Stevie B. Step 1: Step Series at Life Is Good Group - 12/11/2025

Stevie B. Step 1: Step Series at Life Is Good Group, Boca Raton, FL. 12/11/2025

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hardbody. My name is Stevie bham Or, recovered alcoholic.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Member of the Golden Text group in Hollywood, Florida.

Speaker 1 (00:07):
God bless you guys. Great to be here with you.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
And I want to say that, you know, just in
case it's your first time seeing me and you think that, like,
who is this guy? Like, like do I think any
of this has to do with me? I am a
guy that knows that none of this has to do
with me. I'm a guy that is so excited to

(00:34):
be here with you. Like I couldn't I was like
Christmas last night.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
I couldn't even sleep thinking about being here with you.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
I couldn't even wait to get here to tell you
what a disaster of my life was. I couldn't wait
to tell you some of the worst. And by the way,
I want you to know I respect alcoholics Anonymous that
none of this is going to be about drugs, but
except some of it. And and I do want to

(01:04):
tell you that some of the worst drug addicts that
I've ever met in the history of my entire life
are in this room tonight.

Speaker 1 (01:10):
So and that's that's the Gods hon this truth.

Speaker 2 (01:15):
So Alcoholics Anonymous is the answer. Alcoholic synonymous and God
is the answer to all of our problems in here.
I know people in here that couldn't get sober no
matter what. This is time of Christmas year. There's a
drug addict that was so serious of a drug addict

(01:36):
in this room that during the Christmas play, everybody dressed
up as the guards. There was guards, the Roman guards,
you know anything about the play, And and he was
so high on crack during this show that when he

(01:58):
was his line was hark who goes there?

Speaker 1 (02:01):
He was like, hark who goes there? He was like
like this, that's how bad he was as a drug addict.
And he's celebrating eleven years on the nineteenth.

Speaker 2 (02:13):
But God, you see alcoholics Anonymous is a butt God
situations about God's story, and God knows your story and
where you were going until he stepped in.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
Every year that I come here, and I've been.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
Blessed to come here every one or two years, it's
because that man James invited.

Speaker 1 (02:35):
Me here many many years ago. He's the founder of
this meeting.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
And if you remember last year and the year before,
he couldn't be here in person. Last year when I
did the Step series, James was online watching from prison
and the year before watching from prison and what that,
and we came in together.

Speaker 1 (02:59):
We have the same out of time.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
And I say that because he's the founder of this meeting.
The only reason that I was here the first time
is he invited me.

Speaker 1 (03:10):
And he lost his way, and any one.

Speaker 2 (03:14):
Of us on any given day, regardless of the amount
of time that you're sober, can lose your way. If
you become your way, if you let the things of
Alcoholics Anonymous get in the way of Alcoholic Synonymous.

Speaker 1 (03:27):
You will lose your way.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
One the thing that needs to be number one, which
is God, and number two alcoholics Synonymous right there, one
and two. If they become three or four and other
things become one or two, you lose your sobriety. Now
that doesn't necessarily mean you're drunk, that doesn't mean you
get high. There's people in Alcoholics Anonymous that have lost
that have lost their spiritual sobriety, but they're physically sober.

(03:55):
When people Harvey has almost fifty years and I get
to be with him almost on a daily basi, he's
not just physically sober, he's spiritually sober and mentally so
I'm not perfect.

Speaker 1 (04:06):
No what he is.

Speaker 2 (04:08):
But there's people that are physically sober in the program,
and I don't want anything that they have. I can't
even I don't even want to be in a conversation
because they're so dry. If I lit a match, they
would go up in flames in air, and you can
see them because they have a squinty face.

Speaker 1 (04:26):
They're face squints.

Speaker 2 (04:28):
They look like moles and they're hanging in there.

Speaker 3 (04:34):
Forty four years of continuous sobriety, by the grace of God,
and Alcoholics Anonymous, you keep that sobriety.

Speaker 1 (04:46):
I can't stay on that sobriety.

Speaker 2 (04:48):
If Alcoholics Anonymous is not enjoyable and fun and encouraging
and outrageous and all the things that this meeting is,
I'm not coming. I'm gonna go to a different media.
I'm not leaving AA, but I'm gonna go to that.
I'm going to find the meeting.

Speaker 1 (05:01):
But this is my tribe.

Speaker 2 (05:04):
Most people that come here today want something more than
the typical let's talk about the car, the job, the
girl or boy nonsense. They want something that's bigger and better.
They want something that The big Book of alcoholisnomos so
fourth dimension of existence. And the people I hang around

(05:26):
with and the places I go that all dictates that.

Speaker 1 (05:31):
And if you're here for the first time, and I
know that there's people online there here for the first.

