vol 304. Cute & Funny with John W.

Show Transcript

We believe that alcoholism is a disease and that Alcoholics Anonymous is one solution to that disease. I'm here to bring you the voices of its members. Everyone that comes on the show, including myself, is an active member and has found recovery in the rooms of AA. As you listen, please take what works for you and leave the rest.

My name's John, and I'm an alcoholic. My sobriety date is December 18th of the year 2000. And uh I am a very satisfied customer of Alcoholics Anonymous. I've been sober continuously since that date.

I was super lucky when I got to Alcoholics Anonymous. I didn't know anything about AA or very much about alcoholism. And so I ended up getting sober uh working with a sponsor who I got fairly quickly in relative terms and going through the steps as they're laid out in the big book uh of Alcoholics Anonymous very quickly, thinking that that's what everyone else was doing. I had no idea the small corner of AA that I had landed in.

So I will say when I was drinking, I didn't I didn't know that my drinking was unusual because from the very beginning of my drinking, I found other guys who drank the way that I did. I'm I'm a blackout drinker. Uh I was a huge fan of the quiet of blackouts. I thought that everyone blacked out when they drank.

So when I picked up a drink at age 13 and uh I spent the evening uh drinking by myself, blacked out. I sort of browned out the first night. I was blacked out for part of it and recall part of it, that sort of rolling brownout that used to happen to me periodically. I remember telling a blackout story to someone when I was still in high school, under the assumption that everyone blacked out when they drank.

And by that person's reaction, the look on their face and the size that their eyes got was they were listening to me, I realized, oh, not everybody blacks out. So I didn't worry about the blacking out. I just made sure that I didn't tell a blackout story before someone else told their blackout story. And once it was okay to talk about it, um, then we could talk about it freely.

So I had no idea when I started drinking uh that there was such a thing as Alcoholics Anonymous. I know now that when I was uh probably at 13, uh I got drunk at a first New Year's Eve party at my football coach's house. Uh my Pee-Wee football coach had invited a bunch of us over, and there were some high school guys there. His son was also in college, and those guys were there, and everybody was drinking around the fire.

I spent the night drinking with those guys. Only I blacked out at some point in the night, threw up, spent the night unintentionally, missed my Sunday morning paper route the next morning, had to call in sick and have my dad deliver my papers for me uh on New Year's Day. And the football coach's wife sat me down at the kitchen table before I left their house in the morning. And I she tried to explain to me that not everyone drank the way that I did the night before.

I didn't realize this until several years into sobriety that I was warned in, you know, drunk minus five, not even my fifth drunk probably, um, that there was such a thing as Alcoholics Anonymous. Um, that not everyone reacted physically to alcohol the way that my body did. And, you know, that information was useless to me, and I ignored it for many years. The first night that I drank, sorry, I I often don't tell my story in order.

First night that I drank, I waited for my parents to go out for the night. My parents were kind of lame. They were not big going out people, and so it was not a common event for me to be left at home all by myself. But when my parents went out, I snuck down to the garage refrigerator, and my dad had a case of Schmitz beer.

So Schmitz is worse than Schlitz. It was a bad local brewery in Pennsylvania. I grew up in western Pennsylvania, outside of Pittsburgh, and I had a Schmitz. I had opened a lot of beers for my dad and had the top sip off of a lot of them on the way to delivering them to him.

But I had never had a whole one. And so after one Schmitz, I immediately started doing the drink math, trying to figure out, because there were returnable bottles, how many bottles I could put back in the case and beers I could put in the fridge. So the same number of beers would stay in the fridge, and my dad might not notice that a couple were missing, right? Well, I was also a 90-pound 13-year-old, and so it only took me a couple of beers anyway.

The beer math didn't matter to have uh at a certain point thrown up in the front yard, come inside during that brownout. At some point, I tried to lay down and make the whole thing go away. And I got the bed spins. Uh, I didn't know the trick that I later learned where you just have to make contact with the wall and the floor, and it stops the bed from spinning if you make contact in three different planes.

But uh bed spins, blackouts, vomiting, drinking by myself, doing the drink math, um, that basically describes how I drank for the next 17 years. All of those things were part of the drinking that I did later. But uh, when I woke up the morning after my first drunk, I had scared the life out of myself, but I couldn't wait to do it again. Uh, so I started talking to my friends, especially the guys who had older brothers.

Uh, you know, we knew how we could get a hold of alcohol. Uh, I looked like I was maybe younger than 13 at the time. Uh, and so it wasn't until much later when some of us started looking much older that I had friends that uh could buy alcohol. So up until then, we were relying on other people to get our supply.

But all of that uh drinking that was only for the effect uh followed me as I drank through high school and then I went off to a good college. I was a smart kid. I didn't have to work very hard to get really good grades, and I ended up getting into a really good college on the East Coast. And when I showed up there, what fate had in store for me was that I met the prep school kids.

I met these kids that had gone to private boarding schools, and they had been training for what we were about to do for the next four years. And so I then learned how to drink even more effectively uh while keeping my grades at a level that would keep my parents off my back and just drinking sloppily, blacking out a lot. I started, I acquired the habit uh when I was in college. Uh I was there on a scholarship uh that periodically drug tested me.

Uh so I did not pick up drugs, thank goodness, I think. But I relied on a lot of guys who were doing a lot of cocaine and doing a lot of drugs, staying up all night because when I would blackout, I needed to know how I got home, uh, you know, where my shirt was, what that stain was, who that girl was, all the things that uh blackout drunks need to know. And so drinking went pretty well for me in college. The problem was that when I left college, uh I ran out of uh a lot of those guys to hang out with.

And uh people started, even guys who I used to drink with in college sort of moved on with their lives, but I just kept drinking the way that I wanted to drink and running out of people to cover for me. And so by the end of my drinking, there was a there was a moment where uh I I realized I had I had this habit of I would wake up on top of my bed in my clothes and in my shoes, and I would have to go outside and walk around my car to see if I had hit anything. Uh, and I would get in the car and start it, and the radio would be blaring because clearly I had been rocking out on the way home uh in a blackout. But I realized when I was blacking out and driving home that at some point in my young life I had promised my uh mom that I wouldn't drink and drive.

