AA/CA Speaker – Wes H.- Denver, CO – 2006
AA speaker Wes H. shares his journey from musician addiction in LA to spiritual awakening through recovery, vision quests, and learning to surrender what he thought would make him okay.
Wes H. from Denver, Colorado walked into sobriety after years as a musician spiraling through cocaine, alcohol, and the music industry. In this AA speaker tape, he tells the full arc—from his first hit of crystal meth in a San Antonio club to the moment his wife said “you scare me,” to his first meeting, and into seven years of spiritual ceremony that taught him the difference between what he thought would save him and actual surrender.
AA speaker Wes H. recounts decades of active addiction as a musician before getting sober in Los Angeles with help from a famous songwriter in recovery. He explores how he confused drugs and alcohol with spirituality until a sponsor redirected him from intellectual understanding to heart-centered spiritual practice. Through vision quests and Native American ceremony, Wes learned that power—whether in cocaine, sacred objects, or false beliefs—becomes dangerous when he gives it dominion over his life, and that true recovery is about daily connection to his Higher Power, not possessions or concepts.
Episode Summary
Wes H. takes the room on a sprawling, honest journey through thirty years of addiction and fifteen years of recovery. He opens with his trademark humor—joking about how his addictions could fill a business card with credentials (CA, AA, ACA, DA)—before diving into the brutal honesty of his story.
His addiction started young. At a club in San Antonio as a musician, he snorted crystal methamphetamine for the first time and overdosed that same night. Years later, he received cocaine in a Christmas card from a Colombian keyboard player and mistook the numbness for peace. Each time he thought he’d found the problem—San Antonio was wrong, so he’d move to Denver. Denver didn’t work, so Austin was next. Austin failed him, so Los Angeles would be the answer. What he didn’t realize was that the problem was internal, not geographic.
By the time he landed in LA, Wes was a wreck. He’d gone from vice president of a $14 million company at twenty-five to mowing lawns at twenty-nine, working in a pizza kitchen at thirty, and by thirty-two, locked in a one-bedroom apartment, writing songs no one heard, afraid to leave. His wife found him terrifying to live with.
The turning point came through an unlikely messenger. Wes’s wife worked at a dental office and mentioned to Paul Williams—yes, that Paul Williams, the Academy Award-winning songwriter and actor—that her husband had a problem with drinking and drugs. Paul, himself in the fellowship, asked to meet him. Wes stayed dry for thirty days on sheer willpower, miserable the whole time. Then his wife delivered the line that cracked him open: “You scare me.” The next day, he went to his first AA meeting.
Early sobriety was chaotic but real. He found a sponsor who corrected his intellectual approach to spirituality. When Wes tried to think his way into God through philosophy and books, his sponsor stopped him mid-sentence and thumped his forehead, then his heart. “I’m hearing all this,” he said, pointing to his head. “I’m hearing none of this,” pointing to his heart. That shut Wes down—and opened him up.
The meat of this talk is Wes’s spiritual journey through Native American ceremony and vision quests. His sponsor—a post office worker who ran sweat lodges and prayer ceremonies—invited him into a six-to-seven-year apprenticeship. What unfolds is a vision quest in the Joshua Tree desert where Wes was asked to face four enemies: fear, clarity, power, and death. The story builds to a climax: lost in the desert at dawn, dehydrated, burned, disoriented, unable to walk three steps without cramping. He’d hiked four miles into the open wilderness searching for his sacred objects—feathers, rocks, blankets—the very things he’d packed to keep himself safe.
A voice comes to him in the sand: “You’ve been wandering for six hours trying to find all this stuff you’ve given power to. You have empowered them with such importance that they could kill you.” The voice offers a choice—keep looking for the objects or get the strength to walk out. Wes chooses to leave everything in the desert. By God’s grace, he walks four miles straight back to his car without falling once, the same man who couldn’t walk three steps before.
Later, his teacher asks if the sacred objects are willing to be found. When Wes closes his eyes and walks, he finds them without hesitation. But around the objects, he sees his own footprints circling them hundreds of times—proof he’d walked in circles, surrounded by what he needed but blind to it.
Wes ties this back to recovery: “You guys are right in front of me and I don’t see you. Sometimes the recovery in the 12 steps is right there and I don’t see it.” The vision quest becomes a metaphor for how he’d spent years seeking solutions outside himself while the fellowship was already there.
He closes with two stories: one about a man named Bob whose sponsor Frank relapsed after forty-five years sober because of an instant resentment over his wife’s criticism, dying drunk under an overpass—”too many years and not enough days.” The other about Wes’s core insight: “My problem with living is what I think about my life.” One thought away from his Higher Power. One action away from changing that thought. For him, it’s always helping someone else.
The talk ends with a traditional Navajo prayer Wes learned in ceremony, a blessing about walking in beauty—the balance of intellect and emotion, spirit and body—all four directions in alignment.
Notable Quotes
How twisted is my ego and my thinking that I have to worry about, am I sick enough to come talk to you? I mean, that’s just warped. Am I sick enough to talk to a bunch of cocaine addicts and alcoholics? Yes.
You have a choice. You can get up now and I will give you the strength to walk out of this desert, or you can keep looking for that stuff and you’re on your own. And like a good addict, it took me a while to make up my mind.
You’ve been wandering around for six hours trying to find all this stuff that you have given power to. You have empowered them with such importance that they could kill you. Does that sound like cocaine to you? Sounds like cocaine to me. Does it sound like alcohol? Sounds like alcohol.
