vol 76. Sobriety Date 12/20/2019 (Josh C.)

Josh shares his Experience, Strength and Hope as the very first atheist on Keep Coming Back. He is a fantastic example of taking what works for him, and leaving the rest. He also has his own podcast: An Atheist Reads the Big Book.

Josh had his first drink as a little tot, perhaps 2 or 3 years old. It became a family joke that Josh would grow up to be an alcoholic. His parents were teenage partyers, which came with constant chaos, fights and drama. Josh didn’t know when food would come, or bedtime, he only knew the feeling of being poor and dirty and full of unease.

Josh became a street kid and embraced the outcast life of not being welcome anywhere. It was a felony committed in a blackout that brought Josh to the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous – the rooms were behind bars, but I’ll let him tell you the story.

Today, Josh is happy, he is active with his secular homegroup and he is of great service to the fellowship and his community – today, Josh is sober and content.

Quotes
“I was scared to death of meth . . . I didn’t know to be scared of alcohol.” 

“I remember struggling with some aspects of the [Big] Book . . . but I didn’t have to believe every single word as it was written . . .  I just remember feeling better, being involved in AA and the book made me feel better.” 

“I feel happy, I feel genuinely happy, and not that weird manic happy where I think the rug is gonna be pulled out from underneath me, just mostly content.”

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SPEAKER_00 0:01

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.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

