All right, we will now hear from our speaker for Al Anon, which is Carmine from Santa Monica.
0:17 Wow, I want to thank
0:22 Can you guys hear me? Okay, all right, I want to thank Richard, perfect for a great, great share. I want to thank Denise for asking me to be here. My name is Carmine. I'm a grateful member of Al Anon, though I gotta say, right now, I'm not feeling all that grateful. I'm feeling kind of anxious. I can feel it like right here. You know, there's a lot of you out there, and I feel it right here, and I feel like this weight on the back of my head, saying, look at the ground. Look at the ground. Look at the ground, you know. And I spent probably decades of my life in social situations looking, you know, at the ground and looking at the door and thinking of what's the excuse that can get me out of the situation, but I'm here, and, you know, I I've learned in Al Anon, there's something that I do, and I want to share it with you, because this feeling I'm talking about, it comes up a lot. It comes up a lot. I mean, especially comes up because I have two daughters. One is a 27 year old fentanyl addict who lives on the streets of Los Angeles, and that anxiety I feel about it. And I have another daughter, she suffers from mental illness. She's doing a lot better. She has her own, you know, drug and alcohol problems, and I feel that anxiety, and it doesn't even have to do with like my kids, you know, the boss, you know, calls me up at work and says, Hey, you know, can I see you at two o'clock? And I'm sure I'm getting fired at two o'clock, because that's that. That's how I'm wired to think, right? You know, I get a call in Al Anon, you know, if we're lucky, we get a lot of outreach calls. And there's always that thing of like, oh my god, what am I going to say? You know, because of that anxiety. But there's this thing that I do and I want to share with you, you know, I started to do it, and it really helps. I call it the one second prayer.
2:48 And it's really simple. I just take a deep breath and I say, be with me.
2:58 Be with me. One second, one 1000 be with me. And I find that it really helps. It really helps. And the good thing about it is, if the one second prayer doesn't work, there's always the two second prayer, which is, be with me.
3:23 Be with me. And at two o'clock in the morning, sometimes it's the 60 minute, you know, but be with me, you know. I heard someone say recently, the opposite of addiction isn't recovery. The opposite of addiction is connection and be with me. You know, connecting for that moment, for my higher power. I mean, what am I doing up here, sharing with you. I'm saying, Hey all you guys out there, be with me. And I find it really helps. It makes me feel better.
4:03 I was driving here today.
4:06 Yeah, honestly, I didn't know where the Santa Clarita Valley was, but, but Denise explained it to me. She said, Oh, it's just, it's the valley behind the valley. So, you know, I looked it up and I saw that it's gonna be 45 minutes away. And actually, I, you know, I was kind of excited by that, you know, because I'm a product of the 80s and, you know, boom boxes and John Cusack and all of that. And what do we do, like in the 80s, right? It was all about mixtapes or mixtapes, and we don't have mix tapes now, but, like, I always like having a long ride, because I do this thing with, you know, my Amazon and my Amazon playlist, and I put on my playlist so that I can and I and I'm driving here with my wife, and I'm listening to the playlist, and I'm like, Wow, this song is really good. This. Is great, right? This song is really good. And then the next cut song came on. I'm like, wow, two songs in a row, I really, this is really great. And then three songs, and I'm like, wow, this is I'm feeling really good right now. And then it kind of hit me, the Al Anon kind of thing kind of hit me, like, Duh, of course, this is really great. You put together the playlist like these are all the songs that you like in the order that you put them in, everything is perfect. And that's like my Allen on ism in a nutshell, when everything is perfect, I'm perfect, but my higher power has this sense of humor, right? Because I need everything to be perfect. And he's given me these two kids that are addicts and like, what, you know, what kind of sense of humor does it take to to for him to give me that, that gift. And you should, you know? So this is my thing. Like, all over, you know, I want things that way. I drive my wife crazy, because it's like, for me, like, every single thing has to have its place in our house, like, if I can't find a spoon, and it's not like where I put it, you know, it's like, her fault, right? And you know, it's not a good thing. And like, it reaches, if you want to know the depth of my like compulsiveness, all you would have to do is look at my sock and underwear. Draw. If you looked at my sock and underwear, draw, you would some people here would be like, Wow, that's great, and others would vomit. I understand that's like, how it works. But it's like, you know, here's my underwear, right? Well, this is the, this is the row of all the kind of baggie underwear, and this is the tight, you know, the ones that are a little more tidy, Whitey ish, and then my socks are here, and the heavy socks are here, and they're all in a row, and the light, you know, and everything's perfect, but you know, like I was alluding to before, you know, If onlymmy kids could be my sock draw, you know, if only the other people in my life could be my sock draw, and I could get them to be in a perfect line the way I want them to be, right. But that's not going to happen.
