vol 279. In All Our Affairs with John F.

SPEAKER_00 0:08 I'm here to bring you the voices of members. Everyone that comes on the show, including myself, is an active member, and it's on recovery in the room. Please take what works for you and leave it. SPEAKER_01 0:26 My name is John and I'm an alcoholic.

Thanks, Tara, for setting this up. This is a very incredibly helpful and large-reaching yet unique format, especially from where I'm sitting. My sobriety date is April the 17th of 2017. So I have been sober a little over eight years.

It is not my first sobriety date, my second sobriety date, and on and on. And I certainly hope it's my last. The last time I got loaded was at the parking lot of a federal prison about 10 minutes prior to turning myself in, and certainly the last of a nighthare sentence. So I grew up in an alcoholic home.

It wasn't extremely abusive or violent for that matter. My father was more of he would come home from work and close the curtains and drink about seven and a half beers during the weekend, more on the weekend than at a time stand. I mean, I thought that was kind of normal. I remember when they had fumble driving education when I was a little kid in school, and I came running home from school, and I I told my dad, like I was sharing breaking news, that drinking while driving was illegal.

Because I remember my dad just drinking with a beer between his lips. Driving with a beer between his lips. It was just kind of normal. So the first thing I can remember being addicted to was other people's approval.

And I chased that long into adulthood. Just the approval or the love or acceptance of other people, the attention. I didn't really care how it came, as long as it came. And I was willing to do a lot of things to compromise whatever morals I was born with to get that attention and that approval.

The first time I drank, I was probably 11 or 12. I don't know. I wish I knew it was going to be important. I would have written down the dates, but I do remember the first time I got talk.

It was definitely that missing piece. It was kind of like I had been short of breath for my whole life, and I could finally breathe deeply. Being that I was very young, it obviously did it become something that I did on a daily basis or even. But I did it every chance I could.

When I got into high school, it became a lot easier. There was a lot of just access. And from time to time, or a lot of times actually, it was easier for me to get drugs than it was for me to get alcohol. So I very aggressively did drug as well.

It was alcohol and drinking, and during high school, I was one of those alcoholics that was born with a tremendous amount of potential. You know, I can get almost straight A's, easily A's and B's without even studying. So people would have problems with my behavior, but I wouldn't say, look at my grades, doesn't really matter. I don't need to do your projects, I need to do your homework, I don't need to study.

And you know, that was the way I kind of lived my life. You know, my life was always lined with my best interests at heart. I never took into account the welfare of others unless it affected what they thought of me. And if it affected what they thought of me, then I would do the song and dance and manipulate and acted like I cared what was going on with them.

But once I received the approval or the attention that I was looking for, I immediately returned to self. And I lived my life that that way continuously for decades. Somehow I barely snuck out of high school by that time. I I grew up in in Huntington, East, California, where it's kind of required as a right past instant methane for six months.

Uh so I did that, and it was just awful and psychotic. And I was able to kind of get over that, but I always returned to the drinking. The drinking was always involved. And around that time, I was introduced to opiates and heroin.

And so the next two years was an unbelievable alcohol and opiate addiction. And then when I was about 20 years old, I had just some failed suicide attempt and ended up going to rehab. Now, God has a very interesting way of explaining Joe's thoughts. When I was 12 or 13 years old in 1987, my dad got sick.

He went to rehab, and then he went to these weird meetings, and he would take these sometimes, and I thought they were funny. I really liked the speaker meetings because little did I know that when I was 11 or 12 years old, I was already identifying with what was being shared in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. So when I was 20 years old, I went to rehab, and then I went to Alcoholics Anonymous, or actually I went to rehab, and my dad gave me some old dude's number that was then Alcoholics Anonymous and said, Hey, this guy wants to talk to you. And I kind of knew the song had danced by that time, and I wasn't really excited about talking to anybody about anything, but I was also out of options, and I think that's a very important place to get as an alcoholic.

