Whatever Time I Have, I Have This Program – AA Speaker – Dennis M.
Dennis M., an AA speaker from Reno, shares his journey from drag bars and drug addiction to finding recovery and spiritual awakening. His story shows how the program works beyond drinking.
Dennis M. from Reno spent years caught between hiding who he was and chasing escape through alcohol and drugs in the city’s gay bar scene. In this AA speaker meeting, he walks through his childhood in rural Nevada, his descent into heavy drug use, a desperate night that led him to treatment, and the moment he decided to actually work the program instead of just showing up.
Dennis M. shares his recovery story from a childhood in rural Nevada where he hid his identity, through years of heavy drinking and drug use in Reno’s bar scene, to his bottom in a trashy bar and eventual surrender to the program. An AA speaker who was diagnosed with HIV six months into sobriety, he describes his spiritual awakening and how the program became his foundation for living. He discusses how he carries the message through service work and 12-step calls, showing that recovery works when you’re willing to do the work and stay connected to the fellowship.
Episode Summary
Dennis M. opens with humor and vulnerability, laying out the central tension of his life: the conflict between his identity and the world around him. Growing up in a small Nevada ranching town with divorced parents, he was dressed in girls’ clothes by his mother as entertainment, a habit that continued until she realized he wasn’t playing a phase. Even a family doctor reassured her it would pass. It didn’t.
What started as drinking at high school parties in a small town became a lifestyle. His first drunk—half a gallon of Burgundy wine—set the pattern: finding ways to hide it from his parents, white-knuckling through the next day, then doing it all again. When he moved to Southern California at eighteen, his first serious relationship was built entirely around drinking and using. His mother’s terminal illness brought him back home, but after she died, he landed in Reno in 1980, a city with twelve gay bars and a community ready to celebrate him.
For nearly a decade, Dennis became the star of Reno’s drag scene. He won the city’s famous Closet Ball his first year, which launched him into regular performances. The drinking wasn’t just social—it was necessary. He couldn’t perform drag without getting drunk first. As an AA speaker recounting this period, he’s honest about the fact that jobs, apartments, and surface-level stability never fell apart. He was a chef, a restaurant manager, a florist. Drinking and drugs stayed compartmentalized until they didn’t.
The turning point came in the form of two rock-bottom moments separated by a year of relapse. First, he woke up in one of Reno’s worst bars—no shirt, filthy clothes, long greasy hair—and finally asked for help. He tried to check into a treatment center but had no insurance. His brother had to arrange for him to be arrested so he could detox in protective custody. After 28 days of treatment, he attended his first AA meeting and felt nothing. The program was too new in Reno; there were barely five people. He didn’t see what he needed. After four months playing at the program, he went back out, deeper into drugs and drinking for another year.
Then came the moment that changed everything. Sitting in a bar on a Friday afternoon, his boss pointed out that three shots of tequila and four beers in forty-five minutes wasn’t normal drinking. Dennis knew his boss was right. He remembered there was a meeting at Toma Street at 8:00. This time, something shifted. He made a secret bargain with himself: he’d commit to the program for six months, do what he was told, and if it wasn’t working by then, he’d go back out. He walked into that meeting, lit a cigarette (and was quickly told to put it out), and sat among about twelve people, some he’d drunk with.
Within six months, he had a spiritual awakening—he can’t explain exactly what happened or when, but he felt it. Two years later, he was chairman of Reno’s first AA conference. Around the same time he got sober, he tested positive for HIV. Rather than dwelling on this in his share, he moves past it quickly, but uses it to illustrate his point: the program gave him something to fall back on that went far deeper than the drinking problem.
His message at the end is quiet and powerful. He talks about doing 12-step work, about people asking him how he can go to bars and raise money for charities without drinking. His answer: “I just don’t drink anymore. There’s this program called AA and I’m glad I found it.” He emphasizes that he doesn’t do one-on-one 12-step calls the way some people do; his service is more public, his presence more visible. But people come up to him and ask how he does it. He tells them. And that’s the work.
The final line of his talk is what sticks: “Whatever time I have, wherever I’m going, whatever I’m going to do, at least I have accomplished this in my life. And this is what I have.” He’s talking about a life that’s no longer ruled by the obsession to drink or use, a life where he can be himself without needing chemicals to make it bearable, and a program he can always fall back on when the rough times come.