Speaker 2 (05:34):
Time, and there's people that are not even in recovery,
in recovery for drugs and alcohol. But I want you
to know something, if you're not here, if you're here
and you're not in recovery from drudge and alcohol, everybody's
recovery from something.

Speaker 1 (05:47):
We all have something that we're recovering from.

Speaker 2 (05:51):
It's just that in AA we know what it is
because of the debauchery that we caused in the wake
of our using On page fifty two of the big
book about College Anonymous, as we're in the step one,
it talks about some of the problems that we had
when we were out there and really could be even

(06:11):
some of the problems when you're in here if you're
not working currently working the steps, even if you're not
involved in the steps, And page fifty two it talks
about the problem.

Speaker 1 (06:20):
We're gonna talk a lot about the problem tonight. So
if there's war stories tonight, it's not gonna be war
stories for twelve weeks, trust me. But in order for
me to qualify.

Speaker 2 (06:29):
And if I say I was rolled up in a
carpet or I peeped out of a window for three
days straight with one eye and I and I say
that's from Scotch, that would seem silly.

Speaker 1 (06:38):
Wouldn't That would seem silly.

Speaker 2 (06:45):
So of course I'm gonna mention around about drugs, but
not not specifically.

Speaker 1 (06:50):
It's not drug story, but it is my story and
part of the problem.

Speaker 2 (06:56):
On page fifty two, it tells us that we are
having trouble with personal relationships.

Speaker 1 (07:02):
Now, these things we call the.

Speaker 2 (07:04):
Bedevilments are going to be answered in the steps. We
specifically see halfway through the ninth step that we'll get
to during the step series that they get not only answered,
but they get healed. And for a lot of us,
because there's people that here are there's newcomers in here, you're.

Speaker 1 (07:20):
Already seeing that some of these things are getting healed.

Speaker 2 (07:23):
Just by putting down the drink, in the drug you're
already feeling better about. You already have money in your pocket,
You already know where you were the night before.

Speaker 1 (07:33):
These are some of the little tiny promises.

Speaker 2 (07:36):
The little tiny promise if you drive you know where
the cars park, you don't wake up with somebody go
who are you? And that person doesn't wake up going, well,
who are you?

Speaker 1 (07:54):
So those are little promises that happen.

Speaker 2 (07:56):
You'll have extra money, you'll have a piece even in
the even listen today, I was. I was in a
stressful couple of minutes, and then I remembered the wet
drunk that I was just dealing with a couple of
days ago, and how it is to be drunk, how

(08:18):
it is to be high, how it was for me
when I had eighteen months and I was in Minneapolis
and I relapsed on on drugs and be hiding in
a sober building, hiding behind a furnace in the basement
because I felt that people were coming in. My roommate,
who was sober years she comes in, she goes, you know,

(08:41):
what are you doing because she was an alcoholic. She
had never been around my drug a choice before. And
I was hiding because I knew the police were coming
in at any time. And she just came home from
work and she's like, what are you doing. I'm like,
you know, it's not the time to speak out loud.

(09:07):
I'm behind a furnace.

Speaker 1 (09:08):
This is it. They're about to break break the building,
and when.

Speaker 2 (09:18):
We remember how bad it was, and that's a story
that I could just tell with with humor, that that's
a good story.

Speaker 1 (09:26):
Compared to where I went.

Speaker 2 (09:30):
I'm not I'm not even gonna mention the suicide attempts.
I'm not gonna mention wanting to kill myself at the
fort lord of the hospital, wanted to throw myself out
the window of the second story. I'm not gonna mention
having to show up at a detox in Minnesota in
the middle of a winter that was Native American detox,
and having to pretend I was a Native American that
was mute. I'm not gonna bring that up. Because they

(10:01):
were horrible times. Not everyone shot at people from across
the parking lot, but we all were in places that
broke our own hearts.

Speaker 1 (10:14):
And we get sober, and within a couple of weeks
some of.

Speaker 2 (10:16):
Us remember what we just did and the feeling of
low self esteem and no self esteem and how could
I have done it?

Speaker 1 (10:22):
And I did it again.

Speaker 2 (10:23):
It's so overwhelming. We don't think we'll ever get back.
And I want you to look around the room, because
this is a get back room. Not only do we
get back, we get a new life. We're reborn. The
Big Book says, we have a new life. People say,
I want to get back. I don't want my old life.
My old life is what I used from, Not that
it was anything terrible, but the feelings of self pity

(10:46):
and restlessness and irritability.

Speaker 1 (10:49):
I don't want that old life. I want a new life.

Speaker 2 (10:53):
Like walking in here today high five and people are
hugging people.

Speaker 1 (10:57):
This is gonna be a great time. We're gonna talk
about God. It's gonna be amazing. The New Life.