And so I called this old man up. He met me at this meeting. Actually, my dad took me to the meeting and met this guy, and it was a speaker meeting, and I stood up and I they asked for newcomers, and I wasn't planning on it, but I just stood up and I said I'm an alcoholic. And it was just kind of it felt normal.

It felt like I was finally not home where I just kind of loved everybody, but I felt like it just kind of flowed off the tip of my tongue like I'd been waiting to say it my whole life. And life is in session. I immediately became really attracted to the fellowship thought he's anonymous. And this was in 1996, and I was 20 years old.

I was also really attracted to these old timers. And these old timers just kind of they told me the things that my parents told me for years, but because it was my parents, I just never listened to them. I ended up following these old timers around. Yeah, somehow I had been accepted into a university.

So I started going to school, and that was a huge kind of adjustment from being sober, newly sober, going to school, four-year university, and just the life that happens. And you know, I didn't realize that Alcoholics Anonymous is a program that is to be practiced in all of our daily affairs. So when I was going to school, I you know, I would come up with this sort of sissy weak kind of approach and say, you know, I just can't do school today, I need a meeting. And I can't do this, I need a meeting.

And I just I wasn't meeting my responsibilities because I was using this cop-out that I need a meeting. And as a result, my first semester in college, I they almost failed me out. And I had to go through this reapproval process and all these things. And subsequently, I was able to continue.

And I went to one of these old timers and they said, Look, you were at the meeting last night. What time did you get there? I said I got there at 6:30, so I made some coffee. And he said, What time did the meeting start?

I said it started at 8 o'clock. He said, Have you ever thought about doing your school that way? And I said, No. He said, get to your class early, stay late, sit up front, and get involved in what you're doing there.

And he really showed me that the program of Alcoholics Anonymous is not necessarily the hour that I go to meetings. It's for the 23 other hours that I have outside the meetings. And lo and behold, two and a half years later, I graduate from that school, doing nothing more than what they taught me in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I had two, three years of pride, and I, you know, I graduated and I had a really good job in real estate.

And about uh, oh, must have been three years after that, I met a lady in Alcoholics Anonymous, and life was good, you know. I look back and I realized that I didn't really, I never took the steps. I could talk about them, I could read about them, but I never really took the steps. I treated Alcoholics Anonymous kind of like all I could eat was stay, where I would do a lot of fellowship, a lot of service, a lot of commitments, not a lot of step work, almost no spirituality.

And looking back, I can see that there's a reason why the steps were going to work. And married this lady about nine months to ten minutes later, we had a first son. A couple of years later, we had a second son. And life was good.

I worked in real estate, so that was when things were going wild in a good way. And all of the gifts of Alcoholics Anonymous were coming true. And at that time, my vision of the gifts were all tangible. It was stuffed.

It was money, property, and prestige. But if anybody could have looked into my chest, they would have seen that I was just a messed up stress box. And around 2006, 2007, the real estate market started to turn in a bad way. And people I knew that I was close with knew that I was in real estate and the economy was just in almost a historically bad spot.

Now, the truth of how I was doing was I was the mess. I was stressed out, afraid, fearful, but my ego and pride had grown to such heights that I said, ah, we're gonna be fine, it's all good. My boss would ask me, hey, what's going on? You know, this has got to be bad.

I said, We're gonna be fine, it's all good. And then I started to get creative with the way that we were doing business. And what I thought was creative come to find out that the federal government calls mortgage fraud. About a year and a half, two years after the market started to crash, I was contacted by the Secret Service.

Now, about a year before that, when the market was crashing, I had had a couple of surgeries on my shoulder, and I had to go get it checked for it was some sort of irregularity that can get arthritis, or I don't remember what it was, but I had to sex raise, and I went from one of them, and he said, Hey, it looks like you're getting a lot of this kind of growth right here. Does that hurt? I'd been sober for nine years and my alcoholic brain came right back. I knew exactly where he was going, and I knew exactly where I wanted to go.