My name is Josh, and I'm a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. My sobriety date is December 20th, 2019. I have a sponsor. My sponsor has a sponsor. My home group is the secular AA group that meets on six at 6:30. And this is my story, my experience, strength, and hope. But lately I've just been starting at the beginning, which is my first drink. And my first drink was supposedly at about two or three years old. And the the rumors are my parents were very uh very much into the party scene. They were very young when they had me. They were uh 17, 16, 17. And so they were they were parties, they didn't go to traditional high school, they were kind of misfits and delinquents, and all the people that hung out with them were the same way. And so that's how I was kind of like introduced into the world. And uh, so when I was two or three years old, um, you know, the little party baby, the only one that was sort of running around at that time, uh, I guess I came up to either my mom or my dad with uh an empty shot glass and I asked for more. And uh so the joke kind of became that, you know, I was gonna be an alcoholic, and it and it was a joke to my family and to their friends that you know I was unattended and potentially drank a bunch of alcohol. And of course, growing up, that wasn't really seen as anything like a big deal. Uh, but as I got older, of course, you know, uh the more I look back on it, the more I just see how ridiculous and and fucked up all that was. Um so my family and my my home life was pretty chaotic. Uh, there was always people coming and going. There was always some manner of you know, a fight uh or some sort of an argument, some sort of drama. Um I don't remember a lot of that, but I remember that feeling of being uh uh uneasy, like not really, you know, not knowing when bedtime was gonna be, not knowing when, you know, food might happen. Um we weren't very rich, we were extremely poor, uh, mainly due to my dad not really being willing or interested in working, always having some scheme or plan. So that was sort of like my earliest memories are of being um basically dirty and poor uh and surrounded by people I barely knew. And so when they split, but the the the confusion for me was that when I look back on that time, that felt normal to me, like that was the only life I really knew. So when my parents split up, I mean at the time I didn't really understand it, but looking back, I can see that at eight years old, they split up, and that was the point where I saw the breaks and everything. I started realizing that there was nothing normal about that lifestyle, that uh everything about it was wrong. You know, the first thing I drew, I used to draw a lot when I was a kid. The first thing I really drew was this sign on the wall. And for years I thought it was a Coca-Cola sign, and it was actually a cocaine sign that was in the Coca-Cola symbols. Um, and everybody thought it was just the greatest thing. Like all that I thought was normal. So growing up in that chaos and feeling like that was normal, and then feeling this break where my parents split up and realizing that none of that was normal, it just sort of put me, I very easily remember feeling um lost, just completely lost, unsure what was real, what was true about my life, and and feeling that, you know, I didn't really belong anywhere because now I didn't have my parent as a unit. At least they were together, at least there was like a home base. So when they split up, you know, um my mom got super heavy into meth, my dad uh he tried to work a little more, he got a normal job-ish. Um he drank a lot though. And this kind of began, it began the ping-ponging back and forth between family members. When I wasn't with my dad, I was sort of out of sight, out of mind. He'd forget my birthdays, he would forget when he was supposed to come over and pick me up. Um, but when we were together, he was like my best friend. Like he treated me with um, he treated me as an equal in a lot of ways. When I was with my mom, I was always vying for her attention because she was trying to get the attention of other people that weren't me. You know, she was drinking a lot and really got super heavy into meth. We had um we had uh a meth house uh at one point that we eventually got kicked out of. Um just a lot of just a lot of drugs in and out. And it here and there I started going to my grandparents um on occasion when the chaos would get too much at either one location. I would go to my grandparents. And what they offered me was some stability. And it was out here, out there, when I was about 12 or 13, where I had just been with my mom. Um, I think this was the one of the last times I lived with my mom. Um, her boyfriend and her were teaching me how to shoplift so that I could steal items under $25 that they could then return to a different store of the same type and get the money back because Target had this thing that it was under $20, $25, or maybe it was a different store. They could return it without a receipt. And since I looked so young and just looked like a normal kid, like I didn't I didn't dress to the times, I just dressed dressed like a you know, like the poor kid I was. People just sort of left me alone and I could kind of have the run of the store and I knew how to look natural after they taught me how. And so that became a regular thing, and my grandparents, my grandmother found out, or somebody found out, and they're like, that's not at all normal. It was a friend of mine, a friend of mine, because my my mom used to get uh into these physical altercations with her boyfriends, and I would run away and go stay with a friend. And the friend I usually stayed with wasn't available, so I stayed with a different friend, and he started asking me questions, and when I started answering them, he's like, You need to talk to my parents, and I started telling them, and again, all this, even though I knew wasn't really normal, it was like my life. So when I shared it with them, they they became immediately concerned. Um, and they were like, Look, here's what's gonna happen. We're either gonna call CPS uh or we're we're gonna call the police, we're gonna call CPS, or somebody's gonna come get you. And so I went with my grandparents and uh I stayed out there for a little while. And it was at that time that my grandparents drank fairly normally. Um my grandfather would get very uh like verbally abusive when he drank, but he wouldn't, it nobody ever laid hands on me. Uh for the most part, it was pretty stable there, and you know, they would go to work, they would come home, they would take care of their chores and and such an in a way that at least I got that kind of normalcy. Like I got fed well. Uh my grandparents always made sure I had, you know, new clothes and things I needed for school, and um, there wasn't anything extravagant, which which I feel like did me a very big service later in life, you know, because I don't have a lot of need for that kind of thing. But um they did drink a lot, they drank pretty much every day. They had a drink or two after work. Sometimes on Fridays they would go and they would have a drink at the bar. And when they went to the to have a drink at the bar, I started learning that I could drink too. And uh I started sneaking into their alcohol. And this was the first intentional drinking that I started doing. And the the sneaking the alcohol out of the you know, the liquor cabinet was, I'm sure many people have the same kind of story where they would sneak into the liquor cabinet. It was one drink out of everything, you know, hoping to kind of mask that I wasn't drinking it, I'd get a nice little buzz, and then I'd you know, I'd play video games or something, I'd just kind of hang out. Uh, this was around 92, 93. So, you know, my options for entertainment usually were just reading or playing like regular, you know, Super Nintendo or something. Uh eventually we got a computer, it was a very simple computer, and I'd spend like hours, I'd skip way too late on these things called BBSs, which not many people remember, but it was the internet before the internet was chat rooms with local people. And uh yeah, that was how I spent my my evenings when they were off and and doing their thing. Um, and then eventually I started learning that they were gonna notice that I was drinking all this other alcohol. They drank Roman Coke, so I thought I was safe. This other stuff was for guests, and then we had a fucking guest, and so they figured out that I'd been drinking all this goddamn alcohol. Um, and I I remember my grandma saying, you know, I'm not. She's like, what exactly did she say? Basically, she said, I'm uh I I wish you hadn't drank all the stuff that was for the guests. Like, not saying I wish you hadn't drank, not saying you shouldn't do this, more saying you drank the expensive shit. And she did the same thing with smoking. Like she wasn't mad that I was smoking, she was mad that I was smoking her cigarettes. Um, so I never really felt any like shame about drinking. I didn't feel like it wasn't something I was supposed to do. And I saw three different versions of it. You know, I saw the version where with my mom, I saw the one where it overtook my dad, and then I saw the version where my grandparents did it normally. So I didn't see alcohol specifically as a thing to be scared of. I was scared to death in meth because I saw what that did to people. But and it was continual. Like nobody nobody on meth had a normal life that I knew. Everybody had these, just it was all bad. So I was scared of that. But I wasn't really, I didn't know to be scared about alcohol. Um that first sessions of drinking though led to my first drunk when I was at a party and I saw people had alcohol. I didn't shy away from it at all. I was very excited about the possibility that we could get drunk. And it was uh it was rum 151. It was a very cute girl that had it, and I wanted to impress her. So I took a monstrous drink and almost promptly threw up all over the place. Um, but I kept it down, and I just remember I remember that burning sensation all over my body. I remember feeling in my head, like, oh, this is this is it, that moment. A lot of people talk about this too. Like just I felt that same kind of like peace and