From Party Life to Purpose: AA Speaker – Mark C. – Studio City, CA
AA speaker Mark C. from Studio City shares his journey from party life in the San Fernando Valley to sobriety through sponsorship and making amends.
Mark C. from Studio City, CA got sober on January 1st, 1990 after years of partying in the San Fernando Valley, following his uncles into addiction, and watching his life spiral from the waterbed business to working at a strip club. In this AA speaker meeting, he explains how seeing his sober cousins gave him hope, how getting a sponsor and commitments saved his sobriety, and how making a ninth step amends in Colorado transformed his recovery.
This AA speaker meeting features Mark C. sharing how he went from San Fernando Valley party life to rock bottom, working in strip clubs and losing everything. After getting sober, he learned that meetings alone weren’t enough when old-timers assigned him a sponsor and four commitments in one night at eight months sober. His recovery deepened through step work and making amends, particularly a pivotal ninth step experience in Colorado that strengthened his faith in the program.
Episode Summary
Mark C. grew up in the San Fernando Valley in a large Irish, Italian, and Cherokee family where drinking was the norm. After his mother died suddenly when he was eight, his father moved several uncles and grandparents into their house, including his uncle who became his idol and introduced him to drinking and drugs in junior high. Those early years were filled with keg parties, cruising Van Nuys Boulevard, and the party scene that defined valley life in the 1970s.
His alcoholism took him across the country as he worked in the booming waterbed business. From Denver to Chicago to Florida, he climbed the corporate ladder while his drinking and drug use escalated. In Chicago, he loved the bars that stayed open until 5 AM and the blues scene, but his performance at work suffered as he stayed up for days using cocaine. The company kept making money despite his problems, so he transferred to Florida to escape his Chicago connections, but his disease only got worse.
Florida marked the beginning of his bottom. He started smoking crack, lost his corporate job, and ended up working as a bouncer and bartender at a strip club, working off a debt to the owner for drugs. Eventually he fled Florida with a woman and her two-year-old son, returning to Los Angeles after nine years away with no license, no job, and nothing to show for his time.
The turning point came at a Mexican restaurant on Ventura Boulevard when he went to what he thought was a party, only to discover it was his cousin’s five-year sobriety birthday. Both of his cousins were sober in AA and their lives were going well while his was in shambles. This planted the seed, though he continued drinking for another year and a half until New Year’s Eve 1989, when he couldn’t get drunk anymore and was sick and tired of how he felt.
Mark started attending meetings immediately and loved what he found, but for his first eight months he just went to meetings and dances without getting a sponsor or working steps. When he was ready to drink at eight months, someone directed him to a men’s stag meeting where the old-timers asked pointed questions about his sponsor, what step he was working, and his commitments. When he had no answers, they told him not to fool himself that he’d been doing AA. That night they assigned him a sponsor and four commitments, which he credits with saving his sobriety.
Tragically, both cousins who had inspired his sobriety eventually relapsed. One lost everything and has struggled ever since. The other, his cousin Kirk, died after 19 months in a coma following a drunk driving accident with his daughter in the car. These losses reinforced Mark’s commitment to staying active in the program and showed him the deadly reality of “jails, institutions, or death.”
Through AA speaker talks on step work and making amends, Mark learned about the inventory process that revealed his fundamental selfishness and self-centeredness. His sponsor made it clear he would die drunk if he didn’t go from being a taker to a giver, getting him involved in service work. When he developed Bell’s palsy at four years sober and wanted to isolate, his sponsor sent him to speak at a panel, teaching him he couldn’t save his face and his ass at the same time.
A pivotal moment came when he was invited to be best man at his old roommate’s wedding in Colorado. Terrified to return to his old stomping grounds, he heard a speaker named Johnny H. at his commitment who gave him hope he could make the trip without drinking. His sponsor also arranged for him to make a major ninth step amends to his former employer while there. At the wedding hotel, surrounded by all his old using friends, Mark’s head told him to get loaded to avoid making the amends.
Instead, he called for a ride to an AA meeting, but when he arrived, the meeting was ending. The members took him across the street to the University of Colorado campus, where a full AA convention was happening. The main speaker was Johnny H., the same man who had inspired him weeks earlier. Mark saw this as no coincidence but God working in his life. Johnny encouraged him to enjoy the wedding sober and take care of business with his amends.