Notable Quotes
I knew that if I had to ever clean up my life and get it in some sort of direction, I should have to give AA a try.
Whatever time I have, wherever I’m going, whatever I’m going to do, at least I have accomplished this in my life. And this is what I have.
I don’t know what it was. I don’t think it was just that particular meeting or any particular meeting or any particular sign or anything. But I knew that if I had to ever clean up my life and get it in some sort of direction that I should have to give AA a try.
When times get the roughest and the seems so deep that you’ll never get out of it, the program is always here and all you got to do is pick up the phone, call someone, call your sponsor, or call someone in this program.
I just don’t drink anymore. How do you do it? Well, there’s this program called AA and I’m glad I found it and I’m glad I’m here.
Relapse & Coming Back
Spiritual Awakening
Step 12 – Carrying the Message
Acceptance
Topics Covered in This Transcript
- Hitting Bottom
- Relapse & Coming Back
- Spiritual Awakening
- Step 12 – Carrying the Message
- Acceptance
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Full AA Speaker Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated and may contain minor errors. For the best experience, listen to the audio above.
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We hope that you enjoy today's speaker. >> Hi, my name is Dennis. I'm an alcoholic >> and a drag queen.
And I came about this close to being in drag tonight, but I thought that might be a little too much. cuz I'd probably be all melted away by now. I've been sitting back there with this piece of uh tissue ringing it.
Um I brought up the drag queen part because there's several stories in my story about doing drag and when I grew up in a small town here in Nevada. Um, my parents were divorced when I was about 2 months old. Uh, my mother moved her myself and my two older brothers to Winnameaka.
You ever heard that name before? You people from out of town? Um, where my grandparents lived and my mother remarried and we moved out to McDermott to a ranch.
At this point in my life, my mother had let my hair grow down to my shoulders. I was a platinum blonde and tended to dress me up in in little girl's clothes every once in a while when she wanted to entertain the neighbors or thought it was cute. She let me She let me do it for four or five years until she realized that I was really enjoying it.
>> >> Um, and it was about 12 years old and she caught me in her second wedding dress, which fit like a glove. The pumps too, powder blue with a little pillbox hat, powder blue eyes shadow, little pink lipstick. Um, and I think right about that time she realized that I was a bit different than the rest of her sons.
Um, she asked me, it was so funny how she said, "You're just going through a phase, right?" And I said, "No, no, I don't think so." So, she took me to our family doctor. And my family doctor asked me a few questions like, "Do you like playing with girls or do you like playing with boys?" And I said, "Well, I like both." And he says, "Well, why do you like to dress up?" And I said, "Because it's fun." And he says, "Oh, okay." And so we talked to my mother again and he says, "Oh, he's just going through a phase. He'll be fine.
He'll snap out of it." Uh years went on and I kind of hid my uh drag tendencies. Uh because at that point in my in in my life, I realized that whatever it was I was doing, I was doing it wasn't it wasn't right. It wasn't uh the norm.
So, excuse me. You're very dry up here. >> I'm used to having a spotlight and the lights a little dimmer and this is really not my good side because Um, back to uh my story.
I got into high school and uh in this small small town that I grew up in. Drinking was quite a pastime for high school kids. And I I really looked forward to it to being in high school and to to uh party with all the big boys.
and whatever else came along. Um, probably started I probably drank the very first time when my parents were out of town. a neighbor, friend of mine, and I got a gallon of um Burgundy wine and I lived out on a ranch about 10 miles out of McDermott.
So, it was quite a little drive into town. and we drove into town and we stopped at a swimming pool and went swimming and got drunk enough to play around with each other and then drove into town and proceeded to just go crazy and had ran in some other friends and drank and drank and drank. I ended up drinking probably half of this gallon of wine myself and hadn't eaten all day.
And but I knew I was at least smart enough to realize that I had to get home before my parents got back home. So about 7:30 or 8:00 at night, it was just getting dark. My friend decided he he would he better drive.
Um, so we made it home to the turnoff, which is a mile of gravel road to my parents' house and I started getting sick because the road was so windy. Well, if you've ever seen what the the regurgitation of red wine looks like, he'd stop on the side of the road. I'd get out, I'd do my thing, I'd get back in the car, we'd go about another 100 yards, I'd get sick again, I'd get out, and I'd do my thing, and I'd get back in the car.