And so what clearly needed to be eliminated was the driving. So I started walking to the Irish bar that was in my neighborhood, uh, a few blocks away from where I was living. And then I started waking up in people's backyards and underneath their porches and uh other strange places, but it never occurred to me that the drinking might be the problem. At that point, I was living in the Midwest, I was living in Cincinnati.

Uh, I moved back to the East Coast to Washington, D.C. And I was working at a university there, drinking with students and uh doing stupid stuff, uh, drinking the way that I like to drink. And I took this job outside of the university. Uh, I started doing this corporate training job.

And the the point where I realized that something was going on with my drinking, uh, I was doing a series of programs for this company. It was a fancy.com that was located out on the Dulles Corridor, which was outside of DC. I was living in the cool part of DC in a neighborhood called Adams Morgan, which is where all the bars were. And I would share a ride when I would work uh for this company.

I would share a ride out with my colleague who was the HR director there. He lived in a neighborhood where grown-ups lived. Uh, so we would meet at the Starbucks and he would, we would drive out to uh the job together. I was in charge of doing ropes courses and challenges and teamwork challenges with his new employees who would come in from out of town for their new employee orientation.

And so he watched me drink uh with his new employees on their expense accounts and behave really badly. There was a lot of uh shenanigans that included me, you know, spending the night perhaps with people who weren't unmarried. And uh at a certain point, I'm sharing a car ride out to work on a weekday morning with this guy who starts telling me his story. So I'm sitting in the passenger seat of his car and he starts telling me about when he was living in New York City, and uh he was uh he was this big Italian guy, his first name was Luca.

He was an opera singer wearing $5,000 suits to work and sleeping in an abandoned car because he was addicted to alcohol and drugs and he couldn't get his act together. And as he was telling me all of his problems, I was like, I had my head like leaning on the window of the car, thinking, like, I would like to crawl out of this car right now. I do not understand why this guy is telling me all of his problems. As soon as he finishes telling you the story where he gets, uh, you know, there's this big family intervention and he gets sent off to rehab, then he finishes the story with a piece of the big book I now know.

Uh he's he's talking from the doctor's opinion about why his drinking and his drug use uh is different than other people's. Uh he talked about how he has something like an allergy, uh sort of like a physical allergy, where when he puts alcohol in his body, uh his body reacts differently than other people's. And then he talks about the obsession of the mind and how, you know, once he starts drinking, there's no telling when his drinking is going to stop. But also he will then structure the rest of his life when he's not drinking in pursuit of the next drink or the next drug.

And at this point, I have never in my life heard a person describe my alcoholism from the inside of my head before. So I am now like listening to him. I like lean across the car with my hand behind my ear, like, what? Like, like the that uh crazy television commercial in the 80s uh where everyone's like, what?

And then he talks about the spiritual loss of values. You know, he and I were both raised in these lovely Italian Catholic families where I knew perfectly well right from wrong. But when I wanted to do things that I knew were wrong, I just called it drowning my moral compass. I would just drink until I was in a blackout, or could claim to be in a blackout and not take responsibility for my actions.

So anyway, at this point, we pull into the office and it's time to go to work. And he's like, Okay, see you later, you know. And I am like completely dumbfounded that this guy has just described the way that I drink from the inside of my head. We go off to work for the day, and on the way back into town, he said, I'm on my way to an AA meeting tonight.

I checked, and it's an open meeting. You're welcome to join me if you'd like to. And I said out loud uh for the first time ever in my life, like, yes, I'd like to go. I think I have a drinking problem.

I have no idea why I said that out loud. I did not at that time have any experience of admitting any problem uh or uncertainty that I had out loud in front of anyone. At the time, I was the smartest guy in the world. I was a really good talker and manipulator, could talk my way out of all sorts of complicated situations.

And so it was not in my wheelhouse to to ask for help or to admit that I might have a problem, but there was something about the way that he had told his story that was compelling. So we went to the DuPont Circle Club for the 6 p.m. meeting. Uh, might have been 5:30 p.m.

It was after work. And I remember we sat, we sat, I sat in the back of the room, we sat in the very back row, and I listened to people discuss step six out of the 12 and 12. People are talking about character defects and all this stuff. And I remember sitting there, like reading the steps on the wall and the traditions and listening to people tell the stories.

And I thought, oh my gosh, I am so happy for these people. Like they are crazy. And it sounds like this is really working for them, right? I knew that there was a little something wrong with my drinking, but this was going to be a little bit much.

I was not interested in it for myself, but I was really happy for everybody in AA. At the end of the meeting, Luca was like, Oh, do you want to go get a cup of coffee? And I was like, It's 7:30 p.m. Like, who drinks coffee at 7.30 p.m.

Like, I don't even know what that means. But I it felt, you know, he had invited me. I had appreciated seeing the meeting, and so I agreed to go. And we're out, you know, down the street at uh afterwards cafe having a cup of coffee.

And Luca asked me the question that set the hook. And I I wasn't paying attention, I didn't think about it, but I answered honestly again. He asked, he said, so John, did you hear anything in the meeting that you could have said? And I was like, Oh, yeah, that thing that that lady that said about this, and that uh procrastination sloth in five syllables thing, like a real, you know, that's totally my life.

And I named like three or four things. And I will tell you, in a very impressive way, having just done this 12-step work with me, uh, Luca did not grandstand. You know, he did not uh, you know, he didn't pat me on the head and say, like, well, I see you've learned how to identify in rather than compare out. Nice work.

Or like, welcome to AA or anything. He just smiled and he was like, Oh, that's nice, you know, that's interesting, whatever. So that was October-ish of the year 2000. My sobriety date is not until December because I successfully white-knuckled it.

After that, I thought, well, those AA people seem to be having a nice time. I just need to stop drinking. So I didn't drink on my own power for a couple of months. You know, when we got to the holiday season, it was time for holiday parties.

My roommates and I, I lived in a group house to keep the rent low. And my roommates and I were on our way up on a Saturday night to our friend Artie and Kim's house. And I was gonna have one glass of wine at Artie and Kim's house. And so uh we went to Artie and Kim's, I had a glass of wine, I drank the rest of the night, I blacked out, I have no idea how the night ended.

