Help Others & Get to Work ft. Jessika

That's I think one of the, I don't know, one of the charges we have in AA is to carry the message and that I particularly like to carry a message of. Hope sure. All that, but also have like doom because you know, it's, it's a life-threatening disease.

Her siblings were all together with, with us and all the children. So at any given party on any given holiday or weekend, you know, there would be 70 people around and it was always a festival is always a full on party. And that was where I learned the power that alcohol. The power that it has also over me. I didn't know that then, but I drank at a very young age. I started drinking. God knows.

You know, my oldest sister will tell me, oh, when you were a little kid, you used to go around and like clean up for mom and you would like clean up all the stuff and drink it while you were cleaning it up. And I was like, I would. And she's like, yeah, you're really five, six years old. We always used to stop you. And I was like, really. I consider like my first drink, you know, it's hold on. I've been, I've been like, I think my first real drink, probably like 10 years old.

And it was at an uncle's funeral. I can't remember what year it was. He has probably 10 years old. The first time that I had had drinks before that this was the first time that I felt, you know, it's the big book. New power flow in and it wasn't God, it was, it was, it was what was going to become my manager, what was going to become my God for a while. For many years my uncle had died my mother's brother and I was, I really liked him and it was the first funeral.

I was present for, with somebody that I felt I was close to, you know, as close as you can be to an older uncle. And one of his brothers, I was there and I was somber and I was probably.

Maybe I was crying, probably not, but maybe I was, but I was somber and they were toasting their brother and they were toasting, you know, and there was the cousins whom were all 10 years plus older than me and me, this little kid who was just feeling out of sorts, who never, who never felt in sorts, who never felt like, you know, around peg in a round hole. I never felt that way. And you know, someone said to me Here have some of this.

I think it was bourbon and I drank it and then I drank another one and I drank another one and I felt this sense of relief. You know, I felt this power flow in where I was able to express myself. I was able to talk. I was able to creed in public. It, it, it did something for me. It gave me.

The thing that alcohol does give you, it gives you conviviality and it gives you like ease all those things that, you know, our book talks about, like in the doctor's opinion, like before there's even chapter one. And I chased that. I chased that until the age of 37. That's when I stopped drinking. And that's a long time, you know, I had episodes of I was always a blackout drinker. I was also, I was not only a blackout drinker, but I was a violent blackout drinker. I would normally get violent.

I also wrecked a whole bunch of cars. My parents, God bless them were like, so, okay. Sometimes with like me just screwing things up, my dad always used to say, I'll give you a long. To hang yourself on. And he always did. He'll always give him this long rope.

And when I hung myself, invariably, they would, you know, there would be punishment, but not really, you know I was assigned male at birth and raised as a a male as a, you know, a boy and That was something that, you know, now I, I didn't connect with my drinking and, and I don't know if I can, I don't know if I have enough time left in my life to like, you know, psychoanalyze, like was part of this repression was part of it, you know, drinking to anesthetize myself, to like, not like, you know,

realize who I truly am a female. You know, in the seventies, I was raised in like a working class, hard to the core sort of environment. And then the seventies. No gay people around us. There were certainly not any you know, transgender folks around us. And I think that nobody would have understood. I never thought it was an option. I can't imagine what it must be like now being raised, you know? So there's, there's that whole aspect of this story that I'm trying to weave quickly.

So, I had car accidents. I had a car accident in high school. It was the first time I was introduced to AA in 1994. I totaled the car pretty badly. And my mother was friends with the judge and the judge sort of slapped me on the wrist, gave me six AA alcohol, alcohol classes. As they called them in the court system. Then you have to go to six alcohol classes and I had to do community service and something else.

And like, you know, I left the party in high school, completely drunk and trashed my car. I was in and nearly died and it sent ripples through the field. And people watch my drinking for a couple of years after that and everything like, I didn't have a license until I was shit until I was married until I was 25. So 17 to 24. I drove, of course I bought cars. I drove, I had my license renewed, but I never was able to get insurance.

