My name is Brent. I'm an alcoholic. I want to thank Richard for coming to me and asking me to come out here today, and I want to thank the committee for putting this on. This is a wonderful event. And it was funny, he asked me, says it's western theme. If you've got a cowboy hat, if you got some boots, something, please wear em. I said, I'm from Missouri. I've got all of it. So I'm good.
0:24 I have sobriety date, August 27 1996.I have a sponsor, and I have a home group. And to me, those are very important, because I believe today I may need that sponsor every bit as much today as I did on days one, two and three. Because when life gets going good, every once in a while, I may think that it's because of me, and he checks me every day that no, it is not because of me. I have a relationship with Him, that we are in constant contact on the daily basis. Every night, I do a gratitude list with him, and he sends me his and I talk to him every Wednesday.
1:00 I was born and raised in southwest Missouri on an Angus beef farm in the absolutely middle of nowhere, and I hated every minute of my childhood.
1:10 Growing up on that farm, I 100% idolized my father. Everything I did, I did for my father to give me a pat on the back, to tell me that he was proud of me and to tell me that he loved me. That is just not who my father was. He was a type of man that there is one way to do things the way. He told you, that was it. If I brought a B home from school, he wanted to know why it wasn't an A if I did bring an a home from school. He said, That's the reason you go to school, and you really don't need a pat on the back. I was an only child. Now most of you is automatically going to say I was spoiled, but I didn't have to share any hand me downs and everything else, and I quit arguing that over 40 years ago, because I know that's way people believe, but I want to give you the Flipped side of being an only child when the chores were not done on the farm or something got broken, I did not have a brother or sister To blame it on. So it goes both ways.
2:02 Alcoholism runs very rampant my family. That is not the reason I'm an alcoholic, it's just the way I was raised. Neither one of my grandfathers ever made it to the age of 60, and my uncle died at the age of 42 because of this disease, I took my first drink when I was nine. The reason I did that was real simple. After first and second grade, I didn't know how to fit in with the kids. I didn't know how to talk to them. I didn't know how to carry on at recess. I didn't know how to be part of the group. I knew when I walked in the room every day, they made fun of my boots because they was old. They was worn. They had dirt on them from the farm. My jeans was ripped. Now I will say this, in today's world, I would have fit in because people pay more for jeans that already have pre rips in them. Back in my day, you were just poor and you couldn't afford new jeans. But I was so full of fear when I walked into those classrooms to try to be around those kids. And after second grade, it was in the summer. My dad, my uncle, my grandpa, used to sit underneath the tree. They used to drink their beer and then drink out of the bottle. And I noticed that afternoon that the more they drank, the bigger their smiles got. The more they drank, the bigger their laughs got. So that afternoon, when they told me to take the old beers back and bring them new ones, if there is anything left in the can, I drank it, and before I brought the new ones back out, I took the biggest drink I could out of each one. And before that afternoon was over, I realized something. One my smile was bigger. I'm walking a little bit faster, but the most important thing was I felt different, and that's what I had been looking for, and I chased that for the next 25 years now, my drinking didn't explode when I was nine years old, but anytime I could get a hold of a can or a bottle, that's exactly what I did. Growing up in a small town, if you're even halfway good at sports, you get a lot of breaks and a lot of favoritisms. I'm going to say I was better than average, because when I turned 12, they moved me up and I started playing ball the 14 year olds, well, their drinking had reached the level that mine didn't take. Had not gotten to, but it did not take me long to get there. And what I realized was this, the more I drink on the weekends, the more people talked about me the next week. And I like that. I like people talking about me whether it's good or bad. When I was 16, there was five car loads of us coming back from a float trip. The lead car had a wreck, and one of the girls was killed. Her parents and mine had known each other before, Joe and I was even born, and they asked me be one of the pallbearers. Morning of the funeral, I showed up drunk, I stumbled, carrying the casket, and I made a real fool out of myself. That was the first time I ever had anyone start coming to me and said, Maybe I need to slow down on my drinking or drink a different way. And my attitude was, this is exactly the way I need to deal with the situation. So just leave me alone. My junior year, that little small town, we probably had one of the best ball teams they'd had in over 20 years. We ended up making it to state. We lost in the quarterfinals and.
