Peter M. at East Naples Men's Group - 12/22/2025

Peter M. at East Naples Men's Group, Pembroke Pines, FL. December 22, 2025.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
My name is Peter, recovered alcoholic. Grateful to be alive
and sober and part of a say good place called
Alcoholics Anonymous. Thanks Sheldon for stalking me to be here
for the last few weeks to get here. Glad to
be here and share the good news that was brought
to me June twenty third, nineteen eighty eight, has when
a loving God separated me from alcohol. Very grateful for

(00:23):
this gift of sobriety, Very grateful for the many things
that this loving God has brought to me, but especially
grateful for the many things God has removed for me.
And that's basically my ideas about what my life's supposed
to look like and where I'm supposed to be and
what money I'm supposed to have, and basically running my
own show that has little by slowly been removed for me.

(00:46):
I would love to report to you has been completely
removed to me. But I get my own way. Sometimes.
I do have a home group. It's called No Problems
Just Solutions in Boca ratone and we meet on Wednesday
night at seven third. It's a little big book study.
It's just I love being there. On Wednesday. We meet
at seven thirty but we're there at six, and we

(01:07):
break the meeting up at eight thirty, and we're there
after nine. It kind of reminds me of the old
days when I was getting sober. Nobody headed home. They
hung out and waited for the new people, and we
kind of mingled and fellowship. And what I love about
Alcoholics Anonymous. One of the many things I loved about
Alcoholics Anonymous is the music of us before the meeting starts.
It's the soul food. It's the sole music you can

(01:29):
hear it because, based on many of our stories, we're
not supposed to be here. And then the fellowship and
the gratitude that follows. It's music for the soul and
I really enjoy that. I get to experience a lot
of that at my home group. I'm currently sponsoring eleven
guys and my sponsor is out of Saint Paul. His
name is Bob Izon. They just made fifty eight years

(01:51):
sober a couple of weeks ago, so he's a real
old timer and his lessons have been invaluable to me.
So just so grateful. My wife is in recovery almost
as long as I am, and where God has put
us right in the middle of AA with the people
we sponsor, meetings, we get to, the conferences we get to.

(02:13):
It's just a great way of life. I could not
fathom another way of living. I know civilians go to work,
come home and spend time to the family, go to bed,
and do it all over again. That's wonderful, but I
can't picture that existence. For me. It's get home from
work and get out to a meeting and meet us
and hang out, and God knows when we're going to
get home and we do it again. It's just a

(02:35):
great way of living. Before I get going, I am
on a short leasha with Christmas a few days away.
If you do celebrate Christmas. There was a time I
was thinking about this the other day, many years ago.
Was about nineteen eighty one, eighty two, and I took

(02:56):
my first arrest just a couple of days before Christmas.
And I was hanging out with someone in Lower Manhattan,
if anyone knows that area. I was underneath the FDR
Drive near the New York Post Building, if anyone's familiar
with that. And next thing it was a banging on
my window and handcuffs went on, and I ruined Christmas
for my entire family and they would taken hostage. And

(03:19):
I remember I was at one hundred centis Street waiting
to see the judge. I think they called the tombs,
and I'm petrified. I'm thinking I'm going to get the
electric chab. I'm the only guy's going to get the
death sentence. And these are guys who've been in and out.
They were better than the lawyer's jail house lawyers. I'm
scared to death, and all I kept telling myself, I
get out of this one. I'll never do it again.

(03:41):
I got released and I went right back to where
I got arrested as soon as I got out of there,
and they were going to be many more arrests and
many more ruined holidays and many more attempts at I
just want to die until nineteen eighty eight rolled around.
You know, we live life foe and understand it backwards

(04:03):
looking back on it. Even consequences bad ones couldn't keep
me away from a drink, and I had a history
of nonconference approved dry goods too. It couldn't keep me
away from that. But God could and would when I
knocked on his door and he was sought, And that's
what happened to me in nineteen eighty eight. June of
nineteen eighty eight, I was living in an abandoned building

(04:25):
in Lower East Side of Manhattan. I was homeless for
a while and panhandling and in that life, and on
June twenty third of eighty eight, the very same God
I had despised. Quite frankly, I was never an atheist,
but I hated God. I thought he was cruel, punitive, unjust,

