Thank you. Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Danny B very grateful and thankful, enthusiastic member of Al Anon. And you know, I really had to work on tuning out those readings, because I resonated with every single thing that was said. And of course, I'm trying to tell a story, and I want to go into all the other stories beforehand. So I just want to thank the committee and Makeba and everyone who puts this on. I know what it's like. I've been a chair of convention before, so I know it takes a village. And thank you so much. You've all been very gracious hosts and hostesses, especially Doris Denise over there. Thank you so much. I've loved every second we've spent together and Michelle and got some good friends here with Lynn Cathy. You know, I'm here today because Mindy C My dear friend, heard me speak years ago and begged me to come speak at this convention, and I had other engagements, and she gave my name to Kathy, who tried calling me three years in a row, and I had to say no every time, and she got me to speak at the AFG, and she said, while I have you on the phone, would you mind coming up to Santa Clarita? And I said, Absolutely, it'd be my honor and privilege to speak at Santa Clarita as well. So thank you, Kathy for finally getting me here. My sponsor is here, my partner's here, my mom's here, and you're here. The fellowship is here. So thank you all for taking the time to come and listen to me share my experience strength. And hope I always start out by asking, before I really begin, if there's any newcomers here, and you don't have to raise your hand, to raise your hand, you don't have not I don't have a prize for you or anything like that. But you know, if you are, you feel like you're new.

I just want to let you know I am your speaker. Okay, I'm going to set the bar very, very low for you today, so that you actually hear something from me and inspires you. Because when I heard my first convention speaker. I was not very inspired, but they did say those three magical words, which was, keep coming back. And I had no interest. I did not want to come back. I actually am a third generation in Al Anon. I'll share that with you as well. My mom and my grandmother, they're both coming before me. Mom with 20 ish years, grandma with 41 years and I been here since July the ninth, 2009 and I don't really celebrate that a lot, because I actually came in and out of the room so many times. I was actually an Alateen. When they call this ala tots. I was only 10 years old, right? But my grandma yanked me out of the home and took me to those Al Anon meetings with her, and they stuck me in the other room. So but then I left and I came back, and I left and I came back. And so, you know, if you're new or you feel like you're new, please keep coming back, because there is something very special here. We're all miracles of this program. And I firmly believe that the only difference between me sharing my story and you not sharing your story is that, you know, we all come under this one family disease. You know, theirs was drinking, minus thinking, and I'm going to get into that much, much later, but it is a family disease, and we're here to talk about that. So for the sake of time, I'll just jump into it. I was we're asked to share, in a general way, what it was like, what happened, and how we are today, and there are parallels. I will promise you that there are parallels to today and how I was on day number one. I feel like a newcomer sometimes, and that's because I am imperfect. I'm a flawed human being, and I love that we practice this progression and not perfection, because I get to fall down like that Chutes and Ladders game. I get to climb and climb and climb and climb and fall down every once in a while. The great news about that, though, is I have a program today, and I have a sponsor today, and I have steps today, and I have literature today, and I can go on and on and on right. But I was born on January the 21st 1977

3:58 I have this character defect I'll just share with you now. I romanticize the shit out of everything. Okay, there's absolutely nothing traditional about me except how I was conceived. My mother was 16, my father was 21 and 77 No, no, absolutely not, right. But I wanted to be from someplace else. I wanted to be from Gingerbread lane. I wanted to have the 10 bedroom mansion. I wanted to have the perfect family, the million dollar clothes. I wanted to drink cocoa and roast marshmallows by the fire. And the only worry, the only concern, was whether or not the dog was going to recover from its cold over Christmas, right? I call that the Hallmark Channel movie syndrome, because that's how I saw it. I saw all of that stuff on TV, and I wanted that life that was not my life. My mom was still a minor, so we lived with my grandmother, and growing up, that's where I spent the first few years. And my grandmother lived with this guy who I thought for many, many years, was my. Grandfather Tom, and come to find out, he was not my grandfather Tom, but that's how I was referring to him my entire life. That's how I referred to him. And no one ever corrected me. They were they were boyfriend and girlfriend, and we lived there, and I never knew what alcoholism was. I knew what drinking was, and he was a painter, and he'd come home every day about three or four o'clock in the afternoon, rolling up with a 12 pack of ice cold Budweiser beer and a carton of Camel unfiltered cigarettes. And I mean, he was my hero. He walked in, pop the top, pour that beer into a glass, smoke a cigarette. He asked me how my day was, and I'd be on my way. And I just love this guy to death, right? And so it wasn't until I got into Al Anon hearing the stories of my mom and my grandmother, and I'm thinking, holy cow, my heart broke because I found out from their shares and their experience strength and hope that he was not really the best guy. And I'll share with you a little story, because it kind of sets us up for the insanity that I'm going to share with you later. It's not my story, but I'm going to story, but I'm going to steal it for a second.