warmth come over me. And I just felt like everything was gonna be okay. I could do this. This is fine. There wasn't anything wrong with it, and I could have fun at this party, and I could impress this girl, and um, I was funny to my friends, and we did goofy shit, and it was just uh it was a fun time. And you know, I I specifically remember the horrible hangover the next day. Um, but being young, like uh that was like a bump in the road. Like I was fine a couple hours after that. But then, you know, the drinking at home increased, the drinking at school would happen on occasion. Um, I didn't really get too much into drugs. I did start trying to smoke weed and didn't really like it. Um, because as much as I liked feeling confident and the things that I felt alcohol brought me, I didn't like feeling stupid. Like a little dulled was fine. But when I was drinking, I felt like I could still carry on these normal conversations and and maybe even open up on these conversations uh more so than I would when I was sober. But when I was stoned, I I didn't feel like I wanted to even hang out with people, so I didn't really get into that stuff. Um, and because of meth, being because of my my mom, thankfully ruining my views on meth, um it sort of ruined my views on other hard substances like that. I just assumed they were all the same and was scared of them. So I stayed away from that stuff. The uh the drinking though really ramped up. I started living with my dad um after I ran away from home from my grandmas. I couldn't handle the peace. You know, regardless of how my grandpa was on a rare occasion when he'd get so start, you know, talking terrible to me, um, I couldn't handle the peace. I couldn't handle handle a normalcy. I wanted to be in the chaos, I think. Uh that I think started when I was 13. Once I started moving around between all three households, um I wasn't satisfied. I've never been satisfied in one place for very long um since then. So I went and I lived with my dad, and it was around around this time that my drinking ramped up. Uh, I started hanging out with a specific set of people. I started collecting misfits and the outcasts and other people that didn't really feel welcomed by the world, um, felt out of place and could co-sign my bullshit. So we all drank heavily. And I mean, there was a there was a full summer that I barely remember most of it, and just snippets of it. You know, we we started uh just there was a period we were street kids, we just lived on the streets, you know, because nobody else could handle us, we couldn't, we couldn't live anywhere. Um we would kind of take over places, you know, one of us would start dating a girl and we would go and stay there, and then we would just eventually not leave, and there'd be, you know, seven of us just staying at these these people's house until they got evicted, or uh we moved on. We were like little nomads, little shitty nomads. We were heavily into the band ICP, which is funny because out of all the like drunken things I've done that I feel ashamed about, I think I feel more ashamed about that. Um, which, you know, whatever about the band. Uh more just like being being a just a scumbaggy teenager, goffy kid, barely showered, you know, my feet stink so bad that I had to leave my boots outside. I would like feel I started feeling bad about myself because girls didn't like me, and girls didn't like me because I was unkept and unclean and just kind of a scummy kid, you know, and then also just rolling that into being a juggalo and being into this band and our friend my friends being into this band and like embracing that outcast life. And you know, just really, really embracing the fact that I didn't feel welcome anywhere, even amongst my friends now. Like I started getting into this sort of lack of my lack of self-confidence reached the point to where even amongst my friends I didn't feel welcome. These people that I called family at this point. Um, it's around this time I yeah, I didn't have like no chance with women, but we're girls, I guess. We were all just little kids. But uh and one of the the women I ended up with, um, she's a little older, she uh she ended up getting pregnant with my kid. I was 17, she was 19, she was married. Uh her husband, she said she was separated from, was in the military, um, which was partially true. Uh she had she had my daughter, and I I remember briefly trying to be normal, like just getting out of the chaos, but I was just in love with that lifestyle so much, not even sure if I was in love, if it that's the right way of saying it. I just didn't know anything else, and I didn't know how to fix that. So even though I tried for a very brief time, got a job, started taking care of bills, drank a little less, my intentions were still me doing whatever I wanted to do. And there came a period where uh my daughter's mom uh moved, and I couldn't remember this was before cell phones, this was before really the internet, like it wasn't like it was easy to find people, a lot harder. I forgot where her mom lived. I remembered where her babysitter was where my daughter would get watched, and I remember going over there to go see my daughter because we I was at least trying to do that once a week, once every other week. Like I it was like a month wouldn't go by and I would go over there, and it wasn't much. Like I know that wasn't even fucking barely the base effort, but I tried to at least stick to that. And I remember going over there and them saying, um, yeah, she's not here, we don't know where she is, she hasn't been here for a while, and we don't have a phone number for her. And then I tried to find them and I couldn't find them. Um, I couldn't find where her mom lived. I had no other contact information, so I lost I lost contact with her. And then um shortly after that, I there was a guy in my little group that would just like we we were fine when we were sober, we were good friends when we were sober, but when we were drunk, he would like I was super jealous of this guy and how he was with women and how he he looked and presented himself and he had a lot of confidence or seemed to have a lot of confidence. Uh he was a better artist than me, like just these all these different things that I felt like I couldn't achieve because of him. Like I was just so wrapped up in this kind of bullshit thinking. He would feel like I wasn't living my full potential with the things that I was given, and would like pressure me into reacting to him. So he would try to provoke me into fighting him. And I hated fighting, I hated violence. I was honestly just scared of it because I wasn't sure what I was capable of. Like I didn't, like I knew there was an anger inside me that was unexplainable, and I didn't have any outlets that were natural or normal. I was the kind of kid that would hit walls when I got angry rather than people. Um, but also as a way to intimidate so that I wouldn't have to find out what would happen if there were physical altercations, because if I hit a wall and scared people, then they would leave me alone. He didn't buy that and was always trying to pressure me and provoke me. And I remember it was a couple times we did fight, and I remember it got pretty bad. And I just remember like afterwards telling all my friends, like, this is why I don't like violence, this is why I don't like, you know, I'm not that kid that just fights with friends and then gets over it the next day. Like, this doesn't make sense to me. And I know a lot of that comes from the violence I've I've felt around my mom. Um, that kind of violence, it was it was not like this isn't what people do, it's not normal, it's not healthy, I didn't like it. And around this time I also got super into hallucinogens. Um, I finally overcame a fear that I had of them. And then just once I realized that the to me they weren't dangerous, I just fucking dove right in. Um, so I was we were drinking essentially every day at this point, as often as we possibly could. There were periods where I didn't even go out during the day. I only went out at night. There were people in the neighborhood that called me vampire because I was like bald at this point, so always changing my appearance. And I was losing touch with my parents at this time as well. My mom was uh prostituting in north poor in the north part of town. I didn't have any way of communicating with her, so like months would go by. I think a year went by before I saw her or ran into her again, and she finally went out and lived with my grandparents. So this is kind of level chaos that's going on. My my dad sold me a bunch of weapons because he said the mob was after him and then ran to Chicago for like six months. I don't even know how much of that was true. And then there's my my circle of friends, we're constantly fighting, and then this one particular friend who is like making me question even this little group, like how much they care about me. Um allowing me to question. You can't make me feel anything. But so that chaos resulted in me feeling a hatred for him that I I to this day can't really fully explain. Um part of that hatred was centralized around the possibility that he was being uh uh sexually aggressive to women in our group or peripherally in our group. He had had some allegations, and people had come out and said that he he may have um assaulted them. But we, you know, we we believed him because he was our brother, and of course he wouldn't do that. And in the back of my head, though, I I started wondering. And we're at this party. He had just the week before provoked me to the point of almost fighting him again, and we were not in a good place, we were at odds. We're at this party. I am incredibly intoxicated. I had been drinking since 11 o'clock that morning. It was like nine at night. He came in, and I remember some period during that time, someone said that he someone said about him, a woman that I knew that I was attracted to, um, who who her and I had slept with together before. She had said, It's okay, he's drunk, he probably it's fine, stuff like that, like was just waving off this thing. I invented a whole story. Who knows what it was actually about? But I decided he had done something to her sexually that she didn't like, and I was gonna put a stop to it. And in