NATHAN C:
You know, we drank together, we did a lot of drugs together, we committed crimes together. And, you know, I got sober in 2015. He was still kind of doing his thing and he reached out to me and we talked here and there. He would try to get me to pay off his drug debts. He would tell me, if you want help, I'll take you to a meeting or I'll take you to treatment. And he'd be like, alright, I'll talk to you later. And he disappeared. And he got locked up for the last time, both of us. I've done multiple prison visits, he'll tell you about it. But he called me from jail and he said, I'm done, man. I don't care what it takes. I need to get connected to whatever you're connected to. And I'm willing to do whatever it takes. And that's where the journey began in 2018. And he is a dear friend of mine and brother and I love him to death. And I'm proud to say he's one of my best friends. And he's here to tell you his story.
Alright. Hello everybody, I'm Nathan, I'm an alcoholic. How much time do I have? All the time. All the time. Okay. I can't sit. My sobriety date is June 12, 2018. I have a sponsor, I sponsor other men. My home group is Friday night men's meeting at the Dry Dock in Tarpon Springs. And I'm very humbled and grateful for the opportunity to come and speak tonight. Also, this is a special occasion for me because I don't have to put them on front street or anything. But my brother's here hearing me speak for the very first time. So, you know, it's pretty cool when you can see a men's manifest right in front of your eyes.
So, I was listening to this podcast the other day. And it was not AA related. It was just a spiritual podcast. And there was this lady talking to this couple about tuning in, right? Tuning in to God. And she was talking about this, you know, imagine like there's a radio in this room. And we can't hear the music, right? But if Johnny goes over and starts messing with the dials and all of a sudden the room is filled with music. And that's just like God, right? God is in this room. God is in and around us always. What are we doing to tune into it today? Am I awake to the presence of this power in my life? And I just like would challenge everybody, you know, just to try to tune in to that as I speak tonight. And, you know, open your hearts and your minds so you can receive whatever you're meant to receive.
So, how it was. Let me tell a story first. So, I was surfing a couple weeks ago. Maybe two or three weeks after one of these really bad cold fronts. It was freezing out. Wasn't too many people in the water. And I was, I'd been out there for a little bit. And I just, just something overcame me. And I just started praying and, you know, thanking. My dad had gone into the hospital the week before. And he was able to come home. Had a procedure. Was able to come home. And I was with my dad that whole week right by his side. Right the whole time. You know, I went home and slept and everything. But I was with him for like four or five days. And as we were leaving the hospital, driving to the pharmacy to get his medication and all that, I looked over at him. I said, we did good, dad, right? And he's like, he goes, my baby boy, I love you. He's like, thank you. And in that moment it seemed simple, right? But I saw, again, an immense come to life in his eyes, right? I saw an immense to my mom who's no longer with us. I saw an immense to my brother because all my mom wanted is for us to be together. And that's where we were that week. You know, we were together.
So I'm in the water and I'm just thankful, right? I'm just telling God all about it out loud, you know? And all of a sudden I get done praying. I pray for some of my friends and, you know, just talking to this power, right? And all of a sudden I see, like, the nicest wave just coming at me, right? And I paddle, I get on it. And as soon as I, you know, go down the line, I go to look to see what do I need to do. Do I need to do a bottom turn? Do I need to stay on top of the wave? What do I need to do? And the sun's coming up in a very specific way where it's just I can't see. I can't see what to do. So all I did was just trust. Trust that I was right where I belonged. I was right where I needed to be. And I was able to ride this wave all the way to the shore. It was one of the best waves I've caught all day, right? And when I got off the wave, you know, I could have done one or two things. I could have been like, just another wave, paddle back out, catch another one. But thankfully, I was awake that why that wave came because I connected to the source, right? And the experience I had in those 10 seconds of riding, 15 seconds riding this wave, you know, it reminded me like what other waves have I missed, right? What other, where have I trusted and remained and where have I just let it pass by? And it just made me so grateful for, I don't know about y'all, but I hear it all the time. People say, oh, I'm not even supposed to be here. And I don't agree with that. I absolutely know I'm supposed to be here. I've been gifted with the divine purpose. I've been gifted with the message of recovery, of renewal, of this recreated life so I can share it with others that are sick and still suffering.