5:00 I played the best game that I'd ever played in my life, and I knew my father was going to be proud of me when I walked in the door, but I did not get three steps in the door, and he started telling me what I did wrong in the second half. If I'd have passed here, if I'd have shot there, maybe we'd won, maybe we'd be playing for the state championship. And I learned that evening that it did not matter whatever I did. My father is never going to be proud of me. My senior year, I started throwing keg parties on the backside of the farm, and every Friday, people would come to me and ask Brent, which gate could we go in? Where do we cross the river at? When's the party going to be I did not care how much trouble I got in my father, because I knew people were coming to me for what was going to happen
5:39 when I graduated high school, I pretty much figured I'd be like everybody else in that small town. You marry your high school sweetheart, you get a job, get your own place, start a family, and most of the people live there the rest of their lives. Well, my dad had another plan. He wanted me to go to college, and I hated school every day that I went to it, and the last thing I wanted to do was go to any more school. So that entire summer, all my buddies are getting their own place, starting their own life. I'm stuck out there on the farm. I packed up the car that far that fall, I headed off college, and I will tell each and every one of you, on day three on that campus, I joined a fraternity, alcohol flowing 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This was back in 1980 and there was not the rules and the regulations and the laws there are today, and my drinking exploded. There was not one person in my life tell me I need to slow down on my drinking. They told me I needed to drink more, and that's exactly what I did. And it was just that same scenario with my father. When I brought that B and C home from school. He want to know why it wasn't an a and if I did bring an a home. He said, That's the reason I sent you there. But there's a problem. My drinking is absolutely getting out of control. I'm drinking every single day. By my sophomore year, I started losing friends. People did not want to hang out with me. People did not want to ride in the car with me. Other fraternities are banning me from going to their parties because I started fights. I got in trouble, and I started to get a few little consequences. My junior year, I got maybe the greatest job anybody in college could ever have. I became the Anheuser Busch rep for the college for the distributorship there and all those fraternities that had banned me the year before. Yeah, they welcomed me All right, back in their house again. They wanted me to hand out T shirts and coolers, and they wanted me put the big bush blow up can in their yard. I knew deep down they didn't care for me anymore than they did the year before, but I did like the attention. But something else happened my junior year, drinking stopped working. You know, as Nick read this, it talks about people drinking this way, or giving this up, or drinking on the weekends. Man, I never, ever thought about any of that. I drank every single day, and I just drank more and more, and alcohol was no longer working. I couldn't put enough in my body to quiet the voices that was going on in my head.
8:01 Somehow, I did graduate. My senior year, I got a job. I'm living my life. I'm paying my bills, and I am 100% miserable. I could be in a group just like this, and I would be completely all alone.
8:16 Two years later, my mom gave me a call. Said, Is there any way you can come home and help out. Your dad's having some issues on the farm. He's needing some help. I made arrangements at work. I took a week off. I got home on a Sunday afternoon. Monday morning, I woke up, he had a list of chores that he needed done. First thing up there on the list was he needed a section of the barn painted. So I grabbed my beer. Monday morning, I headed out to the barn. He'd already bought all this paint, and in my mind, I'm like, well, that's absolutely ridiculous. He bought way too much paint. I'll use about half of it. Get the job done. Save him some money, and we'll get the week started off on the right foot.
8:55 Later that afternoon, he came out, he did not tell me, I did a good job. He did not tell me I did a bad job. He just asked me why I didn't use all the paint. I said, I didn't need to saved you some money and got the job done. He said, If I wanted to save the money, I wouldn't have bought that much paint.
9:13 You might say. 25 years of me trying to get this man's approval, try and get that pat on the back, I'll come to a head that day, my father and I proceeded to get into a heated argument, and I murdered him that afternoon.
9:29 I will never know what I did to my mother. That lady stood beside me from day one second one, three days later, she bailed me out, and my drinking took a turn that I didn't know it. Knew how I drink in the morning, afternoon, evening, pass out, wake up at two o'clock in the morning, and I would drink more. And I proceeded to do that for the next 10 months. I went to court. 10 months later, I was convicted to second degree murder, armed criminal action, and given two life sentences.