The only thing worse than being in abject misery and not knowing why is being in abject misery and knowing why and then doing nothing about it.
At any moment I am one thought away from my higher power. If I’m disconnected, I only have to find one thought and change it.
Step 3 – Surrender
Hitting Bottom
Letting Go
Sponsorship
Topics Covered in This Transcript
- Spiritual Awakening
- Step 3 – Surrender
- Hitting Bottom
- Letting Go
- Sponsorship
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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. >> Good evening everybody. >> My name is Wes.
It says in the program Wes H. That H stands for Hamill. That's spelled H A M I L.
Now, we just heard a little talk about anonymity. By the way, I am an addict. I'm also an alcoholic.
>> Hi. Thanks. You know, actually, I was thinking about it.
You know how really accomplished people in life have their business cards and it says, you know, Mr. or Miss blah blah blah, comma, or period, PhD. They have all the initials after their name.
And I was thinking about all the programs I qualify for. It could say West Hamill.ca ma aa da ACA. You know, and I'm thinking if somebody didn't know about us and they looked at that business card, they'd think, "Wow, this guy's been busy, you know." To which the only appropriate answer would be, "Yes, I have been.
I'm going to tell you how busy I was." Um, the reason I tell you my last name, Hamill, H A M I L, is because I'm listed in the telephone directory today. Okay? There was a time that wasn't true.
I'm listed in the telephone directory. So, if it's midnight, if it's 1:00 in the morning, if it's 3:00 in the morning, if it's 5:00 in the afternoon, if your head attacks you, like my head sometimes attacks me, and you need to find somebody to talk to, you can call information, and you can say, "I'd like a listing for Wes Hamill, H A M I L. He lives down in Littleton.
Can I have his phone number, please?" and they'll give it to you and then you can call me because I believe anonymity is vital. It's very important. It preserves the sanctity of our fellowships and it makes it safe for us to get sober.
But I can become so anonymous that you don't know who I am and I do not want to be anonymous within the rooms of cocaine anonymous. I want you to know that my name is Wes Hamill H I L. and you can call me.
Okay. You know, it's a crazy world right now and uh today's September 9th, 2006, and welcome to the daily reprieve. Um, the most important thing that I can have right now is the safety of this room.
This is the safest room in the world for somebody like me right now tonight. And if you think a minute about that statement, look around the room. There's a bunch of dope fiends, alcoholics, you know, crazy people.
And yet there's a tremendous spirit of safety right here in the room. You know, I my life depends on that safety. And so one of the things I got to do to keep this room safe is be a real person with you and not be somebody up here giving a talk.
You know, because me giving a talk doesn't do my recovery any good and it doesn't do you any good. I got to bring who I am. Warts and all.
And so what I got to tell you about right now is uh my twisted ego. Here's how twisted my ego is regards to this very night. Uh a few months ago, I don't know, four or five months ago, Bill, I had the pre uh the privilege of meeting with Bill every Tuesday.
He's talking to me about the uh convention and I want to thank the convention committee uh for the honor of of being able to be here and speak tonight. And also just thank him for all this hard work but that they have done to make this thing happen. This is a lot of work.
You know the convention fairy just doesn't show up and make these things go. Although magic dust has been known to float around some of us from time to time. Anyway, so what happens?
He he asked me he says, "Hey, we're looking for an LA speaker." I'm like, "Cool. I'm from LA. That's where I got sober.
Not from LA, but that's where I got sober. Kind of where my life started over. And by the way, I wore a black shirt tonight.
So, I would be all in black. So, I would give the proper LA effect, you know, the hair comb back, the black everything. But I had to get my keep on trudging shirt.
I figured it was only right to have the the, you know, the official t-shirt of the thing going. So, this is just Sorry, I blew the whole black thing. You know, Denver's rubbed off on me.
What can I tell you? Um, anyway, he said, uh, you know, I I tried to line up some LA speakers, uh, and most of the guys I knew were traveling or working right now, and I know a lot of people in the entertainment business. It's part of my story.
That's an addiction unto itself. Um, which damn near killed me. But, um, here's what happened to me, you know.
He says, "Yo, well, how about you? Why don't you speak at the at the state CA convention?" And and I am a cocaine addict. And I am, in fact, I'm an everything addict.
Okay? Put a crispy cream in front of me and we got trouble. Okay?
And my brain said, "Well, I've heard a lot of these guys stories. What if I'm not a big enough addict to speak at the state CA convention? Maybe, you know, cuz I've heard some of their stories and I wasn't I wasn't I mean, I never ended up in a burned out building on the east side of town with a crackpipe in my mouth." and and I stopped myself and went, "How twisted is my ego and my thinking that I have to worry about?
Am I sick enough to come talk to you?" I mean, that's just warped. Am I sick enough to talk to a bunch of cocaine addicts and alcoholics and god knows what else? Yes.
I love the spirit of CA. I love the fire. I mean, uh, Bill recently introduced us to the Nirvana meeting where we've been going and I mean, I just love the fire in the belly here for CA.
There's a big spirit here in the in the community and and I really like that, you know. I I'm a real passionate person. I get fired up about stuff, you know, especially recovery.
And so anyway, I thinking about this whole was I sick enough and I started thinking about, you know, the first time I ever put anything up my nose, it was actually not cocaine. It was that real chunky, god-awful yellow crystal methamphetamine. >> Yeah, it actually starts your sinus cavities burning about 4 in away from your nose.
