Robbing Banks, Losing Everything, and Finding God: AA Speaker – Brian P. – Portland, ME
AA speaker Brian P. from Portland, ME shares his story of robbing banks, doing 7 years in prison, and finding recovery through the Big Book and step work.
Brian P. from Portland, ME robbed banks to fund his crack and alcohol habits, spending nearly seven years in prison before finding recovery. In this AA speaker tape, he walks through his criminal bottom, multiple relapses, and how working the 12 steps with a direct sponsor finally gave him the spiritual solution he needed to stay sober.
This AA speaker meeting features Brian P. sharing his story of robbing multiple banks to support his drinking and drug use, which led to seven years in prison. He describes how just going to meetings wasn’t enough and explains the difference between fellowship and actually working the 12 steps. Brian discusses his spiritual awakening through step work and making amends to his mother who had disowned him.
Episode Summary
Brian P. opens his share with characteristic humility and humor, noting he’s been sober since March 6th, 1993 – a date he didn’t wake up planning to get sober. Coming off a three-month relapse after being sober for a year, he was headed to the dog track and another night of drinking and smoking crack when he got “12-stepped back” into the program.
Growing up in Stockton, California as the youngest of four boys, Brian was surrounded by alcohol from an early age. His mother was what he calls a “barroom drunk” who would come home from work, throw together some food, and bolt out the door to the bar. This created a deep resentment in young Brian, who swore he’d never become like her. The irony wasn’t lost on him later – he went “ten times worse” than his mother ever was.
Brian’s drinking started at 10 or 11, stealing booze from his mother’s cabinet during house parties. Even then, alcohol completely transformed how he felt about himself and the world around him. As a teenager, he was the kid who never left the keg party early, never understood why others would go home while there was still booze available. His mother’s parenting philosophy was simple: “If you get drunk, just sleep in your car.”
After high school in 1980, Brian moved into a house with friends and started painting houses. His drinking escalated to a daily pattern – getting high in the morning, working all day, then starting to drink around 3 or 4 PM. He’d stop at drive-through liquor stores, buy a 12-pack and two 16-ounce beers for the ride home, then spend the evening calculating whether there was enough alcohol for everyone present.
The cocaine epidemic hit Tucson hard in the early 1980s, and Brian got deeply involved in both using and dealing. As someone who “always looked for shortcuts” and had what he calls “a criminal mind,” dealing seemed like the obvious solution to fund his escalating habit. But Brian violated the cardinal rule of drug dealing – he was using his own product and consistently coming up short on payments to suppliers.
By age 21, Brian found himself in a desperate situation. Owing money all over town with his name “getting slammed,” he was broke, hopeless, and sitting around with his friend Dave one Friday night with no money for drugs or alcohol. That’s when Brian came up with his first plan: robbing a Kentucky Fried Chicken. When they chickened out after finding the restaurant empty, Brian went home and had an even darker thought.
Driving into the desert with a garden hose and duct tape, Brian was ready to end his life through carbon monoxide poisoning. At 21, he felt completely hopeless and dead inside. But as he sat in the car writing suicide letters, he had an overwhelming thought about how this would destroy his mother, who had already buried one son. That moment of clarity – not hope, just the realization he couldn’t put his mother through that – stopped him from following through.
Instead, Brian came up with plan number two. The next morning, he walked into a bank, stood in line, and handed the teller a note demanding money. The confused teller looked down at this 5’1″ kid and asked if he was serious. He walked out with $50, drove three miles to a 7-Eleven, bought a 12-pack of Budweiser, and after four beers thought, “That was crazy… and you only got 50 bucks.” So he drove across town and robbed another bank.
Brian’s bank robbing career lasted about six months. He used the money to pay off drug dealers, re-up his supply, and live like “a drunk sailor.” The surreal nature of his situation is captured in his memory of asking his boss for the keys to the company van, driving to town to rob a bank, then returning to the job site thinking, “Why isn’t everybody doing this?”
Reality caught up when one of his roommates cut his picture out of the newspaper and put it on the refrigerator with a “$5,000 reward” caption underneath. His roommates thought it was hilarious that someone looked just like Brian. A week later, the FBI arrested him. His parents bailed him out and got him a lawyer, who delivered the hard truth: “You can’t rob three banks and not go to prison.”
Facing 5-10 years, Brian started drinking around the clock. Three months into this bender, broke and unemployed, he borrowed his roommate’s car “to cash a check” and robbed another bank on a Friday afternoon, knowing he’d get caught but not caring. He wanted money for the weekend to drink and party. The FBI arrested him Monday morning, and he didn’t see the streets for the next six years.