But if there was anybody that wasn't supposed to be here, you know, yeah. And you would think, I think about this often. I never really had the excuse. My parents weren't alcoholic. They didn't do drugs. I was spoiled rotten. Had a great life. I excelled in sports. I excelled in school. Straight A's and all the right friends. But there was always just something off, right? You hear it all the time in these meetings. There's just something not right. In a group of people, with all the right people and the right grades, I just felt uncomfortable. I just didn't feel like I was a part of. And summer of eighth grade, I went to this party and, you know, some friends had some stuff and I indulged. And for once, I just felt comfortable with being in my own skin. And I know we talk a lot about the progression. And it speaks about, you know, how quickly this disease can progress in the literature. But for me, it was instantaneous. Right away, I was stuck. I'm like, this is it. This is what I want to do. This is who I am. And for me, the only progression was like the consequences. That was a reflection of what I was doing, more so than because I jumped right in, head first. Threw everything away.
You know, I was a basketball star. I was straight A's. I was taking high school classes in middle school. By the time I was kicked out of school, the end of ninth grade, I was, you know, in a hospital, in a coma for a few days. When I was 15 or 16 years old, to my first treatment center. And none of that mattered. My parents, God bless them. You know, they loved me so unconditionally, no matter what I did, to the end. Did they never look at me different? Maybe a little bit. Maybe they looked at me a little bit different. But always, always let me back home. Always gave me another opportunity. Always had the door open for me when I came crawling home.
And, you know, I started getting in trouble. I started committing crimes. And, you know, when all my friends were going off to college, you know, I was on a prison bus for the first time. I was 19 years old. And, you know, I could sit here for two hours and talk about all those experiences, but it's just a lot more of the same. Because that's basically the next 20 years of my life. Spent 15 years collectively in prison. And you would think, you know, prison is like a place of reform, a place where I can get my stuff together, take some classes, you know, work out, come home, and, you know, I learn my lesson. But, you know, I brought that same disease inside those walls. And I did the same thing I did on the street in there. Maybe not to the same extent, but I sure as heck tried to. And it was just the same cycle. The same cycle over and over again. I couldn't bring back to memory with sufficient force the memory, you know, the pain, the consequences. It just ‑‑ I always say you can't put logic to insanity, right? You can't explain something that doesn't make any sense.
And I flirted with a few bouts of sobriety. I tried it a couple times. I ‑‑ and I think it's not like the resources or the opportunities or the treatment centers or the people that were in the program, everybody was trying to reach their hand out to me. There's not much to be said to someone who's not ready to receive it. And I just wasn't ready. And thankfully, I'm just going to give you a little disclaimer. I'm going to say God a lot. And I feel like I can talk about God up here because I pray that you guys have a relationship with a higher power. Now, who I choose to call God might not be yours. And that's the beautiful thing about our program, right? Ebi said to Bill in passing, hey, just choose your own conception. And there lies the very foundation of this program. And if it wasn't for that, I might not have ever came in here because, boy, oh, boy, I had beef with that dude, right? I don't know if I was an atheist, but I was damn sure indifferent. I could care less. Not because maybe I didn't think they exist. I just didn't think he wanted anything to do with me. I didn't think I was worth it. Forgiveness? Are you serious? Do you know what I did? Look what I've done to my mom, my dad, my brother. There is no conceivable way I can ever have another opportunity to be whole again. And that's the mentality that I carried. That is the very thing that perpetuated this cycle of alcoholism. I couldn't stand being who I was. I needed relief from myself. And the only solution I knew was in drugs and alcohol. That was it. And I couldn't put enough time and space in between actively drinking to even give this thing a fair shot. To be honest, I thought you guys were full of it anyway.
NATHAN C:
There's no way, what, these 12 sentences on a wall is going to take away my prison problem? You know, this going to the hospital and treatment and having no money and no self-worth, no self-esteem. How in the heck would that work for me? It's impossible. And again, it's so much deeper than that because I just didn't believe I was worth trying.
There are a few things that happened that led up to my last surrender. I did everything. I tried to move away. I tried to change the formulas, right? I tried just to white-knuckle it. I tried everything. I tried jobs. I tried girlfriends. And none of it worked. None of it even scratched the surface of what was going on internally, right? And that's the delusion that if I need something external to fix what's inside. You know, the right amount of money, the right job, the right girlfriend, the right environment. And I just kept on ending up pounding on the bar wondering how this happened again.
So I got out of prison for the last time in 2015. From 2015 to 2018 were probably the darkest times I've ever experienced in my entire life. The things that occurred in those three years still haunt me to this day. It's different. I was with a friend last night and we were listening to music. She said, "Play me one of your songs." And something came back to me. I haven't listened to this song in probably almost a decade now. I put this song on. I'm like, this song saved my life. But it brought me back into that time period from 2015 to 2018 when I was just dead inside. I was dead. I didn't see any way out. I was too scared to kill myself, but praying and doing enough alcohol hoping that I wouldn't wake up from it. A few hospital visits just kept proving that I was here. I gotta deal with this somehow, right? I just didn't know how.