But I know when I woke up on Sunday morning at my house, I remembered that our neighbor Jonathan, who lived across the alley, who I kind of hated, but I knew there would be champagne at his brunch, he was having a brunch. And so I went over to Jonathan, started drinking again, drank through the day, drank through our holiday party. We had friends over on that Sunday night. Drank, drank, drank.

And at the end of that holiday party, I remember my roommates, who are not alcoholics, were sitting in the living room in the light, having like tea and talking about how nice it was to see everyone and talking about what they were going to do at work the next morning. And I was in the kitchen, squatting down so they couldn't see me, finishing bottles of wine, like upending bottles of wine. Because you can't recork a bottle of wine. That's that's alcohol abuse.

So uh it was at that point where I'm tipping a bottle of wine, looking at those nice people in the living room, that I had a moment of clarity, uh, as they call it in AA. And I was like, oh no. This was supposed to be one glass of wine at Artie and Kim's last night. So I had the extraordinary experience where the 12-step work that my colleague Luca had done and one AA meeting ruined my drinking.

I knew that he was right and that those people in AA, like I was gonna have to go back and see them. And so I made it to my own first meeting uh under my own power uh that week. And they were they were very nice. Uh, I went to a meeting in Cleveland Park, which in DC is the neighborhood where your manager lives.

Uh that's where grown-ups live. And they gave me a big book. They didn't even rig the raffle. They uh they just handed me a free big book and said, here, read this.

They sent over the youngest guy in the room to talk to me because most of the people in the room were many years older than I was. And he told me about a couple of meetings. He said, best meeting in DC, uh, Westside Men's meeting, 8:30 a.m., Westside Club in Georgetown. There'll be a hundred guys, donuts.

The women wish they could go to this meeting. It's so great. He said, if you want to see uh if you want to see pretty girls, Tuesday night ex Libris, and Friday night St. Albans.

St. Albans is a young people's meeting. And so I went to those meetings on Tuesday night at Ex Libris. I walked in and I ran into a girl who I hadn't seen for years.

She and I had uh done a fair amount of damage together drinking. The last time I had seen her, we had poured her out of a cab at her apartment building uh loaded. Uh, she was at that point uh sober for a long time. We went out for coffee after the meeting, and she recommended, uh, she said, you know, when I was new, my sponsor told me that the kinds of people who are up and about their business and at a 7 a.m.

daily meeting, have the kind of sobriety that you want, get there, right? So she sent me to the 7 a.m. meeting at the Westside Club, which became my home group. Uh, it's a group called Attitudes and Actions.

We meet every morning, 7 a.m. And uh on Sundays we sleep in until 8 a.m. That meeting saved my life. I I settled in there.

Uh it was a meeting where we regularly talked about the steps and the traditions, and just the act of getting up and getting to a meeting uh with my broken brain at 7 a.m. Um made my day go differently. When I went to Tuesday night, ex Libris, two things happened. One, I met a pretty girl, and two, at about 30 or 40 days sober, exlibris was a meeting where we discuss step two, step three, and step 11 uh on a rotation.

I still wasn't saying anything out loud in meetings, um, but I was listening to these people, and at a certain point, uh, when I was at Ex Libris, I told the meeting off. Uh, 30 or 40 days sober, I basically said, I don't know what you people are talking about about these steps and about sponsorship, but like I'm a 30-year-old man, I don't need a babysitter. You know, the sponsorship thing is stupid, these steps are stupid, I hate you all. You know, basically did a newcomer vomit on the meeting.

And two interesting things happened. One, a guy sitting next to me, Bart A, I had met him at the young people's meeting uh at St. Albans. Bart grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and took me out for coffee.

And he he basically hurt my feelings. Uh, he told me that, you know, he was like, you know, a couple things are true. One, no one comes into AA on the wings of victory. So if you feel terrible, if you feel like ass, I believe is what he said, then you're in the right place.

He said, There's no judge making you be here, there's no wife making you be here, you have no court papers, like go do some more research if you need to, go and drink some more. He said, the other thing that's true is when you're talking about the steps and the sponsorship not working, all you're doing is spraying us with your opinion. He said, if if you have no experience with the steps or sponsorship, uh, then please don't talk about them. If you work the steps with a sponsor and it doesn't work and you want to come back and complain about it, you can complain about your experience all day long.

But we don't want to hear your opinion. We only want to hear your experience. Uh, and so as you can imagine, I did not ask Bart to sponsor me because the other thing that happened at the meeting was that this really nice quiet guy behind me had slipped me a little piece of paper with his phone number on it. So this was pre-cell phones.

I did not yet have a cell phone at the time. We were still handing our phone numbers out on pieces of paper or business cards. So the next day, I called that guy. He had an answering machine, right?

Not a not a cell phone voicemail, an answering machine with a little tape that you could hear rewinding and stuff. I left this really pathetic, passive, aggressive message, basically, where I was like, Hey, Tim, this is John from the meeting last night. I don't know if you were trying to be nice to me or you felt sorry for me, or if you wanted to talk about sponsorship. But you know, uh whatever, give me a call.

Thank you. So when Tim called me back, he was like, Well, both, you know, I felt kind of sorry for you. Uh I I know what it's like to feel like that uh and share like that in a meeting. He's like, and if you want to talk about sponsorship, I'd be happy to talk to you.

Um, you said you like that that uh that 8 30 a.m. men's meeting at the Westside Club. Why don't we meet at the restaurant across the street at 7:30 a.m.? And we'll, you know, we'll see if there's a match.

We'll talk about sponsorship. And I hung up the phone and I was outraged. I was like, oh my God, I just practically asked a man on a date. Like, I asked this man to sponsor me.

I'm the newcomer. You're supposed to help me. Like, what is this I have to qualify? Like, I have to somehow, what I've I got.

So, as you can imagine, uh, I thought that there was gonna be some sort of interview process, right? Uh, when we sat down on that Saturday morning. But, you know, not to spoil this for anybody who hasn't been through this, but Tim was not asking about a match. He was not asking whether or not, you know, we were gonna be able to work together.

What he was looking for was willingness. Like, was I willing to show up at 7:30 a.m. on a Saturday morning to meet with him? So when I showed up for breakfast, we started talking about the steps right away.

