>> Welcome to Sober Sunrise, a podcast bringing you AA speaker meetings with stories of experience, strength, and hope from around the world. We bring you several new speakers weekly, so be sure to subscribe. If you'd like to help us remain self-supporting, please visit our website at 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. >> >> And with that, will you help me welcome WELCOME PETER R. >> >> EVERYBODY, MY NAME IS PETER.

I'M A RECOVERED ALCOHOLIC. Grateful to be alive and sober and a member of a sacred place called Alcoholics Anonymous. And if I may, first things first, I'll thank Art and the house and the community for this very kind invitation to me to be here tonight to share with all of you.

Whenever I get invited for these things, and I suit up and show up for fun and for free, but whenever I get to to attend one of these things, my experience has proven to me that what has simply happened is your spirit has extended an invitation to mine. And when those things happen, we come in shoulder to shoulder upon a common journey, and we suit up and show up, and we follow a few simple directions laid out in the big book Alcoholics Anonymous. And when those things all come together, and we get to live in all three sides of the triangle, we get to follow the directions in the big book Alcoholics Anonymous, I get to we get to experience living in the sunlight of the spirit.

We get to experience bliss. We get to experience the power called God. My life today is one of invitation.

My life is one of presence and breath. Invitations get extended to me and I suit up and show up because I know what the alternatives are. And God has given me enough courage, strength, and direction to show up at places like this and share a message of experience, strength, and hope.

So, my life is one of presence, one of invitation. And I feel very grateful to be a recovered member of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I say recovered for a few reasons.

First, because I am and if I didn't say that, I'd be just falsely humble. But a God of my understanding, a power I've had experience with, has brought me from a place of recovering to recovered. No longer suffering from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body, but recovered.

And recovered will ruffle a lot of feathers at our contemporary AA meetings, at put the plug in the jug AA meetings, and bless them. But they're short-changing the power of God and the greatness of God and the glory of Alcoholics Anonymous cuz we get to a place called recovered. Recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body, recovery of alcoholism, recovered.

And that's simply oneness with this power called God, enlightenment, awake to this power. Cuz every one of us here tonight, whether we have 1 day or 10 years, are connected to this infinite power of love. And in sense, we are all connected to each other.

And the mind gets involved and creates duality and think God is out there and recovery's over there and fellowship is here and service is here and and AA is there and my life my other life is there and we have all this duality going on. We get to experience that in the sunlight of the spirit, it is all one. And we are all connected and we just have to be awake enough to experience that presence.

That's why I tell you my life is one of presence today, with breath, one of invitation. Bliss, sunlight of the spirit. That's a long way That's a long way from the way I used to live.

A loving God separated me from alcohol June 23rd, 1988. And my separation from alcohol was violent and it was ugly and I don't give you that with lip service. My separation from alcohol came in the back of a filthy hallway.

Perhaps the most sordid spot I've ever visited in my life, certainly the most sordid moment in my life, in the back of a filthy hallway on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. And I remember this moment very clearly because it was given to me by God. It was the bitter end that I was to experience.

Certainly not understand because the understanding is how come shoulda woulda coulda, but I was experienced this bitter end. And in that bitter morass of self-pity that our book talks about, we get to get resurrected and reborn. And I made a plea to this power called God, if you're out there, take me from this and I was not thinking about Alcoholics Anonymous.

I was not thinking about the big book. I was not thinking about sponsorship. I was not thinking about all the glorious things we get to do in Alcoholics Anonymous.

It was the first time in my life that I did not want to die. I reflected upon that moment many times in Alcoholics Anonymous. I thought for a long time that my spiritual experience, my spiritual awakening, the revolution and transformation began when I sat down with a sponsor and started moving through the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous.

And perhaps for some of us that's true. But for me it became It started with a mustard seed of willingness and that was planted in me in the back of a hallway where the first time in my life I didn't want to die and I would do anything not to die and that was the mustard seed of willingness that was to move a mountain and get me on this path to recovery and get me to a place called recovery. My entire life from time I was a little guy up until I was separated from alcohol June 23rd, 1988, I was somehow someway trying to run the show, get away from this thing called life, get away from this journey called life, and at the very end try to check myself out completely.

Maybe by overdose, maybe by drinking myself to death. Just something I don't want to see another day. And I get leveled in the back of a hallway.

1988, and something's planted in me that I don't want to die. And my life has been resurrected since. What we get to do and what we get to experience in Alcoholics Anonymous is not just recovering.

Recovering is a horrible way to go, and I'm going to tell you why. Because first of all, AA and God offer so much more. Recovering looks like this.

Monday, I feel great cuz she loves me. Tuesday, she doesn't, I don't know how I'm doing. Wednesday, I feel great cuz I'm going to buy a new car.

When I get the first car payment, I'm not so sure. Recovering is experiencing untreated alcoholism, and I don't know when that's going to show up. Because what alcoholism will do is go underground and resurface in other areas.

That's recovering. And when it resurfaces other areas, it looks like a sex spree, it looks like a food spree, it looks like a money spree, it looks like a fear spree, looks like an anger spree. It's a spree.

It's something before the drink. And I wonder how did this happen? I'm supposed to be in AA.

