My trouble started back when I was fourteen or fifteen. My childhood before that was okay. I didn't have a lot of things other kids had, but I was a pretty happy kid I guess, even though my father was alcoholic. My mother passed away when I was two. There were nine children in our family altogether, but me and my younger brother were the only two by my father and we were separated from the rest of the family. My aunt, who's my father's sister, felt that we would be better off with her and my father, so that's where we lived. We moved out--they took us from the rest of the kids.

My aunts and uncles on my mother's side of the family were drug dealers, pimps and stuff like that. My aunt on my mother's side, all she did was sell drugs. When I was young, before I got into drugs, I didn't fit in when I went over to her house. That kind of made me feel stupid because if I didn't fit in with my family, who did I fit in with? It was kind of crazy. I think my sisters and brothers were influenced a lot by that life style. I can see that today. My aunt didn't like me and my little brother to be around that. To this day she thinks that they are the reason why me and my little brother use drugs. I told her "it's not their fault. Nobody put a pistol to my head and made me do anything. I did it by choice."

When we were very little, me and my younger brother, Reggie, used to fight a lot, and I mean we used to fight a lot. He didn't like what I was doing, I guess he just didn't like me because my father kind of favored me a little bit. One day he threw a skillet of grease on the floor and then told my father I did it. I got a whipping for that.

Later, Reggie started running with a different crowd than I was and he got into some trouble with the law. They sent him to juvenile. When he came out he had been lifting weights and he had gotten a lot bigger than he was. He socked me up pretty good there one day. As a matter of fact there are still hard feelings today--we don't lay hands on each other anymore but in the past he has really expressed his anger toward me with his fists.

I remember that from a very young age, even before I got baptized, I never liked violence and I never liked guns, and I hated bullies. That's the only thing there was in our neighborhood where we lived. I wouldn't even go outside and play. I'd just stay in the house and listen to music. My dad used to think I was weird, but I just didn't like going and playing with the other kids. I was scared because a lot of them were getting killed and stuff like that.

I never was able to see eye-to-eye with my father. His alcoholism made him dysfunctional. He tried to raise me and my little brother by himself. We were on welfare--it was rough. I wasn't able to do a lot of things I really wanted to do with him, like go fishing or stuff like that. He used to come home drunk sometimes and holler at me and my little brother. He'd get me out of bed, twist my arm, and tell me to bring him some water. Those kind of things stuck in my mind. It was ugly to me--that whole thing. But I did love my father.

I had seen people pick on my father when he was drinking. My father'd get so drunk he'd let people take advantage of him--take his money and stuff like that. It really bothered me. Regardless of what he did I really loved my father and I didn't want anything bad to happen to him--he was always on my mind. After school I'd go to the park or something like that, but if he was drinking I'd be worried--about where he was at or what he was doing. In those very rough neighborhoods where we were living it was pretty bad, people getting robbed, and he'd be drunk and out there by himself. I couldn't stay with him all the time to make sure no one was bothering him. It used to worry me when we'd be waiting for him to come home and I'd be wondering whether he was going to make it or not. That made me pray a lot for him, I just prayed that no one would come and say that somebody had shot my father or stabbed him or robbed him or something like that. Especially I saw a lot of young people taking advantage of older people. I dreaded that. Actually, he was all I had right then. I used to pray that he would not die a violent death. I just thank God that he got through it.

I never did understand until I first was introduced to AA myself what he was going through. I don't know what my mother's death did to him, if it did anything, but he used to always tell me that I would never be the man that he was. I used to say to myself "all you do is drink a lot" but I never told him that, I just said it to myself. Turns out I wound up the same because I was addicted myself.

When I was a kid, me and my younger brother lived with our father and grandmother, and we had a niece named Lynne. Lynne is my oldest sister's daughter--she brought her over for us to baby sit, and we wound up fighting. Two little boys beating up on one little girl--that wasn't very nice. When my sister came to pick her up she had a black eye and a swollen lip. This was long before I even started using drugs, but in the book it tells me that I have to go back to everything, and that's something I've felt bad about for a long time.

When I was fourteen I started hanging with a pretty hip group. They used to go to parties and everything, and I started hanging out with them and I was introduced to wine. I used to drink a little wine and it gave me courage because I was afraid to talk to girls. A lot of times I was ashamed because other kids lived in houses and stuff like that. We lived in a house but it was way in the back on a dirt road and I thought it was kind of ugly. The house itself wasn't a very nice looking house. It was in the back of some apartments. We did have a side yard and a back yard but the house itself was really sitting at the end of a driveway. The people who lived in these apartments, which were on the side of it, their company would come and block the entrance with their cars. You couldn't even see the house, you had to walk to the back to get in.

