Below is a raw transcript from the audio recording by
Pat B. in 2019.(Click to go back)
Hi everybody, my name is Pat B. I'm from Clovis, California. Or at least I was. I moved. My speaker tape had me listed from Clovis and I recently moved to Madera Ranchos. So if anybody knows where that's at, if anybody's from Madera Ranchos.
Nope. My home group is life on life's terms. It's on 710 North Fulton Street in Fresno, California. I attend that meeting regularly, mostly every day at noon on weekdays, weekends I'm out having fun. I leave that up to the rest of the people there to run. And hopefully they do a good job while I'm away.
And my sobriety date is November 6, 1997. And this is my fan here. I was fan of myself off before the meeting because one thing is hot as hell in this jacket. And then when you got to check out, when you're speaking Sunday morning you got to check out before noon, it's kind of impossible to get a boatload of raffle prizes. And all my wife's luggage is my wife. All my wife's luggage and my luggage into a car before it's time to speak.
So this is my wife, Michelle, right here, you guys. She's been a fellow alcoholic on this road with me for the last 13 years. And it's been amazing. Well my story is not like a lot of people's. I'm not the garden variety drunk. My dad was.
The y'all he did was drink. I was going to kill myself a whole new way. And I grew up in the 70s. And that was just after the 60s when all the age of Aquarius dawned on everybody. I did drink at an early age. I sipped to be all my parents' alcoholic beverages during parties and stuff like that.
Never was a blackout drinker at an early age. But I did like to take a few sips, get dizzy and fall down. But it never became a problem until I became about 16 years old. Prior to that also, I was, we were talking about, you know, type of drinking we did as kids earlier this week. And what I would do is I would befriend the local 7-Eleven manager and I would offer to do service. You know, I would do service work for him.
And what that was was I would go into the beer cooler and I would face all the beer and all the beverages. And one of the easiest things for me to steal was Tyrolia wine. And I don't know if anybody here is old enough to remember Tyrolia wine. It tastes like a burning tire smells. And it's a wonderful bouquet. And I used to take that home and put it in the inside, you know, the frame between the frame and the bladder of a water bit.
And there's not too many people probably remember what those are. But there's water beds, you used to stay, you know, kind of a temperate all year long. And so you'd have a chilled, nice cold beverage to drink and sip whenever, you know, you needed to take the age off at 13 and 14 years old. And so, but it never became a problem. My mom always, you know, she can tone that because she didn't want us out running the streets. And she was definitely a candidate for now, Alan.
But what I want to do first, I forgot this. I want to thank the committee. And this has been an experience for me. For those of you who don't know it, I speak like at meetings and I speak at like breakfasts and stuff like that in my local area. This is the first time I've ever had the opportunity to speak at a conference level. And I am extremely blessed for doing this.
I want to thank Amarena. She's a friend of my daughters. I don't know if she's here, but she's a member of your Young People's Association here in this area. Money paw. And she asked me to speak at one of her events and then some other. I think Rene or somebody heard of Brady or somebody heard my talk over here at the church and they listened to a tape that I did at Springville breakfast meeting in 2009.
And I don't know what I said there, but I'm impressed with my guest. But I was asked to speak here. And it's been such an honor, man. The people that I've got to meet Cindy and Rene and all these people that have been a member of the May, all the people that I met, they took me first off. We started out Thursday being here. We come out Thursday to go to a barbecue for the committee.
And it was a wonderful, just a small event. And I got a chance to meet people, trees. Everybody was there. And I got to know them like at a real personal level. And the speakers as well, all the speakers were there. And then come Friday, I got a chance to hear the Friday night speakers.
I don't go to a lot of Alonon meetings, I probably should. But I got a chance to hear Jane share her experience with Alonon program. And that was a wonderful deal. And then Harry, he shared Friday night and that was really cool too. He had a great pitch. And then last night I laughed my ass off.
