literature, I got the meeting late and I left early, so don’t do that, please stay, there are a lot of friendly faces here, but there are a lot of open hearts here, and that’s why I stay in Al-Anon. So I’ll tell you a little bit of where I come from, what got me here, what it was like living the disease of alcoholism, and what it is like now, as a result of working the steps and living in recovery and traditions.

So I was born and raised in Soviet Union, former Soviet Union, I lived there for the first 12 years of my life, so I was born and raised in Kiev, in Ukraine, so you could easily say that my country qualifies me for this program. And by the way, if you hear laughter, it doesn’t mean that we’re laughing at the seriousness of this disease, we’re just taking it with a light touch, it doesn’t mean that we take it lightly. So there’s going to be some humor, because I did some ridiculous shit, and you will know this is not a fifth step, but it’s going to be close. So you know, my mom and dad were not heavy drinkers at all, but later I found out after doing some, you know, shaking of the family tree, that my mom was an untreated allen on all her life, she was a daughter of a violent alcoholic who never sought treatment or admitted to her or anyone else that he had a problem with alcohol.

So the reason I bring that up is because I grew up in alcoholic family unit, that is a multi-generational disease, I found out much later, I discovered that alcoholism is pervasive, and an average alcoholic, if there is such a thing, affects six people at the very least, at the family unit, and the family system rather, in such a way that they are not able to deal with life on their own, meaning they become neurotic just like me. So, and I say that lovingly today, because I’m a human being that was deeply affected by someone else’s drinking and or untreated allenism, and which is substantial. So some of the things you’re going to hear are going to sound even shocking, but that was my experience. So I grew up in a family that my dad was a very kind man, very gentle man, loving guy, passive, very intelligent, well educated, my mom ran the home.

She was a control freak, and I don’t say that lightly, she gave orders in the house. She told my brother and I, my sister, what to wear, how to be, how to behave, and everything else, and she proceeded to control and try to control others until the day that she passed. She never found help, she was extremely, she was a person that was filled with a lot of rage, a lot of anger, and an enormous amount of fear. Now she grew up with alcoholism, but she also grew up during World War II, she ran from the Germans like a lot of Jewish, people of Jewish descent did, for about three years.

So she was on the run for three years. So needless to say, she brought a lot of that fear, a truckload of fear, into our home. And she honestly thought, until the day that she died, that she was protecting us. She was trying to build a bubble around people that she cared about through control.

And so I also was a control freak for most, for a lot of my life. Now today, as a result of working the steps, I’m a control enthusiast, meaning I still like to control, but it’s no longer a major issue in my life. But I’ll cover that, I’ll come back to that later. I lived, as I mentioned, I lived in Soviet Union, former Soviet Union, for twelve years before we came to the United States.

I didn’t speak a word of English. I was extremely shy growing up, very, I kind of blended, you know, like, I love what Patrick read, I blended into the wallpaper. I disappeared, I didn’t have a voice. Now interestingly enough, my mom was very vocal about who her favorite child was, and that was me.

So much so that she told the other siblings that I was her favorite, and she did not care about the other two, she only cared about me. Now they didn’t win me any medals with the other siblings, so I was not favored by them until much later, well, many years later. But what I discovered later as I kind of started doing the steps and kind of unfolding my life story before a sponsor, is that I was her project. I was the one that she cared about the most, but she took great interest in making sure that nothing ever happened to Sam.

Which means I never got to live life, okay? She thought that she was protecting me, she would not allow me to play sports, she would not allow me to go outside, pretty much, I was confined to the home where she could see me. So the only game that I played as a sport is chess. It is a sport, it’s not funny.

So if any of you know what a game of chess is about, a game of chess is you play against one opponent. You try to, if you’re good at chess, and I played professionally at a master’s level by the age of eight. It was the only thing that I was good at. And so the game of chess is about trying to figure out what your opponent’s going to do before they do it, and you plan your moves accordingly.

Now some of you may say, boy, that sounds like Al-Anon in training. And it was Al-Anon in training. But no one ever told me that not to use that skill set in life. So I went about in my teenage years and my college years, my college career, trying to figure out what other people were going to do before they do it.

