I Didn’t Know I Was an Alcoholic Until I Heard My Own Story: AA Speaker – Wes H. – Denver, CO
Wes H. from Denver shares how he finally recognized his alcoholism after hearing someone else’s story at a meeting. An AA speaker tape on denial, recognition, and early sobriety.
Wes H. from Denver got sober in Los Angeles after years of high-functioning alcoholism—moving from vice president of a company to a locked apartment in Korea Town, drinking wine by the case. In this AA speaker tape, he walks through the moment someone else’s story became his mirror, how he finally got to a meeting, and what it took to stop fooling himself about being an alcoholic.
Wes H. describes growing up in a family that used alcohol as a coping mechanism and becoming a functional alcoholic who drank at lunch, in recording studios, and eventually isolated in his apartment in Los Angeles. This AA speaker shares the pivotal moment when a famous songwriter’s question to his wife—”Do you have a drinking problem?”—led to his first meeting at the Log Cabin on Robertson Boulevard, where he heard someone else’s story and recognized himself. His talk covers moving through denial, the importance of sponsorship, working the steps daily, and how safety in the fellowship allowed him to heal.
Episode Summary
Wes H. opens with a story that goes back to Texas, where he was raised in a family that drank as a way of life. His parents believed moderate drinking during pregnancy was fine, and his father took him out at 18 to buy drinks for the whole family as a rite of passage into manhood. This early environment set the foundation for what would become decades of alcoholism masked by outward success.
The pattern was clear: Wes was driven, ambitious, and terrified underneath it all. By 24, he was vice president of a $10 million company with 150 people reporting to him—and he was getting plastered at lunch every day. He’d discovered early that alcohol took away the unbearable sensitivity he felt to the world. Without that extra layer of skin everyone else seemed to have, he’d learned to mind-read people, to become whatever version of himself they needed him to be. Drinking numbed that constant vigilance.
He left the corporate world to open a recording studio in Austin, then moved to Los Angeles with his wife after losing the lease, convinced the city of 11 million would finally recognize his genius. Instead, he found himself locked in a little apartment in Korea Town, buying 14 bottles of wine for $8 at Trader Joe’s, too frightened to go out into the world.
The AA speaker tape takes a turn here—the “what happened” part. His wife was working as a dental assistant in Beverly Hills. A patient came in wearing an earring with a circle and triangle inside it. She recognized it as the symbol of Alcoholics Anonymous. She mentioned her husband had a drinking problem. That man turned out to be a famous songwriter. He asked for their home phone number, and three hours later he called Wes.
Wes was convinced it was a hoax until the man sang a few lines from a song demo Wes had recorded—a song no one else had heard. The man said simply: “I hear you’re trying to stop drinking.” Wes answered, “Well, I’ve stopped”—because at that moment, he had. But four or five years earlier, he’d started trying to moderate, what he calls “sobriety binges.” Three weeks sober. Six weeks sober. But when he wasn’t drinking, he wasn’t sober either—he was miserable, short-tempered, full of rage. He calls this state “sodiety,” and it’s a dangerous place.
The sponsor told him about a meeting at the Log Cabin on Robertson Boulevard in West Los Angeles. He said, “If you’re staying sober and not going to meetings, I want to know how.” Then he told Wes he’d be out of town for 30 days and asked if they could meet when he returned. Wes, for some reason, decided not to drink for those 30 days. He describes them as “the 30 longest, darkest days of my life.”
His wife finally asked why he wouldn’t go to one of those meetings Paul told him about. Wes’s response: “If it’ll get you off my ass, I’ll go.” Not gracious, but honest.
At the Log Cabin, his knees were shaking as he walked up the steps. A tall, skinny guy reached down and said, “Welcome,” and it felt like being pulled up into the room. About 120 people were there at 7:30 in the morning—all laughing, cutting up. A big, buff Black man from Compton, a Vietnam veteran, was at the podium talking about being born without that extra layer of skin, about how sensitive he was to everything, about how alcohol made that bearable. He was Wes’s story, told by another man’s mouth. That saved his life.
Wes took the Big Book home and read the first 164 pages that day—not to understand recovery, but so he wouldn’t have to ask for help. That was his disease talking: the need to stay a step ahead, to never show his heart, to never be vulnerable. His sponsor became Paul, and they began working the steps.
Wes talks about “making movies”—that anxious habit of starting a thought about something bad that hasn’t happened, then spiraling into catastrophe within 90 seconds. He learned to use inventory as a tool, looking at the thoughts blocking him from his higher power. He emphasizes that sobriety lives in the right now, one thought away from connection.
Central to his recovery has been working all 12 steps every day, not just once. His morning routine starts at Step 1—acknowledging powerlessness—and moves through the steps as a meditation practice. By the time he leaves the house, he’s been through the Ninth Step in his mind. Throughout the day, he uses the Tenth Step to notice when he’s drifting from the person he set out to be, immediately returning to the Eleventh Step to ask his higher power for help.
He spent eight and a half to nine years doing ceremony with Navajo teachers, learning about spiritual practice. They told him they wouldn’t take an apprentice who wasn’t in a 12-step program because “spirituality is big, and the 12 steps give you a way to live in it, not just pay lip service to it.”
Wes defines his recovery through a few key principles: there is no healing without safety; you’re only one thought away from your higher power; and beware of sodiety. He talks about the importance of keeping the rooms safe, of not breaking confidentiality even in fun, because for some people—like he was—these rooms are literally life or death.