I'm supposed to be doing all these spiritual things. And if anyone from AA saw me, I'd be I'd be humiliated at this moment. And I come out of that spree with the promise that I'm never ever going to do that again.

I'm never going to scream at my husband or my wife or my children again. I'm never going to experience this type of fear again. I'm certainly not going to go out that money spree or food spree or sex spree again.

Never ever. And I'm using me to get past me, and I'm back in the spree again. Emerging remorseful with a firm resolution, I'm not going to do that again.

And then we're back in again. That's recovering. I don't know if anyone here wants to sign up for that.

My Big Book tells me that I can get past that. It talks about getting recovered. And with the power of God, we can get recovered.

There's not a special group of people in AA that get recovered and the rest suffer. It's open, we believe, to all, my chapter to agnostics tells me. All.

Whether you're here with one day in detox and you someone here with 25 years with untreated alcoholism, it's all. God doesn't make two hard terms. What we ought to be about in Alcoholics Anonymous or any fellowship that you would attend, what we ought to be about in Alcoholics Anonymous, what we ought to be about in Alcoholics Anonymous is a pep rally for the power of God.

A pep rally what God can do for us. A pep rally for the transformation and resurrection we get to see in people like us who get transformed, find the sunlight of spirit, and go back into the trenches and pull someone else out. That's what we do in Alcoholics Anonymous.

When my book says the age of miracles is with us, it is here right now. Cuz I lay out from here to Vegas, we take a poll, a lot of us not supposed to be in these chairs tonight. With me?

My home group is called A Vision For You. We meet uh in Union, New Jersey, uh Thursday nights at 7:30 8:45. We're a solution group.

We talk about the solution from alcoholism from the big book Alcoholics Anonymous. And most people in my town don't like us. Uh they're referred to as that group, those people, and stay away from that guy, Peter M.

If they're really desperate, they'll ask me to sponsor them. But we're attracting people little by slowly. Very few people from Union, but lots of people from around the town in Jersey.

And we're a little over 3 years old and we started it with about 10 of us. And our anniversary date is June 10th, and we didn't plan that, but June 10th was our first meeting. At our anniversary meeting a few months ago, we had about 150 people attend.

And the circle, when we say the Lord's Prayer at the end, was just a few of us. We fit around one table. Now we fit around the entire room.

See, although we're one person with a big book under his arm, we carry the message of hope to another drunk, and they they come. And those who don't, bless them. I got sober in uh Brooklyn, New York.

Like you didn't know by the way I talk, right? Um And uh my first home group was called the Free Spirit Group. Uh great group of folks there.

Um in a town called uh Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. If anyone knows that area. Uh the only requirement for membership there is a pinky ring, sunglasses, and gold jewelry.

>> >> You think I'm lying? Come down and check it out. Uh we have guys there who changed how it works into how you're doing.

The senior member there uh uses The Godfather for educational purposes. Um and I'm not lying. See, the lights just went out.

>> >> I used to get asked to share this story uh to give you an idea of the type of people God put in my path when I was first getting sober. We get these teachers who meet us where we are. And I showed up to the Free Spirit Group home from Minnesota after about 10 months or so of treatment.

And I thought I was, you know, good to go and acting like an elder statesman. As soon as I walked in the door, they said, "He's new." And they took me into their little circle. And what they were going to do was plan an AA outing, a fellowship outing.

And so they decided to go fishing. And five guys from the Free Spirit Group got dressed to go fishing. And um I never been fishing before, but I went with them.

And so how do five guys from Brooklyn, New York get dressed to go fishing? Like I'm dressed tonight. And they were on a boat 5 minutes and saying like you're getting my shoes wet and things like that.

We're out on a boat about an hour or so. And uh my friend Sally Boy had the the reel in the water, the line in the water. And he stopped pulling on something.

And it's getting heavier and heavier. And he's pulling it and pulling it harder and harder. And we started to think maybe it's someone from the neighborhood we thought was on a long vacation.

He finally pulls this little fish on board. And it's flapping from side to side. So what did they start doing?

Start throwing punches at it and kicks at it. And uh finally Sally Boy grabs this little fish which is about this big and to bear hug and goes to stick its head underwater. And I said to him, "Sally, what are you doing?" He said, "I'm going to drown him." >> >> Those are the spiritual gurus God put in my path.

>> >> And what's really uh kind of sad is a lot of those guys that uh I was brought to AA uh to me uh are no longer with us. A lot of those guys got drunk and some were just running around in the AA completely untreated. Why?

Why? Why don't we have this message put in our lap do we get sick, drunk, and die? Cuz what some of us will experience along this path and the illness which the which lies in the mind, >> >> which is a a trouble-making machine, the thinking mind, may profit us and this is in the mind, not the body.

What the mind will get to tell us and never anything else is that we're doing okay and it will cosign behavior that doesn't appear to be spiritual. It'll tell us you're doing okay, don't worry about it. You don't need to write inventory.

You don't need to make that amends. You certainly don't need to pray and meditate and go to a meeting tomorrow night. And they'll endorse all that type of behavior.

It's called re-emergence of ego. When my ego becomes my recovery now. And little by slowly I shut down from this power of God.

And then I start to experience freeze and then little by slowly I'm moving closer and closer to a drunk and I pick up a drink and then they hear about people like us. So, I feel really blessed that I'm able to grow in understanding and effectiveness and 19 years later seek this power with the desperation of a drowning man. To tell you in a general way what it was like, what happened, and what it's like now before the rain comes.