Speaker 2 (11:02):
And Alcoholics Anonymous promises that the first one hundred and
sixty four pages of The Big Book specifically points all
the way at God, and everything in the program points
all the way at God. And if you're here tonight
and said, well I don't have a God conscious, then
guess Watt's faith is a muscle that has to.

Speaker 1 (11:20):
Be worked out.

Speaker 2 (11:22):
And people say, and I have a friend here from
high school, And if I had, if she said, we
were not faithful people in high school. We weren't looking
at it and telling I can't wait to talk about God.

Speaker 1 (11:35):
You know, forty years from.

Speaker 2 (11:36):
Now, everybody has an emotional challenge with faith. Nobody is
born with any more faith than everybody else, and everybody
is born with enough faith to last a lifetime. But
how we exercise that muscle is how we grow in
our faith. Faith is an action word. Harvey doesn't have

(12:01):
any more faith than the rest of us. He just
worked at it longer. The person that knows about their
faith is someone that's actively seeking their faith. Bob Davis
is here tonight and he has inner workings of the
Big Book and how to do the steps.

Speaker 1 (12:19):
He didn't grow up with that. He studied it.

Speaker 2 (12:23):
You practice it, and faith is a saving exact way.

Speaker 1 (12:26):
Faith is a muscle, and the more you practice, the
easier it becomes. And some days it's going to seem
like God has a long.

Speaker 2 (12:34):
Distance call, but you pick up the phone anyway. And
here's the problem Phage fifty two. We were having trouble
with personal relationships. We couldn't control our emotional natures. We

(12:56):
were prayed to misery and depression. We couldn't make a living.
We had the feeling of uselessness. Maybe this is so
far away from you you don't remember, but try to
put yourself back when you were in the first five years,

(13:20):
clawing back, getting back, saving for the car, getting back
into a home that's not with seven other people that
you are not related to. Maybe getting the bicycle first

(13:43):
and getting the job, then getting teeth.

Speaker 1 (13:51):
These are all part of the promise. And some of
you have the whitest aa teeth. Ever, so oh, you
didn't come in with that. Well, let's be honest. I
got a friend from narcotics anonymous. He asked for teeth

(14:14):
that aren't even of the color pattern of the world.

Speaker 2 (14:17):
He has ultra white, extra galactic white teeth.

Speaker 1 (14:31):
We were unhappy. I was unhappy. We were unhappy.

Speaker 2 (14:36):
It didn't matter if I took a happy drug and
I was up all night pretending I was happy. The
moment that drug didn't work, I had to take more
of that drug. I looked around. There are other people happy.
I'm just jumping up and down pretending to be happy.
Up and down, up and down, up and down, up
and down. If I was on one thing, I wanted another.
If I was with Susie, I wanted to be over there.

(14:58):
If I was at this party, I wanted know what
you were doing.

Speaker 1 (15:01):
I never had any feeling of a lengthy joy. It
was always a fleeting moment.

Speaker 2 (15:08):
Wow, that's an that was an amazing hit. Now it sucks.
This is an unbelievable party.

Speaker 1 (15:15):
This sucks. This is the best girl. You suck, Always
left wanting.

Speaker 2 (15:30):
Never enough, the god size hole getting bigger with every drink,
rolling around in self pity and bitter remorse and hating
the person I'd become, but looking in the mirror, not
even be able to resemble myself anymore, and not knowing
how to get out of it. This is the first step.

(15:57):
Everyone has to complete that to be in the program.
Does that mean you need to go to the big
Does that mean you need to go to the lowest floor. No,
but you have to have a floor that's low enough
for you. I've been to jail, you know. Every time

(16:20):
I say that, Jerry laughs.

Speaker 1 (16:22):
Because he'd been to real jail. You're a big people. Jail,
you know, like overnight jail.

Speaker 2 (16:30):
But I've been to jail, and that's what's tough enough
for me. I don't ever want to do overnight jail.

Speaker 1 (16:37):
That was horrible. I was in short term jail, and
when I say that, he always.

Speaker 2 (16:44):
Laughs, Well, that was bad enough for me, Like being
in jail almost overnight was bad for me. You get
off on whatever floor you want you don't have to
go down to the basement on the elevator get off tonight.

(17:04):
You may be here just kicking the tires and you
didn't even you've never been to jail. You don't have
to go to jail. You haven't even lost a job.
But you don't have peace of mind. Full of fear.
That's one of the big ones. Full of fear. I
was afraid of everything, afraid of being caught, afraid of

(17:27):
not having enough, afraid of being alone, like a million fears,
real or imagine.

Speaker 1 (17:31):
This is all on page fifty two. This is the
beginning of the program that bedevilments. I honestly can say
that I have so much less fear today.

Speaker 2 (17:44):
I think that's one of the big promises right there,
that we will know a new freedom and the new happiness.
I mean, we're not there tonight in the first step,
but I want you to know it. Not only does
that happen, it's a promise. Don't we say the promises
in the program, and we just we just reiterate them.