came all these feelings inside me about all the other things I hated about him, and all the jealousy and rage and whatever else, you know, just clouded my vision, and then I blacked out. And the blackout during that time, um, I I stabbed him uh in the neck and tried to kill him. Um and it's hard to have like an emotional attachment to that because there's no there still isn't any recollection. You know, this is around 2000, just after the the ball dropped and nothing happened. And And there's not really I've tried, I've tried like hypnosis, I've tried therapy. There's no digging that up, but there's digging up parts. And um one of the parts was shortly afterwards, I went upstairs. This was at a party. There's people like slowly winding down, going to sleep, passing out. I went, I I remember walking upstairs, and then there's like nothing. And then I remember being in the bathroom, and I have my hand in the sink because somehow I cut my hand. It's my left hand. There's somebody helping me. And then I remember looking out of the bathroom, and there's somebody that walked by was a friend of mine, and I remember asking her why she was crying. And I just remember her just losing her shit and screaming at me, like, what do you why do you think I'm crying? You just tried to kill my friend. Like, what the fuck is the matter with you? And you know, it took me a long time to really kind of put just that scene in perspective. Like, whoever was helping me was, I mean, that's a they're a fucking saint. Like, I just did this awful, horrible thing, and they took the time to make sure I was okay. And I and I just I'm still baffled by that. But a lot of but that stuck with me when I eventually would go to prison is that somebody would show that kind of kindness in that moment and show it as a human to a human, not as I'm gonna be kind to you because I care about you. I don't even think I knew this person. They just were caring for someone, like just that was in their nature to do is just care for someone. And then I remember being taken to the hospital, all my clothes got taken because they were now evidence, and I got taken to the hospital and they took my blood alcohol, and then they thought something was wrong, and they took it again. And my blood alcohol was so high that um they put me on a suicide watch or watch, they thought I was gonna fall asleep and never wake up. And during that time, I'm in like a paper suit, they're like having conversations with me, the detectives. And the first conversation that I I had, and I remember just a little bit of this, they asked me why they were asking me questions about like my friends and like the group that we had, and like they remember asking me questions about my the person I had stabbed. And I can I can very physically remember being confused and not really sure why they were asking me these questions and not understanding why I was there. I thought I was just like in a drunk tank, like because I had done that a few times, drank so much that they'd taken me to a drunk tank. And then one of them told me what happened, and I remember just losing my shit and just like knocking stuff off the table and like kicking things over and just just flipping out. And uh I remember during that they you know they removed me, obviously, and then they had to talk to me like two more times. Um and then it became this thing, like I don't I don't know how many events I how much of the events I actually remember, or how much of the events I remember them telling me, and then me telling them back to them because they would ask me these questions later and I would respond with the answer I think they gave me. I don't know, it was just all such a mess. And I remember during this time, um, a little shortly after that, a couple weeks after that, I think, um I remember a guy coming and kind of explaining to me what happens into in a blackout. He's like, you know, your facilities don't just shut down when you're in a blackout. And it's not like you're in a blackout when the blackout's happening. He said, What happens is you go through everything as if you know, you're obviously intoxicated, but you go through these things like you're normal. And then it's like somebody rewinds the tape, starts clearing it backwards. And that's how most people don't appear to be in a blackout. They obviously appear intoxicated, but you can't usually judge when somebody's in a blackout because they're not there yet. That tape gets rewound and and uh not rewound, it gets uh it gets cleared in reverse. And and so I don't I don't know what that did, but it you know, it kind of woke me up out of this fog that I was in. Up until that point, like I just was floating, and I realized that I had I had done this thing. Whatever this thing was, the attempted murder, assault, um, I had done it. And while I might not remember it, that action was mine, and those deeds are mine. So I uh when I was given the opportunity for a plea deal, the I was gonna take the first one they were gonna give me and just plead guilty. And my lawyer said, Well, consider the possibility that doing that doesn't fix anything. You know, you could go to prison for the rest of your life and it wouldn't do anything to fix any of this. And is that really the best course of action? Is that the best thing that you can do for everybody involved? And um, so that kind of convinced me to wait, not to try to get out of anything, but at least try to see what kind of options I had. Um, I was 19 and uh ultimately I got a guilty verdict. I took a guilty plea of 90 months, so seven and a half years. And I want to say, like immediately right out of the gate, the second I hit prison, like I just worked on myself and you know, turned my life around, and that really wasn't the case. The first year or two, I just survived. I didn't know what to do. I was scared. I was a very skinny, very young-looking 19-year-old, um, fresh faced. My crime gave gave me some birth. Like people just sort of at least accepted me in prison. I wasn't a uh wasn't a child blessed or a rapist, so I wasn't a victim immediately. But just because my crime was dangerous doesn't mean I was, and I could see some of the people were starting to circle. Um, it was around that time I started learning how to draw. I had already always drawn, I'd always been kind of artistic, but I really started narrowing that down and started focusing on that. And I believe that saved my life, like absolutely, and also gave me purpose. Um, so not only was I drawing to kind of just keep busy, but my cellmate talked me into selling my artwork to people. Uh, and then they started commissioning artwork from me. And I I don't usually brag about things, uh, but I I am I was really good. I was really good, I was exceptionally good at drawing portraits and people. And what would happen is throughout my stay, uh, I would end up with these clients that were like shot callers and were like important people inside the prison wanting me to draw their face with their mom's face because they couldn't, for some reason, have their mom come in and visit. Maybe they live in a different state, maybe they were a part of their crime, or maybe it was a relative that had passed. Um and these drawings were so good that I was basically left untouched. Nobody could fuck with me because I was now this person's artist, or I was this person's artist. And um, I didn't end up getting into tattooing, which I think would have ended up giving me a lot more problems, but I did really start to focus in and tone and hone in my skills on on portraiture. And once I realized that I had inside me the potential to get better at a thing and and have this sort of power, like it wasn't power over anyone in particular, it was just a personal, I guess, power. Like just I have a skill, I have a do a thing that can that can benefit people and help people, and it's keeping me out of trouble, and it's um it's giving me something to focus my life on. And uh during that time I um I started attending AA meetings. My first AA meeting actually was before prison. It was because of a girl. She had taken me there, and uh I remember trying to share. I think I was 17 or 18. I can't I can only imagine how cringy that was um trying to talk about like I know things in that meeting. Uh, but I I just remember it being kind of weird. I didn't really have a sense of what it was. Uh but when I went in to the meetings there, and I I really was touched by the fact that these men were coming in off the streets to bring me a meeting. And this was like my second feeling of power that didn't have to be a power over people or someone having power over me, just a an uh uh internal empowerment that nobody's telling me to go to these meetings, nobody's telling me to do this thing, nobody's telling these people, like it's a part of their 12-step, but they could do a 12-step with somebody at their meeting hall, they don't have to come to the prison every single week. And them being there every single week was that that feeling like this is a commitment, and this is what people do. This is a a normal, natural thing is to have these commitments. And you know, at that point I didn't really have the concept of commitment, of follow-through, of living living in a structure of any kind, and I really embraced that. Um, so seeing these men come in and do that that really touched me. Uh, reading the book and identifying myself inside that book really touched me. And and you know, I'm an atheist, uh, and that's not really ever changed. There's been times in my life where I've questioned the spirituality of my atheism and whether or not some of that might be metaphysical or whatever. But I'm pretty much at the point where it's not. But I just remember, I mean, I remember struggling with some aspects of the book, but I also just remember feeling like I didn't have to believe every single word as it was written. I didn't like really push up against the God stuff. Um, but I just remember feeling better. Like being involved in AA, being involved with men that were going, being involved with the book made me feel better. Um, and there were other things that happened in there, you know, I didn't have good time or work time early release as an option. I was gonna do 90 months, no matter what, seven and a