And as a massive manipulator that I am, I said, only at night. And he looked through my chart and he said, Hey, it looks like we used to prescribe you NORCO's. And I just kind of shrugged my shoulders, but inside I was happier than hell. He gave me that prescription, and this was probably in 2007, 2000, no, 2000.

Yeah, probably 2007, 2008. And I went and filled that prescription, and I took those pills fast prescribed for about 10 minutes, and that began just I have a mastery of making small problems into massive problems and doing unbelievable making unbelievably bad decisions the further and further I go. And it's kind of like I dig this hole, and rather than stop digging, I keep digging and digging and digging because in my life I always thought that I could either outsmart or talk my way out of any problem. And when dealing with the United States Secret Service and the federal government, I come to find out that's one entity that I cannot and couldn't cannot talk my way out of.

So I started taking all these fills, and my kids were growing. I had a wife that was just had no idea what was happening. And then in 2010, it just got too bad. I had been getting lowered off and on for three years.

I was moved alcoholics anonymous three or four times a week. I had two commitments, I was a secretary at one meeting, I mean coffee at another, because alcohol synonymous wasn't my life. But I had this stress and this, these feelings that I, and I had such a huge ego, I could not go to anybody and say, this is what's happening. So in 2010, I was, you know, like normal, I was uh sitting at my house on a Tuesday morning at nine o'clock when most men with families and kids should be at work.

And in the door starts coming all of the people that are in my circle, one by one. One of them, one of my buddies, another buddy, his wife, my mom, my bro. Now I gotta tell you that if you're ever sitting somewhere and you start to see a group of people that you know that normally would not mix at an awkward time, there is an intervention coming. And that's exactly what happens.

They did this intervention where everybody talked and read and did these things, and by that time I was so just kind of I was done. I was lost. I wasn't suicidal, but I I wasn't really excited about the penitentiary. So an intervention is kind of like a surprise party without the cake followed by a vacation.

But I didn't realize that the vacation was optional. So after that, I went to rehab and I went to the detox way in the middle of nowhere. I had no idea where it was, I had no idea how I got there really. Um I knew who took me, but and I was able to kind of wash out.

And while I was there, I was contacted by the Secret Service that there was an active criminal investigation into me and my companies. It was, it was just, it was a very bad thing. And that process was not a fast process. You know, when I left that rehab, I went to a a silver living.

The manager of the silver living was a guy I helped get so. And in the sober living, and this is kind of the way God plays tricks on me, they had a bunch of speaker CDs kind of sitting in their living room that guys can listen to or take on whatever. And there was this little house dog. And one day I came home to the sober living, and the house dog had chewed up one of those CDs, and it was a CD of me.

And it was pretty aprophole for the time because everything that I was about was basically just false. I you know, I felt like a phoning probably because I was. And, you know, the whole time, you know, I have these two kids that that just need a dad. They have a fantastic mother, and she's sober and and working the program, and they need a dad.

You know, it was going to be some years before I was able to kind of stand up and do my part as a father. The Secret Service and the federal U.S. attorneys um offered me kind of, I had a bunch of criminal cases. I had two cases in two different counties and a federal case.

And without getting too detailed, I would I was eventually uh signed a plea agreement for nine years uh in prison, and I ended up serving about four, uh, four and a half. And I had never spent the night in jail before in my life. And I started, you know, I went to LA County jail, and LA County Jail is about as bad as any prison that you could be in. From there, I went to California State Prison, and then from there uh I ended up going and finishing my time in federal prison.

And until I got to federal prison, I was loaded the whole time. The last time I got loaded, like I said, was in the parking lot of a federal prison before I turned myself in. My mom had taken me to that prison. That prison was in the state of Oregon, and that comes back a little later on in my story.

And I I got there and I had been to meetings in prison, and it just all were it, it wasn't the same. It was more kind of these guys that just were looking for research to talk, and and there was not a lot of recovery. And I'd seen a sign in the prison that there was a meeting there, and I just kind of said, Oh, that's all right. And this new guy showed up a few weeks later after I was there.