And my state is illegal to drive without insurance, but I never followed rules. That's part of my story is I never followed rules. You know, I went to Catholic school for 12 years. I was an alter boy, whom would, you know, drink a church drink, you know especially at Christmas, there was a lot of alcohol around at Christmas. The priest would celebrate Christmas and, you know, we would all drink. I learned to smoke there. I started smoking in fourth.

Yeah, there was cigarettes around for bingo nights. They gave away, they, they re prizes were like sometimes Texas cigarettes, different world, you know? And so, you know growing up and drinking and having this sort of like hardcore working class and also, you know, loving family My mom and my dad did whatever they could for me. It's not like, oh, I had this terrible childhood. And like, you know, I was escaping by drinking. I was escaping just the fucked up person. I was in my head.

And that was somebody who was for some reason, had low self-esteem who had inferiority complex. As the saying goes in AA, you know, we're egomaniacs with inferiority complexes and I would never have admitted that I would never have admitted that I was fearful. I would never have admitted that like I needed help either. So I drank through high school. I did all the drugs that I could possibly.

I was one of those kids that if I came over your house, your parents' house or your house, I would raise your medicine cabinets is what I did. I mean, that was how we like shit for years we financed like sort of our you know, our drug addiction in the neighborhoods I lived in. Cause everybody loves her. Door's unlocked. We just go from house to house. Literally we would do that. It's I think of it now.

And I'm like, if I caught like a neighborhood kid in my house, like going through my, I would kill them and that's like breaking and entering. It's like theft, it's your God. I can deny it. If you ever put this in the podcast, I can deny that lays phrase statute of limitations, but regardless that's the kind of kids we were, you know, we were let out in the most. By her parents and then I'd show up at night. And I was talking like kids, you know, like the four high school kids.

High school was tough. I did not fit in. I went to a prep school. It was a Catholic prep school. I was considered a burnout. I didn't know what that was when I got there. You know, they labeled me that immediately, you know, the seniors did. I stood out because I was I, you know, for my freshman year, when I came to school, I was taller than most people. I'm not, I, I wasn't by like junior year, but I was tall. I had a sister that was a senior.

And so I was known coming into the, the, that into high school and. It was tough and I did drugs and I did more drugs and I did more drugs than I studied very little. I was a straight C student without even trying. Yeah. I mean, it was, it was, that was what I did. And it was a college prep course and like we were going to college. So there's the car accident. There's multiple run-ins with the law, getting caught, doing shitty stuff. Underage drinking.

And we lived a click away from Ohio in Ohio there. The drinking age was 18 and we all had fake IDs anyways, but the drinking age was 18. We used to go over, we call it over the hill or it was literally like this hill up and over this like cliff side, basically. And then you were in Ohio and at the top of, there was a bar and then like all the kids went to and drank. We were like 15, 16, and it was like a real bar setting settings, older people and whatever, you know, pool tables, the stuff.

And I thought, you know, I had. I could go to a bar with my friends by myself. Like I saw my uncles do, like, I saw like people in movies, do you know? And like, I was like child and that's what we would do. And then they sold three, two beer. Cause if you're 18, you had had three, two, which is lower alcohol, but they had, they got a keg there and you would say, I don't want the three to give me the other stuff.

And they would, they wouldn't say, well, no, we're not going to sell you that you're under 18. They didn't care. They knew they didn't care. Poor poor drinks. No cops ever came there. Nobody ever got busted. I don't even know if they had a working toilet. I have no clue. I can't remember. I mean, that's the kind of places that we used to drink it as kids. And, and I went to school. I went to a commuter school because I didn't have a, you know, I didn't have a real life.

My first year I drove with, with, with a with a cousin of mine who is going to a state school in Ohio, in Youngstown. And I literally stayed there for six years. I got my degree from there and it was, it was not, it was not terrible. I met my first wife and my junior year of college and I was, I was out of control, but I also knew like I'd like to see. I liked good booze. I'd liked girls. I liked clothes. I liked, you know music I was into, you know, things. I liked, you know, cars.