(04:45):
you name it. And it took my mom when I
was just a kid, and my dad and I never
got along. Bad things happened to me as a little
boy too, by some man, I was being molested. So
I didn't believe in this loving God by the time
I was twenty twenty eight years old. And the very
same God who I've had these really bad feelings to

(05:06):
is the very same God I beg for mercy. The
bottom was brought to me in a place of I
didn't even have the ability to wallow in my own
self pity. I'd have the ability to figure my life out.
I was in a place of despair, such despair, you know,
that place where desperation screams louder than the ego. For

(05:28):
a brief moment, we kind of flatline, if you will.
There were no options. There was no girlfriend, it was
no job, there was nothing. It was me in an
abandoned hallway. And I realized in this moment, I reek,
I haven't bathed and God knows how long, and I'm dying.
And I weighed about one hundred and thirty pounds when
I got into my seven treatment center and I had

(05:50):
hepatitis scene. I'm urinating blood and I'm dying. But in
this hallway, I asked God to please take me from this.
I don't want to die. I wasn't thinking about it
a treatment or detox or any of this stuff. I
just don't want to die. That's as right as I
could have been. God made me right size, if you will,
And through a series of circumstances, I was placed in

(06:13):
my seven treatment center, and quite frankly, at the beginning,
it was very bump before me was I was like
kind of in survival mode. But I haven't looked back.
I've been here since. It took seven treatment census. It
took me to the Park Avenue park bench. I was
the park bench guy. My first drunk came at fourteen

(06:35):
years old. I'm an old Brooklyn boy Brooklyn, New York.
And what we did back then, the older guys did,
the worldly guys, the men who were like seventeen, They
hung out on street corners and they drank Cole forty
five beer in the summertime. Was hanging out a street corner,
listening to music, flirting with the girls and rough housing.
And everyone wanted to be a gangster, and it was

(06:57):
it was what I grew up with, and I wanted
to be like those folks on a corner on a
Saturday night, drinking and having some fun. But what was
going on inside of me was just the opposite. You know,
that fear based insecure, the square peg in a round hole.
I have a story that's a secret that I was
molested for a couple of years as a boy. My

(07:19):
mom just took her own life via suicide, and my dad.
You know, everyone's afraid of, including me. So I don't
have a design for living. I don't know what to
do now. None of that stuff makes me an alcoholic,
but they are ingredients that went into making me who
I was and how I operated out in the world,

(07:42):
how I saw the world, how I heard the world,
how I spoke, and it was a broken vessel right
from the get go. I've heard enough stories over the
years many of us walk in with something called trauma,
which is for professionals to kind of iron out. It
doesn't make me an alcoholic, But all of those things

(08:03):
were my blueprint. How I'm going to school, how I'm
interacting with other people. Well, one Saturday night, a quart
of cold forty five beer went around and I grabbed
hold of it and I began to drink. I'd never
been drunk before, but halfway through a quart of beer,
I'm feeling something I never experienced before. Now Big book

(08:25):
talks about a sense of ease and comfort that comes
out once by taking a few drinks at once. Halfway
through a cord of beer, I'm feeling nice. I'm traveling
light for the first time. Maybe you know when I
was dawn off, I was the last time I traveled
travel light. I'm feeling pretty good. And by the time
I finish a quarter of beer, I'm drunk and I

(08:46):
know it. I can feel drunk. It's warm and fuzzy.
I like it. Nothing can hurt me. I felt invincible.
I was back in the saddle, and as an alcoholic
who's always seeking control. When I was drunk, I felt
in control. I was out of control, but I felt
in control. Walking back to my dad's house, I had

(09:08):
this thought, I'd never want to be sober again. I'm
never going to make music against sober. I'm never going
to play sports against sober. I'm not going to school sober.
I never want I want to be drunk for eternity.
I love the effect produced by it. Yeah, I had
no idea that my alcoholism doesn't come in a bottle
of whiskey, because when I got to alcoholics Anonymous at
twenty eight years old, physically sober, I'm still operating as

(09:30):
an eighteen year old kid, completely untreated. I'm sounding alcoholic,
I'm hearing alcoholic, and I don't have a drinking me.
I can die from alcoholism, what out of a drinking
And so that's where I was battling. And I don't realize,
and this has happened to me in sobriety, how much

(09:54):
bondage I am in until I taste a little bit
of freedom, and I look back and say, why was
I doing that? Why was I with this person? Why
was I experiencing this? I'm out now. When I got drunk.
I was out and I waited for the following Saturday
to roll around, and I got drunk, and progression does
what progression does. And I started to drink a lot.

