JOHN C.:
Treatment started at the age of 14. It's when I started to go to institutions. I was introduced to AA at that age, but I was not in the least bit interested in it. I started getting in trouble early on, and that carried through my adulthood until I got sober. It’s the classic case of feeling uncomfortable in my own skin, dying for you to like me, all that good stuff that comes with alcoholism. Any time I touched a substance, I couldn't stop unless I was intervening.
So, with that, I went to prison a couple of times, and at the end of 2011, I got out of prison. In 2012, I moved to Ocala. I had a person up here who I knew was in recovery. By this time, I had been to treatment 12 times. I had 16, 30, and 90 days of sobriety at different times. I could recite some stuff out of the big book when I was sober. I could act like the best guy in AA, but I just did not know how to behave. I was always faking it, watching other people and wanting what they had, but I was never willing to do any work for it.
I moved up here, and I think I turned 36. I went to the centers, grabbed a hold of this thing, and got a sponsor. I always share this in every meeting. You'll hear me say it, but I always say thank God for the guys that made AA look attractive, the relationships in AA look attractive, and made it look cool, because without them, I wouldn't be sitting here today. And the women, for that matter.
I went to treatment and stayed sober for about a year and a half. I became the cool guy in the halfway house. You know, I was dating girls and doing all this stuff they told you not to do in AA. I met you in a youth camp after about a year and a half, which takes me to 5-24-2015. By that time, I had read this book a thousand times. You can hear people say they've been around a long time. Well, I've heard, you know, I call them my heroes in AA, but people have been around these rooms a long time and say you read the book for the rest of your life, and every time you read it, it will change. It'll mean something different to you.
I never got that until I was sober this time. I really had to come to the fact that I could not use any substance or alcohol successfully for the rest of my life. Once I did that, I really had to get to work. I've read these things a million times, and there's this one line, right? It’s in the story of acceptance, and I want to share this too.
You know, I've been around AA, and I've been sober for ten years. The first five or six years of my recovery, I went to mental treatment for six months. I got sober with a bunch of really cool guys who were doing this stuff every day. I was a part of a lot of special stuff. We had the whole meetings; I worked at a gym for four years. The owner of that gym is now our mayor; he's in recovery. We used to have meetings there. I was engulfed, and it was what I needed. God knew what I needed.
I didn’t see it then, but God strategically placed all these things in my life because He knew that’s what it was going to take for me to get sober, get a hold of myself, and find out who John is. I didn’t know who he was at 38 years old, and I’m 49 now, still figuring it out.
So, there’s this one line, and I’ve read it a million times. It’s the doctor talking about how he was weaning himself off alcohol and pills. He says, “I had the appropriate symptoms such as cough, pain, anxiety, insomnia, muscle spasms, or upset stomach.” He would just diagnose himself and dose himself, and that was me. The line that screamed to me this time when I got in recovery was, “Today I feel I have used up my brain to get sober.” That really changed my whole perspective on really wanting to get sober and stay sober and be a part of something else.
The other part was acceptance. I was always the guy that was like, “Oh my God, they’re going to talk about page 417 again.” I was that guy. I really, truly was. And maybe I am still on some days, right? But I have to say that the alcohol synopsis given to me is really, truly beyond anything I could have ever even thought. A relationship with God, first and foremost. The ability to have conversations with other people in which I wore so many masks for so long that it just crippled me from being able to communicate with anybody.
You know, it’s the 8-year-old boy. I was an 8-year-old boy scared to death, operating in a world as an adult that had no clue how to live as an adult. So, I would put this face on that would scare people because I didn’t want them to know that I was scared to death. I operated like that from 14 to 38. Again, God strategically placed people in my life that looked at me and said, “Dude, you are so full of shit, and you’re fucking scared to death. You better start to take those masks off. You have no clue how to live at 38 years old.”