10:00 US, I went to prison October 3, 1987 took me exactly 13 days to learn what ingredients to steal out the chow hall so I could make my homemade wine. And that's what I proceeded to do. And when I couldn't steal the ingredients, I'd buy a six ounce bottle of aftershave out of the canteen, cook it down to a one ounce shot, and I'd drink it. I would put anything inside my body to quiet the voices in my head. Now, my mother and my grandmother, again, loved me and supported me non stop. They came to visit me every single Thursday. They drove two and a half hours, and it did not matter whether it was August and 106 or whether it was January and nine inches of snow on the ground, they came to visit me, and when I was drinking that homemade wine, and I had the voices quieted in my head when they came in the vision room, I gave him the biggest hug I knew how I thanked him for coming to visit me. I told him how much I loved him, and I thanked him for that little bag of quarters so I could get a sandwich out of the vending machine.
10:57 Then on January the first 1992 I woke up my cell floor after New Year's Eve, drinking and my own blood, my own puke, the homemade wine that I was cooking was literally burning my stomach lining out, so I decided I would just quit drinking. And the reason I share this next part with you is because it talks about the dry drunk in our book. Well, I really believe I might have been one of the meanest, most miserable dry drugs there was for four and a half years, because when my mother my grandmother would come visit me, and I had nothing inside my body to quiet the voices in my head when they walked into the visiting room, my attitude would be the visiting room opened 19 minutes ago. Where have you been? I've been waiting. I didn't hug him.
11:40 I'm sure I didn't tell him I loved him, but I complained every week there wasn't more quarters in that bag to where I could get two sandwiches out of the vending machine. That's where this disease has taken me.
11:52 I am a completely broken man. I have no morals. I have no values. I do not want to sleep at night because I do not want to dream, and I absolutely do not want to wake up the morning because I no longer want to live there's a couple guys I had a job with in there, played ball. They had been on me for over two years, tell me I was an alcoholic. And I said, Well, I haven't had anything in my system for almost four years. So no, I'm not. They said, Yeah, you are. The problem was I was so miserable, my fuse was about this short. I was ready to swing on one of them. I said, What have I got to do to get you two off my back? They said, real simple. Go to an AA meeting. I said, I truly go to one one meeting, and you two will leave me alone. They said they would. So I signed up. It took about two weeks get on the call out that Sunday evening, they called the AA and my name was on the list, and I walked into that room, and I sat in the back, back left hand corner. I stared at the floor. I absolutely did not participate in anything you all had to do that night. I did not read, I did not introduce myself, and I absolutely was not going to hold anybody's hand during the prayer. And when that meeting was over, I walked up out of that room, and I'm sure I probably pushed two chairs out of them away, tripped over one, and headed back to my cell. And the only thing I could think about all the way back to my cell was this, are these two guys going to leave me alone, or am I going to have to swing all one of them? And you know what, they didn't say a single word to me on Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday or all week long.
13:24 And the only thing I can explain to you all is that something happened to me that night that I will call a spiritual experience, that I had to learn about later on, because the following Sunday, when they called a over the intercom, I went back to that room, and I sat in that same chair, and I stared at the floor, and I talked to myself for 60 minutes, and I asked myself, Why am I here? And I did that for nearly three months before I ever said a word, and I realized that night that the men in that room were talking about me.
13:53 They were talking about how alcohol worked for a long time, and then it stopped. And there was consequences. They talked about how they lived their life full of fear of what other people thought about them. They talked about how they never had the right car, they never had the right girlfriend, they never had the right clothes, their family didn't live in the right subdivision or on the right farm. And that night, I grabbed a big book off the table, and I took it back to my cell.
14:18 I read a couple of paragraphs, and I thought, well, there's nothing big about this book. And then I read a few more pages, and it started talking about me, and I didn't want to deal with that, so I'd slam the book and I throw it on my bunk, and it lay there for two or three days till I picked it up again.
14:32 And I did that for nearly 10 months. And then in state of Missouri, in prison, for us to have a meeting, people just like yourselves literally have to volunteer to come into prison for us to have a meeting. And the three men that was bringing the meeting in said they was going to put on what they called a big book workshop 15 weeks long. You have to make a commitment to be there. I thought, why not? I don't have anything else to lose. Plus, it gets me on my cell one more day a week, so I signed up for it.