He closes with a prayer about walking in beauty, borrowed from the spiritual traditions he studied. It’s about keeping yourself centered in the wheel of mind, emotion, body, and spirit. When you drift off center, you wobble. The prayer is a blessing for everyone leaving the meeting to walk in beauty, to touch with beauty, and to leave beauty in their trail.
Notable Quotes
I didn’t know I was an alcoholic until I heard my own story coming out of another man’s mouth.
Alcohol took away that I was born without this extra layer of skin, and everything that came at me in the world just felt like pins and needles. Everything felt that way. And alcohol took that away.
My version of safe gets me the result I’m the most afraid of getting. I build all these walls so nobody hurts me, and what do I end up? Scared and alone. Perfect.
You’re only one thought away from your higher power. Nothing changes faster than a thought. If you are feeling disconnected, the tool of inventory—that’s how fast you can get connected, man.
I firmly believe that if Humpty Dumpty had found Alcoholics Anonymous, they would have been able to put him back together because that’s the magic of Alcoholics Anonymous.
There is no healing without safety. The world was a very dangerous place for me until I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, which was a safe place for me—a place where I could screw up, a place where I could walk around with all that raw skin exposed.
Sponsorship
Fear & Anxiety
Denial
Step 12 – Carrying the Message
Topics Covered in This Transcript
- Hitting Bottom
- Sponsorship
- Fear & Anxiety
- Denial
- Step 12 – Carrying the Message
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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 Wes. I am an alcoholic.
>> It works. Um, Victoria told my story, so I guess I'm done. >> Um, >> oh, some details.
Yeah, it did all start in Texas. He hangs his head in mock shame. It started in Texas.
Um, yeah, I started in Texas. I was born in Austin, Texas. I was actually I got started on life a little ahead of when I was supposed to start on life.
I was couple of weeks premature and I you know just made I just made up for no lost time. You know back in those days uh you know I was born barely in the tail end of the 50s and um back in those days there were baby books for women who were pregnant that said you know the occasional cocktail wasn't a bad idea during pregnancy. I think my mother uh took that occasionally as occasionally.
How many times a day is occasionally? And so I think I just came out of the the shoot, you know, ready for alcohol, you know. And um and well, I was from Texas shoot, you know.
I mean, just it's a rodeo, right? So um anyway, I um you know, I uh I grew up in a family full of alcohol. That's what we did.
We drank. It was a very uh our coping skills uh as a family consisted of say nothing. Uh the less you said the better off you were.
The less trouble you ended up in. The less times you got hit. The less times bad things happened to you.
And so I have developed a skill that was to serve me well in my alcoholic life. That mind readading skill. you know, where you just figure out in advance the lay of the land.
Who is it that I need to be for you? Who is it that I need to be in this family? Who is it I need to be in the world?
What version of me do I need to sell so I don't get hit, hurt, or otherwise abused? I learned that early on. It set me up perfect for drinking.
I drank a couple of times before I was 18, but it was, you know, the consequences of stepping out of line were pretty severe. I didn't want to get smacked. So, I stayed pretty much in line until I was 18 years old.
And in Texas in those days, you could drink at 18. And uh man, when I turned 18, it was legit. And I was off and running.
And um my my family sent me a not so subtle hint. around uh my senior year in high school. They they moved into a place that had um I have a brother and sister, and it was my mother and father, my brother and sister and myself.
They moved into a two-bedroom apartment. They gave a bedroom to my brother and sister. They gave a they had a room for themselves, and they said, "We're not sure where you're going to sleep here." So, my bedroom my last half of my senior year was this little walk-in closet, which worked great for somebody who liked to isolate, you know, and um could get dark in a hurry, you know, fit my mood on many an occasion.
And uh so I I moved out basically. I got the hint, you know, you need to go get your own place. So, I moved out and um right after I graduated from high school and shortly after that, within a few months of moving out from high school, I met Victoria.
The year was 1977, the very year our speaker last night got sober, which just awesome and amazing to me. And by the way, the speakers here have been I have laughed, I have cried, they have been great. I want to this committee has done a great job and um I've heard a lot of great sobriety here.
You guys have done awesome. And I know this is a lot of work. So, and thank you for having me here.
Uh, so here I am. I' I've moved up. I've moved up from my walk-in closet to my little tiny apartment.
I have it a properly furnished. By properly furnished, I mean there is my guitar in the corner, an essential. Uh, my bed, and then my furniture consisted of long neck beer bottle cases with, you know, cloth thrown over them because that's how I furnished my life.
No food in the refrigerator, but lots of long neck beer. And that was the deal, man. Long neck beer.
It was cheap. It was the nectar of the gods. It was what I was raised on.
Literally, water was for washing your car. It wasn't for drinking the way I grew up. We had this theory when I grew up.
My father had this theory when I was 18. He takes me out and I get that right of passage into manhood in Texas in those days. And that right of for him anyway.
And it was we went to this this uh restaurant that served alcohol. I had turned 18. And he goes, "Son, you're buying drinks for the whole family tonight.
The whole family." It was kind of a group thing. And so we go up and um I got to buy the drinks. I just got ripped on my 18th birthday.
And my dad was proud of me for that, man. That was the deal. I was in the club.
I was a real man in Texas. I was 18. I spent the morning after my 18th birthday with one of those class A hangovers and uh it would not be my last.
So what happened to me was this. I I um I grew up in this environment where the theory had always been when I was growing up, if you wanted a beer, you didn't have to sneak off and get beer. You could just go get one from the refrigerator.
I could 14, 15, it didn't matter. The theory being that, you know, if I didn't sneak around, I wouldn't become an alcoholic. Granted, this was alcoholics that were having this theory and were proposing it, but a little bit of the logic was a little twisted, but you know, it was go get a beer anytime you want, but you better not drink on my beer.
