EPISODE 9: GARY

Gary came into Narcotics Anonymous in 1987 after a therapist handed him a helpline number — not by choice, but by accident — and found himself at home almost immediately, despite rejecting the program's religious underpinnings. Over nearly four decades of uninterrupted recovery, he has built his clean life around sponsorship, service work, and a fierce commitment to keeping NA meetings safe for newcomers. Recorded on Feb 12, 2025 at the Wednesday, NA Another Secular Meeting.

For more information on recovery from addiction through Narcotics Anonymous 12 step program from a secular, non-religious approach, please check out secularna.org

**  This podcast is not formally affiliated in any way with Narcotics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous World Services. **

Comments are welcome. Email to: secularna@gmail.com

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:13

Greetings. Welcome and thank you for tuning in to our podcast. Stories of secular recovery from addiction through narcotics analysis. I am Michael E, coordinator and producer of the podcast. Each episode in the podcast is a story of addiction recovery from a member of Narcotics Analytics. For more information about Specular NA, check out our website, secularna.org. Gary worked the steps with a sponsor, got evolved in service, and it's never looked back. Now 1470 years old, Gary reflects on the defining moments of his first year clean and urges newcomers that not picking up one day at a time is both the starting point and the foundation of recovery. Take it away, Gary.

SPEAKER_01 1:50

Hello. I'm an act named Gary. My home group is Freethinkers South. We meet on Wednesday night virtually. It's a secular meeting. And um it's at 7 p.m. Eastern. I only now go to secular meetings. I am so delighted to not have to listen to the readings that include references to deities. Um I came into Narcotics Anonymous in 1987, and I tend when I share, I tend to focus on year one in recovery after I give a little short um explanation of how I got here. Oh, I used to do drugs, a lot of drugs, and um I don't do that shit no more. It doesn't do me any good, and it doesn't do anybody who knows knows me any good. Um so I kind of like to start with my first year and then kind of work my way back. Um, I walked into NA, um, you know how they say uh there's a saying about none of us get here by accident. Yeah, that was not me. I got here by accident, totally like I didn't I walked into meetings and I'm going, wait a minute, there's like everybody in here is like talking about shooting heroin. I didn't do that. Um like why am I like in this meeting? I got here by accident, August. Um and all kidding aside, um, I found myself at home almost immediately in NA. And by the way, what are there like 19 people here? I have this, I can't look at all the faces in the gallery. So right now all I can see is Chris's photo, which is great. Um and by the way, the readings that we do and the and the um explanations that Chris was giving about who's, you know, how you know the newcomers, it's great. I love the way we've set up our meetings. Just a big fan. I don't want to say thank goodness for the for the pandemic, but the pandemic forced us online. And um, I'm a retired person now. Um I've been retired for like 10 years or more, and um I I just stay, you know, I love being at home and being able to shut my video off and listen or um go to the bathroom during a meeting if I need to, without having to leave the room uh in real life. Um my first year in recovery um was the most important year for me. Um and all of the people that inspired me to want to stay, I'm very grateful for them. The examples of what to do and the examples of what not to do. And one of the things that became very important to me, and Chris knows about this because we've talked about this uh, you know, outside of the meeting, is there was a lot of behavior going on in the meetings where I think some of the people mistook Narcotics Anonymous for a dating service and went beyond treating it like a dating service, and there was behavior that um from some of my fellow males that was so uh predatory that it chased women out of the meetings, and over the years um I've taken it upon myself to be responsible to not not just not engage in that behavior, but to be um a vocal supporter of um keeping our rooms safe, and so on top of that, we have safety statements that we've latched on to, thank goodness for my friend Tanya and and all that, um and Chris as well, and other people who um you know, and it's not just a male problem, but it's predominantly a male problem. And if I've offended anybody by saying that, uh go talk to your sponsor, I suppose, if you have one. Um I don't mean to be an asshole, but um I think it's uh it's worse than dangerous to um take advantage of a newcomer when you have clean time and um when people are most vulnerable. I think I'll leave it at that because I could go on. Um my first year in recovery had so many great moments. Um at three weeks of clean time, I went to my home group on a Friday night, and there was a man standing outside this building. We had a a meeting in a in a detox, um, at a D like a small, like a 12-bed detox, and uh Friday night, 7 p.m. in uh Florida here. And um, and he it was day one for him in detox, and he was from New York like I am, and he his name was Vinny, and I introduced him, I got there early