I
fought getting sober because I was afraid of losing my best friend, the one that wiped out all my insecurities, all my problems. My fear was that I wouldn’t be able to face life without that escape. Even after I
was in recovery—and I use that term loosely—I wasn’t willing to face my problems. When I finally recognized that things just weren’t working my way, that’s when I started the whole pro cess of learning how.
Not long after that moment, I went to a dance and I thought, “I can start drinking again or I can learn how to dance, because I’m sick of not having any fun.” I’d danced when I was drunk but after I got sober, I never danced because I was afraid of everybody laughing about how stupid I looked. So I asked a girl to dance and once we got out on the floor, I looked around to see how I was doing. I found out nobody was looking at me. Nobody cared how I danced. I was not the center of the universe. I started laughing because I realized how arrogant I’d been, how much I’d missed out on because I was so worried about how I’d look dancing. I remember that vividly.
When I was eighteen, I bought a brand-new 1969 Mustang. I bought it on a Saturday afternoon and two weeks later to the hour, at five o’clock in the afternoon, I totaled it. I was with a friend, both of us drunk, and I was driving 115 miles an hour when I tried to take a 25-mile- an-hour curve. Flipped over, bounced on both sides, ended up 180 feet away—just a total mess. The buddy who was with me ended up in the hospital, but I was just beaten up a little bit.
The cop on the scene comes to the hospital and tells me what he can get me for—drunk driving, minor in possession, all these things. Then he said, “But I think you’ve learned your lesson. You know you were driving too fast. You know you’ve got to stop your drinking.” I told him, “I’ll never do this again.”
Two weeks after that, I woke up drunk, in my mother’s car, sliding sideways down the hill on the wrong side of the road.
By the time I was nineteen, I was in the National Guard Reserve. This was the height of Vietnam and the whole reason I was in the Reserve was to avoid the draft, avoid being sent to Vietnam. I went to Fort Leonard Wood for basic training, and after that I manipulated my way into a five-day pass to go to Arizona, where my parents were vacationing. When I got to Phoenix, I decided to extend my five-day pass by two days, so by the time I got on the plane back, I was already AWOL. I got drunk as a skunk on the plane and when we landed in Kansas City, I decided to throw a party for myself and whoever was in the airport lounge.
I remember leaving the airport to catch a cab to the bus depot so I can get to Fort Leonard Wood, and then I wake up in a jail cell. After about half an hour, a guy with “MP” on his helmet walks by and I ask him where I am. He says, “Leonard Wood Penitentiary.” I didn’t know how I ended up there. It could be because I was AWOL, or it could be because I’d knocked off the cabbie. I was sitting in this cell thinking, “Drinking has gotten me into trouble.” There’s a Southern Baptist kid from Alabama in the cell next to me, and he and I got into Bible study in a serious way. I was praying like a son of a gun for a way out of this mess. I was afraid they were going to activate me and ship me to Vietnam. I was there three days before I found out what happened. I’d passed out in the cab so the cabdriver took me to the police station. The police searched me and found my military stuff and called Fort Leonard Wood. The MPs came and picked me up and took me to the base.
A few weeks later, I had my twentieth birthday and my buddies said, “We’ll take you out for your birthday on one condition, that you don’t drink.” I said, “That’s fine.” We’re at the pizza joint and I said, “A couple of beers with a pizza, that isn’t going to hurt, right?” And they said, “No, a couple of beers is fine.” So I drank a couple of beers. Then I got up to go to the men’s room and I didn’t come back. I went over to the other side of the bar where they couldn’t see me, and I started drinking shots and hanging around with whoever was sitting at the bar. I ended up back at Fort Leonard Wood, in jail for being drunk and disorderly. The next morning, I met with the company commander and he said, “You can’t handle your liquor, can you, son?” And I said, “No.”
Did that stop me drinking? No.
I made it back home, without being sent to Vietnam, and I continued drinking and drugging on a daily basis, not sober a single day. I was working for my dad’s plumbing and heating business, and one particular Thursday morning I left for work and I got as far as this little saloon. I drank all day and all night. Friday morning I headed out for work and I stopped at the same bar. I sent somebody in to get my paycheck.
Fast-forward to Sunday night. I started off at this big party on Sunday afternoon, about four or five buddies with me, and by Sunday night they were gone. I was sitting at a bar next to these close personal friends I’d met that night. I went to buy them a round and I had only ten bucks left in my wallet. I hadn’t paid for groceries, I hadn’t made my car payment, I hadn’t paid rent, and my paycheck’s all gone.
I came to the conclusion that I didn’t get paid enough. I started bitching to these good friends of mine about the fact that my old man didn’t recognize what a great plumbing-heating-insulation specialist I was, and how I should be running the company. I go on and on and on, bitching about my old man. They said, “Don’t tell us, talk to the boss. Call your old man.” So that’s what I did. I walked over to the payphone and called him and told him to stick this job up his ass. He said, “Well, suit yourself,” and hung up. I walked back to the bar and these good friends were gone.
I’m sitting there by myself with no money, no place to go, no job. I remembered being in jail at Fort Leonard Wood. I remembered my company commander who said, “You can’t handle your liquor,” the cop that said, “You can’t drink and drive, you can’t handle it.” Those thoughts were constantly running through my brain.