My wife, her cheeks were hurting so bad. She couldn't really hardly talk to me last night, which was good because I got a chance to get a little bit of sleep. And Harry, I love you, man. And I appreciate all that you've done and what you do for Alco-anonymous. And I'm going to tell you some of the two that I've never had the experience of doing was being hosted by anybody. And these guys gave me a new friend.
They gave me Jason. And Jason, last night at the dinner, Brady asked me, how's your host doing? How's Jason doing? And I said, we just can't shake him. And I said, he's on us, like stink on a monkey. And you know what?
It's been fun getting to know him and I sure hope you stay sober, bro. It's been really cool getting to know you. So anyway, going back to the drinking. I drank like, you know, I didn't want to drink. When I grew up, my dad cheated on my mom at an early age. I was born in Avinol, California, which is about the only thing that's known for that town now as a prison.
But I was born in Avinol, California on Easter Sunday, 1958. And it caused this thing in me, and I think it's probably pretty common with alcoholics. You know, I for the longest time didn't think I was God, but I played God in my own life. And it almost killed me. But I grew up, my mom left my dad divorced him at about age five. We moved to Merced, California.
There was an Air Force base there. My mom met an Air Force, a guy in the Air Force. She married him. She was in Washington, Tacoma, Washington. She cheated on that guy. Met another guy, a carpenter.
And we moved from there to Concord, California. And all through my childhood, I'd never had any stability. I was, we were always being rooted up and moved from one town to the other. And that man, that moved us to Concord, eventually moved us to Fresno. And, you know, my mom got tired of catching him wearing her clothes and beating her up. And she eventually left him for another man.
And who she met the last time was an alcoholic, a real alcoholic. And the other guys, they drank, but they didn't drink alcoholic. I think they just had a lot of other deep underlying issues. And so, but the force dad that I had, he lived behind a bar. And he worked at the bar as a bartender. And he lived behind the bar and is very convenient.
Whenever we would visit my mom, because we live with my dad and my mom, you know, half time. Whenever we go visit my mom, they would let us go in the bar and we get to sit on the barstills. And I love the smell of sawdust and urine and, you know, all the smell of a bar, you know, it's a dive bar. And it was over near the fairgrounds in Fresno, California. So it was a city side of town. And we got to drink sip beers and play pool and have a good time, you know.
And I loved it. You know, I loved that experience seeing the grownups, you know, what grownups did. And so, but I never really wanted to be a drunk like him, because what happened was she fixed them up a little bit, brushed them up a little bit, got them a job. And he was, you know, they moved into a house in a nice neighborhood. And he was going to work and drinking. And but he also liked to take pills.
And I just hated him for that, you know. And I hated the fights that it caused in the household. And I just didn't want to be anything like it. So what happened was I got the, I wasn't good in sports. I never got chosen. The kids in my school, you know, I'm kind of short.
It wasn't really athletic growing up. They would never pick me to be on their team. I can never, I try out for sports in school, can never make the cut. And I always felt different. I always felt less than. And but what happened was I got it introduced to motocross motorcycle racing.
And I got to be pretty successful at that. I wasn't, I was a professional, but I didn't make a lot of money. But I did get to ride in some pretty nice tracks. I was at the motocross the week before Evil Knievel jumped to Stake River Canyon. I don't know if anybody remembers that. But I got a chance to be there.
And I got a chance to watch Evil Knievel pull up with these big semi-trucks full of Schlitz beer. And he would open the back of those things up. And he'd have this cane with a big diamond looking thing on it. And he would invite these girls up to get on the back of this truck and help pass out these cases of beer. And we were, you know, 14, 15 years old. And we would be able to go up there and get Kasey beer and take her back to our camp.
And we had a great time, you know, drinking and having a good time. I ended up falling and hurting myself that week. And I didn't get a chance to race or qualify for anything. But I had a good time getting drunk. And that was important. Evil Knievel didn't make it across the canyon just for your information.