Just before I started using, when I was about fourteen, I had a cousin named Linda. She was much older than I was. She lived in Orange County. She came down and she stayed with us for about three nights. She was the first girl that I ever had sex with. That happened three nights in a row, and we had sex a few times after that as well. I never told anybody about it, but for some strange reason or another I have felt in my later years that her mother had found out, because my father said something to me about it, and that really bothered me. Not to say that I was better, but it wasn't my idea for it to happen in the first place. But when it was offered I accepted, so I'm just as guilty as the other party. I don't see her anymore. I don't know where she is--probably living with her mother. This put me in a bad relationship with her mother, my mother's sister. I never did have the courage to tell her what really happened. I can look in her eyes and tell there is something lacking between us in our relationship. I really never even went around my Aunt Marie that much, and to this day I hardly ever see her. But maybe, hopefully, in my recovery I'll find the courage to tell her what really happened. Linda, she's just an alcoholic, been an alcoholic ever since I've known her. Maybe I can find the courage to tell her that I'm sorry it happened, it wasn't right. But that is down the road, I guess--because I haven't seen her.

I was pretty good in school. I went through elementary school with a breeze. And then I got to junior high school and I was introduced to alcohol. When I was introduced to alcohol it gave me something that I was looking for, and that was a shield. I could drink alcohol and forget about everything. By not feeling like a whole person I hid a lot of shame. In my addiction I did a lot of things that I wasn't very proud of, and doing those things kept me in my addiction--I didn't have the courage to face my problems.

I made it through junior high school, but my drinking progressed, and not only did it progress, I moved on to something else. I started taking pills. This friend I met introduced me to pills. I started taking then and I was in pretty deep. It didn't take very long till I didn't have to look for my friends to get high, I'd just get money and get high myself. And this was going on when I was at an early age. One of the friends I was hanging around with was in a car accident and got his leg cut off--he was loaded on pills.

I met this girl named Yvonne, she was a church-going girl, she was very nice. I used to go to church her. We didn't go too much to church when I was at home. During my upbringing we didn't go to church every Sunday or anything like that. But it was nice and I was looking for a change anyway, so I used to go to church with Yvonne and her folks every weekend. And I got baptized. The pastor at the church wanted me to be in the choir and everything. And I was all for that because I wanted to be wherever Yvonne was. Whenever we had an engagement or something big like that, where the choir had to perform, I wouldn't show up. I guess it had to do with the way I was living--I was too busy trying to hide things. I didn't feel that I fit in with the people at the church because they were living life on life's terms. Those were honest citizens. They used to go to work every day and all that stuff. Where I come from it just didn't fit. So I stopped going and Yvonne moved away.

That same year we moved to Orange County. My brother got into trouble with a group of people in our old neighborhood who had guns and my father moved quickly to a new neighborhood to get us, and especially Reggie, away from there. When I left L.A. I was going to Ralph J. Bunche. It was an all Black school. When we moved to Orange County I was all suddenly going to a school that had a few Latinos, a few Blacks and the rest were White. But it was truly an excellent school.

It was a culture shock, going to a whole different part of town with different people -- it was a shock to me. I got along with everybody, but I still didn't feel part of it. I wasn't gang-banging or anything like that, but because I came from a gang-related area I guess they probably thought that I was. A lot of times it got me in trouble because people would say things to me and I'd get all pissed-off. A lot of the white kids wouldn't even talk to me.

The class work was more advanced at Santa Ana Valley than it was in L.A. I guess I could have fitted in, I truly could have, had I been willing. But at that time I was drinking and using. Had I set that aside and really strived to fit in, I'm quite sure I could have. It wasn't that I didn't want to--but I was too much into my addiction. Being addicted I alienated myself. I started hanging around with the deadbeats, the ones who weren't doing anything, hanging around at the park. I guess I was bottled up in my own little world. I'm quite sure people wanted me to make it there but I guess I really wasn't ready.

My grades started dropping so they sent me to a continuation school. The continuation school was okay, I got along with everybody there. At the continuation school they make you go to school half a day and they put you in on-the-job-training the other half of the day. They had me at the Orange County purchasing department. I got along pretty good with the people there and they all liked me. So when I graduated I had a job at the Orange County purchasing department. That was real good coming right out of graduation and having a job with the county.

I was still using and it was in my way. The more money I made the more partying I did. I had run into some friends from L.A. that had moved to Orange County. We'd get together on the weekends and we'd just drink and smoke weed, because there weren't many pills out there, we'd drink a lot, I mean a lot. I started drinking hard liquor--JB, rum, anything we could get our hands on. One day I was driving one of the county cars and I had a wreck. I had been drinking, too. They didn't get mad, though, they sent me home for a couple of days. But I was so embarrassed I didn't even feel like going back. So they sent someone to the house to get me. I went back to work, but I eventually wound up losing the job. I could see that they had really went out of their way for me but I just wasn't ready. I was too into my addiction.

My whole life centered around getting loaded, one way or the other. If people weren't getting loaded they weren't cool. I guess that's the insanity of it. If you don't cross this line then you're not in the clique. I crossed that imaginary line a long time ago in my addiction, because it stopped being a recreational thing and it started being a necessity.

