December 19, 2025 • 45 mins
Pat Rogan Step 10, Step Series at the Tuesday night Step Group at the 12 Step House, Fort Lauderdale, FL, 12/16/2025.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Recovered alcoholic. My name is Pat Rogan. Thanks to the
Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous outline in our Big Book
of Alcoholics Anonymous, which is the program of AA, I
ever recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body.
And I can never express to you how grateful I am.
A didn't just save my life, but A gave you
(00:21):
a new life. And I absolutely love my new life.
I don't love all the moments in it, but just
far better than the life I had before I got here.
This is just incredible and I love this place. This
is a great meeting. Getting there down near the end
soon of this series you've been talking to, I'm gonna
(00:44):
read on twelve and twelve. I don't usually go to
the twelve and twelve too much, but great essays that
Bill wrote. You know, the directions to the Steps are
in the Big Book, but Bill expands thirteen years later
writes essays on the Steps, and there's just so much,
just has such a much broader outlook and information on
(01:06):
the steps. But this is one of my favorite lines
out of the eighth step that comes out of and
it says, since defective relations with other human beings have
nearly always been the immediate cause of our woes, including
our alcoholism. No field of investigation can hear more satisfying
and valuable rewards than this one. Calm, thoughtful reflection upon
(01:27):
personal relations can deepen our insight. We can go far
beyond those things which were superficially wrong with us, to
see those flaws which were basic flaws, which sometimes were
responsible for our whole pattern of our lives. Thoroughness. We
have found pay, and pay handsomely to me. This whole
(01:48):
journey has been about relationships, faulty relationships, if you will,
you know, and repairing these faulty relationships. The first relationship
being that with God, you know, developing a I'm not
so much at the beginning understanding of God, but a
(02:11):
relationship with God of some sort, you know, at least
to get to know that God was my solution. And
the second is to know me, to get to know me,
to get a relationship with me, to know the truth
about myself, know the truth about God, know the truth
about me so that I can go out and repair
my relationships with you in steps eight and nine. And
(02:35):
I know I'm supposed to be on step ten tonight,
but I don't know we'll get there. But because you know,
we've been talking a lot about reparation, We've been talking
a lot about getting right in the physical dimension, getting
right with the people around us. And I don't know
where these defective relationships came from for me. I don't
(02:55):
I don't know if I'm even capable of knowing where
those defective relationships were created, defective relationship with God, with myself,
and with you. I mean, I was that guy that
suffered from false pride. I was either I was just
a piece of shit when I walked into the room.
I was never that the false pride where I'm better
than you. I was never better than you. I was
always less than you. You know. I always felt less
(03:18):
than And part of that was my I was shorter
than everybody else, it was skinnier than everyone else. I
started school at five, everybody else started at six. I know,
do not I don't think they even do that anymore.
You know, But if if mommy didn't have daycare, you
went to school no matter what your age was back then,
you know, And I don't know, you know, I you know,
I've read stuff on it. There. There's there's plenty of
(03:41):
books on and where that comes from. And and what
I've learned is that where that came from isn't even
accessible for me. Is it's a part of my history
that I can't even access it. Probably they say before five,
and I can't. I don't know about you, but I
can't remember anything before five. You know. Well, the first
thing I really remember, the first memories I remember, are
(04:03):
my memories of skipping school at five. You know, that's
really the first thing if I go back to my
childhood and my sponsor. Maybe I'll talk more about this
next week. But my sponsor had me do a timeline
at fifteen years sober, and that time he said, take
five year increments of your life and write down significant events,
(04:24):
good and bad, you know, bad memories, good memories in
those five year increments. It's a really cool exercise, very revealing,
by the way. But I couldn't remember anything before five.
I couldn't remember anything before And what I started to
remember at between five and ten was fear, a lot
(04:45):
of fear and being bounced around from house to house,
you know, living with my aunt, my uncle Jack and
my aunt, living with my grandmother, living with my uncle
Frank and my aunt Carol, you know, just being bounced around,
and what really was review it is where of my
fear of cockroaches came from. But which is a terrible fear.
(05:06):
Those not those big, buick looking things, but but the uh,
but those little I hate. I guess are they German cockroaches.
That's a terrible thing to label them like that. Nothing
against the Germans, but uh, those bastards, you know. Like
I can remember as a child living at my uncle
(05:28):
Jack's house, who was a slob, and and and waking
up in the middle of the night to go to
the bathroom and cockroaches being all over the walls, you know,
And I couldn't get out of bed to go to
the bathroom, and I would just went to bed, you know,
And and then I would get berated the next morning
for you know, made fun of the next morning for that,
and and and so ever since then, I mean, my
(05:50):
wife tells me there's a cockroach in the house, I say, no,
there's not. No, No I saw one. No you didn't
called above man. I'm just like in denial about cockroachis.
But it revealed a lot of stuff. It revealed, you know,
possibly where some of my trust issues come from you know,
I was sharing with somebody earlier about night after night,
(06:13):
staring out the window, waiting for my father to come
and pick us up, but never shown up. You know.
And what I've read and what I from psychiatric professionals
is that our trust issues, our abandonment issues are developed
before we can even remember. They may even be developed
(06:36):
in the womb. Most of them are developed in the
first few years of life, definitely in my case, before
I was five, you know, So I can't even access
those memories. I'm incapable of accessing those memories, and I'm
incapable of knowing why every relationship that I had was
defected either trust issues and abandonment issues basically, you know.
(07:01):
And if the sad part is, you know what the
punishment of the cheater is, they can't trust anybody. You
know what the punishment of the thief is, they can't
believe it. They know that everybody's about to get their money.
You know what the punishment of the liar is, they
can't believe anybody. You know. That's and that's who I became,
you know, just manipulate, you know, trap you you know,
(07:22):
into my into my life. You know, my my relationship
with women were not relationships. They were hostages, you know,
they were. I would try to get you in a
position where you couldn't leave, you know, but I knew
you were gonna run, so I would do I would
have a backup plan, you know. But I don't know
where all that comes from. But the two amends that
(07:44):
we talked about last week, the financial amends and the
criminal amends, are the easy ones, really, I mean, I
mean I think that when you have to pay the money,
you know what the hard ones are financially, And I
learned this from Arthur Rice. You know what the hard
ones are financially when you have the money, right, When
you don't have the money, you can't pay them anyway.
That's he's you know, I'll create a payment plan somewhere
(08:06):
down the road. Right, But when you have the money,
it's hard to write the jack, you know, it's hard
to get I'll never forget I was. I shared with
you guys my tax issue where I didn't have to
call the RS. They called me and I got to
make restitution with the irs and they only went back
a year and then then they let the rest of
(08:28):
it go. So the next year, I want to be legal.
I want to file an income tax that I recall,
you know that I actually know what I'm signing. And
I don't know anything at this point because I have
no history. Now I'm thirty seven years old at this point,
thirty eight years old. I have no history of filing taxes.
So I don't know about s corps and LLCs and
(08:49):
quarterlies and you know all that kind of crap. You know.
So I'm just this contractor out there making money and
figure out just take care of it the end of
the year. You know. Well, I go to the end
of the year, my college to answer you my taxes
says I owe eight thousand dollars. How can that be? Well,
that's you know, you're supposed to pay quarterly, you're monthly,
and set up an LLC or an s corps so
(09:10):
that you don't have to pay twice the workman's comptent.
Just a bunch of that kind of simple stuff. And
I have I owe like seventy eight hundred dollars. I
have eight thousand stashed right and I'm sharing. I'm complaining
in a meeting in the Boca Boys Club. You know,
these these tough love mentors of mine and I'm sharing it.
(09:33):
I can't believe that I was able to save eight
thousand dollars this year and the irs wants seventy eight
hundred dollars of it and bud right card, God rest
his soul. Takes a pack of cigarettes at that time
we were smoking to me, throws them at the table, said, oh,
what the hell is the problem? Then write the check. Yeah,
(09:53):
there was no problem in his eyes because I had
the money. In my eyes, I don't want to part
with that shit, you know, other than saving that. But
I wrote it. It was hard, he said. I mean
he's and his advice was do it now, because the
longer you wait, the harder it's going to be. But
those are the easy ones, right, the criminal ones, those
(10:13):
are the easy ones because I benefit from it, right.
I mean, if you have to do time or something,
it's not an easy one, but it's something I'm gonna
have to do one way or another. But the relationships
with family members and siblings, that's where it gets difficult.
That's where it gets difficult. With the ex wife or
(10:34):
with the current wife, you know, that's where it gets difficult.
How do I get honest in a situation that might
cause me to lose the relationship, you know. And that's
that's tough stuff right there. You know. I struggled with it.
My I, uh, you know, my my ex wife, Uh
(10:56):
at about I guess I was about four months sober.