(10:18):
And by the time I was around nineteen years old,
I'm not drinking be I'm drinking liquor now, and I
get introduced to outside issues to make the liquor feel
even better, non conference approved dry goods, and I loved
the effect produced by all of it. By the time
I got into my fifth treatment center, I got the

(10:40):
trifecta going. I got booze, pills, and heroin all going
in my body at the same time. And that's all
I'll say about drugs. This is alcoholics anonymous. My last
two treatment centers was over a number of years, was
alcohol and taking sedatives. That was it. And I couldn't
get out of that. So I go into my first

(11:01):
treatment center around nineteen eighteen, something like this. And I
went there because I got caught stealing from my dad
and he put pieces in a puzzle together and placed
me in my first treatment center. Now I don't get
I just know I start drinking. I don't like stopping.
I had no idea about this phenomenon called craving. It's

(11:23):
unbelievable with folks like us. The first drink we have
to take because the mind sets you got to and
for some reason, I got to have a second drink.
I don't get out, figuratively even literally. I'm glued to
a bar stool and life is passing me by. I
got to get home, I got to get to work,
I got to see the kids. One more drink and

(11:44):
I'll pay any price tomorrow, see comfort tonight. I'll do
it tomorrow. I'll make it up tomorrow. I'll fix it tomorrow.
But right now I'm here and I can't get out.
It's a sad place for me to be. And I've
gotten there when I can't even get there anymore from drink,
and I'm not getting loaded. I'm not getting nice anymore.
I'm drinking basically to breathe at the end, to stop

(12:07):
the shaking and stop getting sick. That's my existence. Drink,
eat some pills. I'm good. I'll figure it out tomorrow.
And I can't get out. Many times I wanted to
stop and quit, just to continue doing it again. So
I go to this treatment center for thirty days. I
get out and I'm drunk in an hour. In fact,

(12:31):
stix out of seven treatment centers. If I wasn't locked
up or in treatment, I was drunk or to pursuit
of getting money to get drunk. I wasn't a guy
who bounced in an out of AA or had thirty
or sixty or ninety days or a few months together,
and then readly, that's not my story. I had no time.

(12:51):
Two days of sobriety is what I was able to
accomplish over six treatment centers over a number of years.
I get out of treat drunk within an hour, and
the trap doors have trap doors, and I woind up
making my second and third and fourth treatment center and
going into my fifth treatment center, my bodies all mark up.

(13:14):
They diagnosed me with this thing called hepatitis C. I
lost my job. I was a long showman. I started
as a long showman in Brooklyn Waterfront. Good money, great benefits,
very very powerful union, maybe the second at the time,
the second most powerful union in the country. You cannot
get fired from this job. If you worked in New

(13:37):
York and got fired, there'll be a workstop, patrollaway to California.
Nothing would move. You cannot get fired from this job.
I got fired from that job. There was no strike,
nothing for all the stuff I was doing. My dad
was one of the when I call shop STU its

(13:57):
there and I brought nothing but shame and embarrassment to him.
I wouldn't show off for work, you know, doing a
lot of illegal activities. Anything wasn't nailed down. I was
taking it that kind of thing. And they said, don't
come to work anymore. And the guy who said that
was my dad, don't come here anymore. I'm firing him.

(14:18):
And so I lost all of that. I go into
my fifth treatment center and they said, listen, you pick
up a drink. Soon as you leave, we're going to
keep you a little bit longer. So they decided to
hold on to me past the thirty day mark, with
nine weeks, and back in the day, that was unheard
of for an impatient treatments. And there's twenty eight thirty days.
I will tell you this. You know your life's not

(14:40):
going well when you're side of the door doesn't have
a door knobs. That's not a good sign. And so
after nine weeks of being in treatment, I'm bathing and
I'm eating, I'm going to group. They're taking me to
physical therapy and all of those nice things. And I
get this charge on a Saturday, and I'm drunk Monday.