For a while after I graduated from high school and got a job I stayed together with my older sisters and brothers. I moved out of the house I shared with my father and my little brother. We hadn't stayed together at all but we were sisters and brothers, and we tried to make it work. They were into their drugs and they never would share any of their drugs with me, but I knew they were doing them and I had my own little problem. I was an alcoholic then. I was real deep into my alcoholism and I was smoking weed. I got the impression that they didn't really too much like me to be around when they were getting high because they felt I was going to ask them something, or I would do something stupid to make them look bad, because I was a fool, believe me. I used to do some real crazy things in my drinking. That's another relationship that I really need to work on because I see my sisters going through their addiction today. One of my sisters turned Jehovah Witness, I haven't seen her in at least fifteen years.

I used to get high by myself and they say that's bad. When I left work I'd go by the store and get myself a pint of rum and a coke and I would drink that just so I could feel okay. I was living with my sisters and my cousin and they didn't think that was cool, which I don't think it was either. But everyone else was getting high and this was my thing, alcohol was my thing. They used to smoke their weed and all this other stuff, but we didn't get high together a lot, because when we did I used to act the fool.

When we lived in Orange County my sisters said, "you get along good with people," because I felt very comfortable with anybody, even around white people. I worked at Buffums in the Laguna Hills Mall and I think I was the only Black who worked there. I got along real good with the people. A lot of them would invite me to their house and stuff like that. It was nice. I guess I probably could have done a lot had I not been drinking. I can't say I haven't had opportunities. I've always liked to read. I don't think there's a lot of people in my family that like to read except me. I'd pick up a book in a minute.

I was drinking rum. I brought a car and I only had that car for two weeks before I tore it up. I was a blackout drinker. They told me I had driven to L.A. to see my aunt. I had already drunk a whole pint of rum, and I brought another one and put it in my glove compartment. There was a girl in the car with me, her and her two kids and my cousin. Me and my cousin used to get high all the time. They told me that I went around a car at a stop sign and that I blew out a side of the Cadillac. After all that, with this lady in the car with me and her kids, the only thing that I could think about was trying to get my drink out of the glove compartment. That is the insanity part of it. My thinking told me that that's what I needed to do--to get my drink out of the glove compartment so I could settle my nerves. Thank God nobody was hurt. I had to get my car towed.

I was running away from responsibility--that was my main impulse, because I never went to see about that car. To this day I don't know what happened to it. They took it to the impound yard and that's where it stayed. I think the lady tried to sue me. I never answered any of her letters. I think her lawyer sent me a letter--I never answered it.

Fear has been one of my main trouble points. I never was able to face my responsibility. I was always, I thought, a pretty nice person. I'm not stupid, but I never was responsible. I'd make it to work, but when my drinking got to be too much I stopped going. I just wouldn't face my responsibility. My sister kicked me out of the house because I wasn't able to keep up my end of the rent.

After staying in Orange County for six or seven years I moved back to L.A. in '78 and I started living with my aunt. I got a job with the CETA program, working at Martin Luther King Hospital for two years as a radiology technician. I started smoking PCP while I was there. It wasn't good at all. I wound up being in the emergency room at the same hospital where I working, while I was supposed to be on my way to work. That was very embarrassing. They didn't say a lot about it. The guy who was the head of the department where I worked at, his name was Dr. Williams, he pulled me over and he talked to me. He said, "you know what, you want to do a little something extra on the weekends? I want you to come help me at my house." So I used to go over to his house. He was building a deck in his back yard and I helped him build it. He used to give me forty dollars a day for doing that. He thought that he was keeping me out of trouble, which he was, but I'd use the money to get drugs. That was the bottom line. After the two years was up they let me go because my performance wasn't really what they were looking for.

My aunt has always stuck by me and my little brother. She tried to raise us the best as she could. In my addiction I did some things to her that I really wasn't too proud of. Out of all the people in my life I would say my aunt has been the closest to me. She recognized I had a problem. She was the first one to tell me, "look, you need some help. Why don't you go to a program or something?" I stole a VCR from her, I never stole any money from her but I did steal a VCR from her, and she wasn't really too happy about that. She never called the police on me, although I believe that she was more or less afraid of me because of what I was doing. She didn't know how far I would go. When she saw that I had stole from her she wouldn't let me stay at her house, but she never did stop talking to me. We always talked, we always had communications. Right now, today, I think that one of the things I really enjoy the most is talking to her, and I let her know today where I am at in my recovery. Actually she's the only one that I've got that honestly understands what I went through--what I'm going through--me being an addict and all. She always told me "you'll get it together." I talk to her as much as I can. She's really in my corner.

My aunt knew what was going on, she said, "look, you know what? You need some help." That's when I was first introduced to the work of AA, in 1980. I took her advice, I went to a program. I stayed in that program ninety days and when I got out of the program I went to sober living. I stayed in sober living for about ninety days. I stayed sober for six months. It felt good. I was taking care of my own business and everything without the use of alcohol or drugs. It really felt good. But they say you have to stop hanging around your old friends. For me this was pretty difficult because the people I used to get high with, well a lot of them were my family members--cousins and sisters and brothers. My cousins started hanging around and the next thing I knew I was getting loaded again.