half years, no matter what. So I can I just remember thinking, well, I could I could do it like as a shitty person, um, or I can do it in a way that benefits how I feel like I want to live when I get out. So that meant like acting with integrity, it meant like having a normal schedule. You know, I had work hours, quote unquote, outside of my actual job. We did have jobs in there, I had a very wide range of jobs. Um and and just like how I conducted myself with people and activism stuff came about. I started learning about um community activism. I learned how to do trainings for that. So I was having people come in from the streets, and I was training them in community activism, or at least aspects of it. I was um started getting involved with with different programs for like the the Native Americans had powwows, which they had people come in from the streets, and so I started getting involved with putting these powwows together. I just started doing a lot more stuff that didn't involve me and involved being of service to people, even if they weren't my people. Like I'm not Native American, but I had a strong connection with them because of the you know, their fellowship of uh their family and how they connected with each other. And a lot of them allowed me in, you know, because of the service I provided. And I didn't have that as an expectation, I just was willful in doing these things. Like, yes, I'll I'll paint this thing for you. And I didn't have the expectation that something would be returned, and I remember that being like my first real experience with those sorts of things, doing things without the selfish need for reciprocation. Um, and of course, I mean, this is the longest period of sobriety I really had outside of my youth. So all this sort of added up to me feeling like, okay, I have a direction, I have a path, I understand my sobriety, I know what to do when I get out. There's people I met in there that I still know to this day that were good people. Um and then I I got out, and uh, you know, I'm 27, I'm in great shape. Um, I feel pretty good about my my chances in life. I start going to AA pretty pretty heavy. I'm with a girl, actually the girl that took me to my first AA meeting at 17, me and her reconnected while I was still inside. And now we're to now we're together again, and and she's my fiance, and I'm living a normal life, you know. I'm going to work, I'm I'm active in my community, I'm going to AA meetings, I have a sponsor, I have sponsees, I um I uh have I spoke at a speaker meeting a couple times. I started a meeting that was for atheists and agnostics, I was making real connections with people, um, and then I relapsed. And uh there wasn't any fucking reason for the relapse. I you know, no, there wasn't for me, it wasn't the same story that I've heard before of other people where it was I stopped going to meetings, I stopped doing it. I was doing probably twice as much of what should have been personally required. Like I if I felt like I was going to if I was going to a meeting three times a week, I would start telling myself I needed to go four or five, like that wasn't enough. If I was meeting with my sponsor regularly, I would tell myself, well, I'll ask you to read the book. Like I was always telling like one up, I was always one upping myself. Rather than progressively getting better, I was expecting so much of myself. And while I can't really pinpoint exactly what it was that led to my relapse, I know I know some of it had to do with just like feeling like I was in my own because I was in really, really good shape and I was well kept and I and I felt like I looked, I had confidence, you know, I'd never really had that stuff all on the streets. Um, and so I went out to the bars. I went bar hopping. I went strip club and bar hopping, and I spent like $2,000. And my uh my fiance almost called everything off. Um we ended up trying to work through it. I got back on the sober track, uh, but something fell off in my brain. There was now this thing, it's like, you know, I've never tried to do this stuff, I've never tried to drink normally. And that's that's the insanity for me is all the things I did in the past, all the the dirtbaggy shit that I did in my past that was revolving around alcohol, the fact that black during a blackout I tried to kill somebody, that my life improved dramatically when I didn't have alcohol in my life while I was in prison. And then the first thing I did when I did drink was to spend a whole shit ton of money going to as many strip clubs as I could in my town, which is a lot, and almost destroying my my relationship with this woman. The insane thinking was, well, I never really tried to drink normally. And I somehow convinced myself that that that was a thing I could probably do, and that I was wasting my time in AA, and I started like kind of giving it all lip service, and maybe I was doing that beforehand, and that voice was in there somewhere, and I didn't really hear it. Uh, but so I relapsed again. And the second time I relapsed, it was sort of like the ultimatum stage. My, you know, the the girl I was with was heavily in the program as well. She said she's still sober, 20 something years. I think she's got 17 years, something ridiculous. And you know, at this point it was like, if you continue to drink, it's over. So I doubled down, things were finally improving. Like I could tell that we now had true mutual trust and our life was improving, we're still gonna get married. And I posted pictures, it's totally sober when I did this. I posted pictures on Craigslist looking for a hookup, and her mom found the pictures and called me up and fucking tore me a new one. And I did I don't there can't, I don't really have a reason for it outside of just I don't I didn't know how to, I still, like I said, don't know how to live outside of chaos. So I, you know, sabotaged everything, even in the middle of sobriety. And uh I remember when she was breaking up with me and I and I was um I had my backpack full, you know, I still had some stuff in the house, we were gonna work that part out. But I remember her three things from that. One, she had a knife with her because she didn't trust me anymore. She thought that I was a physical danger, which I'd never been to women, and I definitely haven't been since that incident. But that and what she had told me was that that had never really left her mind. She'd always in the back of her head had kind of a sense of danger, like that she was in danger. And that hurt like all kinds of crazy, and maybe I deserved that for what I put her through. But I just remember thinking everybody's gonna have that. No, nobody's really gonna fully trust me now. They're all gonna be worried about me potentially harming them. And then I remember thinking um that I needed to get a pack of cigarettes, and I remember exactly what the alcohol looked like that I was gonna go drink. While she's talking to me about splitting up with me and telling me these things, I am picturing in my mind this sparks energy beer that they had. And the second the conversation ended, I did that. I went three blocks away, went to a 7-Eleven or a Platt Panther or whatever it was, got some alcohol, and then went and I stayed with my mom. And uh that kicked off 10 years of drinking. And in that 10 years, like I would have normal episodes where I would go six months where I would drink normally and things would be fine. And then I would have periods where I would just be blackout all the time, and I would be like creating all this chaos and havoc. Um, in that period, I got married. Um, shortly, shortly after my relationship with this woman ended, I'd say three months, I was in another relationship, and that kicked that off too. Never being alone, being uncomfortable with being alone. Um got into this relationship with a woman. She drank heavily as well, um, though she drank more responsibly. She drank more like a 20-something-year-old probably would. She doesn't have an alcohol problem now, so she obviously didn't bend. But we we hit the bars a lot and we we argued a lot, and our our relationship was extremely toxic, and and uh most of that is on me, like just not being responsible as an adult, not being capable of you know, really seeing things through. You know, I would start a business and I wouldn't actually go through with the things necessary to make it a successful one. You know, I'd have like a good start and then I would peter off and I would change directions all the while drinking. And our drinking would would get really out of control um and just verbally violent, like just throwing insults at each other and yelling at each other, and then the next day we would make up. Um and it was just it was just too toxic. So we ended it uh really close to the way that we began it, you know, just sort of casually while we were hanging out. You know, I went over and met her and I never left. And then when it came time for us to break up, it was like, I think we should get a divorce. And it was, yeah, I guess we should. And then that was that. And I moved to uh Pittsburgh because I was gonna be an airbrush artist, and again, just drank most of my ability away instead of getting up early and getting this thing done. Um, I spent the night partying. So that fell through, and it was just sort of more of the same. You know, I'm gonna get into a relationship, I would be in the relationship for a while. You know, the the the marriage was two years of us together, two years married. The next relationship was five years um with somebody at this and this person kind of changed things for me because they were uh supposedly incapable of working. So now I was it was on me, and it wasn't just her that was responsible, I was responsible for it was uh her son. And so that duty put me in a position where I felt like I had to continue to work and I and I really worked hard, but I also drank hard. And there this was another period where you know eight months would go by and I would barely drink. Um, maybe on the weekend I'd have a couple at the bar with some friends, maybe I'd have a six-pack on a Tuesday or something, and then all of a sudden it would be a six-pack every night, and uh way too much at the bar and arguing with my girlfriend regularly, um, you know, with