The wind caught him. It was kind of like a rocket ship. It really wasn't a motorcycle. But he ended up going off. He ended up taking off. And then the wind caught his parachute and blew him back on the side of the canyon that he jumped from.
And he kind of crashed. But he was all right. Anyway, so what happened was I ended up growing up. And I met this girl. And I was really shy, you know. And it wasn't until I got here that you people told me that being shy was just another word for self-centeredness, you know.
And that pissed me off. So I was really kind of shy. But this girl at this motocross races, you know, she liked me. She started taking liking to me. And so I figured, man, if she likes me, you know, I must be okay. And so I ended up dating her and I was 16.
She was 14. We ended up dating. And we eventually got married at 19 because she got pregnant at 17. And I had my first child at 20 years old. And I was deep into, already deep into drinking daily, having cake parties at my house. My mom had ended up leaving that fourth husband for her fifth husband.
And she went and she went and moved out to the country, left me a three-bedroom house at age 16 to kind of live on my own, you know. And I made my brother and sister so mad that they couldn't live there anymore because it was constant parties when my mom was gone. So what happened was cops were coming to the house a lot. I started doing other dry goods and solid forms of alcohol, powder forms for alcohol. I was doing a lot of other substances during those early 70s. And I wasn't able to graduate from high school.
I took, at the time, they had improved. There was always the GED to take that to get out of high school. But they had this new thing called the California State High School Proficiency Examination. It was supposed to be the bigger, better thing than the GED. So I took it, you know. And I was able to leave school early, you know.
And I don't know why. I only left half a semester before I was able to graduate. So I don't know why I left. But all I did is school anyway, is party. And it's kind of ironic, we have a mensming. The guys that I sponsor, the guys that they sponsor.
And my sponsor has come a couple times. But we have a big book study right across the street from where I used to sit and drink and party all during the school day. So it kind of cool circle there. But what happened was I was getting, the cops were starting to come around the house too much. I had invited, in the three years that I was in that house from 16 to 19, I had 23 people, 23 different roommates living with me in a three bedroom house. And sometimes I'd have whole families move in, you know.
But there was a lot of activity. And eventually the cops were coming around so much that I knew that I was eventually going to go to jail. And I didn't want to ever go to jail. My grandfather was a police officer. And I always wanted to be a police officer. So what happened was my wife's dad, he got a promotion, he moved to Aurora, Illinois.
And he offered me a job back there as a route salesman. And I was only 19 years old and you're not even supposed to be working for a bread company because it was a union job and you have to be bonded. And in order to be bonded, you have to be 21. But he lied for me. And he got me the job in 19. And I was able to go back to Aurora, Illinois, and I was able to drive a bread truck around and deliver bread.
And it was the best thing. It was the neatest job I ever had. I loved it. And what I loved more about it was that when I was 19, I had a lot of my customers were bars because in the Midwest, they have something called beer gardens and a lot of the bars and pubs. They have fish fries on Friday nights and they sell sandwiches. And I would take the bread in there and befriend all these barkeepers and they would give me a beer and I could have lunch and a beer.
And every day I drank on the job at 19. And eventually what happened was she wanted to leave. She didn't like it back there. Her family, some of her father's family was back here. And she wanted to come back to Fresno. So we moved back to Fresno.
And I transferred with the bread company. I was able to continue working for that bread company. But in short time, within six months, I had gotten so deep into my alcoholism that I couldn't show up for work in the morning. And my supervisors were getting tired of coming to my house at five o'clock in the morning waking me up. And they eventually gave me the option to either quit or be fired. And being a prideful person, I didn't want to be fired.
I quit. And I ended up jumping from job to job to job. And from the time I was 21 years old to time I was 27 years old, I could not keep a job. I could get good jobs, but I couldn't keep them. And because of my drinking, I always got in the way. Or I'd steal from the company.
So what happened was by the time I turned 27, I was unable to provide for my family. I couldn't bring home a paycheck, I couldn't put a rook over their heads. My wife and three kids were getting tired of seeing their dad killing themselves on a daily basis. And she ended up leaving me for another man. And it devastated me. And I got so angry and so bitter that I sort of myself, this is how sick I was.