The next day, Mark sat with his former boss and confessed everything he had stolen over three years. By the time he left, the man had offered him his job back if he ever wanted to return to Colorado. This experience gave Mark the courage to take action regardless of what his head told him and set him on fire with AA in a way he’d never experienced.
Mark moved to the Antelope Valley at three years sober and found the meetings lacking in structure and commitment. He spent ten years helping build up the Palmdale group before starting the High Desert Big Book Group two years before this talk. He married the woman he brought from Florida, and her two-year-old son grew into a 350-pound 19-year-old who eventually confronted him. Mark’s response was to call his sponsor rather than react with violence.
Throughout his recovery, Mark has maintained five meetings a week, regular sponsorship, and active service work. His relationship with his father, once damaged by years of absence and selfishness, became precious through the amends process. He emphasizes that similar transformations happen through working with a sponsor and staying committed to the program despite life’s challenges.
Mark’s message is clear: meetings alone aren’t enough. The combination of sponsorship, commitments, and step work – particularly the amends process – transformed him from a selfish taker into someone who gives back. He warns newcomers that while it’s not necessary to drink again after that first meeting, backing off from active involvement in AA will put the drink right back in reach. His life has taken on new meaning through working with others and watching people recover, but he emphasizes you have to be “smack dab here in AA” to see the miracles happen.
Notable Quotes
They told me that if I wanted a drink to go drink and get it on, but don’t ever kid yourself that you’ve been doing AA.
I’m so selfish and self-centered that once I have a few drinks I don’t care about anything, and once I take a few drinks there’s nothing that’ll get in the way of my drinking.
My sponsor made it real clear that I’m going to die drunk if I don’t go from being a taker to a giver.
I couldn’t save my ass and my face at the same time.
Life will take on a new meaning, and to see those miracles happen, I got to be smack dab here in AA. I can’t do it sitting at home watching Law and Order.
Steps 8 & 9 – Making Amends
Step 4 – Resentments & Inventory
Service Work
Hitting Bottom
▶
Full Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated and may contain minor errors. For the best experience, listen to the audio above.
Welcome to Sober Sunrise, a podcast bringing you AA speaker meetings with stories of experience, strength, and hope from around the world. We bring you several new speakers weekly, so be sure to subscribe. We hope to always remain an ad-free podcast, so if you'd like to help us remain self-supporting, please visit our website at sober-onrise.com. Whether you join us in the morning or at night, there's nothing better than a sober sunrise. We hope that you enjoy today's speaker.
[applause]Tonight, it's my pleasure to introduce our speaker. He's a guy I met when I first visited his group, and it was one of the most powerful groups I've ever been to. He's a good example and a fine member. Thanks, Mark, for coming out. Mark C from Palmdale.
[applause]Hi everybody. I'm Mark. I'm an alcoholic. I want to thank Jeff for inviting me out. I see a lot of familiar faces in this room. I got sober in the San Fernando Valley and went to meetings in Northridge and Granada Hills. At about three years of sobriety, I moved up to the Antelope Valley and was in culture shock about what AA was about. But I'm proud to say that today I'm a member of the High Desert Big Book Group, and we believe in sponsorship and the program of action outlined in our book. I'm real grateful that I hooked into a group that's active. We meet Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays at 8:00, and if you're ever in Palmdale we invite you to come join us. It's on Palmdale Boulevard at Crazy Autos restaurant. We take over the banquet room.
My sobriety date is January 1st, 1990. My home group and my sponsor is Bob Fisher, and those are the three most important things in my life today. I have a sobriety date, and I love life today. I love Alcoholics Anonymous. When I got here, I didn't think I'd like Alcoholics Anonymous. I thought I was around a bunch of lames and had no idea what I was doing here. I thought my life was over. I thought there would be no more fun. What am I going to do? And now my life is so full and so rich that life is good.
I grew up in the San Fernando Valley. I'm a product of the valley. I'm from a large family—Irish, Italian, and Cherokee Indian. We like to drink. My dad had six brothers and two sisters, and most of them have either died from alcoholism or drug addiction or related causes. Somehow it skipped my father, but my uncles and my grandfather sure made up for it.