I had to move out of the sober living home. My aunt really didn't want me to stay with her because she knew what I was doing then. So I started hanging around back and forth from my aunt's house to my cousins' house. They were smoking crack then and I started smoking crack. I don't know how I did it but I managed to get a job, a maintenance job. My aunt let me back in but it didn't last very long. Every time my cousins got paid, we'd spend our money on crack. It was miserable. I didn't like it, I didn't like what I was doing but I couldn't stop. I tried another program. I've been to four programs so far. Out of all the programs that I go to I always get something out of them. That's good, and it's finally sticking.

Needless to say, the second program didn't keep me sober. I never followed the instructions, I never read the book. I never applied the twelve-steps of AA to my life. I guess I just really wasn't ready for them anyway. So I continued to use and it got a little bad at my aunt's house. I eventually wound up moving to downtown L.A. This had to be around '83. I stayed downtown in L.A. a good four years. I wasn't using crack then, I was drinking. I was drinking a lot of wine, I guess I had turned into a wino. I eventually moved back, I started staying with my cousins.

I continued a very miserable existence until around 1988, when I went to the penitentiary for a robbery that I knew nothing about. A woman definitively identified me from police photographs as the person who robbed her. A couple of years earlier I had taken some change from a drunk and the police had photographs of me as a strong-arm robber. The lady said I pulled a gun on her, robbed her at gunpoint and hand-cuffed her to an elevator. The police twisted everything I said against me. My aunt and girlfriend vouched for me but the lady I.D.'d me in court. She was white, from Olancha, California, and she was staying at the Holiday Inn downtown. The man who robbed her impersonated a security guard. After he gained her confidence he offered to help her take her luggage to her room. When he was in the elevator with her he took out his gun and robbed her. She was with him about half an hour and had a chance to get a good look at him. When I was in jail I racked my brains trying to figure out why she identified me, because I'd never laid eyes on her before. I think maybe it had something to do with insurance.

I've never had anything to do with guns. I've always been afraid of them. I fought the case for eleven months and nineteen days. My father died while I was in jail. The only person who believed I was innocent was the public defender. She was a fighter. I also got the impression the prosecutor didn't think I was guilty, but he was just doing his job. We had a jury trial and there was a hung jury. Then we made the deal to give me probation. The judge told me, she didn't tell me directly but I heard her say, that if I got arrested for anything else they'd give me the seven years.

My father went into the hospital while I was in jail and I wasn't able to be there with him. He died and I had to go to the funeral in handcuffs, but I was too ashamed to stay for the service. I went to the funeral before everybody got there and I viewed the body and then the officers took me back to the jail. I got along okay with my father when he was sober, but we had drifted apart over the years. I wanted to make things up with him while he was still alive but I didn't get a chance to.

I got out and I went back to living with my girlfriend, I had a girl friend named Karen. Then my sister that lived in the valley, she came and got me. She was trying to help me, she said "Well, come on out to the valley and I'll help you get a job and everything." She didn't want to see me go back to jail. She knew I was using. So I went out there and I did something that I really never, ever talk about. The first night I was there she was sleeping and I ran into someone who gave me a hit and that set me off. I stole her VCR and her stereo. I went and sold it and I brought some crack because I wanted to use. I hate to say it but that's where this disease took me. I stayed away from her house for two days. I was only right around the corner staying in a field. It was summer and I was just wearing torn-off old jeans, some rubber thongs on my feet and an old tee shirt, camping out and smoking crack with those people.

I think one of her friends saw me. My sister called the police and took them over to where I was staying. When she saw me she came over and pounded me on the chest with her fists and said "how could you do that? You stole my VCR and stereo and left the door standing open in the middle of the night with me and the children asleep in the house. How could you do a thing like that to us? If your father knew what you were doing he would turn over in his grave." That really hurt me, what she said about my father. I was very ashamed of myself. The police took me to jail and when I went to court the judge gave me the seven years. So I did about forty-four months altogether.

When I got out of the pen in '91 they sent me to a half-way house. I had really made a vow to myself while I was in prison that I wouldn't use any more. Little good did it do. While I was in the half-way house I went to a construction school and I became a carpenter's apprentice. I started using again because people in the half-way house were selling it and I was getting paid every week. I started using again before I even got out of the half-way house.

When I left the half-way house I said to myself, "Well, I have a job and I'm making money." My auntie, being the lady she is, knew that I needed help. She asked me to stay at her house while I worked, she knew I had just got a job. But I told her "no" and moved back to downtown L.A., and got me a room. I was working in the Gas Company tower. I had a job installing cabinets and office partitions in the tower while they were building it. That job lasted three months, I couldn't hold it. I've learnt that over the years. I've never been able to hold a job while I was using, and there's always been something. If it wasn't alcohol it was pills, or it was crack, or it was PCP. It's always been something.

It got so bad I started leaving work at lunch time and I'd run down the street, because it wasn't very far from the Skid Row area where I got my crack, and I'd get me some crack and come back to work. One day I wound up not even going back to the job, instead, I was doing what I do best, getting high. I lost that job.