7:41 And and, in all honesty, that's the good news. That's the good news. Because if I can accept that, right and this program, that's what it helps us do. It helps us to accept, if I can accept that, because, you know, I mean to be honest, if I am waiting for the two daughters that I have to be, what to get better, to be how I want them to be before I can have a life before I can be happy, then I'm out of luck.
8:22 That might take a long time. And you know, the thing is, it was so easy before Al Anon to blame all my woes on somebody else, but I know now right that it's not my kids didn't break me. I was I was pre broken. I heard someone say that at a meeting recently, and it really hit me this idea of being, you know, pre broken, and, you know, where did that come from? I don't, I don't want to talk about it too much, you know, you know, childhood and things like that. You know, my dad was a workaholic who was never there, ever you know, my mom, I'll just say she was crazy, and like to take it out on me. And I'll tell you that I tell this story that kind of gets to the depth of, like, what that was like, you know, we used to. I'm from New Jersey, you know, which sometimes I joke, that's the first thing I'm recovering from.
9:45 And some people don't like that, but I'm from New Jersey and and every summer, we used to get this little, crappy little bungalow on the Jersey Shore. Except my dad was a workaholic, so he stayed east. He left me and my brothers to be in this bungalow for the summer with my mom, which meant that I and you know this, so this was probably like the 70s now, so you know, which meant I spent my days trying to not be in the house for as long as possible, leaving the house early in the morning, being gone for for as much of the day as I can and and, you know, from a very young age, very early age, and I spent, I did that most of the time with what I call my summer best friend, and his name was Eugene. And Eugene was a little older than I was, and he was a little cooler than I was, but I me and Eugene, you know, his family had their problems too. Not anything we talked about, but we would, you know, we would go out and we would walk around, and we would, you know, and we would spend our days basically roaming the streets. And I'm talking like 10 years old. And I remember this one time very well. I'm 10 years old. Me and Eugene are walking on the beach, and he finds there's this, like, I guess it was like the top of a picnic table, top of a picnic table. And Eugene has this great idea, like, hey, this will make a great raft. Let's go out into the into the into the bay, on this, on this picnic table, that'll be a great raft. Now I had a problem, and my problem was I did not know how to swim, but I had a bigger problem, which was I had no idea how I could possibly tell Eugene that I'm 10 years old and don't know how to swim. So what do I do? I pretend everything's going to be all right, and I get on that raft, and we go out into the water, and the inevitable happens, that raft tips, and I'm in the water, and I remember it. I remember it to this day. I remember flailing. I remember desperation. I remember at one point thinking, well, if I just sink to the bottom, maybe I could walk to shore. And that did not work. And then I remember thinking at 10 years old that I'm going to die. This is it. I'm going to die. But even before that, it was like, I'm going to die, and I'm in so much trouble, you know, for doing this and at that moment, by the grace of God, hands reached in and pulled me out. And next thing I know, I'm on the shore, wet, shivering, scared, and there's this guy in front of me, and he's asking me questions. Are you okay?
13:04 Yes, I wasn't okay. I was a liar at 10 years old. Can I help you? No, do you want me to take you so no, I got this I'm okay, and I don't know what happened to Eugene. He took off somewhere, but I remember walking back to that bungalow, opening the front door, and never telling a single person what had happened to me, 10 years old, I almost died because I knew that there was nobody in that house who was going to understand. I knew that there was nobody in that house who was going to be with me.
14:01 They might be with me, but it would be like being with the spoon that was going to hit me in the butt.
14:11 And so I never said a word about it, and in so many ways, like that's how I went into my life. Keep it inside. Don't say anything. Keep your distance. Don't let anybody get too close. If anybody says how you're doing, you say, Fine, and they'll go away. And that worked for a while, building this, these walls around me that worked for a while. It worked for a long time, pushing people away.
14:56 Eventually, I got graduating college, I married my wife. And she wanted to have a kid. And I'll be honest, I didn't know
15:10 if I went, nah, that's honest, to be honest with me say I didn't want to have a kid. And I think the reason I didn't want to have a kid was, and this sounds terrible, but in all honesty, I wasn't sure that I could love a kid, because I had never put myself in a position where I was ever close enough to anybody, even you know, even my wife, to feel that kind of thing that I knew. I certainly didn't feel it with my dad. I certainly didn't feel it with my mom.