I sorted myself at 27 that I would never work another day in my life because if I did, she would get my money. And I was willing to like suffer. Maybe I should be an element. I don't know. But I was willing to suffer for that resentment. And so what I did was I ended up, and I was going there already, but I ended up going to Motel Drive.
And if anybody, I don't know if there's a Motel Drive in Monterey, but it seemed like every big city has a Motel Drive. But I ended up going to Motel Drive and I started driving prostitutes to farm labor camps. I started stealing on a daily basis. I never robbed anybody, but I was a horrible person. I wasn't a good person. And I couldn't see my kids.
One time my wife, I talked her in to let me visit my kids for a while. And I was so out of my mind that I passed out in the front seat of my car at a foster freeze drive in. And my wife brought the three kids to see me. And when they came up to the window to see me, they thought I was dead. I scared them to death. And I didn't see them for a couple of years.
And I know it's just a horrible father. But what I did for those two years living on the streets of Fresno, I would go steal things. I would steal aluminum off the sides of barns because aluminum, you could recycle. And I found out they call it urban mining nowadays, I think. But I was stealing and I'd get caught and I'd go to jail. And by the time I turned 29, I weighed about 130 pounds.
I quit wearing underwear because I didn't take baths. I didn't wash my clothes. And I was living in my car with this lady of the night, my significant other at the time. She was a friend of mine and we drank and did other things together. By the time I hit 29, we were going to car washes where there was the greats on the ground where the water goes in, people would drop quarters and I would lift those greats up and I would get anywhere from 50 cents to $3. And I had to have enough for a little bit of gas to go off on more stealing runs.
What happened was that my wife's best friend in high school, she saw me and she came up to me and she saw me take car wash and she came up to me and she asked me what happened. And I told her what I thought to be the truth. I told her that my wife left me and this is what happened to me. She took me to her house and she said that she would help me. And she just graduated with her nursing degree and so I figured she was qualified and so I went to her house and within three months she was doing the same stuff I was doing. And her parents threw her in a treatment center and kicked me out of the house and I was back on the streets.
And I eventually followed her into recovery and I started out in the other 12 step program and it was a wonderful place for me to be at the time because now I thought was my problem. And so I had gotten clean and sober for 11 months. But the problem was I had a sponsor just to get her off my back and I didn't work any of the steps. I acted like I was working the steps but I didn't work the steps. I was faking it. And after 11 months I created a huge resentment about the way I was feeling because alcohol and drugs they weren't my problem.
They were my solution. And when you took that away from me I was restful, irritable and discontent and I could not find any peace in my life. So I picked a fight with her. I went off and I drank a 12 pack of beer in the back of my delivery truck. I had another delivery job and proceeded to drink that whole 12 pack pass out and then go to work the next morning. I didn't tell anybody.
And what happened was I ended up really hitting it hard. And I ended up living in this drug connections garage and I had stole a check-caching machine from my mom and I was cash, I had some stolen checks from this contractor. It was probably the carpenter. And I got these checks from this construction company and I cashed these checks. I took them around to different places, grocery stores and cash them. And I'm not a real bright criminal.
I used my own driver's license. I don't know what I was thinking. But I figured I didn't have a house. So how are they going to come and find me? And so I ended up going on the day before Thanksgiving 1989. This was, in 1987, was my first introduction to the program.
In 1989, I had the day before Thanksgiving, I went into this grocery store in Madeira, California. It's called Madeira Foodmark. And I cashed this check. I first made it look like I was buying groceries and I had this payroll check. So it looked like it's legitimate, right? I used my own driver's license.
And everything went fine. And I cashed it and got the extra cash and went off and had a little party. And then when I was on the way out the door, I saw this sign saying, we will be open on Thanksgiving Day. And my keen alcoholic mind thought that I could go back the next day and they won't know that the checks were stolen because the banks would be closed. It would be Thanksgiving and they wouldn't have a chance to process a check yet. And by the way, you won't hear a keen alcoholic mind in the Alana meetings if you're new.