I was staying at the St. George Hotel right there on Third and Main. From my room I could look out the window and see the people living in the alley behind the Union Rescue Mission. I thought that was pretty disgusting because up until that point I hadn't stayed in the street but I seen these people camping out in tents and cardboard boxes and I said "damn, this is pretty deep down up in here." I even saw a pregnant girl down there. But I used to go down there and get my crack and go up to my room and smoke it. Mind you, I'd lost my job by now. I wasn't able to keep up my rent. I tried welfare. It lasted for a little while but me being the irresponsible person that I was I didn't keep that going very long.

So I moved into the Midnight Mission. They have a room-and-board program for people. You just do a little work and you get to stay all night. They fed you pretty good at the Midnight. I worked in the kitchen and I used to get sandwiches, ham and egg or any kind of sandwich, which you weren't allowed to take out of the mission. I'd put them in my pocket, and after the last meal was served I'd leave around six o'clock and I'd walk down Wall Street and sell them. I turned the corner on Fourth and Wall and there were a lot of guys that used to hang out between Fourth and Fifth on Wall--I knew they weren't leaving where they were at, they weren't going to any missions to get food. If you're living out of missions, sleeping on streets, that's an all-day thing--standing in lines to get beds, meals, showers, clothes, and everything. So I used to fix them sandwiches, pastries and stuff like that and take it over there and sell it to them. I'd make my money like that, which wasn't very much. Other times I'd make it all the way over to between Sixth and Seventh on Wall and sell the sandwiches there.

I was smoking crack at that time. It was around Christmas and they were out there washing windows and carrying peoples' luggage and I said, "well damn, what are they doing?" I was wondering, were they making any money? I tried it myself and somebody tipped me a ten dollar bill and I was hooked. With my little hustle, selling sandwiches, I would be lucky if I came up with four dollars a day. When I got a ten dollar tip, and I said " man, that is pretty good."

I got discharged from the Midnight. It wasn't a spiritual program nor was it a rehabilitation program. It was just a room-and-board. If you come and do your job like you supposed to and are there on time they didn't mind what you do. But I stayed out very late every night, sometimes all night. They'd write this down every night, every time people'd come in and out. The least little thing that went wrong--I think I was late for work one day--and then they told me that was it. I guess they looked at my track record and they said "well, he's not doing very good anyway, he's in and out all night"--so they let me go.

Then I started hanging around on Wall Street. It was really a last resort. I met a friend of mine named Andre and he and I stayed together. I washed windows, I fit in with the crew. When I first saw them I didn't really think they were all that hot; it was not something that I wanted to do. But out of all of the people I'd seen downtown they were the ones who were doing the most hustling. That was money, and I was ready to smoke me some crack so I needed some money. To me it sounded pretty good because I wasn't stealing anything from anybody and I wasn't hurting anybody, and I still had my money for my crack. I stayed downtown and I lived outside, homeless. I noticed there was a lot of little camps around there, so I just fell right on into it. I didn't call home for at least a couple of years. When I finally called my auntie they were a little mad at me because I hadn't called. They said, "Why don't you at least call or something and let us know you're still alive?"

When I was camping-out downtown a friend told me I had a powerful drive to let myself go, to get away from a lot of pain underneath. She said she thought I was hiding out behind a lot of fear that had to do with my mother dying when I was two and a lot of help I didn't get when I was growing up.

My existence went on and my friend, Andre, told me about a club he used to go to at night. There were six or seven people that used to hustle over on Wall Street and at six o'clock or seven o'clock when the bus station closed everything was over with and you just had to get your boxes and go to sleep, or some people would try to find burglaries to do. I wasn't really ready to go to sleep and I didn't want to do burglaries. So Andre showed me where the club, a taxi-dancing place, was and we used to go over there every night, washing windows and keeping an eye on people's cars, and making money to get crack. That got to be the thing to do for me. I wound up over there every night for the better part of four or five years. I got to know a lot of people that were working in the bank building across the street. People tried to help me get on my feet and everything, but I wasn't ready, I really wasn't ready. I'd make enough money to smoke me some crack all night. Then I'd take my ass over to Wall Street, lay down on the street, and wake up every morning broke. It was okay for a while but then everything seemed to be a fool's paradise downtown.

To this day I can look at some of the things that I used to do and some of the places that I have went into and I can't figure out to save my life how I did it. I was having fun, that's what I thought. I didn't have any responsibilities, I didn't have to go here or be there, all I had to do was just smoke crack, do windows, hustle money, and it was cool. Everybody there was sleeping on the street so I slept on the street too. It lasted for years. It seemed to me as though it lasted for a long, long time.

It took something more for me to see for myself what I had to do. I knew I was doing bad, but it just really didn't matter to me then. I had a pretty close friend of mine, named Nancy, and she O.D.'ed. That kind of shocked me because I had just been talking to her a couple of days before and all of a sudden she was gone. It got to be a problem. It wasn't the drug, I simply can't lie, I like crack cocaine, I just don't like what I have to do to get it. Not to mention, it was tearing my insides up too, it was really screwing my body up.