And and this process went on until we got to my parents' driveway. Um, at this point, all I remember after this is my parents coming home and me going, "Woo, I can get caught. They went to bed.
They got up the next morning. Well, my my bedroom was in the basement of the house. My dad came down to wake me up.
And he says, "What stinks down here?" Well, I had gotten sick again in my bed. And instead of getting up and taking the sheets off, I switched the sheets around to the bottom of the bed and went back to bed. figing, well, nobody will see it.
Um, that day was uh filled with regular ranch work, hanging and whatnot. And my dad realized that I had been drinking the night before. Well, he didn't say anything about it to my mom.
Um, we went to uh the farm to get all the the hang of the day and I was just thirsty as I am right now. Probably drank another gallon of water to replace all the uh the wine that I went through the night before. and got back home that afternoon and my I I can remember my mother saying besides all of the you dumb why did you do this?
You you're grounded, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. She said the funny part of it, the whole the whole funny part of it was she said, "I thought there was an awful lot of dead rabbits on the road last night. My mother, she was always had a wonderful sense of humor.
>> This continued through high school, but I hid that from my parents and as much as I possibly could, I went out and partied with the boys and the girls and we did uh weekend parties. Um, I was introduced to to marijuana when I was a junior in high school. And it wasn't really crazy about it because it made me so paranoid.
And it what was weird about it was we'd have to go to the store and pick up a couple of bags of Doritos in order to function. You know how you get that munchie stuff? Um, we went to the stores and we knew that when when we walked in the door, everybody was looking at you.
Everybody's everybody knew that you were you were smoking pot. Um, high school days went pretty swiftly and all this time I always knew that there was something different about me, but I didn't quite know know what it was. I like wearing dresses.
Um, I got out of high school in 74 and uh my I wanted to come here to Reno to go to school, but my parents for some reason didn't want me to go that far away and uh talked me into going to Elco to community college for school. Well, I never know. I got to Elco and began partying and got crazy and wild and did drugs and the party was well, the party was on the whole time I was there.
Um, I didn't settle down. I didn't go to school. I dropped out of school and ended up moving back home for my parents' insistence.
Um, I lived back home for a while and decided that I needed to uh go someplace further away and uh I moved to Southern California, lived there for about a year, met my first lover there and things seemed to be going pretty well. I had come out with my parents. It wasn't a It wasn't a pleasant experience, but nevertheless, I came out or at least attempted to.
Um, I got to Southern California, like I said, had a boyfriend there. We were together for about 8 months, which was a lifetime for me. Um, but our relationship centered around drinking.
He was a teacher. I was a waiter and a waiter. I was a waitress or a waiter in a truck stop.
And the the drinking was um the main stay of our relationship. Drinking and smoking dope. Occasionally on routines would do coke.
Um, my mother became ill in that same year and was terminal and I decided that I should move back closer to home to be around her. Um, my mother and I probably hated each other but loved each other. would have this lovehate relationship that that neither of my brothers or my younger sister even came close to having.
Um, so I moved back to uh McDermott and uh the relationship was was the plan was that we would get back together in a couple of in a year or whenever my mother it was it was obvious that my mother was going to die soon. So we we plan to uh get back together again soon. And uh in the meantime, he had been transferred to Texas.
We lost touch and never got back together again. Um I lived back at home until my mother passed away and in 1980 I moved here to Reno and I've been here ever since. Um, the first thing I really noticed about Reno was the amount of bars there were for the amount of gay people there were.
At that time when I moved to Reno, there was probably 12 gay bars. And the Queens in this town had some fun. It was a party town.
Still is, I guess. Um, but a lot of things have changed. I got real heavy into the bar scene when I first got here.
Um, became Reno's welcome wagon. A title I really don't care to bring up, but I just did, didn't I? Um, and continued to do so for quite a long time.
I I managed to keep jobs. I was at one job for three or four years as a chef, moved to another restaurant, was there for two or three more years, became a florist, and then did that uh up until last September. Um, so drinking never screwed up my my uh my work life, but like Doug, I did partake in a few cocktails and a few lines at work.
Um, but it really is a big part of your day. Um, where was I? >> Oh, welcome again.