15:00 And those 15 weeks changed my life. At the age of 34 I finally admitted I was an alcoholic. During those 15 weeks, I also realized that I was responsible for everything that happened in my life. I quit blaming the sheriff and the prosecutor, the judge, the court. I started holding myself accountable for everything that had happened, and during those 15 weeks, I took the first step of realizing that my father was a good man. He loved me the only way he knew how. It just wasn't what I wanted. When those 15 weeks was over, I asked one of those three men if he would sponsor me, and that's when I learned real quick that you all lived in the free world was truly crazier than I was because he said yes, he came in every other Sunday, one hour early to take me through the steps. I got through steps one, two and three. That was not really hard at that point in time, because my life was pretty much unmanageable. I did an inventory with this man and shared things with him I'd never shared with anybody else. Got through six seven, when we got to step eight, he knew that they sold three by five cards in the canteen, so he told me to get a big pack of them, write the people's name down I had harmed who I need owed amends to how I played my part. And I got all that done. Then he came in for when we was going to start Step nine, and I said, Well, Harold, we're done. And he looked at me, and he said, and how did you come to that conclusion? I said, Well, Harold, I'm locked in a maximum security prison that's gates locked, and they are not letting me out to make an amends to anybody. So we're done till I go home. He goes, I do understand your thinking, but that's the wrong answer. I said, with him, please explain it to me. And he said, No, you're going to explain it to me. Tell me about the visit you had with your grandmother three weeks earlier. And what I told him was, I went into the visiting room, and my grandmother gave me a big hug, and she said, It's so good to see my grandson again. And I said, Grandma, you see me every Thursday. What are you talking about? And she said, No, my grandson has light behind his eyes, and it talks about in the big book how others will see changes in us before we ever see it in ourselves. And I am so grateful I was given that opportunity to be a grandson to her again, because she passed away five months later.
17:16 My mother had been dealing with cancer, and they came out of remission for the third time, and she told me on a visit that she was too tired to deal with it anymore, and that lady passed away long before I ever got out. And I am so grateful that I was given opportunity to be a son to her again. Now she had done something for me that I didn't realize at the time, and I found out later. So I need to backtrack a little bit. I went into prison. I tried to drag everything in my life into that cell with me. And I'm telling you, if they let me brought the dog in, I'd have brought the dog into that cell, but I tried to drag a woman and two girls in there with me. She came to visit me and lasted for about 18 months, and she said, This is not for me. I give her a lot of credit. I was a selfish sob. I probably wouldn't have lasted 18 days, and she moved on. Well, I received a letter from this woman one night, had her name up in the return address corner, and I got the letter. And being the good alcoholic I was at this point in time, in my program, I couldn't read it. I laid it on my desk because I knew she was going to tell me how I ruined her life, how I destroyed everything. So I sat there for three days and came up with 4307 27 scenarios of what she wrote in that letter. And after I drove myself crazy long enough, I opened it up and read it, and she said, Here's my phone number. Will you give me a call? Well, I know I couldn't wait three more days, so when they opened the cell doors, I went down, got in line, I gave her a call, and she asked me, she goes, Am I still on your visiting list? And I said, Yes. And she said, Well, I'd like to come see you. And I said, why? And she said, because I'd been talking to your mom, and she said you'd been making some changes in your life, and I want to come see you. And she come to visit me three weeks later, and for the first time in my life, I carried on a conversation with a woman without any ulterior motives. I did not have to worry about what restaurant she wanted to go eat, and I could care less about Sure, didn't have to worry about what movie she was been wanting to see, and I really did not want to see it. We just sit there and talked, and for whatever reason you'd had to ask her my higher power, who I choose to call God, she wanted to wait on me, and we got married in the visiting room of prison, and she waited on me till I got home. I became a husband. I became a father. My girls come to visit me on their own when they got old enough and didn't need Debbie to be with them, and I was starting to change life. Even with two life sentences in the state of Missouri, you do get to go see the Pro board. And I went up my first time, and I thought, well, they're going to see what a changed man I am. I've got my family back. I finally admitted I was an alcoholic. I've been making amends. They're going to give me a second chance of life. I.