>> >> I'm living currently in all three sides of the triangle. I have a prayer life. I have a meditative life.

I have a life with inventory. I sponsor 10 men. I have a sponsor who has another sponsor.

And we work. We work and we walk this path, and we're accountable to each other. And I annually go through the steps at least once a year, sometimes twice a year.

To dissolve ego. To have ego broken down really into dust so it doesn't show its ugly head again. Ego will destroy me.

I've heard many times in AA how ego is easing God out. It's exactly what's going on. But with a new experience with this power, it brings me depth and weight and I have another experience with God, and self is out of the way.

My first drink came when I was about 14 years old. I grew up in Brooklyn. And I remember my first drunk like it happened a week ago cuz it was that powerful and that life-changing for me, my very first drunk.

I was driven by a hundred forms of fear before my first drunk showed up. If people would ask my name, I'd try to come up with the right name so you'd like me. I could feel the my forehead sweating and my face turning red when questions were asked of me, when I was kind of put on the spot, driven by fear.

I had a a guy at home called Dad, and he was cunning, baffling, and powerful. And when he would walk in the room, I looked for the exit door. He would look at me and I'd shake in my shoes.

My dad is a a tough guy from South Brooklyn, and I walked to a different beat. And I lost my mom about 6 months prior to my first drunk, and she was like the buffer between he and I. I lost my mom to this illness after experiencing the incomprehensible demoralization over and over and over again.

She got to a place that alcohol loves to take our lives, and that's exactly what happened. She took her life, and I was completely leveled by that. I mean, my design for living was taken right out of my lap, and I was left with this guy called Dad.

And I would try to duck and dive every time he would ask me a question. I was so driven by fear. Fear owned me.

And my friends on this one Saturday night, the first night of my first drunk, my friends were standing across the street from a church, and they were having a feast that night and they were passing around Colt 45 beer. And I watched the quart go around a couple of times and I remember thinking if I put my hands in there, something bad's going to happen to me. I mean, I wanted what they had to offer.

They seemed to be joyous, happy, and free drinking beer. Kept thinking that my dad's going to drive up. I didn't want that.

The cops were going to turn the corner. I didn't want that. For some reason, I put my hand in there and I took a few pops off that quart.

It hit my gut and nothing happened. And so I drank a little bit more and I drank a little bit more and I drank a little bit more and then something happened to me that electrified me. I got to a place out there that's indescribably wonderful.

Little by slowly what I started to experience was the dissolving of being restless, irritable, and discontented. And more and more I felt present to the moment. As I continued to drink, fear was left.

I was present to the moment. As I continued to drink, the fear of my dad left. The fear of the police left.

The fear of who I thought I was left. Everything left and the pain of losing my mom was gone. I loved drinking beer.

As I continued to drink, I got taller. I had muscles. I think I found hair on my chest by the end of the night, a few tattoos.

I was like Dirty Harry and Baretta rolled into one at the end of the night. >> >> And every girl on the corner wanted to be with me. You know how that goes, right?

When you're drinking, she looks like Bo Derek and the next moment she looks like Bo Diddley and you want to get your guy to get that chick. >> >> So there I was drinking and life was great. When Bill says in his story, "I had arrived." I had arrived drinking Colt 45 beer on the corner of 75th Street and 20th Avenue in Brooklyn.

What a good deal. And I went home that night and I when I woke up the next morning, I remembered everything that happened. There were no strange mental blank spots.

There were no blackouts. I didn't wake up in a jail cell. My car was still there.

Everything was as it was the night before. And the other thing was, I remembered everything and I loved every minute of it. I found a panacea for my ills, for my bedevilment.

It was called Colt 45 beer and next Saturday I couldn't wait to roll around because I was going to capture that elusive feeling and get to a place out there that's indescribably wonderful and everything was going to be okay again and therefore I can somehow get through the week and I'm only 14 years old and I'm experiencing the hideous four horsemen. I'm experiencing 100 forms of fear. Anyone who's a real alcoholic here tonight knows exactly what I'm talking about.

Experiencing alcoholism before we put the first drink in us. And so the following Saturday rolled around and I got fired up and I got out there somewhere but it was just a little bit different and I went on to chase this this chase this elusive feeling for about 15 or 16 years and it took me to incomprehensible demoralization. It took me to doing things and saying things and behaving in ways that I never ever thought in a million years I would ever say or do.

And here's the other thing that happened. Alcoholism didn't only own me, it owned anyone who I came in contact with and starting with my family because by the time God separated me June 23rd, 1988 from booze, my family along with me was suffering from full-blown alcoholism. See, I hope and I pray to God that I never ever get to a podium and say, "All I have to do today is not drink and I'm a winner." because that's arrogant and selfish and that contradicts what the big book talks about.

It contradicts a message that God has given to us and how we hopes for us to live. It's contradiction to this big book and it's arrogant and selfish. "All I have to do is not drink and I'm a winner." It's great if I'm not drinking.

Am I really a winner? Do you see the arrogance in that statement? Let's go knock on the doors of the people's lives that we tore up on the way into Alcoholics Anonymous and see if just not drinking is enough.