Now that didn’t make me many friends, that didn’t make me, I was an awkward kid, I was bullied a lot, I was a chess champ, and I’ll cover that in just a minute. There was a moment in my life in Soviet Union that defined who I was and how I am to relate to the world. My dad was a very well-known engineer, space engineer, in Kiev. And as a bonus for his good work for the government, he got a bonus of 144 eggs.

Now to some of you that may sound strange, weird, ridiculous, but food was a hot commodity back then, there was no food available. So to him that was one of the biggest bonuses that one can get. So my dad made a mistake of telling my mom that he was bringing home 144 eggs. This was December 31st, 1976, it was one of the coldest winters in Ukraine ever recorded.

We didn’t have a car, so he proceeded to take two buses and walked about a quarter mile from the bus station to our apartment building, which we lived on the fourth floor, and carried these 144, these multiple trays of eggs. We lived on the fourth floor, and the elevators were broken that night. And my mom invited all of her friends and family from everywhere to make sure that everyone knew that my dad was bringing eggs home, and we were going to have a celebration based on the eggs that he was bringing home. We’re all watching from the fourth floor, there was 50 to 100 people, I don’t remember how many, but it was filled up with relatives and friends.

My mom’s standing at the front like a hawk, and we’re standing right behind her. And my mom sees my dad come up the stairs, it’s about time Michael, is what she said. He made it to the third floor landing, and then he suddenly saw one egg of the 144 eggs start going back and forth. He panicked, there was sheer panic on his face.

He didn’t say a word, but I saw he started sweating, and my mother uttered, Don’t you dare let that egg drop! In front of everyone. And my dad was horrified, I was horrified. My dad went to save the one egg, and lost 143 eggs.

And for the rest of his life, I will never, well for the rest of his life and my life until this day, I will never forget his face. What he looked like, how ashamed he was, and how tormented he was for all of his life that he made a mistake of dropping those eggs, but more importantly embarrassed himself, herself and the family. He felt responsible for how other people reacted, responded to life. And I saw my dad do that.

My dad was a corrective hero. He normalized abuse, he said that it was okay, all of this raging and guilt-tripping and shaming was okay, and he made excuses for my mom’s rage. And that shameful act that he witnessed and he experienced, he never talked about ever again. He died with that.

And I’ll never forget his face. The reason I bring that up, that was a monumental experience in my life. That actually built several traits in me, that one incident. Stay quiet at all costs, disappear, don’t do any favors for anyone, don’t ask for help, and above all, don’t put yourself in the position where you’re vulnerable.

This is what I took away from that experience. And thus I was a very quiet kid, a kid, like I said, like blended in, didn’t have a lot of friends. And then I noticed a group of young kids in high school. They seemed to have all the fun.

They were on the in crowd. You may have seen those kids. They were invited to all the parties. They seemed to be very cool, they had all the cool clothing.

Now none of them belonged to the chess club, by the way. Just want to make sure you knew what I was talking about. And I try to be as cool as possible just to fit in. You know, that’s a big difference between Al-Anon family groups and my former self.

I always try to fit in, but in Al-Anon I belong. It’s a very big difference, but I didn’t know the difference between those two. So I try to wear their clothes. I try to go to some of their parties.

It was ridiculous. I didn’t fit in. I was like an odd man out. So what ended up happening, I graduated early, I was a 4.0 student, overachiever.

I was very successful academically, high IQ, which is a handicap in this program, by the way. So I was definitely preparing myself for an Al-Anon career. And I met a lady in college that was part of that group. She seemed free.

I later discovered that she was reckless. She seemed, oops, is that my time? She seemed like she had it all together and carefree, but I later discovered that that was irresponsible. So the reason I’m telling you this is because I misidentified my own how I was, and I misidentified how somebody else was.

I was comparing my insides by somebody else’s outside, and I had so much self-loathing. I had so much hatred for myself that I wanted to be with someone that was definitely not like me. So we started dating, and I know, yeah, some of you are shocked, I’m shocked. We started dating, and before I knew it, I saw her consume more alcohol in one evening than I saw a party of 50 people consume.

And I’m talking about many forms of alcohol. And I thought, well, she’s a party girl, that’s what party girls do. I had no idea. And as our relationship got more serious and more serious, I noticed violence that was coupled with drinking and drug abuse.