You know, there was a lot of violence in that household that I didn't have to witness. I wasn't I was fortunate enough not to have to witness that, but my grandmother and her own family disease and Tom and his alcoholism, you know, they used to play this little game called War, right? And she'd have her weapon and he'd have his, and they were chasing each other around the house, and she managed to get a switchblade, and he had a gun, and they were just going crazy with one another, and she chased him out of the house, and he was just trying to get away. All he ever wanted to do is drink, because that's what drinkers like to do. They just want to drink. He found comfort in his drinking, but it was like that police academy movie where she's hanging on to the hood of the car, and they're driving in the back of the driveway, and he's just trying to get away. And there she is. This is like an everyday neighborhood, and the neighbors are waving, and everyone's like, what's going on with, you know, Linda and Tom? And it was just the weirdest thing. But I didn't know that until I got here, and I was so heartbroken over that I really was, but I loved him till his dying day. And you know, I can't, I can't say that the sentiment was shared by others in my family, but I did love him, and I learned here in Al Anon. You know, you can, you can hate the disease, but you can still love the person. It took me many, years to figure that one out, but my mom and my dad, you know, my mom graduated high school, this is really bothering me. I'm so sorry, you guys, because I'm squatting to talk to you and I can't stand up straight, so I apologize. But my mom graduated high school, and my dad and her tried to make a go out of it. We moved to Fresno, California, and my father was horribly abusive. Of course, he was drinking, and it wasn't a really good situation. So we ended up, thank you so much. We ended up moving back home to my grandmother's house. And that's going to be a reoccurring theme. Grandma was always there, sort of front and center with us, and she was always there. Her door was always, always open. I mean, there was some real magic there with that lady. And you know, we that's where we lived for three years.

8:18 And in 83 my mom, who I didn't even know was dating the man. She says, this is going to be your new stepfather. And this guy reminded me of that character from Popeye. His name is Brutus. You guys remember Brutus? Bulging, muscly, Puerto Rican guy, snarly, curled up lip, just tatted, you know, tatted up, not nice. Six year old Danny intuitively knew this was not the guy for me. I did not like him, and he kind of had a resentment from, you know, with me too, because my mom and Bobby were high school sweethearts, and when he went off to the army, my mom got together with my dad, and when he got back, guess who was in the picture? You know, it was me, and he didn't like that. He didn't like that. My mom had this relationship and had a baby, but I came with the, you know, I came with the package. And next thing I know, it's a David and Goliath for, you know, 10 years. Because I don't know about you, but I always assess the drinkers in my life. And Bobby was a drinker, you know. And for me, when I'm assessing the drinkers, there's always those happy go lucky life of the party drinkers, you know, they're always telling jokes. Then there's the drinkers that are kind of just silently passing out in a corner somewhere, right? And they don't really want much to do at the party anymore. They just pass out. Then there's the drinkers that get all philosophical. They start staring themselves in the mirror, and they start sobbing, trying to solve, you know, solve all the world's problems. And then there's the violent and belligerent drinkers. And that was Bobby. That's who I got. Was the violent, belligerent drinker. And if he wasn't beating me, he was beating my mom, and if he wasn't beating my mom, he was beating in the walls and and he was a very violent person. And again, it took a long time for me. To really reconcile that, because, you know, it was 10 years of hell, but he was a good man, and I have to acknowledge that, because oftentimes I don't he has a disease. He has a disease. His disease is alcoholism.

And there were certain days where he would start fighting with the dog, and I remember being in bed, and I would just wish the dog would bite him in the ass. And, you know, he learned his lesson, and we'd be done with it. And that never happened. He my mom had two other children with this man, and I'm not one to celebrate divorce, but when she told me that they were getting a divorce, I was 16, and I kid you not, I did three cartwheels down the driveway. I mean, I was so excited because life for me was about to begin, I was finally free of all the fear, finally free of all the resentment, finally free of all of that violent drinking and I mean, I saw a lot. I don't really share a lot of the details anymore. It's just in a general way that I want you to know. I saw a lot. It was awful. It's not anything that I wish on anybody, especially children. You know, we have to take care of our children, but when we left, it was just me and my mom and my two brothers, and another resentment came right into the picture, because my mom said, you have to go out and get a job, and I resented her for that, because why am I helping clean up your mess? You're the one that got the divorce, you're the one that wanted the kids. You're the one that you know is taking us away from this. Thank God, but it's not my responsibility. And she said, Well, you're going to have to help out. And so I did exactly what I was told. I went and got a job. And I'll just share this little tidbit, because my mom's here, and I get a kick out of sharing this with you guys. But I don't know about your mothers, but my mother has this sort of death stare that I'm very, very afraid of, and the eyebrow kind of goes up, and the lips kind of purse, and I get this deep, deadly stare with the eyes. And so I did every single thing that my mother told me to do. Thank God for our boundaries today, because that doesn't happen anymore, but that used to intimidate the living hell out of me. So every time she said something, I would do it. And so I did. I went to go get a job. I worked at KB toy store, got fired.