And now remember, I had a detox in prison for about three weeks, which is about the worst place I've ever been to detox. And I've detoxed a lot of places, but a federal prison was was pretty horrible. About three weeks into my my time there, this other guy showed up and he was just trying to buck him around me. He asked, he asked him, Hey, do you know where there's an A meeting?

I thought, oh, on Saturday. And I remember seeing that stupid sign, and I said, Yeah, I know where it is. And I walked in and I immediately never heard, said it's over for all three weeks by that time. And I sat in there and ended up getting my first meeting, you know, during this this variety that I have now.

And I ended up going to get back to that meeting every Saturday. You know, Oregon is it's beautiful sometimes, but it rains a lot of the time. And when I mean walking around the yard and there wasn't much to do because it's all wet, and I saw these guys end up sitting in the chapel, and I wasn't big on spirituality or anything for that matter, but the inside of the chapel was dry. It was warm and they had padded chairs in there.

So if I went in there and said, you know, just sat down and yeah, it was a bunch of Christian guys, and there's nothing more annoying to me than like a convict that goes with prisons that comes out with the Bible. Yeah, that's my story. And so I ended up being in Oregon for a little while, and and then I ended up crawling back by my halfway home in Southern California. And federal prison is weird when they release you, they just take you to the airport and say, hey, you got to this address by this time and put you on a plane or a bus.

And that's it. It was very awkward because I I could have literally just flown to Mexico, but I didn't. I remember sitting there in Oregon, getting on that plane and flying out. And about an hour into that flight, I said, you know, I'm pretty sure we're in California by now, and I will never come back to the state of Oregon.

I got to the halfway house, I had to be there for four or six months, something like that. But I was able to start to reconnect with my kids. And it was a slow process because I had to watch those kids grow for pictures from when they were 10, 11, 12 years old, 13 years old. And those are critical years for boys.

And and I can remember when I reconnect with them, they were both playing sports, and I started to get these passes, and I was able to go to the sporting events, and I started looking for work and uh with my history. You know, I was on Google search, it was for me disqualified, and that started happening over and over. And finally I called one of my old sponsors and he said, Hey, call so-and-so, she'll hire anybody. And I was just it was almost like my life was just beginning from zero, and it was another kind of kick in the face.

But I, you know, man is only his loyal to his options. So I called this guy and I started to work for him. And, you know, little by little I started making these little strides, you know. And I I kind of make a decision that, you know, I'm gonna do the steps this time.

And I'm gonna at least do this little experiment with your little program and see if what you guys really talk about works. And so I got this sponsor. I I still had and have a lot of grandiosity, kind of know it all of them. So, like asking someone to sponsor you is kind of like asking somebody to go out or whatever.

Just, you know, so what are your thoughts on this and that, and some steps and the big book? And he said, Look, we are just gonna read the big book. And when it says it's do something, we're gonna do it. And that sounded like such a novel concept.

I went with it. And he said, when we're giving give to something and it says we're gonna pray, we're gonna pray it. If it says we have to write a little bit, we're gonna write some stuff. If it says we've got to go meet with people, we're gonna go meet with people.

If it says we've got to go help, we're gonna go help people. He just took it very literally. And I realized from my past time in Alcoholics Anonymous that my way didn't work. This whole like egomaniac, know-it-allism, like sound good, but act like shit, was not the way for any kind of life that I wanted to have.

And so I did it. We started reading on uh on Zoom every Sunday morning and would read a chapter and then read the next chapter, and I knew the big look well enough. We're getting close to the four-step part. So we get to the four-step part.

You know, I wrote the fourth step, and so the following week we did the fifth step, and then we had to do like the sixth and seven, and I knew like we're gonna read some more work good, but like he and I were gonna, we don't make it. I never I never made hardly any not in the past. And I stuck it to, and I realized that there is so much power in in the amends for me. I remember this old timer used to say, like, it's where this is the step that separates the men from the boys.