I noticed just volatile mood swings that felt familiar because of my mom’s upbringing, my upbringing rather, and I witnessed the volatility with my mom. So I thought that this was normal because two people, two women that I, you know, were in my life. My mom was the first example, and now this person, who I eventually married. And, you know, we had fun at some times, but more times than not, the disease of alcoholism is a, it’s a brutal disease.

I never knew there was a disease. I never knew that this disease cuts families like butter. I didn’t know that this disease is stronger than mother’s instinct. I didn’t know that this disease is stronger than love, that people that are afflicted with this disease will go to any length to get what they want and need.

I had no idea about any of those. All I knew is that if I remained a good man, like my dad, now that would be a corrective hero in her life, then maybe, maybe she’ll get it together because it’s really about will, you know, will. I thought it was about will, moral compass. I was her moral compass, you see.

She never asked me to be her moral compass, but that’s what I, that’s what I started doing. I started making sure that she knew when it was appropriate to drink and not drink. I made sure that there was no alcohol available at certain hours so that I would not be embarrassed or ashamed. And the more I did that, the more unmanageable my life got.

When I came to Al-Anon, I was misinformed. I thought that alcoholics cause unmanageability. That is absolutely not true. I am 100% responsible for my own unmanageability in my own life.

She is not responsible for my unmanageability. And as a matter of fact, my first sponsor, Phil C. , told me that I was dedicated to misery. And what he meant by that is I was dedicated to controlling the uncontrollable and trying to manage the unmanageable.

And that brought about the result of insanity and craziness in me. And I was misinformed. I thought it was the alcoholic that was causing my craziness. It was not.

It was my own dedication to control. This hunger that I had for having things my way, you know, and, and I thought if she could just get my language, she would be okay. And within a year and a half of marriage, I was unrecognizable to myself, let alone anyone else. There was no one that I could talk to about the disease of alcoholism in my home and my family.

My brother and my sister, although my sister was married to a very violent alcoholic, she never shared it with me. So I had no idea that she was going through what she was going through herself. So I had no one to talk to and, and before long, this gentle, shy kid had a thought one morning that either it would be, make sense to either end my life or end someone else’s life. So that was the degree of pain, shame, and complete inconsolable burden that I carried every single day.

At that time, we had our daughter and she was, she was an infant. And so my, my ex-wife decided to find the rooms of AA on her own. God bless her. She found the rooms.

And you know, a therapist had recommended to me, even though, you know, I told the therapist that my ex-wife was the problem. If she stopped drinking, I would be okay. If she would stop the craziness, I would be fine. It’s her, I blame the other person.

So when my ex found the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous and they welcomed her, she came home, running home, excited for me, that she found a place for me. It was called Al-Anon. I was not as excited as she was. It felt like an after school, you know, like you, you do something wrong and you go for after school and you stay and you, you know, you do an extra assignment or something.

I said, wait a minute, you’re the one that’s having all the fun, quote unquote. I had very little compassion. By the way, compassion for an Al-Anon is a slip. No, just kidding.

Anyway, for this Al-Anon, for this Al-Anon, it’s a slip. So, so I was not as excited and, you know, she was prompt to tell me where the meetings were and, and I really was not willing to participate in my own recovery. I thought, and I believe the lie in my own mind, that she was the problem. If she, her drinking would stop, she would, she would stop and then we’d go back to our normal way of living, which we never had a normal life.

And what I, what I discovered in my own program is that, is that my problem started not with the alcoholic. My problem started when I was growing up in a very volatile, unpredictable, horrifying environment of an untreated Al-Anon, into multi-generational disease of alcoholism. And and basically the disease of alcoholism simply replayed the version of events that happened in my home and it just escalated it to a new level. I had experienced in alcoholism, active alcoholism, I experienced violence, infidelity, rage, suicide attempts blackout drinking, and everything that went along with it.

And I still thought that it was something that I did or didn’t do, that I somehow caused it, that I somehow was responsible for someone else’s pain and trauma, that I could possibly fix it. And I honestly thought that if there’s some, I lacked some gene or some element in myself that made me unable to take care of this one person who I call my wife. And I came to Al-Anon begrudgingly, I didn’t want what you guys had. Like I said, I didn’t want a God.

The only time that the word God was used in my home was God damn it when things didn’t go your well, your way, or God willing when you want things to go your way. And I heard you guys talk about the higher power, I heard you guys talk about acceptance, I heard you guys talk about things that I never even heard. This language scared me because I didn’t know this language, it was unknown to me. I thought that you made a mistake with the twelve steps because the word alcohol only appeared once and the word admit only appeared more than any other word in the twelve steps.