I was a rebellious teenager. I did not want the responsibility, but I did. I got fired. Then I went to Sam goodie music store got fired, went to go work for Mrs. Fields. Cookies got fat, is exactly what happened. You know, those cookies were the best cookies. And every day, at the end of your shift, you get to take home all the leftover cookies. And I would take them home. And my brothers were digging. My mom would dig in. We were all getting high on these cookies and fat. And she came home one day and she said, Look, you know, these cookies just aren't cutting it anymore. She was in the airline industry, and she said, you know, the airline's hiring, come fill out an application, and this will be a better situation for you. And so, because it was Mother, I did exactly what I was told to do, and I interviewed right on the spot, filled out that application. I was working in the reservation sales office down at LAX, and I was completely rebellious, getting into trouble, left, right and backwards, and I just didn't care. There was something about not caring. Back then, when you're 18 years old, you just don't care. I was not planning on making a career out of the airline, so I didn't care. And a few years had come and passed, and they said, you know, HR had called me in, and they said, Look, you know, we like you, but you're not going to make a go out of it, out of the LAX office. So you're going to be transferred to Salt Lake City, Tampa or Boston. So having grown up this way and having really, there should have been some logical like, when you grew up in an alcoholic home, you probably want to go the furthest away. And of course, I chose the closest place so that I could be closest to my mom and my grandmother, Salt Lake City. Now, No one warned me what Salt Lake City was going to be like in the 90s, and no offense to anybody, but it was boring. But I got there, and I got there with two suitcases in my hand, and that was it. And I tried turning over a new leaf, and I started making these friends. And my friends loved to drink. Oh, man, they were life of the part. This was the kind of drinking that I wanted to be a part of, right?

And I promise you, I'm not in the other program, but, man, I got really close, because these guys were fun. They were a lot of fun, and I watched them drink and have the parties and the greatest time. But I just didn't take to it the way they did, and I knew that I had to be more responsible and working in the airline industry. What do you do? You like to travel? So I took a trip overseas in 98 and I instantly fell in love with the flight attendants. Oh, man. They said, why don't you come get a job as a flight attendant? And I said, I. Think about that and come do that and fly with you guys. And so I went in and asked my manager, how do you become a flight attendant? She said, Oh, you'll never be a flight attendant. You're not the type. They're not going to like you. And if there's one thing that you will never tell me is no, I have a very tenacious attitude, you will never tell me no. And so I did exactly that. I filled out that application, and I got that interview, and I actually got hired in January of 1999 but they wouldn't give me a date to go to training, and I was so pissed I had to wait month after month after month after month, and I'm like, okay, they probably forgot about me. So now I have to put my life back together, and remember, I only got to Salt Lake City with two suitcases, and I thought, after six months, I'm not going anywhere. I'm going to have to be in Salt Lake City for a while. So I decided to go out and buy a car. I'm like, I need a car. And I went out and bought myself a neon green geo tracker. We used to call it the Gremlin, the old green mobile. And that was on August the 10th of 1999 and on August 11, 1999 an f2 tornado came in and breezed right through Salt Lake City.

And I had no idea. No one warned me about this type of weather in Utah. And I got I had parked my car under a tree, and I went inside. Now the phone rings, and everyone's like, come help. Our friend's house got, you know, some damage. And I went, got dressed, I went outside. My car was gone. The tree was gone. They taught me, and Al Anon, years later, that, you know, God does have this sort of sense of humor kind of thing here, because what happened was, Is God took the car and he took the tree and he kind of commingled them and married them together, and I found them about a block away, and I slept through the entire thing, the alarms, the lightning, the thunder, I just thought it was regular rain, so but the reality of that story was really because I didn't have the patience to let God work in my life. I was getting in the way, and what God afforded me that opportunity was get out of the way. I'll take care of the car so you don't have to get a repossession, because on August 12, I got the phone call to go to training, and I wasn't prepared to drive across the country to go to training. I wasn't prepared to be paid six weeks of unpaid training, no car payment. That would have gotten me in a lot of trouble, but God took care of that problem for me and took the car and married it with the tree, so that was free and clear of that. And about a month later, I ended up in Atlanta, Georgia.

17:46 I ended up in flight attendant training about midway through, we're learning our medical procedures, CPR, medical, AED, all of this stuff to save people's lives, right? My very next day, I'm on a training flight. I'm going to St Louis, and back. This is way back in 99 so you know, if you've been on a plane recently, you know, everything's got, like, seat back, entertainments, movies, headsets, the whole nine yards. This is when flight attendants used to have to do exits. Are here, here and here, right? And I'm doing that. I'm right in the middle of my training flight, and this guy right next to me, he starts choking and gasping for air, and I yanked him out of his seat. I'm giving him the Heimlich maneuver, and I'm giving it towards me instead of away from me. I'm doing it backwards. And I realized my air, and I turned him around. I did it two more times, and he projectiles all over the place. We're both out of breath. I turn them around. I said, are you okay? And he threw up all over me. They named me Danny Appleseed after that, because he left a little little apple seat on my lapel. But I love the parallel there, because it's kind of like what we do in Al Anon, you know, we get here, we learn these tools of the program, and we start saving each other's lives one day at a time.