We had the We were like tornadoes roaring through the lives of others with our selfish and inconsiderate habits, and then we land in a glorious place called Alcoholics Anonymous, and we think that's the beginning and end of it all. I will challenge that from now till the end of time with anyone in Alcoholics Anonymous who tells me or tells the group all they have to do today is not drink and go to meetings. What I want to know is how many people they killed with statements like that.

With me? Oh, yeah. My ego would love nothing more than just to show up at a meeting and act like a drunk without a drink in me.

Cuz it gets to breathe. My illness gets to breathe, and when I do this work, it gets to die. The book, our message in the big book Alcoholics Anonymous, is not aimed at a thinking mind.

The reason why it gets so uncomfortable as we go through the 12 steps is because this message is aimed at spirit. To wake up the spirit. It's not a paying attention to a thinking mind.

An ego kicks in and says, "This is awfully uncomfortable. I don't like what the speaker is presenting. I want the nice, soft-touch, touchy-feely kind of message.

Read page 449 of acceptance. Call me every day." >> >> That's what ego wants to know cuz it can breathe with that. The message in the book contradicts ego.

The message in the book contradicts the thinking mind. The spirit of God contradicts all that. It sets me on a path to freedom.

I knew nothing about that back then. I just knew I had my first drunk and off I went, and I wanted to capture that over and over and over again. But little by slowly, my family was getting sick.

And you know the signs, because when you're walking in the door, they're giving you the breathalyzer, you know. They're getting real close to you. Where have you been?

Checking your pockets, checking their pockets, checking jewelry around the house. Because what my family started to do become fearful of me. I have two kid brothers.

They looked up to me. They dressed like I dressed. They listened to the same music I listened to.

They played the same sports I did. They felt safe about around me. They were all the brother.

Until alcoholism started to do its deal on me. And then little by slowly they started to become fearful of me. And when I would walk in the door after a drunk, they would be on edge.

And I would come up with a lot of earthy ugly language about the terrible deck of cards God handed me. This guy called dad and mom is gone. And I wanted to nothing to do with God and they got all of it.

I was a god fighter all the way up until I walked into Alcoholics Anonymous. The change happened to me in the back of a hallway. My dad felt safe leaving money and jewelry around.

So I started to take take on with this alcoholism. And then little by slowly things start getting put away. And my family was suffering from alcoholism.

One morning I woke up when Bill says the morning terror manifested were on him, it was on me. And I needed money. So where do I go?

Look in the house. I discovered my dad's checkbook. And so what I did with that was got the brainstorm.

If I sign his name go for his check and cash at the bodega or liquor store, I can get some drinking money. And that's what I did for a short time. I knew nothing about something called checking statements.

And all that stuff came back to him. And it is hot. >> >> He got these things with his forged name and he came looking for me.

And he caught me in lower Manhattan. I was sitting in a car with this girl. And um the alcoholic girlfriend.

You think it's a relationship? When you have drinking you're not in a relationship. And when you don't have drinking you love her cuz she's got booze, right?

And he drove up and jumped out of the car. My dad's presence usually shows up 20 minutes before he actually gets there. And he jumped out of the car screaming my name.

And I told her, "You deal with him. I'm leaving." And I took off. Um I was a man's man back then.

And uh >> >> And he caught me and I off to my first treatment center. And like my my my next few treatment centers, my first one was pretty much to get the heat off. I had not conceded to my inner most self I was a real alcoholic.

My first few treatment centers because the heat on the street was too hot. My family was looking for me. I got into too much trouble.

So I'll go back into treatment and kind of rest up for a bit. And I'll participate in all the little groups that they do and raise my hand and say all the right things and never ever conceding that I'm a real alcoholic. And if I couldn't concede if I couldn't have that little bit of an experience, then how in God's name was I to recover?

As soon as I hit the fresh air, I was right back to the same people, places, and things and revisiting the vicious cycle. I got a job as a a longshoreman working on the Brooklyn waterfront. This is not exactly the training ground for spiritual growth.

>> >> I work with men who are fed up at the day at sunrise and I show up and I kind of blended right in for a short time. And then I started to borrow money from people that wanted a little bit back each week. And I started to become a thief.

And I started to do a lot of things. And my dad, who was this big boss down there, started to experience humiliation and degradation because of what his son was doing. I would get paid on Wednesdays and I'd come back to Monday.

And then borrowing money. And I got bounced off of that job and bounced from job to job to job. And by this time I remember going into my fifth treatment center.

And I hit my fifth treatment center and I was up there for 9 weeks. I was laid up in treatment for 9 weeks. I had put on weight.

I was going to groups. I was doing all those things. Physically, I looked fabulous after 9 weeks of being in treatment.

I was discharged on a Saturday and drunk on a Monday. My illness did not care what treatment center I went to, how good I did in treatment, what I said in my little group. It was cunning, baffling, and powerful, and incredibly patient.

And it laid around for 9 weeks until I got out on a Saturday and it got me on a Monday and I was right back to the same vicious cycle. And I will tell you my family thought a lunacy commission should be appointed for me. We'd be What are we going to do with you?

I had people pray over me. I had people throw holy water on me. I went back to my religious community.

I tried shrinks. I tried therapists. You I tried it.