Now, see, this is where I didn't know that other people didn't do this, but all I had to do was show up. And Tim was happy to walk me through the steps, right? He didn't say like, oh, these are only suggestions. You know, some people do this, some people don't do this.

You can procrastinate this for as long as you want and stay sick. He just said, this is what we do, right? And so I start working the steps um with this guy. I also, however, in a related uh sidebar, uh I also start dating that pretty girl from ex Libras.

Now, I'm hearing the noise around the room, you know, that you're not supposed to date in your first year. And so after I've been working with Tim for a little while, I go and I ask him out of duty, you know, like, what is this thing about not dating in your first year? Because I met this girl and I'm thinking about dating her. Now, you could tell from my hesitation as I describe this, that I was already dating this girl.

Like she was following me around to every meeting that I was showing up at. And she was super cute. She was a couple years sober. I had, I, there was no, there was no part of me that was actually asking my sponsor like I was gonna take no for an answer.

So he explained, you know, Tim explained to me why it's not a great idea to make major changes in your first year of sobriety. But he also said, do what you're gonna do. Because I think he knew well enough that if he was gonna fire me over this, I was probably gonna be running around with no sponsor. And so, anyway, so she went and checked with her sponsor, who I think thought was gonna put the kibosh on this whole thing.

But her sponsor said, Oh yeah, you can date John once he's done a fourth and a fifth step. So I quickly reported this to Tim. Tim was like, Great, start writing, right? So I then write the fastest fourth step that you've ever seen written in Alcoholics Anonymous.

At first, he had already introduced the idea of the fourth step to me, but I did it didn't make any sense to me. But at this point, I didn't care that it didn't make any sense because I knew what was on the other side uh of getting through my fifth step. So I wrote and wrote and wrote. I filled a legal pad full of resentments and fears and harms and sex conduct.

And uh I took Tim hostage for you know six hours on a Sunday afternoon and read him all of this stuff. And then I was officially allowed to start dating the girl, which, as I have already said, had already been going on. So then I moved into her apartment, you know, since there were no secrets, which was just a horrible idea. So at this point, I'm I'm living with this girl.

She's bananas, I am bananas. I'm happy to not be dealing with myself, really. I'm happy to have this other distracting crazy person to blame my problems on. And, you know, as you can imagine, this relationship did not end well.

So at 11 months of sobriety, she's threatening to throw my stuff out the window because I was out of town. And uh I was like, no, people only do that in the movies. I'll be home on Monday and I'll move my stuff out. She and I break up.

At this point, I'm already doing ninth-step amends from my first fourth step. And my sponsor says, Oh, John, why don't we sit down and write a fourth step and you can read me the fifth step just on this relationship with Alyssa. So having still had my first fourth step in my possession, which I still do in my closet, I then write what is essentially the executive summary of that fourth step, uh, which is all on one page. All of the same patterns that I had identified in the in my first fifth step, but the feelings, like I was writing like all caps, underlined, underlined, bold face.

The feelings were huge. And all of those actions that were on that little one-page fourth step were taken without putting a drink in my body, which was another illustration for me that my problem, my drinking problem was only part of the problem. I have an underlying set of character defects that I'm happy to use, even without a drink in my body. And so uh that was my first trip back through the steps because then I got to add Alyssa to my eight-step list.

She was uh not to be contacted uh for several years so as to prevent harm. We did not have a pleasant breakup. We divided our meetings. She kept the young people's meetings, and I kept the grown-up meetings, like the 7 a.m.

meeting, and we managed to not run into one another for several years in DCAA. I eventually did get to sit down with her, uh, and we both had amends ready for that uh encounter. And uh I can tell you that I, as far as I know, uh she's living a happy life and uh still sober on the East Coast. I, after um making amends with Alyssa and moving on, I got to stay sober in Washington, D.C.

for a number of years. Uh, I met a girl uh who was not in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. And we moved to Boston, got married, uh, had a couple of kids. Uh and so I was sober in in Boston AA for a number of years, which is very different than the way the way they do it in uh in Washington, D.C.

But uh fortunately, the principles uh that are underneath the program uh in the book of Alcoholics Anonymous apply wherever you go. And so I've I've gotten to keep going through the steps sometimes because I move and I get a new sponsor, sometimes uh because I'm uh restless, irritable, and discontent, and I need to sit down and do a formal uh fourth and a fifth step. But I also stay on top of the continuing inventory in the 10th step. And after we moved to Boston, I started sponsoring guys, and so I'm very lucky that the whole time that I've been an Alcoholics Anonymous, I've been myself still cycling through the steps and taking new guys through the steps, um, which which also helps me learn it at a whole different level and experience the 12th step in a way that has depth and weight.

So let's see. I feel like the other piece of my early sobriety that I would say uh has changed the way that I experienced the world was getting to amends. With my first sponsor, Tim was super mellow. You know, he was pretty good about giving me lots and lots of leash and letting me make my own mistakes and then come back to him when it was time to deal with the consequences.

Um, but when we got to steps eight and nine, Tim all of a sudden got very strict. Uh and when I went out to make amends, he had lots and lots of guidelines for me, which was unusual up to this point. And because I'm kind of a I'm an excuse-making explainer and manipulator, he was very careful that when I was making amends, I was not to ever apologize. I wasn't to use the words I'm sorry.

A set of mumbling apologies would not do. And so I needed to figure out how to describe uh the harms that I had done to people by taking responsibility for them. I had a really strong resistance to using the words, I was wrong. And so we I was allowed to find my own phrase.

Uh, what I uh found that worked for me was that I would say, when I disappeared on you, I was out of line. You know, when I lied to you about where I was, I was out of line. So I had to figure out uh you know how to take responsibility for the harms that I had done. Because I was a blackout drunk.

He also asked that when I was finished taking responsibility for what I thought I was there to make amends for, that I also asked, is there anything I've left out? And the only response that I was allowed to give after people added whatever they needed to add to the list of harms was to say thank you. I wasn't allowed to ask clarifying questions, uh, to apologize, uh, defend, nothing, just thank you. So the other thing that Tim was really enthusiastic about, which I did not understand, was uh he asked me before I went out on my first few amends, he asked me to come and role-play them with him, right?

So we would sit down at coffee and he would say, So, what are you gonna say? And then what are they gonna say? And so he would play the part of the person I was making amends to, and we would have this conversation. And then I would go and I would make the amends.