And that is exactly what my flight attendant training did for me, is I was able to start saving people's lives, and I've been through many medicals on board the aircraft as a result of my training. And so I love the parallel there, because that's what we do in and outside. I think someone mentioned it earlier. We get to practice these principles in all our affairs, right? And so I love that. And so after the end of training, six weeks later, as I did in most of these situations, I called mother, and I said, they're giving me an assignment. It's Dallas, Boston or New York. And she said, You got to go to New York. New York's awesome. You'll have international flying opportunity. Her husband was in New York, or was from New York. And so because of that, I did exactly what I was told to do, and I packed my bags, and they went to New York.

19:43 And you have to understand this one, I'm 23. I have this best friend in training. His name is Kevin. We went up to New York. We moved in with these guys in a one bedroom apartment, and we hated them instantly. It was like one of those things that you absolutely instantly regret because they weren't the kind. Flight Attendants that we wanted to hang out with. They had drugs all over the table. They were drinking right before sign in. I'm like, how do we even report these guys? Like, this is all this is so legal, and so what do you think we did? We kept ourselves out of the house as much as possible. We just did not want to be there. And in the process, I kind of just started meeting a bunch of people, and we met a bunch of people, and we started making a bunch of friends. And about the one thing that was missing in my life was someone to share my time with. And we were in Central Park, and I remember just catching eyes with this guy one day, and I'm like, Oh, there he is. There he is. And we met, and we started hanging out for the next 10 months. His name was Peter, one of the greatest guys. We conquered New York together. We had the best time. He lived in Brooklyn, I lived in Queens, and he knew that I hated my roommates.

He said, You know what, why don't you just start spending some of your free time here with me, and that way you don't have to be in that situation. And so that's what we did, and we were just having the best time of our lives. And one September evening, we were doing what most people do at night, we were having dinner, we were getting ready to pop in a movie. I was a brand new flight attendant, and the phone rang and it said, hey, it was proof scheduling. They said, We got a trip for you. You're going to go to Los Angeles, nice little two day trip. I called my mom, I called my grandma. I said, Hey, I'm coming home. I can't wait to see you guys. I hung up the phone, packed a bag, and I told Peter I was going on this trip. I said, What do you got going on tomorrow? He said, I'm going to be in the financial district. I've got some things I got to tie up. And I said, Okay, I will see you tomorrow. And we embraced. He walked me out the door. We gave each other a great big hug, and that was that. And I went to work. I got on the plane. I was so lucky. There was like, maybe 40 people on board the aircraft. I was working in first class with this great girl, and we were having this great time. And 45 minutes into the flight, we get a phone call from the flight deck. The pilots were calling, saying, do not let anyone near the flight deck door, and that's how we found out that the nation was under attack with September 11, 2001

22:14 I looked out the window, and I could see that We were being escorted in by an F 16. You see, we were one of six airplanes that was profiled that day, and two of them ended up being escorted in by f 16. We were one of them, and when we landed, I turned on my phone immediately. I tried calling my mom, no answer. I called my grandmother. She said, Thank God you're safe. I'm watching the news. I said, Okay, so it's true. I got to hang up this phone. I will call you back. This is the old cell phone system. So messages weren't just coming in left and right. You had to listen to one at a time. And I had 10 messages, family, friends, neighbors, co workers, just checking in to make sure I'm okay. And the very last message was from Peter, and he said, Danny, I'm stuck in this building and it doesn't look good, and I love you. And when the FBI escorted us off the plane, I watched the towers both fall on repeat, and he was gone.

23:21 And when I tell you, I lost it, I absolutely turned my back on God. I hated God. I could not believe, after everything that I had gone through in this disease, all I wanted was to feel loved, and Peter was giving me that, and in an instant it was gone. No goodbye, nothing. It was just gone. And it wasn't until I got here, it was I able to actually reconcile that emotional connection with God again, because I was working with my sponsor, and my sponsor knew I was very upset on the anniversary of 911 every single time it happened. And he said, Danny, you know, I think part of the reason is that you haven't said goodbye to Peter. And I went down, and, I mean, it was just like this light bulb moment over my head. I went down and I took some flowers, found his name on the memorial, said a prayer, and I was free of it ever since, but I hadn't done that up until that point. And that's the wonderful and important thing about having a sponsor is really picking the right person that you can confide in and tell everything to, because they're the ones that are going to be there for you and help guide you along the way. And so when I did that. I was broken, despondent, heartbroken.

I stayed at ground zero for five months on any type of hope that he might have been in a hospital or something, and he was just gone. And so in December of 2001 I transferred to Atlanta, and I started making a new group of friends. Life was starting to get put back together just a little bit. But then I met someone else in a bar, and he was drinking, but because of that, I was attracted to him right away. He was life at the party. I needed some I needed something back in my life like that. I needed to feel that emotional connection with someone, and he gravitated towards me right away. And his name was David, and about three months later, when he asked me to move in, I was just like, yeah, absolutely, let's do it, because I just didn't know any better. And he had two cats that I was deathly allergic to and me and katz just I'll get into more of that later.

25:51 Yeah. But we did. We started. We started. I thought what I could do was stop his drinking, control his drinking. Those first three months, we were just having the best time. We were just kind of having the party, right? And that's, I think, what they call the honeymoon phase. You know, it'll all wear out, it'll it'll go away. He drank. And someone mentioned Heineken earlier, and David's choice of beverage was beer. And so what I started to do is I started to bring home the beer with me, thinking that if I can get him to drink at home, he won't want to go out. But see, he didn't like to drink alone. He wanted me to drink with him. So he started playing this little game.