I tried controlling and regulating my drinking. I tried everything possible, but the needed power wasn't there. For me, one of the most powerful lines in the big book Alcoholics Anonymous, lack of power is my dilemma.

Lack of power is my dilemma. With power, no dilemma. Lack of power is my dilemma.

If I think for one moment that I'm in charge of this deal, I'm in serious trouble. If I think for one moment that I can get me past page 52 and my be devilments, if I think I have enough self-reliance and self-confidence to overcome alcoholism, order up a drink now cuz I'm about to get drunk. That's the real deal.

And what God did with me was he hit me with all of that in the seventh treatment center. I had to be brought to a place for me of Park Bench. Some of us come in here but through Park Avenue.

Pain is pain. I I don't want to have any kind of duality with that. But for me, I had to get level two to a point where I was literally living in the streets and panhandling.

That's the despair I had to experience to get that it's either God or nothing. And even with that those propositions on my way into AA, I was coming at God with a lot of old belief systems. How many of us have belief systems tonight that we worship, we honor, but they don't work for us anymore.

The truth is the truth until we find out it no longer isn't. And I would show up to this to this God of everyone else's understanding, certainly not of mine. My actions didn't display that I was a man who's really surrendering to God.

I was more We're talking about the story about compliance rather than surrender. Well, pray okay, I'll pray, but I'm really not too thrilled about this power called God. And yet I was still in this place of I will do anything.

You know what God did for me? He blessed me by connecting dots and putting tremendous teachers in my life. And one of the greatest things I heard from another drunk early in recovery was, "I know where you are." What?

Most people said, "You better smarten up. You better straighten up. Do the right thing.

Grow up. Use willpower. Find a girlfriend.

Get a better job." I know where you are. And suddenly the doors flew wide open. Somebody talks my language.

And that came from a gentleman named Vince D, who sent me off to Minnesota. And then when I met him counting days, he was sober at the time 30 years. I said, "Somebody knows me." One drunk talking to another.

If we ever lose the power of one drunk working with another, we have no Alcoholics Anonymous fellowship. We do a lot of things like this. We do a lot of conferences.

We do lots of workshops. We do lots of things. But when we lose the gift of one drunk working with another and pulling them from the scrap heap to a level of life better than the best I've ever known, we lose Alcoholics Anonymous.

And Vince D started with an extended hand says, "I know where you are." Just on those words I would have gone anywhere. Because there was another person who knew me. That's God working in our life.

That's the power of God. Anyway, I get out of this fifth treatment center and I hit the streets and I'm unemployable in a quick time and I'm living in the back of hallways and just floundering around living for drink to drink to drink and I experienced the bitter the bitter end more than once. I would do things for the price of a drink that I never think I would do.

Lie, cheat, steal, do anything because I needed to get a drink. The luxury of deciding when I'm going to think drink was long gone. I needed to drink.

And somehow I I up in my sixth treatment center. And that went like this, a day and a half and signed out AMA. Because the obsession to drink alcohol was that powerful.

I could not get me past alcoholism. I had a powerful desire to stop drinking. In fact, I had a powerful desire to stop drinking many times, and I hear from countless others, I have a powerful desire to stop drinking and was still getting loaded.

I will tell you this from my own experiences I come at you tonight with the experience. Having a powerful desire to stop drinking is of absolutely no avail when it comes to combating alcoholism. It may bring me to a place like this and ask for help.

It may bring me to someone say, "Can you sponsor me?" or perhaps another treatment center or the sacred rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. But that itself is not enough. The only antidote for alcoholism is an experience with God, and nothing less than that great fact.

We don't have to understand this power. We don't have to comprehend this power, but certainly experience in my heavenly Father is giving this away in abundance in abundance, and we sit around and say, "I'm going to 90 meetings in 90 days. Where's God?" How about getting you out of the way and doing some work so you can be open enough to experience this power?

So I signed myself out AMA, and I'm right back to the same vicious cycle, and I experienced things after that sixth treatment center that I I I couldn't believe. I was about 50 lb less than I weigh now. My eyes were sunken in and black.

My gums bled. I bled from places I shouldn't be bleeding. I had liver disease.

I had a whole bunch of things going on. I remember walking up the streets in downtown Brooklyn, my uh Prospect uh Expressway down there, and um the streets kind of go on this incline like up a hill. I remember holding onto a fence to make it up to the corner because I couldn't even walk.

If I live to be a hundred, I will never be as old as the day I walked into Alcoholics Anonymous. It was killing me. And all I kept thinking was if I get a Mr.

Boston Blackberry Brandy in me, I'll be okay. Just one more Boston Blackberry Brandy, let it go down, I'll straighten out like Clark Kent going into a phone booth into Superman. I'll be okay.

And I would get that down and it would come right back up. And I need another one just to stop me from shaking. I wound up outside the Port Authority in uh Midtown Manhattan on the 9th Avenue side of the Port Authority.

And I had what many of us get, this moment of clarity. This little window, if you will, opens for a brief moment. A brief moment cuz that's all we get to see it for.

When we get here and get through the archway, we find out it's always been open. We get it for just a brief moment. These moments of clarity where we stop sober for a half a second.

And I got that outside the Port Authority. And what came to me was very clear things, in no uncertain terms, of what I had turned into. I thought of my mom who had passed many years before that, my dad and my two younger brothers who I hadn't seen for quite some time now, and really the condition of my life.

