Episode 23: From Chaos to Clarity: A Journey of Sobriety and Redemption

A raw and honest conversation about the tumultuous path from addiction and crime to recovery and a life of service.

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Episode 23

Hello world, and welcome to Choices, Books and Gifts, Where You Always Have Choices. So we're here at another podcast, and I have a special guest with me today. He's a man named John, who I grew up with. We grew up on the Upper East Side, and he will tell us his story. So, I'm going to dive right into some questions.

And thank you, John, for joining us. Thank you. Jay. You got it, pal. So our first question is, you know, I said a little bit about where you grew up, but go into a little bit deeper detail about where you grew up.

No, I mean, I was born in New York Hospital. You know that I was born in New York Hospital.

So, I was born in the neighbourhood. And I grew up on 74th, 75th, and Second Avenue. The address was 1435 Second Avenue. Still there. The building. So, I, and I know, you know, well, I'm going to let you get into that a little later. Can you tell us a bit about your drug and alcohol usage and how you hit the streets?

I guess I start. I think I picked up my first joint or beer when I was, like, 13 years old. Yeah. Me too. Now 13 years old. Yeah. And it just progressed from there, you know. All right. So, and I know you have quite a Unelectic story. Chris. I know you do. Can you tell us some of the things, some of the troubles and things you used to get into while you were drinking and drugging?

Oh, absolutely. You know, it was probably fun for the first two years, and then, two days after I turned 16, I got arrested for the first time, you know, and I got arrested by a friend of ours named John. I can't tell you his last name. He was only 15 and taken to the 19th prison, and his father came and got him. And I had to do the whole central booking. And that would be the first time I would get arrested. And I probably got arrested another 50 times after that, and I probably got arrested another 50 times after that. And, you know, the alcohol really got to me. I was always in, I was always in the middle of chaos.

I never went to school because of the drugs and the alcohol. I never, never wanted to do anything but get high and drunk, and, you know, like I said, that was the first arrest. But then many more would come after that. And, you know, I always seemed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. And I'm not in 1978.

I was out in Queens. I was out in Queens at a bar on Green Point Avenue because a part of Green Point Avenue goes into Queens. And I was over there at a bar and, me and a couple of friends, three other friends were walking to Queens Boulevard to get a cab back. There was some kind of drug deal in front of the Merry-Go-Round.

The Merry-Go-Round. They are very famous strip joints that have been there for years and years and have just started flying. And I think that the drug dealers thought that we were involved in trying to rip them off or something. And one of my friends caught four bullets in the chest. Another friend died. Another friend of mine got shot in his leg, and three shots were fired at me, but two one off the lampposts and the third one got me in the leg, but it went right through, you know, and I took off and, I knew the guy, my friend who got shot four times.

He was dead because it was point blank, you know? Wow. You see, It's amazing that, you know, you can go. And I know that's just a tiny part of your trauma and what you've been through. And to you, it was just getting up the next day and doing it again. Correct? Yeah. It was just keep drunk, keep numb.

It was more or less numb. Keep it as normal as I could, you know? And then six months later, I was involved in some bad robberies. I was doing some nasty stuff with a guy. What kind of stuff? I don't have to say their last names, drugs, drug stores, and, you know, the two guys that I was doing it with, Mitchell and Sergio. And I ended up doing some morphine. Sulfur. And you're not supposed to go to sleep on that stuff. Me and my friend Mikey and I were at a friend's house doing it, and they tried to bring Mikey back to life, but they couldn't bring him back to life, and he died. Mikey's got three other brothers, you know, them.

And then, they took a shot at bringing me back one more time. And for some reason, they. They got me back to life. And I ended up being in Bellevue Hospital for about six weeks. But I was paralyzed on one side of my body from me. It sounds corny, but, you know, and I mean, this is like you get these little God shots.

I mean, you were blessed to live through all this, right? Tragedies and this stuff. This is because, you know, I genuinely believe I know you well, and I know how much service you do. So I know you're here for that reason. Now that that that's what it's all about. Me now, I'm here.

I just want to say. I'm here to say that no matter what happens, you can still get another chance if you're still alive. Yeah, you still can do concurrent things. There are a lot of good friends and people you know from this disease. A lot of pain, a lot of hurt. Yeah. So with that, Johnny, when did you know you had enough? What needed to happen to change? When did you first go into AA? When did you decide enough is enough? When did that happen?

I was probably going through, in and out of, detoxes, all in the 90s. All in the 90s, just. But I just couldn't stop. I would go to a detox. I would go to a rehab for 30 days. As soon as I got out, I would go to AA for one day, and then I would drink again Right back. How many times did you do that? I probably would say, I don't know, 20, 25, rehabs, detoxes, you know, I was so I could name them all of Staten Island up and up in Brooklyn, in the Bronx.