Me and the girl I was with, we ended up having a daughter named Sophia. And you would think that this beautiful girl would make me change my ways. And it couldn't. I continued to do what I did. But I was just doing what the doctor prescribed to me, so I was doing the right thing. And these are the delusions that I believed. I lied so much that my lies became my truth. About ten months later after I had Sophia, she was taken from me. Crying in my arms. "Let me have the baby." And they said, "All you gotta do is A, B, and C and then you can get her back." And I wanted to. I promise you. Every fiber of my being is geared and created to be a father. I had the greatest father. I had the greatest examples of men and dads in my life. That's who I'm meant to be. I'm a caregiver. I'm a nurturer. I love this daughter. I love this girl more than life itself.
But that's the insidious and cunning and baffling factors of this disease. Frothy emotional appeal, right? Seldom suffices. There is no kid, no judge, no mom, no dad, no brother. Nobody could get to me. I was impenetrable. There was only one thing that could get to me. And I wasn't ready to let that one in yet. On accident, it's not really an accident, but she had another baby the next year. Same thing. She couldn't stop getting loaded. She got adopted right out of the hospital. And as if I didn't have enough guilt, shame, and regret already, this just drove me even deeper down.
I remember we got this townhouse to raise our daughters in. I remember being in this townhouse one night, both of them gone. It's a two-story townhouse, really nice. And we're just squatting in this living room, right? Our coffee tables, the bathroom door from downstairs that I tore off. We're sleeping on the floor, right, in squalor. And the only furniture, the real furniture in this house was upstairs where we never went. And it was an empty crib. I remember going up there and looking at that and I'm like, what is wrong with me? God, what is wrong with me?
About a year after that, multiple near deaths, multiple hospital visits, I got into a little scrape with the law and had bonded out. It was time for me to face my consequences. I had been putting this court date off, putting this court date off, and finally it was time to pick a jury and you've got to go to trial. But I'm guilty as shit. I can't pick no jury. I know I'm guilty, but they're imminent. Prison is imminent, right? You're going back to prison, mandatory sentence, at least five years. I decided not to go and somebody, whoever it was, thank you, called and the bondsman came and picked me up.
There I am, 39 years old, getting handcuffed, walking out of my childhood bedroom, my mom sitting on her chair, dying from complications from lung cancer and COPD. She just looks at me and she says, "Nathan, are you done?" Two things happened in that moment. One, I said, "Yes, Ma, I promise I'm done." And that's the first promise I kept to my mom in over two decades. Two, that was the very last time I ever saw my mom alive. She died while I was in treatment. I didn't even get to go home and say bye to her. But that's where it began. Something came over me. That's where God entered into my spirit and I surrendered for the last time.
But this time I did the thing that I hadn't done for my entire life. Once I finally coupled action with that surrender. Faith without works is dead, right? I hoped I could change. I prayed to God I didn't believe in that I could change, to change me. I thought I had a little faith. I just plead with the universe, please help me. But until I meet that prayer, that hope, that belief, that faith with action, it's all for nothing. Nothing ever changes.
The next sequence of events is just as if I needed more evidence that this power existed. The very fact that I'm even alive is evidence of a very strong and loving God in my life. But I'm hard-headed, right? I need evidence. What was imminent prison becomes an opportunity for treatment for the first time. This guy that I went to go see about my daughter in a complete Xanax blackout when I was on the street comes and finds me in jail and says, "Hey, I think I can help you get into treatment." I'm like, who are you? He's like, "You don't remember who I am?" We sat and talked for two hours. I'm like, I have no recollection. He came and found me. He advocated for me. And what was certain prison became treatment for the very first time in my entire criminal career.
Now I started out my treatment journey at Fairwinds, which is in Clearwater on Bel Air. Personal chef, massages, the whole nine. You know, this place was five star easy. Thank you, mom. Where I got sober is at a DOC ran facility at Phoenix House. Where I had the most magical, spiritual experience I've ever had in my entire life. Because why? I was ready. I had surrendered. Something had shifted. I had a profound alteration of how I think, act, and feel.
It's like, it's really illogical. I was listening to this podcast the other day. It was saying that we shouldn't go to God with logical minds. Because it's really not. Our finite thinking and the way we see things, we need to go to God with illogical minds. Because it don't make sense. And this power just started moving pieces in my life strategically. You know, Johnny was able to make a few phone calls. When you get sentenced to treatment in jail, you usually sit there for a good year. At least six to eight months. I went in five days. And Johnny's coming to pick me up. I get a sponsor. I get into these steps.