And then by the time it hits your nose, of course, your head starts to explode and it burns all the way down and and we were at this club in San Antonio and um this guy comes up and he says, "Uh, hey man, you know, we were musicians, you know, and he's like, really enjoyed your show and you want to hang out tonight? I got to I got to rewire the lighting in the club." It was a 25,000 foot nightclub. He goes, "I got to rewire the lighting in the club.
you know, all the all the lights and the this kind of stuff. And he's like, u he's like I'm going tonight. He's going, "Yeah, man." But he goes, "I got this." And he go starts waving this bag of crystal meth and we're like, "What's that?" He goes, "Oh, this is good." And we just took his word for it, you know, and uh you know, so uh starts snorting up this crystal meth and uh you know, kept snorting up the crystal meth and it was the bar, man.
Everybody was gone home. There was just like unlimited booze and you know we we kind of I was like 12 or 14 hours we snorted crystal meth and we um drank and got in the car to drive home and I was driving home. I was with my wife Victoria and and uh I go, "God, what happened to our car?" And she's like, "What?
What do you mean what happened to our car?" And I go, "It smells like there's a dead animal in here, you know." And I drive along a little further and then I kind of go Oh my god, I'm the dead animal. And uh I basically I overdosed first time out of the shot. I just passed out.
Couple of days later come two and I went we got to go find that guy and do some more of that. So because I started out on that non-habit forming crystal methamphetamine, it leaves the harder stuff. You got to watch it.
Uh I uh my first experience with cocaine was I was working with this guy. He was from Colombia. He was a keyboard player.
He played with us and he's like his name was Andreas. I have no idea where Andreas is back in Colombia for all I know or hope hopefully somewhere in a room like this somewhere in America. And um he goes, "Hey, give me 50 bucks, man." Now this is I don't know when this was like 1980 or something.
He goes, "Give me 50 bucks, man." And I'm like, "Why?" And he's like, "I'm going home to my sister's wedding." And I go, "And I'm supposed to give you 50 bucks to go home to see your sister?" He goes, "No, man. Just trust me." So, for some reason, in my alcoholic addictive wisdom, I gave the guy 50 bucks. Which 50 bucks, man, that was like that's big money.
Okay, I'm starving to death. I'm like 19 years old. I'm scraping.
But I fork out my 50 bucks. About two weeks later, I get a Christmas card. It's July.
I get a Christmas card. Noel. I open it up.
There's a bindle of cocaine in. I'm like, "What's this?" It's like real white. It's not chunky yellow like I'm used to.
It's real white. Little flat packet. And frankly, I was pretty disappointed.
It didn't burn like the other. It wasn't cut with anything, man. This was like pure Colombian cocaine.
It was sweet. Okay, so I do this and I get the numb and I get the rut to the temples and I'm like, "Oh, I like this, too. This is good.
This not quite the same, you know, driving into a brick wall at 50 m an hour that the yellow chunky stuff is, but it'll do. It's a sufficient substitute." So, I do it, you know, we do it. Then we get the broad idea that the problem with our life, this is 1980.
Figured out the problem with my life in 1980. San Antonio, Texas. That was the problem with my life.
Okay. Anybody here been to San Antonio, Texas? >> I'm hearing any argument from anybody.
Actually like San Antonio. But anyway, that was the problem with my life. So I decide I'm going to head for Denver, Colorado.
All right. Now, this is how quick on the draw I am. We pack everything we own into a 1969 Chevy van, one of those panel vans with no windows.
Privacy is very important. And we uh we drive to uh Denver, Colorado, where I promptly hook up with this guy through a person I know from bars and doing drugs and alcohol with in San Antonio. Look up my ex-husband.
That should have been a clue right there. You know, we start with ex-husband. It's probably not the best way to go.
Hey, your ex-wife sent me to find you. He's like, why? You know, anyway, so he uh do I need to be talking to you?
I don't know. And so short the short version of the story is I end up meeting this guy. He gives me in Victoria a place to stay up in Evergreen in this house he's building if I'll help work on the house.
his handyman, an Englishman named Colin, says, "Hey, man. Um, I know all the great places drinking Evergreen, and I just happen to have had plenty of cocaine." I had completely forgotten about the fact this guy carried around cocaine constantly until I started thinking about coming to speak at this meeting. I completely blanked it out.
Cunning, baffling, and powerful. So, what happens is we do cocaine. I end up homeless in Denver, Colorado.
I'm sleeping in the van. Victoria and I sleep in the van. We're relying on the graces of strangers, sleeping in people's living room floors.
I'm homeless. You know, I didn't figure out until I was 5 years sober that I had ever been homeless. I didn't figure out that if you're live in a town, you got no place to live, you're homeless.
Kind of makes sense. I never put that together. It was just another little part of the journey, you know.
Well, I went there. I just slept on these people's floor. I slept in the truck.
It was cold. You know, I had this van wouldn't start unless you have had it plugged into a block heater, you know, wall outlet in the wall. Try being homeless and going around and finding an electric plug somewhere, you know.
Hi, I'm a homeless guy. Can I plug my van into your house? You know, crazy.
So, uh, Denver didn't work out. Denver was the problem then. So, um, I moved to Austin, Texas, where they would obviously appreciate the depth of who I was as a human being.
And, um, I got into the music business and I ran a recording studio. And I, um, I met a guy real briefly that was going to be important in my sobriety later on, but, he was going to be important as a ghost. We used to live down the street from a Texas guitar player named Jimmy Vaughn.
and I'd run into his brother from time to time and uh because we were all playing the same clubs, we were all doing the same circuit and um I met him a few times and then right before I moved away from Austin, uh this guy got sober and then the week before I moved away from Austin, having by that time figured out Austin was my problem and that Los Angeles would surely be better. Got to love the reasoning behind that. Um, he got killed in a helicopter crash.