And he always wanted to debrief it, and he would say, So, you know, what did you say? What did they say? What did you say? What did they say?

And it took me a number of amends, probably fourth or fifth amends, as we were doing the debrief, I realized that never once in the pregame planning had I guessed correctly what people were gonna say back to me. So I realized this, and I'm looking at Tim, and he has this shit-eating grin on his face, like, yeah, dummy. So it turns out I have no idea what's going on in other people's minds. All those chess games I thought I was winning for all of those years in all of those conversations, I have no idea what people are actually going to say back to me.

I don't know what other people are thinking. The other part of the process that continued, even though, you know, my feelings were a little bit hurt that Tim wasn't actually trying to do the role play to make me feel better. He was trying to teach me a larger lesson. But the the other piece of my amends that was astounding to me was that when I would ask people to add what I had left out, I was braced for blackout stories, things that I had done that I didn't remember doing.

And I got a couple of those, but nothing really interesting. The most interesting thing that would happen is that I would go out to make amends for a set of things that people didn't think were a really big deal. And they would add in things that I had remembered doing that I would never have thought were harmful to them. So the way that I got right-sized in the process of doing the amends was that I found out that I have no idea what's going on in other people's heads, um, and that I can stop paying attention to that, right?

So part of the miracle of that was, you know, all of those, you know, trying to remember the plot lines and who I told what about where I was. Like, if I tell the truth, I don't have to remember anything, right? So my life got simpler that way. Then if I don't have to try to manipulate conversations and guess what's gonna happen, it freed up all this brain space such that I had so much free RAM in my brain that I got to go back to graduate school, I got to get a master's degree.

I like the amount of freedom that I got just from not worrying about what's going on in other people's heads is an indescribable gift that cannot happen if I'm still drinking, but also cannot happen without really solid guidance through the steps. I have I have listened to other people describe how they went through the ninth step. And because it was different than the way I did, they didn't get all of the things that I got. And so I'm really, really happy when I get to pass on what I have experienced in Alcoholics Anonymous because the trip that I got through the steps for me was the bonus round.

My drinking was not exciting, my drinking was pathetic. There's a whole lot of other people that had much more exciting lives. And when I came into AA, frankly, I had a little bit of bottom envy. You know, I didn't have an alcoholic pedigree.

There was no obvious alcoholism anywhere in my family. You know, I wasn't trying to not drink like my dad, or, you know, all the things that I hear other people describe. I, you know, there were some super cool bottom stories, arrests and DUIs that I felt like I missed out on. You know, early on, I was like, wow, maybe I don't belong here.

Like maybe I need to go back out and get drunk and, you know, get in some accidents. But uh the reality of my life is that you know, I was walked into AA early. The 12th step that Luca did for me while we were working together is extraordinary. I have not had the opportunity to find anyone as early in their drinking decline as Luca chose to share his story with me.

And so the grace that I've been given, I just gladly give back. I couldn't possibly repay the time and the brain space and the freedom, the miracle that Alcoholics Anonymous has given to me. And I wouldn't have been able to experience it if I hadn't changed a couple of patterns in my life. One of them was, you know, being able to admit that I have a problem, and the other was asking a man for help.

And uh because I did those things against my own will, because I took suggestions from my sponsor, even when I didn't believe that they were going to work with my giant brain, you know, I've stopped being the smartest guy in the world. I can learn from other people's mistakes. And uh yeah, my life goes a whole lot smoother when I'm not, in fact, in charge, and I don't think I know everything about what's supposed to happen in every situation that I run into. That is my natural default.

I end up back there lots of times in my marriage uh with my daughters. Uh, I've got a 15-year-old and a 17-year-old who are uh really not interested at all in my how big my brain is. Um, they do not want to hear uh my input unless it is asked for. And uh that's a humbling experience.

I don't recommend children as a way to get sober, but I will tell you that when you're working an active program, uh your kids can help you a lot to see back in the mirror what you sound like and uh are acting like. And so I'm super grateful that uh my higher power sort of put me in that car, that uncomfortable car ride with Luca, and that I have sat through lots and lots of uncomfortable meetings and done lots and lots of uncomfortable things against my own will that have ended up in a graceful life that I could not have imagined for myself. So I think that I'm kind of petering out at this point, and I will stop there with my story. Thank you, John.

You are well spoken and clearly intelligent, which is always fun because um your overthinking as a qualified alcoholic gets more exciting when you have like intelligence and research and time invested behind it. Uh eventually your daughters will want that. But you know, sometimes you ask one question to dad and then they go on for an hour and you're like, Really, I got the answer in the first five minutes. So you can like do readers digest versions, maybe.

Okay. Luca is your Eskimo. Have you heard this term? Oh no.

I mean if you're referring to the the reference in the big book, the guy that shows up with a bottle. That's uh Oh, is it from the big book? Okay, historian. Enlighten me.

Well, there's a there's a piece of advice um that you can't isolate uh your drinker from alcohol. You you know, sending him all the way to the Greenland ice cap will not work because an Eskimo might show up with a bottle of scotch and ruin everything. Okay, I wonder if that's where it originates from. So maybe it's a California thing, but I've never heard of an Eskimo portrayed positively, though, as the one who carries the message.

Because the Eskimo comes and ruins everything in the big book story. It's around page 100. Um but um when we're talking about not going to sorted places. Yeah.

Okay. Well, in this case, the Eskimo is the one that brings the program to you. Does Luca know that you got sober? Did you guys have any sort of well we I continued to email Luca for several years on my sobriety date, and I stopped hearing back from him.

So I have no idea whatever happened to Luca. Because our our professional relationship ended shortly after that. I left that job. Uh hanging out with clients on their expense accounts became too high risk of a job.

I moved to another department in that company quickly when I got sober. Smart man. Smart man. Yes.

You talked about being able to do you did two different things. Um were able to admit that you have a problem and you were able to ask for help. Do you find with 26 years? 26, 20, 25.

Do you ask for help or do you find that that's still challenging given your level of intelligence? It is still uh it's it's still challenging. My default setting is to try to solve problems with my big brain. And the faster that I break that habit uh uh the better.