They don't refer to us as that. But anyway, what happened was when I went the second day to cash them, did the same scenario, bought all the Thanksgiving goodies. And when I went back, they said, Mr. Barnett, we know that these checks are stolen and we're going to hold you for the police. And like I said, I didn't ever hold anybody up. I was in a violent criminal.
But for some reason, I had a 25 Raven automatic pistol. I was a little bitty pistol and I pulled it out and I said, you're not going to hold me for anybody. I said, I'm going to walk out of here and I'm leaving. And I don't know if the guy thought I was, I don't know what the guy thought. But he was a big guy and he rushed me. And we ended up getting into this altercation and we went over these dog food sacks in front of the plate glass windows in front of the store, my face first.
We ended up out in the parking lot and the next thing I remember is, my head was on the ground and they were yelling, shoot him. Kill him. And they had a shotgun. The assistant manager got a shotgun out of the truck, his car, and they were beating me with the butt of it. The next thing I remember was the police car pulling up and then all I remember is those little birdies. You know, in the cartoons when somebody gets hit and head, that's real, man.
They really happen. They've ever been knocked out. There's birdies. Yeah. But I ended up going to jail and I surrendered in there like I had never surrendered before. I made a deal to God that if he would give me one more chance of sobriety, then I would do everything that I could.
And I meant it at the time. I got out of there and I got sent to State Prison. I ended up getting introduced to Alcox Anonymous at CRC and down in Norco, California. And the people on H&I, they come in and they would do four-step workshops and they would do panels and they would encourage us to work our steps in there. And I'm going to tell you, I felt at times more free in prison working this program than I felt out here. I had no bills.
I had no wives. No girlfriend. No troubles. No responsibilities. I felt free in there. But I also felt the freedom of the spirit.
And I ended up leaving there and I did the things that they asked me to do. I got a sponsor. I was going to meetings every day. My very first sponsor's name is Jack Daniels. And that's no joke. His name is actually Kelly, but he goes by Jack.
And he's still sober to this day. No thanks to me. Because I ended up getting drunk again after four years. I got after that relapse. I had already gotten my tickets to the World Convention in 1995 to San Diego. I planned on getting sober, struck sober down there.
Classy, you heard, you know, as Charlie's sponsor's classy. My plan was, and I used to listen to a lot of spirit tapes, but my plan was to go to that convention in relapse and announce myself as a newcomer and have a classy strike me sober somehow. And the plan didn't work. I had, but I did end up coming back getting sober, stayed sober two more years. And it took me up to 1997. What happened in 1997 changed my life.
And I ended up trying to go to meetings. By that time I was back drinking daily as much as I could drink. I, during my usage of drugs and the type of drug I used, I contracted hepatitis C. And so the alcohol wasn't agreeing with my liver. My stomach was swollen out to here. I could only hold down so much alcohol.
And I was taking 500 biket in a month. And what happened was I was in this motel, back on Motel Drive, ten years after I left it. And I was in a motel called The Welcome Inn. It was on the third floor, Penthouse Suite. And I was praying to God for help. I wanted God to help me.
And I don't know how this guy, I met a friend in Alcoholics Anonymous. He's been a acquaintance. I met him in meetings and we'd always talk. He was a very nice gay man, gay Native American man. His name's Reyes and Nia. And what he did was he came looking for me when he heard that I'd relapsed.
And he came looking for me. I don't know how he found me. He can't, to this day, explain how he found me either. But for some reason he'd come up there and he knocked on that door. And when I opened it up, he took one look at me. And he said the same thing that girl said ten years earlier.
And he said, Pat, what happened? And I told him the truth. I said, Ray, I said, I'm in a relapse and I can't stop. And he said, come to my house, I'll help you. And that was the first time in 10 years anybody actually came looking for me. And they actually put their hand out to help me.