When I was eight years old, we moved from Englewood to the San Fernando Valley in Northridge. My dad bought a house and my mom had just given birth to my little sister. Just out of the blue, she died suddenly. I was eight and my sister was an infant. My father was there with me and an infant, and he had a job that kept him busy a lot. So he moved in three of his brothers and my grandparents into the house.
Instantly, I had an uncle Jerry who was my dad's youngest brother, and he was like an older brother to me. He was my idol. He was the guy in the car clubs and the lowriders. I just liked to hang out with Jerry and do whatever Jerry said to do. We'd wax those KGer rims and shine that car. We'd do everything we could to hang out with my uncle. He was about five years older than me.
I had two cousins who were one year older than me and one a year younger—Kirk and Gary Coffee. We were like the Coffee guys. I grew up at a time when I went to Noble Junior High School and Our Lady of Lords Catholic School. I felt out of place there. I've always been a big kid. I've always been teased about my weight and all that stuff. But when I started to drink, it didn't bother me anymore because once I took a drink, I didn't care about what you think.
My uncle Jerry got my cousins and me loaded for the first time. We were at their house on Bryant Street, and he gave us a bag of that outside issue stuff. We were smoking that and drinking Old English 800. I think I was in sixth or seventh grade, and man, I loved everything about it. My cousins and I continued to do that. We were like brothers together. We ran around the San Fernando Valley. That was the time when the San Fernando Valley was all about open keg parties. Every Friday and Saturday night we'd go get a list of parties. We'd go from party to party. There'd be live kegs going on, live bands. When the parties all got busted by the cops, we'd head for County Line Beach. I loved it, man. I loved everything about drinking.
Drinking, I'm not an alcoholic. Drinking worked real well for me for a lot of years. I enjoyed it. My alcoholism continued to progress though. I come from a big family, and my aunts and uncles all loved to drink too. My earliest memories of my grandfather and my uncle were getting dressed for Our Lady of Lords school, sitting down at the breakfast table with a bowl of cereal, and they're drinking Old Forester and slits and playing cribbage. That was the norm in our household. When it did come time for me to pick up a drink, it was just normal.
My dad was a single father and was not around. He worked for the news and was always gone. We just did whatever we wanted to do. I ran around with my cousins and never became much a part of my sister's life. But drinking was a lot of fun then. It was Wednesday night on Van Nuys Boulevard. It was Bob's Big Boy on Saturday and Friday night. I would just hang out with my uncle Jerry because he was in the lowriders. There was something that just attracted me to that—the girls with the ratted up hair, the miniskirts, and no underwear. For me, I'm 14, my cousin Kirk's 15, my cousin Gary's 13, and Jerry's letting us hang out. He'd pick up hitchhikers and throw them in the back seat with us and tell us what he would do to us if we didn't at least try to make a move. Alcohol was a lot of fun for a lot of years for me.
But as my alcoholism progressed, I started to take these diet pills. My aunts and uncles had a weight problem. They always had diet pills, and those were the kind of things that allowed me to drink the way I wanted to drink because I hate passing out. I always feel like I'm going to miss something. We would eat those pills and go out and drink all night. Man, it was a lot of fun. Kirk, Gary, and I just ruled the roofs in the valley. My uncle Jerry had a house at Napa and Rita, and we had big kegger parties there all the time. It was a lot of fun.
Somewhere along the line, after I just got out of high school, my uncle Jerry moved to Colorado. I was with this girl through high school. She lived in the Semi Valley. I lived in the San Fernando Valley. She thought we were going to get married. She was engaged the whole time through high school. I was just a dog. Once I start to drink, there's no such thing as a bad idea. I was supposed to be getting married right out of high school, and I wasn't going to get married. I split and left her behind. I went to where my uncle Jerry moved. He moved to Colorado. I started working for this company that he was part of. It was an industry that was fueled by drugs and alcohol. The entire industry was the waterbed business.
When waterbeds were booming in the late seventies and eighties, most of the first places I ever saw a waterbed was in the black light poster room through the beads at the head shop. Surprisingly enough, most of the waterbed store owners were ex-head shop owners. I was in the wholesale end of it, and we just couldn't go wrong. Everybody seemed to have to have a waterbed. There was a lot of money being made. I was in a young company. The company was brand new. There were only five of us in the company, and it was making money hand over fist. I'm in Denver, Colorado, and life is getting good. I'm really enjoying life. My roommate's a jazz drummer in one of the hottest jazz bands in the city there. We're hanging out at the clubs and going up to the ski resorts in the winter time. My alcohol is just right—I'm really enjoying life now.