So, I moved to Los Angeles and I'm in Los Angeles about 60 days and I'm working on being a man about town. And we go to this art gallery opening and um we meet this photographer. We start talking to this photographer.
Guy's name is Robert Knight. He's a great photographer. took the last photo of uh Jimmyi Hendrickx taken before uh Jimmyi Hendris died.
He took the last photo of Stevie Rayvon taken before Stevie Ray died. Battle up for guitar players, this guy. But anyway, um I like don't ever take my pictures, man.
So anyway, uh he gives us this photo. It's a photo of the two brothers, the two Von brothers. They're standing there.
I have this photo hanging on the wall of my office. The people that have been in my office have seen it. This this photo is standing there and this guy Stevie Rayvon as he's staring out at the picture and hanging from his ear is a circle and triangle earring.
Now, I knew what that symbol was, okay? I knew it had something to do with sobriety. I didn't know anything about the fellowship.
I didn't know anything about AA or CA or any AA, you know, FNA maybe. But uh so I I have this photo and this this guy gives it to us because we bond. We we make this spiritual bond.
We're talking about spirituality. And see, here's the thing for me. I have always always always been searching for a higher power.
Always. Okay. When I was 16 years old, I had this amazing experience.
Was driving home from this really disappointing day, you know, which I was 16. What else could it have been, you know? So, anyway, I'm driving home and I've got this little car, this little beat up old convertible, and I drop the top on the car and I'm I'm going along and I'm bitching and moaning, man.
God, whine, whine, whine, whine. And I'm I'm whining to God. And I'm driving out this Texas Hill Country road outside San Antonio and this thought comes into my brain.
This thought comes into my brain and this thought is, I wonder if anybody ever asks God how God's doing. So I pull over to the side of the road. If you ever been to Texas, especially at night, the sky is huge.
It's just like huge. When you're outside of towns, the stars are like right. You could reach above your windshield and grab one.
You know, it's everything is this close, which is kind of like how it is when God's around. You know, everything is this close. You can touch it.
It's right here. Okay. So, I have this thought and I pull over and I stop and I lean my seat back and I look up at those stars and I go, "Okay, God, how you doing?" This amazing sense of peace and calm like I had never felt came over me.
And man, I went, "This is good." Okay. And then later on when I took a big hit of whiskey or when I took some cocaine, a sense of peace and calm came over me then and I got confused. You know, I confused stepping outside of the selfobsession of the voices in my head.
I confused spirit, whether in powder or alcohol form. I confused that spirit with spirituality. And it damn near killed me.
And what happened was we've been talking to this photographer. We've been talking about spirituality. He was talking programming.
We were connecting. We didn't even know what he was talking about. He gave us this photo and I put that photo up in my little one-bedroom apartment in Midtown Los Angeles just about four blocks where about oh eight months later every building was going to be on fire because of that little you know why can't we all just get along Rodney King thing that happened because I was living at ground zero when all that went off and um I couldn't that photo man it was after me it's like everywhere I went in the room the eyes of that guy were like you.
It's like one of those creepy mystery movies, you know, where the eyes move around in the painting, right? And so Stevie Ray's eyes, man. They were on me cuz it was that damn earring and I knew it had to do with being sober and I knew I needed something different and I didn't know what it was and I put the photo in a box and I stuck it in the top of my closet and I go, I don't even want to look at that damn thing.
And it stayed there for about six years into my sobriety. So, how did I get sober? Well, you know, God works in his usual sense of humor way.
I I done this recording session in uh San Marcus, Texas, and one of the guitar players is a guy he played for Bonnie Ray. And he was sober, but I didn't know that. And he was down.
And I kept trying to get him high during the sessions. And this guy was a great guitar player, man. He was really good.
And he played with Dylan and Bonnie Ray. here he was playing on my record and I'm like rocking man like dog you know although he didn't do that back then but you know and so anyway he's he's he's playing I keep trying to get him to join the party and he just like no man no thanks had enough blah blah the whole deal all the little oneoff lines and and I'm like yeah okay okay okay and then I when I walked out of the studio that night my brain said this guy's sober now I'm got this voice in my head saying the word sober And I have no clue what sober means. It's just a word in my head.
Sober. Okay. So, this is Austin.
I moved to I moved to LA. Now, this guy gets important later on. So, my wife is working at a um and by the way, this is a pretty special weekend.
This weekend is the 29th anniversary of our first date, my wife and I. You know what you're applauding for right there? You are applauding for the 12 traditions because we got married in 1980 and I got sober in 1991 and we've been married longer and we've been sober married longer than we um were loaded.
And a lot of relationships don't last in sobriety and sometimes that's a good thing. But I want you to know that if you're in this room and you're newly sober or you're in a sober relationship and that's all new in sobriety, that the 12 traditions of our fellowships can absolutely guide you to a healthy and happy and balanced relationship with another human being. back more than one, you know, but to get back to getting sober.
She's working at this uh dental office cuz at this time I you know, now my career path had been something like vice president of a $14 million at 20 uh $14 million company at the age of 25. At the age of 29, I'm mowing lawns for a living. Age of 30, I'm working in a pizza kitchen.
By the time I'm 32, I'm in a one-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles, writing song after song, nobody hears, and I'm afraid to go outside. So, and that's just how it looked on the outside. It was worse on the inside, as they say.