Finally lifted the restraining order and uh and we started
talking and I'm thinking, I cannot go and and Bill
talks about it. You know, if we've been wild, you know,
if we've cheated, should we go to our wife and
tell her that we've been cheating and we have been
(11:18):
unfaithful in that? And thank god Bill wrote it not
lows because it says it's not always you know, and
and that and that's is just going to do more
harm than good. Now here's the flip side of that question.
Am I going to be able to stay sober living
that life right or am I going to risk blowing
up the relationship by admitting that I've been unfaithful? That's
(11:40):
that's a tough call right there, you know. And that's
where some strong sponsorship comes in. And I don't even
know if my sponsor had the answer to that. You know,
that's just that's just a tough one, you know. And
and I struggled with it and and uh, I was
uh asked in the spur of the moment, I was,
I don't know if I've ever I ever spoke at a meeting.
(12:01):
I was, like I said, I was not even a
year sober. And and the bottom line group we had
this guest speaker coming, and the guest speaker didn't show up.
And they said, Pat, you're speaking tonight, and I go
to speaking. Now, I have never spoke anywhere before. And
when you're under a year sober, you don't have a
lot of hope. You know, you have a lot of
(12:22):
what it was like, you know, you don't have a
lot of what it's like now, you know. So it
was what it was like story, you know. And in
the meantime, my she was my ex wife who had
just dropped the restraining lawyer, had snuck into the back
of the room to see what this triple A was
all about you and h and I basically dumped the
(12:45):
fifth step on the on the group and it was
all out there, you know, the girlfriends and this and that,
and it was just, you know, and then my buddy,
my buddy Jeff is sitting where Pierre sitting and he's
gone and He's pointing to the back, and I'm going,
I got this job. And I just kept going, man,
(13:07):
and and she slammed that door. And I guarantee, if
she could have put that restraining order back on, it
would have gone back on. But she couldn't get it reinstated.
You had no cause. And I'll but I'll tell you
what happened because of that. Now there was We didn't
talk for a while, but the healing began. You follow me.
(13:28):
The healing began at that moment for both of us. Right,
I no longer have to worry about who she's talking to,
Who's gonna say what? Is she going to run into
one of them? Is somebody gonna say something about one
of them? Every time I saw her talking to somebody,
I'm going, oh my god, this is gonna come out
of the I don't have to live in that fear anymore.
And she finally knows I'm not crazy, because that's what
(13:51):
I told her. Oh, you're just imagining shit, you know,
You're just you're just trying to cause problems, you know.
She finally knew, No, this is what This was the
truth and the truth was finally out there. And with
the truth healings begin now. I mean the good news is,
you know, months later we started getting back together and
we got to know each other again sober, and two
(14:13):
years in the recovery, we were remarried. And that was
the good news of two years, not the good news
at fifteen. But it was a good news. It was
a good news for two years. But here's what that called,
here's what that allowed. That allowed the two of us
to raise our two sons together for fifteen years until
our sons had left the house, you know, And maybe
I'll share the rest of that story some all the time.
(14:34):
But it didn't it didn't last forever. Let's just say that.
And it ended on good terms. And it ended on
good terms, you know. It was just, you know, to
be honest with you, I had I had begun a
new way of life. And some normies don't want this
way of life. And I don't know anything about balance
(14:55):
what balance means to me When you say I need balance',
i'm you know what I want to do less th aa,
that's what I hear. And for me to create balance
with me, I'd have to do less here and I
can't do that. I can't do it. I can't do
less here. This is my life. I have a life
because of this. And if you can't be along for
(15:18):
that ride, this probably isn't gonna work out, you know.
And it was exciting and cool to see Pat sober
and you know, doing the right thing and being trustworthy
and all that kind of stuff. But you know, she
had just been to her I mean, in her words,
I'm not going to another one of those ef Ingratitude
dinners ever again. You know, I'm just done with these meetings,
you know, I just don't. And she was going to
(15:39):
ninth Chapter meetings and all she just had enough. I
want to go out Friday night, Saturday night, have a
couple of drinks and dance, right. I want to go
to the meeting Friday night. You know, I don't want
to go to the meeting Saturday night. That's where I need.
That's where my happy place is, not in a bar
dancing while you drink and smoke your pot. You know,
I'm just not doing I don't want to get the
(16:00):
car and smell that anymore. I don't. I just don't
want to be part of that. You know. I can't
be part of that. I can't. And so I mean
I'm blessed to this day, and I'll talk more about
that to be with somebody who's all in in recovery.
Also as in as I am, I could have it
no other way. I could have it no other way.
So so I was able to mend that relationship taking
(16:24):
the risk. There's risk involved. There's risk involved, and that's
that you know in the How It Works And on
the next last page of How It Works, what talks
about Suppose we fall short of the chosen ideas and stumble,
does that mean we're gonna drink? Well, not necessarily, not necessarily,
but as to say, if we if we we know
(16:45):
that we did wrong, and we ask God to take
us to better things and we get back on track,
we brush ourselves off and get back on track, surely
we're gonna stay sober. But if we continue that behavior,
we continue that behavior, then we are we are surely
gonna drink. And he says, these are facts out of
our experience, these are facts of our experience. So then
so then I get to this place where I say, look,
(17:06):
there's bells you can't ring. There's bells you can't unring, right,
you can't unring a cheat bell. You know, you can't
unring the lie, you know, so we have to be
careful where we fall short. I got to be careful
where I fall short. I can't fall short in those areas.
And that road narrows, And we talked about that in
six and seven. That road narrows as we go down
(17:28):
the road. It's not about cheating anymore, you know. It
might just be about lust, you know. And then it
might not be just about lust. It just might be
about flirting, you know. It could The road just starts
to narrow as we go down the road. For me,
I don't know about for her, but for me it
starts to narrow, which I'm sure does for her too.
(17:48):
But the family, you know, my stepfather, God, he got
into a bad deal. You know. It's you know, my
mother was trying to raise four kids on her own.
And when my father left at a very young age,
my mother remarried another flaming alcoholic. You know who got
(18:14):
the opportunity to live with me, you know who was
an addict, alcoholic big time. And this poor guy I
used to take his car, tell him I'm going to
the store. I'll be back in a couple and I'd
be back in a couple of weeks, you know, and
a lot of times the car came back on a
tow truck on a flatbed, you know, because I'd be
trail riding with it or something. It was one I
(18:35):
swear to god, I brought it back missing a rear wheel.
Where's the wheel? I don't know, in the woods somewhere,
you know, little Volkswagen fastback, you know. But that's the
kind of stuff. Yeah, he ended up divorcing my mom
because three out of the four of us caught the bullet.
You know why. There's me and my sister who's two
(18:56):
years less sober than me, and then it skipped my
brother and my baby sister died of an overdose seventeen
years ago. But three out of four of us caught
the bullet. He was dealing with three addicts and alcoholics
in that house and my mother who refused to let
him discipline us, which was just it was bad. And
so they ended up divorced. Then after we were all gone,
(19:20):
they ended up remarried again. Isn't that crazy? Ye? How
do you make amends for that? Yeah? And I made
all of and look, I made the financial amends between
him and my mother. I mean that, and that isn't
really what they wanted. But he may have wanted it,
but I made all the financial amends that I could
(19:42):
bank with him, and and and he he's been he's
been my father, you know for the last thirty five years,
you know. And and so I do anything I can
for him at any time, and it's just just there's
just no way I will ever complete the mends for him.
And you know what happens when we're in this recovery,
(20:03):
we're on this road to recover. We do it because
we want to, not because we have to, you know,
because it's someone in need, and I have the opportunity
to help, and I'm in a position to help, so
I help, And so we could call it, yeah, I'm
still making amends. But I just looked at it as
no matter who it was, and if I was in it,
had the opportunity to help, and I could, I would,
(20:23):
you know. And he's that guy. I would do anything
for him, and he knows that. And my mother, on
the other hand, it had to come through demonstration. There
was no amount of money that was going to repair
the damage that I did to her. I share with
you guys as sleepless nights, and you know, she got
(20:44):
a good night sleep when I was in jail. You know,
leave him there for a while, you know, let me
get some rest, you know. And in the Robb reason,
she didn't even really care about me stealing her stuff,
and she just want her son back. You know, I
got the opportunity to demonstrate that I lost my mother
three years ago. But but over the thirty one years
(21:09):
sober that I got to live with her, I got
to make all the amends that I could possibly make,
and then some and then some, and our relationship became
an amazing bond between the two of us. And but
I you know what, what I think they want and
(21:30):
what they really want are two different things. My mother
was a two time cancer survivor, and and that's all
what killed her. What killed her was knee surgery, you know,
was the beginning of the end of her. She decided
to have knee surgery after surviving cancer twice, you know,
and she gets on the table to do they do
(21:51):
the knee surgery. She flatlines on the table and goes
into acoma and they intubate her and all this other stuff.