I'm 19 years old. I'm making decent money, and I got this life going on in Colorado. I left my father. My father eventually met another woman and got married, and she had two kids. Between them they had another kid, so I got four younger sisters that I haven't been much a part of their life until sobriety.
But those two cousins of mine, Kirk and Gary—when I left California, I was 19 and Gary was almost homeless. He was living in North Hollywood Park when I left. My cousin Kirk was making the rounds of all the couches, and when you have a big family like I have, it takes a long time to get through all the couches. I left, and I was gone for nine years.
I moved to Colorado. The business was going good. They want to open up a new location. I'm single. I'm ready to go. I'll be the warehouse manager. I'll open the new office up. They send me to open the new office in Chicago.
Chicago is my kind of town to drink in because bars are open till 5 in the morning. It's a lot of fun in Chicago. They got the blues and the jazz, and I love drinking and hanging out in those bars. Man, alcohol was working good. Staying up all night, no bosses to report to. I have a big giant showroom full of beds. I'd come back after the bars closed or whenever I'd leave the bar and go to my showroom and pass out and tell my secretary in the morning, "No calls until noon." It was just a good life.
As I'm moving around the country, my alcoholism is progressing. I'm doing a lot of other things—a lot of drugs. I'm the kind of alcoholic that likes the kind of things that keeps me awake, that keeps me going, that allows me to continue to drink the way I want to drink. Living in Denver, I'm with my roommate in the band. I'm the supplier for the band, and we're just having a good time. I moved to Chicago and the party just moved with me. I met people there that like to do the same thing—drink and get loaded.
But as it was progressing, I started to become less accountable. I didn't care about anything other than myself. I remember my dad had a massive stroke and heart attack. My father and I have always been very close. My sister called and told me Dad just had a massive heart attack and I need to get on a plane and come home right away. It was a Friday night and we were going up to the Wisconsin Dells and we had already started the party. It was like I just turned it off in my head.
Later, through my inventory process, I found out that selfishness and self-centeredness is the root of my troubles. I'm so selfish and self-centered that once I have a few drinks, I don't care about anything but that. Once I take a few drinks, there's nothing that'll get in the way of my drinking. I just left town and came back on Monday and called home as if nothing ever happened.
Thank God my dad didn't die that day because him and I are very close today. But as my alcoholism progressed and I was living in Chicago, I'm doing a lot of that other outside issue stuff. I'm getting in more and more trouble. I can't perform at work. My bosses in Colorado are wondering what's going on with me. But the business doesn't matter how hard we tried—it just kept making money because everybody had to own a waterbed. It was like if you didn't have a waterbed, you weren't cool.
We're going to open up a third location and I want to get out of Chicago now because I'm getting in trouble. I'm doing a lot of that other stuff. I'm staying up for days, and I'm not performing at work. I'm in trouble all the time. They're going to open a new location, and I'm the prime candidate. I've got the experience on how to open a new location. They send me to the new location. I need to get away from Chicago to get away from the cocaine anyway.
They open the new location in Clearwater Beach, Florida. Florida is not a good place to go to try not to be around that other stuff. As I'm in Florida, my disease is really progressing and my alcoholism. Now I'm a daily drunk. I'm in sales and I have a company credit card. I'm in a corporate apartment with a company car and company credit card. Every day I'm hitting happy hour. Every day at noon I'm running to the bar. I'm a daily drinker now. I don't know what's going on.
I get introduced to a new form, a new way to do that outside issue stuff. I start smoking it, and now my life is starting to spiral like a big dog. I can't stop drinking and I can't stop doing the other stuff. Everything around me is falling apart. I'm just a mess. I end up losing that job and end up getting a job working as a bouncer in a topless club. I'm a bartender. I'm in a biker clubhouse showing up in my OP shorts and tank top every day.
I felt that I had to drink. That was a license to drink for free because I owed a tremendous amount of money to the woman who owned the bar for some of that stuff. I was just working off debt. In that bar, I met a woman and ended up having to leave Florida on the run real fast. I took her and her two-year-old son back to California with me. I fed her a bunch of lies and told her that if we came to California, I could go to work and get a job in the studios or some crap. She believed it.