You know, I was trying to be John Wayne on the outside while I was Shirley Temple on the inside. >> But, you know what? What happened is she was working.
This guy comes in. He's got a another circle and triangle earring. I should buy like 50 of these things.
You just hand them out. So anyway, he's got the circle and triangle earring on and it's a guy and I'm going to use his full name because like me, he has no anonymity inside the rooms and that's how he trained me. His name is Paul Williams.
Certain generation out here will have no clue who he is. Some of you will know him as the artiste who acted in the Smokey and the Bandit movies. He called him his art film trilogy.
Uh he's the little short guy. He's an Academy Award-winning songwriter. I grew up watching this guy on TV.
He was like one of my songwriting heroes. And uh he comes in and he's a patient of my wife's. And she's working on him.
She goes, "Well, I know what that circle and triangle earring is. I know what that is." He thinking a fellow member of our fellowships is like speaking up goes, "Oh, really?" And then she pipes up, "That's the sacred teas. It is in fact the sacred teas.
That symbol's been around for like 2500 years. The circle is unity with God. The triangle is man searching towards it." So like any really good organization, one thing you learn in the entertainment industry is you learn the old saying that amateurs borrow and professionals steal.
So you know AA stole good and CA and everything else you know everybody uses that. So she sees that and she says I know what that is. And she blazed the sacred teas thing on him and he just starts laughing.
He goes well you know uh it's a symbol of a fellowship that I belong to where we stay clean and sober one day at a time. He goes, "Uh, you have a problem with your drinking." This is drinking at the time. You know, Paul's a You're a good He's a good honest coke fi thing, too, man.
We share that. And he goes, "Um," she goes, "Oh, God bless her for this answer, too." She goes, "No, but my husband does." Now, she wasn't lying about her husband does. She left out the part, and I won't tell her story, but let's just say that the scene in Indiana Jones where Karen Allen drinks all the other guys under the table.
So, anyway, he goes, "Really? I'd like to talk to your husband." So, the next time he comes in, Victoria takes a demo tape of a song I've written. She plays it for this guy.
About four hours later, I get a phone call. I'm locked in my apartment. Where else am I going to be?
I'm available for the phone. My day planner wasn't exactly jam full. So, um, voice comes over the phone, says, "Hi, this is Paul Williams." Now, I stifled the urge to say, "Bright on Johnny Carson." But I almost said it.
Thank God I, you know, there's a lot of stuff I've almost said. Anyway, uh, he goes, uh, and he starts singing me this song that I had written. And he says, "Your wife played that for me." Now, I she had called me all excited, saying, "Hey, I got to play Paul this song." So, I knew this had happened.
That's how I knew it was really the guy who said he was who he said he was. And he said, "Uh, I hear you're trying to stay sober." I go, "Well, yeah, like what? What up?" You know, and he goes, "Well, I'd like to meet you and talk to you about that.
You going to meetings?" I'm like, "What meetings? What are you talking about?" Goes, "Oh, we need to talk." I stayed sober 30 days dry. By the way, I have this little thing I call so dryy.
Anybody here relate to so dry? I'm not drinking. I'm not using.
I'm one miserable so I have not found a sufficient substitute. And I had not. My wife came home and she said something that changed my life.
I'm not real proud of this, but I have to tell you truth about it. She looked at me and she said, "You scare me." And uh that got my attention. You know, it's really hard to be an addict and an alcoholic and be the incredible kind of lonely that we can be.
Man, we define lonely like nobody defines lonely. To lay in bed next to somebody that you know you love and you're still the loneliest person in the planet. to be in a group of people that you know care about you and you are so frightened of letting them touch your heart that you're the loneliest person in the planet.
That is me in my disease. And that is me in my disease whether I'm drinking and using or not. And that's real important to me.
I don't want soiety. I want sobriety. I want to be part of the tribe.
So what happened is um I went the very next day to my first meeting now I got sober in AA shortly discovered CA after that we had rocking meetings one of my best buddies in that uh fellowship out there was a guy named Bruce M who wrote the part in the who is an attic about scraping the flakes out of you know brown bottles. I was like this is cool. It's like meeting somebody who wrote the Declaration of Independence.
Dude, how did you come up with that? Brilliant. He's like He's like, "Well, it was about 3:00 in the morning.
We were out of pizza. We were working central office waiting for the phone to ring. We were bored out of our minds and we figured we got to write something for this fellowship." So that's how it happened.
just the ordinary way genius comes about, I guess. So, um, so I started on my journey in sobriety. I want to spend the rest of my time talking about that.
Um, I walked into a music store. Remember the guy I told you about earlier, the guitar player in the studio that was so good. I wanted to be just like I'm in on a little studio over in I mean in a little music store over on the west side of LA and I'm talking to the owner and we're talking about stuff, man.
We're just talking about stuff. We're talking about stuff and words like easy does it start slipping into the conversation and words like, you know, surrender. There's a big one.
And words like, you know, one day at a time. And so I go, "Are you sober, man?" And he goes, "I'm sober. 27 years, the owner of this music store." And I go, "Wow." We immediately head for the back like corner of this place.
And just start having a meeting. Basically, we're just talking and I get all fired up and I go, "Man, I worked with this guitar player in Texas and and I know he was sober." And I told him his name and I said, "Blah blah blah. I just I'd love to meet him.
He really inspired me. I wanted what he had." And the guy looks at me and he goes, "Well, I'm his sponsor." I go, "No kidding." He goes, "Yeah, man." And he goes, "Uh, I go, "Look, I'm going to give you my phone number. If if he's willing to call me, I just want to thank him." I turn to walk out the store.