20:00 Went in that parole hearing, it lasted six minutes, and they said, Mr. Huff, we'll see you in five years. And I walked out of that room and I cussed. God, I cussed. Aa, I got on the phone that night, and I told Debbie to file for divorce. I am absolutely never going home. This is the stupidest thing you could have done. Get out of my life. Move on and I'll just live in here? Well, I whined and cried to her for three nights, and on that third night, she cut me off right in mid sentence, and she said, Are you done?
20:29 And I will tell each and every one of you. I'd heard that voice before, so I knew my next answer better be the right one. I said, I can be and she said, Good, I'm not going anywhere. The girls aren't going anywhere, and we're going to get through this. And in case you had not figured it out, yes, she was in Al Anon, and she just called it the way it was that night, when I went to my cell, I changed my life. Instead of getting up at 6am count, I set my alarm 15 minutes early, and I read out the daily reflections. I read out a big book, and I said a prayer every morning before I walked out of my cell. And I did that every single morning for five years. And I went up for parole the second time. Parole hearing lasted about 13 minutes, and they said, Mr. Huff, we'll see you in two years. And I knew my PewDiePie was not going to last very long. And night two, I changed my life for the second time, and I set my alarm 30 minutes early,
21:26 and I read out the daily reflections, and I read out the big book, and whatever month it was, I read that step, and I said my prayers, and I did that every single morning for two years. And during those two years, I started working with other inmates in there. They're the best of my ability. I'm not from our parole hearing. The third time, it lasted 57 minutes, they threw pictures of what I'd done to my father on the table. They talked about things that I did not know. They even knew I'd done as a kid. It took him 73 days to give me an answer, and they said, Mr. Huff, we'll see in two more years. And for the first time, I was good with that answer, because I I had got out when I wanted to. I did not have the foundation of this program.
22:09 I had really not worked the steps to the best of my ability. I did not know anything about their traditions, and I'd have walked out of prison and in six months, burned my life to the ground and probably took somebody with me, and during these next two years, when I brushed my teeth in the morning, I started liking that man that was looking back at me in the mirror.
22:31 I found a freedom living in a seven foot, benign foot cell in a maximum security prison that I had never experienced before in my life on the streets, I went up for parole that fourth time, they granted me an out date. I walked out of prison. October, 3, 2008 21 years to the day. There is not one thing I did to get them gates open to allow me to walk out. Alcoholics Anonymous, my higher power, who I choose? God. God did that because when I was sentenced, I should have done 15 years on each I should have done 30 years. I got out in 21 now we'll tell you all this. Though you go to prison in 1987 and you come out in 2008 the world did change, and I didn't really fit in anymore. You had these things called a cell phone, something called the internet had come along, there was something called Google. There is some lady named Siri who had talked to you on the phone.
23:28 But let me explain to you my first 30 days out of prison, I came home on a Friday afternoon, Saturday morning, to me and I'd never met before in my life, came to my door and said, Are you Brent? I said yes, and said, Harold l told us take you to a meeting. I went to my first meeting Alcoholics Anonymous, less than 24 hours out of prison. Sunday afternoon, my wife told me, I need to go down the basement. There's a couple boxes I need to go through. I thought they were things that my mom my grandmother and I said, Well, I'm not ready for that yet. She goes. It's not their stuff, but you do need to go through these two boxes. So I went downstairs, and there's these two large boxes down there, and they had gifts in them. And I started picking the gifts up, and it said, Merry Christmas, dad, 2004 Happy Birthday. Dad, 1999 they had gifts from my daughters for every year, and they started after 1996 when I went to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, and that told me exactly how powerful this program can be in the miracles that can happen if you work these steps. And then on Monday, a gentleman invited me into his home. He cooked me a steak dinner and took me to an AA meeting. And that night, I did truly realize that you all in the free world was crazier than I was. He had a six month old son in that house, and he invited me in there. And I said, Why would you invite someone like me into your home with your six month old son? He said, because those three men that's been bringing that meeting into prison to you for the last 12 years, those three men are in my life, and those three.
25:00 Men told me, You have done everything they have asked of you, and I'm just going to give back so freely given to me. And I learned that night exactly what the fellowship about college Anonymous was all about.