I wanted to be successful for some reason I was driven. And I think I was driven because, you know, my father was a steel. He sort of gave up the career that he had started when he met my mom and had her first baby had, had their first child, my older sister. And like he sort of gave up his career, has aspirations and, and did the right thing and manned up and went to work at a steel mill driving you know, locomotive for 30 something years, completely fucking missing.

And I saw that and he would say, you're never going to work in this kind of situation. You're not going to do this. I would see him. And I would see him struggle doing what he did. He just did it though. He went, he went every day and did it, and it was powerful to see that. But, you know, I was, it was also, it was like sadness and also pride. And also maybe like, I don't know, maybe a little bit of like anger at like, why, why didn't you do something? Why didn't you make school yourself?

He was a gifted person that like did whatever. And that's sort of like, I think. Hidden low self-esteem because of that, like transferred often to me and I, and I picked that up and I was driven to fucking succeed. And for an alcoholic like me, with that fuel behind you, that push of like more, better, faster, make more money, be more successful. And like having the skillset that I did, which wasn't that great. You know, like I said, it was a straight C student without trying.

And you combine that with alcoholism, like, Hmm. So I studied in college. I cracked down for the first time. Like I like took some of my classes serious where I saw other people not doing that. I had already partied my ass off before I got to college. So I like cracked. I cracked down for a couple of. And then junior year I met my first life.

My college had sweetheart who become my first wife and we got together and I loved her and I also loved alcohol and I was incapable of having a relationship with her or anyone, you know, anyone I wasn't capable of being a real friend as well, because I had like one thing in front of everyone else. I wasn't capable of being a son or a brother or a sister or whatever.

No, I did not identify as female then, but I was incapable of having relationship because alcohol was the primary thing in front of everything. And I didn't know that, but I let it rule who I was. I didn't let it, it took over. I originally I had the power of choice. But that soon goes away for us as alcoholics. If you're a real alcoholic, you can't decide not to drink. You can't decide. I'll have one brought up to this time and I want to have any more, you know, how many times have I done that?

Like gone to like someplace and say, well, I have a test tomorrow, or I have to get up for work tomorrow. I'm just going to have to, and then like, it's five o'clock in the morning. And I don't know where I am nor do I have any clothes on, like what happened? I was just going to have two drinks, you know? That was me to a T that was how my life happened. So I went to the school, I first wife, we got out of school. I had a tumultuous relationship cause I would get drunk and it was awful.

And it was that, and she loved me and she stayed with me and I stayed with her and I was a terrible, weird codependent relationship. And her family had issues and I had issues and I was never faithful for one moment in our relationship. And then we got married at 25 and I continued to not be that person not be that not be that person that could be in a committed relationship with a person and being an adult. I was a child in an adult's body with an adult career.

I went into advertising, I think that's where I was straight CS students go to and went into advertising. Graphic design. My background is I'm an art director and I'm the pictures person and the design concepts and all that crap. And I was driven coming out of school. I was driven. I got a job in an in-house agency outside of Cleveland and that wasn't working out well. I would get up in the mornings and like go to work. Because I was still drunk from the night before.

I mean, if I got up or roll into work and I can remember one time just like passing out and being like on my keyboard and like typing in like whatever it was, I was typing. I think it was my face was on the keyboard and it was drooling on my desk. And like, it was just typing like a, a letter I think has been in my alarm on my computer's just going off. I'm fucking out. My boss walks up and it was like waste nothing. You can't do that anymore. You can't do that here. You can't do that here.

And I was like, what, what am I doing? What? I'm not doing anything. I'm just hoping I don't feel well. And he was like, I could smell you from a mile away almost every day. You can't come in here like this anymore. And that's what I did. I lived the life of lies. I lived a double life.