(15:02):
I was at my dad's house for a couple of days.
I didn't know where to go. I called him collect
He had told me get in the cab and just
come home from Amityville, Long Island, back to my dad
was living in a place called Staten Island, New York.
It's a long drive, so y'all pay the cab when
it gets here. And I walked in the house and
my brother's wan thrilled to see me. One brother said,
what's he doing? He's gonna ruin everything because I took

(15:24):
whatever didn't belong I was a thief. I stole everything
and brought it to the pawn shop, but tried to
sell it on the street because God forbid, I should
get a job. And so I'm drunk on Monday, and
I remember I took a car that didn't belong to me.
It was around four o'clock in the morning, and I
cannot take Saturday Sunday of not having anything in me.

(15:49):
I need a drink. The world's going too fast, as
too much noise in the head, you know, all the
noise in the head, we get all the thinking that
creates our current reality. Whatever my mind tells me, it
must be true because I thought of it. But if
you tell me it as well, that's crazy. But they're
my thoughts, so it's true. And I can't take all
the noise, and I sneak out of the house around
four o'clock. I take a car that doesn't belong to me.

(16:10):
I head to South Brooklyn and I wait for the
liquor so to open it by one pint of whiskey
and take the edge off. But no one's open, and
I feel myself getting more agitated and more anxious and
more uncomfortable. So I start to pay something down on
the sidewalk, waiting for this guy to open up the
liquor store. And by the time he did and I

(16:33):
ran and are put my money underneath the petition. It
was a swinky joint, full aproof class, and I put
my money on anything, and he gives me a pint
and I go outside at twist Colck. I start drinking
the cop off and I started drinking and immediately I
felt relief. Now what's really frightening about this is I
was physically sober. My body didn't need alcohol or anything

(16:56):
else that was going to affect me from the neck
up with me. But my alcohoism doesn't come in a
bottle of whiskey. My mind's screaming, we need a drink
to slow life down, just to breed, just to feel comfortable,
to the point where it began to feel physical, like
my body felt like it was sick. My hands are clamming,
my forehead is sweating. I'm anxious, my heart's racing. I

(17:18):
need something. And I finished a pint and it worked.
I settled down and took the edge off. I was okay,
But as I said earlier, I'm an alcoholic. So I
had to go back into the liquor store and buy
a second pint. I'm not getting out and I finished that,
I'm getting drunk, and I went on a really, really

(17:39):
bad one. I got in a lot of trouble and
I didn't see that coming. That wasn't in the forecast.
The forecast, We're just gonna get a little drinking pool
and take the edge off. And I had a really
bad time out there. I got in trouble not only
with the law, but with the wrong folks, and my
Dad would scoop me up and get me out of
those jams over and over and over again, and I
landed in my six treatment center. By the way, I'm

(18:02):
out of insurance at this point, my poor dad is
going into his pocket and forking over money to get
me away from me. If you will, over and over
and over again, if it wasn't for the courage, strength
and direction that my heavenly father gave my dad, you'd
have a different speaking here tonight, because it got me
to you, and you kept me alive and showed me

(18:23):
a way of living. I walked out of my six
treatment center after thirty six hours. The realization of the
damage I had done to my family and what I
had done to my life burst upon me, and it
was bad. In the Big Book it says we will
tell you how we got out from under. I didn't

(18:48):
think there was a way out from under. I'm too deep.
I'm totally unemployed. I'm a homeless bum. Who's going to
let me eat? And who's gonna come near me? And
the damage I did to my family and I know
I am not ever gonna get sober. My mind is

(19:10):
telling me it's not gonna happen for you. So I
had this idea that if I get out of here,
I can just take my life and go away. This
has been a big mistake. I don't belong here. It's
been bad since I can remember. And I was in
some fleetbag motel in Staten Island, New York, and some

(19:30):
woman who was a bomb made for pity on me.
She said, I rent upstairs, take the couch, you can
stay there. And one night, when she finished the shift,
I went into a pocketbook to steal the money that
she made and I found pills. I found a bunch
of valume and I ate them and washed them down
with alcohol and got on this couch and I waited
to die. I welcomed the idea of dying because the