And I truly believe that that's in my true experience that I never had the beautiful experience of sitting across from somebody and really owning. My shit right in front of them and listening to them say their peace and walking away from it, regardless of the outcome of how kind of the conversation went, feeling like through freedom. We live in America, so we kind of have this idea of freedom, which is pretty cool if if anybody's into other countries. And then there's kind of the freedom that I experienced when I was being let out of prison, which is an incredible feeling.

And I didn't realize there's this sort of this third freedom that is me getting out of my own way and being kind of liberated from these things. But it really took me being accountable and looking these people right in the eye. And for the most part, my immense like wheeled down was hey, I want you to know that I screwed you over. You probably know I screwed you over, but let me tell you how I screwed you over, and you let me know what I missed.

But that sort of interaction, and you know, I had to do that quite a few times, and was incredible. And I can tell you that the one amends that that I made that probably had the most profound effect on me was I had these kind of this group of small group of investors, and they obviously lost all their money. I went to meet with this husband and wife, and I was sitting across from them, and my sponsor told me when I go to meet with them, I'd bring the first payment and let them know that I'm gonna make monthly payments, and that if I make more money, then this this will this will go up the amount per month. And so I met with them and I told them kind of everything, and they were really gracious and you know, this appeared forgiving.

And then, you know, I started and said, Hey, you know, here's what I can, here's what I propose if it's okay with you. I'd like to start making payments monthly. And they said, Well, well, you don't know? And I said, Well, I don't know what.

They said, for some reason, John, you had really good insurance. This sort of like airs and omissions, corporate insurance, and we were able, all of us were able to recoup all of our investments plus 10% interest. And I gotta tell you, like I was able to maintain my composure. But when I left that and I got an amend in that coffee shop, and I went, got to my car, I cried like I haven't cried in a long time.

And you know, the entire process really is me kind of putting off the amends to this couple for probably the better part of six months, one of those things that I think about every single day. And finally I did it. And then the meeting took about 15, 20 minutes, and I had postponed that for six months, that freedom that I got from that conversation, wandering around my head, all because of either procrastination or fear, which procrastination probably comes from fear, I suppose. You know, so I you know, not completely done with my amends, but way further down the road than I ever have with the program.

And making amends to my kids as well was incredibly difficult walking through that. And then I used to always kind of couch everything by saying, Hey, I make a living amends, you know, I'm doing living amends. Well, a living amendment is great. However, if I've really done somebody wrong, I cannot just change my behavior and make a living amends and never address it.

That I think is the antithesis of what we're doing about college synonymous, or what the whole nice step is. I experienced a tremendous amount of humbling by meeting with those people, all of them, and owning my part side of the street, and did making the living immense. My uh my oldest son graduated high school um a few years ago. He had pretty good grades, and he had applied to a bunch of colleges, and once again, God played uh played another trick on me, and my oldest son ultimately chose to go to college at the University of Oregon, which has proven to be just an unbelievable gift.

A year ago, a year and a half ago, my youngest son had graduated college and he only had a 4.3 GPA, so he had trouble getting into some schools. And after a while, he said, Dad, I'm going to the University of Oregon. So now the state that I get corrolled from instead I'm never going back to that state. Both of my kids can go to the University of Oregon.

As I sit here now, I'm wearing a University of Oregon t-shirt, and I end up going to the state of Oregon three, four, or five times a year, going there next month. Life has a way of working itself out. I've truly experienced that when I get out of my own way, when I take other people's direction enough. Now, if if we're grading on taking people's direction, I probably get about a C.

But that's good enough for me. And I could definitely do better. But my life is nothing but a blessing. Whether I deserve it or not, I don't really get into those sort of word again with God.

I know that this is where I'm at. A little over eight years, the bride. Extremely grateful, extremely blessed, and I do my best to give it back every time I can. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 27:36 Thank you, John. Oof, that sounds like that would have been a rough time in federal prison with white-collar crime. SPEAKER_01 27:45 Yeah, the state prison was definitely hard. Yeah, I don't recommend it.