People used to ask me, "What do you do with your money?" And I'd have to come up with some kind of lie. I'd stay out there regardless of whether it was raining or what, I would be out there, saying I was "keeping an eye on peoples cars" and stuff like that. It got to be pretty miserable. It got to the point that people were really laughing at me. They recognized my condition and it got embarrassing, it really was. Sometimes people would come out of the building and wouldn't even say anything to me, and that really said a lot.

I spent a lot of years putting irons in the wrong fires. I got so sick and tired of going through the same shit, asking people for money all of the time. In the past I've been afraid to succeed and because of that I've often sabotaged myself. People downtown are either drinking or smoking too much--they are people with problems. Only a few are really homeless because of not having any money and not being able to work. The first step is detoxification.

Somewhere in my mind I always had this dream of how my life's supposed to be. I honestly feel I can reach that if I just stay off crack or anything else, period. I honestly feel in my heart that I can make it. There are some things that I have to do first and what I'm doing now is one of them. I have made up in my mind that I am going to go through with my recovery no matter what. I don't care what happens, I'm going to stay sober. If it means that I don't have a job or I don't have a car, or I don't have this or I don't have that, fine! I don't want to go back to using drugs again because I already know what that's all about, I know what's going to happen.

I guess you might say I had a moment of clarity. I had already been introduced to the work of AA and I knew that I really didn't have to be doing what I was doing. For me to see these people now, doing what they are doing so diligently, and I was with them for most of my life, it seems ridiculous to me. These people are just throwing their lives away and they think it is cool, but I was doing the same thing without ceasing, I wasn't able to stop myself. Who am I to say what they are doing is foolish? This went on for years. I used to always tell myself, "oh, I'll get it together next week," and this went on for years--"I'll wait a little while longer, I'll straighten out then." But a little while longer never came, it just never came, until now. When it came it wasn't because of me, because I know today in and of myself, on my best day, all I do is get loaded. It had to be a divine intervention because Carey didn't know how to do anything but get loaded.

Finally I decided that whatever it takes for Carey to stay sober, then that's what I'm going to do. When I was introduced to the work of AA in 1980, they told me that I had to get a sponsor, they told me that I had to work the steps, and I didn't know what the hell they were talking about back then. But today I do and it isn't easy. In this book that I'm reading it says the only thing I have to look forward to is jails, institutions or death. And I've been to jails and institutions, so I guess the only thing left for me is death. I don't want to die on the streets addicted, an addict. My back's against the wall, but it is getting better. I don't know a whole lot about this program but I am willing, I am truly willing, I'm just really grateful that I'm not out there sleeping in a box on Wall Street, telling myself that it's okay when I know damn well it isn't. I'm trying and I pray every night.

We have family reunions now. I have nephews that I haven't seen since they were kids. One of them is twenty. My youngest brother, Reggie's sons, I haven't seen neither one of them since they were kids. I don't have any kids myself. I always wanted to be an example for my nieces and nephews, but I never was because I was into my addiction. Now that they're grown, they're not all on a bad path. Some of them are doing good. I have a niece that's working for the city now. And I have a nephew in the Navy, and another nephew that's in the Army. It's something that I feel I should have done. I will have to sit down and tell them what it was I was going through and maybe they'll understand, because as it stands now if I were to try to tell them something they'd probably just discard it and say "you never did anything." I haven't been to one of the family reunions yet because in my addiction I isolated myself. I wasn't ready to face that pain. All it would have took was for somebody to say, "what's you been doing?" and I would have probably just fell to pieces. I hid myself from my family.

Since I got out of the program this last time I've been visiting my relatives and talking to them. Some of them drink and stuff like that when I'm there, but it hasn't been a temptation for me. Last weekend I helped one of my sisters move her furniture to a new apartment and I had a chance hear about how she's doing. Every time I talk with one of my relatives they tell me that they don't feel like the others like them, and that they feel cut off from the others. At this next family reunion I plan to tell them that this is not right, that it's not supposed to be like that in a family.

During the two years that I didn't call my aunt I kept telling myself "I better try to call because they don't know where I'm at but I know where they're at, and if I call one day and find somebody's gone then I'm going to really feel bad about it." I feel good that I did call because I'm very close to my aunt. She lives in a pretty rough neighborhood, she's living there by herself, but she takes care of herself. She doesn't go out, she's not a street person. I really want to be there for her because she's done a whole lot for me and my little brother. I'm looking forward to making my family reunion this year. I want to get in touch and expose some truths about myself so that maybe they'll understand. There's alcoholics and addicts in my family. Just now people in my family are starting to stay sober.

Today, my brother and I really don't see eye-to-eye, and that bothers me because I really love my little brother and I don't want to see anything bad happen to him. Every time I would tell Reggie "that's not right what you're doing," he would say "well who are you to tell me?" I guess justifiably so because I haven't been a very good example. He's a grown man now with a wife and two kids. He's still using drugs and stuff. He went to trial just a few weeks ago and was sentenced to seven years for possession of drugs with intent to sell.

My mom had me and my little brother, Reggie, we're Claburns and we're the youngest children. There's also Cottmans, Parks, and Bradleys--my mother had children by four different men. It's kind of screwed up. I've never seen a picture of my mother. I am going to try to find someone in my family who has a photograph of her.