He popped one, I popped one, he drank it. I pour mine down the drain. And I said, you know, I got to stop this. This is getting to be a very expensive habit, because I wasn't getting buzzed, and he wasn't really buying it. He did not like that. I wasn't drinking and getting buzzed with him. And the six pack turned into the 12 pack, and it turned into the case, right? And it was getting very expensive. And then he said, Well, now let's go out. We've pre gamed, let's go out. And I said, No, I don't want to go out, but, you know, you can't drive under the influence, so we'll just stay home. I mean, this man one up to me every single time he says, no, no, we'll just have a friend come and pick us up. We'll all go out together, and then the friends would come and they'd pick us up, and we'd go. And I did not have a good time.

27:24 I used to love going out and dancing and with all that rhythm you were talking about earlier, but I didn't like to get so wasted, because I'm the moderator. I can do anything in moderation. I am the kind of guy that can have 123, drinks, and I'm fine. I'm actually really okay with that. I am responsible, right? So, but not David. David had to really become obliterated in his drinking. And I just didn't like it. I didn't like the kind of person I became trying to control it. I knew I couldn't cure it. And what happened was, is every time he we would play this game, it just never worked. And so I said, Well, we can't go out. Your friends are out of town.

I'll call a cab. And when the cat called the cab and canceled the cab, and when the cab never showed, he's like, Well, I'll just sober up and I'll drive us to the bar. Well, while he was in the shower, I was outside deflating the tires, so now he can't drive, right? And I hid my car, and I mean, all this crazy insanity, and it just never worked. He always got the upper hand on me, and when he and I started really, really having our problems. Who do you think I called? I called grandma, and I called my mom, and the first thing my grandma said is, you need to go to Al Anon. And I said, I don't want to go to Al Anon. That is not for me. She took me when I was six years old, and in those rooms back then at Birch and RFK was a bunch of older ladies, and I just did not identify that way. So I had zero interest in Al Anon whatsoever, zero. So I call my mom. Mom, what do I do? And she's a newcomer this time, and she says, Well, I'm not supposed to give you any advice, but let me call my sponsor and see so she calls me back. She says, You need to go to Illinois.

29:08 All right. Well, that's not happening, and so we live this way for a couple more years. Now, I will tell you that this is a progressive disease. It's cunning, it's baffling. It's awful. Watching someone you love slip away is one of the worst things I've ever experienced in my life. And I really started developing feelings for this guy after about a year, and that's how long we lived together. And I just I had gotten a little bit of it imparted on me, because it was very subtle, but the literature started showing up in the mail from my grandma, and then I got the O dad in the mail, and I got a directory in the mail, and I'm like, geez, everything just went into the drawer. And I'm like, This is so subtle, I can't even believe it. But I was not impressed. And I did look at it, though, and I saw those three C's, and I just thought, oh. Hey, maybe, you know, if I can't cure it and I can't control it, I mean, you know, am I the cause? And it turned out I wasn't even the cause, there was something much, much deeply rooted before me that caused that, but I was willing to take responsibility and not even know it. So I called Central Office. And she said, Well, I'm central office Hollywood. Let me get you Georgia. I called and this little lady,

30:30 Hey, y'all, you looking for an Al Anon meeting? And I said, Well, yes, I am. And she asked me where I was and how she could be of service. And she said, There's a meeting about a mile away. It starts in about a half an hour. And I just panicked. I didn't know if I could do it, and I had this vision in my head of what I was going to walk into. But I mustered up enough courage to get into the car, and I drove down Georgia, 400 and I went to that meeting, and there they were knitting and smoking and eating cookies. All of them had blue and purple hair, and they said those three little magical words, just keep coming back. And of course, I was out of there before you knew it. I sat through the meeting. I was very kind, and they were very gracious, but I couldn't do it. I could not do it.

31:25 It got to the point to I found out that there was another person, and when I confronted him about it, he said, well, so and so likes to party, and you don't like to party. So I pick him. And I said, What? How do you pick that guy? I mean, we were doing like, the apples and oranges thing, right? I'm educated, I'm smart, I'm this. I've got a great job, I got a nice car. I have a fragile ego. I mean, what can I tell you, right? But he chose that guy and not me, and I was really pissed. And so when he went on one of his vendors, I said, Well, I'm going to teach you a lesson. Now you've had two other Hispanic people tell you their stories, so I'm going to tell you right now. This is not end very well.

32:10 It's actually quite ugly, but because Michelle told me to talk, I'm going to talk. So this is back in 2003 we didn't really have laptops. Back then we had the big, giant computer screens, and I found out that's where they met. So solve the problem by getting rid of the computer. We live in this three story townhouse with cats that were indoor cats, not outdoor cats, and so the one rule that we had was never open the French doors to the balcony. They will jump off of the balcony, and that was the first thing that I did, was open those French doors, and off went the cats. I said, Well, there's one problem solved. Now. I don't have to worry about my allergies anymore. And then I went and plugged the screen of the computer, and I'm carrying it. It's like a 30 pound screen. I'm carrying it out into the, you know, the balcony. But here come the cats. They're crawling up the trellis, and I can hear there's something squeaking in their mouth, and they're, I think they brought, like a rodent or two, a friend to play with them. And now we're all three doing this wobbly dance, and I lost my balance, and over the balcony goes the computer screen.