And you know, the power of prayer is an amazing thing.
And it is just amazing, you know. And but you know,
praying for my they we had a priest come in
and give her last rites, you know, and I wasn't done.
(22:14):
I just wasn't done making the amends to my wife
and my wife and I prayed over her. And the
next day we're staying. This is after we give her
life's prayers. The next day we're standing beside her and
looking at her, and she opens her eyes and she
looks at me and she says, why can't you get
along with your sister? I went, Really, that's what was
(22:40):
eating her alive, the fact that her siblings didn't get along.
It's got chills, you know. That's what she wanted, was
her children to get along. That's what would make her
happy in that moment, right, crazy, right. I called my
sister that night, said we're good, it's all good. You
(23:02):
need let me know, you know, And it's We've always
had it, to say, the least a ten years relationship.
I'm not going to go into take her inventory. It
was a challenge to call her, let me just say that.
And it's been a challenge to keep contained a relationship
with her, even though my mother has passed. It's a
challenge to maintain a relationship. And you know why I
(23:24):
do it because my mother wanted it. But my mother
wanted it. That's why I do it, you know. And
we do like our book says, we treat them as
we would a sick person, as we are or were,
and I do anything I can to help her if
I can. But my mother came out of that right
and my mother went into rehab, and my mother got
(23:46):
sepsist in rehab, and she ended up back in the
hospital again, in a coma again. And the doctor says,
I don't even know why I'm sharing this with you guys.
So so the doctors her shows me her feet and
her feet are black, and the doctor says, we're gonna
(24:08):
have to take her feet and I said, all you
can't do that says not, it's another way. It's either
that or let her go, you know, And I said, well,
you gotta do what you gotta do, and and he left,
and and my wife and I, Shannon, and I put
hands on my mother's feet and the way we put
(24:28):
some sincere prayers out there, and they took her down
to take her feet off the next morning, and they
were pink. That's incredible, right, I mean, look, I don't
even know how to explain that. And the doctors are like,
I don't know, you know, we do we do, and
(24:51):
that and that my mother came out of the calm.
We got another three years out of my mother before
she passed. You know, h my mother put her life
in my hands before she passed. Not not my not
my stepfather's not my brother, who's not one of us me.
(25:17):
You will make the call. So you will make the call.
When it's time, you will know it, and you will
make the call. And I did. I had to make
the call three years later. But just what a what
a gift to be able to mend those relationships like that.
And it was all about demonstration, it was. And it
was a long road, but it was all about demonstration.
(25:38):
It wasn't anything I said. It was in actions. It
was in actions. My uh, my youngest son, I might
has ever seen me drum. He was too some of
young medam. He's been here, you know, uh, And him
and I have this unbelievably you meek spiritual bond. But
(26:03):
my other son, my oldest son, was twelve when I
got sober, and he's seen the shit man, He's seen
the fists go through the walls. He saw my fist
come through his bedroom door. Because he was so afraid,
he locked himself in his bedroom, and I put my
fist through the door and unlocked the door from the inside.
(26:27):
He remembers seeing his mother knocked to the floor when
I got arrested for assault and battery at the beginning
of the end. Those are the kind of memories I
gave my child. Those are the kind of memories my
father gave me. Where do our defective relationships come from? Right?
(26:48):
I became my father. I became everything I hated in him.
And when it came time to make a menace to him,
I sat down with him and I did that. I
deeply regret what you had to go through and what
you had to see, what you had to endure. And
(27:09):
he did not accept it well. And he said, yeah,
that shit sucked. He said, I was hoping you wouldn't
come back because they moved. We moved them into an
apartment after that, and I got the house, big deal,
got what I wanted. And when him and his mother
started to reconcile, he wanted no part of that. He
(27:31):
was glad not to have me around because he didn't
know me. He didn't know this, He didn't know sober pat.
He only knew violent pad. Yeah, what do we call it?
Discipline through intimidation? Right? We all know that? How many's
old school here. You used to see the look, right,
(27:52):
you get the look, right, you got the look you
you know what's coming after the look? With grandma it
was a shoe you know. Wow, my grandmother could throw
shoes around a corner. So, and it's not that we
(28:13):
didn't we didn't have a bond. It wasn't that we
didn't have a relationship. We did a lot of stuff together.
I took a lot of action to try to mend
that relationship and not to spoil them, but just to
do things together sober and enjoy life together sober fishing
trips and traveling and you know, all kinds of different
stuff that we did together. We had a lot of
fun together. And it wasn't like the relationship was strained
(28:36):
all the time. But anytime I would bring up this amends,
he did not want to hear. He did not want
to hear it. So I'm I'm twenty seven years sober.
I'm doing a step series at Palm Bay and I
(29:01):
get this text from him. He says, I want to
thank you for all the skills you taught me and
the ethics that you've driven into me about working hard
and doing what's right. I know there are plenty of
speed bumps along the way, but I want you to
know how much I appreciate you taking the time to
(29:23):
let me learn and providing me with the foundation for
being successful. I don't know how if I've ever really
said thank you, and I just hope I can continue
to be that person for my kids. I love you,
and I look forward to the next time we get together.
This is twenty seven years later. I wrote back, thank
you so much. I'm so proud of the man you've become.
(29:45):
I couldn't be prouder. Yes, there were speed bumps along
the way, and I truly regret that, but you and
Joe his brother have always been and will always be
the most important people in my life. Thanks for being you.
I always look forward to seeing you guys. Can't wait
to see you again. M hm. He writes back, don't
regret anything, it was all part of the journey, and
(30:08):
have a good night forgiveness. Forgiveness, it's the uh, there's
a line in the nice step. This says there's a
long road of reconstruction ahead. Yeah, for all of us,
For all of us. If you know, if you're newly
(30:29):
divorced and you're you've lost your kids, or you're not
seeing your kids, so there's a warrant out and you're
down here, not just because of the sunshine. You know,
there's something going on up the north. This is this.
If we stay this course, it will it will be okay.
(30:51):
It will all be okay, it will work out, just
not in my time. I want immediate gratification. Right. I
want to say I'm sorry. He said, yes, come home.
I'm sorry. Yeah, I've heard that ship before. Show me,
show me, prove to me. That's what this is about.
(31:15):
That's what it's about. This is not about, you know.
I mean that's what I wanted. I wanted to do
steps one nine and move back in the house. Right. Hey,
I'm an alcoholic. I'm so sorry. I'm coming home. You know.
(31:36):
She said, I'm sorry too. You're not an alcoholic, You're
an asshole who drinks a lot. That's a true story.
I called home. I said, good news. I found out
what's wrong with me, I'm an alcoholic, She said, nope,
you're an asshole. Boa she was. She was pretty accurate. Hey,
(32:04):
it takes a long time, you know, to get over
the selfishness and the self centeredness. You know, it takes
a long time to change. There's a long road of
reconstruction on my end too, not just on repairing the damage,
but on my end in five years? Was I still
selfish and self centered? You're damn right I was. I
wasn't drinking. I was a better person. I surely wasn't
(32:28):
where I wanted to be. But I surely wasn't where
I was. I'm sure I wasn't where everybody wanted me
to be either. I got a divorce at fifteen years sober.
Who does that? Who does that? I mean, who blows
up a marriage fifteen years sober? Oh? You too? There's
(32:49):
too many parallels. Ye talk about feeling like a failure, right,
you know what? You know what that timeline revealed? You
know what that timeline revealed? This is this is scary
that at fifteen years sober, I was still a taker
in relationships, that I still was living with the fault
(33:12):
with faulty relationships, that I was still suffering from abandonment
issues and trust issues. Still fifteen years old, that divorce
felt like the biggest rejection of my life. I was,
I didn't want to drink, but I want it out,
(33:33):
you know what I mean. I want it out. I
want to go. I want to go live in the
woods with deer and shit, you know, dogs and deer.
That's what I wanted, you know, fuck these people, man,
you know, just to be a great world with our people, right,
I mean, I was, I shouldn't tell that story, right.
(34:00):
So I'm ready to leave the planet. I'm ready, like
I'm gonna cooks forests alligating nationalists in Pennsylvania. I'm going there.
I've got a plant, you know. And I'm driving up
and down A one A thinking about how am I
going to tell everybody that I'm going to be a hermit,
you know? And uh, And I get a call from
(34:20):
Billy Galvin. And I've shared with you who Billy was
in my second step. Billy was my guy that I
followed everywhere he went because Billy had what I wanted
and that you follow the people to have what you want.