I was a fall-down Bowery bum at this point, unemployable, and I looked the part. A drunk, and I looked the part. And what I did is I looked up to the skies, I cursed God with every four-letter word I can think of because you did this to me.

You took my mom, you took my family, and you turned me into this drunk. And hope having hope was the furthest thing from my mind. What I waited for was to drink enough to die and put my family to rest and everyone out of their misery because of me.

In this moment of clarity. And I don't know what happened to me afterwards, but I do remember this. It was a short time later, I was in the back of another hallway.

God doesn't make two hard turns for those who seek him, for his children who seek him. And I was at that place again, and once again, I had this moment. See, God doesn't give up on us.

Ever. We give up on us. We give up on each other.

Our heavenly Father never stops. And one of his children were in trouble, and he had extended once again. In the back of this filthy hallway, I had this moment, and I remember thinking, I don't want to die.

I don't want to die like this. I don't want to drink anymore. There was only one place, I remember thinking, I can go to.

The only person I can call in this condition on the entire planet was one man, and that was my dad. He's the only guy who's going to come down and get me in this condition. No one else.

I remember going to the phones and cuz I had no money and calling my dad. I was in Brooklyn, he was in a town called Fort Lee, New Jersey. And going to the phones to call him collect.

And I was experiencing these crying jags of impending doom all the time, and I would get these crying jags. I'd go to call him collect, and hang up the phone, and tears would come. I'd begin to weep.

I walked to another phone booth and try that again, and tears would come. I'd begin to weep and and hang up the phone. And around the third or fourth phone call, somewhere in there, I remember thinking, if my dad comes to get me in this condition that I've turned into, this will surely break his heart.

This will do him in. To see his older son in this condition. I had blood stained pants.

I hadn't bathed in I don't know how long. My My pants were soiled. I had construction boots with holes in them.

I I had marks all over me. Um I was, like I said, about 50 lbs underweight. It was around June, early June, and I had was walking around in summer in New York with a turtleneck and a jacket on because I was sweating and cold at the same time.

And I couldn't call him. This particular day, my dad was not home. He was in South Jersey, in Atlantic City with his wife.

And he happened to be gambling. He was there for the weekend. And while he was at in Atlantic City, he had a feeling that I was in trouble.

I've heard for the longest time in Alcoholics Anonymous how God works through people. God works through people. It is not only people in Alcoholics Anonymous, it's people.

God has no duality, AA, no AA, people, or children pass a message. And we know sometimes a message has been delivered to us through our children, to civilians out there, a police officer, whoever it may be, somebody or some event connected the dots for us to get here. And for me it was my dad.

I remember he told me this story at my first first AA birthday. He looked to his wife and said, "I need to get my son Peter something that's telling me he's in trouble." And she thought a lunacy commission should be appointed for him because we hadn't seen each other for quite some time. And he drove about a 4-hour so drive back from Atlantic City and start looking for me in Brooklyn.

Here's a man who would have a little picture of me, right? He would drive through the projects of Lakewood, Brooklyn with my photo and pay off the winos and the junkies. This is my son, where is he?

This is my son, where is he? Never ever giving up hope even though we closed doors on me many times. And he caught me.

I was running through the streets in Brooklyn and he drove up and he saw me as standing on a corner. And this I'll never forget because when he got out his department shouted he was someone who was bringing love. See, the past performances he would jump out of the car scream my name, I knew he was in trouble, get me a boat to China, I got to get out of here.

This was different. See, if my dad was a little bit softer that day, I would have run. I would have ran circles around him.

If he was a little bit more aggressive, I would have ran out of fear. And what God did by working through people was bring him a heart of compassion to touch me exactly where I am. Like when we get to work with another alcoholic, some of us are sober a while or in the sunlight of spirit and we get to falling down smelling drunk and we think suddenly we're better than.

And we come at them with this condescending attitude, well if you want what I got to offer let's meet them where they are. Let's get down to where they are and display compassion for them even if it means reading them the riot act to get them to see truth because it's coming from a place of love. Let me show compassion for another drunk because when I lose that, I get drunk.

Let me show compassion, it's another word for love and perhaps in that I'll experience some tolerance and some patience and some understanding and pull that drunk from one side to the other. Well, guess what? God might Heavenly Father use a civilian.

He came in the form of my dad who showed up and walked across the street with a gentle spirit and met me where I needed to be met. This was God working. I didn't know that at the time, I just knew there was something different about my dad as he approached me.

I wasn't afraid of him anymore. This was God. And I remember telling him, "Dad, I'm okay, don't worry." and I collapsed in this man's arms.

And this I'll never forget cuz this is not my dad's way of operating. Him holding on to me, embracing me and him patting me on the back telling me, "I'm going to be okay. I'm going to be okay." meaning me, "You're going to be okay." And I was very much aware of that little precious moment cuz that never happened.

And off I went to my seventh and God willing last treatment center and I laid up in there for about 10 days in a place on Long Island, New York. When there six times previously and now I'm again. And I experienced what Bill Wilson talks about in the Mayflower Hotel when the insidious insanity of the first drink is is coming back to him.

It was galloping back to me cuz there after being laid up in this in this in this hospital for 10 days my mind was telling me it wasn't that bad. We need to get out of here. Just one more drink.