Okay, so I stayed out of the beer refrigerator mostly until I could buy my own. and I met Victoria and within a few months we were living together and alcohol was the deal and off I went. And I want to I want to tell you about kind of how the outside of my life looked.
This is how the outside of my life looked at at 18. I move move out. I get my I'm supporting myself on my own job.
I'm supporting Victoria. I'm going to college and I'm working a full-time job so I can pay for the rent and of course the furniture, the beer furniture. And so, uh, I'm doing this and by the time I'm 24 years old, I'm the vice president of a $10 million company.
Okay? So, it's still working. Okay?
But this is how I'm having to deal with it. Okay? I'm really driven.
I'm go go go. That's me. I'm I'm the Energizer Bunny.
Okay? Especially in those days. Um, and uh, you know, I am one of those alcoholics who did a few other things than just alcohol.
Uh me and Dr. Bob would have got along well. You know, we mixed other things with our alcohol.
He mixed other things with his alcohol. I mixed other things like, you know, uh crystal meth and uh you know, cocaine and a little recreational marijuana with my alcohol. But um as it so happened, I actually quit doing all of that stuff long before I got sober.
And so what happens is this. I'm 24. I'm the vice president of this company.
There's like 150 people that report to me. There's not like 150 people. There are 150 people that report to me and I am terrified.
Absolutely terrified. I know I am in over my head. I know I don't know what I'm doing.
This is what my head's telling me. And so the only way I've got to deal with that that I know my coping skill, which has been my coping skill from, you know, certainly 18 on, you know, having discovered early in life that I seem to have been born without this layer of skin that everybody else seemed to have. And everything that came at me in the world just felt like pins and needles.
Just extremely sensitive. Man, the wind's blowing the wrong way. It's going to screw up my psyche.
And alcohol took that away, you know, in this respect. I just didn't notice it so much anymore. It didn't matter to me which way the wind was blowing.
You know, alcohol actually was a spiritual awakening for me. It was the wrong kind of spirit. It was distilled spirits, but it was a spiritual awakening.
It just came in the bottle. Okay. So, what happens is I'm 24.
I am getting plastered at lunch every day drinking three my standard lunch was three pictures of beer that was maintenance drinking. I would go get drunk and then I would come back and make it through the rest of the day trying to manage this company. And about this time I decided, boy, corporate life sucked.
My opinion hasn't changed a whole lot in the ensuing years. Um, and I left the corporate world and opened a recording studio in Austin, Texas, which is perfect because talk about drinking on the job. just kind of was like, "Well, doesn't everybody?" So, I opened up this little recording studio in Austin, Texas by the University of Texas and proceeded to drink, drink, drink, drink.
Like the sign it says in in a lot of the meetings, think. My motto was drink, drink, drink. We did have some very innovative concepts to deal with public intoxication, though.
We MAD was just getting started back in those days and we were playing all the clubs and MAD is mothers against drunk drivers. We came up with dad which was drunks against drunk drivers. The theory being that when you and your buddies were really getting drunk, you just keep them drinking till they pass out and then take their keys and they weren't going to hurt anybody.
We were very proud of this. This dad thing didn't catch on, but you know, we thought we were clever. So what happened is this had a recording studio.
Everything's rolling along, you know, eking out a living, you know, putting bands on the radio, doing this kind of stuff. And I lost the lease on my recording studio and uh couldn't find another one. So now my way of making a living was gone.
And uh I wasn't too thrilled with Austin anyway. And uh I decided, you know, the problem with Austin is they just don't appreciate the genius that is me. They just don't get me, you know.
And so I'm going to take all this amazing talent and I'm going to move to a city of like 11 million people where surely I will stand out. And um so we packed up our little tent. It was the grapes of wrath, man.
everything I could not ship via UPS to a little apartment we found in an area called Korea Town of Los Angeles. Uh later to be the scene of people standing on rooftops with semi-automatic weapons because the Rodney King riots broke out about oh about 10 months after I or about a year after we moved there. So we picked a great neighborhood to move into.
Um so we anyway it's like everything we own packed and strapped on top of a van. Off we go to the promised land. Los Angeles, California.
You know, get to Los Angeles, California. I'm still drinking. Los Angeles is a pretty good place to drink.
Started going to all the uh, you know, got in with some people in the music business out there and started hanging out at the music business parties, which is just uh, it's a parallel universe that doesn't really have much uh, bearing to our own. Um, and um, it's a place where people do a lot of drugs, drink a lot, tell a lot of uh, interesting stories to each other that nobody remembers the next Monday when you called to have that business conversation with your new best friend you'd made last Friday night. Come to think of it, that's just like the bars I drank in in Texas, actually.
So maybe it's not so different. So anyway, I go out there, I get involved in the music business, sort of meaning I go to music business parties. I'm not really doing anything.
My wife in the meantime goes out and gets a job. Now, she hadn't had a job in years. God bless this woman.
She went out, she held down a job. Uh, and that job was to prove incredibly important in me getting sober. The magic of Alcoholics Anonymous was sneaking up on me and I didn't know it.
Now, back in Texas, I had had a pretty uh, one important thing happened to me. I'd gone into a recording studio with this guy. And by the way, you know, think about this for a minute.
This is a measure of the insanity of someone like me. I am so raw and terrified of the world. I just want everybody to love me, right?
And so what do I pick to do for a living? I'm going to go stand in front of people and try to entertain them. Where in a business where the entertainment business is all about hearing the word no, usually accomp accompanied by you suck.
Okay. And so why I picked that to go heal me. Now I know why I picked that.