You know, I had the, I had the person that I presented and then the person that I really was, and that was an alcoholic out of control and beyond human aid, I book says we go to the place where we replace ourselves to beyond human aid. And that's the thing that I didn't realize. I thought I got this, watch this. And I quit that job. My wife, we're sitting together. Got it got a job in her career to move to Pittsburgh. I didn't want to go to Pittsburgh. We were going to New York city.

I was like, I want to go to fricking Pittsburgh. I grew up near there. I don't want to be anywhere near that town. I hate it. So we ended up in Pittsburgh and I'm resentful the, get a place. I changed jobs. I get a job at the largest ad agency in town and I get hired. And like, I get hired because I have a skillset that nobody at the agency has lo and behold, like I knew computers really well, and I knew how to design on computers.

They were new then and the design world and all the art directors there didn't know them yet. They were, we were still doing it by hand. And if you, if you, if any of your viewers know what that means to me would do ads on board with. With wax to holding down blocks of copy that you specify and get typed from a type house knew it was like, it was like, you know, I don't know. It was like before a lighter was invented, it was like, we were like making fire by rubbing sticks together.

I mean, that's sort of what it was like, it was pretty backwards, but I knew the computer end from fortunately having this job, this in-house agency outside of Cleveland, which. You know, had some people there, my boss, who was pretty advanced, but I, I quit that job and I told them to go F themselves and watch me. They said maybe one day on invite you to lunch. If you're ever in Pittsburgh, look me up. So what I said to my left, like what an asshole. So I had a big head, like a massive.

And I got into this agency and it was like 270 people or something like that. When I, when I got in there and I clawed and scratched and fought and worked massive amounts of hours to get a promotion and I got one promotion and then I kept working that way and I got another promotion. All the while drinking and drinking and drug use were not discouraged in the ad business. You can drink in the daytime. No one was going to say anything to you, if your shit was done.

And it was good, no one cared there. Wasn't like your mommy and daddy weren't at the door. Like checking it for like, you know, you've, you've stayed up. You know, later came in after curfew. It was like, it was, you know, working with the big voice. It wasn't quite mad men. I missed that era. I was 20 years after that, but still. That's what I was picturing. Oh yeah. And the offices were like that there was the executive floor and it was on, we took up three floors.

It was like on floor 13 or something. We were like, and, and the executive floor you walked in and was like, all mid-century modern. Let us move from office to office and all the furniture. Pristine and amazing. And like designer furniture, you know from Em's to like, you know, all the Italian brands, it was like a showroom for fucking furniture and office equipment. It was unreal. And like, I thought I'm going to have an office up here one day. I never had an office at that. At that job.

It was my first job. I never got an office that had. I mean, I, I, my, I burned my candle out pretty quickly. It took, I got massive promotions. I, you know, quadrupled my salary and I quadrupled my drinking. I pled dribbled my wise to my wife. I quadrupled the women I had affairs with. And I was. Yeah. And my

I had a mattress, which I bought a stereo, which I bought for the apartment, an old chair, which I brought four kitchen chairs and half gallon of, I think it was crappy, like absolute vodka and a half a gallon of Bombay Sapphire in the freezer. And The single and it was the best thing ever. I was like, I made it. That's all I had. And what was weird is I met my second wife. Right before it moves into this apartment. She lived in the next building.

Now we have the, we live in these old pre-war apartment buildings in the squirrel hill squirrel, squirrel hill area of Pittsburgh. And I instantly fell in love with her, and this was going to be my solution for everything. It was the retribution for the pain and suffering went through by divorcing my wife, who didn't deserve me. Anyways, my first wife I've met this other woman. Who's amazing.

And you know, it turns out she was, it turns out like that relationship and like where I was, she was also in. It brought me to my knees. I kissing you drinking. Ma many of ultimatum we're given, we got married a year after we met she said to me, this is one of the things when I was still in that apartment and she would come over and hang out. She said to me, you know, one night we were talking, she said, well, you know, who's your best friend. And I was like, oh, I don't know.