I have an older brother, his name is Clarence, and he's been locked up in the penitentiary since at least '76--it was after I graduated from high school. He got arrested for armed robbery-murder and they sentenced him to fifteen years to life. I think I went to see him once. This was during my addiction. My sisters would always tell me "why don't you go and see your brother" or "why don't you write your brother a letter?" But I never had time for that, I was always into my abuse. He called from prison one day and I talked to him. He said "man I think you're pretty chicken shit, you don't even want to come and see me." I had gone to see him once and that was it. Those words he said really stuck in my head. During that whole time he was in there I was afraid that he would one day get out and be angry with me. But he's out now and I've talked to him and he gave me a big hug. He's trying to get his life together, but I still haven't really had a chance to sit down and talk to him about what he's doing. That's another relationship that I really need to work on in time, because he's trying to get his life together too. I guess I kind of feel like I abandoned him. It's pretty rough, he spent the better part of sixteen or seventeen years in the penitentiary.

I have another sister Sharon, she's still drinking and I'd really just love to tell her "there's a better way, you don't have to do that." But our relationship has been so warped in the past, I don't even think she would really want to listen to me. I have a sister, Diane, she came to see me recently when I was in my program, she's the oldest. She gave me the impression she's a little bent out of shape because she felt that she should have set a better example when we were coming up. I kind of like told her, "look Diane, it's not your fault. We all have our problems. Everybody makes mistakes. We just really need to look past that and keep going."

I have a sister, Maxine, me and her were very close for a while when I was very young. She moved to Chicago, she stayed out there for a long time and I didn't communicate with her at all. She's the one I stole the VCR and a stereo from when I was in my addiction after I got out of jail. She told me some things that just really hurt, but we talk today. She's been sober five years now and she's a Christian. I really want to show that her I mean well, I told her I was going to give it back to her, and I will one day, with God's help I know I will. Me and my sisters still talk, except for Sandra, the one who's a Jehovah's Witness, it's been so long since I've seen her.

I have another brother, Charles. He's in jail and has been in jail for a year now or more. The life style that my sisters and brothers used to lead, after me and my little brother were taken away when my mother died, has led to a lot of pain in their lives.

Something that I really want is a greater God conscience. In the twelve-step book it says that drugs are only five percent of the problem, ninety-five percent of the problem is Carey. Things are looking a little better now. I'm still striving for that spirit within. I'm not experiencing what they say is the "sunlight of the spirit" because I have all this other junk in me I need to get out, and that's a job within itself. They say this program has three speeds and that's slow, slow and slow. I just have to really pray and do the things that I need to do when I need to do them, regardless of whether I want to or not.

I've been to four programs. The first program I went to I stayed sober six months and it was pretty good. The last program I went into was before `87. It has been a long time since I've decided to put myself back into the work of recovery. This last time, this very significant time in my life from 1991 until today, has been about getting my whole heart ready to take a chance one more time on trying to making some of my dreams come true.

I've always wanted to have a spiritual life. I always wanted to put God first. I always wanted to have a wife and kids and a family, and a very successful career. I always wanted that. This was in my heart but I never was able to see any big opening for me to go strive for that. I remember I was on probation in Orange County and the probation officer asked me, "what would you like to do?" I told him, "I like music, maybe a sound engineer or something like that." I can't remember his exact words, but he gave me the impression that he didn't feel I would be able to do that. Well, I didn't pursue that career anyway, but he just didn't give me the impression I was able to do that.

My dream today is that I just want to stay sober, one day at a time. Possibly in the future I'll be able to put some kind of dream together for myself. I haven't really set up any long-term goals. I just have short-term goals, and one of them is to maintain my sobriety at all costs. That's what I'm going to do.

Out of all the difficulty that has happened I still believe that there is only one power that's going to bring me out of this. After going through what I went through, what really slapped me in the face was seeing my picture in that paper and the caption under my picture that said, "this is Carey with all his worldly possessions in a bucket." That slapped me in the face, it really did. My truth was catching up to me. Everybody who is successful believes in something that keeps them going, something greater than themselves. I've never had that. I always went on my own and every time I did I messed it up. I never knew how to deal with people, places and things. If people would reject me I wouldn't know how to deal with that, so I'd go medicate it with some alcohol or some drugs. I wasn't dealing with life on life's terms. This time when I came in I was ready to follow some instructions. A counselor told me, "Carey what you need to do is exactly what you need to do, when you need to do it, regardless of whether you want to do it or not." I've been doing that. I do what is in front of me. What is in front of me now is to learn as much as I can. I've learned a lot already, but it's the application, I haven't applied it. I'm going to a lot of twelve-step meetings and I'm being honest with myself, not with other people but with myself first. It really feels good not having to lie to anybody about anything. I'm really a baby, I'm learning how to live right now.