We came to California. I got back to LA, and it had been nine years since I'd been in Los Angeles. The first thing I wanted to do was hook up with my cousins and start partying and have a good time. I hadn't had any contact with my cousins for all these years. Gary invited me over to a party. I went to this party on Ventura Boulevard at a Mexican restaurant. There was a whole bunch of people in this banquet room. I started ordering shots of 1800 gold and drinking margaritas. Pretty soon, nobody else was drinking, and they started singing happy birthday to my cousin. They walked out with a cake with a five on it. My cousin was five years sober, and my cousin Kirk was his older brother and was seven years or six years sober at the time.
I had no idea what the hell anybody would ever get sober for. The places I hung out, if you didn't drink and use the way I did, I wasn't around there. I never heard about sobriety. I never heard about Alcoholics Anonymous. It just didn't compute. You take away the only thing that makes my life function and I got nothing left.
But my cousins were both sober members of Alcoholics Anonymous. Their lives were going good. Gary had a thriving painting contracting business. He had a beautiful new wife with two gorgeous kids. My cousin Kirk's life was going pretty good. And I got my girlfriend from the strip club with her two-year-old son. We're living on Dad's couch. My life's in the toilet. I got no driver's license. I got no means to make a living. But their life was going good, and that was the attraction that brought me to the idea of possibly getting sober.
Kirk and Gary were both sober and having a good life, and my life was in the toilet. I continued to drink for another year and a half after that though. I couldn't fathom the idea of not drinking. On New Year's Eve of 1989, I couldn't get drunk. I was sick and tired of the way I felt. I couldn't take enough of anything. I couldn't drink enough of anything, and I couldn't get to that place.
I had lost the ability to get to that place where I'd gotten to for so many years. The last two and a half, three years of my drinking, I could no longer recapture the high I used to get cruising Van Nuys Boulevard on a Wednesday night or being in that club getting down with the blues in Chicago, having a good time, being able to dance and shoot pool and have fun. Now, every time I'm drinking those last two and a half years, the obsession for everything else comes on so strong. I'm completely isolated. I find myself locked up in hotel rooms, in closets, staring out windows, and sweating a lot.
When I lost that job in Florida, here I am 250 pounds. It's August in Florida, and I'm riding a ten-speed in a suit to work after being up for two or three days. It was just one big sweaty mess. My alcoholic life had become my only normal one, and I couldn't differentiate the truth from the false. I mean, wasn't that the way everybody got loaded? I couldn't see anything wrong with it.
It wasn't until coming to California and seeing sober members, seeing my cousins, knowing that the people that they were and that they now have become, that gave me the inspiration to get sober. I'm forever grateful for that. I got sober, like I said, January 1st of 1990, and I started going to meetings and meetings and meetings. I loved what I was feeling in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. I loved the people, and I could relate to the people. I found something here that really touched me. I knew that you people have been where I had been.
But the most important thing that ever happened to me in my first year of sobriety—I was going to meetings and meetings and meetings, going to dances and meetings and dances. I was about eight months of sobriety just doing meetings, just doing meetings, and I didn't have a sponsor. I'd never opened that book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Thank God that I was just attracted and kept coming back.
But at about eight months I was ready to drink, and I convinced myself that because I wanted to drink, Alcoholics Anonymous didn't work for me. Somebody told me to go to this men's stag meeting and let the old-timers there know all the things that I'm doing in AA—going to the dances, going to Millie's, going to Lulu's. I did that that night, and they asked me questions like who my sponsor was, what step I was working, how many commitments do I have. I had no answers for any of that.
They told me that if I wanted a drink to go drink and get it on, but don't ever kid yourself that you've been doing AA. That got my attention. They told me to get a sponsor that night. They said we meet over at the Coco's after the meeting. I went over to Coco's after the meeting, and they said, "Did you get a sponsor?" I said, "Well, I'm checking a few guys out." They said, "No, he's your sponsor." They appointed me a sponsor that night. They made me a door greeter at the Mason Ashcan Chaser speaker meeting. They made me a literature person at the book study. Then Saturday night, I had a cookie commitment at the Saturday night AA meeting back over by next to Stanley's in Woodland Hills.