Who walks in the store? This guitar player. We almost like get stuck in the door together going like this.
I go, and he's like looking at me like, "Who the hell is this guy?" And you know, he doesn't remember me. I'm like one of 500 things he's played on in the last three years. And uh I tell him the story.
I thank him. He gets really moved by this. He gives me his home phone number.
Two years later when I go in to make the first record I'd made in years, the first record I was going to make sober, he came down and played on the corner. He did that for free. He did it just to be of love and service.
That's what we do. You know, who knew? See, I don't have the big picture.
I don't know how to connect the dots. I don't know how a scared kid in a recording studio in Austin, Texas, seeing some guitar player that has something he wants. I don't know how you get from there to two years sober in Los Angeles meeting the guy walking through the door of a music store.
I don't know how that works. That's the mystery, man. And nothing's better than a good mystery.
And that's sobbriety. And that's life. It's a mystery.
When I was um about 14 months sober, everybody's talking about spirituality, spirituality, spirituality, spirituality, spirituality, God, God, God, God, God, God, God. I'm like, god damn it. Enough.
Enough with the God thing already. Two important things happened to me. I sat across from my sponsor.
He starts talking about God. God, God, God, God, God, God, God. I start explaining God back to my sponsor because I've read a book or two.
I must know something. Boy, that's dangerous, huh? Little bit of information in the hands of an addict.
Scary. You know what I do with a little bit of information in the hands of I I do what this little thing is? I call I start making movies.
I bet everybody here makes movies. Here's how a movie is. I get a little piece of information.
My car isn't running, says the mechanic. Piece of information. I start a movie.
I'm in a great mood when I get this phone call. By the way, I am like rocking. I'm walking hand in hand with God.
Phone rings. Hey, your car. It's got a little bit of a miss.
We need to look into it. Movie starts. It's going to be 1,500 bucks.
I know. probably total the damn car. I'll be homeless by the end of the week.
Nobody's going to ever love me. Making movies, man. I start out Bambi, I turn into Stephen King.
I'm making movies. Got to watch those movies. Don't not literally.
You got to watch out for making the inventory. You know, inventory says it's factf finding, not feeling finding. Save my butt.
So, I'm sitting across from my sponsor. I bet you thought I lost track of where I was. Sitting across from my sponsor.
Add works for you sometimes. I sit across from my sponsor and I'm laying it out, man. God and I Tibetan Book of the Dead and blah blah blah blah.
ching and he stops and he goes, "Man, I am hearing all this." And he starts thumping on his forehead and he said, "I am hearing none of this." He starts thumping on his heart, shut me right up cuz he couldn't have been more right. You know, I was going to think my way into this conscious contact with my higher power. So, uh, that really spun my wheels.
I'm like, I'm screwed now. I You just took away my last line of defense, my intellectual posturing. I think if I can put together a sentence without too many uh duh in it, you know, I'm going to get one past you.
But you guys are too clever. So, uh, he nailed me on that. And a few weeks later, I went to this spiritual um experience and I went with some fellow members in the uh you know 12step members.
And when I've been in Austin, Texas, I've done this thing called a sweat lodge. It's prayer ceremony. Some of you guys may know about what this is.
It's Native American prayer ceremony. Hell, we're all Native Americans, most of us. I don't see too many immigrants fresh off the boat here, but um it was an American Indian prayer ceremony and um he uh I went to it and the guy I mean it was a guy that worked for the post office that ran this and I sit in this thing and it rocks my world because it makes me be completely present.
Now I don't wear a watch right now. It's been a few months cuz I started doing this. I'm surrounded by clocks all the time.
Clocks at work, clock on my computer. I'm looking at my wrist all the time. Every seven minutes, I'm looking at this thing.
What? I can't remember what time it was seven minutes ago. I just, you know what?
I'm trying to be someplace other than where I am. So, I quit wearing a watch because the time I need to be aware of is right now. I had to borrow my wife's watch.
So, you know, I don't want to go too long here, screw up anybody's evening. Um, so I was in this ceremony, man, and these people were praying from their heart and I was right here. And after that ceremony, this guy looked at me and he said, "Uh, he's an Indian guy.
They don't talk a lot. You know, that's Indian feathers, not dots, kind of Indians." And he goes, "Um, got to make the distinction, you know. And he says, uh, he says to me, um, you can come back.
That's all he says to me. You can come back. I'm like, what does that mean?
Somebody I ask somebody, what does that mean? He says, well, it means you can come back. Always looking for that deb.
So anyway, um, so I I went back to this guy's house a couple of nights later. He took one look at me. He says, "So, you know, you can come back tomorrow, too." And what happened was an apprenticeship.
And I spent the next six and a half to seven years of my life studying at that guy's knee. And I got to go places in the realm of the spirit that I never would have imagined. I'm going to tell you one story right now about something that happened to me one of these ceremonies.
It has everything to do with recovery. And that's the only reason why I'm telling the story. It's not an outside issue because you know what?
It's my life and my life is not an outside issue to me. This is how I got here. So, I started out down this journey.
He said, "You're going to go do a vision quest that's going to involve like going without food for a long time, by the way." and um you're going to go face the four enemies of man. I'm like the four all four at once. And he's like, "Well, you're going to do them one at a time, but you're going to do them in this ceremony.
The four enemies of man." I go, "Well, you want to tell me what they are?" Go, "Sure. We're going to start with fear." I'm like, "Okay, that makes sense. You want to go to enemy number two?