I'm not alone, I'm finding a lot of love. Sometimes if you have a problem or are feeling bad there's what you call post-acute withdrawal. I get up in the morning, I pray and go take me a shower, and I'm feeling pretty good, but when I get around a corner and thirty minutes later I've gone from a real high to a real, real low. That alone has caused many people to just leave, throw in the towel. There's reasons for all of it and I try to find out the answers today, I don't try to lean on my own understanding to try to figure it out.

I know it's going to be a struggle. Anybody can stay sober for ninety days, but when you get out there on the streets and you run into some of those old friends, which I don't plan to but you never know, there's a whole lot of triggers. It could be a girl with a big butt or an old friend with some money, anything could happen. I'm praying a lot, and to tell you the honest-to-God truth, I don't feel I'm going to use any more, I really don't. Regardless of where I go or whatever happens, I'm not going to use, regardless, I'm not going to use.

Since I left my residential rehabilitation program three months ago I've started college and commenced looking for a job. I'm now on welfare, which I don't like, but it'll do for now. I've also gotten a little eye opener. I got a ticket riding on the Metro Rail, and now I have to appear in court for that ticket. But I'm not all bent out of shape about it because it's in front of me, and I know as long as it's in front of me I can deal with it if I stay sobber. I'm on probation because of some old outstanding warrants and probation violations. The judge looked favorably on the fact that I turned myself in and that I had been sober for six months, and gave me another year of probation. That was a blessing, because I had really expected that I would have to do about three months in jail to clear up my record.

The good thing about it is I don't feel bogged down. I do feel I do need to sit down and kind of sort some more things out, but maybe that'll come a little later. As of now I'm just doing whatever is in front of me. People tell me it's not that bad if you just go through it. Half the problem is over if you just suit up and show up, and I've been doing that on a daily basis. It's working, I feel pretty good. I know it's going to take a lot of effort for me to get through these classes at the college where I've enrolled, and I'm willing to do that.

As far as my sobriety is concerned, I have to put forth even more effort to work on my recovery, but then again, I'm not in a program anywhere where I can sit and deal with these issues all day long. I have needs to be met out here. I'm making meetings and I do pray a lot. I've also heard people say that's not enough, that a lot of them have tried to do the same but they relapsed. The things they told me to do were to get a sponsor, work the twelve steps, and go to meetings. As far as working the steps, I'm starting on the very first step, which is writing this story about my life, and telling what powerless means to me and how unmanageable my life had become.

I think I'm doing okay. I still have those sick-assed thoughts about using and drinking, but I just don't act on them today. There have been times where I'd think about these things and the next thing you know I'd be off and running, but I'm not doing that today. They told me this is a program for people who want it, not for people who need it, and today I want to live. I haven't used any alcohol or drugs for nine months now, which is the longest time that I've been sober since I was fourteen years old. I know it's not going to be easy, but it'll be okay. I honestly believe that in my heart.

I'm forty-one years old and I may look like a big, strong man but I'm really just a person full of fears. One of my fears is about having money in my pocket. I feel ready to work and I want to get a job, but I'm afraid of what may happen if I have money in my pocket that I could spend on drugs when I get one of those sick impulses.

Some fears I have to deal with are around trying to find employment. I've been trained for different jobs, but I haven't ever held onto any of them for very long. I learned how to bake in jail, and I learned how to repair small engines when I was in prison. Our small engine instructor, Mr. Washington, wanted to be cool with the inmates and brought in drugs for them to prove how hip he was. The last I heard he was an addict himself out on Venice Beach. I also got trained as a sheet metal technician, and I was a radiology technician and a carpenter's apprentice. Besides that I've had jobs in a nursery, doing building maintenance, tinting car windows, driving a delivery truck, conducting opinion surveys, and for a little while there I had my own car detailing business. Altogether I've worked for about seven years since I graduated from high school, the rest of the time I've been into my addiction or locked up.

In my past I've always been afraid of people, and I would imagine by me being sober now that fear just doesn't go away, it's just something that I have to deal with. I guess I'm very ashamed of my past, and therefore I'm reluctant to talk about it, especially to employers. There are a lot of huge time gaps in my employment history that do need to be addressed. Looking back, though, on the jobs I did have, I always did put forth a good effort. I do even remember the first job I had, they went out of their way to try to keep me, but I was too busy with my addiction so they had to let me go. It kind of lets me know I wasn't a bad employee, I just had a problem. Thanks to the grace of God that problem is behind me now, or it's where I can deal with it, or me and Him can deal with it.

I feel if I'm able to relate to people exactly how I feel without stumbling over my words--I do that a lot--I might put forth a positive image. A lot of times what I say and what I think are two different things, even though I try to say exactly what's on my mind, but it comes out wrong. I think that's an area I need to work on very much, especially my past--my employment record--and not lie about it. I think that if I can get to that point I'd be able to go and do an interview with a positive impact. That's something I will be working on. I do enjoy talking to people. But it scares me when people start asking questions like "were you ever convicted of a felony?" or "what were you doing between this date and this date?" A lot of times I've been driven to distort the truth. That's where I hit my stumbling blocks. I honestly feel that if I'm totally honest with whoever I interview with I'll probably come out a little bit better by conveying where I'm at right now. It's something that I need to work on and I will be doing that.

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