And I'm not talking about relationships. You know, the people
who are chasing people that have a spiritual solution. That's
what Billy was. And where Billy was, that's where I
(34:42):
wanted to be. I didn't want to know where there
was a meeting. I want to know where Billy is.
Because Billy was chasing guys like Garrett Mauldow. He was
chasing guys like Ben Troxel. He was chasing guys you know,
like like Peter. He was chasing guys like like I
could just go on and on. I mean, there's just
so many giants that I've been chasing around the years,
(35:03):
and that I wanted what he had, and he wanted
what they had, and so I went where he was.
So Billy calls me out of nowhere. I hadn't heard
from Billy in about a year because he had been
on this travel league thing with his kids. And uh,
and I said hey Bill, and he goes yeah. He says, uh,
you were on my heart. I just called to see
what's up. I said, no, I'm fine, you know, He said, no,
(35:27):
something's up. He says, there's a reason why you came
on my heart. And this is why. If if you
get a call from me out of the blue or
text from me out of the blue, that's why, because
you came on my heart in that moment, and I
don't ignore that anymore. Because Billy I came on Billy's heart.
He knew something was wrong, and he wasn't hanging up
until I told him. And I told him, what's going
to a divorce? Man? He said, I want out? I
(35:49):
want out. Well, we're gonna pick you up and take
you a meeting night. I said, nah, sorry, I'm good.
I'm good. Now, we're gonna take you go see Russell. Oh,
I don't do Russell's No, no, no, that's the god
squat there. Man, I don't I don't know. They say
Jesus and all that in the meeting. No, that's not
that's not me. That's he's a tradition violator. You know,
(36:11):
you know it's too bad. We're going to bring you
to see Russell. And they take me. He picks me
up and takes me on on the tracks in North Miami.
He was doing a step series there and and Russell
opens a meeting like this, if you're new here, you
might want to go to a different meeting. Yeah, he says,
(36:32):
I'm here for the guy who's fifteen twenty twenty five
years sober dying inside. Oh my god, you're talking to me,
you know. I mean that just tears started coming on. Now.
I don't anybody that knows Russell. He starts most of
his meetings like that, right, But I think it's me.
It's about me, right. And I go up to him
(36:53):
after me and I said, oh my god, Russell, you
were talking to me. And he said, oh, it really is.
I said yeah, He says, I told him what was
going on. He says, you know, maybe pages eighty four
through eighty eight aren't doing it for you anymore. Maybe
you need more. Maybe this isn't just maybe. Maybe I'm
not saying to abandon what you're doing, but maybe you
(37:13):
need more. Maybe you need to reach outside of AA
for more. And I went I thought about it, and
I said, Okay. Next night, I'm having dinner with Peter
Marrion Allen and Peter and I and Arty from the
Florida House, and we're having this debate about people raising
from the dead, and we're just having babies and shit
(37:35):
like that. And actually Peter was having no debate. I
was debating, you know. And Peter looks at me and
he says, did you ever think you would be sober
fifteen years. I said, no, that's a miracle. He said
it is, isn't it. And I said yeah. And he said, well,
anything's possible now, isn't it. I said yeah maybe. And
(37:57):
we were like, well even the meeting. We're outside of
Frankie Johnny's in Deerfield and Peter looks at me and says,
maybe you should go back to the church of your
childhood and leave for a good reason. And I went home.
It was a Saturday night. I went home, and I thought,
why did I leave? Why did I leave? I left
because I couldn't live up to their principles. That's why
I didn't want to live up to their principles. How
(38:19):
about that I wanted to be on the fun side
of the island where they were smoking dope, you know,
drinking and having sex and you know all that. I
wanted to be on that side, not the side that
talks about abstinence and no sex before marriage and all
that kind of you know. I mean, I didn't want
to be on that side of the island. They had
principles over there, we had none over here, That's what
(38:42):
I mean. And I went back to church the next
morning for the first time since I was thirteen years old,
and I threw up a prayer. Okay, I don't know
how this prayer thing works, you know. I just know
that prayer changes things. That's all I know. I don't
know if it changes me or circumstances. I don't know.
(39:03):
I just know that when I pray, things change, you know.
And I'll talk more about an eleven. But I'm a
big brother Lawrence fan, you know, practicing the presence of
God all the time, all the time. I don't set
aside time for I do pray in the morning, but
I pray all day long. I travel with God all
day long. You know. I'm constantly throwing up prayers. But
(39:26):
I don't know how that works. But I threw up
this God, if you're there, if you're real, show me now.
And I had an experience in that church, and I'll
share with you that that day I put a name
to the God and I understand, you know, and it
just changed my direction. It just changed the direction in
my life. Yeah, rejection or redirection seems like every time
(39:56):
I've been rejected, I've just been redirected to somewhere better,
you know. Stand at that turning point, over and over again.
Which way are we gonna turn? You know, we're gonna
turn away from the recovery, or we're gonna turn towards recover.
We can turn away from God, or were gonna turn
towards God. You know which way are we gonna turn?
We'll stay and you and I will stand at that
turning point over and over and over again. But I
(40:19):
know which way I'm turning because I know I no
longer believe it's rejection. I know it's redirection. And then
that's just happened over No, maybe I'll talk more about
that next week, but that's happened over and over and
over again. I'm gonnaend with this because I stole this
from Trolley Parker, and I love this. You know, I
share with you that fear was my demon. You know that,
(40:40):
and it still is. Fear is my thorn. Fear is
probably what keeps me going to God, what keeps me
coming back to God. You know, without fear, I'm not
so sure I would pray before this meeting. I really don't.
I've learned that fear has become an asset for me
because it forces me to pray, it forces me to
travel God all day long, and I'm okay with that.
(41:03):
I'm all right with that. I love that relationship that
I have today, and I find God here in this room.
I find God when I'm calling one of you guys,
I find God when you call me. I find God.
When I walk into my church. I find God when
I walk into any church, doesn't matter what church it is.
There's so many options I have today to find God.
(41:27):
And whatever you think that is, that's what I'm talking
You're new here. Whatever you think that is, that's what
I'm talking about. You know, you get to define it.
But I suffered terribly from that fear, from that anxiety,
from that torment. And it's sixteen years old. I picked
(41:49):
up a drink and I knew a new freedom and
a new happiness. When I picked up that drink, I
didn't regret the pass or wish to do and shut
the door on it. When I picked up that drink,
I could comprehend the words serenity, and I knew peace.
When I drank, I could see how my experience could
benefit others. When I drank, that feeling of uselessness and
(42:09):
self pity disappeared. When I drank, I lost interests in
selfish things and gained interest in my fellows. When I
picked up a drink, self seeking slipped away. When I
picked up a drink. My whole attitude and outlook on
life changed. When I picked up a drink. Fear of
people and economic insecurity left me. When I drank, I
(42:30):
intuitially knew how to handle situations that used to baffle me.
When I drank, I realized that alcohol was doing for
me what I couldn't do for myself. How could you
not love that? How could you not fall in love
with that? Right? Alcohol was not my problem. Alcohol was
(42:51):
my solution. The spiritual malady was my problem. That's what
we learned here, The spiritual sickness, the fear, the anxiety,
the torment They're Clapton called a torment. I was a
tormented child, he said. Man, I needed something more powerful
(43:13):
than that. You needed to give me something more powerful
than alcohol. You suffer from another substance, substitute your drug
and choice for alcohol, Whatever it is that takes away
that restlessness, that irritability, that discontent, that anxiety, that torment.
And these nine steps put me back together and gave
(43:37):
me what alcohol gave me. God gave me what alcohol
gave me. I shared with you in my fifth step.
It was the first time in my life that I
was at peace without a substance in my body. Now,
you may not believe that you know how, you can
come to believe that do the first freaking nine steps right,
(43:59):
that this is about. That's how faith is born. Right.
All we have to do is get started. Is be
willing to believe that this might work for me or
I'm gonna die an addict alcoholic death. The two there's
door number one or door number two. You know. Now,
if you're not there, you may not buy into this.
You might just say this is all bullshit. But you
(44:23):
couldn't scare my ass out of here. With God, I
was willing to believe that you just might be right.
And that's all it takes if you're new to That's
all it takes is to be willing to do. You say, okay,
go from note to maybe this could work? Why because
I'm gonna die. Because I'm gonna die. You make a
(44:45):
decision to do the work. You do the work, you
get the results. There's the faith. There's the faith when
God entered my heart in my fifth step. There's where
faith was born. I believed in this power greater than myself.
I believe that in this miss understanding of God, that's
really what it was for me, a God of my misunderstanding.
(45:06):
But I knew at that point it was real and
it was re emphasized in that in that experience that
I had in the church. And I still want more.
I still want more of it, right, So I'm going
to continue to do what this program asked me to
do in Step twelve, and I'm going to continue to
(45:28):
grow in understanding and effectiveness as Step eleven says, and
I guess we'll get to that next week. Thanks for
let me be here.