33:17 Now I get a knock at the door, and it's the police, and they asked me, Do you happen to know how this happened? And I looked the guy right in the face. I said, No, officer, I do not I closed the door, and we were back on our way, and here's what happened. I've got mice running around in my house, or rats, or whatever they were, two cats going to crazy, tearing my house up. I've turned into a monster to fight a disease, and it's become absolute chaos. I didn't know what to do. I took an oversized trash bag, cut a hole through the top, two holes in the sides, put it on, cinched it with a belt, put a hockey mask on my face, oven mitts on my on my arms, a hockey stick in one hand and a tennis racket in the other. Me and the two cats went to hell and back, fighting these rats. And when I tell you my house was destroyed, I mean, there were feathers coming out of pillows. There were glasses, broken, plates broken. I get a knock on the door. It's the sheriff, once again, and he looks at the other guy, and they looked at each other, and they didn't know whether to commit me or take me away. And right then and there, they asked if they can come in.

34:43 And I said, Sure, come on in. And they said, What is going on, and it was the first time I had the courage to tell someone what was going on. And they said, You got to go. You can't stay here. If he comes home, you're going to be in a lot more trouble than you are now. You got to go clean up the mess and get out you. Yeah, and the reason why I share that story is because, when I first met my sponsor, we talked about, he said, Tell me your story.

35:12 And I said, okay, and I had this justification rationalization thing, right, and I was expecting him to agree with me, like, if he hadn't done that, I wouldn't have done this. And I said, Don't you think that's a little bit crazy and income step two, right? Because I didn't think I was the problem. I didn't think I was the crazy one. I thought these guys were the crazy ones. But it turns out, I had a little crazy and as I got into program, years later, my mom and myself and my grandma, we would sit there and sort of compare these war stories to see which one of us was the craziest. And I'll tell you, my grandmother won by far. She is nuts. I was very proud of the amount of crazy that lady had for 41 years in Al Anon. There's no competing with her. And I'm telling you, me and my mom never once, we never hit the mark. But, I mean, we tried, I can tell you that we tried, but when it was over, it was over, and I did muster up enough courage and I left.

36:12 I ended up back home, and in 2008 my grandmother called, and she said, Hey, I am the chairman of the South Bay family Roundup, and I want you to come and read the invocation. And I said I'd be happy to. And so I read the invocation, set up on that stage, listened to the speaker. I kept checking my watch. I couldn't be bothered. My mind was not open. My heart was not open. She was actually keeping me from where I needed to be next. She said a couple of cute things, but I just wasn't there. But my mom and my grandma both called me and they said, Well, what did you think about the roundup? And I said, it was, it was okay. They said, good. You can come back next year and that next year, I went to the opening, and I went to the luncheon, and I went to the banquet, and I went to the family breakfast and all of the marathon meetings, and that's where I met. My sponsor was at the family breakfast. He came up to me and he said, Hi, I'm Bruce. I said, Hi, I'm Danny. I don't think we talked more than five minutes before he determined I needed a meeting, and he invited me to the Thursday night men's stack meeting in El Segundo he said, we have a great group of guys there.

Please join us if you ever feel so obliged. I called my grandma. I said they invited me to the Thursday night men's meeting. She screamed louder than I've ever heard anyone scream. She was so excited. Now here's the deal, when you're a third generation now, Anon, you know you just want to be you're hoping you're going to be anonymous. That all of these people knew who I was, they were literally saving a seat for me in this meeting. And my mom was the same way. She was kind of nudging me up. Go to Thursday. Go to Thursday. It's almost Thursday, and I was I was pumped. I was ready. I got to the parking lot and I froze, and I called my grandma. Said, I can't do it. She said, Danny was the hardest part will be walking through the door. I promise you, they're not going to make you do anything. They're not going to make you share. Just go in and listen. She was wrong. Thursday night men stag, everybody shares, whether you're a newcomer or not, you at least tell them your name and what you're doing there.

Everybody shares, and Bruce shared. And the couple of the guys are like, Oh my gosh, you're Linda's grandson, and that's how I was known as Linda's grandson or Karen's son. And you know, Danny right here, not Karen's son, not Linda's grandson, but just Danny, right? And they said, Well, welcome to Al Anon. Here you go. Here we go. And that's what happened on July the ninth, 2009 and I stepped into it and never once looked back. We jumped into the service. We jumped into the 12 Steps. We did one day at a time. We were at conventions, and I'll tell you, my life started to change one day at a time. I mean, I embraced this thing like there was no tomorrow, and I knew that I was going to have to take these commitments because I really wanted what you all had. I might I knew that my life was unmanageable. It was hard to admit I wasn't falling for it quite that easily. But, I mean, I knew that I needed to get something going here to change. Because at first I thought, I'll come, I'll inspire you guys with my own wisdom. You'll erect statues in my name, and you'll change the literature. They did not do that. They just said, keep coming back.