I have a lot of friends, but you know, This divorce really like shook things up and you know what, you know, what I've realized is that alcohol is my friend. It's my best friend. Never lets me down. It's always there for me. It's always like, you know, it it's, it's there when I'm up, it's there when I'm down. And I like to describe this thing to her and she, she not being an alcoholic, looked at me and said, I think that's the saddest thing I've ever heard anyone say.

I was like taken aback by that, but after I got sober, it is the saddest thing I've ever heard myself say like, really, really alcohol is your best friend. I mean, if you'd asked me a couple years ago, who's your best friend? I would say my wife or my mom or my one sister, you know, not like not.

For my friend, Tom, or, you know, whatever, but like not alcohol, like that's the furthest thing from like friendship that I've ever had in my life, but I didn't know what that, and so there was a white light moment. I had one of those weird white light moments. I was so fast-forward I got married. I was a. So it was six years into our first marriage and into my marriage that I'm still married. I'm still married to Adrian was tissues into our marriage.

I was I was stunned out of the blackout, talking on my cell phone in an apartment of a woman. I was having an affair with who was bartender. A couple of doors down from the agency that was working at, then I wasn't working at that big agency. I'd gone through a couple of agencies after then and burned some bridges and ruined some people and took corsages and, and advanced in my career somehow.

But in this woman's apartment, it's five o'clock in the morning and I'm on the phone with my father-in-law is in Florida getting up to go, go. He's meeting his friends at the diner before they go out and golf. He says to me, so what I remember the first thing he said, what are you doing? What are you doing? I was like, what? Like, I, I, I work late. I was out, I was out all night. I worked late.

I don't know, I'm just driving and I'm standing in this apartment and he said, I've talked to your wife for over an hour. Get your ass. Just go home. And I started talking to hung up on me and I had the moment right there where I was just truck. I was struck with like the cumulation, the cumulative, like feelings of all of this life of lies in life of deception. That's lying to me. And lying to people around me that loved me. I was struck by this like thing. Like, what was I doing?

I was an adult. I was 37 years old and I was making decisions like, oh, like I did, when I was like a teenager, like were like, I'm with one girlfriend, I'm going to sleep with her best friend, like shit like that, like dumb, terrible behavior. And I'm doing this drinking and doing drugs. You know, I didn't talk much about drugs in this, but there was all that stuff all together and all of it, all of those drugs and all of the drinking was a symptom of something else that was far graver.

And what that was, was a soul sickness. It was inside me. I was sick. I was spiritually sick and that's what I learned in AA. And that for. First, when I heard it, I was like, this is a cost. And that is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. You don't know me and for you to say that to me, what do you know? Like how, how dare you? I mean, the first person that said that to me, wasn't my sponsor. And I thought that like, those were original words coming out of his mouth.

And then, you know, once I read the book, I was like, oh, wait a minute. He got those words from here. And that other person, the other words from here and that other person did too. And like, oh wait, this thing is based on a.

And we were in New York and we were out to dinner with friends, and then we were out that night and trying to celebrate what in the meanwhile we were fighting and she turned at one point like three in the morning and said to me, I'm half in the bag. She said to me, when we get back to Pittsburgh, I'm going to add. I laughed at her. I was like, why you don't have a problem drinking? And she's like, you moron Allen ons for people whose, whose loved ones have a problem drinking and that's you.

And I was like, yeah, whatever. Yeah, I'm an alcoholic. So what, you know, like, I didn't care that she called me that I didn't care to anyone called me that you didn't have to figure it out. I presented it to you pretty, pretty quickly. That changed our relationship. She no longer came after me. She no longer called the borrower. I drank like sh if I didn't answer my cell phone, she called the bar. Cause she knew where I was going. You know, I left breadcrumbs.

Maybe I'm not sure, but you know, she would check up on me and she stopped doing all that. She stopped worrying when I came up three o'clock in the morning on a two. You know, and I had to get up and go to work. And the next morning she didn't care. She didn't say anything. She didn't fight with me. She didn't argue. She asked me how much I drank when we went out. She didn't do any of that. I was just like, what the hell is going on? Why is she like this? And I was like, I do have a problem.