I did. I've done lots of inventory since then. But you know, I was going to make the whole world love me for what I thought I needed to be.
Remember that mind readading thing I was talking about earlier? It's that thing inside of me that said, I've got to spin up some version of me to sell to you that you're going to find acceptable. And please give me just enough clues with the way you look at me or something you say to me that I can I can stay one step ahead of you and figure it out because I'm just a sentence away from falling apart here.
Man, you got to give me just enough feedback so that I can know who I'm supposed to be so you'll care about me. Man, that is my alcoholism full-blown. And no wonder I had to drink to deal with that.
You know, that's a miserable way to go through the world. You know, talk about living inside out. That's what I was doing.
So, I'm out there in LA. My wife's got this job. She's working as a dental assistant in Beverly Hills where all the fancy people go get their teeth fixed.
And she's out there and um in the meantime, alcoholism had swallowed me whole. I was living in this little apartment in this questionable area. Let's just say none of the street signs were in English, so I couldn't read the local language.
I don't read Korean. So, well, and so I discovered this store called Trader Joe's. It's a store they have out in California.
Trader Joe's was perfect for an alcoholic. At the time, they sold like 14 bottles of wine for $8. I was home, you know, and I got my wine and my beer and I just I lived inside the bottle and I was I was still doing work, but nobody was hearing it because I I became too frightened to go out in the world.
And you know, if you're going to do any kind of creative art for a living, if nobody sees it or hears it, you're going to have a hard time making a living. Just a tip for anybody considering that. And so, um, I wasn't going very well because nobody was here understanding what I was doing.
I was locked in this apartment. So, my wife is, she goes in and she's in the dental chair. By the way, this is the what happened part of the story.
Um, so she goes in, she's in this dental chair, and this guy is laying down in the dental chair, and he's got an earring in his ear, and it's a circle with a triangle inside of it. And my wife and I, being students of all things metaphysical, but especially my wife goes, "I know what that is." And this guy goes, "Really? You know what that is?" And she goes, "Yes, I know what that is." And he's like, "And?" And she goes, "That's the sacred teas." And he's like, "The what?" And he goes, "Yeah, it's the sacred teas." Which in fact it is.
It's a, you know, they say in the music business, amateurs borrow and professionals steal. So AA is another in the long line of societies and people seeking spirituality who have made use of that fine circle and triangle notion. And um the notion behind it, which actually fits the conference just great, is that that that triangle pointing up into that circle is man seeking unity with God.
And he would he this guy who happened to be this really really famous songwriter was was this famous songwriter that I'd grown up seeing on TV and she was working on him and he was the one with the earring, right? His name was Paul. Paul W.
And so Paul says to her,"Well, you know, it's it's I may be the sacred teas, but to me it's the symbol of this society that I belong to, this fellowship that um where we just help people stay sober and we don't drink one day at a time." And then he asked a question and I was not in the room for this question. Now, this is an important part of the story because all in our lives out there, there are things going on that are changing our lives and we don't even know about it, you know, and one of these days it's going to walk through the door and hit us. And that's what I've learned in Alcoholics Anonymous.
I mean, Bill and Bob got together that changed my life before my life ever got started because it was waiting for me when I got here. And so she was sitting there and this guy asked her a question and I was not in the room. And that question changed my life.
And that question was directed at her. And by the way, she was like um she was like Karen Allen in the original Indiana Jones. You know where in the beginning of the movie Karen Allen drinks the bad guys under the table.
She could go shot for shot with me or anybody. And so this guy says to her, "Do you have a drinking problem?" And God bless her. She answered, "No, but my husband does." She wasn't lying.
And then she did something else. She She played him a little cassette tape of this song demo I had worked up. And that proved to be very important about three hours later because he asked for her for my home, our home phone number.
And so he leaves and she calls me and says, "Hey, I met this guy Paul, you know, Paul W, you know, and and God, you know, he's such a nice guy and he listened to your music and he really liked it." And he's like, "Um, and he wants to talk to you about something about something. You guys know what's coming, right?" So the phone rings and so I know this has occurred, right? I know this meeting has taken place.
So, the phone rings in my little apartment. Oh, about three hours later and it's I pick it up and I hear this voice. Hi, this is Paul.
Paul W. And he says, uh, and I my first reaction was to be a smartass. You know, I'm going like, yeah, right.
I'm Johnny Carson. You know, why is this guy calling me? But then he I think it's a hoax.
I think it's a joke, frankly, that somebody's pulling my chain. And this guy sings me a couple of the lines from that song that I'd written. And I knew that no one had heard that song except for my wife.
And now this one person that she said she'd played it for. And so I knew it was really who she said it was. And he goes, "I hear you're trying to stop drinking." He got he wasted no time.
I hear you're trying to stop drinking. And I answered very honestly, "Well, I've stopped." because I had for that moment. See, I skip past this part, but about four or five years before I I find myself in this room talking to this guy on the phone, I had started getting an inkling that something was terribly wrong with me.
And I had tried I had tried to moderate and control my drinking like it talks about in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. I had tried that. I used to call them sobriety binges.
I'd go, you know, 3 weeks, 6 weeks, 8 weeks, I wouldn't drink. And when I wasn't drinking, I was thinking about drinking. And when I wasn't drinking, I was a miserable, angry, short-tempered, unpleasant human being.
Okay, I have a name for that, you know, not drinking and not really sober state. I call it sodityy. You can get into that in recovery.
I have experienced it. Not working steps, not going to meetings, not reaching out to other people, not being engaged actively, having my heart open to sobriety, living in the process of recovery. I'm in sodiety and it is not a nice place to be.