(19:52):
only thing I can come up with. It was so awful,
and God interrupted my death. And I was on the
streets and all I couldn't consume enough alcohol to make
the pain go away. And no matter how many times
it went into treatment, once I pick up a drink,
I need a second drink, and then I need a
third drink, and then I need another drink, and I

(20:13):
don't care what the consequences are. And when I'm not
drinking I'm restless here and discontented, and all myliveness is
dead in that can happen alcoholics Anonymous. My first six
months in here, I'm doing two and three meetings that
Dad was living in Minnesota. And I can't even get
comfortable in the rooms anymore because I'm way beyond restless,
you and discontented in one hundred forms of fear. I'm

(20:34):
not okay. I have no design for living in all
my mind is telling me after this meeting, let's go
get a drink, after the next meeting, let's go get
a drink. And I'm basically holding my breath for six months,
and I almost got loaded. And God's intervention, God's grace
got in away of that. I showed up at some
guy's doorstep, this guy Jot from Saint Paul Cottage Grove, Minnesota.

(20:57):
And I got to his house and I told him
my plight. He says, where are you with God in
the twelve Steps? I says, when do you start the steps?
He said, when you stop throwing up? You're late. This
disturbed me. I wanted a hug and I understand, let's
have some coffee and you know that kind of warm

(21:17):
and fuzzy stuff. He wasn't interested in my feelings. He
saw a guy dying in front of him. I better
give this guy the truth. He really annoyed me, but
I heard him, and I didn't hear him with my mind.
I heard him with my soul. I'll share this what
God has done not only for me, but so many
of us without even steps in our life, just with

(21:37):
a pure intent. I don't want to die, need help.
God will close the ears to the mind and open
up the ears to the soul. So we're hearing something
for the first time, even though it's been spoken about
many times prior, we're hearing it. I've heard Joe speak
a million times. I don't hear anything, and then one
day I walk in Suddenly I hear Joe and he

(21:58):
makes sense to me. And about a year later, I
went to Minnesota after my seventh treatment center by the way,
and I was in Amityville, Long Island for the seventh time.
About two weeks later, they sent me out to Minnesota
lived out there for a year. I was brought to
my first home group in Brooklyn, and I found my

(22:19):
first sponsor. And I've had wonderful, wonderful men sponsor me
out of this book. And there was a time where
I got worshiping the mechanics. I became mechanical, and I
forgot that this is a treasure map that takes me
to the treasure. I thought this was the treasure. I
loved the book. I love the mechanics, but their vehicles

(22:40):
to take me that power, which is allow me to
do the steps. In the meantime, I had to find out,
like most of my lessons, the hard way, that I
do the steps not to keep me sober, but do
the steps to experience the power which is keep me
sober all along. He's always press he's always consistent, and
so I'm able to step into a new place in
my life. Yeah, you know, it says we alcoholics are undisciplined.

(23:03):
I had to get disciplined. But my discipline, quite frank,
has turned into devotion with God, with alcoholics, anonymous, with prayer,
with meditation. This whole life that we're in has gone
from discipline to devotion. That doesn't make me better than anyone.
It's just my walk because this speaker me is broken

(23:24):
in flaw. This is a broken toy you're looking at. Well,
I'm a car when it drives away, lives a big
oil spot on the ground. The door squeaked. Well, anyone
over sixty knows about squeaking, so I don't think any
I used to wake up and run over to the
coffee pot. I kind of mambo very slowly over to
the coffee pot. And my body makes all these weird
sounds now, but that's me. I will cause a traffic

(23:46):
jam on ninety five when I'm the only guy on
the road, because there's something called thinking, and it seems
to me when I'm in diseased and discomfort, I forgot
about God, and when I'm in a place of visa,
I've remembered about God. So my job is to chop wood,
carry water, plower field that God you the growing, and

(24:07):
past this on for fun and for free, with the
same love and gratitude that you bring it to me with.
Every time I walk into a meeting of alcoholicsnoms, I've
been not only over the country, but to Europe many
times for Alcoholics Anonymous. And when I walk into a room,
they say, hey, welcome, not like who are you, which

(24:29):
is what I'm used to. Who are you? Who do
you know? You know? It's just welcome. At the door,
I have a couple of coffee sit down. I leave
with a whole bunch of new friends. Only in AA.
It's the greatest place in the world for me. That's
all I got in peace.