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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Podcast Transcript:
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 very special guest with me today. He's a man that I grew up with named John. We grew up on the upper East Side, and he's going to tell us about 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 did you grow up, but go in a little bit deeper detail about where you grew up and, you know.
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 neighborhood. 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 guess 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 with a friend of ours named John. I can't tell you his last name. And he was only 15, and he got we got 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, you know, and I probably got arrested another 50 times after that. And, you know, the, 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 on Queens. I was out in Queens at a bar, and, Green point Avenue because there was a part of Green point Avenue that 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, and there was some kind of drug deal going on in front of the Merry-Go-Round.
The Merry-Go-Round. Are very famous strip joints that was there for years and years and 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, he died. Another friend of mine got shot in his leg, and, three shots were shot 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 know, It’s amazing that, you know, you can go. And I know that's just a small part of your trauma and what you've been through. And to you, it was just get up the next day and do it again. Correct? Yeah. It was just keep drunk, keep numb.
It was more or less keep numb, keep it as normal as I could, you know? And then six months later, I was involved in doing some bad robberies. I was doing some bad stuff with a guy. What kind of stuff? Drugs, drug stores and, you know, you know, the two guys that I was doing it with, Mitchell and Sergio, I don't have to say their last names. And, I ended up doing some morphine. sulfur. And, you're not supposed to go to sleep on that stuff. And, me and my friend Mikey were at a friend's house doing it, and, they tried to bring Mikey back to life, and they couldn't bring him back to life and 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 the 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 because, you know, I truly 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, if you're still alive, you still can get another chance. Yeah, you still you can do concurrent things. There are a lot of good friends and people who 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 I 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 when did it take? Well, what happened was I was homeless, I was homeless, and a friend of mine, Bobby, an older guy from the neighborhood out of, an apartment in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.
You know, first of all, I tried to 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. And after I had a year, the guy said to me, you want to go get dinner after your anniversary? And I said, no, I'm going to meet Flacco and I'm going to go 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 I'm amazed you lasted a year with without help. That's amazing. Yeah, yeah. And I don't know, it was all gone. And then, I was sleeping in the street, actually, 75th and first Avenue on the corner. We were sleeping over there, a bunch of us.
And, my friend Bobby saw me, and he 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 favor, but then it never happened. One guy ended up piping 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 in 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 next morning 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 26th.
Yeah, yeah. Did you ever go back out again? No, no. That's it. I been here since 2005. April 26th. Excellent.
Wasn't easy. What was some of the most difficult 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 neighborhood. What were the challenges for you to stay sober in the beginning?
No, I didn't like 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, I there was a lot of people getting high in the, in in the three way, three quarter way house. So I ended up getting a job and getting out and getting a room in Baldwin. But I stood out here, it was all gone because I had gotten 22 unemployment checks. For some reason. 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 couldn't rely on me. But the hardest thing was for me was I was I wasn't like 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. I was they were telling me I couldn't have it any more 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 of mine, 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 people in your life?
I just change people, places and things. I didn't go back to the city for like two years until Adam was two years sober. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then every time I walked into the workshop, somebody told me I owed him money. So that was another take. So I was making amends all the time. I believed him, so I was paying money.
Like, every time I went to the workshop, it was costing me money. And then none of you remember. So maybe. Maybe somebody was playing you a little bit too, I don't know. Now, a lot 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'm a pretty good memory, unfortunately. Well, that's a good thing. That's a good. Especially after the way you treated your brain. I mean, I remember one of my one of my last good New Years eve was at your place when you at that party? Yeah. Yeah, And the downstairs, yeah, yeah, the restaurant, mean, 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. Like you mentioned the first eight months. You were very, you know, want 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 I got into the work and 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, 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 new. Well, yeah. I quit doing those bad things. And Sergio got killed the two week, 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 now that contribute, that could make you think of relapsing or, you know, a trigger, for instance, or, that's 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. 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, That so She had walking pneumonia, she had septic and she had COVID and she had alcoholic So she just got hit with all three things at once. It was too much.
Yeah. That is that's a lot of things to get hit with.
What would you say to someone like, you know, 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 know you're going to be okay one day at a time. It's only you got to just only have to take care 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. You know, 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 was 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 is the number the best five things that you do now to keep up your recovery to do. Is it consistency. Is it steps meeting sponsorship talking what work for I stay in the middle every day I wake up and I pray. And I'm always, I'm always staying out of here.
Worst neighborhood in the world is up here. You know I make no life. Yes. If you asked 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 a meeting, You just like checking up on people, helping them, things of that and talking to people. You know, I talk to people a lot more time than me. You know, it's I just like to stay in the center of the of the program. I go to a meeting every day. Even when I'm on vacation. I'm on. I went to vacation in Florida for six days. I was a meeting every day. I'm always at a meeting 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, like tomorrow I got a busy day. Tomorrow I'm going to be in Staten Island at 10:00 in the morning speaking. Then I got to go up to the Bronx at 2:00 and introduced to people that are going to be going to meet. 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 for me to speak twice in a day. It drains me. It really does it because it's emotional. It is, it is, it is. Do you still do you work with people too? Like do you have sponsors and things of that nature? I only believe in three sponsor the time.
I think that more 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 true. The book. Really. I've take 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, maybe one year when this guy gets into his year and maybe I'll be able to take another one on, but I don'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, I don't I'm not God, I'm John. I'm one person. I mean, that's for me, you know, that's my belief.
I understand that. And I just got reiterate and I agree. How much can you do? I know when I, you know, I haven't had a sponsor you in a long time now, but 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, the people But you got a find out about all that stuff inside you. What you just said Jay, was not only 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 a couple hours we'll go to a meet 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, then I'm going to 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 the wrong way.
But no matter what, if you look at for me, you always going to 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 I'll be in Jersey next Wednesday. I'll be in Philly the following Monday.
Do you think the service is is a big part of why you stay? You know why you're, your program so strong? It’s God God's the reason. God. It's God. Yeah. And then me. But. Yeah. No, I just I have the time. I, I like to, I like to travel. I like to go to different people, you know?
I don't like it. I don't like to go to the same meeting, 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 of this. Is there any you know, parting words 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 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, see how you feel. So you say 90 and 90 is what you would say.. Yeah, you feel you I mean it.
Nobody forces us to stay. And you know what? I'll help anybody. But I'm only responsible to help the person. I'm not responsible for the outcome, whether they're going to stay where they go. So I don't get hurt. Like people say, oh, my sponsor, you want to. That's 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. If you don't pick up a drink, the light will shine again. Yeah, not in my time, but it'll shine. I. I wish you a real dark time. When my wife died for a year. 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 is it's the people sometimes who suffered the most like you suffered tremendous slate. You were brought back to life. You've been shot,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 that you 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, I think you're a wonderful guy. And a good work.
Can I say one thing, Jay? You could say as many things as . 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, there's somebody that's been through it already 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 just 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, they're solid and all that. And I swear to God, John, I didn't make one decision for an entire year. I just I counted on everybody else to do it for me. And it worked miraculously.
And I well, I'm a big God component too. I really am. I hope we help somebody, that's all. I just hope that somebody sees this and just one person and I'll be happy for the whole family. I agree, but it's a lot easier here than is out there. I drank for 29 years and I did the other stuff for 25, believe me, and I swam through it.
Yeah. You know, I would go out on Tuesday, you know, I would get up on Saturday. So, you know wasn't like Joe for a couple of drinks or a couple of snorts, so. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much. Any time you need me, let me know you will be joining us again. if you'll have us, we will.
Yeah. Whatever you. Whatever you need. All right. God bless John. Have a great day.