Recovered alcoholic. My name is Pat Rogan. Thanks to the
Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous outline in our Big Book
of Alcoholics Anonymous, which is the program of AA, I
ever recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body.
And I can never express to you how grateful I am.
A didn't just save my life, but A gave you
(00:21):
a new life. And I absolutely love my new life.
I don't love all the moments in it, but just
far better than the life I had before I got here.
This is just incredible and I love this place. This
is a great meeting. Getting there down near the end
soon of this series you've been talking to, I'm gonna
(00:44):
read on twelve and twelve. I don't usually go to
the twelve and twelve too much, but great essays that
Bill wrote. You know, the directions to the Steps are
in the Big Book, but Bill expands thirteen years later
writes essays on the Steps, and there's just so much,
just has such a much broader outlook and information on
(01:06):
the steps. But this is one of my favorite lines
out of the eighth step that comes out of and
it says, since defective relations with other human beings have
nearly always been the immediate cause of our woes, including
our alcoholism. No field of investigation can hear more satisfying
and valuable rewards than this one. Calm, thoughtful reflection upon
(01:27):
personal relations can deepen our insight. We can go far
beyond those things which were superficially wrong with us, to
see those flaws which were basic flaws, which sometimes were
responsible for our whole pattern of our lives. Thoroughness. We
have found pay, and pay handsomely to me. This whole
(01:48):
journey has been about relationships, faulty relationships, if you will,
you know, and repairing these faulty relationships. The first relationship
being that with God, you know, developing a I'm not
so much at the beginning understanding of God, but a
(02:11):
relationship with God of some sort, you know, at least
to get to know that God was my solution. And
the second is to know me, to get to know me,
to get a relationship with me, to know the truth
about myself, know the truth about God, know the truth
about me so that I can go out and repair
my relationships with you in steps eight and nine. And
(02:35):
I know I'm supposed to be on step ten tonight,
but I don't know we'll get there. But because you know,
we've been talking a lot about reparation, We've been talking
a lot about getting right in the physical dimension, getting
right with the people around us. And I don't know
where these defective relationships came from for me. I don't
(02:55):
I don't know if I'm even capable of knowing where
those defective relationships were created, defective relationship with God, with myself,
and with you. I mean, I was that guy that
suffered from false pride. I was either I was just
a piece of shit when I walked into the room.
I was never that the false pride where I'm better
than you. I was never better than you. I was
always less than you. You know. I always felt less
(03:18):
than And part of that was my I was shorter
than everybody else, it was skinnier than everyone else. I
started school at five, everybody else started at six. I know,
do not I don't think they even do that anymore.
You know, But if if mommy didn't have daycare, you
went to school no matter what your age was back then,
you know, And I don't know, you know, I you know,
I've read stuff on it. There. There's there's plenty of
(03:41):
books on and where that comes from. And and what
I've learned is that where that came from isn't even
accessible for me. Is it's a part of my history
that I can't even access it. Probably they say before five,
and I can't. I don't know about you, but I
can't remember anything before five. You know. Well, the first
thing I really remember, the first memories I remember, are
(04:03):
my memories of skipping school at five. You know, that's
really the first thing if I go back to my
childhood and my sponsor. Maybe I'll talk more about this
next week. But my sponsor had me do a timeline
at fifteen years sober, and that time he said, take
five year increments of your life and write down significant events,
(04:24):
good and bad, you know, bad memories, good memories in
those five year increments. It's a really cool exercise, very revealing,
by the way. But I couldn't remember anything before five.
I couldn't remember anything before And what I started to
remember at between five and ten was fear, a lot
(04:45):
of fear and being bounced around from house to house,
you know, living with my aunt, my uncle Jack and
my aunt, living with my grandmother, living with my uncle
Frank and my aunt Carol, you know, just being bounced around,
and what really was review it is where of my
fear of cockroaches came from. But which is a terrible fear.
(05:06):
Those not those big, buick looking things, but but the uh,
but those little I hate. I guess are they German cockroaches.
That's a terrible thing to label them like that. Nothing
against the Germans, but uh, those bastards, you know. Like
I can remember as a child living at my uncle
(05:28):
Jack's house, who was a slob, and and and waking
up in the middle of the night to go to
the bathroom and cockroaches being all over the walls, you know,
And I couldn't get out of bed to go to
the bathroom, and I would just went to bed, you know,
And and then I would get berated the next morning
for you know, made fun of the next morning for that,
and and and so ever since then, I mean, my
(05:50):
wife tells me there's a cockroach in the house, I say, no,
there's not. No, No I saw one. No you didn't
called above man. I'm just like in denial about cockroachis.
But it revealed a lot of stuff. It revealed, you know,
possibly where some of my trust issues come from you know,
I was sharing with somebody earlier about night after night,
(06:13):
staring out the window, waiting for my father to come
and pick us up, but never shown up. You know.
And what I've read and what I from psychiatric professionals
is that our trust issues, our abandonment issues are developed
before we can even remember. They may even be developed
(06:36):
in the womb. Most of them are developed in the
first few years of life, definitely in my case, before
I was five, you know, So I can't even access
those memories. I'm incapable of accessing those memories, and I'm
incapable of knowing why every relationship that I had was
defected either trust issues and abandonment issues basically, you know.
(07:01):
And if the sad part is, you know what the
punishment of the cheater is, they can't trust anybody. You
know what the punishment of the thief is, they can't
believe it. They know that everybody's about to get their money.
You know what the punishment of the liar is, they
can't believe anybody. You know. That's and that's who I became,
you know, just manipulate, you know, trap you you know,
(07:22):
into my into my life. You know, my my relationship
with women were not relationships. They were hostages, you know,
they were. I would try to get you in a
position where you couldn't leave, you know, but I knew
you were gonna run, so I would do I would
have a backup plan, you know. But I don't know
where all that comes from. But the two amends that
(07:44):
we talked about last week, the financial amends and the
criminal amends, are the easy ones, really, I mean, I
mean I think that when you have to pay the money,
you know what the hard ones are financially, And I
learned this from Arthur Rice. You know what the hard
ones are financially when you have the money, right, When
you don't have the money, you can't pay them anyway.
That's he's you know, I'll create a payment plan somewhere
(08:06):
down the road. Right, But when you have the money,
it's hard to write the jack, you know, it's hard
to get I'll never forget I was. I shared with
you guys my tax issue where I didn't have to
call the RS. They called me and I got to
make restitution with the irs and they only went back
a year and then then they let the rest of
(08:28):
it go. So the next year, I want to be legal.
I want to file an income tax that I recall,
you know that I actually know what I'm signing. And
I don't know anything at this point because I have
no history. Now I'm thirty seven years old at this point,
thirty eight years old. I have no history of filing taxes.
So I don't know about s corps and LLCs and
(08:49):
quarterlies and you know all that kind of crap. You know.
So I'm just this contractor out there making money and
figure out just take care of it the end of
the year. You know. Well, I go to the end
of the year, my college to answer you my taxes
says I owe eight thousand dollars. How can that be? Well,
that's you know, you're supposed to pay quarterly, you're monthly,
and set up an LLC or an s corps so
(09:10):
that you don't have to pay twice the workman's comptent.
Just a bunch of that kind of simple stuff. And
I have I owe like seventy eight hundred dollars. I
have eight thousand stashed right and I'm sharing. I'm complaining
in a meeting in the Boca Boys Club. You know,
these these tough love mentors of mine and I'm sharing it.
(09:33):
I can't believe that I was able to save eight
thousand dollars this year and the irs wants seventy eight
hundred dollars of it and bud right card, God rest
his soul. Takes a pack of cigarettes at that time
we were smoking to me, throws them at the table, said, oh,
what the hell is the problem? Then write the check. Yeah,
(09:53):
there was no problem in his eyes because I had
the money. In my eyes, I don't want to part
with that shit, you know, other than saving that. But
I wrote it. It was hard, he said. I mean
he's and his advice was do it now, because the
longer you wait, the harder it's going to be. But
those are the easy ones, right, the criminal ones, those
(10:13):
are the easy ones because I benefit from it, right.
I mean, if you have to do time or something,
it's not an easy one, but it's something I'm gonna
have to do one way or another. But the relationships
with family members and siblings, that's where it gets difficult.
That's where it gets difficult. With the ex wife or
(10:34):
with the current wife, you know, that's where it gets difficult.
How do I get honest in a situation that might
cause me to lose the relationship, you know. And that's
that's tough stuff right there. You know. I struggled with it.
My I, uh, you know, my my ex wife, Uh
(10:56):
at about I guess I was about four months sober.