Depending on how invested I am in solving it myself. Um, it can take a long time before I end up asking for help. But if I'm if I'm regularly going to meetings, working with sponsees, and sharing honestly, uh it will become apparent to me sooner rather than later. But when I drop those program habits, uh, I can get pretty far down the rabbit hole before I realize I need help.

Do you refer or let me rephrase that? Do you tend to ask God for help before others? Or maybe we need to back up and ask the question about step two, three, and eleven and how that has transpired over the years. And then we can ask uh the the former question, which is do you um lean on God before you lean on others?

So steps two, three, and eleven um for me uh uh were the were gravy adding a higher power uh to my problem solving is a complement to needing to ask another human being. I will pray very willfully. If I'm in my own will, I will ask God for very specific things that are not actually very helpful. If I were to pray out loud in front of other people, I might get help sooner.

Because if I if I run my problems by anybody who has a little bit of knowledge of me and a spiritual program, uh, they will often say, like, wow, it's interesting that you've prayed about that. Have you thought about have you thought about just telling God what the problem is rather than asking for something, right? I have a funny story where during COVID, I fled my house. My kids were in the house, my wife was in the house, everybody was driving me crazy.

And I called a buddy of mine, an AA here, um, one of my best friends, and I was hiding in the car, and I was like, he has boys the same age as my girls. And I said, I'm having this parenting problem. What do I need to do? I called for a parenting trick.

I did not call Bud because he's an AA pal of mine, but the first thing he says to me is, Do you have your big book with you? And I was like, dude, I'm hiding in the car. No, I didn't bring my AA book with me, and I'm calling you about parenting advice. And he ignores what I say and says, Because on the page about fear, when I sound like you sound right now, it's usually because I'm afraid of something.

And there's a really great prayer when they're talking about writing about fears in the fourth step instructions in the big book, and the prayer that you say when you have a fear, take away the fear and help you to be what he wants you to be or what he needs you to be. And so that's usually when I get to prayer. When I've said out loud to a person who knows that I have a relationship with a higher power, that I'm trying to solve a problem myself, they'll be like, hmm, maybe you'd like to get a higher power involved. I don't go straight to God very effectively because if if I go to God while I'm still stuck in my own doom loop, I will be asking God, like Santa Claus, to bring me something that I'm specific that I'm asking for.

I'm not very good at praying openly when I'm in trouble. It helps me to get other people involved. And AA meetings, I find the high, I most often find my higher power between me and other people. Sometimes in a Conversation like that one with Bud, he reminds me, oh, there's a higher power here who can also help, right?

Sometimes I'm just sitting in an AA meeting, and what's in the middle of the room, what's in between all of us, is like this grace that, like, oh, oh my gosh, there's a higher power involved here. I don't have to be in charge of this. I don't have to solve your problem. I don't have to solve my problem.

I need to say a prayer. Does that make sense? Sorry, that was a really lot of talking. It's really good.

It's artistic. You have a way of um illustrating things as you're explaining them very well. Oh, thank you. Yeah, I like you throw in some language that I appreciate too.

Uh maybe there are more expressions like Doom Loop and you had said program habits. You also called yourself an excuse making explainer manipulator. Pretty good. Did I?

You did. Pretty sure. I did I did not say that on purpose. Yeah, we'll have to fact check it, but I'm pretty sure that's what I wrote anyway.

Um I really liked all of this stuff that you said about oh, the the space, the time and energy you get back in your brain when you're not having to indescribable gift, you called it. You don't have to try to figure out what other people's are thinking, whether people are thinking, how they're feeling, how to then like approach. I feel like that's one of the magical things about sharing your experience, strength, and hope in this format, because you don't have an audience looking back at you where you see somebody's disgruntled face and you're like, oh God, did I say something that upset them? And and then you're then you're amending your story and all the Teras in the bus start hammering to fix it because you want everyone in the audience to like you and be happy and laugh.

And I don't know, do you do any of that still, or is that just is that just me? Oh no, I'm I'm a sucker for uh other people's approval, and I will, you know, I I I call it um I will cute and funny my way out of any uncomfortable situation, right? Um because because that's like so you know, I joke when what I learned in my fourth step, you know, the patterns uh when I got bored with myself reading my first fifth step and my sponsor smiled, like I still wait for that moment. I just had a sponsee cross that threshold uh with his fifth step reading, and and you know, he asked me, like, can I be done writing?

And I was like, Yeah, I am waiting for the moment that my sponsor was waiting for when you get bored with yourself and you're like, oh my gosh, this is all the same thing, right? So the way that I describe it is if I were a video game, I would have one special move. I think every situation that I'm in is new and unique and complex, and it requires some new skill set that I'm gonna whip out of my tool belt. Like you hit the A button and you push the lever forward, and I do one thing.

I cute and funny my way out of a situation, I distract you with my cute and funny while I take what I want on the side. I wish that I was more interesting than that. It hurt my feelings that I'm not that interesting. But it's also a relief, like, oh, I don't have to work on a thousand things.

I have to work on one thing. I gave that to a therapist outside of AA that I was meeting with. I was like, look, Kathy, if I ever start complimenting you or if I go cute and funny, you need to call me out because that's how I get out of uncomfortable situations. I'm not a fighter, I'm not a big tough guy.

I'm cute and funny. I'm sort of adorable, and I'll make you laugh. And that is where I know I'm in trouble. We're all in trouble.

Everybody run for the exits. Check your wallet, check your watch, and run for the exits. Does that make sense? I don't know.

Is that helpful? Yeah, it is good. It's good stuff. In that, you mentioned briefly uh sponcy recent sponsey experience.

So maybe we hear more about that experience, not particularly like that instance, but tell us about your sponsies. Oh my gosh. So the thing that I love about sponsoring guys is that I'm very clear from the very beginning what I do. Like I'm I offer to my guys the same trip through the steps out of the book that my sponsor offered me.

And it's not very exciting, it's boring. And I warn them, I'm like, look, I'm really boring. We're gonna read the book out loud together. I get together with my guys an hour before or an hour after a meeting that I'm already attending.

And my sponsor told me that early on. Don't offer to meet a guy at some odd hour in a public place. You'll end up there, he won't show up, and you'll be mad. Meet him at one o'clock after your noon meeting.