If you're gonna be crime, do federal crime. Okay. Because the prisons are a lot more good. SPEAKER_00 27:58 Note to self.

All right. So you talked about your previous sobrieties and having not done the steps and you've done them this time. You also talked about spirituality lacking. Do you want to talk about step three or step 11 in your in your sobriety uh since April of 2017?

SPEAKER_01 28:20 Yeah, definitely. My sponsor, you know, we as we go through this, went through the steps. You know, we did step three. And you know, obviously step eleven is kind of you know that conscious contact, you know, and he explained to somebody that conscious means awake.

That means that when I'm when I'm awake, I can be connected. And, you know, he kept telling me that he had done the sort of transcendental meditation thing that helped him a lot. And I was very just abrog against anything. You know, I came away from prison and my time there, you know, with a very good spiritual connection.

But I just never really meditated or anything like that. And he said, What would you do around a meeting of somebody we're doing a step study and so on and said and we're doing a fist step? So I said, Well, you know, I never really did the test step, you know, but we say I don't want to meditate, like with impunity. And he said, I I I don't think that's really good.

So I went to this sort of transcendental meditation workshop, and I gotta tell you that it has helped kind of tone my head down to more or less store. And the spirituality, I actually believe that God first shows himself through other people, like you, Tara or any anybody else. And uh the spirituality allows me to not have to rely on what I want to do. Like sometimes, you know, the right thing is not my thing, and they they don't have to be the same thing, that I can do the right thing, and that's how I stay connected.

SPEAKER_00 29:48 What does that look like in uh any given week? SPEAKER_01 29:52 I meditate in the morning and at night for about 10 minutes, and transcendental meditation is more of a mantra meditation. I'm one of those people that I'm able to pray for sure every night and almost every morning. The morning is what you got for me today, and at night is more or less just thank you.

And I try to keep it real simple. And you know, I do believe that there's um a lot of of value in not praying for myself unless it can benefit other people's. SPEAKER_00 30:22 What about the rest of your program? Eight years in how many meetings?

Do you have sponsees? Do you work with your sponsor? SPEAKER_01 30:30 Definitely. Um, between you and me, well, I guess not between you and me, I really detest the word sponsee.

Um, I've but I've been blessed with quite a few men that have invited me into their lives. And and I actively work with probably half a dozen. I go to about three meetings a week, plus uh probably three and a half meetings a week, because I'll do a Zoom meeting probably every other week. Um, I have a panel once a month at a seasonal detention center, and then I'll go on other people's panels from time to time as well.

SPEAKER_00 31:04 Why do you detest the term sponsee? SPEAKER_01 31:10 Because sponsey means that they are something to me. And it's more of my thing. I don't ever tell anybody that really.

My whole life I had a hard time connecting with humans on a on a level basis. I either felt incredibly inferior to them or superior to them. And the sponsey sponsor kind of thing is like employer employee. I know for me, I have to have a sponsor.

I mean ATA unemployer. Our literature talks about that. However, as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, I don't mean sponsees or employees. It's it's almost 100% personal.

I know a lot of people, a lot of people that use the word with impunity, and it doesn't seem but for me, I have to be very, I'm very ego conscious, and I know that this massive feature can get out of hand real fast. SPEAKER_00 32:04 This makes good sense to me. I I am aligning with what you're saying and I like it, but I'm wondering how that looks for your people that you work with. Do they call you their sponsor?

SPEAKER_01 32:19 Yes, they they do. Okay. And that's completely okay with me because that's the I don't know if it's it's either my experience or or whatever happened this time around, but I really I've learned to mind my own business pretty damn well. And if you want to call me your sponsor, awesome.

If you don't, awesome. It's your choice, and I don't mind either way. Because my job is to be a friend and to share my experience strength and both. You know, the word sponsor, we all know it's not really both, but does show itself on the 12 at 12, which so we can have a debate on that analogy.