Speaker 1 (18:04):
We don't understand that these are these are promises.

Speaker 2 (18:08):
I can just go down each road, but God, but God,
but God, but God, Happy joys and free lives not perfect,
not stress free.

Speaker 1 (18:21):
We're gonna lose people.

Speaker 2 (18:23):
People are gonna die, people are gonna disappoint you, and
you will get through it and never alone again. In
this room, I have maybe forty people. I can call
it anytime forty. Instead of having a really difficult day,
I'm in my head. Can you take a call and
they'll call me back. We couldn't seem to be of

(18:48):
real help to other people. Was not a basic solution
of these bedevilments. Just the word. You can see, this
is not of God. This is from the devil. The
devil creates, The devil creates all this. This is from
the devil. Now we're not gonna get religious. You don't
like the word devil. Then called disease. But this is
not God. None of this comes from God. It comes

(19:15):
from the disease of alcoholism. I'm not at ease with myself,
and I was never at ease.

Speaker 1 (19:25):
I was always feeling.

Speaker 2 (19:26):
Like there was a school and everybody in the school
got the instructions and I missed it. Everybody in my
neighborhood had big brothers. On my block, it was a
big brother block. And when you walk to the playground
with your big brothers. That's where you got your juice.

(19:47):
You're backing, and I had a little chubby system, which
gets you no juice.

Speaker 1 (20:01):
And I felt that if I had big brothers.

Speaker 2 (20:04):
Everything would have been different. They teach you sports, there
your back up. People fear you.

Speaker 1 (20:12):
No one fears you with the system.

Speaker 2 (20:16):
There was the Mundingers, the Woolies, the Mattas, the Wagamans.

Speaker 1 (20:22):
They all had big.

Speaker 2 (20:23):
Brothers, three of them, and I had my sister, and
I felt that was part of the big problem. And
there was a new coach that came to school. Now
I realized that if you've been in Step series before
with me, you know the story. But there's a lot
of people that don't know the story. And this is

(20:44):
my story, so I'm gonna have to tell some of
the same stories. Otherwise I'm gonna tell someone else's story,
which I can do. There was a new coach that
came to school and he looked at the roster and
he saw my last name, which was Boyarsky, and he
says Boyarsky, and I say yes, coach, and I wt

(21:06):
a big I went to a five hundred person class.

Speaker 1 (21:09):
My class is five hundred people.

Speaker 2 (21:11):
Our classes are five hundred people each grade and he
looks over my name, He goes boy Arski, and I go, yes, Coach.
He says, does your brother play for the Pittsburgh Panthers.
Is your brother Jerry Boyarski? Now I know I didn't
have a brother. It should have been an easy answer,

(21:37):
but part of my problem was that I didn't have one,
and that was about to have someone that was famous.

Speaker 1 (21:41):
So I said, yes, I do, Yes, that's my brother.
And everybody that knew me knew I did not have.

Speaker 2 (21:50):
A brother that played for the Pittsburgh Panthers. They knew
I had a step brother that was a plumber from Massachusetts.

Speaker 1 (21:56):
But I didn't care.

Speaker 2 (21:58):
I said yes, signed you, and I started to live
out that story. I lived out that story so severely
that I still have paper clippings and jerseys to this
day of that guy, and I have his phone in
his picture.

Speaker 1 (22:15):
On my favorites.

Speaker 2 (22:19):
I tell you that story because if you feel like
a nobody, lying can make you feel.

Speaker 1 (22:23):
Like a somebody until the drink.

Speaker 2 (22:27):
The moment I took my first drink of Meanishevit's Jewish
table wine.

Speaker 1 (22:35):
Morgan David, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (22:38):
Morgan David, Yeah, I.

Speaker 1 (22:42):
Didn't have to lie anymore.

Speaker 2 (22:45):
The moment I took my first drink, I was that person.
The moment I took my second drink, I was everything
that I ever wanted to be.

Speaker 1 (22:55):
The big developments were gone. I was right in my
own skill.

Speaker 2 (23:00):
It was like instantaneously everything became clear. This is what
I need, this is the magic elixir that's going to
be with me forever.

Speaker 1 (23:10):
I'm always going to take a drink, whatever form, and
it didn't matter. Over the years, I never said. This
is a line from Polie, May God rest his soul,
but this is the truth.

Speaker 2 (23:22):
I never said no to a drink or drug unless
I didn't understand the question.

Speaker 1 (23:27):
I never said no.

Speaker 2 (23:30):
Now at first, if I'm sober in the moment and
you say, yo, Steve, would you like to try some
of this stuff that we made from a guy named
Julio at home depot in the bathtub and it comes
in a jug, an unmarked jug, and it could kill you,
but if not, it's gonna get you very high.