15:51 But see one thing saved me, my daughter, my oldest daughter, she didn't care whether I could love her or not. She loved me anyway. She loved me anyway.
16:12 And I, you know, I gotta say I was a stay at home dad, and we used to go to the park, and I had one of those baby born kind of things, and I carry her around, and it'd be me and all the moms, you know, and, and it was really great.
16:32 It was really great. And, you know, and because that's that period, right? Like, it was almost like she was my mixtape, right? I had this kid that I loved, and you know, if we're going to the park, we're going to the park. And if there's a problem, all I had to do was say ice cream, and the problem was gone, you know. And you know. And I could remember walking to school and her grabbing my hand to cross the street. And then I also remember, and this is how I know I'm an Al Anon, because I remember the day exactly where I reached for her hand to help her across the street, and she pulled away and said, I don't want to do that anymore. I And that was kind of the beginning, you know, and she started to have problems, and I didn't know what to do, you know, at first, I did what I always did. I tried to hide or joke it away or do whatever, the problems didn't go away, you know, because that's not what happens with this disease. It doesn't go away. You know, I thought on one level I was really prepared, like, because I had this manual in my head, like, just do everything the opposite of what your parents did, and everything will be great.
18:08 And that didn't work out that way. And and it hurt. It really, really hurt, and I didn't know what to do with that hurt. I had never dealt with hurt anymore, and so I got more and more desperate doing things like, you know, like, like, my kid, would, you know, it's, I mean, it's kind of funny. I could laugh at it now, but, you know, she would, she would, we lived on a second floor apartment, right? And she would, like, tie her. It was, like, it was like, Prison Break. She would tie, like, her bed sheets together and go out the window and, and, you know, I would find these bed sheets, and then, like, go around the city trying to find her and, and I remember, you know, I used to always think, like, if I gave the perfect speech, like I could change everything. I don't know how many of you have given like, I'm a master at giving speeches that don't work and then and then and then rewriting the speech, because it's like, Well, the reason it didn't work was because I just didn't say it right, you know. And my sponsor would always joke about that. He'd always say, you know, is there anything you haven't said to your kid yet? And I'd be like, No. He'd be like, Well, is there anything you haven't said to them 10 times? Well, no, and I, and I'm thinking like, there's nothing I haven't said 100 times, because I really believe like you. That thing, like, if I just said things the right way express my love, the right way that you would listen to me. But the funny thing about that, going back to the sheets, you know, Oh, she got the greatest speech that, you know, how dangerous it was, how she could have fell, how the bottom was, whatever. You can't trust those sheets. And she's like, Yeah. Pop, yeah, pop, yeah, pop, and, like, two nights later, she left again, but this time I didn't find sheets. She actually had found a fire safety ladder and had put it, put it on the window sill, and she cut, you know, so she was safe, but I thought I could save her. And, and then covid came, to be honest, and and during the middle of covid, my oldest daughter left our house, cruelly, it was Mother's Day that she left our house and she took off for the streets of Los Angeles. And like, for me as a dad, like to you know it's like you would rather be on the streets of Los Angeles with heroin and fentanyl than at home with us, and we love you.
21:23 And, and I was shattered. I was just completely shattered. And, and that's when I found these rooms. I found these rooms of Al Anon. And I'm so grateful. But you know, I gotta say I I wasn't grateful at first. I wasn't grateful at first. Like, you know, there's this thing everyone, you know, we all say, like, we go into Al Anon and we learn that we're not alone. And that's true. And I saw that from the very first moment I was in Al Anon. But there's a big difference between knowing you're not alone and actually not being alone. And I think for me, because I had no idea how to connect with people, it kind of made me feel even more alone, like that, feeling like when you're at this big party and you feel like everybody knows each other and you don't.
22:24 So this idea of be with me, like I wasn't there to be with anybody. I was just there, you know, I wanted to get some answers. I wanted to be able to stop the person I love from doing the things that that were just killing me. You know, we talk a lot at Al Anon like there's always, like, three of stuff or five of stuff, you know, like the three A's, awareness, acceptance, action, the three C's. There's a rule about the three C's, like, you always forget one. But I didn't cause it. I can't cure it. I can't control it. I'm getting better at that. But I joke like, when I first came to Al Anon, my my threes were the three y's, yeah? Yeah, yeah, keep coming back, yeah, yeah, yeah, get a sponsor, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, we got all these books. You know, you want to buy a book, yeah, yeah, maybe next time.