And so I still had a little bit of alcohol left and a few other dry goods to finish off. Because I'm a very frugal alcoholic. I told him I'd be by the next day. And I did. I showed up at his house the next day. And that man detoxed me.
And his spare room was housed for three days and three nights. And I shook and I shake and I died in his house. And I was going through DTS because I was so strung out on alcohol by that time. And I was also going through withdrawals. And on the third day of that detox, what had happened was I didn't want to live anymore. I was the most painful experience that I've ever had.
And he put a waste basket next to my bed for me to throw up in. Because I was throwing up a lot. And he would encourage me to take hot baths. And on one of these nights, the third night of that detox, it was a November night. And in Fresno we get fog. You know, it's foggy over there quite a bit.
And there was a foggy night. And he lived well in the country. And there wasn't a lot of light out there, no street lights. But there was a few lights. You know, in the distance and all I could see with these lights through this fog. And I crawled out of bed to pute.
And then I went over to the window sill. I was looking out in this cold foggy November night. And I said this prayer out loud. And I said, God, please let me die. I said, I don't want to live anymore. And life is too painful.
I don't know why he was up. If he heard me, you know, or whatever. And he got up and I didn't know it, but he was standing behind me in the doorway. And he heard me say that prayer. And I wouldn't have said it out loud because even at that time, after being around this program for 10 years, I was still too prideful to pray out loud in front of people. And he heard me say that prayer.
And I didn't know it. But all of a sudden I heard this guy burst in the merriment, you know. And he started laughing at me. And I saw nothing in that room to be funny. I was oozing, you know, self-pity from every pore. And this guy told me something that completely changed my life.
He told me after he realized that it pissed me off that he was laughing, he told me, Pat, you're not going to die. You're going to live so that you can do for somebody else what I'm doing for you. I left that man's house of freeman. And 21 years I haven't had to take a drink or a drug. And I've been able to live the kind of life that I always thought you guys deserve, not me. I went left that guy's house early on the fourth day.
And I went to my day with a morning maintenance meeting, 7am Paul Michal. And I went there and they appointed me as sponsor because I had a really bad, really had bad luck at choosing sponsors. And they appointed me as sponsor and he asked me to do a few things. And one of them he asked me to go to 90 meetings in 90 days.
And I think I probably went to 180, at least 180. I was going to two and three meetings a day probably from my first two years. And I ended up, and he asked me, he wanted me to meet him once a week to study the big book. Because he said in the big book is where you'll find the program. The meetings are fine, but you're not going to find recovery until you work the steps. And so he had me meet with him once a week to study the book.
And he asked me that if I was, once I had worked these steps, then I was willing to help other people. And I told them absolutely. So when I left that little meeting with my sponsor that morning, I said this prayer to God. I talked to God a little bit in my car when I left. And I said, please let me do this program this time completely, the way they talk about in chapter five. Completely give myself over this simple program.
And I said not for myself, but so that I may help some other mother's son that's suffering from this disease. And for the first time in my life, I think I started thinking about other people. And so what's happened is, I had about three months, this young man, about three months this young man came and asked me if I was sponsoring. And I wasn't sure yet if I was ready, you know, I'd been working the steps with my sponsor. I think I was doing the process of doing the four step. And my sponsor says absolutely.
He said, Pat, if you've got 10 days sober, you look for a guy with nine days sober and you tell him how you got day 10. And he goes, and all you got to do is stay one step ahead of him. And I'd been around the program a little bit, so I knew a little bit about it. But anyway, I started sponsoring this guy. And so I started having the meeting with him on Tuesday night. My sponsors meeting was on Monday night.
We started having it on Tuesday night. And so with my sponsor. And that meeting grew. We started having it in my apartment, my little apartment. And it grew from that one guy to about 10 guys. And eventually it came to the point that we had to rent a room.