The word admit appears in step one, step five, and step ten. It’s used more than the word God. Well why? Because I like to keep secrets.

I like to pretend that nothing’s wrong. I like to blame others and really not look at what’s going on within Sam. That’s what I like to do. And I’m glad the word admit appears more than once in the twelve steps.

And today I understand why the word alcohol appears only once in the twelve steps. Because that is not our primary focus. Our primary focus in Elanon is to work on ourselves, for me to work on me and discover where my pain comes from, where my fears come from, why do I respond to life the way that I do, and why do I feel compelled that I can fix another human being’s disease. I think I’m the one with a complex, don’t you?

So I went to Elanon for the first six months and I didn’t read the literature, I didn’t want what you guys had, I didn’t pray out, like I didn’t hold anyone’s hand, I’m like oh my God this is a cult. And you know, and back then, this is thirty-four, about thirty-four years ago. Back then you don’t shop for a sponsor, just somebody comes up to you and says okay I’ll sponsor you. I’m going to take you through the steps, you know.

So Phil C. , who’s no longer with us, came up to me and he said I’m going to take you through the twelve steps. I said what makes you think that I need the twelve steps? I didn’t know how to ask for help.

There’s another example that I want to share that I haven’t shared in a meeting, I don’t think ever except this last Thursday. When I went to college, I went to a junior college, even though I was a 4.0 student, I didn’t go to a university, I just went to a junior college. And no one ever told me that a junior college was just a two-year program. And so I stayed in junior college for six years.

Why? Because I didn’t want a counselor. I didn’t want someone telling me what classes I should take. This Elanon doesn’t like to be controlled, hello.

So the joke is, how many AAs did I get out of JC, you know, out of the six years of college? Anyway, that was funny. So I didn’t want, I didn’t trust people. I didn’t trust myself.

And you know, as nice as you guys were, I didn’t trust that people, strangers, could be so understanding and compassionate towards my situation. And I couldn’t believe that a lot of you had situations similar to mine. It was incredible to me that I wasn’t alone, I didn’t feel alone in Elanon. So he came up to me and he says, let’s do this for six, you know, I said, how long, how long do I have to do this?

And you know, I want an assignment. Why can’t someone give me an assignment on how to fix her and I’ll be on my way? You know, I still didn’t get it. And he says, look, the steps are for you.

You don’t have to do this for more than six months. If you don’t like what we have, misery will be fully refunded to you, is what he told me and I believed him. And I had, really, I had nowhere else to go. You know, you remember that Bugs Bunny cartoon where the rabbit keeps opening doors and there’s walls, and every time you open a door you hit a stone wall?

Well that’s kind of what I felt in my life. I’ve tried every other door. I was specifically and particularly uninterested in Sam, of what was going on within Sam. And the one person that I, that I’m excited to tell you that I met in this program is myself.

I was introduced to myself over and over again until I liked what I saw. And what I discovered in the very beginning as I started working the steps, I didn’t like myself. I didn’t love myself. I didn’t know myself.

I was an echo of the disease of alcoholism. I was isolated. I was alone. I didn’t want anyone’s answers.

I was shut down and I didn’t have any friends. I really was alone. I felt alone. And I was angry.

I was angry. I was terribly afraid of everything because I thought I knew everything. And as I started working the steps, the two most amazing things that I discovered, as intelligent as I was, I was wrong about most things at the same time. This was amazing to me.

I was wrong about everything. I was wrong about my own misery. I was wrong about who caused my misery. I was wrong about what it is that I was really afraid of.

I was wrong about who I can control. I was wrong about the disease of alcoholism. I was wrong about that I didn’t need choices, I just needed obedience from other people. I was upset about everything but not willing to change anything.

So needless to say, I was a victim of my own life. So life was not happening for me. Life was happening to me. So as I started working the steps, I started discovering something that I’m experiencing now where one person speaks and 50 or 60 of you are not saying a word.

I never saw that in my home, ever. I was never allowed to complete a sentence. My mom always filled in the blanks or made sure that I was redirected towards a different thought, you know, mindset, if she didn’t agree with it. So silence became my friend.