Clarity." Like, how's Because I've been like sitting in meetings and everybody's praying for clarity. I'm like, "Well, how's that the enemy?" He goes, "Well, you know, you're going to let me know if you live through this." He did say, "If I live through this, dude, it's really unsettling." And then he said, "Uh, power. There's your number three." And he says, "Now, your fourth enemy is going to be death.
What you're going to do is you're going to go out in the desert." I chose the Joshua Tree desert. I don't know if any of you guys know where Joshua Tree is. It's It's sort of like a little chunk of the moon that fell off and landed on Earth.
And um you're going to go out there and you're going to be in prayer and meditation for three days and three nights and you're going to ask every one of these enemies to appear to you in physical form. Okay. And I'm going Joshua Tree, huh?
He goes, "Yeah, that or your living room." I saying that because there's a reason why I'm saying that. So I go to Joshua Tree scared to death. drive out there at the middle.
It's 2:00 in the morning. I drive out there. My god, it does look like the moon.
I got all my stuff. I look cuz I got I got my gear, man. Now, this is real important part of the story.
I got my stuff. Okay. I got my sacred feathers, my sacred rocks, got my sacred pipe.
And I'm not mocking any of this stuff. I'm very serious. I have my sacred blanket, my sacred sunscreen.
Maybe I'm mocking that one a little bit. I am a pretty pale complexed guy and I go out in the middle of the desert and naturally just hiking a mile or so off the road is not good enough for my grandiose spiritual seeking. I hike like four miles into the open desert because it's got to be real.
Got to be big. I'm an adrenaline junkie, you know. I'm addicted to the buzz.
I still am little disappointed I didn't see adrenaline on the beverage menu tonight. So anyway, I hike all the way out there. I'm sitting there.
I'm kind of like working with this fear thing. I won't go into all the details of how this stuff appeared to me in a physical form, but it did. And I'd be happy to talk to people, you know, afterwards about that.
But what's important is I I got through I got through fear and I got through clarity. I learned a really important thing about how clarity is my enemy which I will share with you. Now you may disagree with this and that's cool because the thing about ceremony and by the way sobriety is a ceremony baby.
Ceremony is presenting yourself to life completely. That's the definition of ceremony. Sobriety is ceremony.
Everybody in this room knows what it's like to be on a vision quest. If you've done a fifth step, you've done a vision quest. you have shown up and brought the scariest parts of who you are to the light.
That's a vision quest. So, I'm out there in the middle of the desert. It's And this ceremony required me to wander around and do all this different, you know, we used to call it ooey owi gowi stuff, you know, because you got to laugh at it otherwise you're just scared to death.
It's about 3 in the morning. Clarity. What I learned, clarity is my enemy when I get it and do nothing with it.
Okay? I do a fifth step. I learn all about my character defects.
I learn about these fears, these unreasonable demands. I learn about my brokenness. I learn about these things inside me that have driven me to run from life and use cocaine and alcohol and hogands and you name it.
Okay. And on with that information, I do nothing. I don't do the sixth step.
I don't do the seventh step. I don't go out and make amends. Now I am trapped in everything I know that I am doing nothing about.
And the only thing worse than being in abject misery and not knowing why is being in abject misery and knowing why and then doing nothing about it. Clarity is an enemy. So I got that.
Got that on that vision quest. Now it's power. 3 in the morning.
I get up. I'm going to do my thing. The time the spirits feel right.
I take about four steps out into the Mojave Desert out there. And it's like some it's like 500 photographers took strobe pictures of me like a millisecond apart. It was like a ring of flash bulbs going off around me.
This is 3:00 in the morning. It's pitch black. And I'm just like, "Oh my god." And I become completely disoriented.
And in that moment, I have no idea what my name is. I don't know where I am. I don't know what I'm doing.
I'm completely lost. Lost in the dark in the middle of the desert. And I go, "My god, I got to find my way back to my little spot.
I had my little sacred spot. You know, I had my hat. I had my sunscreen.
I had my sacred rocks and feathers and all the stuff that was going to make me okay and keep me safe. I had my stuff and I'm wandering out in the desert. The sun comes up.
I'm still wandering. I'm completely lost. I figure out my name by a brown sunrise, but I don't know where I am.
If you've ever been to Joshua Tree or even seen a picture, you get out there and you look and it's just a million Joshua trees. It all looks the same. So, I'm trying to pick out, is that the J?
No. Is that I can't find where I came from. And I start wandering.
If I don't find my way back to that spot, I'm in trouble because that's where my safety I can hide in the shade of my blanket. I can weather the 108°ree heat. I'll be okay.
I keep looking for the spot. I can't find the spot. I can't find it.
I keep looking. I'm not giving up. I am a little self-willrun riot.
I start getting cramps in my leg. Now, it's about 10 in the morning, I'm guessing. And I get to the point where I can't walk more than three steps without cramping up and falling over.
So, I cramp up and I fall over and I dig a little hole in the sand and stick my face in it. Face down into the sand to hide from the sun. I can already feel my skin starting to turn red and blister from the sun.
It's 10:30 in the morning. It's already 100°. Why?
I went out there in June. It was bigger that way. I had to have a big experience.
My ego demanded it. So, I'm lying there face down and this voice really clear calm comes into my head and it says, "This is about power." I'm like, "I'm listening." He said, this voice said to me, "You've been wandering around for six hours trying to find all this stuff that you have given power to, your sacred rocks and your sacred feathers and your sacred blankets. You have empowered them with such importance that they could kill you." Does that sound anything remotely familiar?