Speaker 1 (23:49):
I would be like, no, of course not, that's ridiculous.

Speaker 2 (23:52):
And then two drinks into it, I'm drinking Julio's gin.
You know, I'm sure right right there in the moment,
I don't care what the bottle says, because two drinks in,
I'm a yes man. Three drinks in, I'm a yes
man or woman, depending on the occasion.

Speaker 1 (24:14):
And I'm an ind or guy. I'm a guy that
wants more whatever it is.

Speaker 2 (24:22):
I never remember me ever saying, in any situation that
had to do with drinking, I'm good.

Speaker 1 (24:28):
I don't know if anybody's ever said that I'm good.
I'm feeling it, I'm good. I've never even made that statement.
If there was more booze.

Speaker 2 (24:36):
To be had, I wanted it, because if one is good,
I would imagine that six is probably gonna be better.
And so that brings us to the doctor's opinion, where
the doctor's opinion talks about that obsession and the compulsion
and not being able to stop.

Speaker 1 (24:55):
And I realized there's a lot of movement in the here.

Speaker 2 (24:57):
People are walking around, and maybe you don't really stand
where most of us are at. It was pitiful and incomprehensible.
I'm not going to use the word demoralization. I'm going
to use the word misery. We were at misery. I
would have said yes to anything, and I did say
yes to.

Speaker 1 (25:17):
Everything, and I couldn't stop.

Speaker 2 (25:24):
And so I figured if I tried stronger drugs and
harder drugs and faster drugs and quicker drugs.

Speaker 1 (25:29):
That they would get done. And momentarily it all worked
for a second. For a second, everything I have ever
put into my body for a second scene to work.
And then the second second, I realized this was not enough.

Speaker 2 (25:44):
It was the wrong concoction, it was the wrong place,
it was the wrong person, it was the wrong time,
It was the wrong apartment, it was the wrong bond.

Speaker 1 (25:52):
Whatever it was, it was just wrong. So that started
the spiral.

Speaker 2 (25:58):
Again to try to get right, to try to get right,
to try to get right.

Speaker 1 (26:01):
On the way to being dead.

Speaker 2 (26:07):
And I told that lie about Jerry Boyarsky, who's not
my brother, but when he got drafted into the NFL,
it was a great day for my family. I do
want to say, big day for my family. And then
from low self esteem. And I'm not going to tell
this story every single week about my eye, but it

(26:29):
is an important part of my story because it did
shape the way that I thought about myself and different things.
But there was a kid in the neighborhood and he
was the toughest kid in the name of the biggest kid,
the toughest kid to me, the coolest kid, and I
always wanted him to hang out with me, and I
never thought he would want to hang out with me.

(26:50):
So I went to him and I said, why don't
you let's hang out? And he said why and I said,
because I have guns and we can.

Speaker 1 (26:57):
Blow stuff up.

Speaker 2 (27:00):
And he came to my house and we did start
blowing stuff up, you know, cans and different things like that.

Speaker 1 (27:06):
But then he got bored and he was gonna leave,
and I didn't want him to leave.

Speaker 2 (27:11):
And the moment I felt like he was gonna leave,
I came up with an ingenious game, which I thought
at the moment like right on the spot. I was like,
quicker on the spot, I'm like, why don't we play
U shoot at Me?

Speaker 1 (27:21):
It was called the U Shoot at Me Game?

Speaker 2 (27:25):
And he took me up on it and he shot at
me and I lost and I lost my eye that day, and.

Speaker 1 (27:32):
It was like a major deal for me.

Speaker 2 (27:35):
It was a major deal for me because not only
did I have low self esteem, but I also had
misplaced anger.

Speaker 1 (27:41):
I was out of school for a year.

Speaker 2 (27:43):
Of course, I got on narcotics during that year because
of all the different surgeries.

Speaker 1 (27:47):
That's not why I became an addict.

Speaker 2 (27:50):
I became him an addict because there was something inside
me from the very time I was born that was
a little bit off, and the moment I had a.

Speaker 1 (27:56):
Substance, it gets right.

Speaker 2 (27:57):
For that moment, it's called a odd sized hole. But
I drank at that boy. I used at that boy.
And I want to tell you a really cool slender
thread story. A couple of years ago, there was a
young man that was in this meeting and he told
his mom about me as a speaker, and he told

(28:20):
his mom to come hear me as a speaker, and
they're here tonight. And it turns out that his mom
and I were in high schools at the same time,
just not the same high school.

Speaker 1 (28:32):
But she knew the.

Speaker 2 (28:33):
Guy that shot me, like very good friends with the
guy's wife.

Speaker 1 (28:40):
And she came up to me after it.