Now originally silence was not a friend because I knew how to do silent treatment. I knew how to punish you silently. So that was not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about actually silence because I had nothing of value to contribute to a conversation.

Now I’m a recovering know-it-all. What that means is I know about everything, a little bit about every subject matter, which is not a good thing to have in a relationship or in a family unit or in any relationship whatsoever actually. And part of the realization for me was that I realized that I wanted to play God in my own life. I didn’t trust God, so I wanted to play God.

I wanted to control others, not because of any other complex other than I just wanted things to be predictable and safe. I thought that controlling others gave me a degree of safety that I deserved. And I did not spare control originally, initially. I thought it was well-executed actually.

I thought it was a good control person. And I had complaints to my sponsor like, well, all this stuff that she does, she doesn’t remember half the things that she does. Why do I remember all of it and she doesn’t remember any of it? It’s like complaining that I keep getting hit by a train while I’m standing on tracks.

And every morning I get up, I get dressed, and I go back on the tracks wondering why the train hits me over and over and over again. Like almost like polishing a saddle on a dead horse, expecting that horse to somehow move. And that horse is never going to move. So my job was not to stop the train from coming.

My job was to move from the tracks. And my higher power, who I choose to call God, said, you don’t have to go far. I’ve been standing by and waiting for you all this time. Come towards me and I will lessen your burden.

Trust me more and you will feel lighter. I’m with you even during the most difficult times. And it occurred to me that I survived some of the worst times of my life. I’m still here.

Somehow I was carried through all of the agony and the hurt. And I discovered as I started working the steps that not only was I carried, but I’m being carried towards something that I did not understand. That was out of my reach and out of my view. But my higher power thinks that I’m worth this destination that he calls life.

And I’ve had many stops along the way of this life. I’ve had a stop of being, you know, being this kid that pretended that he knew everything. Being a young adult that thought that he was, just because he’s intelligent, he could do well in life. You know, another stop was, you know, if pretending that nothing was wrong, that’s another stop.

Denial runs deep in this guy because pain runs deep. I was able to finally identify through the use of the steps where the pain came from. Not with blame, but with almost like doing like an experiment. Like I wonder what this is from.

I wonder what this is from. And I constantly ask God to show me in a way that I can understand what it is that I need to learn from, you know, my life, my relationships, you know. I used to ask God the wrong questions. I would ask him, why me?

That was the wrong question to ask. Because first of all, why not me? You know, I’m not special. Second wrong question is, when is this going to stop?

That’s really the wrong question to ask God, because if he wants me to stop, he’ll stop my life, you know, if that’s really what I want. So I started asking the right kinds of questions. And the right kinds of questions were given to me by, through prayer and meditation, through coming to meetings, through sharing openly with a spirit of like, I really want to know. And the right kind of question is, God, what would you like me to do with this information?

God, I don’t know the answer to this situation. I know I’m hurting, and they must be hurting too. Help me show compassion, or, you know, help me pause. God, help me see what I need to see from this.

And so I became teachable in Alamo. And the miracle is, is I became changeable. And what that means is, when I’m teachable, I become changeable. That means that whatever boxcar of issues that I came here with, and character defects, and pain and agony, whatever I came here with, I can change into something other than that.

I can mature into a different person. I can allow God to change me. And this is what the, you know, what the steps promised me. They promised to change me into something that I haven’t yet discovered.

You know, AA has its own promises, which I love reading. And Al-Anon has its, you know, disease of alcoholism also has promises. If you practice what you practice, there’s insanity, death, or otherwise, right? So Al-Anon condition has its own promises.

If you do not practice the 12 steps of Al-Anon, you will continue to blame, and more importantly, you will miss a miracle. And the miracle in Al-Anon is me. And you. And you know, God has no zip codes when it comes to miracles, or area codes.

And I discovered that me wanting to change is a miracle. I was not willing to change before. Me wanting a different life for myself, and my children for that matter, is a miracle. So I’m going to switch a little bit, switch gears a little bit, and you know, obviously I was brought here because of my ex-wife’s drinking, even though she didn’t cause any of the character defects that I have, any of the pain that I, that I came into the marriage with.