So, I I'd had my little so dryity bouts and um and I wasn't drinking. And he said, "Well, you go into meetings." And I go, "What meetings? I didn't know anything about Alcoholics Anonymous." And he told me about these meetings.
And he said, "Well, there's these meetings and I'll tell you where one is." He said, "Uh, there's one over here on Robertson Boulevard. It's in a place called the Log Cabin. And it's a log cabin." Now, I know here in Colorado, it's like, what's the big deal about a log cabin?
You know what I mean? It's like every nine dirt roads there's a log cabin. But in Los Angeles, log cabins are pretty rare.
Okay, trust me on that one. Very rare. Only log cabin I know of is over here in West Los Angeles.
It is an honest to God real log cabin. And it has been an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting for 20 some odd years. If you're ever in West Los Angeles, 7:30 in the morning, five days a week, there is a meeting of a bunch of drunks gathering in a log cabin in Los Angeles, California, Monday through Friday.
Just look for the log cabin on Robertson Boulevard, and you will be in the right place. So, he tells me about this log cabin meeting and says he says he says, "You know, I um I got to go out of town, but I I said, I'm not going to meetings." goes, "Well, if you're staying sober and you're not going to meetings, I want to know." It was a trick. The guy tricked me.
He goes, "I want to know how you're staying sober and not going to meetings." So, I'll tell you what, I'm going out of town for 30 days, and when I get back, let's meet. I'm thinking, "Wow, I get to meet this guy." And for some reason, I decided I would not drink for those 30 days. Those were the 30 longest, darkest days of my life.
No alcohol. No meetings, no program, no clue that even such a thing existed. So dryy there I was so dryy.
And so what happens is I don't drink for 30 days and I am a lunatic and I have a moment that I'm not particularly proud of. But in the interest of really being honest and to so I never forget where I came from, I got to tell you this little bit of this story. my dear wife who'd seen me through thick and thin, you know, we'd been together since 1977.
This is 1991 now. She looks at me and she says, "Why don't you go to one of those meetings Paul told you about?" And I sat there, no defensiveness in me, of course, and I said in my spiritual large, you know, spiritual giant I was well on my way to becoming. I said, "If he'll get you off my ass, I'll go." Pretty gracious answer, huh?
Just a prince among princes there. And so what happens is I get in my little beat up van and I drive over to this place the next day and I see all these people milling about with little styrofoam cups and cigarettes and, you know, the coffee and the whole deal. And I had I had made a I had made a deal.
I was a good dealmaker. I had made a deal with myself. You guys know about that deal making stuff, I bet.
So, I'd made a deal with myself that I would go up, stick my nose in the door, say I had been to the meeting, leave, and that would be that. And then that would settle this going to meetings nonsense. So, as I walk up to the steps, literally my knees were shaking.
I was scared. Had no idea of what. I was just scared.
Of course, that's how it usually goes, right? It's cuz it's it's what we don't have any idea about that seems to scare us so much. So, I'm wobbling over to the front steps of the log cabin there in Los Angeles.
And this tall, skinny guy, who I later came to learn had never gotten more than like four and a half minutes of continuous sobriety. This was in that 4minute range. He reached down the steps to me and stuck out his hand and he said, "Welcome." And it felt like he was pulling me up the steps of that meeting hall.
And suddenly I'm standing in a room and the room is about twothirds this size. It's really big for a log cabin. I I mean I don't know how big the typical log cabin is, but you know it was a pretty good sized room and there's about 120 people in it at 7:30 in the morning.
So, they're pretty serious about what they're doing on they're all laughing and cutting up. And I walk through the door and of course immediately I think every eye in the room is looking at me. And I walk over and there's coffee and thank God you didn't have to pay for it because I had like eight cents in my pocket.
And I get this cup of coffee and I go sit down and the magic of Alcoholics Anonymous got me. And here's what happened. It wasn't the 12 steps.
They read them because they read them at every meeting. But the 12 steps back in those first few hours and days of sobriety were like the Peanuts cartoons. You know how when the adults talk in the Peanuts cartoons, all you hear is walk.
Step two. I could just none of it made any sense to me. Okay.
But there was this 6 foot three-inch tall big just super buff black guy at the podium who had been a Vietnam veteran come out of Compton. obviously my story. And he's talking about feeling like he'd been born without that extra layer of skin on him and how sensitive he was to the world and how scared everything made him and how when he drank alcohol, it made that something he could deal with.
And he told his story and he told the truth about his heart and he was me and that saved my life. That is Alcoholics Anonymous. One drunk talking to another drunk coming straight from the heart like I heard at 12:30 today.
And that saved me. That's what I wanted. I was like, "Man, this is great.
I'm I'm getting emotional just thinking back to it." I was like, "Wow, wow, these this is amazing. I've never seen anything like this before." So, I got a book. They gave me one.
They said, "Hey, you know, you don't have the money, just take the book. just you can pay it back by coming back. And I'm like, deal.
And I went home. And like the good alcoholic I am, I sat there. I heard him say the programs in the first 164 pages.
I was listening. And I went home that very first day. And between the time I got home and the time I went to pick Victoria up from her job, I read those first 164 pages.
I read them, man. I'm like, I'm going to get this thing now. Why?
So I wouldn't have to ask anybody for help. That's the truth. I was going to read this thing, have it figured out.
By the time I got to my second meeting, they were going to go, "Oh yeah, step seven." I was going to go, "I know all about step seven. Let me tell you about step seven." Because, see, that's my thing, you know. I don't want to be vulnerable.
I don't want to show you my heart. I don't want to show you how broken I am. I don't want to be real.