When did it finally take? Well, what happened was I was homeless. I was homeless, and a friend of mine, Bobby, an older guy from the neighbourhood out of an apartment in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.

I tried for my family in 1999 to stop, and I did it for a year.

But I never, never stalked anybody. Never got a, you know, never got a response. I never did any of the work. After I had a year, the guy asked me if I wanted to go get dinner after my anniversary. And I said, no, I will meet Flacco and have a Heineken. And I went out for four and a half four years of torture.

I'll tell you the way, with your drug and alcohol use, I'm amazed you lasted a year without help. That's amazing. Yeah, yeah. And I don't know, it was all gone. And then, I was sleeping in the street, 75th and First Avenue on the corner. We were sleeping over there, a bunch of us.

My friend Bobby saw me and took me to Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. And I wasn't there more than two days, and I was wearing an Irish cross, and I was telling the Italians what I thought about them because I was trying to get killed. I didn't have the nerve to kill myself. I didn't want to live anymore. I figured one of them would do me a favour, but it never happened. One guy piped me over the head twice with a steel pipe. I had two big holes in my head, and my friend Bobby took me to the emergency room, wrapped in a towel from the club. Left me there, and I beat a cab with a black eye because when he got back to the club, I was there trying to get a drink.

They thought I was out of my mind. And then Bobby dragged me around the corner. And the following day, I was crying in the shower. I was bleeding, and I never cried. And I just said I can't fight this war anymore. And then he took me to a Nassau Medical Center detox. And that was 2005, April 26^th.

Yeah, yeah. Did you ever go back out again? No, no. That's it. I have been here since 2005. April 26th. Excellent.

It wasn't easy. What were some of the most challenging things? Like, you know, in early sobriety, when we, you know, we see we're hanging out with people that we still drank and drug with and still lived in then in the same neighbourhood. What were the challenges for you to stay sober in the beginning?

No, I didn't like it when I came out of Nassau County Medical, and I went to seek post-rehab. I went right to a three-way courthouse in Freeport Stadium. For how long? When I got out, I, well, saw a lot of people getting high in the three-way, three-quarter-way house. So I got a job, got out, and got a room at Baldwin. But I stood out here. It was all gone because I had gotten 22 unemployment checks. I had worked, and I wanted employment. Yes, I got 22 checks, and I got out, but I was working for $10 an hour in a bagel store when I first got sober.

So that was your sober job? Yeah. That's because the union I couldn't get back in the union for two years because of shenanigans. Right. Yeah. They knew what I was. I couldn't rely on me. But the hardest thing for me was that I wasn't grieving my sister and my grandmother.

I was grieving my two best friends when I got here. Alcohol and cocaine. That's what I was grieving. I don't know about anybody. They told me I couldn't have it anymore for the rest of my life. And when I realized, no, it's just one day at a time, things got easier. But I struggled for like eight months.

I wanted to drink every day, and I did the coffee commit with a guy that I'm like 17 years, and he's still doing, he's still seeing a psychiatrist after all these years. He's a good friend, but he says I drove him crazy. Imagine eight months with me doing coffee on Tuesdays and Fridays. How do I know you? I don't think that would be that tough

No. Alright, Okay, let me move on. Here.

So, how did things change for you? You mentioned your sister, your mother, things like that. What happened with your relationships with people and friends? And could you stake, you know, if you committed something, can you stay to it? What changed with you and the people in your life?

I just change people, places and things. I didn't go back to the city for about two years until Adam was two years sober. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then, somebody told me I owed him money whenever I walked into the workshop. So that was another take. So, I was making amends all the time. I believed him, so I was paying money.

Every time I went to the workshop, it cost me money. And then none of you remember. So maybe. Maybe somebody was playing you too, I don't know. Many of these people had time that was saying it's, Oh, all right, all right. We do have to trust them. And I remember that.

I have a good memory. I have a pretty good memory, unfortunately. Well, that's a good thing. That's good. Especially after the way you treated your brain. I remember one of my last good New Year's Eve at your place when you were at that party? Yeah. Yeah, And the downstairs, yeah, yeah, the restaurant, right? Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. 34th.

When would you say how long into it would you say you finally I, and I know it's a day at a time, trust me? But when you said I feel safe, I'm in recovery. I'm good. As you mentioned, for the first eight months, You were very, you know, wanted to drink and get high every day.

Right. But I was, you know, I stood in the middle of the pack, you know, I had a lot of guys that were around me and told me, drink tomorrow, get high tomorrow. You know you felt comfortable, right? And then, like, once I got into the work, about nine months into the work, I started to feel a lot better.