39:27 So viewers have come, you know, come and gone, and I'm back home and I'm I'm kind of at that point now. And I said, let's try this dating thing once again. And so in 2013 Jane I met, and I'll tell you a little story about how we met, because I think it's kind of funny. We met in the age of technology, on the web, Internet, and he sent me a message, and it was a very simple message. I got a message in my inbox that said, you've got a message waiting for you. And. I opened it up and it was, hi.

40:04 Okay, I'm not responding to Hi, but here we go. I said, I'm not responding to this. And two weeks later, I get a follow up. You haven't followed up to Jay say hello and go on a date. So I said, All right, so I sent a message back, and I said, Hi, this man waited three more weeks to send me another message, and it said, how are you? And I said, The nerve of this man. After five weeks, it's Hi, how are you? And so I said, I'm not responding to this at all. I'm done. But I gave in. And three weeks later, I said, How are you?

40:46 And so it took us three months between April and June to impart enough conversation to actually go out on our first date. And when we met, we hit it off instantly, and he was just ending a relationship, and I was ready to get back into one. And when I tell you, we hit it off. I mean, we played 20 questions right out of the gate. He said, Which airline do you work for? This guy guessed every single airline but the one that I worked for. And he was guessing airlines that were out of business and had been out of business for like, 20 years. He said, You really can't guess my airline. He's like, I just gone through all the airlines terminals, one through seven, no. And I finally told him, and we just had, you know, we started going out.

41:33 We started going out. Now, Jason Normie. He's the Normie in my life, and I hate it, because in my mind, he's got every ism he's got every problem that I wish I didn't, you know, oh, it just drives me crazy. And he has this way about him. He's so calm, He's so calm, and I want him to get mad back at me sometimes, like, fight back and I'm Latino. We're fiery. We have tempers. We have flare yell back at me. I shouldn't have asked him to do that, because he started one day, but, you know, he just drives me crazy. And so in 2016 we decided to move in together. And here's my Hallmark moment, oh my gosh. We went and saw 20 houses. Found the perfect house in Torrance, giant yard, huge space. We're gonna have parties. We're gonna have friends over. Well, we moved in, and here is my effort, because I had gone for I'd done all the steps. Was working in the recovery. I talked to my sponsor once a week. Now we're as needed, like I don't need to talk to my sponsor all the time. I'm seeing him at meetings, but, man, I blew up my sponsor's phone when we moved in together, because Jay and I went through a period of trial living where we had to know each other.

42:55 There was the great Colgate conspiracy with the toothpaste, the great haljar War, where he wouldn't put it away. He himself had a cat. I was trying desperately to figure out how to get rid of this cat. I called my mom. My mom said, Okay, you and Jay, Micah and Jay, who do you think is going to win this thing here? That cat staying? And I will tell you this, that cat became one of my best friends because we went through hell and back together. He would run from me and hide from me, and then I'd pick him up, and I'd scratch him behind the ear, and he'd follow me into the kitchen, meow and want to be fed, and he but then his fleas. And Jason, well, no, he doesn't have fleas. I'm like, any better.

I'm like, but I am fix the freaking fleas, right? And he's like, he doesn't have fleas, and we're doing the flea filming. We're combing in with DISH Don dish soap, and the fleas are just spilling out of this poor guy. And once we got the flea situation under control, it was great, but we it took us some time, and I called my sponsor, and my sponsor said, we get two choices. You either get to put the hair gel away yourself, but then you don't get to say a single thing. You just put it away, and you don't write his ass for it. Or you get to gently nudge him and say, Hey, Jay, can you please put the hair gel away? And that's all you get to do. You give him the dignity to put it away when he's ready. And if you don't like it tough. And I didn't like that answer and I hung up the phone, I love my sponsor. He's brutally honest when he needs to be and he really keeps me in tow, and I appreciate that relationship that we have. But life was good. Life was good. Jay and I were living together, and what I'll tell you is that fast forwarding to the next five years life got lifey. I think that's what they call.

44:45 It a good reminder that life does not revolve on your terms. Jay's brothers, plural, Jay's the youngest of five, both of his brothers passed. Stay away with an 18 month period, both due to cancer, our 21 year old cat died. I was in a car accident. I had my identity stolen. We had squatters in our home.

45:15
It took us years to the legal system to get them out. We were homeless. Everything was in storage, and we were living in a hotel room when I first got to Al Anon. There wasn't a lot of problems in my life. See, it had all happened when I was a kid. I was just arrogant, smug and self righteous, like they teach us in the readings, and we were at AFG, and they're reading that Jay's like, raise your hand. Those are you though, you know, but I was fortunate enough to be in this thing for 16 years that when life got lifey, I could handle it the way that I knew. I could handle it by being the best version of myself, by being an example to my program, to sponsoring my sponsees. And in July of 2023, in the midst of all of this, we had just gotten home, or we were just about to get home, and my grandmother called, and she said, Danny, I need you and Jay to come over. I said, okay, and I just intuitively knew that there was something wrong. And she sat us down in her den, and she said, I have cancer, and it doesn't look good.