23:39 And that's what it was like. And, and in the meantime, you know, I'm, I'm in Al Anon, you know, and I'm trying to convince everybody that I got it all together. And in the meantime, I'm chasing down my daughter on the streets. Nothing's going right. And it finally, it reached the point where my youngest daughter was actually she, she was going away to college, she was going away to college. And I thought, Okay, well, she's the one like, Okay, this will be great. And She lasted about three weeks, and she had a suicide attempt, and, you know, and it was so crazy, because it was like I was either on the streets of Los Angeles chasing down one kid or driving to my kid, other kids college, which was five hours away, thinking like I could go, I could talk her down. Then I'd come home, and it was like I was commuting, like in craziness. And then finally, my my oldest daughter, she just stopped communicating with us, and we went a bunch of months. You know, without hearing from her. And I'm really grateful that that happened, actually, because, I mean, it was so painful. It was like, curl up in a ball, turn off the lights and like not want to move painful and but I'm grateful that that pain became unbearable, because I think if the pain had just stayed slightly bearable, I mean, you know, I'm an Al Anon. We could put up with a lot. We could put up with a lot, and I put up with a lot. And I think if it had stayed barely bearable, I could have rode that out for a really long time.
26:01 But it became so unbearable that I actually had to do something. And what I'm grateful for is that when I had made that decision, right, like step three, made that decision, that all of you were there, and you didn't care, like how long it took for me to get it. You were just there, and all those books were there, a sponsor was there, and I started to get better. You know, I guess you would call that the gift of desperation. That's what it took for me to start opening my mouth, to start doing those things. Because, you know, now I know that those are character defects, right? This idea that I can't ask for help, this idea that my feelings are going to can't be expressed, because if they do, there'll be judgment and punishment and pain. I found none of that in this fellowship. I found the thing that, quite honestly, I never had. There's just this feeling of love and this feeling of acceptance.
27:32 I call it, I call it, and I think you guys will know what I'm talking about. You know, there is no more powerful thing for me. I won't call it a drug, but then what I call the Al Anon Head Knot, right? Because I've seen that a lot. I've seen it tonight. I see it whatever you know when I finally start being honest, and I see those heads nod. I go to a lot of meetings on Zoom. They're like, all like, right in your face, all these, all these heads nodding.
28:16 And man, is that a beautiful thing?
28:20 Man, is that a beautiful thing? And I've, I've come to grow closer to this idea of a higher power, which I, you know, I never had before, this idea this be with me. And, you know, somebody said something in a meeting, and I just remember it forever. You know, they were talking about their higher power. And they they said, you know, my higher power protects me in nothing, but sustains me in everything.
28:54 And when they said that, I said, Yes, because I used to be my higher power used to be like the higher power of the guy who's losing money at the blackjack table, you know, like, please just do this for me. Do this for me. Another 80s reference. There's an 80s band I like, called the replacements, and they have a song called waitress in the sky. And and as I was in the program more, I said to myself, Oh, that was what my higher power was. It was like a waitress in the sky. You know, you know, Please, God, bring me like a tuna fish sandwich and put the mayonnaise on the side. But God, God forbid you mess it up and don't put the mayonnaise on the side, then I'm going to be mad at you. But this idea that that God sustains me in everything, I know that's true because in the darkest moment my life, that's when I found all of you.