Finally lifted the restraining order and uh and we started
talking and I'm thinking, I cannot go and and Bill
talks about it. You know, if we've been wild, you know,
if we've cheated, should we go to our wife and
tell her that we've been cheating and we have been
(11:18):
unfaithful in that? And thank god Bill wrote it not
lows because it says it's not always you know, and
and that and that's is just going to do more
harm than good. Now here's the flip side of that question.
Am I going to be able to stay sober living
that life right or am I going to risk blowing
up the relationship by admitting that I've been unfaithful? That's
(11:40):
that's a tough call right there, you know. And that's
where some strong sponsorship comes in. And I don't even
know if my sponsor had the answer to that. You know,
that's just that's just a tough one, you know. And
and I struggled with it and and uh, I was
uh asked in the spur of the moment, I was,
I don't know if I've ever I ever spoke at a meeting.
(12:01):
I was, like I said, I was not even a
year sober. And and the bottom line group we had
this guest speaker coming, and the guest speaker didn't show up.
And they said, Pat, you're speaking tonight, and I go
to speaking. Now, I have never spoke anywhere before. And
when you're under a year sober, you don't have a
lot of hope. You know, you have a lot of
(12:22):
what it was like, you know, you don't have a
lot of what it's like now, you know. So it
was what it was like story, you know. And in
the meantime, my she was my ex wife who had
just dropped the restraining lawyer, had snuck into the back
of the room to see what this triple A was
all about you and h and I basically dumped the
(12:45):
fifth step on the on the group and it was
all out there, you know, the girlfriends and this and that,
and it was just, you know, and then my buddy,
my buddy Jeff is sitting where Pierre sitting and he's
gone and He's pointing to the back, and I'm going,
I got this job. And I just kept going, man,
(13:07):
and and she slammed that door. And I guarantee, if
she could have put that restraining order back on, it
would have gone back on. But she couldn't get it reinstated.
You had no cause. And I'll but I'll tell you
what happened because of that. Now there was We didn't
talk for a while, but the healing began. You follow me.
(13:28):
The healing began at that moment for both of us. Right,
I no longer have to worry about who she's talking to,
Who's gonna say what? Is she going to run into
one of them? Is somebody gonna say something about one
of them? Every time I saw her talking to somebody,
I'm going, oh my god, this is gonna come out
of the I don't have to live in that fear anymore.
And she finally knows I'm not crazy, because that's what
(13:51):
I told her. Oh, you're just imagining shit, you know,
You're just you're just trying to cause problems, you know.
She finally knew, No, this is what This was the
truth and the truth was finally out there. And with
the truth healings begin now. I mean the good news is,
you know, months later we started getting back together and
we got to know each other again sober, and two
(14:13):
years in the recovery, we were remarried. And that was
the good news of two years, not the good news
at fifteen. But it was a good news. It was
a good news for two years. But here's what that called,
here's what that allowed. That allowed the two of us
to raise our two sons together for fifteen years until
our sons had left the house, you know, And maybe
I'll share the rest of that story some all the time.
(14:34):
But it didn't it didn't last forever. Let's just say that.
And it ended on good terms. And it ended on
good terms, you know. It was just, you know, to
be honest with you, I had I had begun a
new way of life. And some normies don't want this
way of life. And I don't know anything about balance
(14:55):
what balance means to me When you say I need balance',
i'm you know what I want to do less th aa,
that's what I hear. And for me to create balance
with me, I'd have to do less here and I
can't do that. I can't do it. I can't do
less here. This is my life. I have a life
because of this. And if you can't be along for
(15:18):
that ride, this probably isn't gonna work out, you know.
And it was exciting and cool to see Pat sober
and you know, doing the right thing and being trustworthy
and all that kind of stuff. But you know, she
had just been to her I mean, in her words,
I'm not going to another one of those ef Ingratitude
dinners ever again. You know, I'm just done with these meetings,
you know, I just don't. And she was going to
(15:39):
ninth Chapter meetings and all she just had enough. I
want to go out Friday night, Saturday night, have a
couple of drinks and dance, right. I want to go
to the meeting Friday night. You know, I don't want
to go to the meeting Saturday night. That's where I need.
That's where my happy place is, not in a bar
dancing while you drink and smoke your pot. You know,
I'm just not doing I don't want to get the
(16:00):
car and smell that anymore. I don't. I just don't
want to be part of that. You know. I can't
be part of that. I can't. And so I mean
I'm blessed to this day, and I'll talk more about
that to be with somebody who's all in in recovery.
Also as in as I am, I could have it
no other way. I could have it no other way.
So so I was able to mend that relationship taking
(16:24):
the risk. There's risk involved. There's risk involved, and that's
that you know in the How It Works And on
the next last page of How It Works, what talks
about Suppose we fall short of the chosen ideas and stumble,
does that mean we're gonna drink? Well, not necessarily, not necessarily,
but as to say, if we if we we know
(16:45):
that we did wrong, and we ask God to take
us to better things and we get back on track,
we brush ourselves off and get back on track, surely
we're gonna stay sober. But if we continue that behavior,
we continue that behavior, then we are we are surely
gonna drink. And he says, these are facts out of
our experience, these are facts of our experience. So then
so then I get to this place where I say, look,
(17:06):
there's bells you can't ring. There's bells you can't unring, right,
you can't unring a cheat bell. You know, you can't
unring the lie, you know, so we have to be
careful where we fall short. I got to be careful
where I fall short. I can't fall short in those areas.
And that road narrows, And we talked about that in
six and seven. That road narrows as we go down
(17:28):
the road. It's not about cheating anymore, you know. It
might just be about lust, you know. And then it
might not be just about lust. It just might be
about flirting, you know. It could The road just starts
to narrow as we go down the road. For me,
I don't know about for her, but for me it
starts to narrow, which I'm sure does for her too.
(17:48):
But the family, you know, my stepfather, God, he got
into a bad deal. You know. It's you know, my
mother was trying to raise four kids on her own.
And when my father left at a very young age,
my mother remarried another flaming alcoholic. You know who got
(18:14):
the opportunity to live with me, you know who was
an addict, alcoholic big time. And this poor guy I
used to take his car, tell him I'm going to
the store. I'll be back in a couple and I'd
be back in a couple of weeks, you know, and
a lot of times the car came back on a
tow truck on a flatbed, you know, because I'd be
trail riding with it or something. It was one I
(18:35):
swear to god, I brought it back missing a rear wheel.
Where's the wheel? I don't know, in the woods somewhere,
you know, little Volkswagen fastback, you know. But that's the
kind of stuff. Yeah, he ended up divorcing my mom
because three out of the four of us caught the bullet.
You know why. There's me and my sister who's two
(18:56):
years less sober than me, and then it skipped my
brother and my baby sister died of an overdose seventeen
years ago. But three out of four of us caught
the bullet. He was dealing with three addicts and alcoholics
in that house and my mother who refused to let
him discipline us, which was just it was bad. And
so they ended up divorced. Then after we were all gone,
(19:20):
they ended up remarried again. Isn't that crazy? Ye? How
do you make amends for that? Yeah? And I made
all of and look, I made the financial amends between
him and my mother. I mean that, and that isn't
really what they wanted. But he may have wanted it,
but I made all the financial amends that I could
(19:42):
bank with him, and and and he he's been he's
been my father, you know for the last thirty five years,
you know. And and so I do anything I can
for him at any time, and it's just just there's
just no way I will ever complete the mends for him.
And you know what happens when we're in this recovery,
(20:03):
we're on this road to recover. We do it because
we want to, not because we have to, you know,
because it's someone in need, and I have the opportunity
to help, and I'm in a position to help, so
I help, And so we could call it, yeah, I'm
still making amends. But I just looked at it as
no matter who it was, and if I was in it,
had the opportunity to help, and I could, I would,
(20:23):
you know. And he's that guy. I would do anything
for him, and he knows that. And my mother, on
the other hand, it had to come through demonstration. There
was no amount of money that was going to repair
the damage that I did to her. I share with
you guys as sleepless nights, and you know, she got
(20:44):
a good night sleep when I was in jail. You know,
leave him there for a while, you know, let me
get some rest, you know. And in the Robb reason,
she didn't even really care about me stealing her stuff,
and she just want her son back. You know, I
got the opportunity to demonstrate that I lost my mother
three years ago. But but over the thirty one years
(21:09):
sober that I got to live with her, I got
to make all the amends that I could possibly make,
and then some and then some, and our relationship became
an amazing bond between the two of us. And but
I you know what, what I think they want and
(21:30):
what they really want are two different things. My mother
was a two time cancer survivor, and and that's all
what killed her. What killed her was knee surgery, you know,
was the beginning of the end of her. She decided
to have knee surgery after surviving cancer twice, you know,
and she gets on the table to do they do
(21:51):
the knee surgery. She flatlines on the table and goes
into acoma and they intubate her and all this other stuff.