her son in the other room, just just unhappy and not knowing how to do anything about it and taking it out on everybody around me. And then uh, you know, that when that relationship ended, um I thought it would be like it wasn't a period of like relief, like it just that that went ended, and I basically started looking for the next one. And it it it just was like it was more of that kind of a mess. And it happened until I got into uh a job position in Washington, and I thought that you like another area, it was I don't know, four hours away, three hours away from where I was usually living, and I thought that geographical would help. And uh so I got a job that paid extremely well in comparison to what I'd ever made before. And I started during this time, this is now close to where I start sobering up again. During this time, I start realizing that I have an opportunity to try all the things in the book it talks about people trying. Uh only drinking on Wednesdays, drinking you know, beer, not wine. Drinking only wine, drinking brown beer, drinking light beer, drinking, you know, vacas, but only on days I earned it, or just all these different little rules, right? That people have had. I eventually would switch to Scotch because I felt that since if I became a Scotch connoisseur, then it would be a hobby and it wouldn't be alcoholism. And also I felt because that was expensive that I would spend less money on it and I would drink less, uh, which is not how that went. That went that it was a terrible idea. I ended up spending even more money. I spent $200 on my birthday just drinking um tasters of scotch. I didn't even drink it. I had a one little tiny three-ounce glass of scotch that cost $85. And so that backfired. Um, couldn't even tell you what it tasted like. Petey, probably, is how I would have described that. Um during that time, there was this girl that I had dated very briefly, and then we got together while I was living in Washington, and now I was driving down every weekend. And there were periods where my responsibilities were of the type that I would do them without really questioning them or how they impacted me. So I was coming down every single weekend or every other weekend, and I wasn't really considering how that was impacting my life or hers or putting any consideration to that kind of stuff. And I was just doing it. And so when it did become a problem, it became a huge problem. Um and we almost split up because physically our relationship was sort of lacking, like not sexually specifically, but she wasn't a very physical person. She didn't like to cuddle or just sit close or touch. And the relationship almost ended, and it probably should have ended for a thousand other reasons. Um, but I was in counseling, and so I was convincing myself that I was doing the right thing, that I was trying to improve my situation and be a better person. And in some ways I was, but I was still drinking so heavily. And she didn't see me often, so she didn't know how bad the drinking was. And I was able to kind of live that double life where when I was alone, I was drinking every single day. There were times I would drink a fifth of uh you know, doers, and then go to work the next day, and then I would come down and visit her, and I wouldn't drink the whole weekend, and it wouldn't even be something I would think about. Like it just was easy to not drink. Um, so it was easy to convince myself I didn't really have a drinking problem, that it was always something else that was the problem. Um fast forward to me moving back down to Oregon, um me finding an opportunity in a store that was gonna be opening up. I was gonna be the first store manager of this, this, you know, this thing, this retail thing. And it was gonna be a great chance for me to prove my my abilities. And then that gets started getting pushed back, and I started getting moved to stores that were broken, and I was gonna have to like I there was a there was a week I put on 112 hours, and the following week I put in, you know, close to 100 hours, and every week it was like this. And it was like there was there was times where I would leave at six. I I'd gotten there at five in the morning, I would leave at six, and on my way home, somebody would call and say that the person that was replacing me didn't come in and I'd have to go back and I would have to finish out that shift and I wouldn't leave until 10. And I wasn't, you know, it's like I was getting paid for this, like it was I was salary, so this was killing me mentally. I couldn't make plans um because I had to be available for that at a store, which means I couldn't make plans with the woman I'd moved down for. Things were getting chaotic and very difficult. I did have my own place. This was my first time really ever having my own place. I had roommated with people up until that. I had my own apartment, I was making my own way, so there was pressure there to make this job work, to get a handle on all this stuff, and to uh make the relationship work because this was all what people are supposed to do. And uh meanwhile, I am increasingly unhappy. Um, we we end up moving to in together. I quit the job. I quit the job because it I had an absolute nervous breakdown. I was I had a panic attack. Um the uh had a panic attack. I called in and I told him I just wasn't gonna be able to make it. I went to the urgent care, and even just talking about the job, I was having a panic attack, and uh the guy took pity on me and he gave me two weeks off. And during that two weeks, he also gave me um the advice to look for another job, and I took that advice and looked for another job. I took the first job that would offer that would hire me. Being a felon makes it really hard for me to get work. Uh, at no point will that change because it's a violent felony. And uh I took the first job that would offer me any kind of pay that was regular and 40 hours a week and weekends off, and it was uh almost $20,000 or less year pay decrease, and I never looked back. Um, but it also meant that I had to move in with my fiance a little sooner than we'd really planned. And I moved in and everything seemed okay. It was she was not having an easy time me leaving there, she hadn't had anybody, another man living with her for years. She'd been single for a long time, up until me. And I am a pre-fixer type of person. So if I think I can, you know, if I find that if I found that she was stressed out because the house wasn't clean, then I would I would sacrifice my time to clean the house so that she could relax. But what was happening was she wasn't relaxing, she was staying the same. She was she was not working on things herself. So I was becoming extremely codependent trying to fix things that she wasn't fixing. So leaving my own things unfixed. Meanwhile, my drinking is now starting to increase. I was just drinking on Wednesdays. I'd have a uh growler of beer, which is just a big jug of beer, and I would go down into this little basement area I had made and I'd start working on my crafts. Always have some sort of a hobby, and that was my hideout. I would go down there and I'd hide out and I'd make my crafts, and that was like my me time. And then I was realizing that physically, because we were starting to separate even more, that at night she wouldn't even kiss me goodnight sometimes. So I could drink vodka. So I started drinking vodka. The alcohol increased, my depression increased, um, more of our issues in the relationship became unresolved, and I eventually got to the point to where I wanted to kill myself. I didn't know it yet, but I knew that I wanted to end the world I had created. Um, and the a in pure fashion uh that is very common to me, I uh sabotaged the entire thing. Um, I sent her an email, uh, packed all my shit, so when she came home from work, I was completely gone. Um moved out to my grandparents because they were snowbirds and they split most of their time down in a different state, leaving their house vacant. So I went, I stayed out there. And this is where my my drinking became just textbook alcoholic. I had the the the quirk came off. Um, I would I would get up in the morning, I would have a huge hangover, I would go to the gym, I was working out. Um I would go to the gym, I would try to work off the hangover. Uh, I would get to work, I would tell myself I'm not gonna drink, I'm gonna take the day off. The closer I got to getting off work, the more I'd start to convince myself uh that it's fine, I can drink. I I survived my hangover, so it was okay. And then as I got closer to the liquor store, no matter what my conversation was, if I started out telling myself I wasn't gonna drink, that would change to I'm gonna stop. There were times I would stop at the liquor store and I felt like I was a robot, like I was not in control of my body. And I would just be standing in the checkout and I'd be looking at this cheap ass bottle of vodka and I'd be shaking my head, and and I wouldn't stop. I would just put it on the shelf and or on the counter, and I would buy my buy my vodka and I would go home. And so I was drinking a fifth of vodka and a half a case of Henry Weinhart's every day. Um, and I was getting more and more unhappy with my situation, but I was also becoming more accepting of it. Like this is just what this is just how it's gonna be. This is my life now. And I remember talking to a friend of mine, and she's like, Well, why don't you go to like an AA meeting? And I had actually forgotten about AA, I'd forgotten about recovery as an option or sobriety. She didn't even say AA, she just said, Why don't you call somebody? And I said, I thought I was talking to you about it. And she's like, I can't help you with this. Um and it wasn't like from a hurtful place, like she was she was already doing more as a friend than she should have. This was somebody that was a mutual friend of the person that I had stabbed years ago. So I was putting all this stuff on her, and it wasn't her place to help me. She was trying to get me to help get help from somebody who was more qualified. She wasn't like just pushing, like she wasn't not being my friend. She was basically telling me I am not equipped to deal with this. And I took it the other way. I just I just took it as that was my last hope. I