Prison, Brian says, saved his life. After serving five years and eight months, he was released on parole with clear conditions: no drinking, no drugs, regular check-ins. His parole officer gave him all the tools he needed to stay free. But within a month, Brian was drinking again, eventually testing positive and violating parole. He lasted four or five more months before the marshals arrested him for another year inside.
The second release was different – Brian actually wanted to stop drinking. He went to a halfway house called New Beginnings Treatment Center, but on his first day of freedom, the thought hit him: “You should have a drink.” He drank for three days, got caught, and was mandated to AA meetings.
Brian spent a year in AA without really understanding what alcoholism was. He said he was an alcoholic because everyone else in the room did, “quacking like every other duck,” but never believed it. He went to the noon meeting at the Allen Club – “the best show on earth” – and found comfort in an old Navy veteran who would put his hand on Brian’s shoulder and tell him to come back tomorrow.
But Brian wasn’t working the program. He saw three groups in the meetings: the “hardcore Big Book thumpers” who seemed too serious, the “fluff and peace and God” crowd who were too touchy-feely, and the guys who said “just don’t drink and go to meetings” and invited him to play pool. He chose the latter group, thinking this was good enough. This approach to recovery matches what many people discover in AA speaker talks on hitting bottom and early sobriety – that half-measures don’t work for real alcoholics.
After a year sober, Brian relapsed and spent three months drinking and using while working at a rehab facility. The insanity of his situation is captured perfectly: he’d be drunk and high in his trailer when newcomers would knock on his door asking for help staying sober. He’d talk them out of leaving treatment while being completely loaded himself.
March 6th, 1993 changed everything. After three months of waking up determined not to drink but finding himself drunk by evening anyway, Brian was contemplating either suicide or returning to bank robbery when his friend Max intervened. Max, a former heroin addict who’d done time in California State Penitentiary, got in Brian’s face and said, “I love you too much to watch you die in front of me. How long have you been sober?”
That confrontation broke Brian completely. For the first time in years, he cried and admitted, “I need help. I can’t stop drinking.” Max stayed with him that night, sleeping on the floor near the door to make sure Brian didn’t run. The rehab owner, instead of kicking Brian out, allowed him to become a patient at the facility where he’d been working.
The next day, Brian got a sponsor named Kim and had to face a circle of 50 patients to get honest about his three-month lie. His future wife Chloe and two other women literally held him there because he wanted to run. This moment of complete honesty marked the real beginning of his recovery.
Brian’s sponsor delivered a crucial message: “You were never in AA. The program of Alcoholics Anonymous is the 12 steps. Without the 12 steps, you’re just hanging out with people who don’t drink.” This distinction between fellowship and program becomes central to Brian’s understanding of recovery and mirrors the experience shared in talks like Chris R.’s story about why just going to meetings almost killed him.
Working the steps revealed the true nature of Brian’s problem. His sponsor explained that drinking wasn’t the problem – it was Brian’s solution. His actual problem was alcoholism, a physical allergy that created an abnormal reaction to alcohol once he started drinking. Understanding this physical aspect helped Brian release the resentment he’d carried toward his mother, realizing she wasn’t making bad choices but suffering from the same disease.
The mental obsession required a spiritual solution. Brian was particularly struck by the 10th Step promises on page 84 of the Big Book, which state that “when the thought occurs” to drink, “you will recoil from it as from a hot flame.” As someone who had plotted and planned ways to drink in every situation – even making prison wine – this promise of automatic mental protection was exactly what he needed.
From atheist to spiritual man represents Brian’s most dramatic transformation. Working through the steps with his direct sponsor, he moved from hatred of God to living by spiritual principles. The 12 steps gave him not just sobriety, but integrity – something he’d never possessed during his criminal years.
The ninth step brought particular healing with his mother, who had disowned Brian during his last prison sentence. Sitting down with her alone, Brian got completely honest about the destruction he’d caused. The full impact didn’t hit him until years later when his daughter was born. Feeling unconditional love for his child, he finally understood what he’d put his mother through and called to apologize once more.
Brian’s transformation from the “one-man crime wave” Judge Bilby sentenced in 1984 to a man of integrity speaks to the power of the 12 steps. Where he once took his whole family to prison with him emotionally while being completely self-centered about commissary money, he now lives in service to others. Much like the speakers featured in AA speaker meetings on sponsorship and carrying the message, Brian focuses on finding the lonely newcomer sitting in the corner and reaching out with the same compassion others showed him.