And when you see some of the work, I got into the process hundred and 64 pages of the big Yeah, Baby yeah, that's where it all begins. And it wasn't so much the drinking and the drugs. It was all the secrets I had. I had a lot of. I had a lot of, well, what's the word? I had a lot of, you know, bad stuff happened to me, you know, through my years, you know, you know, like my friends getting shot, me almost dying, me getting shot.

You know, there was a lot of trauma. Yeah. You know, and a lot of secrets and news. Well, yeah. I quit doing those bad things. And Sergio got killed two weeks later. Two days later, after I stopped, they got somebody else that didn't do what I did. And, you know. Yeah, that's something. You lost a lot of people even when you were in recovery.

Is there anything that contributes now that could make you think of relapsing, a trigger, or that it's something completely in the past? No, I can't afford a drink. I know I can't listen; my wife died in 2019, and I never thought about it. I'm sorry. She was a wonderful woman. Have you never thought about a drink? No. And it wasn't like it was coming. It was. All of a sudden, it was. I took it to the hospital on a Thursday, and she died the next day. So. And you guys knew nothing about it beforehand? An illness or just that she was feeling sick, so she had walking pneumonia, had septic and had COVID, and had an alcoholic. So she just got hit with all three things at once. It was too much.

Yeah. That is, there are a lot of things to get hit with.

What would you say to someone like, I know, I know how much work you do. So, say somebody first comes in the rooms and says, I need help. What? What do you say to that person?

What do I say to them? I say, tell me. You know, you'll be okay one day at a time. It's you who just has to take care of it today. Don't worry about tomorrow. Just worry about it today. You know you're not guaranteed tomorrow, right? No.

And I always tell them to stay and get a bunch. You get a bunch of people and stay with them. Stay in the middle of people. When I got here, I had a bunch of guys at Merrick Bellmore that I'd meet in the middle of them all the time, and that, you know, I felt safe. So, did you have any guys that, you know, you used to use with that were sober?

No, I didn't know any of these guys. No, I didn't know any. Okay. Okay. That's wild, man. Wild.

What would you say is the number of the best five things you can do now to keep up your recovery. Is it consistency? Is it steps meeting sponsorship, talking about what works for you? I stay in the middle of every day. I wake up, and I pray. And I'm always, I'm always staying out of here.

The worst neighbourhood in the world is up here. You know I make no life. Yes. If you ask Nancy, my girlfriend, I must make 100 phone calls a day. I don't like that. And I'm always on the phone. I always go to meetings. You just like checking up on people, helping them, and talking to people. You know, I talk to people a lot more often than me. You know, I would just like to be at the centre of the programme. I go to a meeting every day. Even when I'm on vacation. I'm on. I went on vacation in Florida for six days. I was in a meeting every day. I'm always at a conference like I went. I spoke to say, afternoon at 12:00. I'll be at a meeting at 7:30 tonight.

Is it a home group? No side of home. Group. It's just a meeting I go to on Thursday nights. Now, with the world and how it's changed. You go more to physical zoom. Both. How do you stay sober? 

I always go physical. I only did Zoom when you had to. I'm physical. Every time. Every day. You know, tomorrow I have a busy day. Tomorrow, I will speak in Staten Island at 10:00 in the morning. Then, I got to go up to the Bronx at 2:00 and was introduced to people who would be meeting. I'm going to be the leader for them. And then I got to go to New York City tomorrow and speak at 630.

So tomorrow I don't like doing two in a day, but they asked me, and I don't want to say no. You can never say no. That's sweet. I try not to, but I know what two and two a day to speak twice daily. It drains me. It really does it because it's emotional. It is, it is, it is. Do you still work with people? Do you have sponsors and things of that nature? I only believed in three sponsors at the time.

I think that is more than 3 to 5 pieces. I think it's not fair to them. And I don't think it's fair to me. Right. So they can end with three. You can give them your full attention. Right? I don't have time for 20. That's ridiculous for me. That's for me. I just don't have that kind of time because I'm busy. With what other stuff? Yeah. Yeah, if I have one. That's. That's been confirmed. The book. Really. I've taken it; he's got five years, and then I got another guy who just celebrated the year, and I got another guy with six months. So maybe one year, when this guy gets into his year, I'll be able to take another one, but I can't. I'm not one of those. I believe you. If you don't stay humble, you're going to stumble. Oh, I got 40, 40 people; I don't. I'm not God; I'm John. I'm one person. I mean, that's my belief for me.

I understand that. And I just reiterate, and I agree. How much can you do? I know when I, you know, haven't had a sponsor you in a long time now. Still, when I did, you know, I would meet with them, you know, each once a week for at least two hours in my house, taking them through the big book of, you know, Alcoholics Anonymous. So It was; that's the thing that really gets you. That's, I mean, the program is great, the meetings are great, and so are the people, but you have to find out about all that stuff inside you. What you just said, Jay, was not only about the drugs. You got to clean the house. If you don't clean the house, you know like I had one guy I had. He always had so many excuses. I had him stay at my house for five days, and we did that.