I left that night with a sponsor and four commitments. I'm positive without a shadow of a doubt today that sponsorship and commitments have kept me sober and kept me in good standing and feeling good about myself ever since. It's been 15 and a half years, and I haven't been without a sponsor, a home group, or commitments. To me, that's so vitally important for me.
That first year went by and I watched my cousins drift away from Alcoholics Anonymous. I thought I was going to come in and we're all going to be going to meetings together, but I watched what later I've seen many, many people do. I watched money, property, and prestige divert them from their primary purpose. I watched my cousin Gary drink again. I watched him lose everything—his house, his family, his business. He's been struggling ever since. I watched my cousin Kirk drink again, and it tore my heart apart. They were very close to me, and it scared the heck out of me and got me more active in Alcoholics Anonymous than I had ever been.
Unfortunately, my cousin Kirk drank again and continued to drink. Then one day on Super Bowl Sunday, he was drinking and ended up getting in a bad car accident with his daughter in the car. Almost 19 months later, we had to pull the plug. He was in a coma for 19 months. Jails, institutions, and death. My cousin Kirk had to go to the death route, and it scared the hell out of me.
My cousin Gary—I talked to him about a half hour ago—he's trying to get sober again. But I got real busy in Alcoholics Anonymous. At three years of sobriety, I moved to the Antelope Valley like I said, and the meetings weren't—there were people in the Antelope Valley, but nobody was around. The idea of having a commitment or starting a meeting on time was like nowhere to be found. I was in culture shock. I got involved with a group out there for ten years. I was an active member of the group called the Palmdale group, and I helped. I just have—my sponsor told me that I have to grow where I'm planted. I got involved there, and life just started to get better.
Through the process of the steps, through the inventory process, I was able to see what kind of person I'd become. Through doing the resentments and the fears and the sex conduct, I could see where I was such a selfish, self-centered son of a gun my entire life. I never did anything for anybody if I didn't get nothing back. My sponsor made it real clear that I'm going to die drunk if I don't go from being a taker to a giver. He got me involved in service work.
I don't know, I was four years sober and I came down with something called Bell's palsy. Half my face was like I had a stroke. Half my face was distorted, drooling, and I couldn't talk. I wanted to isolate and be away from meetings. But thank God for the wisdom of sponsorship. He sent me to a panel over at Glendale Adventist in the outward. I was in a room with two other droolers, and I laughed at myself that night. I realized that I couldn't save my ass and my face at the same time.
Thank God for sponsorship to get me to do things that I don't want to do. About two years ago, we started a new group called the High Desert Big Book Group. It was just a necessity in our area to have some group with some kind of structure and something to do with sponsorship. It was a good thing.
Today my life is very full. I've got a host of guys that call me sponsor, and we do a lot of things together. We're real active members. We just had our roundup last weekend. Life is so full and good. That woman I ended up marrying—that two-year-old son grew up to be a 19-year-old monster. But him and I are getting along today better than we ever had. They went to Alateen, and my wife went to Al-Anon. My daughter is 13 now, and I know that it's just starting to come with her. But life got real full and real busy.
The one thing that I'm so grateful to Al-Anon for and for my wife is that she's never complained about my involvement in Alcoholics Anonymous. She knows the absolute necessity for me to be an active member. I'm a five-meeting-a-week guy. I have to be. I have my time for my wife and kids. I have time for work. I work over here in North Hollywood. I live in Palmdale. I do the commute. God seems to make room for everything. I don't know how that happens.
On page 88 it talks about if when I stop trying to do everything that revolves around me, things just take place. The thing for me is that through the inventory and through the amends, I was able to rebuild some of those relationships. I have a relationship with my father today that is very precious. He's in my grandchildren's life, and two days a week he spends a night in my house. We do a lot of things together, my dad and I. He's 74 years old, and it's a precious deal for me to be in his life because I was away from him for so long. I didn't—he never knew if I was dead or alive for most of those years. Today I'm active in his life.
I have a couple sisters that have been trying to get sober. They've been in and out of the program. I can just be an example. I can't do anything other than be an example of how Alcoholics Anonymous has worked in my life. It's a good thing.