Speaker 2 (28:41):
She goes, I know the guy that shot you, And
I said, can you make it so that I can
meet him again, because I need to make an amends
to it. You see, for thirty years I carried a
resentment against the boy until my fourth step. On my
fourth step, my sponsor was asking me about this situation.

Speaker 1 (29:00):
With my eye. And I told the story about how this.

Speaker 2 (29:03):
Guy shot me, and my sponsor said, well, where are
you wrong in this?

Speaker 1 (29:08):
I'm like, he shot me.

Speaker 2 (29:13):
You understand I have one eye right now, right now,
I got one eye.

Speaker 1 (29:16):
The guy shot me. He does what It doesn't sound
like he was a guy. It's sound like he was
a boy. How old were you, guys? So that I
was twelve, he was thirteen. He goes, that's a boy.

Speaker 2 (29:30):
He said, where did it happen? I said, my backyard?
He said, who's gun with it? I said, was my gun?
He said, whose idea with it? I said, it was
my idea. I've been telling the story for so many years,
act I believe that this kid shot me.

Speaker 1 (29:46):
He didn't shoot me. He was a victim.

Speaker 2 (29:48):
And for thirty years I held him accountable for something
that he was not.

Speaker 1 (29:52):
Adult enough to even understand.

Speaker 2 (29:55):
And because of alcoholics, Anonymous and slender Threads, this beautiful
woman that's here with their son tonight put me in
touch with him. And this summer I went back for
our fortieth class reunion and I said to him.

Speaker 1 (30:05):
I'm sorrow I resented you.

Speaker 2 (30:08):
I don't know if I used the word resentment but
I said I had heard for years, and he said,
I'm sorry, but.

Speaker 1 (30:17):
It wasn't his fault. We were kids.

Speaker 2 (30:19):
Alcoholics Anonymous will set you free of resentments that you
have no business carrying you drinking the poison and expecting
other people to get sick ouvery and the moment I
was able to let go of that. Now, I'm telling
me I was able to let go of this four
years ago in the fifth step. I'll be twenty four
years sober next in a couple of weeks. So I
was able to let this go twenty four years ago.

(30:40):
But I wasn't able to go back and make the
amends until a young boy in alcoholics Anonymous told his
mom that this guy was a good speaker. It turns
out that I knew she knew. The same guy put
us together, and that's how God works. Can we give
God around applause for that? It was a but God's story,

(31:04):
you see.

Speaker 1 (31:05):
Alcoholics Anonymous doesn't algos.

Speaker 2 (31:07):
Anonymous loves you so much that it loves you just
the way you are. I love this girl.

Speaker 1 (31:14):
What's your name? Michelle? The one year right here? What's
your name? What is it?

Speaker 2 (31:18):
I always get the first letter right, Melanie.

Speaker 1 (31:23):
This is Melanie's one year. I don't know him, but
I know him.

Speaker 2 (31:29):
I love the way she said, my name is Melanie,
I have one year.

Speaker 1 (31:34):
She put up her hands like Rocky, no, I'm not
gonna get a joke now, and she went like this,
and I know exactly how you feel. Getting to your
one year is amazing.

Speaker 2 (31:53):
And next week and next week, Melanie, we'll hear about it.
But I want you to know I felt.

Speaker 1 (31:58):
It, and we feel it, and we get you're.

Speaker 2 (32:01):
In the fight for your life. But I want you
to know you're off the hook. Another line from Paul Efro,
May God rest his soul. You're totally off the hook.

Speaker 1 (32:10):
You never have to use again, one day at a time,
even if you want to. You have arrived.

Speaker 2 (32:15):
You're safe. You're gonna be able to get through anything.
But you have to believe in the creator and the creator.
You have to believe that the Creator believes in you,
and you have to do the work. I'm not say
the same believe people say, well, I just go to church,
but you gotta be drunk.

Speaker 1 (32:31):
Nine out of ten times church people get drunk. The
guy that I told you, Jerry, with eleven.

Speaker 2 (32:36):
Years, he was the most strongest Christian I knew ever,
smoking crack, a smoke crack at Christians telling people about Jesus.
I was Friday smoking crack behind the building on Saturday.

Speaker 1 (32:53):
One time. He had to.

Speaker 2 (32:55):
He was such an amazing Christian that they did a
whole documentary on him. By the time the documentary, he
was already on run. When the documentary aired, he.

Speaker 1 (33:02):
Was already on a run. Faith without works is always
going to be dead.

Speaker 2 (33:10):
I'm not saying, don't get me wrong, that here and
there God can reach down from heaven to strike you cleaning.

Speaker 1 (33:14):
You don't need meetings. That happens to somebody for James
and I. We need meetings. We shoot people, We need
meetings and and most that's that's James.