I do have a problem. And what's really weird is that, that relationship I had with that woman, I was having an affair with the bartender. I was at the bar with her one night after that whole debacle, of course I didn't stop that relationship. And she said to me, you know, you should go to AA because she'll have a problem drinking. And I was like, okay, fine. I'll go. She said, all right, tomorrow, I'm going to a meeting. And that was the first meeting I went to was with her.

Now I cut that relationship off shortly after, because my sponsor asked me to, but shortly after to me, it was like nine months. And I struggled and, you know, the positive things about being sober now is I don't do things like that. I don't treat people that way. I could be a person that, you know, it does. Esteemable acts that Theresa there as well, that shows up for work. She has a fork sober had the respect. Heather respected both of my parents before they passed.

I was sober for both of them exiting the world. And you know, I, I've worked in the same career at different agencies since getting sober. I've worked in the same career, you know, and I don't have to drink to do it and I go to work and I show up and I'm sober and. My sponsor said, people watch you, people will watch you. And he was right. He was right. Because like, we set examples.

We said examples when we're the only one out to dinner with clients and they're, everyone's getting blotto and I've, you know, continuing on the same conversation. And I could be with those people and not drink. And people were like, why didn't you. Like, well, I don't like to or with certain people I'll say, well, I quit drinking. I had a problem with it. I was never successful at drinking. You know, I don't have to explain why, you know, everybody's concerned about themselves.

And you know, us alcoholics thing, when we get sober, like, oh, it's going to be so hard to be around people that are drinking because like, oh, they're going to ask me, they're going to pressure me. Like no one cares. They're caring. They care about themselves. If they're asking you, they have a problem. If they're, if they're saying you will, you should have a drink. Come on, you have a beer. It's it's hot outside. It's you deserve it.

We. If they have an issue with you not drinking, they have an issue, you know, it's, that's been my experience at least the positive things or just, I could be, you know, I could be a worker amongst workers, a girl amongst gals. You know, I always love to say this, like, you know I used to go to this meeting if the JCC here in squirrel hill. And there was an older Jewish gentleman, Dan, who used to always have these shares that were just amazing.

And this meeting was like a a hybrid, you know, sometimes it was a 12 and 12. Sometimes it was You know, just the regular share meeting. And he will always, in some way, like once a month you would hear him say this thing about like, I'm able to be a match. I'm able to be a standup person, but but but but a man amongst men, he would say, and, you know, as a, as a drinker, as an alcoholic, I was never able to do that. I always had to be above or below, below with sometimes really cool.

Because when you were below, when you were like more hardcore or more, you know, screwed up than other people in certain crowds, it was like you had like cred, you know, like, like, yeah, I, I just got out of rehab or I just got out of like the hospital. Cause I, you know, certain people cared about that stuff and like I'd sit around the bar and talk about how much I drank and how much trouble I get in. And with the guys that would talk about.

When I was, when I presented mail, I would talk about the women I'd laid in, like, you know, just horrible, horrible behavior. And I don't have to do that. I don't have to pretend that that person or live in that body anymore. Not because I've transitioned, but because I got sober and I got sober before I transitioned like 17 years before it, six feet, no 15 years before it.

And thank God. Because it cannot imagine having a mind back then or having the mind I had back then last year at 53 when I transitioned. I mean, like I couldn't, I like number one, maybe it would've never come up. I don't know if I would be alive first of all, but it probably would have never come up and I wouldn't have been able to handle what I've done in the past. Year and a half and monumental shifts. Thank God. I'm sober. Thank God. I have a program and people around me.

I mean, I came to my home group, the mustard seed really shortly after, like I started in November. I came to the mustard seed in February, the end of February. And it had just started, but it was an LGBTQ I meet meaning it was the first LGBTQ meeting I went to mean that's not true. I may have gone to in-person ones like years and years ago, just for the hell of excels with friends that were in the rainbow, as I like to say sometimes.