And you know, the power of prayer is an amazing thing.
And it is just amazing, you know. And but you know,
praying for my they we had a priest come in
and give her last rites, you know, and I wasn't done.
(22:14):
I just wasn't done making the amends to my wife
and my wife and I prayed over her. And the
next day we're staying. This is after we give her
life's prayers. The next day we're standing beside her and
looking at her, and she opens her eyes and she
looks at me and she says, why can't you get
along with your sister? I went, Really, that's what was
(22:40):
eating her alive, the fact that her siblings didn't get along.
It's got chills, you know. That's what she wanted, was
her children to get along. That's what would make her
happy in that moment, right, crazy, right. I called my
sister that night, said we're good, it's all good. You
(23:02):
need let me know, you know, And it's We've always
had it, to say, the least a ten years relationship.
I'm not going to go into take her inventory. It
was a challenge to call her, let me just say that.
And it's been a challenge to keep contained a relationship
with her, even though my mother has passed. It's a
challenge to maintain a relationship. And you know why I
(23:24):
do it because my mother wanted it. But my mother
wanted it. That's why I do it, you know. And
we do like our book says, we treat them as
we would a sick person, as we are or were,
and I do anything I can to help her if
I can. But my mother came out of that right
and my mother went into rehab, and my mother got
(23:46):
sepsist in rehab, and she ended up back in the
hospital again, in a coma again. And the doctor says,
I don't even know why I'm sharing this with you guys.
So so the doctors her shows me her feet and
her feet are black, and the doctor says, we're gonna
(24:08):
have to take her feet and I said, all you
can't do that says not, it's another way. It's either
that or let her go, you know, And I said, well,
you gotta do what you gotta do, and and he left,
and and my wife and I, Shannon, and I put
hands on my mother's feet and the way we put
(24:28):
some sincere prayers out there, and they took her down
to take her feet off the next morning, and they
were pink. That's incredible, right, I mean, look, I don't
even know how to explain that. And the doctors are like,
I don't know, you know, we do we do, and
(24:51):
that and that my mother came out of the calm.
We got another three years out of my mother before
she passed. You know, h my mother put her life
in my hands before she passed. Not not my not
my stepfather's not my brother, who's not one of us me.
(25:17):
You will make the call. So you will make the call.
When it's time, you will know it, and you will
make the call. And I did. I had to make
the call three years later. But just what a what
a gift to be able to mend those relationships like that.
And it was all about demonstration, it was. And it
was a long road, but it was all about demonstration.
(25:38):
It wasn't anything I said. It was in actions. It
was in actions. My uh, my youngest son, I might
has ever seen me drum. He was too some of
young medam. He's been here, you know, uh, And him
and I have this unbelievably you meek spiritual bond. But
(26:03):
my other son, my oldest son, was twelve when I
got sober, and he's seen the shit man, He's seen
the fists go through the walls. He saw my fist
come through his bedroom door. Because he was so afraid,
he locked himself in his bedroom, and I put my
fist through the door and unlocked the door from the inside.
(26:27):
He remembers seeing his mother knocked to the floor when
I got arrested for assault and battery at the beginning
of the end. Those are the kind of memories I
gave my child. Those are the kind of memories my
father gave me. Where do our defective relationships come from? Right?
(26:48):
I became my father. I became everything I hated in him.
And when it came time to make a menace to him,
I sat down with him and I did that. I
deeply regret what you had to go through and what
you had to see, what you had to endure. And
(27:09):
he did not accept it well. And he said, yeah,
that shit sucked. He said, I was hoping you wouldn't
come back because they moved. We moved them into an
apartment after that, and I got the house, big deal,
got what I wanted. And when him and his mother
started to reconcile, he wanted no part of that. He
(27:31):
was glad not to have me around because he didn't
know me. He didn't know this, He didn't know sober pat.
He only knew violent pad. Yeah, what do we call it?
Discipline through intimidation? Right? We all know that? How many's
old school here. You used to see the look, right,
(27:52):
you get the look, right, you got the look you
you know what's coming after the look? With grandma it
was a shoe you know. Wow, my grandmother could throw
shoes around a corner. So, and it's not that we
(28:13):
didn't we didn't have a bond. It wasn't that we
didn't have a relationship. We did a lot of stuff together.
I took a lot of action to try to mend
that relationship and not to spoil them, but just to
do things together sober and enjoy life together sober fishing
trips and traveling and you know, all kinds of different
stuff that we did together. We had a lot of
fun together. And it wasn't like the relationship was strained
(28:36):
all the time. But anytime I would bring up this amends,
he did not want to hear. He did not want
to hear it. So I'm I'm twenty seven years sober.
I'm doing a step series at Palm Bay and I
(29:01):
get this text from him. He says, I want to
thank you for all the skills you taught me and
the ethics that you've driven into me about working hard
and doing what's right. I know there are plenty of
speed bumps along the way, but I want you to
know how much I appreciate you taking the time to
(29:23):
let me learn and providing me with the foundation for
being successful. I don't know how if I've ever really
said thank you, and I just hope I can continue
to be that person for my kids. I love you,
and I look forward to the next time we get together.
This is twenty seven years later. I wrote back, thank
you so much. I'm so proud of the man you've become.
(29:45):
I couldn't be prouder. Yes, there were speed bumps along
the way, and I truly regret that, but you and
Joe his brother have always been and will always be
the most important people in my life. Thanks for being you.
I always look forward to seeing you guys. Can't wait
to see you again. M hm. He writes back, don't
regret anything, it was all part of the journey, and
(30:08):
have a good night forgiveness. Forgiveness, it's the uh, there's
a line in the nice step. This says there's a
long road of reconstruction ahead. Yeah, for all of us,
For all of us. If you know, if you're newly
(30:29):
divorced and you're you've lost your kids, or you're not
seeing your kids, so there's a warrant out and you're
down here, not just because of the sunshine. You know,
there's something going on up the north. This is this.
If we stay this course, it will it will be okay.
(30:51):
It will all be okay, it will work out, just
not in my time. I want immediate gratification. Right. I
want to say I'm sorry. He said, yes, come home.
I'm sorry. Yeah, I've heard that ship before. Show me,
show me, prove to me. That's what this is about.
(31:15):
That's what it's about. This is not about, you know.
I mean that's what I wanted. I wanted to do
steps one nine and move back in the house. Right. Hey,
I'm an alcoholic. I'm so sorry. I'm coming home. You know.
(31:36):
She said, I'm sorry too. You're not an alcoholic, You're
an asshole who drinks a lot. That's a true story.
I called home. I said, good news. I found out
what's wrong with me, I'm an alcoholic, She said, nope,
you're an asshole. Boa she was. She was pretty accurate. Hey,
(32:04):
it takes a long time, you know, to get over
the selfishness and the self centeredness. You know, it takes
a long time to change. There's a long road of
reconstruction on my end too, not just on repairing the damage,
but on my end in five years? Was I still
selfish and self centered? You're damn right I was. I
wasn't drinking. I was a better person. I surely wasn't
(32:28):
where I wanted to be. But I surely wasn't where
I was. I'm sure I wasn't where everybody wanted me
to be either. I got a divorce at fifteen years sober.
Who does that? Who does that? I mean, who blows
up a marriage fifteen years sober? Oh? You too? There's
(32:49):
too many parallels. Ye talk about feeling like a failure, right,
you know what? You know what that timeline revealed? You
know what that timeline revealed? This is this is scary
that at fifteen years sober, I was still a taker
in relationships, that I still was living with the fault
(33:12):
with faulty relationships, that I was still suffering from abandonment
issues and trust issues. Still fifteen years old, that divorce
felt like the biggest rejection of my life. I was,
I didn't want to drink, but I want it out,
(33:33):
you know what I mean. I want it out. I
want to go. I want to go live in the
woods with deer and shit, you know, dogs and deer.
That's what I wanted, you know, fuck these people, man,
you know, just to be a great world with our people, right,
I mean, I was, I shouldn't tell that story, right.
(34:00):
So I'm ready to leave the planet. I'm ready, like
I'm gonna cooks forests alligating nationalists in Pennsylvania. I'm going there.
I've got a plant, you know. And I'm driving up
and down A one A thinking about how am I
going to tell everybody that I'm going to be a hermit,
you know? And uh, And I get a call from
(34:20):
Billy Galvin. And I've shared with you who Billy was
in my second step. Billy was my guy that I
followed everywhere he went because Billy had what I wanted
and that you follow the people to have what you want.
And I'm not talking about relationships. You know, the people
who are chasing people that have a spiritual solution. That's
what Billy was. And where Billy was, that's where I
(34:42):
wanted to be. I didn't want to know where there
was a meeting. I want to know where Billy is.