Today, Brian does more meetings inside prisons than outside, recognizing that not many people are willing to carry the message into those institutions. His story comes full circle – from being saved by incarceration to returning as a messenger of hope. At 46 years old with 15 and a half years of sobriety, Brian exemplifies the promises of recovery while maintaining the humility that comes from remembering exactly where he came from.
His closing message emphasizes service as the point of recovery: being of maximum service to God by reaching out to those still suffering from untreated alcoholism. For someone who once robbed banks for $50 and nearly died by suicide at 21, Brian P.’s transformation demonstrates that no bottom is too low for the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous to reach.
Notable Quotes
It’s never been the first drink that’s gotten me drunk. It’s been the unprotected thought that precedes the first drink.
You were never in AA. The program of Alcoholics Anonymous is the 12 steps. Without the 12 steps, you’re just hanging out with people who don’t drink.
Drinking is not your problem. Drinking is your solution. Your problem is you have alcoholism.
I love you too much to watch you die in front of me. How long have you been sober?
The biggest lie any alcoholic ever says is ‘Leave me alone because I’m only hurting myself.’ Guess who I took to prison with me? I took my mom to prison, my dad, my brothers, my nephews.
Sponsorship
Big Book Study
Relapse & Coming Back
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Full Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated and may contain minor errors. For the best experience, listen to the audio above.
Hey everyone, I'm Ryan, an alcoholic. And drop this—the worst thing is flavored coffee. I don't want to seem ungrateful, but flavored coffee. [laughter] Anyway, it's good to be here. Thank you for asking me to come up. I don't get out on Tuesday nights, so it's a rare year I actually come out. And I'm alcoholic. My name is Brian. And I really don't know what I'm going to say, but I'll start off with this. My sobriety date is March 6th, 1993. The only interesting thing about that is I didn't get up that day to get sober. I was on a three-month relapse after being sober for a year. And it was like any other day. I was going to go to the dog track and then go smoke crack and drink all night.
And somehow I got twelve-stepped back into AA that day, and I haven't had a drink since or any other mind-altering substance. And I find that amazing. I find that really amazing because I'm a guy who could not not drink in any situation, in any institution, in any surrounding. I'm a guy who drank in prison. I drank in the youth center. I drank in rehabs. I drank in halfway houses. Wherever they put me, I would find a way to drink. And I haven't had a drink in almost fifteen and a half years. So I'm still baffled by that.
It is good to be sober. It's good to be here. My home group is the It's in the Book Big Book meeting in Camden, Maine. Though I will not live in Camden, Maine. I live in Union, Maine. You know where that's at. It's in the middle of nowhere. And I grew up on the West Coast.
And I'm going to share with you—the big book is really interesting. It really tells you what to do. I share what I was like, what happened to me, and what I'm like now. And I'm a guy who, when I first got sober, came out of the big book. I got sober out of the big book. I got really directed with some good directions. And I used to speak and I would only talk about recovery. I wouldn't talk about where I come from. I think I did a big disservice to people because most people need to know that I'm a real alcoholic. They need to know I'm a real alcoholic.
I grew up in California. I grew up in this town called Stockton, California. And I'm not going to take it all the way back to my childhood, so don't worry. I'm not going to do this for three hours. But I did grow up in California. And I come from a family—I'm the youngest of four boys. And I come from a criminal background if that's of any interest to anybody. But it's the mindset of the environment I grew up in.
And I was the youngest of the four, and my brother died when he was seven. I was five. And so it was pretty much my two older brothers and me, and I was surrounded with a lot of alcohol. My mom was a barroom drunk, and I remember there were things I used to say about my mom because she was a latchkey kid—which you don't hear that very often anymore—but basically, my parents worked, and when I came home from school, it was just me and my older brothers and neighborhood kids.
And my mom used to come home from work, and the only reason I'm saying this—it's nothing against my mom, trust me. But it's more about my mindset and the resolve I had to not become like her, and how I went ten times worse than her. But my mom used to come home from work and she would slap some food together if she did that, and then she would bolt out the door to the barroom.
And I used to sit around. I was torn. Half of me liked it because then I could run the streets and do whatever I wanted. The other half was mad because she would do that. And my dad would then go off to the bar and try to drag her home, and it'd be a big battle, or he would stay there with her all night. And sometimes she wouldn't come home till three or four in the morning, and sometimes she wouldn't come home the next day.