I just lost it because in my mind, I’m like, “You know that.” It was blatantly obvious at 38 years old. But that’s when I became willing to really try to dig into this stuff. A lot of this, even ten years in, I’m constantly unlearning. I get to learn. I do. I have to remain teachable. I’m constantly unlearning. It’s more the process nowadays for me than anything else.
I’ve gotten to do a lot of really cool stuff and make a lot of really magical relationships that I thought were out of touch for a person like me. I fell in love seven or eight times over. In the beginning, I put myself in this box, thinking, “What am I going to do with my life? What options do I have? I’ve been to prison three times.” I thought I was doomed for life. I finally showed up, listened to some people, and followed their suggestions. My life changed. It started to change really fast, and it continues to change to this day, daily. Opportunities show themselves, and I’ve learned a lot over that time.
I’ve gone through these phases where I’m cocky. I’ve gone through these phases where I’m scared. I’m a husband; I have a wife. I have a lot of friends. I work for some pretty important people, and they trust me with some really amazing, crazy important stuff, which still blows my mind.
I wanted to read some of Acceptance, what I hated the most, because I’ve got a lot of stuff going on in my life right now that applies to this. I really need to start digging into this more for myself because it’s all me inside. Just to share with you guys, I’ve shared this maybe a long time ago, but in July this year, I was diagnosed with stage 3 heart failure. I had no clue at all. I started doing the adult stuff, going to the doctor. I had hepatitis for a year, so I got treated for that.
The doctor at my gastro said, “Hey, you’re going to get a colonoscopy and an endo.” So, I did that. When he did my endo, when I woke up from it, he told me that he noticed I had an enlarged heart and that he wanted me to see a cardiologist. He said, “Just go for six weeks, do the robot, just so we can make sure everything’s okay.” So, I did that. At the end of the six weeks, the lady came in. She was from New York, and we clowned around; she’s very loud, and she’s a cardiologist.
On the sixth week, she came in, and her energy was totally different. I knew something was wrong. Her delivery really sucked. She just said, “I’m sorry, honey, but you’re upstaged for your heart failure.” I had no clue what that looked like. I wanted to know what the answer to that was. I’m like, “Okay, well, what’s the solution? What is the next step? Is it a pacemaker?” And she said, “No, you need a heart transplant. I’m sorry, honey.” That’s basically what she left me with.
She said, “I’m going to recommend that you go out to the transplant center in Orlando.” She made an appointment a month from that day and kind of sent me home. My wife and I were like, “What the fuck?” My mind was going, “Am I going to die in three days? What is going on?” Everything that I had learned here for a split second went totally out the window, and I went straight into panic mode.
I thought, “I’m going to leave my wife. How is she going to survive?” All of these things, right? It rocked me. I shared it with friends, and I started getting panic attacks from it, replaying the story. That was in July. Again, I look back on it now, and I didn’t see it then, but the odds immediately showed up. Immediately. They called me and gave me my job for about seven years. I flew around, picked up different clients, and got different treatments. I did a lot of that stuff, so I was traveling a lot.
The first thing that the cardiologist said was, “You can’t fly anymore.” So then that horrified me. “What am I going to do?” The people I worked for told them about that. A couple of friends that I know, dear friends of mine and my wife’s, worked in the industry. This was right after I got diagnosed. She said, “Hey, I run an alumni group in the treatment center, and I have a guy who’s two years post-heart transplant. He’s an Indian guy. No brush, but if you want to talk to him, you know, an advocate.”
I just want to apologize. I go to a doctor, and we make an appointment to go back to the doctor. We want answers. I can’t wait a month. He just told me I need a heart transplant. So, we go back, and I said, “Sure.” I asked her, “Am I going to die in three months? What is this?”