Like my home group these days is the noon meeting here in Bentonville, Arkansas. And new guys, they're my one o'clock guys. We sit down, we read the book, and when we get to the instructions in the book as we're reading out loud together, then we take the steps as they're indicated. So I'm very clear like, look, I'm really boring.

And we're gonna read the book together. That's all we're gonna do. And then we're gonna work the steps when we get to the instructions. The miracle is that works every time.

Guys who show up for that when warned do the stuff that I asked them to do when we get there. And I watch their lives unfold in miraculous ways. When I first started sponsoring, I thought everybody was gonna get what I got, the way that I got it. And that's not how it goes.

This miracle happens where, you know, when you work the steps in your life, those principles change your life in a way that's different than mine, but it's equally miraculous. And it's this huge gift of the mystery, you know, that is my higher power. I've stopped trying to define my higher power. It's the mystery that occurs between the two of us, right?

And in that mystery, I participate. I'm there as the guy with the map. You know, I've been down this trail before and I can help you, but you're doing the work. This guy that I'm sitting across from, you know, that I was just joking with about the fifth step, his life is unfolding in a way that's beyond what I could have imagined when we first started working together almost a year ago.

But it is entirely appropriate for like what's happening in his life that this grace is just dropping into his lap when he was pushing the grace away. Uh, you know, and that's what I was doing. I was trying to solve my problems, but when I close down to solve my problems and work on this thing in front of me, I've rounded my arms and my back and I'm deflecting grace. That work is my will, right?

If I sit up open and like have an exchange with a sponsee, I see this thing that's happening. I talk about it all the time. When I call my sponsor with my problems, I'm still talking about John from John's perspective. And I'm never clear on what the problem is.

But when my guys call me and describe what's going on in their lives, I'm like, oh my God, I'm doing that too, and I didn't even know it. Right? Like they show me what's really going on. It doesn't matter if I call my sponsor, if I'm answering the phone from my sponsees calling me.

I mean, it does matter, don't get me wrong. Uh, don't misquote that. But the the real grace that arrives arrives when my sponsees tell me the truth about their lives. It's I don't know.

Sorry, I'm carrying on. Well, I think the the word mystery kind of sums all of that up. It's just it's hard to explain because it is unique in every scenario. It's like this mystery or miracle or magic that can also be summed up by grace.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, all the words, yeah. You can pick your favorite words, mystery, magic, grace. Like, yeah, it's all in there.

And I'm part of it, but I'm not, it's not me, but I'm I'm involved. Uh you know, like I don't know. I feel like my sponsees often thank me too much, in my opinion. And I get that.

I used to, you know, think that my sponsor was magic, but it he's just there with the magic. So I mistake that for that was him. It's like, no, it's the it's the principles applied. The work produces this unexpected result.

Like, I'm a mechanical engineer by training. A plus B equals C. I don't understand how AA works, still to this day. Having laid my big brain on it from every angle, I can.

There is no like, ah, A plus B, I'm working on A plus B. D pops up, and I'm like, holy crap, that's so much cooler than what I was expecting. And it's related to what I was doing, but it's not in any way a linear result. That's what for me, yeah.

Call it mystery, call it magic, call it grace. It's all in there. Yeah. Yeah.

The beauty of it is that we're all helping each other. The you know, one thing I do want to point out, we are gonna get to talking about some AA history, but before I get to that, I do want to say the guy, the young guy that they sent to you that came up to you in the meeting. I'm not sure which meeting it was. I don't think it was your first meeting, but where he comes up to you and he starts telling you about these other meetings and makes recommendations.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That simple act of going up to a newcomer and being like, hey, what's the next meeting you're gonna go to? Here's where I'm going, or here's what I recommend. Get it in the newcomer's head before they leave the meeting, what next meeting they're going to.

Get them to commit with their mouth where they're gonna go next. So helpful. And then the other thing I want to point out that is so powerful is your sponsor said to you, or somebody said at some point with respect to doing this step, you can procrastinate and stay sick longer. Blah, blah, blah.

But it's so true, right? Like, and I tell people when they're stuck on step four, I'm like, you have an open wound, wrap it up, finish it, go to step five so it can start healing. Sorry, I've now snorted into the microphone. That's lovely.

I didn't hear it, but I'm so pleased. Okay, any commentary about that? Uh, well, two two pieces of commentary, because I I would even soften what you said about the way that Brian came up to me and told me about meetings, because I I retell the story like I was afraid to talk to newcomers after I had been around for a little while. And my sponsor broke it down even more simply than that.

He's like, Look, when the new guy walks in the door, he doesn't know how long any of us have been here. He knows that you were here before him, so you're as good as anybody else to help him. If you get to talk to the newcomer, tell him important things. Tell him where the bathroom is, tell him where the coffee is.

And at the time we had paper where and when books, like the internet was not our directory yet. He said, get the where and when, put it in his hands, and you tell him the meetings that you go to that you like. And you will be helping him in one of two ways. You don't know which.

If he likes you, he will go to those meetings. If he doesn't like you, he will avoid those meetings. But you will have given him a point of reference. Which I found that was like really low risk for my sponsor to break that down that simply.

Just tell him what meetings you go to, and then he'll either choose them or not choose them, you know, depending on whether he's decided he likes you or not. Um, so it's not even as simple as like make him say it out loud. Don't even put that pressure on him. Yeah, good point.

Give him the reference point. Like, all you're trying to give him is the reference point. What was the second part when I snorted? What were you what was the second observation that you made?

Procrastinate and stay sick. Oh yeah. Um, oh goodness. Yes.

I didn't know that other people weren't going through the steps. And I went back to my home group. There was an old timer who sat up front who was telling a story after I had done my first fifth step. He was telling a story about high school.

The guy was in his 70s. He was telling a story about high school in a way sober 30 years. I sat there thinking, there's no way that guy could talk about that if he's ever done a fourth and a fifth step. How, how at four months sober, at five months sober, how do I get that clarity?

Because I've done a fourth and a fifth step. And it's your life looks and sounds different once you've thoroughly worked a fourth and a fifth step, right? So you could stay sick for that long. That guy did all kinds of CPC, like professional speaking stuff about AA, talking about going to meetings every day.