I had a huge resentment against my mom growing up because I thought—I didn't even consider alcoholism. I just thought she was making bad choices, you know? Like, she's just a bad mother because she would drink. And I remember thinking, I'll never get like her, you know?
And when I was ten, eleven years old, I started smoking a lot of outside issues. And then I started drinking a lot of booze. And I wasn't a daily drinker. I was just a guy who would steal booze from my mom's cabinet, or they'd have parties at the house and I would just get drunk and nobody would ever say anything.
And alcohol for me—and this was repeated all the way up to the age of thirty where I got sober—alcohol changed me. It changed everything about me. It changed how I felt about myself. It changed how I felt about you. It changed how I felt about life, about the world, about everybody. It just totally transformed me and made everything okay. But I would have never put that into words. I just liked to drink. I mean, I would have never put those words together. Alcohol for me—I just liked to drink. I liked to go out and hang out with the guys while my mom and dad are out partying. And we would often go out to the fields and we would just drink and get drunk and then throw rocks through windows and do kids' stuff, you know.
There was not a lot of problems with my drinking. My mom basically—her mantra when I was growing up in high school was like, "So what are you doing tonight?" I said, "Oh, I'm going to a party. Going to a keg party." "Oh, there's going to be booze?" I said, "Yeah, hence the keg, Mom. That's the whole point of that." And she would say, "Well, if you get drunk, just sleep in your car."
And so when you're a sixteen-year-old kid, seventeen-year-old kid, you got the green light to just get trashed and then sleep in the car. That's what I would do.
And the only thing significant about my drinking as I started to grow up is it started to get where I would drink on the weekends and I would have fun, you know, like a football game. We'd go out to these big keg parties out in the desert. This is in Tucson, Arizona. I'm jumping all over the place, so just bear with me.
And the only thing that I could identify that maybe I had a problem with booze was I would never leave if there was a keg party going on. I would never leave a fifteen-foot circle of the keg. Like I wouldn't go without eyesight and care, you know? Even if I had to go to the bathroom, I'd just turn around and go. And I would never leave the party while there was still booze there.
I was never one of those guys who would say, "Hey, see you later. I got to go to work tomorrow," you know? Like guys would leave at eleven, twelve o'clock at night, and I was always baffled by that. I'd like, why would you want to go, you know? There's still booze here. We still got stuff happening.
And I would drink till it was empty, and then I would crawl in my car, and then wake up six in the morning and drive home. And I didn't think that was a problem. In fact, I thought that was kind of cool. I thought that was all right, you know?
Everything between ten and eighteen was kind of one long thing. You know, I went to the youth center, ran away from home, stole a boat, got arrested, did some B&E, minor stuff, you know—stuff that lots of kids probably weren't doing, but I did. And nothing was really like—you could have never convinced me at age eighteen I was alcoholic. You never would have done it, you know? I was having fun. I graduated in 1980, which means, you know, I'm forty-six years old, which is another thing that confuses me—that I'm actually still thinking I'm like in my twenties. I don't know what's up with that. [laughter] But I'm forty-six, and my wife would say forty-six and a half, but I'm forty-six.
And so when I graduated in 1980, this is when my drinking was getting progressively worse. It was getting to where I would want to drink. It was getting where sometimes when I—I used to always pride myself on having a job, right? I got a job. And my whole purpose for having a job was twofold. One is it's a good place to steal money. I never worked at any job where I didn't steal anything from. So I kept me in weed and kept me in drinking money. And two, I always worked in restaurants where we could steal booze.
So that was kind of my thing, and it put gas in my car. It wasn't like I wanted to further my career washing dishes at the Tanky Guest Ranch, which is where I worked a lot. It was like an old dude ranch out in Tucson. I stole a lot of booze from that place and stole a lot of steaks and had a lot of fun.
And I started to do things like drinking, you know, seventeen, eighteen years old, started drinking on the job. Not even thinking that's a problem, thinking that everybody does that. But I could identify none of that. You know, in fact, even when I got sober in ninety-three, when I started to go through the steps—I'd been in AA for a year before that—but when I got sober then, I remember a guy taking me through the steps and he started to explain alcoholism. I was in AA for a year and did not know what an alcoholic was. But I said I was alcoholic. And you know, you guys didn't do it here, but in Tucson, and I know a lot of meetings where everybody goes around the room and says they're alcoholic. I said that for a year. Never believed it once. And the only reason I did it was because every other duck was quacking in the room. And so when it came to me, I quacked like everybody else.