I ended up walking out of there and going to my dad’s sponsor’s house. I pounded on his door and he opened it up and we sat and talked. He said, “Sleep it off and come and see me in the afternoon.” Next afternoon, he had a meeting set up with me and my dad and him. They say, “We think you need to take treatment.” I said, “Well, I could go watch the meetings.” They said, “You need to get into treatment.” I said, “I’ll go to meetings.” They said, “No, you need to go into treatment.”
I went in on a twenty-one-day program, and I completed it in seven weeks. Fought it throughout, did everything I could to rewrite the program. Fought it for two years. Did not want to be a member of this community. Did not like the people, did not like the concept of being sober the rest of my life. But I didn’t drink and I didn’t drug. I went to lots of meetings and I tried to figure a way around the program.
A little over two years after I completed treatment, I walked into my parents’ home, and my sister and a couple of my brothers were there. I got into an argument with one of my brothers and I punched him. He ran out of the house, got onto his bicycle, took off. That’s when my sister said, “You used to be a drunken son of a bitch and now you’re just a son of a bitch.”
That was like a slap in the face. I knew she was right. I’m supposedly in this program of recovery, and I was the same angry, unhappy, depressed individual I had been when I was drinking and drugging.
That night, I spent a couple of hours chasing down my brother. When I finally did catch him, I told him I needed to talk to him, and he said, “The only thing I have to say to you is what a prick you are.” I said, “Okay. I’m willing to listen to whatever you say.” He sat down and for about two hours he told me what he thought of me. I sat and listened for the first time in my life. I finally listened.
Willingness . . . in a word, that’s it. I became willing to look at alternative ways of dealing with my addiction and dealing with myself. I became willing to look at this program, willing to follow it. I had been in it but I hadn’t been willing to participate. I hadn’t been willing to be a part of it, to live it. The only thing I was willing to do was change it to my liking.
I start my day thinking about the twenty-four hours ahead. I watch for selfishness, dishonesty, a self- seeking mood. On a daily basis, as long as I’m practicing my program, my recovery, it takes me back to that moment because I don’t ever want to let go. I don’t ever want to end up there again.
Denny Seiwell
When Denny was five years old, his dad put him behind a set of drums. From that minute, Denny knew exactly what he was supposed to do with his life. He’s been a professional drummer since he was barely a teenager, and he’s played with some of the best and the best- known acts in the world: Paul McCartney, Joe Cocker, The Who, Astrud Gilberto, Deniece Williams, and too many others to list. He’s still in demand for studio and film score work, and he’s a beloved teacher to aspiring musicians and recovering addicts alike. I heard him speak at a recovery meeting and was taken with the role resentment played in his addiction. Resentment is such a poisonous emotion, one of the major stumbling blocks to recovery. The irony is, recovery is the best way to get rid of resentment—just let it go.
M
as Que Nada” is a Brazilian song that’s intricate, free, moving, rhythmic, and just happy. It makes you feel good when you hear it. And to this day, I play in jazz clubs and when somebody knows that song and plays it, my heart sings. It’s the deal. And that’s my recovery.
I had one big problem in life, and I had no way of dealing with that problem other than pouring alcohol on it. The more alcohol I poured on it, the more the problem grew, and then I had more problems. Pretty soon it just fed into every area of my life. A typical day: I’d roll a joint in the morning, get high, get a burrito from Poquito Mas, have some beers in the morning, and at noon I’d start drinking Stolis. I just didn’t want to feel what I was feeling. What I was feeling was resentment, because there was this big piece of work that I did years ago that I didn’t get paid for, and I couldn’t live with that. It should have taken care of my wife and me financially for the rest of our lives, and it just didn’t happen that way. The only way I knew how to deal with that was to slam booze. Those days were just really horrible.
I lived in a nice but small one-bedroom apartment near Universal Studios. It was close enough to a bar that I could drive home one-eyed, which I did most of the time. My life was just sad. My wife was working, and all I could do was drink. I did get some calls to play music. I used to work for a buddy of mine up in the hills, doing TV commercials. He’d call me, and a couple of times a week I’d go up and record a commercial. Before they were done with me, I’d leave. I could not wait to get back to that bar. That was the only thing that gave me any solace. They knew where I was. They’d call the bar and they’d say, “Is Denny there?”
“Yeah. He just walked in.”
“Well, tell him to get back here. We’re not done with him yet.” That was what my life was like. I was just medicating myself to the extreme.
Alcohol really had me by the short hairs. I tried acupuncture. I tried hypnosis. I tried everything that I could try. My wife is French, I lived in France, I drank like a gentleman for a couple of years. But when this problem hit me, it took away all of the pleasure that alcohol afforded me. The only way I could live my life was to just overdo everything, drugs, alcohol, anything and everything. And I was just miserable.