Two years ago, my old roommate from Colorado wanted me to be the best man in his wedding. I was scared to death to go back to Denver and go back to Boulder, Colorado, and be in that wedding. I was scared. I didn't want to go there because I know what's going to be there and all my old friends are going to be there and everybody's going to be doing the stuff I used to do.
It was coming time, and I had a commitment as a door greeter at the Mason Lassen speaker meeting. A man came up there to talk, and it was the first speaker that really reached out and got me. Although we had nothing in common with his story in mind, I related to his feeling. I related to how he felt about Alcoholics Anonymous and how his life was changing, had changed over the years. He got sober the year I was born. He was sober in 1959. That man was Johnny H. from Long Beach.
I heard him share that night, and he gave me a lot of hope. He gave me the hope that I could go and do this deal in Colorado and not have to drink. I'm going to go to Colorado. I'm going to be in this wedding. My sponsor says, "You know what? Wonderful opportunity because you're on your ninth step. What a great time to get together with that old employer of that waterbed company and go over everything you stole from them because I stole from them for about three years. So I was going to go to Colorado and be in this wedding at the same time, knock off this big giant ninth-step amends. I was scared to death.
But with some of the things Johnny had told me and things my sponsor had told me, I felt comfortable that I could do it. But when I got there, it was a different story. I got to the hotel in Boulder and everybody's doing shooters. There's all that stuff being smoked. The bathroom doors are closed, and I know what's in the bathroom. People are going in and out of the bathroom, and my head's telling me if I just get loaded, I don't have to make the damn amends.
My feet have been trained in Alcoholics Anonymous to do what my sponsor said. I'd already preset somebody to come pick me up from Central Office before I even got to Colorado. I called a cab and went to where this meeting was at in Boulder. They were just wrapping the meeting up, and there was no meeting that night. I was scared to go back to that hotel room. They said don't worry, you're going to come with us.
I went with these guys, and we drove right back in front of my hotel room, which was right across the street from Boulder University. We go into the parking lot of Boulder University, and there's a full-blown Alcoholics Anonymous convention going on. I get a seat in the front at the main speaker meeting, and out walks Johnny. He's the main speaker.
It was that night that I knew there were no coincidences and that God was working in my life. I sat and talked to Johnny that night, and he said, "Man, just go to some marathon. Hell, go to those dances you talk so much about and enjoy. Go back and take care of business. Be the only sober member at that wedding and go back and make those amends."
I was able to do that that night. I made that amends to that boss of mine. I was sitting at his house and told him everything I had stolen from him and asked him how I could make it right. By the time I left there, he had taken me to the airport, and he told me before that if I ever want to come back to Colorado, he's got a job waiting for me.
I come back to Los Angeles, and I was on fire with Alcoholics Anonymous in a way that I've never been. It was just something else. I thought all those amends were going to be that great, but they weren't. But what it gave me—it gave me the courage to take the action regardless of what my head told me. My life is full. My wife has been in Al-Anon now for a while, and my daughter's in Alateen. My son and I didn't get along. We had a really hard time.
About four years ago, he crossed that line. He's six foot three and 350 pounds. He crossed a line where he got right up in my face and said that regardless of what I think, he's not—I'm not afraid of you. So I did the manly thing and called my sponsor.
[laughter]But he hasn't had to grow up in a house of violence or a house of alcohol abuse or alcoholism. Today him and I get along pretty good. I'm forever grateful for Alcoholics Anonymous.
If you're new, I want to welcome the new people here today and tell you that it's not a requirement to go back out and drink. I'm convinced that if I keep doing what I'm doing, I'll keep getting what I'm getting. It hasn't been necessary for me to take a drink since my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. But I know without a shadow of a doubt that if I back off of what I'm doing and I let money, property, and prestige get in the way of my sobriety, if I put anything in front of my sobriety, the drink will be right there.
My favorite thing that I can't quote it verbatim, but in working with others in the second paragraph, it talks about life will take on a new meaning. Life has taken on a new meaning for me. To have a host of friends, to see people, to see people recover. To watch loneliness vanish, to see them help others. For me to watch and see those things, I got to be smack dab here in AA. I can't do it sitting at home watching Law and Order. I got to see the miracles happen. I hope you stay around and see them, too.
Thanks.
Thank you for listening to Sober Sunrise. If you enjoyed today's episode, please give it a thumbs up as it will help share the message. Until next time, have a great day.