I wish I could say I had this huge white light Bill Wilson experience. But I didn't have that. Mine was more of the educational variety. Most of my spiritual experiences early on were in retrospect. I look back and I'm like, whoa. Look how he showed up. I'm in treatment for a couple months, I'm into this work, and I get the call. My mom goes on hospice. I'm scrambling trying to get to a pass to go home and see her. And she passes right away the next day. I remember Johnny says, I'm talking to him. And he's like, "Nate, say out loud that my mom died and I went and got loaded." See how crazy that sounds. And it just didn't sound right to me.
For the very first time, it made me dig in deeper. How can I honor this woman, my champion, who probably went home because she knew that her son was finally safe? A couple months later I'm paying child support, I'm working. I'm so excited to go home and see my daughter. I can't wait. I know I'm going to be a dad. I'm not doing it for her, but damn, it's great inspiration. The assistant where I'm working says, "You don't have to pay child support anymore." I'm like, why not? I make some phone calls and get in touch with DCF. They're like, "Yeah, she was adopted." I'm like, really? Supposedly the court sent letters to a residence that me or the mom no longer resided at. She was in treatment at the same time as well. Eight years later I still haven't got to see my daughter, still fighting for her. How do I honor that? How do I reconcile that, right?
The miracle of this program for me has been that no matter what unfolds in front of me, I have the capacity and the capability to walk through it with grace and dignity. Not on my own. These steps are a direct line to a power, a relationship that can transform my life if I continue to do the work. I'm thinking of just the steps and how divinely wrought they are. The first step, I couldn't believe or I didn't want to believe who and what I was. And therein lied the problem, right? I had this idea that I could be someone else. I didn't want to be an alcoholic. Because if I admit I'm this thing, that means I can't do what helps me. That means you take away my solution.
But the delusion is that the very thing that I was using for a solution, I find here. And then some. Instead of happiness, which is based on external circumstances and is fleeting at best, I find joy, I find contentment, I find this inner peace that is always within me. It cannot be taken away. No matter if I lose a relationship. No matter if I lose my mom.
NATHAN C:
No matter if I can't see my daughter. I'm okay. I'm not going to be okay. I'm okay. And there's freedom, right? There's such freedom to just say this is who I am. Now I know what I have to do. Now I know what I can't do. And then I come to believe that this power can restore me to sanity. I love how it says come to believe. It doesn't say I have to have some definitive, absolute idea of what this power is.
Because I'm a sunlight of the spirit dude when I walk in here. Creative intelligence, that's what I'm praying to. Because I don't believe in God. And I damn sure don't believe the God of any religion. But what this program tells me is I just have to express a willingness to believe. And I can make my beginning. And then I turn my will and my light over to this power I don't really understand. But I am so crazy willing. I don't know where this willingness comes from. It absolutely doesn't come from me. That I'm just willing to follow these instructions.
Because I see how this thing is working in other people's lives. I see my close friend sitting in front of me who was in the gutter with me. In the gutter. And he's absolutely transformed. Completely different person. And I make this decision to go through the rest of the steps. I do this searching and fearless moral inventory. And for the first time in my entire life, I get absolutely honest with another man. All the dark stuff. All the weird stuff. All the stuff that I thought I would carry to my grave.
Because it doesn't make me a man if I talk to somebody else about this. The very stuff that kept me getting loaded. The very stuff that if I hold on to, I am absolutely going to get loaded again. And I sit knee to knee with another member of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I tell them exactly who I am. And for the first time, I accept responsibility for everything I've done. I am able to look at it from a different angle.
I see my part. Every perceived pain or slight or tragedy or loss was my fault. I put myself in a position for that to happen. I take a look at these defects. These things that are just as much a part of me as my hair is brown. That are always going to be a part of me. That I always have to continue to look at and identify so I can continue to grow. I make this list of people I have harmed.
And I will say that... Steps 8 and 9, the ability to right my wrongs. To look another man or woman in the eye. And for the first time not say I'm sorry. But say this is what I did and this is what I'm willing to do to fix it. And then honor it. Talk about a weight lifted. I probably had the most tangible effect from that process.
In Steps 10, 11, and 12. Man, I'll tell you. You know the ability and the tools at our disposal. The ability to have something where no matter what is happening in my day, I have a chance to reset. I have a chance to look at myself. Make an amends if necessary. Talk to another alcoholic. And then go and help somebody else.
Step 11. You know I seek through prayer and meditation to improve my conscious contact with God as I understand it. Praying only. I used to leave that word out. Only. Only for knowledge of His will for me and a power to carry that out. And what happens is as a result of these steps, I have a spiritual experience. So this mind that was absolutely closed, now it's open.