was completely hopeless. So I put into motion the plan to kill myself. Um, and uh I remember drinking up to the point if I I ramped my drinking because I knew I'd have to be drunk to do it. I got to the point to where that the day was the day. We're here, it's time. Um I had read an article about carbon monoxide poisoning, and I had this shitty little pickup that my grandparents had had given me because it they didn't use it anymore. And I went out and I duct taped a hose to the tailpipe and then duct tape a hose to the uh the window, got in, turned the car on, and went to sleep. Um, and I remember feeling peace, like just before even any of that. Once I decided, okay, this is what I'm gonna do. I remember like checking in with myself. I I felt this overwhelming peace, so that I remember asking myself, is this really what you want to do? The answer was yes. So I'd keep going. And then a few minutes would go by. I was like, are we sure about this? Yes, and I'd keep going. The answer was never no. There was never any doubt, like it just was. And you know, there was of course some concern, like, well, what about people finding me? And I was like, it's you know, people get over things, they're gonna get over this. And I just remember feeling like that when people discovered that I had passed away, that it was gonna be this massive sigh of relief, and that finally we don't have to deal with some new fucking sets of chaos that this guy has introduced into the world, that that's gonna be the stop of it. And so I went to sleep, car was running. About two hours later, I woke up, I had a really awful taste in my mouth. The car had overheated because the truck did that on occasion. Um, and like my glasses had a weird film over it, and the inside of the car had a weird film over it, and I had like this massive headache, and I remember turning the truck off and thinking, well, okay, man, you fucking did everything else, all of the things, except for actually try to live. You've you've done literally everything in your power to avoid living a fucking life. Now it's trying to do that. You've you've you didn't fucking die. So you can't get that part, right? So you might as well try living. Like, what's the worst that could happen? You know, we all we all now know that this is an option. Uh let's fucking, you know, let's pick it up and and let's go to a meeting and let's go talk to a counselor. So I went to a counselor, I made a plan. Um, the counselor was kind of shitty. She's like, I think I need to call the police. I'm like, well, then I'm gonna lose my job because I'm gonna be out like, why would you call the police? I'm not here to talk you out. I'm not telling you I'm suicidal, I'm telling you I don't want to be suicidal, and that I'm I need to make a plan uh of accountability. Like, I'm feeding you all the information that you should be telling me, and you're telling me that you want to lock me up. That's terrible. So that was my real experience with counseling after my failed attempt in in the other state. And then I remember going to the AA meeting, and I went to the same meeting that I used to go to with that girl who I had gotten out of prison with, and fucking just so many people were still there. Ten years later, still there, still holding a seat, still sober, still happy, still living a life that was normal, still some of them saying the same fucking thing. And it used to irritate me when they said the same thing, but this time I was like, I get it, I get it. Like, this is a different version of acceptance. Like I was perfectly willing to accept being an alcoholic, and and just that that was my lot in life. Like, I'm just gonna drink this until I die. And then there's this kind of acceptance where it's like this is what I do on Tuesdays. I come here and I go to a meeting um for an hour and I hang out afterwards and I get to know people. And so I kind of was all in. Um, I didn't know if I was gonna continue to go to traditional meetings, I didn't know or have a plan or an expectation of how any of it was gonna go. I just knew that I was gonna try to find my tribe, I was gonna try to be more outgoing, and I was gonna actually try to do this thing that everybody has told me I should do, which is just live a life. And uh I haven't really looked back. Um, that was December 20th when I walked into the runes, and uh, while my experiences inside sobriety haven't always been um, you know, perfect and wonderful and nice, um I have been happier, progressively happier since I came back into the rooms. Uh we when I wasn't able to find my tribe at those meetings, I did find secular meetings, but I didn't want to lose touch of traditional meetings. And I think this is an important thing that I've taken away from it. Is I I wanted I want to always feel like at any place that I go to that I can find a meeting if I need one, um, that I could be welcome anywhere that I need to find sobriety. And so I made it a point to go to traditional meetings, even though I had started to get this experience that when I talked about being an atheist and my atheism, I wasn't always met with like a welcoming sense. Sometimes people's shares would change, like they would start talking very specifically to me about God and Jesus and all this stuff. So I I wanted to change that. So I started changing my attitude about those kinds of interactions. I started changing my attitude about how I felt other people should treat other people, and just wanted to be a representation of atheism in AA. So if there were other people that were atheists, they could hear that and feel welcome, and to just continue on being like a better person, um, regardless of how others should feel my recovery should go. And uh while on one hand, yes, there are secular meetings, those meetings are very limited, and I don't feel like I don't feel like Bill Wilson would would come out and say, it's cool that you're here, but maybe you should go to this other meeting and only go to that one because you'll feel more welcome. I can't imagine that anybody who started this program saying it. Um and in fact, he said something completely opposite. And there's a a brochure that uh came out called The God Word, and in it is an excerpt from something that Bill Wilson had said, and it's along the lines of, and this is after he'd written the books, it's like in the 60s he'd said this, that uh basically we are all different people of all different religions, including non-religious AA and agnostics, and instead of trying to change that for them, we should accept them. And it's a plan, so it's a group of inclusion, not exclusion. And uh that did a lot to continue kind of pushing me towards going to traditional meetings and reaching out to people, even if they're religious. I found a sponsor that allowed me to go through the book as an atheist and ask a lot of questions and sort of try to learn how to digest this thing as an atheist, and I got a lot out of that. And he he moved away from being completely anti-religious to being more accepting of religion. And I sort of moved more secure in my atheism, uh, but also more secure in my understanding that this program can absolutely work for me. I started doing the steps, I started doing the work, I started um applying the principles in all my affairs as it's written, and my life improved. Simple as that. Um, you know, I'm not like gonna buy a house anytime soon, uh, but I have been more stable emotionally in my relationships, in my life in this last year than I have ever in my entire life. Um I feel confident in myself. You know, I don't I don't feel like there's something inherently wrong with me anymore. I don't feel like that I'm living life incorrectly, that people just were waiting for me to die. I don't have these feelings anymore. And uh, you know, a lot of it came from AA, a lot of it came from outside help. I did see it at counselor regularly and have been for a while. Um, and it also came from applying this stuff even in my normal day-to-day life. Uh I did things that put me in positions to really put my life to the test. I started going to conventions, I like comic book conventions, I started interacting with people that I would have otherwise been very nervous around. Um, and I started doing things that really just made me happy for that specific reason, not because I wanted the social credit that would come from doing these things. Um, and then ultimately that that led to me starting a podcast related around me reading the book as an atheist for other people that might be, you know, in my position, but spirituality doesn't mean it's metaphysical or it doesn't mean that it's it's uh you know magical, um, but it's something that we can apply in a way. And reading the book openly with questions and with history and with like the the dysfunction that came from writing it uh to other people in the hopes that I can connect with them the same way that I connected with my sponsor, and that's really helped lately keeping me sane. You know, I don't go as many meetings as I used to go to at the beginning. Um but I do have a sponsor that I meet with regularly, and I do that and I do things like this, like this speaker uh sort of meeting. Um and I found that that's not only enough, but um I'm not beating myself up about doing one-upmanship on myself like I was the first batch of of this. Um I I feel happy. I feel I feel genuinely happy. Um, and not that weird manic happy that I think is gonna be rug pulled out from underneath me. Just, you know, mostly content. And if something seems off, or if I start feeling like like traffic's my barometer. If I start yelling at people and making weird decisions in traffic, then I know that I need to work on some stuff. Um and that check-in happens regularly now, like that um the self-appraisal, the self-inventory, you know, and I could I could go to like Smart Recovery or these other recovery programs, life ring, but AA offers a fellowship that can't be found anywhere else, I I think. And the sponsorship part of AA, the 12-step part of AA, I think is the backbone that makes this program really special and unique. And I wouldn't find that in a different program. So I keep coming back to this one, and uh I hope that that continues.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:45