Just one more run. You'll be okay. One more Mr.

Boston Blackberry Brandy and I'll come back to group and talk about my dysfunctional family, my inner child, my enablers, my triggers, and my issues and off I go. >> >> Thank the good Lord. As God interrupted my death in the back of that hallway, he interrupted my death in treatment because it was based on my self-will, I would assign myself out again and try to figure out my life.

Because when I made a plea to the to God of my understanding in the back of that hallway, my heavenly Father interrupted my death and said, "Enough. And I have other works for you to do." And put me put me in a place called Alcoholics Anonymous by way of my seventh and God willing last treatment center. And they shipped me off to Minnesota.

And I did 6 weeks more of treatment. They sent me to a halfway house and I lived in a sober house for a while and I was brought home to my first home group. I got permission to come home.

And my family was riddled with alcoholism. But I came home and I remember sleeping on my younger brother's in his apartment on his couch. He let me was loving enough to take me in.

And trust me. And little by slowly I start to work a little bit and get some money. I was trying to get my job back and little by slowly I got enough money to get my first apartment.

My youngest brother got my his older brother his first apartment. And not once did he make me feel uncomfortable humiliated by that. One brother extending a hand to another.

I remember the first night in my first sober apartment. There was no furniture in it. A woman from AA gave me a sleeping bag.

That's what I slept in. There was wood floors. There were no curtains, no no anything electrical in the place, nothing.

The only thing I had was I had a couple of AA bumper stickers. I put them on the door. I had a big book and I had something that represented my higher power above the door.

And I got into that sleeping bag and I was in paradise because I was a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous and God was doing for me what I could never do for myself. I was in paradise and I slept wonderfully that night. I woke up with new life in me, reborn, resurrected each and every day.

And someone from AA brought me a TV and someone from AA brought me something else and AA family took care of me like a family. And then there was a knock at the door one day and my dad showed up with um stuff for me to put in my apartment. And then my brother showed up with stuff for me and they were building me, putting me back together.

Things like that happen in Alcoholics Anonymous. I work with this first sponsor and then I start to outgrow my first sponsor. Because if the sponsor is not growing in understanding and effectiveness and we are, we need to find a new teacher.

And I work with one gentleman for many years and uh I needed to ask God to show me a new teacher. About 5 years or so ago uh a new teacher was put in my path and I began reworking steps over and over and over again and my family's been reassembled and I have a prayer life and a meditative life and I'm self-supporting through my own contributions that I and I will tell you this, because I get to do this and I get to do a lot of this and I get to do lots of traveling and I get to meet lots of new drunks and I work with a lot of people. That doesn't mean I'm immune from out there.

Life tends to be problematic. Spirit is not. In the world, not of the world.

No attachments to external conditions thinking that's the remedy for what ails me in here called alcoholism. That's delusional. Out there will not heal heal what's going on in here.

God could and would if he was so it. And then little by slowly start to get attached to I am my money. I am my marriage.

I am my home. I am what I drive. I am the cigars I smoke.

I am how much money's in my pocket. I am my home group. Attachments to external conditions and it was a subtle shift for me and little by slowly you know what happened?

In about 20 minutes I found myself getting laid off from my job, going through divorce, about to lose my home, and near bankruptcy. In sobriety. And I looked up to the heavens and I says, "Father, I wrote this really great script about me and you're not you're not doing you fell asleep on the job.

>> >> I'm supposed to be joyous, happy, and free all the time. My spirit's always joyous, happy, and free. Out there is drama.

What a lot of us tend to do is use the external conditions to to figure out how I'm doing in here. And when all that stuff was removed from me I was left with one place to turn back to and that was back to this power of God and go through the work again. And I was able to walk through those very, very challenging times with dignity.

And I learned about the harm in attachments to external conditions. How I had to cut the strings of desire, cut the strings of pleasure. All of that stuff all it does is bring me pain and I'm always seeking to get more.

I need, I want, got to have to make me feel like I'm someone. And what this work with the big book does is remove all of that. It's a complete removal.

It's removal of attachments, it's removal of belief systems, of contempt, of resentments, of fear. And that's why some of us feel like we we're dying when we go through the work because we are. We're experiencing the death of self for successful living.

Was able to move through all of that. And not once, not once and I've had joys in AA and some very tough challenging times in AA. Not once did my mind ever tell me we need a drink to celebrate or drink to wash the night away.

Never. That's freedom. And I'll close with just a quick story about the power of meditation and how God knows me.

What a great freedom to know that I am known by the creator. To have a personal relationship as we all can get to experience. We get to pray, we get to meditate, we get to work with a sponsor, we get to go to work, we get to play with our children, we get to do this stuff.

And when we get to meditate, we have great experiences with that, way beyond the AA meeting, way beyond what the word God means. Three letters does not sum up God. It's just a pointer, like the steps all point us to experience God.

Even meditation, we talk about meditation, we all have ideas what that looks like. But does it really sum up the power of meditation and going into silence and giving this power attention? And letting him direct our lives in a place of worship, sacred, pure consciousness, awake to this power.

Start working with meditation. That meditation leads me to work with a religious practice, I'm a Catholic. And at at the risk of breaking a tradition, I start working with this religious practice in the middle of the day.