And I'm starting to believe and I'm starting to see that I can get recovery no matter where I go. I can be open and go walk inside a church and I don't bristle with antagonism. What I see is this very same message no matter where I'm at. And I understand that this power doesn't care what room we're in. It's always there. It's just how awake am I to it.
There was a period of my life where I reprioritized my relationship with God. Because we get busy. We have these blessings. We get the job back. We get the relationships. Things get busy. And I make my relationship with my horizontal relationships more important than my vertical relationship. The very thing that put me in a position to have any of these blessings to begin with.
I don't know if it's irony or tragedy how I can forget just how blessed I am. What a miracle my life is. And so what I've done over the last three or four years is I started to spend more time with my Creator. And in that space, through conscious contact with God, not just in the morning and at night but throughout my day, it's allowed me to walk through some things that were super difficult.
It allows me to understand what it means to cease fighting anything or anyone. Because nothing is happening to me anymore. It's happening for me. And then, you know, Step 12. You know, I haven't had my spiritual awakening. I get to go share this gift of recovery. This version of myself with others. Not just in here.
You know, the greatest demonstration of these principles will be in our work, our homes. Not just in an AA meeting. Not just sponsorship. But what a gift. The ability, you know, it says, you know, faith has to work in and through us or we will perish, right? So I've been blessed with this gift of recovery and I get the privilege and the honor to sit with another man and take him through this work just like someone did for me.
I'll tell you a little story. This is how I practice these principles in all my affairs and then when I don't, how I feel. So I'm putting in, I just put in for a very important application to be an intervention professional. I get this, I get the response back. I have to do some CEUs and, you know, I watch the video. I read the little material. But I get to the course exam and I'm unsure of myself, right?
I'm like, I don't know. I need to get this right. I need to do this, right? And, you know, so I put the questions in AI and see what they have for me. And I put them, see I'm still sick, man. I'm just like y'all. I'm no different, right? And ChatGBT fails for me. And I feel rotten. I feel rotten. I was uncomfortable for the last 36 hours because of it.
I have been blessed because I can't be dishonest anymore. I was at the store with my dad the other day at Dollar General. And, you know, they have this very ornate, crazy maze you got to go through. And there's nobody in the store. You can just cut right through to the cashier. My dad's heading that way. I'm not. He's like, what are you doing? I'm like, I'm going to follow the rules, right?
I'm going to go around. He's like, why? I said, I can't afford to do shortcuts today, Dad. How am I taking shortcuts in my life still today? How am I honoring this gift of recovery? How am I honoring this privilege of I have a life? Life beyond my wildest dreams. I couldn't have even dreamt this up. I wasn't capable.
And it has nothing to do with my external circumstances. And it has everything to do with how I feel inside. The freedom that I experience today is nothing short of a miracle. The ability... The ability... So a couple months ago, this is after a very difficult separation from my then-fiance. And I was really struggling.
And I'm like, I need to write my daughters. So I got a couple notebooks and I just started writing to them every morning. And that is a difficult situation for a man. My daughters live five minutes away from where I live. I can't see them. And I want nothing more than to share this guy with them. And I started writing them and something happened.
Like over about the course of a week. Where all fear, all what-ifs, all my guilt, all my shame just was removed from me right away. I was with them. And they were with me. That's the stuff, right? I have tapped into this power that can take something like that and completely remove it. That can take something, this obsession that I was hopelessly and desperately controlled by for two plus decades and remove it.
Before I even do the work. It can put me in this position of neutrality where I am able to walk through life free from the bondage of self. I talk about it all the time. The last thing standing between me and God is myself. Today, my life isn't perfect. I'm not rich. I'm still growing.
But the abundance I have in my life is immeasurable. The relationships, the brotherhood, the connections I have with individuals who love me unconditionally. This whole book, all of our literature is a book about relationships. First and foremost, the relationship with God and then a relationship with ourselves and then a relationship with my fellows.
It shows me how to navigate through every single thing that life presents. Sorry, I'm a little emotional tonight. As I sit here, you know, talking to people that are just like me, driving up here with my brother and my best friend. It's not lost on me. How blessed I truly am.
And if I know that, if I'm awake to that, how am I honoring that on a daily basis? What am I doing on a daily basis to give thanks, to give it back? My entire life today is built around service professionally, personally, when I'm by myself, this is who I am. I don't change. I act the same way with integrity, with honesty, with openness.
It says in our book that we can recreate our lives. This power has done so much more because I didn't really have a life to recreate. It created one for me out of nothing. And for that, and for you guys, I'm eternally grateful. Thank you so much for this time and space.