I'm supposed to be the mind readader. I'm the guy that's got to stay a step ahead so you can't hurt me. See, because you can't hurt me, I do all the damage to myself.
It's a preemptive strike. I got the situation under control. I love the alcoholics version of safety.
You know, it's like I don't want to let anybody in. They may hurt me. So, I'm going to build up all these defenses, all these walls.
Okay? Because if you hurt me, I'm gonna end up scared and alone. So once I get building all my fortress and all my perimeter and I don't let you in, what do I end up?
Scared and alone. Perfect. And that's my alcoholic thinking.
My version of safe gets me the result I'm the most afraid of getting. Crazy, man. So I was I had it all figured out by the second meeting.
Paul came back. I met this guy. He became my sponsor.
And off we went on the journey of the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. In the time I have left to speak tonight, I want to talk about my journey in recovery because my life in recovery has has been everything I dreamed about in life, though it looked nothing like any of the things I dreamed of. So when you hear people in recovery say to you, you know, if you make a list of all your dreams and x number of one day at a times down the road, you know, you'd have sold yourself short.
That's my experience, but it's not my experience the way I thought it would be. Here's my experience. I can be just about as grandiose as they come.
I mean, I did move to LA to be in the music business. That's pretty just that's a form of insanity unto itself. Okay, there's probably a program for it.
Um, but anyway, here's what I find now standing here in this room talking to you. I had a list of all these things I thought I needed for my life for my life to be good. And what that list really was was a list of all the things I thought I needed so that I could feel the way I needed to feel in this world to be feel safe, to feel whole, to feel a part of something.
I had this list of things I thought I needed. And that list of things I thought I needed was wrong because it was based on my alcoholic thinking. It was based on trying to pretend to be something that I thought I had to be in order to have you accept me.
And what Alcoholics Anonymous has given me has given me a life that feels on the inside like everything I dreamed about those outside things would bring. And the cool part of that is I don't have to worry about anybody taking that away. I don't have to worry about losing it.
I can only forfeit it by going into sodity or relapse rather than working my program. And I'm a big believer in the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm one of those people that likes to talk about the book.
You know, where I got sober in LA. It was like a CC paw meeting, man. We chanted.
I love that. That just rocks. I love the energy in your fellowship.
I am so grateful to have been invited to be come and experience this. You know, where I got sober, that's what we did. We chanted, we cut up, we had our little posies, everybody hung together.
I'm still hanging with those people. They've scattered all over the country and to Europe and to New Zealand and you name it. And I Hey, I have Skype.
I mean, I see people online. I'm still online face to face with people that I got sober with 16 years ago. We see each other just I was sitting in my hotel room skyping with a guy still sponsor in Los Angeles before I came over here.
You know, technology is amazing. Technology, by the way, we wouldn't have AA if it wasn't for telephone. You know, Bill picked up a phone, you know.
So now, email, Skype, video conference, you name it. It's all fair game to me. Any way I can connect to you, any way our fellowship can be in touch with each other, that's just an extension of that telephone, the one that Bill picked up and called and found another alcoholic with, you know.
So, here's how I here's what I'm doing in my program. I don't want to, you know, go over my God, you know, but you run along at a meeting. You just stir up a lot of bad feeling.
I just don't want to do that. So, uh, I'm a big believer in, um, living what I call living in the steps, you know, and there's all kind you hear all kinds of things in Alcoholics Anonymous, you know. I've been around meetings where they say, "Yeah, I worked a step a year, man.
If id have worked a step a year, I'd have been dead before I was 12 years sober." You know, I can't go that slow. I'm too sick. You know, you know, I do this thing called making movies.
Let's see if anybody else in here makes movies. Let's see. I start out the day.
I'm feeling pretty good. Um, I have a bad thought. Just comes into my head.
I think something. Oh I'm happy now. But if that bad thing happens, of course it hasn't, but I'm thinking it.
Okay, hadn't happened. Well, I could end up homeless now. I'm driving my car from my house to my job, but already I'm 14 blocks from home and I'm homeless in my head.
Okay. I can go from perfectly serene, content, walking hand in hand with the big amigo to homeless in my head and you know 90 seconds making movies. They start out Bambi, they end up Emityville horror.
So I got to watch that movie making thing. The way I do that is I believe I had I had a great experience when I was about two years sober. In fact, two two if I can count.
All right. And here's I'm sitting in a meeting in Los that very log cabin. And this guy comes in.
He kind of talk like is he sounded like he's from Texas. He was not, but it made me feel like home, you know. And he said, "Uh, okay.
If you want what we have," and then he stopped. We were like, "That's a trick, right?" He goes, "If you want what we have," and then he said what I'm about to say to you. "What do we have?" >> Same result basically that that room gave.
We all just kind of were like, he's asking us a question. He said, "If you want what we have," and then he pointed at that meeting, they had the 12 steps hanging on the wall. And he pointed at the 12th step, which this gentleman over here read.
And he read it really, I was paying attention to how you read that. He said, "Having had past tense, a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps." That's what we have. So he goes, "I'm going to start over.
If you want what we have," he was on that path. He goes, "And you believe that sobriety is one day at a time, then you got to work all 12 steps every day." I just rocked my world, man. I'm sitting there two years sober.
I had finished my amends which had taken me quite a while. You know, amazing how few people were actually surprised to learn I was an alcoholic. It was a little disappointing.
So anyway, he goes, "You got to work all 12 steps every day. All 12 of them." He goes, "Now, some of some of you are going to say that's 10, 11, and 12, and I'm cool with that." He said, 'But I think you ought to see if you can find a way to work all 12 steps every day. And I walked out of that meeting, my head was kind of spinning.