But the truth is, in my heart of hearts, I didn't believe I was alcoholic, you know?
And so it was baffling to me when I started to understand that I got a problem with alcohol. And I didn't learn that till I was thirty. So when I graduated in 1980, I made this decision. I had lots of times in my life where I could have gone left or right. And I started—I always went right and it was always wrong. I always went right thinking that was the right way to go.
And I made a decision. They were saying, "Well, you should go to college." And you know, if you're me and I came from a school—and this is in Tucson, Arizona—that had two thousand students. It was a big school. There was over five hundred students in my graduating class. And I was about four hundred seventy down the line, you know? Like I was on the back end. I was barely graduated, like getting kicked out all the time. And so when they said, "You should go to college," it was like, "Yeah, that's not an option for me."
And so a lot of my friends went this way, and a lot of my friends—most of them were my pot-smoking buddies and my drinking buddies. We kind of went this way, and we all got—four of us moved into a house together. And in 1980, I'll never forget June of 1980. I graduated in June, and about two weeks after graduation, I moved out of my parents' house and I started painting houses and doing what guys do, you know? You work. We're working. I'm working eight hours a day. We're all working construction. They're like masons and painters and carpenters, and we work all day. We come home and we all come home with booze. We start drinking, and then we go off to the bar. We go play pool or we have a party at our house. And it's not a lot of problems. It's not a big problem, you know?
Nobody I knew was going to rehab in 1980, 1981. No one. People would stop coming around anymore. That was kind of weird. People would all of a sudden—I'd stop seeing people and we'd wonder what happened. We didn't know they were going to rehab. So I just never spoke about it.
I never heard of AA until I went to prison, you know? And that was only because they announced it over the PA system. It wasn't because I went into the AA meeting. It was just because they announced it, and then I'd look at all the people going to the AA meeting and then judge them, you know? [laughter]
So what happened for me—and drugs were part of my story. This is an AA meeting. I'm going to be real respectful of the traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous. I cannot tell my story without telling what happened because in 1980, 1981, though I was becoming a daily drinker, it was not like I woke up in the morning and drank. I used to say, "Well, I don't drink in the morning," but I get up in the morning and I get baked. You know what I mean? I'm like getting the bong out and I'm getting baked before I eat anything, before I do anything. I'm getting slanted, you know?
And then I go to work. And then I work all day. And then at lunchtime I get baked again. And then around three or four, I start drinking. And so my measuring stick was, "I don't drink in the morning." And we had a few friends who were drinking in the morning—like, man, that's messed up. If I start drinking in the morning, you know, I got a problem. If you're drinking in the morning, you got a problem.
But I would start thinking about drinking around lunchtime, and I would be thinking about where I'm going to go that night, what I'm going to do. And in Tucson, it's really cool. They have drive-through liquor stores, which I think is really impressive. And so I would come off the job site and then go to the drive-through liquor store and I'd get a twelve-pack of Budweiser—two hundred sixteen ounces in the bag—and then that would be the two hundred sixteen for the ride home, and then I'd start drinking.
But once I got three or four into my twelve-pack, or whatever I was buying that night depending on my finances, I would immediately start counting. I was the type of guy who I would see how many people were in the house, who was over that night, how much booze was around, and I would already calculate whether we're going to have enough or not. And then I would either go to the liquor store and stash it, or I would go to a club and drink, you know? Whatever. I would just go somewhere and drink where I could get my fill because I knew once I started drinking, I was not a guy who was drinking three or four beers and then going to bed. That's just not who I am, you know? I'm drinking till I pass out. That's the story of my life. But I'm not alcoholic. I just like to have fun, you know? I mean, that's just having fun. That's what you do.
And I started to get involved in—Tucson was what they call cocaine alley. It was like thirty miles from Mexico through the interstate. They called it cocaine alley because they brought all this stuff up through, and it was really cheap. And I went to the dog track one night and I'd been dabbling in that substance—you know, what we call outside issue in AA. But I went to the dog track one night and I won a lot of money, me and my buddy. And we went to this guy's house, and instead of snorting it, this outside issue, we started to smoke it. And this was pretty crack for all you guys. And you have to label that because this was back in 1981, 1982.
And I got involved in that in a really deep way. And now you understand—I'm a guy I have, by nature, a mind that always looks for shortcuts and always tries to get the easy way out. And I'm also a guy who, for lack of a better word, has a criminal mind. And so I'm always looking for the edge.