46:31 Now, I am a drama queen. I have a flare for theatrics. I wanted to start falling apart. And she said, I'm not dead yet. Can you just give me a minute here? She said, I need you to keep it together. I'm going to fight this the best way that I can. I've got a great team of doctors. Please keep it together for me. And I honored her wishes, and we had an embrace, and we hugged and we went home, and for the next year, we went to chemo together. We ran all of her errands, we bought all of her groceries, we did everything that I knew how to do in paying that forward, that's what you all taught me, was to be a loving, kind service to my grandmother, who inspired me to be an Al Anon.

47:21 We knew the end was coming, and she was very alert, very feisty till the very end. The Sunday before she passed, she says, I want a taco party. I said, Fine. Spent $100 at Taco Bell. We invited all of these people, family, friends, larcene, her sponsor, was there, very close friend of our family. Everyone kind of gathered, and it wasn't this somber thing. We watched the Dodgers play. We watched the movie Jaws. We all we were laughing, telling stories, but when she said, I need you to go, we all laughed, and she started to slowly slip away into that little bit of sleep that they do. And we came and visited her on Tuesday, and she was in and out, in and out, and I said, I love you. And she said, I love you too. And when we got the call on Thursday, they said, Come it's going to happen any minute, we dropped what we were doing. Me, Jay and my mom, we went. Larcene was there. My brothers were there, and, you know, we just all gathered around her bed, and she had a little pink nightgown on, and larceny had pinned her 41 year pin on her, and we all prayed.

48:34 Everyone had laughed. It was me and my mom and my cousin, and she passed away as peacefully as I could have imagined, as beautiful a death as I could have imagined, and we not often celebrate that, because it's difficult.

48:54 But I couldn't have asked for a better way for her to go surrounded by loved ones in peace and serenity, because that's what she taught me, that's the way she would have wanted to go. And so when she passed, my mom and I stayed, and you know that we did reach a point where we were pretty hysterical. We were pretty upset, you know, but we got it together pretty quickly. The last year has been one of courage, change, inspiration. You know, I come into these rooms hoping to be the best version of myself every single time I'm asked to come up and do one of these. And the last group I shared with in front of was AMG, and I'm so happy. This is a smaller group. It was a it was a bit intimidating. There was hundreds of people there. And, you know, people are always ready to critique you on every single thing that you say and do. So, you know that's some of us are sicker than others, right? I mean, that's just how it goes. But I feel like I'm with Family today. I. Like I'm with my peers today and my loved ones today.

50:03 And my grandmother had said to me once, she was the proudest person. I will tell you that proud, proud, proud. Grandma bragged about me. She said, Danny, I need to tell you something. You are a miracle of this program, beaten, abused, molested, neglected, shunned, homeless, all of these things, all of these things you should not have overcome that. You overcame all of that. And Al Anon took so much care of you. She got me here. She turned me over to the guys. She said, I put him in your hands. She put me in God's hands. God. She said, God has you. Danny, you just keep coming back. And she said, and look at the man you've become. You went to college. You got your associates, you got your bachelor's, you started your master's, all in honors. I celebrate 30 years with my airline this November, I've just been bestowed my airline's highest honor, less than 1% every single year.

51:25 I'll tell you this, I give that to Alan on man, because I would not have been where I am at had it not been for this program, this has been the greatest gift and the greatest gift that I get to share with my sponsors as we're doing the work together, as we're doing the steps together, as I'm calling my sponsor, saying, Hey, I'm Stuck. Help me, you know, and my longest sponsor just finished his steps finally. And I said, you started the 12 step with I mean, he just texted. He's like, Yeah, I couldn't wait. He's like, I was too excited. I said, we're still going to do step 12 Together, but good for you. I sponsor a couple of double winners and or dual members, as they call them now, and they did it instantly, one step a month, and then they quit me. They just basically, we got this, but we love you, and they call me once a year. But you know, what a gift to be able to get them through that as well, and to really be a gift of this program. And you know, is life perfect today. No, it's not.

My uncle who is my grandmother's primary caretaker, along with my mother, is homeless, living out on the streets, getting drunk all the time. My youngest brother, who is sort of estranged from the family, keeps in touch with my mom every once in a while, but he's out there doing his own thing, and he's got major problems with drugs and alcohol as well. But I know that he has a God of his higher you know, he has a God of his understanding, and his higher power is going to take care of him, because I can't. Y'all taught me that I didn't cause his problems. I can't control it, and I can't cure it, but I pray for him every day, and I turn him over. I turn him over because that's what you taught me to do, and now I keep the focus on me, my service, my recovery, my 12 Steps, my literature, my daily readings. It's a lot, but this is here if you want it, this is here if you're willing and ready to do it. So if you're new, or you feel like you're new. Come do what we do. Come hang with us. Come to these conventions. Come be part of the fellowship. There is great times to be had. Life is for the living. Whoever said that a few minutes ago, life is for the living. We're here because we're meant to be here today. Thanks for letting me share you.