One day, I’m playing golf at Lakeside, I’m having a nice day, and all of a sudden my chest started hurting and the pressure wouldn’t let up. I finished the round and then went into the clubhouse with the guys. I had a beer and the pressure went away. But then the next day I got up to move some drums around and go to work, and the chest pains came back. I saw my doctor, and he put me in the hospital. They did an emergency angioplasty on me. I died on the table that day. I was awake but really drugged up on the anesthesia, and I heard the nurse say, “He’s going, he’s going— he’s gone.”
The doctors never told me how long I was gone, but they paddled me back and they fixed me. That was probably one of the first moments of clarity that I had, because I realized that this was brought on by my drinking and my drug use. But on the way home from the hospital, I drank again.
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The docs told me that a glass of white wine was good for circulation. So for the next five years, I drank like that. One toke off the joint, no cocaine, and one glass of white wine a day—that was my program.
The thing is, it wasn’t scary when I died. I don’t like to talk about it much because it was so beautiful. I realize there are a lot of people out there who want to take their lives, and I don’t believe it’s the same for everybody. But when I died, it just got really beautiful. I now know there’s life after life. It got all warm and fuzzy and really, really nice. I think that was the day that I got my first little dose of spirituality.
The moment the resentment lifted . . . you know when that was? There’s an old friend who allowed me to talk about my resentment and then he just said, “This is no longer yours. I want you to give this to your idea of a higher power. Let him deal with it, because if you touch it, you’re going to screw it up. Every time you think about how you’re going to deal with this, bless it and dismiss it and keep your hands off of it. Let the big guy take care of it for a while and see what happens.” It took a little time, but when I learned how to do that, a miraculous thought came to me. I thought, “It’s gone.” And it was. That resentment was just gone.
Of course, it comes back now and then, but it’s not the same. It doesn’t take over like it did before. I know that I’m done with it because I’m just so happy to get back to the music and my life. That resentment kept me from enjoying my work as a drummer for quite a while. I’d gone so far off the track. That was the beauty of it, just getting back to what I started out to be. When I was nine years old, I knew I was destined to be a drummer. Forget school, I’m going to be a drummer. Get out of my way, here I come. That was my mind-set. It wasn’t ego. It was just . . . I had the gift, and I knew it.
That was the easy part. Then at some point I realized I was off track. It’s like taking a boat to Catalina, and you’re three degrees off course, and all of a sudden you turn up in Brazil. That’s what happened with me. Being able to get back on course and get my life back on track again was of the utmost importance.
God is everything and everywhere. I don’t just have a picture of God. I talk to God anytime I want. He is in me; not out there somewhere amorphously in the sky. He’s in everything I see.
Michael Glasser
Some people are born entrepreneurs, and Michael is one of those people. Early in his life, his business plan involved drugs and money laundering, but since then he’s become a legitimate—and very successful—businessman, as one of the founders of the pop u lar jeans company 7 For All Mankind. Michael’s also one of my neighbors and a good friend. I’m grateful that he’s agreed to share his story here, since his moment is one of the most dramatic I’ve ever heard.
T
he week before I got sober, I was living in a friend’s apartment in North Hollywood. I weighed 240 pounds, I was unbathed and unshaved, and I had not brushed my teeth in six weeks. My life
consisted of going to the market every morning and buying a quart bottle of Popov vodka and going back to my friend’s apartment and taking the cold empty bottle of Stolichnaya out of the freezer and putting the Popov vodka into it, because I wanted to make sure that if somebody did come in they would think I had money. But no one ever came over. It was a lonely existence. My friend had a gun collection and I used to always tell him, “If I have enough balls, I am going to kill myself to get out of this misery.” He kind of believed me.
One day he got some bootleg pills—I do not know what they were to this day—and he left them around. That next day, I get my normal Popov vodka and start taking those pills. I took twe
nty-five of whatever they were. When my roommate called, no one answered, and he called 911. The paramedics came over and found me dead.
Before they shocked me back, I was in the tunnel. I was halfway down to that white light. I remember the voice, it was so calming and so nice. It was seductive, but I remember saying, “No, I don’t want to go.” I didn’t want to go wherever that voice was taking me, which was dead. So I made a conscious decision not to go.
I woke up in the ICU after a couple of days with all kinds of tubes in me, and I tried to figure out what had happened. I put some things together and then the thought came into my head, “There’s something wrong with me and I need help.” That was the very first time in my life that I looked at myself and not anybody else, that I recognized that there was something really wrong with me. So there was a significant change in my psyche.
I think I hit such an emotional rock bottom that, for the first time, I was egoless. Any agenda that I had was done. I had destroyed everything, and all that was left was the shell. And I had to own it for the first time.
From that moment on, I have been sober. I’ll never forget that moment. I know I’m a very lucky guy.
I was twenty- seven days sober and I’d just come back from a recovery meeting and I was standing at my brother’s house. There was a knock on the door, and FBI and DEA agents came in to arrest me for dealing and money laundering. I was in Terminal Island for two days. It was just before July Fourth, and they were about to shut down for the long weekend. I was able to make one phone call. I called my dad and he said, “The only thing that would prevent you from getting out is if you have any other warrants.” Well, I had warrants because I never paid parking tickets and I never paid moving violations. But I got out. The guy at Terminal said, “The goddamn computer is down today so we’re just going to let you out.”
Moments of Clarity Page 24