29:57 I. That's when I found all of you and a whole lot of other stuff that allow me to live the life that I have because that I that that's how I look at it. Now, my biggest problem when I before I came in, wasn't my problems that were out there. They were the problems that were in here, but even more so that I did not have a life that could help sustain me in those problems, and Al Anon has given me that life. And I just want to end with this story, because, you know, I've been talking about higher power, and my higher power definitely has a sense of humor. And this story is kind of kind of good with for that. This was it, last spring, my wife and I were going to a concert at the Greek theater, you know, which is, I'm grateful for that, because when, when I was in the midst of everything, I couldn't do anything, because, you know, God forbid, the phone rings and I have to do something. I can't go, you know, and my world became so small. Now it's bigger. I'm going to a concert at the Greek theater. Not only am I going to a concert in the Greek theater, one of my favorite places, place called Dino's burgers, but they're known for chicken, but they're on Vermont Avenue, and I it's delicious, and I'm like, we're gonna go pick up Dino's. We're gonna get to the show early, and we're gonna picnic, and me and my wife go to the show, and we set up our little picnic blanket, and it's perfect. It's a perfect night. And we eat our we eat our chicken and and our fries, and then it's time to, you know, go to the show. And there's, you know, there's one other thing, because, like I said in the very beginning, I like things exactly the way I like them. And if I'm going to eat that meal, I need ice cream afterwards, you know, that is it. But I'm figuring I'm set, because I'm going to go into the into the Greek theater and and I'm going to go get ice cream. That's all I'm thinking. Like, like, on the way to the Greek theater, I'm getting ice cream. You know that Eddie Murphy, Eddie Murphy had a thing I figured out. And so, and I get there, and of course, the line is, like, way too long. And as I get closer, I'm looking at the board like, what am I going to get? What am I going to get? And they didn't have any ice cream. And I was like, What in the like, this is a concession stand, and there is no ice cream, right? And there's no anything at the very bottom, it says cookies, $8 and I'm like, man, but I decided, you know, all right, I am going to splurge on these cookies. They're $8 I'm going to, you know, and that will be my thing. God doesn't want me to have ice cream, so I'm going to have cookies. So luckily, I get to the front of the line, and the person in front of me orders cookies, orders the cookies, and I see them get the cookies, and these $8 cookies, it was, they were like, in a package, like, like you'd buy in the gas station or something like that. Like, you couldn't even see them. They were just and I'm like, Oh, well, I'm taking a stand. I am not paying $8 for those cookies, right? And one, one. And one of the things, you know, I learned from my sponsor doing step four, because we talked all about resentments and step four, and I definitely had a resentment against the Greek theater at this point for not having ice cream and just having this crappy bag of cookies. And so, you know what he said was, the way an adult handles resentments is you either let it go or you address it. What we don't do is stay in this middle ground of seething, self righteous anger, whatever. And I knew all that I knew of that, but, but, man, I could not do it. I just could not do it. I get back to my seat and it's like, my wife's name is Jean. I'm like, You won't believe this. They don't have, I cannot believe they have 25 places to buy beer, and not a single place in this whole place to buy ice cream. And she's kind of used to this kind of thing for me. And you know, middle of the show, I'm still like, Man, I can't believe they expected, you know, and so it was a great show. We had a great time, but I still had this resentment and and now to tell you how far like I've gone with Alan on we actually went out the next night too. I.
35:00 Two nights in a row, like, I went out my kids on the streets of Los Angeles, but two nights in a row, I'm going to go out, and we were going to see a movie. It was like, you know, it's a Los Angeles thing where, you know, whoever was talks after the movie. It was that kind of thing. So we had to drive from Santa Monica into Hollywood, and, of course, there was traffic, and we were going to go to get dinner, but we couldn't get dinner, so we had to kind of just say, All right, well, whatever's at the concession stand, we're gonna get for dinner, right? And the way it worked was, you know, it was a smaller place, so everybody had to kind of line up, and there was somebody in charge of the line, and he would let people go to the concession stand. So, kind of like the night before, you couldn't see everything on the thing. So we get to the concession, you know, I get to the point where I could see the concession stand. And there's all these, you know, I think the choices were hot dogs or chicken nuggets, popcorn, candy.
35:59 And then there was this one other thing, the BAC, the BAC. And when I got to the front of the line, the guy who was standing there in charge of the line, I said, Listen, I really got to ask you something. What is the BAC? And he looks at me and he says, Oh, the BAC, that's big ass cookie, and it's $8 and so I order that cookie, and it's like, it's like a Pizza Hut, mini pizza cookie. They put it in the oven, they take it out. They even like hot sauce on the not hot sauce, chocolate sauce on the top of this cookie. And I get back to my seat, and Jean is there, and I just say to her, there were some kids here, so I don't want to say it the way I said it, but my higher power is messing with me. He just set me up with this joke that took two days for the punchline. And basically what I got from that is that it was my higher power message to me was, hey, you know what? There's going to be days where there are no cookies, and there's going to be days when there's cookies.
37:50 So when those cookies come, enjoy the cookies and just not don't take it personal.
38:00 You know, have faith that there'll be more cookies in the future, and that's my higher power messing with me. So anyway, I don't know how long I've been talking. Feels like a long time. I just want to thank you all for inviting me, for being here with me, for being a part of this fellowship that's quite honestly changed. Changed my life, gave didn't change my life gave me a life, and I'm so grateful for that. Thank you so much. You thank you so much, Carmine, thank you. Yeah, I got it. You.