And what I realized is the habit I was getting into—I couldn't support that on my own financial nature. When you're making seven bucks an hour painting houses and you're starting to smoke what I was smoking, you couldn't do it. So I started to deal drugs.
And the thing with me is I love booze. I love the feeling of booze. But also, when you start to get around eleven, twelve o'clock and you've been drinking a lot, you start to get a little tired. So I love this other stuff that would just actually catapult me to the rest of the day, the rest of the evening. But then I realized I can't make enough money. I couldn't handle this. So I started dealing drugs.
And I'm a guy—if you're a drug dealer, you'll know what this means. If you're dealing the substance you're smoking, it's a problem. And if you're good, like I am—which is, you know, I don't have a lot of money to go get—so I would go get these ounces from these guys. I'd say, "Hey, can you give me an ounce?" And they'd give me an ounce. "I'll get you back in a week." They'd give me an ounce. They trusted me. I'm a nice guy. Look at me. Come on. You would give me your wallet in a heartbeat.
And then I would start to slang little nickel and dime, you know, quarter grams. Then I'd come back with about fifteen hundred, five hundred short. And I would say, "Hey, look, here's this. And I got the other five hundred fronted, and I'm going to get that to you next week." And I can get another one. And then I started piling this up.
And then after about six months to about a year of this, I started going to other dealers, and then pretty soon, after about a year and a half, my name starts getting slammed all over town. And I'm now getting to a place where people actually want their money back, which, you know, I understand that. But I thought they were being inconsiderate because, you know, this is a business venture. Just have a little patience, please. And the whole time I'm a guy living such a double life. Nobody knows what's going on. Nobody. My fiancée doesn't know. My roommates don't know. Nobody knows how deep I'm getting. Nobody.
And I was twenty-one, and I was in a place. And I'm not a guy who would go into deep depression. I mean, I did used to like to listen to the record at the end of Fitzgerald and then throw the lights off and think about my funeral. But I wasn't really a depressed kind of guy.
And I was sitting around one night with this guy named Dave Kerr, and him and I were like running partners. He was my road dog. We ran together. We worked together. We drank together. We smoked together. And we were just—everybody was out partying, and I didn't have anything. I didn't have anything. I had no money. Everybody's out at the club. I had no—I couldn't get any of this outside issue that I like to smoke, and I couldn't get anything, and I couldn't get any booze. And we're sitting around, and he's like, "Um, this sucks." And I go, "Yeah, man. This really sucks."
And so I came up with a plan. And the plan for me and Dave—Dave was the type of guy. Dave wasn't a leader. I was a leader. Which is always weird because I'm like five-foot-one. I shouldn't be leading anything. [laughter] And I get really stupid thoughts like, "So my thought this night was, hey, we could go rob the Kentucky Fried Chicken." That was the plan, you know?
And he's like—he'd never committed a crime in his life. I mean, I've been to the youth center. I've done stuff. But he had never even thought about that. I said, "Look, I got some pistols and I got ski masks and some rope. We go down to find chicken. Cut these guys up. Boom. Bang. We'll take the safe. We're good to go."
And I'd been there late night. There's like a weak crew. It's like three people, two girls, and some goofy guy. We can do this. So we, you know, it was like—we were jamming over there. We had "Back in Black" by AC/DC. It had just come out, you know. So we were jamming. And I used to have long hair and wear these big bandanas, you know? [laughter] We were jamming, you know? And we were like, "Yeah, we're doing this. We're taking this down."
We went in there. We didn't do it. We ended up finding a poppish meal. [laughter] I had to.
And I remember thinking, "Man, this sucks," you know? And we were like—and Dave was one of those. Dave was a bummer, you know? He used to bum me out all the time. I said, "Dude, you're bumming me out, man," because he was one of those guys who would go into depression, and anyway, I dropped him off and I said, "I'll see you tomorrow." I usually picked him up for work, but I didn't. I went home.
You know what I did? I drove home and I got a piece of hose and I cut off a piece of hose. I got a roll of duct tape. I threw it in my roommate's car because that's what I was going to rob this place with. And I drove out to the desert.
And the thought of suicide had never come in my eye, and I had never even thought about that. It wasn't a fad like it is now. People doing it. I wasn't even—I never thought about it. I didn't know anybody. Never really even talked about it. But that night I was so hopeless and I was so desperate and I was so empty and dead inside that I was going to check out.