SPEAKER_00 33:00 Yeah. Yeah. I I I align with everything you're saying. I I love it.

I'm gonna have to ponder more about your uh stronger stance on it than my musings. Like I too need a sponsor, but I don't like the idea of sponsees. SPEAKER_01 33:20 Yeah, I just I never really liked the word. I I don't, it's like these little minions that run around, and but there's so people that are so well balanced and and whatnot that it's nothing.

But if I do anything, like I gotta watch out for like a lot of things, but one of them is attention-seeking behavior or any sort of uh like pedestal setting myself up on, putting myself up on a pedestal. So if I use the word sponsee just by default, I am putting some sort of like level difference, you know. Now, there you might have more time than me or less time, but you might have a lot more experience in some area, and I'm not gonna put you on the pedestal, but you're gonna be my go-to for that. But when I just kind of do this straight kind of cart blocked sponsor, sponsey kind of thing, yeah, I got these sponses.

Yeah. SPEAKER_00 34:07 Yeah, that that makes sense. You mentioned the attention uh seeking behavior early on in your story. You talked about your first addiction being the other people's approval and attention seeking.

Obviously, this is an example of you being careful not to go down that path. Can you talk about that that area a little bit that is attention seeking and approval seeking? SPEAKER_01 34:35 Yeah, I can say what I've learned. And what I've learned is our literature in Alcoholics Anonymous talks a lot, especially when we're in the tenth step onward about going through something or an experience that must be discussed with someone else at once.

They might use the word another at once, which means, hey, if I did some shady things in sobriety, which I have done a lot, if I hurt somebody in sobriety, which I have done, all of these things, I have to discuss someone else at once. Those are kind of the negatives, right? Those are when bad things happen. If I get a bonus at work or anything like that, or I know more, or an employee of the month, nowhere in our literature just say, hey, good stuff happens, take back your reading and tell them all about it.

So I feel like I need to live my life the same way. By doing that, I get to share my dirt with you guys, and I get to stay with the good. So if I get employee of the month, I don't need to go home, brag about it, or tell anybody about it. I get to stay with that.

But if I hurt somebody customer off, call my boss a jerk, whatever, I call Tara and tell her about it. Now I'm just left with the good. And I never realized that because my whole equilibrium was based upon what you thought of. And as a result, a lot more prices, a lot of people, too.

SPEAKER_00 36:09 Okay. Is there anything that you left out of your story or that you're thinking of now that you would like to share? SPEAKER_01 36:20 I'm pretty much the least favorite thing to talk about when it comes to myself. So what's there is there, and what's not.

SPEAKER_00 36:30 Okay. You did mention your boys and that you've gone up to Oregon. So I imagine you have mended that relationship well. SPEAKER_01 36:40 We're extremely close.

The three of us, we're extremely close. Being the father of boys versus my my friends that are fathers of girls, it's a lot different. Boys, especially when they're 19 and 21, they need cash, food, and Wi-Fi. That's about it.

So our relationship, we're we're in constant communication with our way with each individual, and the three of us have a group chat. And I gotta tell you, it's it's the highlight of a life just watching them. My oldest is will graduate next June from college. SPEAKER_00 37:18 That's very exciting.

Good job, Dad. SPEAKER_01 37:21 Yeah. Good job. Good job, mom.

Takes a village to raise a child, that's for sure. SPEAKER_00 37:26 Doesn't it? All right. Well, we have come down to the final question for the listener who is suffering with or without sobriety.

What message would you like to leave them with? SPEAKER_01 37:40 That you're not broken and you don't need to be fixed. That alcoholism and addiction is a disease just like cancer or diabetes. There is a treatment plan.

It may not be the best, much like chemotherapy or daily insulin ejection for a diabetic, but it does work. And it is eventually amazing. SPEAKER_00 38:06 For more information, read the first 164 pages of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous or visit keepcomingback.net.