JOHN C.:
She said, no, you're not going to die in three months. You need treatment immediately. There are some options, whatever. They started me on a bunch of medication, all of which made me drowsy. And then so, like, a week goes by, and I'm like, I'm scared to death. So I call our friend, and I'm like, hey, let's take Eddie's number that you were talking about. It turned out to be an advocate at the White House for the Capitol Hill vote for people who are getting heart transplants. He was, like, just calm. He wasn't doing anything. He's insane. This guy's not an alcoholic. He's never done drugs in his life. And he, me and Elise, I've had this in with him. And he's explaining to us, like, what this looks like. You're going to be a heart transplant recipient. It's very traumatic for her. It's going to be traumatic for me. And how to navigate and all these things.
My appointment was, like, September 10th. And this was, like, September 6th, I think, that I was on Zoom or whatever. And he said, how would you feel if I flew from San Diego to Orlando to show up for your first appointment? And I was like, that's fucking weird, but okay. He knows what he's talking about. He's been through it. And that's where, like, if I'm looking for God, he's right there in front of me, right?
As soon as I steered the ship, which I think probably anybody would have done when it was like that. But, you know, I was panicked about all this stuff. And as we started to learn about it, it got a little bit better. But for years, I've always been tired. I get out of breath really fast. I have to quit the day. It's never been any of those things. And I've operated for a long time. I'm still working on that. You know, just lately, now it's been since diagnosis, July.
Every area of my life has kind of just shown up. People have shown up. My job adjusted things so I can still work and get a paycheck even if I'm in the hospital. You know, multiple things showed up that I didn't think, you know. It was just, the thing the most, like, of course, we've all heard this. At last, acceptance proves to be the key to my journey. After I'd been around AA for seven months, I was able to say, oh God, this is true. That I, of all people, strange as it may seem, even though I didn't give my permission, really am an alcoholic. And it's all right with me.
Now, what am I going to do about it? And it's the same thing with this diagnosis. What am I going to do about it? Am I going to sit in the shitter? Am I going to go drink over it? Am I going to drug over it? No, I'm not. I'm scared to death still right now. But over the last, I'd say, two or three months, I've done a pretty good job of trying to practice this in my life and accept that, like, I feel like, and this may sound selfish, I feel like I have a couple of coins in the spiritual bank, and I feel like God is going to work out exactly as He's supposed to.
I don't think that I'm ready to die of a heart attack or have any of those things yet. So if I stick with that, I'm okay. As long as I continue to practice, to lean in on God and other people while I'm going through this, everything seems to be okay. I feel okay. But here it is. When I stopped living in the problem, I began living in the answer. The problem went away. And that's kind of what the deal is right now.
I've tried to, you know, we I'm speaking of my wife, too, sorry. But trying to educate myself on this as much as possible and while being engulfed in it trying to practice these principles in all my affairs and stay connected to God and help other people. It's like the one constant thing in my life has been to be involved in helping other men for the last ten years. And I'm scared to death to stop doing that. Because that's been the best part of my life.
And I honestly believe, I don't even believe I know that everything that is good in my life today came from that. And so it always does. And so yeah, it's been a lot for me, man. I really am, I have been trying to practice this acceptance thing in my life and God's been really, really, really, really good to me. And I try to continue to do His work.
And I heard something, what was it? Selective acceptance. And I have that, too. I really do. And there's times, you know, I don't care what anybody says, it's hard to be in a relationship. It's hard, it takes work. It's not hard. But it takes work. And as two people are also learning and unlearning together and married and living and sharing the same space together for years at a time and experiencing life which has been overwhelmingly joyous, there's still these things where I am selective when it comes to things.
I use a small example. Sometimes she may bring something to my attention, or somebody will bring something to my attention. And at the time which is not willing, I don't feel like it's a problem. Whatever it is, it may be something that bothers somebody else, it may be something that my wife asked me to do and I'm like, no. Like, I can't. And that's me being selective. I can't do that. I have to try to practice this in everything that I do.
So yeah, I didn't think I was going to make it here. I was kind of just collaborating. I didn't know it was a 12 and 12 but that's my lead. And hopefully somebody can do something with that. So thank you. Thank you for having me. *applause applause*