25:12 Now, my sponsor had told me. He said, if you're ever asked to share your story, you just say yes, let you have a prior commitment. Well, I looked at Harold, and I said, Well, Harold, there is going to be no one ever asked me to share my story. He said, I kind of figured you'd think that, so I already got that set up. You're sharing your story Halloween night.
25:33 28 days after getting out of prison, I walked into the basement of a church and I shared my story, and I was in a complete sweat. I was a nervous wreck. I knew that everybody in the basement that church would turn around and walk out the other door when they heard what I had done and heard my story, and that night, nearly every single one of them got in line and either shipped my hand or gave me a hug. And I learned right there that I had finally found my true people.
25:56 Now for whatever reason you all can imagine, no one would give me a job, nobody would hire me, and I'm panicking and I'm complaining. And my sponsor stopped me said, Did you ever think maybe you're not supposed to have a job yet? And I looked at Harold and I said, No, absolutely not. Because my parole officer is asking me every week, do I have a job? I'm pretty sure my wife would love for me to have a job and help pay bills. So this has never crossed my mind. And he said, No, you're missing the point. Maybe you're not supposed to have a job yet. Maybe you're just supposed to get used to your family and let them get used to you. And of course, the committee starts spinning up there, going damn sponsors.
26:38 So I kept doing what I was doing, and about six months later, I shared my story to meeting a gentleman I'd never met before my life. Came up to me afterwards, and he said, Do you really need a job? And I said, Yes, I do. He handed me his card. He said, Come see me in the morning. At 10am he hired me on the spot, aa, doing for me what I could not do for myself. And I worked for this man for a little over a year,
27:02 I ended up getting hurt, had to have surgery. They put a plate in my neck. I really couldn't do the lifting that I needed do for him, but I am for always grateful for that man for giving me an opportunity. Just as I was finishing up rehab for my surgery. Is right before Thanksgiving, there's a group of us went out to dinner, going to a meeting. One of the men who used to bring the meeting into the prison had moved away. He's back home for the holidays. He asked me how things were going. I explained it all to him. He said, Don't worry. He wrote a man's name down phone number. He said, give him a call when Thanksgiving is over. So I gave him a call the following week, set up an interview. I went out the interview at the man. I said, Look. I said, I know I only had this interview because George set this up. I'm a convicted felon. I've never worked in the car business before in my life, and I don't want to waste your time. He looked me in the eye, and he said, George told me you'd be honest. He goes, let's sit down and talk. An hour and 20 minutes later, I walked out of his office. He said, I'll talk to the family owns this dealership, and I'll get back with you following week. He gave me a call, and he said, When can you start work? I looked at my watch. I said, I'm pretty sure I could be there in 20 minutes. He said, Well, that's great, but let's wait and start on Monday. I said, Yes, sir. I started working for this dealership as a porter and cleaning and detailing cars. They gave me an opportunity to be a salesman. The last three years I was a salesman. I was the number one salesman in the district. I became a finance manager, a sales manager, and I actually became the General Sales Manager for Chrysler, Dodge Jeep, Ram store.
28:36 Now there is no reason anyone like me should ever be given that much responsibility. I had the security code to unlock it in the morning, to lock it up at night, and I had access to keys to 500 cars. And the only reason I was given that was because of each and every one of you, because you told me when I came in these rooms, you said, get in the middle and stay in the middle. Come in and sit all the way down. Get active, get a commitment. Be a part of the group. Don't hang around on the outside. You said, work, hard, work smart, work on us. And miracles will happen when they're supposed to, not when I want them to.
29:13
And that's what I did. Now, I told you about those three by five cards that my sponsor told me I had to do for the immense and when I'd got out over the years, I'd been working on them. But there's this one that I always zip to the back real quick when we met. Why I didn't do it before I walked in front of him, I don't know. But every time he'd see me, put it in the back, and about the fifth or sixth time, he said, don't you think maybe we need to address that one? I said, I don't know how, and it was an amends to my father, and he said, This is what you're going to do. I give you 15 days to write your father a letter. Then we're going to get in the car and want to drive to his grave site, and it was about three hours away, and that's what we did. He walked into the cemetery with me, and I got down on my knees and read that letter, and he had his hand on my shoulder.