Thank you for sharing your story. When I came to these rooms and I couldn't get sober and I kept relapsing is your exact story that I would have just loved. And I still love it. You know, sometimes you'll hear old timers, I don't want to hear about how it was, I just want to hear about how it is today. But when you are speaking to the newcomer, they can't relate to the amazing gift that this program can provide, but they can relate to your story. And I love that you spent so much time going through your story and you did it in a great way. And I'm really grateful that you shared I I didn't know you were headed to stabbing someone in the back because I'm just listening and listening over it, over it. Um and so and then when you said that, I thought, God, you know, I could totally do something in a blackout and have and it's someone else. I always say terror attacks out and somebody else takes over my body. And you alluded to that more than once. You said um, you said you had somehow convinced yourself, right? There's that voice that's not really ours that can talk us into anything. And then you talked about being a robot. And I've I've said before many times I would get in my car at the end of my drinking days where I was losing three days at a time. I would get in my car when I'm lucid, and I would like rush to the store to get alcohol before I would talk myself out of it because I didn't want to do it, but it was like a robot, like I I have to do this. And my best explanation, I like robot, it's a little more creepy, but mine is like I'm possessed. That's my explanation. I feel possessed. Did you feel possessed or just like a robot, or talk to me?

SPEAKER_01 1:05:45

Or so okay, so uh touching just briefly on the incident, me stabbing my friend, there there was um witnesses that said that I had actually started talking to myself in different voices, that there was a voice that was more mine, and then there was like this more like fucking weird voice. So there was like some of that going on where I was literally talking myself into out of this thing. Um, but when it was like time for me to really, you know, to just end up at the at the cash register with the liquor in my hand and not not feel like and no, I didn't want to be there, but feel like I just didn't have a choice. There was no fight against that. I feel like if you were possessed, that there would be some internal part of you that would be like, I don't want to do this. There was no fight left. So it was more like um in psychology, they they talk about the witness uh just sort of watching you do these things, and and you can use the witness to help gauge how you are as a person in social settings and in other situations, but it was more like that. Like I was completely removed from my body, and it was just going about this business. Um, and I was like a casual observer that was just uh, you know, I didn't have any control over it, and I wasn't sure that I wanted control over it. I just knew that I didn't want to do this thing, but there wasn't any fight left.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:04

Yeah. Yeah, and I got a little excited on my possessed thing, but definitely only mean in the blackout. So I'm possessed in the blackout, but when we're going to buy the liquor, I like your explanation way better because I could have, if I fought, I could have not done it. But in a blackout, there's no fighting. I'm not there anymore. So you are saying other languages, I'm gonna have to look up. That's crazy. That's crazy. Different like intonations. There's that um that photo, um, I quote it because it has my name in it, um, the United States of Terra. Or the mom has that, yeah, I cannot watch it because that's how I feel when I'm blacked out. I I I get flashes of a blackout, and it just like I wouldn't. I'm so sorry that you went through that. And I love that you were an artist in there and it it like gave you a different experience, and then you were so helpful. I just I love all that story. I couldn't see it in a movie. It was just so good. It was so good. I'm gonna have to listen to some more of your podcasts. Tell me one more time, what is the name of your podcast?

SPEAKER_01 1:08:11

An atheist reads the big book of AA. It's pretty on the nose.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:14

Okay, and that is how people get to it. Go to a podcast app and search that up.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:20

Yeah, you can just search that in Google and it'll bring that up. There's nothing wrong named it or close to it.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:25

Perfect. Well, it has been a pleasure. I have so much to think about and consider. And I have if you can just leave one final message for the newcomers or the atheists or agnostic, whichever you may be, listening, what message do you have to leave them with?

SPEAKER_01 1:08:44

At no point should anybody ever be made to feel like they're not welcome in AA.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:50

For more information, read the first 164 pages of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous or visit keepcomingback.net