And but this is the one, the first one I went to as a person, you know, in, in the T part of the rainbow. And it was amazing. We, we don't like it. We don't talk about it. It's not like it's our topic of choice. Like, why do I drink I'm transgender? It's like, that's number of topic or discussion or anything like that. But you're around people, not only, you know, that are like you, that are alcoholics, but are also safe and, and, you know, in the community, both communities and it's.

It's fantastic. And I've met some friends and I've I got support and what was really important was I got support right after I had that relapse on medical marijuana. And that was like you know, it was in, it was a thoroughly researched, planned and maybe necessary. I went and got a medical marijuana license because my mom was. In hospice. And she had multiple complications, like literally multiple ones. And one thing she couldn't do was take opiates. She could take oral morphine and that was it.

None of the, like the real things that like really killed, you know, pain like oxycodone or, you know oxies or, you know, anything that was in any of the, you know, that. In that family of drugs. So and she was nauseous all the time. She had stomach, she had small intestine initiatives that she was dying from. And I was trying, we were trying anything just to give her relief. And I was like, yes, of course, I'm going to get it. And I had a doctor friends with. A medical marijuana license.

Cause it's like the proxy in our state to, in order for me to go buy weed from my mom, with her, there's like stuff she had to do. She had to go and fill some allergy, you have a doctor. I was just like, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do this. I have a friend, who's a doctor. It's going to take two minutes. And literally it took like no time at all. I went and bought some weed and you know, I wasn't going to just give it to my mom. I planned on smoking it and I smoked it with her.

And It didn't help her. It touched her nausea for a little while, and then she would say, I feel so out of it from smoking it that, you know, I'm dizzy from it. I don't, I don't feel good. I don't like this. And you know, I tried CBD oil and other things. None of it really helped her that much, you know, there was moments, but, and, and I could use smoking it for five months and. I used to be able to be a functional person on marijuana. And when I found out is like, in my fifties, I am not.

And I feel dumb. Well, maybe let's, let's put it this way. I feel dumber. And I'm slow. I am sometimes hyperly motivated, you know, kind of, we just smoke or I'm just like yeah. Just disconnected. And I don't like that. I don't like that at all. I T I told a friend that I was actually a sponsee that I was smoking weight. And also on the same night told them that I was transitioning both things on the same night and my sponsee flipped out and was just like, I can't believe.

You were hiding this from me. And I was like, well, I have a sponsor for some ball. And yeah, I was, but you know, it, it has no issue on outside. I'll say issues in there. Want us, and I'll say this issue, and my sponsor told me you don't need to change your sobriety date because of that fact. And I was like, no, I'm going to. And then once it went to a meeting online with my sponsor, And change my sobriety date, someone from 2004 to 2021. And that was cool.

It was cool doing it because, you know, as I said, you know, time in, in time, well, marijuana, wasn't an issue for me. If I was drinking, I probably never would have come back. But marijuana, like I don't re recommend smoking. At all. And it's not an issue for me, so initially for plenty of people but you know, by the grace of God and, and maybe my chemistry, I didn't have an issue with it and was able to just go like, okay, I'm not gonna smoke it. And I stopped.

Yeah. I stopped because my mom asked me to as well, and nobody like asking me to quit drinking. And my mom asked me to put drinking a million times in my lifetime and I never did until I was ready to yeah. My story is sometimes non-linear. I know, I know there's other questions.

And, you know, the, the most awful thing is that like, you know, we think that, that, you know, nothing's going to change and it's too slow because we're impatient when we're new and like patients and just realizing that everything will change. It's gonna, it's gonna change whatever you're experiencing right now. Good or bad. It's gonna change. Yeah. Nathan's.

And that's the methodology here is we help one another. We help each other by doing things. You helped me by asking me to speak tonight on your, on your planet. And I'm helping you by coming here and filling plank air with lots of words.