Speaker 2 (33:26):
That's part of my story. Now we both did prison time. Okay,
we know how it is. James and I have that
and what I want you to hear over the next
eleven weeks that is not only possible that your life
is going to change, but it's a promise that your

(33:47):
life is going to change.

Speaker 1 (33:50):
But it'll only change if you do the work.

Speaker 2 (33:54):
Don't tell me how strong your faith. Don't come up
to me afterwards and tell me you're a Christian, you're
on fire for the Lord.

Speaker 1 (33:58):
You're a pastor. I'm happy for you.

Speaker 2 (34:01):
But what's your home group, who's your sponsor, who your sponsoring,
who you taking the meetings? What step you're on, who
you helping this week? What's your meeting schedule? Where are
you going to be by the end of the week.
Because I cannot tell you how much faith without works
is dead.

Speaker 1 (34:18):
This is a serious thing.

Speaker 2 (34:20):
People with faith are dying as we speak because they
do not have a program. And the program is outlined
specifically in the first one hundred and sixty four pages,
and then in this book.

Speaker 1 (34:30):
It's going to help you to explain it.

Speaker 2 (34:32):
Somebody said to me this week, they're they're like, well,
Bill W wrote that when he was getting hot.

Speaker 1 (34:36):
I don't care when Bill W did. What this book
will help you. I don't take anybody's inventory. It's helped me.

Speaker 2 (34:47):
There's some things in the twelve and twelve that are
supernatural in nature and could not be written by anybody
that was not listening to God. I'm not here to
trash out. I owe my life alcoholics anonymous and Bill W.
And I think his sobriety dad is today today, today
give him around the night the other today.

Speaker 1 (35:12):
I don't need to make statements about what his life was.
I'm sure if he was just like me.

Speaker 2 (35:16):
He's a sinner by nature, and every single one of
us have that in us.

Speaker 1 (35:21):
And we're only sobered by the grace of God.

Speaker 2 (35:25):
And the moment we start credit for we start taking
credit for our sobriety is the moment we lose our serenity,
because then we become all powerful and we start easing
God out with ego, easing God.

Speaker 1 (35:35):
Out, and we become all powerful.

Speaker 2 (35:37):
And then when we become all powerful, we then are
not power less anymore.

Speaker 1 (35:41):
And we're not power less anymore.

Speaker 2 (35:42):
Then we become the creator of our own lives, which
is the creator of misery.

Speaker 1 (35:48):
And it's that simple. You're either a God person or
you're a you person. I don'd tried you. I don't
tried me. I tried to do me for thirty four years.
It was a disaster. Are they the meat program? What
do I like? What about me? What am I thinking about?

Speaker 2 (36:04):
How bbbb my my my, my, my, my, my, my.

Speaker 1 (36:12):
Crassed and burned disaster?

Speaker 2 (36:16):
And when you get up at the end of the
night and you thank a speaker what you're saying. You're
not telling the speaker that they're great. You're saying thank
you for coming. Because I belong to a fellowship that
is incredible and it's near and dear, and I respect it,
and I want the thing to continue, and I want
to be able to at the newcomer to know that
that's what we do. And a lot of the traditions
are getting lost, and we have to show the newcomer

(36:37):
what we do at the end of the meeting, what
we do at the beginning of the meeting, what we
do during, how it works. Otherwise it'll be lost. We
have a responsibility. I'm so glad that the old timers
and alcoholics synonymous. Regardless that I didn't smoke. They told
me your job is cleaning asstrays. I'm like, I don't smoke.
They said, I don't care. Nobody asked, Nobody.

Speaker 1 (36:59):
Said, well, are you than you should clean the aster?
This is your job. Go pick the guy up on
ninety five. This is your job. Russell's patch. Tell me
go pick my sponsor up in North Miami. I'm like,
I don't live in No, He's I don't care. What
would that mean? You don't live in North Miami.

Speaker 2 (37:14):
You want to die, just do what I tell you
to do. And sometimes people get upset that I don't
speak to my sponsor that much. But you heard him
over the last twelve weeks, and he doesn't have that
much compassion.

Speaker 1 (37:28):
We love him, but he always has the same answer
from me.

Speaker 2 (37:33):
I call him up, I said, Russell, I got to
complain to you about my wife.

Speaker 1 (37:36):
He goes, you have a wife. I go, Russell, my
job is killing me. He goes, you got a job.

Speaker 2 (37:43):
I go, Russell, my one eyes looking all over the room.
I got headaches. It's migrants and tell me.

Speaker 1 (37:47):
He goes, you got another eye. So is there really
no point?

Speaker 2 (37:51):
I just realized that everything stems back to gratitude. Everything's
making I remember one time he happened to be on
the card next to me. I was driving out of
the fort load of del swapshop, which was a male
in my in Broward, and it was a really difficult day,
I mean really difficult.

Speaker 1 (38:08):
And he happened to be.