But I want to talk about, when my son was about 11 years old, 12 years old, I noticed, and we noticed, because my ex-wife was sober at that time, that our son was exhibiting very strange behavior. Behavior of like running away, stealing cars, taking our cars, stealing money, and, and bizarre behavior, violent behavior, volatile behavior, that, that it, you know, it was pretty easy to identify as somebody that’s using substances. He later discovered that, you know, that he was an alcoholic addict. And he was on his way out.

By the age of 16, he already OD’d several times. He was what I would call a buffet drunk. He’d use anything and everything, he didn’t even ask questions. And today, with today’s drugs, that would kill anyone.

And by the grace of God, you know, he found, he found wounds of AA, but what I really want to talk about is not his journey, but my journey within his journey, is letting go of a son, of a child is very different than letting go of a partner or a spouse. And I want to talk about the trust that I developed with God over the first, you know, 17, 15 years in Al-Anon. I skipped some years in between because of the move, geographic and stuff like that. But I’m going to, I’m not going to cover that.

I can tell you that I crawled into Al-Anon because I needed help. And I crawled into Al-Anon because I knew the solutions were here. This is a spiritual program for any kind of problem, life problem for me. And what I, what I discovered is, I invited God into my day, I invite God into my affairs, I invite God into my relationships, and all of a sudden, God becomes the center point of my life.

And I needed every ounce of that because by the time my son OD’d the last time, which was about 16 and a half or so, he was on his way out. And at that point, I got on my knees and, you know, my ex-wife told me that, she said, AA does not prepare me to deal with alcoholics like my son specifically, but Al-Anon prepares you so you deal with him. And no, no, and she was actually voicing her own limitations. She was aware enough to say, I don’t know how to help him, but I know Al-Anon prepares you to do that.

And, and I knew what I had to do, you know. Before the age 17, I lovingly asked my son to leave our home. He was illegal to do that because he was underage, but I knew that if he were to stay in my house, he would die. And I told him something that Tradition 5 talks about, which is supporting your alcoholic relatives, and I told him, I know you can’t get sober here, but I know there is a place where you can get sober.

And I don’t know if it meant anything to him, but he remembered it many, many years later. It gave him a seedling of hope. And that’s what I found here. I found, I didn’t necessarily find answers right away, but I found seedlings of hope.

And I get to decide today whether I’m a seed underground, whether I’m buried, or whether I’m planted. I get to decide what kind of a seed I am today. And I prayed that he would find his own way as a seed that’s buried underground. At that point, he was buried.

And by the grace of God, in the most unlikeliest of places, a shitty rehab in Oxnard, I mean the worst areas in Acton and Oxnard, he found God. He found God in the most unlikeliest of places, and he found his kindred spirits and Alcoholics Anonymous. By the grace of God, he’s been sober for almost 17 years now. And that’s not my doing.

But what I learned in Al-Anon, either I can be part of the problem or part of the solution. And I became someone that no longer was the shiny object in his life. I no longer distracted him or interfered with him with his own recovery. And as he entered AA, you know, of course the control enthusiast wanted to contribute.

He wanted to tell him at least how to do it. He didn’t drive back then. So I’ll never forget the, and this was really a great moment for my recovery, where I realized that I need to step, I’ve stepped away, but I need to step away further. And I pulled into the house, our driveway one day, and I see these two young kids that have tattoos everywhere, they have their hats sideways, they have holes in their ears, and they’re walking up my driveway.

And I roll down the window in the cool way that an Al-Anon does, and say, get off my fucking property. And then one of them says, Mr. S. , we’re here to see Josh.

He’s here to take us through the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. And then I said, come on in, come on in, come on in. So the reason I tell you that story is I’m quick to judge. I don’t know much about anything.

And you know, and AA opened its doors into our, you know, my ex has been sober for many, many years, and our son has been sober for almost 17 now. So they’ve opened their hearts, their doors, and the least I could do is open mine. So AA’s given me a good example, and Al-Anon gave me a good example of, I’ve got to have an open heart. I can’t tell God where my sons or my messages will come from.

I don’t write the script for God, it’s the other way around. So God is the architect, I can be the builder, but he is the architect. I may be the peddling, but he does the steering. I’m not in charge.

My God, thank God I’m not in charge. I just spent 30, 40 minutes, I don’t know how much time I have, I’ll do a few more. We’re here in the 10s, so 13 minutes. Oh, 13 minutes, all right, good, I’ll jump into recovery and service here.