30:00 Her the entire time, and when I got done with the letter, he walked away. And when I left the cemetery that day, I believe that my father has forgiven me.
30:10 I believe he's proud of the man that I am becoming. I can never make a direct amends to undo the damage I did, and the only thing I can do is wake up each morning try to live my life to the best of my ability, by the steps or traditions, the guidance of my sponsor and my higher power, who I choose to call God.
30:29 Now I'm not standing up here telling anybody, you walk into these rooms and life is going to be great, because you know what life is. Life and things happen in life, and in 2019 many things happened in my life in 2019 in February, I got a call from my parole officer, and he said, Brent, the state of Missouri is done with you. They cut me off parole. I used to get have to get a pass 15 days prior to drive from Saint Louis, Missouri to Kansas City, Missouri to visit my daughter and grandson. Now I have a passport. I've been to Europe. I've been to Thailand. I mean, I can go other places, and this country actually lets me back in too. That's a positive.
31:11 I want to share you a gift that this program gave me in 2019 the St Louis Blues made it to the Stanley Cup Championship.
31:23 My daughter had been watching hockey since she was 12 years old with her best friend. She showed up into the dealership one evening, and she said, Can you leave? And I said, Yes, I can leave. She goes, No. I mean, like, can you leave right now? I said, Yeah. I said, What's wrong? I'm thinking something's wrong with my grandson. And she reaches in her purse and pulls out two tickets to game seven.
31:47 And she took me, of all people, she didn't take her fiance. She didn't take her best friend, Jamie, who she'd been watching games when she was 12 years old. She came and took me, and that was a gift from Alcoholics Anonymous is she chose to take me to game seven is still the greatest sporting event I've ever experienced, because I got to spend it with her.
32:10 And then something else happened in 2019 that beautiful woman that came back into my life, she ended up being in a horrific accident.
32:19
She spent nine months in ICU, covid hit, and I couldn't get in to see her anymore. And I raised so much hell. One night, I think the administrator just wanted me out of the hospital. They said, Give him five minutes. They put a gown on me, gloved me up, and I got to get into the room, and she started crying, and she said, Please don't leave me alone in here. I do not want to die in here alone. And I made a decision that night to bring her home. And I called the girls and I said, I'm bringing your mom home. And I signed a stack of papers in the hospital, against the will of the hospital, telling I was doing everything wrong.
32:55 We brought Debbie home, we said a hospice the girls both took off work and moved back into the house, and we were all together last 19 days before she passed away, you all showed up only like you all know how you surrounded me with love. You supported me, and you gave me space to space to breathe when I needed it, and on visitation, you brought food, you made coffee, you brought sodas. You filled that visitation room to where people couldn't even move, and my two brother in law said, Who are all these people? Said, our sister did not have this many friends. I said, That's my other family. That's my a family. They did not understand, but I did.
33:37 I really figured that I would be in Saint Louis, Missouri, working for that dealership the rest of my life, till I was 6870 years old. But when I learned to stay out of the way, God has other plans, I was asked to share my story in Dallas, Texas in August of 2020, well, covid did hit. They shut the conference down. August 2020, 22 they opened it back up. Stu said, Hey, we got the conference going again. Let's try this all over. I said, Great. I said, I'd love to come down. He said, If you can take golf two days early, you can stay with me. We'll play some golf, we'll eat some good barbecue, and then we'll go to the conference. I said, this is exactly what I need. Then about six weeks before the conference, he gave me a call and he said, we got a problem. I said, What's wrong? He said, the hotel double booked, and they're going to move the AA conference back two weeks. Can you still make it? I said, Yeah, that's not a big deal. I'll make arrangements. And he said, Well, we got one more problem. I said, Okay, what's this problem? He said, well, in two weeks, I have a commitment at another a meeting, so I won't be able to pick you up. You can't come down two days early. We can't play golf, eat barbecue, but I'll have one of my sponsees pick you up and take you to the conference from the airport. Well, I was very disappointed, but I said, okay, and for all of you out there who have sponsees, you kind of know what the next story's coming. He did pick me up at the airport, and he did drive me to the hotel to.