I'm thinking, man, it took all these months to do the ninth step and I'm not going to get a damn thing done with my day. I'm just going to be sitting there all day long trying to work these 12 steps. I mean, what about working for a living and stuff like that?
So, you know, he just laughed and and he uh and he said, "Now, you know, let me know how that goes." And that set me on a mission. I have a little routine that I do where I start at step one every morning. And I I do this little routine where I'm on the ninth step before I leave my house as part of my morning meditation.
And I sit there and I go, you know what? I am an alcoholic and my life is unmanageable. I'm real clear on that.
And I go, you know, I do believe a power greater than myself can restore me to sanity. See, I actually believed that back when I was drinking. I just didn't I had the wrong higher power, you know, because when it comes to the third step, that make that decision to turn our will and our lives over.
I had been doing that for years before I got to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. Here's how that used to look like. Geez, everything's screwed up.
I feel miserable, man. I'm just wretched. This sucks.
Life sucks. I need to do something different. I know what I'll do.
I will go get some alcohol. Okay. And in that moment, I had made a decision to turn my will in my life over to the care of something much more powerful than me, alcohol, that was going to solve my problem the way I felt.
And you know, all the way over to the store to get my higher power, waiting there, glistening on the shelf for my arrival, saying, "Hey, Wes, here I am waiting for you." I felt better. Now, I hadn't even cracked a beer cap yet, and I already felt a sense of relief from having made a decision to turn my will in my life over. I was picking the wrong higher power.
But you know what? When I understood that, it gave me tremendous freedom in Alcoholics Anonymous because I was worried about that third step thing. And then I realized, you know, I already know how to do this.
I just need a different higher power than alcohol. And so in the morning I sit there and my I have a very casual relationship with my higher power. You know I am I am very respectful of all faiths.
Um in fact in my second year of sobriety I was adopted by these uh Navajo guys and I spent about eight and a half nine years traveling around to reservations and doing ceremonies and learning to do what they do. And and they really they really helped my spiritual path. They really helped me connect to a feeling of being part of everything.
And they loved AA. In fact, the guy that taught me wouldn't even take anybody on as an apprentice unless they were in a 12step program. He said, "Because spirituality is big, man, and the 12 steps give you a way to live in it, not just pay lip service to it." And you know what?
The 12 steps are a way to live in spirituality. In my experience, you know, they have taught me a very important thing. that when I am in a state of disease, when I am feeling separated from you or from the world or from my higher power, and this is real important, you hear the term slow briiety.
You'll hear that in meetings and and what what people with some one days at a time are talking about and we've heard it expressed really well in this conference is that by living one day at a time sober over a long period of time, you get an experience of sobriety that really starts to resonate in your life. You know, when you're newly sober, you got to take everybody else's word for this thing that it's going to work. You've been sober a while.
You know it works. You've lived it. Okay?
But here's the thing about slow slow briiety. And this is what I have learned. I am only one thought away from my higher power.
And nothing changes faster than a thought. So if you are feeling disconnected, if you are feeling somehow apart from or if you are feeling like this higher power thing, there's no space for you there. I suggest the tool of inventory.
Once a sponsor has taught you how to do that, where you look at your life and identify that thought you're holding in your head that is blocking you from that higher power that's greater than you. You're only one thought away. You want to get connected?
It's that fast, man. that fast. Sobriety lives in that space right there in the right now.
That's what I've learned. And by living in the steps, I do an inventory every morning. I look at my life.
Usually, it's 5:30 in the morning. So, the only part of the fifth step I don't do at that moment is talk to another alcoholic about it. The sixth step, I look at my shortcomings.
I look at the crazy things I'm holding on to, attitudes, ideas that are separating me from that higher power. And I have a real willingness to change. And I ask God to change those things.
And then I look at the eighth step every morning and I say, "Who is the west I'm supposed to go out there and be today?" Okay, that's my amends list. I've got a version of me I'm supposed to give to you. See, because the whole deal of what's God's will, you hear that a lot in meetings, too.
What's God's will? Well, there's first clue is God's will is what happens. Okay.
Second, it's in the big book. It's in the big book. It says when I do my third step, I'm asking for this relief of the bondage of self so that I can be of maximum service to you guys, to God and my fellows, that's God's will for me.
How I go about doing that, what I do for a living, whether I play a guitar for you or do something else, it doesn't really matter if I'm being of service with that and if I'm helping other alcoholics. I'm in God's will for me. God doesn't care about the box I put it in.
God is not concerned with whether me put I put my service in a blue box, a green box, a guitar box, uh computer helper box, it doesn't matter. Be a love and service. That's God's will for me.
It's real simple. And so when I have the version of me I'm supposed to be, I go out the door to my office, the one where I sometimes have those little movie making episodes where I go out that door and I go, you know, this is the west I'm going to go be today. Okay, this is the west that's going to be a love and service.
And then the 10th step, I call that the pay attention step. As I'm going through the day, when I start to drift away from that version of me I set out that day to be, I stop immediately just like it says, you know, I'm drifting off of that love and service guy. I stop.
I go turn to my 11th step and say, "God, I know your will for me is to be a love and service. Help me get back on track here. If I've done any harm drifting off track, help me get back on track and I know what to do.
You know, just get the big E ego out of the way. Put the little E ego back in its place. Little Ego is okay.
It's the one that makes me want to be the best version of me I can be. Big E ego. That's the one that leaves no room for anything but me.
Small universe that. So then I make a point to be of love and service every day. Help another alcoholic.
I talk to him all day long. Be of service in my life. Practice these principles in all my affairs.