We did work for five straight days, and now he's got five years. Oh, that's great. That's a great story, John. Mean  Right. But he could have said no, you know. But I said, listen, stop. Let's just come over for five days. We'll work every day for a couple hours and go to a meeting while hanging out, you know. See what I mean?

But that's a lot of my time. I'm giving up. But he was willing to come. So if he's willing to come, I will give my time. Yeah. Yeah, but I just don't believe in that. 20 I know, guys, I got 20 sponsors. What? What do you know? You don't sleep well. So, just for me, I mean, everybody does it incorrectly.

But no matter what, if you look at me, you will always find me in the middle of the program? I'm always in the middle. Anybody that knows me knows I'm. If I'm not around, I'm in on the meeting, you know? Yeah. Like, I'll be in Jersey next Wednesday. I'll be in Philadelphia the following Monday.

Do you think the service is a big part of why you stay? Do you know why your program is so strong? It's God; God's the reason. God. It's God. Yeah. And then me. But. Yeah. No, I just have the time. I like to travel. I want to go to different people, you know?

I don't like it. I don't like to go to the same meeting; I say it gets stale. I don't want it to ever get stale. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think that's big. All right. So, I mean, I love what we talked about. I love you, but we're going to be coming to an end to this. Are there any, you know, parting words? It is something you want to say to the people that are, you know, just coming around or not quite in yet, but they're on the fence.

Come here and talk, and come here and try it. If you don't like it, you can leave. You know, that's what I was told. Nobody forces you to come here in. Come here and see how you feel. After those 90 days, like they say, know how you feel. So you say 90 and 90 are what you would say. Yeah, you think I mean it.

Nobody forces us to stay. And you know what? I'll help anybody. But I'm only responsible for helping the person. I'm not responsible for the outcome—whether they will stay where they go. So I don't get hurt. Like people say, oh, my sponsor, you want to. That has nothing to do with me. I'll do anything. I get to help you stay here.

But if you want to go out, I can't stop you. I'm not. I'm not a cop. I'm. You know, I'm just another alcoholic. I'll try to get you out of me, but it's, you know, it's like a roller coaster. It's like a roller coaster. And no matter how dark it gets in Alcoholics Anonymous, I guarantee you this. The light will shine again if you don't pick up a drink. Yeah, not in my time, but it'll shine. I. I wish you a really dark time. When my wife died a year ago. But I went to meetings every day, and that was during Covid. And I was going to the park.

In case people don't know, he lost his wife in sobriety. I just want to say sometimes, like what I've noticed in the program and things of that nature, it's the people sometimes who suffered the most like you suffered tremendous slate. You were brought back to life. You've been shot and lost tons of friends. And it's amazing because when guys like you get it, you give so much of it away. You're so grateful to have God and this program in your life. And you guys just, I mean, I know you; I know how much you do, and I just want to salute you for that. And I want to tell you that you're a wonderful guy. And good work.

Can I say one thing, Jay? You could tell as many things as possible. I'm just another alcoholic. There's nobody better than me. And I'm not better than anybody. Absolutely, humility is another attractive thing. I know what? We're bigger than the Mafia. There's nobody that we can't call to find out something. So is somebody that knows what's going on. No matter what you have going on in your life, somebody has been through it or will go through it. Absolutely. I just try to share my experience, strength and hope. You know, my sponsor asked me a question about three months ago, and I said, let me call you back in five minute

 I got to think about it. I called three guys for 40 years, and they gave me the answer. He said you think quick; I said, no, I made three phone calls. We don't have to be alone. We've got people in all areas. I'm telling you, we're bigger than the Mafia. Yeah, I got sober. My brother said, Jay, listen, you're 37 years old in this.

Nothing's been working for you. Nothing says I want you to just sit back and listen to everybody in AA. Make sure they're good people, solid, and all that. And I swear to God, John, I didn't make one decision for a year. I just counted on everybody else to do it for me. And it worked miraculously.

And I'm a significant God component, too. I really am. I hope we help somebody, that's all. I hope somebody sees this, and just one person and I'll be happy for the whole family. I agree, but it's much easier here than out there. I drank for 29 years, and I did the other stuff for 25, believe me, and I swam through it.

Yeah. I would go out on Tuesday; you know, I would get up on Saturday. So, it wasn't like Joe for a couple of drinks or snorts. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much. Let me know if you will join us again if you need me. If you have us, we will.

Yeah. Whatever you. Whatever you need. All right. God bless John. Have a great day.