Guy was at the meeting every day. He was like a piece of furniture. He was up front in his chair every day for 30 years. But I could hear at four months that he had not worked through that resentment.

Yeah. Like, yeah, there's relief in the meetings, but the recovery is in the steps, they used to say. I can get enough relief in a meeting, and if I go to enough meetings, I can stay sober on meetings. But man, you work the steps, and like this grace arrives, and you're like, what is this?

Like this, this is different than what people who are just going to meetings are getting. Yeah, it sounds different when you've done it. Yeah, it's a really good point. That's such a good point.

A couple years ago, I started reading an autobiography that a celebrity, a celebrity that claimed to be sober wrote. And within the first couple pages, it was just rid with resentments. It legit, I returned the book. I'm like, this person has not done this.

Well, I will tell you that person has since died from this disease. So, like the resentments, when we say resentments are the number one offender, when we see people walking around with resentments, yeah, it's very obvious to even a four-month-old person, four-month-old person in sobriety can identify. Like, yeah, they're still really sick. They're carrying their bag of rocks, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, there are three more questions. So for listeners that have had enough, they can stop listening. For those that want to hear some amazing history or awe moments before we started the recording today about going to the Wilson House in Vermont, and you talked about some AA history and one drunk talking to another drunk.

Uh, what can you share with us that we might find um cute and funny? Well, I will admit to all of our listeners who may be surprised that I needed this reminder before we started. I was worried about telling too many drinking stories. And uh you reminded me uh of the story that I have heard that when Bill Wilson first got sober, after his friend Ebby came and took him to the Oxford group meeting, um, Bill went down to the Bowery where he knew the drunks were, the really bad drunks were.

And he was talking to the drunks about his spiritual experience that he had had uh both at the Oxford Group meetings and at Towns Hospital. And he wasn't getting anybody sober. People were not responding and getting sober when Bill was trying to do this 12-step work. He had this feeling that he needed to go and work with other alcoholics, like Ebbie had come to see him, but he was complaining to Lois, allegedly.

This is before he goes out to Akron. Um, and Lois says, makes an important observation. She says, Bill, look, none of them have gotten sober, but you've stayed sober this whole time while you've been doing the 12-step work, right? Um, so again, like it doesn't matter if other people get sober.

I have to keep carrying the message. Then he goes to see Dr. Silkworth at Towns Hospital before he gets on the train to go to Akron. And Dr.

Silkworth says, Bill, you're forgetting. These guys need to know that you're a drunk. When Ebbie came to your house, he didn't have to explain to you that he was a drunk because you guys used to drink together. You already knew that Ebby drank like you and that he was out of control and couldn't get sober, and that he's a miracle.

He said, So when you start out talking to an alcoholic, you gotta start with explaining your drinking. Don't talk God to a drunk. You gotta talk drunk to a drunk. And so that's the two messages that Bill left home with when he went out to Akron and ended up running into Dr.

Bob, uh, who observed, you know, when when he talked about what he heard from Bill in his own story in the big book, Dr. Bob says, and this man knew all, clearly knew all about the drinking game, and not from it was not because of things he had picked up in his reading. He drank like Dr. Bob, and that's what made him legit.

Because if Bill had started with theology, Dr. Bob would probably have outgotted him. Anyway, uh, I I find that fascinating, and I need to be reminded of that because I'll start, I'll start with the mystery and confuse a new person. Well played, well played.

But it's so powerful because it's an example of what the some I'm gonna blame old timers in this case, but some um and and newcomers, this like whole don't do a drunkalogue, this whole drunkalogue has become like a negative thing. But but your example just there from our history, from our origins, is like, no, no, you have to talk drunk to a drunk if you want them to hear anything else you have to say. And so that experience, strength, and hope is necessary. All three components are necessary.

Yes, and it's I mean, it remains true for me, you know, as you were asking me about my sponsees. Like, my sponsees want me to come and tell them about my problems and then about the solution that I found through the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous. If I just start with the magic, if I say, like, oh yeah, I was having trouble with my wife, but you know, now we do this, that might be interesting. But really, what I need to do is break down how I was being an asshole, being self-centered, and not listening to my wife.

And when I started applying an AA principle about listening from the St. Francis prayer, trying to understand rather than being understood, trying to love rather than be loved, when I did that, then that principle opened up this grace that's now in my life. If I'm only talking about the grace, I just sound like some happy schmappy guy that like is trying to sell snake oil, perhaps, right? But in fact, I'm a broken human being.

And when I talk about my brokenness, when I'm honest about what's how the whole thing started, because I was a blackout drunk and I sort of favored blackouts to real life, right? Then I can fire. Oh, my brain is so busy, but you can't imagine the relief that a blackout is. You know, when when my brain, if you think I'm talking fast, my brain is running 10 times that speed.

It's tiring being me when I'm left unattended. And alcohol worked. That was the problem. Yeah.

Yeah, you said you were a fan of the quiet of blackouts. Yeah, oh yeah. Which I think is just crazy. Why wouldn't you just go to bed?

I'm just saying. You were smarter than me. I might have I might be in in sleep, Napaholics Anonymous. Oh god.

Oh god. I think it's called depression. Yes, yeah, no, that I don't mean to make light of that. Yeah.

But like, yes, there are other pathways. Uh but the alcohol had more interesting consequences, which got my attention more complete. Yeah, yeah. Okay, two final questions.

Is there anything that you left out of your story or you're thinking of now that you would like to share? No, I think uh I was really glad you asked that question about two, three, and eleven. Uh, because the way I would have answered your question just now is that I did not talk about my higher power enough in the recounting of the tale this time. And so I'm really glad you called that back out already.

But I don't feel like I have anything more to add than we've already talked about. Okay, good. This has been so much fun. We we have found our way to our final question, sadly.

What message do you want to leave to the listener who is suffering? I am really glad that I didn't wait until I was sure that Alcoholics Anonymous was gonna work before I gave it a try. Don't wait until you're certain that this is right for you. You can give AA a try and find out whether or not it's right for you, and there's no penalty.

If you find out that you're not an alcoholic by coming to AA, there's it's not gonna cost you nearly as much as waiting until you're certain to come and give AA a try. For more information, read the first 164 pages of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous or visit keepcomingback.net.