35:00 I got my suitcase out of the car, and he drove away. I'm standing in Dallas, Texas, in the lobby of a hotel, and I do not know one person. Lady comes up to me, and I must have had that lost look in my face, and I explained to her what was going on. She said, Well, I'll tell you what. She goes I'm taking a couple other speakers out to dinner. Some of the committee's going to be there, so why don't you come join us until the conference starts? I said I'd appreciate that when we're sitting there at the table, I realized there's another lady who was not supposed to be there. She was a late minute fill in, like 12 days prior, because the original speaker had to have surgery and couldn't fly.
35:36 So we were sitting there visiting that night, and her best friend says that we were sparking. I'm not really sure what we was doing, because I hadn't been on a date in 37 years, but later that weekend, I heard her story on Saturday morning, she heard my story on Sunday morning, and she was still speaking to me, so that had to be a positive.
35:59 And we proceeded to communicate back and forth. She came to St Louis and visited me, met my daughter and grandson, met my other daughter in Denver. I flew out to Los Angeles, I met her I met her daughter. We proceeded to do this for a little over a year. We both decided, neither one of us are in our 20s or 30s, so what are we really doing and where is this going?
36:24 Said, Let's talk to our sponsors and figure out what's happening. We had been sharing things with our sponsors back and forth, and here's the AA world getting a little bit smaller. Her sponsor in Los Angeles, California, mine in St Louis, Missouri, had known each other for over 12 years. They'd been at conferences together. They'd been at workshops together, and they knew everything that was going on. So we had to come to the conclusion, who was willing to move? I couldn't really ask her to move from Los Angeles to St Louis, because she had spent her entire life with her career, and she just made senior partner in a law firm. Yes, only an AA can an attorney and an ex convict get together.
37:06 So I made the decision that I'd leave St Louis. Lot of people in my life thought that I was crazy, giving up everything I'd known to go someplace that I had no job, no opportunity, and I did not know what was going to happen, and that little boy I told you about who was so full of fear, what you all thought about him when I walked into a classroom, I did not have any fear. I knew this was the next step on my journey, and I listed my house, and nine hours later, I had four offers. I closed in 18 days. I gave a 30 day notice at the dealership, and I packed up, moved to Los Angeles, California. I had no job. Two months later, I ended up having lunch with the President and CEO of the Midnight mission. He hired me on the spot, and I've been working there for the last two and a half years. My sponsor told me a long time ago, if I ever want to stay sober, I better do two things every single day. I better work with the newcomer, and I better go somewhere once a week that I do not want to end up and my sponsor is still taking meetings into prisons and sent in Missouri. I have sponsees out here. I still have a couple back in St Louis. I deal with long distance, and I go into the heart of Skid Row five days a week, and I can tell you all I do not want to end up there, but I'm trying to help others, as people have helped me now, on this lady's 30th sobriety birthday that I moved out here for, I got down on my knee in front of 183 alcoholics and proposed to her. She said, Yes, we got married this past October.
38:40 We have a life. We have a life today that is beyond words. Our home is full of alcoholics, anonymous. She has her lineage G meeting once a month over there. I have one for the guys that I sponsor over here. Last Thanksgiving, we opened our home to alcoholics who didn't have family around here, and we had 68 people in our home for Thanksgiving.
39:04 Everything, please understand this. Everything that I have in my life that is good is because of Alcoholics Anonymous. Today,
39:15 I have a life that is beyond words, and I have a life that is so rich, and I'll sum everything up in this if I stay in the passenger seat of the car and I let my higher power, who I choose to call God, drive, we get down the road at 55 miles an hour in between the lanes. But there's a problem with me, because I'm an alcoholic and I don't like to wait sometimes. So I grab the steering wheel and I'll put my foot on the gas, and we start running 85 miles an hour down the road. And with me in charge, I start driving my life right off into the ditch. And as soon as I release that steering wheel and surrender back to God and crawl back in the passenger seat, the car slows down to 55 miles an hour, and we get back in between the lines, and we get down the road when.
40:00 Are supposed to not when I want to, because if I got to Dallas, Texas when I wanted to to play golf, hang out with Stu I would not have had dinner that night. I would not have met Yvonne, and there's a good chance that we would have not gotten together and got married, and I would not be standing here in front of you all today, and for the people sitting out here, and I know there definitely are some of you that came into these rooms before me. I thank you for my life.