Speaker 2 (38:09):
Going to the same meeting, the West Side Mets group,
and he was traveling in the same direction and Luke
Russell looks over at me and I'm swamped over my
front seat, I'm just swamped over.

Speaker 1 (38:20):
He goes, what's wrong. I go, it was the worst
day of my life. He goes, you were.

Speaker 2 (38:28):
Smoking crack and we're arrested for prostitution today. I said no,
the customers were meaning to me, and he goes, it
doesn't sound like it was the worst day of your life.

(38:51):
We hear these sayings in alcoholics anonymous, and sometimes because
we hear them over and over again, we don't give
them the power that they that they must have had
the first first time someone heard, hey, son, an attitude
of gratitude will keep you sober. Imagine the first time
someone heard that. Man, Imagine the first time that say

(39:11):
keep it simple, go back to the basics.

Speaker 1 (39:15):
All these things work.

Speaker 2 (39:17):
Everybody in here has a reason to be grateful. And
probably fifty when was the last time we wrote down
a gratitude list. I know Jimmy does it. He lives
a life of gratitude. Of gratitude, what are you complaining about.
You're sober today, You're not in jail. You're not in
jail anymore.

Speaker 1 (39:36):
You some of you have never been to jail, like
myself and James. You've never been to jail. Oh, you're
milking this. You have a life today.

Speaker 2 (39:49):
Most of you celebrated Thanksgiving sober a couple of weeks ago.

Speaker 1 (39:54):
Not everybody. Who's that? Everybody? Not everybody. Some people just
came in this week.

Speaker 2 (40:00):
As a matter of fact, people are here for their
first meeting today. Most everybody had a sober Thanksgiving. Most
everybody had something to be grateful for. Everybody tonight has
something to be grateful for this meeting Alcoholic synonymous. Your
relationship with God, however, inadequate, is a perfect place to start. Well,

(40:24):
I'm not a God guy, but you can be. Well,
I don't and it didn't grow up religious. That has nothing
to do with it.

Speaker 1 (40:30):
If we go to let's just.

Speaker 2 (40:31):
Say we just fast forward real quick to page eighty five,
eighty six, eighty seven, and eighty eight, and we're gonna
get there during the weeks.

Speaker 1 (40:37):
But let's just say we fast forward today.

Speaker 2 (40:39):
Let's just say this wasn't the first step, and we
just we just got over there and we said and
we ceased fighting anything or anyone, even alcohol. If I
asked you to raise your hand on who thought of
taking a drink today, ninety percent of you would not

(41:01):
raise your hand.

Speaker 1 (41:02):
That is a miracle.

Speaker 2 (41:05):
There wasn't an hour that I didn't think about getting
loaded since the time I was twelve. Whatever substance was,
the current substance, I wanted it. I remember every single
day in my eleventh and twelfth year of twelfth grade,
every single day I found out who had this stuff,
how much it was, where can I get it, How
was I gonna store it.

Speaker 1 (41:25):
What we're gonna do on the weekend, how is I
gonna show up?

Speaker 2 (41:28):
And And I'm not gonna keep talking about my one eye,
but let me share something with you. It is very
hard to drive drunk with one eye.

Speaker 1 (41:38):
Okay, I'm not gonna.

Speaker 2 (41:38):
Bring it up every week, but I do want to
tell you some It is a serious business y because
you had to kick.

Speaker 1 (41:44):
One eye on the road. That's the only eye you got.

Speaker 2 (41:49):
So you're keeping that one eye on the line, but
no one's driving the car.

Speaker 1 (41:55):
That serious business. That was high school. That was the beginning.

Speaker 2 (42:06):
We're not even talking about drugs yet. We're not talking
about what happened in Washington Heights. We're not talking about
the things that brought me to my knees.

Speaker 1 (42:17):
Literally, We're talking about just high school. Just michelob light,
something like that.

Speaker 2 (42:25):
Still whacked, restless, irritable, discontent, life going nowhere, feeling of useless,
this fear, self pity. I'm not gonna make it. I'm
not going anywhere. Maybe I should take my own life.
This is not gonna work out. Fast forward thirty five years.
Can't wait to get to the meeting. Have a life,

(42:45):
amazing friends, We have sober Thanksgiving.

Speaker 1 (42:48):
We're gonna have a sober Christmas. Happyhonica to the Jewish
people that are here.

Speaker 2 (42:52):
What a life, What a life we have today? And
even if it was brumpty untill now you got here, Zach,
you made it. Who cares? You got a better story?
You got a story, You lived it.

Speaker 1 (43:15):
And you made it.

Speaker 2 (43:17):
Step one, powerless, life was unmanageable, wanted to kill yourself.

Speaker 1 (43:25):
God steps in next week. The rest of the story.
God bless you guys,