And it was not one of those cut-my-wrist, run-to-my-roommate's-room-and-say, "Look, I'm—you know, take me off." It was none of that. And it was like I'm driving out to the desert and I'm out in the middle of nowhere and I get out of the car and I put the hose in, I tape it up, and I get in the car and I start pumping fumes. And I just don't see any hope.
See, this is at twenty-one years of age. I was twenty-one. That's why when guys come in at eighteen, seventeen, sixteen, I don't even question it, you know what? Because at twenty-one, I was so hopeless, you know? And if somebody would have told me, "Oh, you know, just suck it up," that wasn't it. I was dead inside at twenty-one.
And I didn't get sober nine years later. And I started to pump the fumes. And I got really close to dying that night. I got really groggy and I started to get nauseous. I started to nod out, and I was writing letters. And this is the type of son I was, so you understand how big this moment was. I was the type of son that when my mom and dad questioned my drinking a couple years earlier—three years earlier—they said, "Um, me and Dad want to talk to you." And they said, "You know, we're concerned about your drinking."
Well, I should just stop going to my parents' house. That was my solution. Like, okay, I'll check into that. And then I just wouldn't go home. I lived a mile from my mom. I hadn't seen her except on Christmas, Thanksgiving, my birthday, maybe her birthday. And four times, five times a year, I'd go see my mom. I lived a mile from her, right? That's the type of son I was, right?
And so here I am, writing this letter, and I was writing this letter to my mom. And I don't know—you know, this was definitely a God thing for me because at that moment, at that time, I had this overwhelming thought of how much that would destroy my mom because she had already buried one of her boys. And I don't know why that selfless thought came into my heart. At that moment, I thought, man, I can't do that to my mom. It wasn't like I had any more hope. It wasn't like I had a plan. It wasn't like things would get okay. I still think it was going to be crappy. But at that moment, I thought, man, I can't do that to my mom. I love my mom too much to have her bury another boy.
And so I drove—I just climbed out of the car and I walked around the desert. And I came up with another plan. This is my second big plan in one night. So, you know, I was on a roll.
And I didn't plan this out, but I drove into town the next morning. I robbed a bank, you know? And it was about that casual. I walked in, stood in line. In fact, if I had to reinvent that whole scenario, I can still remember the lady looking at me like, "What are you, crazy?" I went—you know, you fill out your forms. You know, you fill out your deposit slips. And I basically wrote on the back of it—I didn't know I was writing this, but I wrote, "I have a gun. This is a bank robbery. I will kill you. Give me fifty dollars." That's what I wrote.
And I stood in line because I think that's the wrong thing to do if you're going to rob a bank. So I took the line, and when it was my turn, I called up and I slid the lady the note, and she looked at me. That's what it felt like. She was looking down at me. And I looked up at her and said, "Yeah, I'm serious." And she slid me a fifty-dollar bill and I took it and ran.
And you know, you're not dealing with a criminal here. I'm not really a gangster. I'm just a snot-nosed punk. I weighed about one hundred five pounds. And I was just way out of control.
And I remember the only thing I remember—I think I was in a sober blackout because I wasn't sober at the time. I ran to my car, which I parked a couple blocks away, and I drove about three miles to a 7-Eleven, and I was shaking so bad. It was like shaking, and I went in and bought a twelve-pack of Budweiser. And I got about four beers down, and as soon as I was done with that fourth one, it felt like everything was like booze worked for me every time. It was like, "All right, dude. That was crazy, you know? Like you just robbed the bank. That's insane. And you only got fifty bucks. Man, that's not even worth it."
So I drove across town and robbed another bank. About fifty bucks. I know people always say, "What'd you get?" None of my—none of your business. But I didn't get fifty bucks. And then I came home. I paid all my debts off. I went to every drug dealer I owed money to. Paid everybody off. I re-upped a couple times, and I paid my rent. I paid every bill. I paid everything off, and I had a pocket full of money and a bag full of coke and some booze in a bag. And my girlfriend—God love her—she says, "Uh, how was work?" And I'm a painter, right? And anyone who's painted for a living knows that you come home with paint on you. I came home the last year that I lived with that woman covered in paint. And I was clean as could be. And I said, "Work was great. Let's go out to dinner."