Yes, welcome. Well, I was just kind of a party animal. And in my drinking, well, the first the first uh October that I was here, that I'd lived here, there's a thing called the closet ball where people that have never been in drag, come out as men and then they're sent back and they've they're given an hour with a sponsor to change into a woman.
And there's several faces in this room that well at least one that I know was there. She was the runner up. I won in this fabulous I Dream of Genie costume with a ponytail coming out the top of my head.
Was quite stunning. And it probably began my days of drag in a in a real strong way because being the star for one night and being the head queen for one night, it was just it really did something to me. I wish I could be up here paneling instead of speaking live.
Does anybody have any Shirley Bassie? >> Um, my drag days and my drinking became very common uh occurrences if I wasn't working. Um, like I said, I never screwed up a job because of drinking and or drugs or anything like that.
I never got a DUI cuz I didn't have a car. And I have this one story that I just I really hate to tell, but I'm going to tell it tonight. One birthday I was my birthday is in October.
I decided that I was going to go out and drag and I had this wonderful little spandex outfit, spandex pants, a little tube top, uh sequin tube top, and a nice little uh a little oriental jacket. It was lovely. And I had my wig all combed out.
I had planned this for a couple of days, but the only thing I didn't plan and and to take you back a little bit, when I did drag, I had to get drunk. I had to get drunk. So, I bought a 12-pack of beer and I went home and I started getting ready.
Drink a beer and put on some base and drink some more beer and I line my eyes and well, I got completely made up and went to put on my eyelashes and I didn't have any eyelash glue. So, I searched all over the house for eyelash glue, Elmer's glue. I tried Elmer's glue, but it didn't work.
It kept falling off. The only thing I could find, and at this point I didn't give a was crazy glue. Ah, go for it, girl.
So, I put them on. They stayed on all night long. In fact, the next morning when I about noon, I guess, when I stumbled home and went to take everything off, I had forgotten that I used crazy glue.
rip. And I looked in the mirror and I didn't have any eyelashes left on my eye of my own, but I had a good time. Um, do you know how embarrassing it is to have to go to work the next day and say, "In what happened to your eyes?
Something weird. Well, the oven blew up. Now I just tell him I shaved my eyebrows.
Um, there's that story and there's another one, but I don't think I'm going to tell it tonight. Um, my drinking progressed into a very I was I was to the point where I was drinking four to five days a week, sobering up, telling myself I would never do it again for two days going right back at it. And then drugs came into my life.
Drugs came into my life in a very big way. I started shooting up. I had lost all respect for myself at this point.
I was hanging out in bars that um at one point in my life were probably not acceptable places for me to hang out. Um, the unacceptable became more acceptable. I I was losing friends.
Not friends dying. They were dying, but people didn't want to be around me anymore. Um, like I said, I started hanging out in places where no one I knew hung out.
Um, in 19 Well, let's say eight years ago. Eight almost nine years ago, I decided I was working for Margot's Lover and I'm not going to tell any stories on Margot, but the drugs were there and they were always available. And it's a when your sponsor comes to the program and you don't or if your your connection comes to the program, you really can't go out because you don't know anybody anymore.
I was doing drugs. I was abusing drugs. I wasn't even doing them.
I just for some reason the things that I was hiding from, the the emotions that I was trying to trap away and push away were were handled by drugs, I guess. But I went on a runner June of that year. And I woke up in the one of the trashiest bars in this town.
Still is. I'm surprised it's still open. with no shirt on, a pair of pants that were filthy.
Um, I had a pair of shoes on, long, stringy, greasy, dirty hair. And I asked the bartender to call me a cab. I got the cab and had the cab driver me to what was then uh Raleigh Hills.
um what's now Turkey Meadows Hospital, a treatment center, and tried to check myself in. Well, the job that I had working in a gay bar, I didn't have any insurance, so they left me right out the door. Um I had to get my brother to come down and he had to have me arrested so they could put me in protected custody.
And I went through detox overnight. I woke up and this was u the county detox place. It was not pretty, let me tell you.
And so I decided to go home and detox myself, which I did. And I kept calling back to see if there was an opening for the treatment program there. And a week later, I got accepted for the treatment program.