So I can’t afford to think that I know what’s good for somebody that’s trying to find their own recovery, other than if I sponsor them and I’m taking them through the 12 steps. At that point, I can make a suggestion, I can share what works for me, and what I will tell you is that if I had gotten my wish, if I had gotten the only wish that I had when I got into Al-Anon, just to get her sober, I would have missed my entire life. I would have shortchanged myself one more time by telling myself, this is all I deserve, this is all I need, this is all I want. And I was wrong again, one more time, I was wrong again.

So I stuck around, I got into service, somebody, Barbara O. , I remember, cornered me in a meeting in West Hills, and she said, you need to do Alateans, and I said, well, my own kids are not in Alateans. She said, doesn’t matter, you do it. So she actually, I mean, she was an inspiration because she did so much service.

And Ed Kay, who’s no longer with us, I sponsored Alateans with Ed Kay for five years, almost five years, several years, I don’t remember how long. But the incredible part about that is that I surrendered what I think I knew, and I couldn’t help my kids at that time. I could only help, I could just be a presence for other kids that were entering Alatean. And that was one of the most worthwhile experiences that I’ve ever, ever had.

The other thing I’m grateful to share at conventions, at meetings, I never dreamt that I’d be, this is another funny story, I just remembered, sorry, I’m talking to myself, commentary. So reason being is that my mind can make something so small almost seem impossible. I remember my sponsor telling me, he said, Sam, now that you’ve completed the 12 steps, you’re ready to sponsor. I said, what?

You want me to sponsor? And I ran out, I just ran out. And my comment, my one comment was, what am I going to tell these guys? You know, and I was, I was so shut down for most of my life, I didn’t have a voice.

And I didn’t think that I could have anything to say to anyone that was worthwhile. What I discovered later, along the lines of, you know, the theme for the, you know, for the convention, it’s a spiritual experience. I was given something that did not come from me, it comes through me. And my sponsor told me, and settled me down, of course, and said, you are ready to sponsor, because you have been given, you have had a gift of desperation, and now you have a different gift.

And I said, what is that? He said, freedom. You’ve been given freedom. And you need to share this freedom willingly and openly.

Ten minutes, thank you. So, so service is a big part of, you know, I’m privileged to sponsor many men in this program and take them through the steps. And you know, I don’t know who I’m supposed to help. Like, there was a guy that called me the other day and he says, I know you don’t sponsor me, but I need to ask you a question.

And I said, you don’t have to call me your sponsor to call me. And that’s exactly the way it works. We share what was given to us freely. Everything that I’ve shared with you, I’m only able to share with the grace that was given to me in a very open way.

You know, and I came from the throes of volatility. And I’ve been running into the arms of vulnerability all this time. I want to be vulnerable with you. I want to be open with you.

I want to tell you that my relationships with my kids are challenging. I mean, with my son, it’s awesome. I have to tell you. This kid is a, is, is an incredible, he’s got a big heart.

He’s a dad. He’s got two kids, two beautiful girls. And he’s an incredible kid. My daughter, who happens to be in this program, I’m having difficulties with.

And I’m applying the steps and the traditions and giving her room and giving God room to operate in that relationship. It doesn’t mean that I have answers for my daughter. I don’t have answers for my daughter. I have answers for me.

I’m an incredibly loving relationship today that was only possible because I was willing to let go of what no longer works. I became willing to say, you know what? I’ve had breadcrumbs for most of my life, but now I want to see what the full loaf tastes like. Okay?

And I don’t mean that disrespectfully to anyone. I mean that I was ready to experience life more fully. I was ready to give myself fully without fear, without legacy of injustices that I carried in my back pocket and wanted to present those at any time to anyone that would listen. I was not a vision for you, okay?

I was the broken piece. I was the one that was lost, and now I’m found. And it doesn’t mean that I’ve arrived. It just means that I’m a work in progress, and I have a whole lot of love to share in my life, and I’m grateful to just have the opportunity to do that.

I’ll share two more stories, and then I’ll stop. The first story happened about ten years ago when I was meditating in the backyard. And my higher power, who I choose to call God, is nature, universe, everything that’s in nature, and especially birds. I don’t know why.