And we did. We went out. I started spending money like I was a drunk sailor. And about six months later—six months later—I remember I had a boss who was, you know, he was like I was. And I said, "Hey, I need the keys to the van, man. I got to go make some errands." He said, "Yeah, give me the keys to the van." I drive into town, rob a bank, go back to the job site. And I'm thinking, seriously thinking, "Why is everybody doing this, you know? Like, what do you think? All I do is ask for it, man. They just give it to you."
And what I didn't understand—well, but here's what happened. Two weeks later—not two weeks, about a week later—I came home from work. This just gives you the definition of the guys I run with. I came home from work. It was like every other night. I had some booze, and I went to put it in the refrigerator, and I looked on the refrigerator and there's a picture of me that was cut out of the paper. One of my roommates had saw it. They cut it out of the paper and they put it on that thing. And it didn't say my name. And it was just like me coming out of a bank, waving, you know? Like, "Hey."
And underneath it said, "Uh, five thousand dollar reward. Call 88 Crime." That's when 88 Crime started hitting the road, you know? Everybody's like, "So I'm like immediately my knees start buffeting. I'm like, man, that looks just like me. I would have that shirt in my room right now."
And I like get my stuff together, and I rip it down and I go out. My roommates are all out there, and they're all baked because they've been home like an hour. And I throw it on the table. I'm like, "Dude, what's that?" And they go, "Man, it's crazy, Brian. Some dude looks just like you." [laughter]
And I'm—as soon as they said that, it's like I thought, you know, if they don't know, then nobody knows. And then about a week later, I got arrested. FBI came in and arrested me. You know, somebody obviously needed a new car or something.
But they arrested me. And then the only thing significant—my parents did what parents do because my parents love me so much. They bailed me out three days later and they got me a lawyer. And then the lawyer told me the truth, which nobody had really told me the truth. He said, "Brian, you're going to go to prison. You can't rob three banks and not go to prison."
And I said, "Well, what does that mean?" They're like, "Well, you—a year, two years." He said, "No, probably five or ten years."
Now, when you're twenty-one and you're talking ten years, that's like—that's thirty is like so old, right? I mean, I remember that thirty is like ancient. I got a seventeen-year-old daughter. She's a foster daughter, but she's my dog as far as I'm concerned. I know she's like thinking I'm ancient, you know? I mean, I get that thought process. And I thought my life is over. It is over.
And so I started drinking really, really bad. I started waking up drinking. And once I start drinking, because I have this physical allergy to alcohol—once I put alcohol into my system, it's not like I just drink a few and then call it good. I drink all day, and I do other things all day so I don't fall asleep. Or if I do pass out, I wake up and I start drinking more. And it was bad for about two, three months. It was really bad. I was really bummed out, and I knew what's the use?
And one day everybody's like, "Hey, we're going to the bar." You know, they're all happy to go to the bar. I don't have any money because nobody's hiring me, right? Because I'm going to prison soon. And nobody's giving me any drugs for free anymore, you know? Because I'm hot as heck, you know? Nobody wants me even around. And understandably, right?
And I'm sitting there thinking, man, this sucks. And I look at my roommate and I said, "Hey, can I borrow your car? I need to go cash a check."
Hey, this—I don't want to take his inventory or anything, but come on, dude. I haven't worked in a long time. I don't have no check to cash. But he gives me his keys to his car. And I drive. It's a Friday afternoon, and I go rob a bank on a Friday afternoon. And I knew I was going to get pinched. I knew it. And I didn't care. It's like, so what? I'm getting some money tonight, and I am drinking and partying this weekend.
And that's what I did. I drank and partied that weekend, and I knew the FBI was coming after me Monday or Tuesday. I just said, "Well, whatever." And they came and got me on Monday, and I didn't see the streets for the next six years.
And thank God they saved my life, you know? There's a running joke—guys who do time will know this. You know, it's like we used to say, "Yeah, you weren't arrested. You were saved." You know? And the truth was I was saved. I was a train wreck waiting to happen, you know? It wasn't going to be my life. It was going to be somebody else's, you know? And that's the way it was going to go down. And I just didn't see the severity of it. I just didn't get it. I was so immersed in my alcoholism.
So six years, you know—I got a six-year sentence. Make a run right to the solution now. I did five years, eight months on that bit. Got out. Didn't think I was going to drink. I was just going to do my time and I was old enough to get off. But I can't, you know? They can give me all the conditions. In fact, my PO was real clear. It's not like he tricked me. He gave me all the things I needed to stay on the streets. He said, "You can't drink alcohol. You can't use drugs. You got to be here when you're there." He gave me all the rules and laid them all out.
But as soon as I'm