And I went in and I went in with the thought in mind that, well, I'm going to lose this job because this place is going to close down. And nobody can just get a quick fix and and get this all straightened out and I'll be fine and I'll quit doing the drugs cuz drinking is really not my problem. So, I went through the 28 days of treatment, got a lot of stuff out, got a lot of stuff started on its way out.
Um, it it planted the seed. I My first AA meeting was there at the center and it didn't really didn't really turn me on. I just for some reason I just I didn't get it.
I didn't feel it. I didn't want what they had. Um, and at the the point at this point, AAA was very very new here in Reno and there was only like four maybe five people.
A couple of the people I did know that were in treatment. Some of them are here tonight. Um, I didn't, like I said, I didn't want what they had.
I didn't see anything that we had in common. I couldn't imagine living without drinking. Um, so I played with the program for about four months and after about four months I went back out.
Well, nothing had changed. It was still there and I went right back into it just as fierce and as I was before. um and stayed out for about another year.
In uh January of 1988, I was sitting at another gig bar in Reno on a Friday afternoon after work with my boss and I'd been there probably 45 minutes and he mentioned to me that I had already had three shots of tequila and four beers. And he says, "That's not normal drinking." And I says, "Well, I think you're right." And I put down my beer and I knew that there was a meeting at Toma Street at 8:00. And I thought to myself, well, I might as well give it a try.
I will give it one more try. So, I walked into that meeting. Of course, it was a non-smoking meeting.
and I sat down, lit up a cigarette and which they quickly told me to put it out. And there was only about 12 people there and it's four I probably knew, four I had probably drank with. Um, I sat through that meeting and a couple people came up to me after the meeting and gave me their phone numbers and talked to me for a few minutes.
And I don't know what it was. I don't think it was just that particular meeting or any particular meeting or any particular sign or anything. But I knew that if I had to ever clean up my life and get it in some sort of direction that I should have to give AA a try.
So I made a plan and I kept this very secret to myself that if by 6 months I don't have it and I don't like what's going on, I'll go back out. But I'm going to do what they say. I'm going to do what they tell me.
Um, so the first six months whizzed by and I was out there on one of those prover proverbial pink clouds and I don't know when it happened or what happened. I can't tell you how it happened. But I had a spiritual awakening.
All the things that they say can happen happened. Um two years later I was the chairman of the very first conference here. Well, actually was with it at the Sands Hotel and I can't say that my program is is the program to follow.
Um, I do know what the basic steps are. I do know what the what's planned for us and and how to to go about the daily living of this program. I on the other hand from from what Doug said um I was diagnosed with HIV in 88 about 6 months after I sobered up and I didn't really want to talk about this tonight.
So, I'm not. But I'm glad that when I got tested and when I found out that I was positive that I had this program to fall back on. It has uh taught me a new way of life.
It's taught me uh that I don't have to hang out in those sleazy places anymore. That I'm that there is something that I have that other people want. Other people search for for years and never find it.
a very very good friend of mine just passed away from alcohol poisoning. He never he never gave himself a chance to get the message. Um, and it's a very sad way to go, but whatever time I have, wherever I'm going, whatever I'm going to do, at least I have accomplished this in my life.
And this is what I have. I have fallen back on this program for more than just drinking issues, more than just emotional issues, and more than just an my HIV issues. A lot of times I'll go days without even thinking about the program.
But when times get the roughest and the seems so deep that you'll never get out of it, the program is always here and all you got to do is pick up the phone, call someone, call your sponsor, or call someone in this program, even if it's just contact with another AA person. Margot told you earlier that I do a lot of, like I said, do a lot of 12step work out there. Um, and I don't know that I actually sit people down and talk to them personally on a one-on-one basis, but I've had a lot of people come up to me and say how much they're how much I they're admire me so much because I can go to bars and put on functions and raise money for for charities and and not drink.
And I said, "Well, I I just don't drink anymore. How do you do it?" Well, there's this program called AA and I'm glad I found it and I'm glad I'm here. And I hope if any of you got anything out of my babbling tonight.
Um, I told Margaret I was going to keep this short. Um, I know some some people have traveled a long ways to get here and I want to thank you all for coming and this is this pro this conference was a dream of mine 5 years ago. I didn't think I was astounded when Margot asked me to to speak.
Um, but nevertheless, I gladly said yes. And I want to thank everyone for being here. Um, because without you, we're nowhere.
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Until next time, have a great day. >>