Because Billy was chasing guys like Garrett Mauldow. He was
chasing guys like Ben Troxel. He was chasing guys you know,
like like Peter. He was chasing guys like like I
could just go on and on. I mean, there's just
so many giants that I've been chasing around the years,
(35:03):
and that I wanted what he had, and he wanted
what they had, and so I went where he was.
So Billy calls me out of nowhere. I hadn't heard
from Billy in about a year because he had been
on this travel league thing with his kids. And uh,
and I said hey Bill, and he goes yeah. He says, uh,
you were on my heart. I just called to see
what's up. I said, no, I'm fine, you know, He said, no,
(35:27):
something's up. He says, there's a reason why you came
on my heart. And this is why. If if you
get a call from me out of the blue or
text from me out of the blue, that's why, because
you came on my heart in that moment, and I
don't ignore that anymore. Because Billy I came on Billy's heart.
He knew something was wrong, and he wasn't hanging up
until I told him. And I told him, what's going
to a divorce? Man? He said, I want out? I
(35:49):
want out. Well, we're gonna pick you up and take
you a meeting night. I said, nah, sorry, I'm good.
I'm good. Now, we're gonna take you go see Russell. Oh,
I don't do Russell's No, no, no, that's the god
squat there. Man, I don't I don't know. They say
Jesus and all that in the meeting. No, that's not
that's not me. That's he's a tradition violator. You know,
(36:11):
you know it's too bad. We're going to bring you
to see Russell. And they take me. He picks me
up and takes me on on the tracks in North Miami.
He was doing a step series there and and Russell
opens a meeting like this, if you're new here, you
might want to go to a different meeting. Yeah, he says,
(36:32):
I'm here for the guy who's fifteen twenty twenty five
years sober dying inside. Oh my god, you're talking to me,
you know. I mean that just tears started coming on. Now.
I don't anybody that knows Russell. He starts most of
his meetings like that, right, But I think it's me.
It's about me, right. And I go up to him
(36:53):
after me and I said, oh my god, Russell, you
were talking to me. And he said, oh, it really is.
I said yeah, He says, I told him what was
going on. He says, you know, maybe pages eighty four
through eighty eight aren't doing it for you anymore. Maybe
you need more. Maybe this isn't just maybe. Maybe I'm
not saying to abandon what you're doing, but maybe you
(37:13):
need more. Maybe you need to reach outside of AA
for more. And I went I thought about it, and
I said, Okay. Next night, I'm having dinner with Peter
Marrion Allen and Peter and I and Arty from the
Florida House, and we're having this debate about people raising
from the dead, and we're just having babies and shit
(37:35):
like that. And actually Peter was having no debate. I
was debating, you know. And Peter looks at me and
he says, did you ever think you would be sober
fifteen years. I said, no, that's a miracle. He said
it is, isn't it. And I said yeah. And he said, well,
anything's possible now, isn't it. I said yeah maybe. And
(37:57):
we were like, well even the meeting. We're outside of
Frankie Johnny's in Deerfield and Peter looks at me and says,
maybe you should go back to the church of your
childhood and leave for a good reason. And I went home.
It was a Saturday night. I went home, and I thought,
why did I leave? Why did I leave? I left
because I couldn't live up to their principles. That's why
I didn't want to live up to their principles. How
(38:19):
about that I wanted to be on the fun side
of the island where they were smoking dope, you know,
drinking and having sex and you know all that. I
wanted to be on that side, not the side that
talks about abstinence and no sex before marriage and all
that kind of you know. I mean, I didn't want
to be on that side of the island. They had
principles over there, we had none over here, That's what
(38:42):
I mean. And I went back to church the next
morning for the first time since I was thirteen years old,
and I threw up a prayer. Okay, I don't know
how this prayer thing works, you know. I just know
that prayer changes things. That's all I know. I don't
know if it changes me or circumstances. I don't know.
(39:03):
I just know that when I pray, things change, you know.
And I'll talk more about an eleven. But I'm a
big brother Lawrence fan, you know, practicing the presence of
God all the time, all the time. I don't set
aside time for I do pray in the morning, but
I pray all day long. I travel with God all
day long. You know. I'm constantly throwing up prayers. But
(39:26):
I don't know how that works. But I threw up
this God, if you're there, if you're real, show me now.
And I had an experience in that church, and I'll
share with you that that day I put a name
to the God and I understand, you know, and it
just changed my direction. It just changed the direction in
my life. Yeah, rejection or redirection seems like every time
(39:56):
I've been rejected, I've just been redirected to somewhere better,
you know. Stand at that turning point, over and over again.
Which way are we gonna turn? You know, we're gonna
turn away from the recovery, or we're gonna turn towards recover.
We can turn away from God, or were gonna turn
towards God. You know which way are we gonna turn?
We'll stay and you and I will stand at that
turning point over and over and over again. But I
(40:19):
know which way I'm turning because I know I no
longer believe it's rejection. I know it's redirection. And then
that's just happened over No, maybe I'll talk more about
that next week, but that's happened over and over and
over again. I'm gonnaend with this because I stole this
from Trolley Parker, and I love this. You know, I
share with you that fear was my demon. You know that,
(40:40):
and it still is. Fear is my thorn. Fear is
probably what keeps me going to God, what keeps me
coming back to God. You know, without fear, I'm not
so sure I would pray before this meeting. I really don't.
I've learned that fear has become an asset for me
because it forces me to pray, it forces me to
travel God all day long, and I'm okay with that.
(41:03):
I'm all right with that. I love that relationship that
I have today, and I find God here in this room.
I find God when I'm calling one of you guys,
I find God when you call me. I find God.
When I walk into my church. I find God when
I walk into any church, doesn't matter what church it is.
There's so many options I have today to find God.
(41:27):
And whatever you think that is, that's what I'm talking
You're new here. Whatever you think that is, that's what
I'm talking about. You know, you get to define it.
But I suffered terribly from that fear, from that anxiety,
from that torment. And it's sixteen years old. I picked
(41:49):
up a drink and I knew a new freedom and
a new happiness. When I picked up that drink, I
didn't regret the pass or wish to do and shut
the door on it. When I picked up that drink,
I could comprehend the words serenity, and I knew peace.
When I drank, I could see how my experience could
benefit others. When I drank, that feeling of uselessness and
(42:09):
self pity disappeared. When I drank, I lost interests in
selfish things and gained interest in my fellows. When I
picked up a drink, self seeking slipped away. When I
picked up a drink. My whole attitude and outlook on
life changed. When I picked up a drink. Fear of
people and economic insecurity left me. When I drank, I
(42:30):
intuitially knew how to handle situations that used to baffle me.
When I drank, I realized that alcohol was doing for
me what I couldn't do for myself. How could you
not love that? How could you not fall in love
with that? Right? Alcohol was not my problem. Alcohol was
(42:51):
my solution. The spiritual malady was my problem. That's what
we learned here, The spiritual sickness, the fear, the anxiety,
the torment They're Clapton called a torment. I was a
tormented child, he said. Man, I needed something more powerful
(43:13):
than that. You needed to give me something more powerful
than alcohol. You suffer from another substance, substitute your drug
and choice for alcohol, Whatever it is that takes away
that restlessness, that irritability, that discontent, that anxiety, that torment.
And these nine steps put me back together and gave
(43:37):
me what alcohol gave me. God gave me what alcohol
gave me. I shared with you in my fifth step.
It was the first time in my life that I
was at peace without a substance in my body. Now,
you may not believe that you know how, you can
come to believe that do the first freaking nine steps right,
(43:59):
that this is about. That's how faith is born. Right.
All we have to do is get started. Is be
willing to believe that this might work for me or
I'm gonna die an addict alcoholic death. The two there's
door number one or door number two. You know. Now,
if you're not there, you may not buy into this.
You might just say this is all bullshit. But you
(44:23):
couldn't scare my ass out of here. With God, I
was willing to believe that you just might be right.
And that's all it takes if you're new to That's
all it takes is to be willing to do. You say, okay,
go from note to maybe this could work? Why because
I'm gonna die. Because I'm gonna die. You make a
(44:45):
decision to do the work. You do the work, you
get the results. There's the faith. There's the faith when
God entered my heart in my fifth step. There's where
faith was born. I believed in this power greater than myself.
I believe that in this miss understanding of God, that's
really what it was for me, a God of my misunderstanding.
(45:06):
But I knew at that point it was real and
it was re emphasized in that in that experience that
I had in the church. And I still want more.
I still want more of it, right, So I'm going
to continue to do what this program asked me to
do in Step twelve, and I'm going to continue to
(45:28):
grow in understanding and effectiveness as Step eleven says, and
I guess we'll get to that next week. Thanks for
let me be here.
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