And that meeting has grown. It's not in the schedule. It's not a really AA meeting. It's a sponsor-sponsored meeting where we go and we meet. And we might look at my sponsor. He's across the table.
And we can all hold each other accountable to what we're doing in the form of service and alcoholics and all of us. And most of us, we get into service. The guys that don't, they leave. And it's always kept about an average count of about 20 to 25 guys. That meeting's always had about 20 to 25 guys. I don't know why it stays about that now, but it does.
Whenever there's somebody who leaves, it always seems like somebody fills their seat. And so I've done that. That's what I've done to be a service. I've sponsored a lot of men. And it's been a blessing in my life. I write down their names in the back of my big book.
And I don't do that to count them or anything like that. I used to share how many men I sponsored. And I don't do that anymore because it sounds brag and doshus. But what I want you to know is that my life depends on my self-sacrifice and my service to others and how I can help others meet their needs, not my needs. The neat thing about that being an alcoholics anonymous is that's also your primary purpose. And so I've got a list of things I'd like you to do after the meeting that you can maybe help me out.
But this program, you know, gave me everything that I've ever wanted in life. But most importantly, it's gave me a God of my understanding. This is the spiritual Sunday morning speaker meeting. I had a God before I got here. And the God that I had, I was trying to run from because I heard that he wanted me to go to hell. And an alcoholics anonymous gave me the opportunity to have a God of my own understanding, which I found through you guys was loving, caring, and forgiving.
And as long as I do his work, he'll provide what I need as long as I perform his work well. And it's happened in my life. I was the first person in my family to ever graduate from college. I'm not saying that to brag. It was you guys that gave that to me. And David, we reprieve that I've got from this program.
And it's given me the ability to have relationships and develop friendships with people that I never thought that I would be friends to, you know, or friends with. The other thing that I struggle with, and I think it's common. I hear it a lot in alcoholics anonymous. You know, I struggle with relationships because I'm selfish, you know, and I've been married and divorced. I've been married four times. She's my fourth wife.
And I've been divorced three times. And I'm not here to tell you it's their fault that the marriage has failed. You know, it's probably mostly my fault. And what alcoholics anonymous has taught me to do is to be a good husband, a good father, a good family member to my brothers and sisters, and to be a friend to my friends. And to be a good co-worker. I was able to get a job.
I worked at a job that I absolutely loved. It was a, you know, I don't like working with people. I think when I first got here I wanted to be a drug counselor. And I think everybody does. Because I wanted to help people, you know. But what I found is that if I don't do this for fun and for free, it doesn't really count.
You know, I have to be of service to alcoholics anonymous because alcoholics anonymous is what gave me my life. It's not my whole life, but it's a foundation for my life. I was able to graduate. I got a great job with the County of Fresno being, you know, I was a systems analyst. And I love analyzing stuff. Even as a little kid, I used to take apart perfectly good watches just to see how they work, you know.
And so, but I got a job that I loved and I was able to retire from that job last year, you know, with the support of my family and friends and to be able to do what I love doing, which is helping people. And I've been able to spend a lot of time at my fellowship. If you're ever at Fresno, 710 North Fulton, it's one of the low, it's kind of a low bottom meeting. And the reason I love that fellowship, we moved to several times, but the building we're in now, we've been in for like the last five years. Behind that building was where I parked my car most nights. And the reason I parked my car there was because right down the alley was the methadone clinic where I got my daily dose of treatment.
And I was able to drive over to the HMU Gallies market, which is on ABN Blackstone and purchase a 99 bottle of white, 99 cent bottle of white port. And if you never drink a white port, it's also a very fine wine. And actually how I could tell is if you look at the label, it says 23. 5% alcohol by volume. And that's how I could tell fine wine. But I don't have to do that today, you know.
And I love my fellowship, I love my family, I love my wife. I love all you people. Alcoholics Anonymous is a fantastic way to live. And I hope we all get to stay sober another day under the grace of God. Thanks for letting me be a solid day. Thank you.