Art and I were talking about this earlier. I don't know why, I didn't question. God moves you, you're going to get moved.

And I start working with this religious practice. And I go into meditation. My current practice is praying and meditating three times a day.

And I do this practice and something comes to me. When I was about 3 years old, I watched my mom have what I learned down later on was a nervous breakdown in South Brooklyn. I remember being frozen with fear.

She was about 20 ft away from me. I watched her in hysterics punching a brick wall, police and an ambulance driving up, people crowded around. I was mortified.

I was frozen with fear. What a little 3-year-old guy watching his mom collapse in hysterics, screaming and crying, and just unbelievable what I was experiencing. I remember a gentleman covering my eyes, and uh next thing I remember I was back in the hospital.

She was being strapped down to a gurney. They closed the door. I'm I'm looking at my dad and my grandparents like my life just ended.

That's my mom. What is going on? Well, in this practice, I get to see this.

Meditating, and what comes to me in the meditation is what looks like a a broken, old, dusted statue of a female. Of this woman holding a silver infant baby. Don't think much about it.

Finish my meditation, go on my day. Go into meditation next day, same thing happens again. No planning of it.

Go into a place of pure consciousness, can't plan that. And there I am, the same woman appears with an infant in her arm, but now I'm a little bit clearer on this that it's some saint, some religious figure. Around the third or fourth day, I think it was the third day, I stopped to remind communities was important.

I didn't know what at the time. I get what I think is flowers or roses or something going on. I'm looking around saying, "What does this mean?" Didn't think much about it, but that that statue was now lifelike.

Like I can touch flesh. And the message she gave me holding this infant was I needed to go back to that spot in South Brooklyn where my mom had this nervous breakdown. I told my sponsor about it.

He was headed back to Texas, and Joe Hawk was in town. I told Joe Hawk, he says, "We'll go this Thursday. We'll go Saturday." My sponsor told me, "You're having an experience.

Do not talk this away. Just be with it." We didn't know the significance of it. When this experience happened with my mom having a this nervous breakdown, I had uh my brother John who was about a I don't know, a year year or two old at the time.

And Joe Hawk said often, "We head down to South Brooklyn." And we're talking about a man saying, "Anything you need to tell your mom?" I says, "I don't think so." And we got to talking, and I got out of the car, and I go to a spot that I can feel the energy of exactly where I stood when I was 3 years old. Not to the left, not to the right, but exactly where I stood. I could feel the energy.

If any of us have ever had these experiences, you know exactly what I'm talking about. I remember kneeling down, it's a rough part of Brooklyn now, kneeling down and making prayer to this little guy. The first wake I ever walked into was my mom.

And the first thing that came to me from my thinking mind was, cuz I used to hide her pills and her liquor from dad. The first thing my thinking mind says was, "It's your fault. You should have stopped her." "You should have stopped her death." And walk with that.

I got to this corner, I told this little guy, "You did nothing wrong. It's okay. You're coming home with me." "It's okay." Remember standing up and going over to this wall where my mom was having this episode and touching the wall and letting my mom know how truly sorry I was that I could not stop her pain.

She was just like me. I was just like her, alcoholic. I could not stop the pain.

I was a little guy, and if I could have, I would have, and I couldn't, and I'm so truly sorry. I made a prayer, and I walked back to this spot. I remember getting after another prayer, trying to get back into my car, and Joe was sitting in the car, and something stopped me.

And here's really where I had this experience that just words will fall short. I could not get back into my car. Something was stopping me, and I leaned in and I says, "Joe, I can't get in the car.

I cannot leave this kid here like this." "I need to do something more than saying that you're coming home with me. I need to do something more. I cannot leave this kid who's been in torment all these years here." So, with that, Joe got out of the car, and he's walking around.

If anyone remembers Joey, very insightful, intuitive. And he looked on the wall and there was graffiti of flowers and he says, "How apropos, flowers, growth. This is an experience." And he's looking around and he says, "You need to look in the on the concrete." His wife says, "You need to take a look at what's written in the concrete." And what was written in the concrete, just off to my right, was to Peter and Johnny with love and three little x's underneath it.

That was written in the wet concrete called that concrete. Now, anyone could have wrote that. I'm aware of that.

Anyone in that neighborhood could have wrote that. But, I'm also aware of this about the power of God, how he hears your heart, how he hears my heart. He hears it when it's joyful and it weeps.

Being known by the creator. For years I would wonder, "Does my heavenly father know me?" And once again, this was about the second or third episode I had in a meditation that I was convinced that my God knew me and showed me through messages like that of where my mom is. And how everything is connected.

Sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, when God shows up, God shows up. It's powerful, it's transforming, it's life-changing, and we experience with God, nothing can be compared to it. Everything else has fallen short in my life as my ex- compared to my experience with this powerful God.

I am convinced of my God in my life. I'm convinced of my love for the Alcoholics Anonymous and my heavenly father. And I'm convinced what God does for us.

He put my family back together. He's put countless lives back together and we get to experience bliss in the sunlight of the spirit, walking day by day with this power called God and with Alcoholics Anonymous. I hope to always be teachable and pass this message on with the same love and gratitude that you so freely give it to me each and every day.

That's all I got. Peace. >> >> 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. >>