It doesn’t matter why. They speak to me. So I was in the backyard meditating, and the birds were singing very loudly that night, that afternoon, late afternoon. And my ex-wife came out in the backyard and she said, Sam, don’t forget the trash cans.

She didn’t say that to interrupt. She didn’t know I was meditating. She just lovingly said, don’t forget the trash cans. It was my job to take the trash bins down the hill and out to where they could be picked up.

And I immediately interrupted my own meditation. I didn’t have to do that, but I did. And I took the two trash cans as I walked downhill. And these trash cans make so much noise that I can’t even hear the birds.

And then I realized that much of the step work and much of the meditation and prayer is to remove the noise of the trash cans from my mind so I can hear the birds. This is my only job. My job is to tune in to God and leave the noise behind me. And there are many, many great, incredible lessons that I learned from Alcoholics Anonymous and from my ex-wife particularly.

She was the one that discovered Al-Anon. She was the one that said, you may need this. And you know what? I’m grateful.

I’m grateful today that I welcome, I sponsor Double Winners guys that are in Alcoholics Anonymous who happen to welcome our uncles, our aunts, our brothers, sisters, and kids into the rooms with open arms. And the difference between an alcoholic and an Al-Anon, I’m going to tell you right now, this is the biggest difference. I go to, you know, not many, but I used to go to many open AA speaker meetings. I’m sitting in one AA speaker meeting and there was a guy that comes in, obviously a newcomer, smells like a shitty glass of wine that somebody just poured all over him.

And he sits right next to me. There was 300 people in that meeting, people. I don’t know why he sat next to me. So I’m sitting there and I’m complaining, oh my God, now I’ve got to be in this meeting and I’ve got to smell this shit.

So I moved. I moved. I didn’t say, you know, what the fuck, I said, I moved. And I excused myself and I moved elsewhere because I was not feeling comfortable with that smell.

As soon as I moved, he identified as a newcomer. He was sworn by five alcoholics who nearly carried him, oh, he was the MVP, they carried him to the first row, they offered him the seat, they gave him coffee, they embraced him. And that is the difference between this Al-Anon and an alcoholic. I have a lot of preferences and alcoholics deal with needs.

It’s a very big difference. I’m willing to set aside my preferences so I can approach to handle needs today. I need to be here, I need to share my experience, strength and hope. I need for you to hopefully find one thing that I said, one thing that I said that possibly can move you towards your own recovery, towards your own healing.

And there was one more story that I was going to share, but at this time I think my… Three minutes. Three minutes, wow. Now, if I could just remember that story.

Oh, yes, I got a call, this was about 25 years ago. I got a call from World Services in New York, they were the arm that was dealing with Soviet Union. They were trying, you know, the call goes like this, I heard you were Russian. I said, who is this, is this KGB?

By the way, I’m fluent in Russian, I’m fluent in Russian still. So I said, yes, I’ve infiltrated Al-Anon, but I am Russian, yes. So they said would you help us proofread Al-Anon literature so we could send it to press. And I was one of three Russians, or former Soviet Union guys, that helped translate and correct some of the writings in Russian one day at a time.

And now, the reason I tell you this is not as anything other than I would have shortchanged myself by a mile. And about three years ago, Betty Ann, who just walked out of the room, she gave my name to a largest speaker meeting in Moscow. And a secretary from that meeting called me and said, Sam, would you care to share your experience, strength and hope for that meeting? And I was honored and privileged to share, there was a translator there, even though I didn’t need a translator, but they provided one.

So this guy proceeded to tell a story, but when a translator got it wrong, I tried to correct her. All in good fun, all in good fun though. It was an incredible experience. So the reason I share this is I cannot afford to limit how my higher power can help me.

I cannot afford to say, this is all where I’m good for. This is the only thing that I’m good at. God creates talents. The biggest thing that I lost in the disease of alcoholism is potential.

When I started focusing what I can change, all of a sudden I have enough energy for my potential to shine through. But if I’m busy about those people, places and things that I cannot change, guess what? The potential is, I simply don’t have access to it. It’s not that God had forbidden me from it, I just don’t have access to it.

So thank you Al-Anon for giving me the attention and the discipline that I need and the love that I need to work the 12 steps to trust the right people, to share my experience, strength and hope, to deposit my pain, to authentically share with you my fears that I’m a work in progress and with that I’ll keep coming back. Thank you Al-Anon. Thank you.