Does that sound like cocaine to you? Sure does to me. Does it sound like alcohol to you?
Sounds like alcohol to me. Does it sound like people, places, and things as a higher power to you? It sounds like that to me.
And I'm lying there and it this voice said to me, "You have a choice." Now, a lot of people I really loved had given me those things, which made it even worse because I had invested my sense of my relationship with those people into those objects. I confused the fact that what I confused what they gave me with the love they had for me. And so what I did is listen to that voice.
And that voice said, "You can get up now and I will give you the strength to walk out of this desert or you can keep looking for that stuff and you're on your own." And like a good addict, it took me a while to make up my mind. I don't know. Maybe die, make it, die, make it.
Tough one. I really like that rock. I'm a silly man.
So, what I did is I uh I chose to go I chose to leave the stuff in the desert. And I swear God is my witness standing before you tonight where I could not take three steps without falling down. I stood up and not only did I walk four miles back to where I had parked my car, but I walked straight back to where I parked my car like somebody had drawn a dotted line in the desert back to this horrible sense of loss just like I did when I got sober because God, how am I going to live without what I need to make me okay?
See, isn't that the tragedy of me and my disease? I got to have cocaine to make me okay. I got to have alcohol to make me okay.
I got to have a sacred rock to make me okay. And I left it in the desert. So, uh, I get back, my teacher, the guy from the post office shows up.
He goes, "What happened to you, man? You look bad." I was like, "Power, power got me, man." Goes, "Yeah, no kidding. He said, "So, uh, that stuff you left up there, do you think it, now this is interesting, the way he put it, do you think it's willing to be found?" Well, so it's like about it, like the spirit of of that stuff, not about me.
He said, he asked me if I was willing to go find it. He asked me if it was willing to be. I said, "Yes.
So then he asked me to do something I thought was just completely stupid. But hey, you know, I was in a good bargaining position at this point. Damn near dead.
He said, "We're going to go up and we're going to stand on this tallest rock over here out in Joshua Tree." And um you're going to close your eyes and when you feel like you know where that stuff is, I want you to start walking towards it and never second guessess yourself. So I was like, "This is pretty dumb, but I'm going to give it a shot." Why? Because you guys taught me that the barrier to my spiritual growth is contempt prior to investigation.
And I had not investigated this yet. So I went and did what he said. I started walking.
I walked straight to it. Four miles out of the open desert. I walked straight to that stuff.
And you know what? Here's the scary part of it all. Around all this stuff, I saw my bootprints.
Hundreds of my blueprints. I had circled that stuff and never seen it. It's just like that.
If that's not God talking to me about how my sobriety works, you know, you guys are right in front of me and I don't see you. Sometimes the recovery in the 12 steps is right there and I don't see it. Then I'm in soiety, which sucks.
So that was a lesson in s surrender. It was a lesson in what I give power to and I'm real grateful for that. and it served as a metaphor for my journey.
I think I'm getting close to time. I I want to um want to tell two quick stories. I was sober about five years.
I went to a meeting and this guy is sitting there and he's saying, "Uh, my name's Bob. Grateful to be sober today. I need to share about my sponsor.
My sponsor's named Frank. or he was named Frank. Like, oh, this doesn't sound good.
He goes, Frank was 45 years sober and he died last month. And I just went to his funeral. He died drunk.
See, because what happened to Frank was Frank had helped he'd been sober in Chicago and he helped all these people. And um one night his wife who was also sober kind of got on his case about something. He just took great offense at this.
He worked up an instant resentment over it. And with 45 years of sobriety, he went out and bought a six-pack of beer. And no one saw Frank again because they found him about 5 days later dead under an overpass cuz he bought more after that.
He bought some whiskey. I don't know if he used drugs or not, but it was too much for his system and he died. And his wife eulogized him.
She said, "I love Frank and he helped a lot of people and I'm going to miss him, but you know, there was one problem Frank had. In the end, he ended up with too many years and not enough days." And I want to give that one to you guys. It's a daily reprieve.
Last thing I want to share is this. My problem with living is what I think about my life. It's how I think and I'm an addict which means when I want things to change I want them to change now.
And this is what sobrietyy's taught me because I don't believe it has to be slow variety. It's not my experience. Okay.
I believe that at any moment I am one thought away from my higher power. >> If I'm disconnected I only have to find one thought and change it. Where am I separating myself from you and from my higher power?
One thought, nothing changes faster than a thought. You want to change the way you feel? Take an action that changes a thought.
For me, it's helping somebody else that changes my thoughts in a hurry. I'm not focused on me. I'm not making movies.
Last thing I want to do is I want to close with a prayer. It's a blessing actually. Um, my teachers on that road of all the sweat lodges and vision quests and all that, they taught me this great prayer.
I I just I collect prayers now like I used to collect barroom toasts and this is my best one. I'm going to lay my very best one. I'm not giving you, you know, B-level stuff here.
This is my best prayer. Goes like this. It talks about walking in beauty.
Okay, when you are walking in beauty, I got to tell you what that means so you understand the prayer. It means that your intellect, your thoughts, your mind is balanced with your emotions. Okay?
And it means your spirit is balanced with your physical health. And if those four things are like four directions on the compass, you're right in the middle, perfectly balanced. You are walking in beauty.
So what I would like to close with is the following prayer from me and it is my wish for you as we leave this sacred and holy place. May beauty walk before you. May beauty walk beside you.
May beauty walk above you. May beauty walk below you. When you touch, may you touch with beauty and may you always leave beauty in your trail.
Thank you very much for letting me share. 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.