The people I work with. That's an opportunity to be of service. Lots of opportunity to practice patience and tolerance.
You know, practice the principles that you guys have taught me so I can stay sober and live this sober life of peace. You guys have taught me what love is. Okay?
And I've learned whether it's in relationships. In relationships, love is basically a series of contrary actions. This is what I've learned.
Listen when you want to talk. Give when you want to take, stay when you want to run. I've also found in life that if you take gratitude, forgiveness, forgiveness is big, man.
Forgiveness. Okay, gratitude, forgiveness, and compassion. You mix those three things together, you give them away to people.
That's love. It works. I learned it here.
I have a friend of mine who was in the real mafia that got sober. They actually let him walk out of the real mafia. He worked for a guy named Sammy the Bull.
Sammy the Bull said, "You are so sick that if you ever relapse, you don't have to worry about killing yourself because I'll do it for you." This guy I know from LA, Greg L, he calls this the mafia of love. One of the last things I want to say about this is, and this is real important to me, I was a wreck. You know, I was a real wreck when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous.
I mean, I firmly believe that if Humpty Dumpty had found Alcoholics Anonymous, they would have been able to put him back together because that's the magic of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I'm a big believer in celebrating your sobriety. That's why I love this fellowship here because you guys are celebrating.
I do not believe in Eeyore sobriety. You guys know who Eeyore is? The guy, the little donkey from Winnie the Pooh.
Eeyore, I'm sober. I just don't drink no matter what. I'm fired up for that.
Yeah, I get it. We don't drink no matter what, but I want a life I can live flat out full speed and have some fun with. I've had fabulous failures in my life in Alcoholics Anonymous.
And Alcoholics Anonymous didn't care. They're like, "Hey, glad you're still sober." Look, I'm the guy who thought it was a good idea in 1998 to put Culture Club, Human League, and Howard Jones on the road together. You know what?
I found out the answer to the musical question, "Do you really want to hurt me?" Oh, very much so. We want to hurt you. It was a nightmare.
I did it sober. It failed miserably. But I learned a lot.
I learned how to be sober through my bright ideas. I learned how to be sober through my movie making. I learned how to be sober through living life and taking chances.
In my experience with sobriety, I have not been able to sit still and figure out in advance how it's going to be. I've had to go out and do life and let it show me what it is. I'm finding that's the best way to go.
Get out there, get your shoes dirty. Well, you will tonight, I guess, at the hill there. Talk about an opportunity to match calamity with serenity here.
You know, we've got it with this. Um, Alcoholics Anonymous, in closing, I want to say this. Alcoholics Anonymous, I My sponsor accuses me of speaking in bumper stickers.
And one of the bumper stickers I speak in is this. There is no healing without safety. Okay.
Why other bumper sticker? You're only one thought away from your higher power. Beware of soiety.
And there is no healing without safety. The world was a very dangerous place for me until I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, which was a safe place for me. A place where I could screw up.
A place where I could learn how to be a human being. A place where I could walk around with all that raw skin exposed. And you guys were okay with that.
You knew you had been there as well. and you gave me a way to function in the world. We have to keep these rooms safe.
When we start telling stories about each other, when we and some of it's just good-natured fun, and I know that, but we've got to keep the spirit of safety in these rooms. This is life or death. You know, I was taught when I got sober, get a suit.
You'll need it for weddings and funerals. You'll go to a lot of them in Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, I've seen some good people fall by the wayside.
I hope years from now I come to a CC paw meeting and everybody in this room is there and still sober. That would be awesome. It's also completely possible.
I don't believe in statistics. I believe in the power of a relationship with a power greater than yourself that helps you stay sober one day at a time. the way it helps me stay sober one day at a time.
And there are no statistics that mean about that. That's me, my higher power, you and your higher power. These 12 steps, the 12 traditions, they work.
We got to show up for them. I want to leave you with a prayer. when I went out um all those years I went out and and did ceremony and I did all these different ceremonies because I was seeking that spiritual experience and I went to the Joshua Tree Desert and sat out there for days on end with no food or water and I went to the Oregon desert and I sundanced with the Shosonyi and I did all these spiritual warrior things and you know what they were a really good thing for me to do.
They taught me a lot. But I also now see that I can get to those same places working the steps and sharing my heart and the spirit of who I really am with another alcoholic. And so I learned this great prayer and I want to share it with you.
In the in the the ways of the of the uh Indians that I was taught, there's a thing called walking in beauty. Okay? And when you walk in beauty, it means this.
It means every human being has these four elements. We have our mind, our intellect, you know, the movie making thing, right? With all those bright ideas, but it's also a healthy part of who we are.
And then we have our emotions, right? What we feel. And then we have our bodies, our physical bodies, and we have our spirit.
And we are all those four things. And they make a circle, a wheel, a wheel of life. And what we're trying to do as human beings and as sober alcoholics is be right in the middle of that circle.
Think about a wheel on a car or on a on a bicycle or something. If you take the the hub of that wheel and you put it right in the center, man, that wheel rolls down the road nice and smooth. You move that hub off center just a little bit and suddenly it's It's all out of balance going down the road.
Okay? And that's my life. If I don't stay in the center of all four of those things that I am, my mind, my emotions, my body, and my spirit, I get off center and I wobble down the road.
So to stay in the center of the wheel is to walk in beauty. So this is my deepest prayer for everybody here. As you leave this sacred and holy place, may beauty walk before you.
May beauty walk beside you. May beauty walk above you and below you. When you touch, may you touch with beauty.
And may you always leave beauty in your trail. Thanks for letting me share. Thank you for listening to Sober Sunrise.
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