because I was coming straight from work, and Vinny and I wound up going into his uh little room area, whatever, and he was really tweaking, man. He was like Vinny was like wired bad, and I was only three weeks clean. And Vinny um opened up a two-pound bag of um MMs, poured them into a dish, and I told him everything I knew about recovery, all three weeks worth, and we polished off the entire two bit two pounds of MMs, and we went into the meeting, and Vinny wound up sharing how um I won't use the word inspired, but whatever the word, it was sort of like that. That the conversation we had really made him think that maybe he could get clean this time. And um I got goosebumps, man. I I it really meant something to me that, like, wow, like I'm a newcomer and I have something to offer somebody with less time than me in three weeks. And Vinny stayed clean for like 10 years. I became very good friends with him, and um, he eventually died of something unrelated, but like that was really meaningful to me. Um, I'm gonna step back and talk about how I got to NA and then get back to my first year because um I'm very well organized, as you can well think. Um, I grew up in New York, I was born in 1955, so I'm gonna be 70 next month. And um my parents um were um they they were really good parents, um, and I had a really lovely childhood up to about age 13. Um played a lot of sports, baseball. My father almost played professional baseball, and he taught me and my brother how to play baseball, and that was like a big thing in my life. I was always a very um good athlete, to be perfectly honest. Um, I could run like the wind, I still can at my age. Um, I don't know why. I think I have like very strong hamstrings. Um and uh and then when I turned 13 and started to wake up to the world around me, it was 1968. And for those of you who don't remember 1968, um, there was a lot of shit going on in our country that was um crazy, you know, besides the fact that the war in Vietnam was like raging on with no end in sight, and the draft was still on, my brother's friends were being drafted. Um, you know, there was assassinations and um it was crazy. And that year, my mom tried to commit suicide, and um my home became instead of this very happy home that I gave you a picture of a little bit, um, it became like crazy and scary for me. And within the same period of time, um I I had been um I really don't like talking about this. I I was sexually abused um in my father's office building a few years before. I kind of backing, my memory is not great about this, but um and it had um the effect of making me almost forget about it and bury it somewhere in my in my soul, and it didn't really come to my memory again until I was five years clean. And um and what I did to combat whatever was going on at home and whatever I had, you know, my self-esteem was very poor. Um I I always try and impress people with what a great athlete I was and how smart I was, but like, and how many girls I could like get to kiss me or whatever. Um I um I struggled. I struggled a lot, but I found drugs. Drugs took away most of my fear, and I became an immediate drug dealer because it was a lot less expensive that way, and um I proceeded to run through the next 17, 20 years of my life, um acting as if I was very trustworthy, even though I wasn't. Um and I wound up getting thrown out of my house when I was 17 because I would not obey my parents' um rules about drugs in the house. And um and I joined the military when I was 19, even though I was a war protester up till that time. The war had just ended, it was 1974. Um, I was in the Navy supposedly for four years, but they threw me out after 16 months because I choked a chief petty officer. Um somehow they gave me a general discharge under honorable conditions. So I got the GI Bill. I managed to go to college, I managed to go to graduate school. My profession that I chose was audiology, you know, hearing testing, hearing aids. And um and I was doing pretty well in it. And I got married when I was right after I got thrown out of service, this poor woman who I had a relationship with, um, she made a terrible mistake in choosing to marry me. She married my potential instead of marrying who I was, and who I was was a lying sack of shit and an unfaithful husband. And that marriage lasted four or five years, and then I found another woman who my brother set up with and we had a baby together, and now I'm 30 years old, and then we moved to Florida, and um the baby's like two, and I'm like now I'm I'm I'm snorting cocaine at work, and it's just um the money's disappearing, and um and the therapist handed me a narcotics anonymous helpline card, or a helpline phone number, not a card. And um she said, I suggest that if you want to stay in this marriage and be a father to that little boy, that you um check out these meetings. I don't think she said check them out, I think she said go. And uh, and that's how I showed up at my first meeting. I called my the helpline from my office in Pembroke Pines, Florida, and um and I went in, and here's here's what's what with the secular, not secular thing. So I come in and I see all the things on the wall that they had in the meetings about God and higher power and and and he and and all this stuff that I didn't buy into. I mean, I never bought into the whole religious thing basically because there wasn't any tangible evidence that there was any supreme being that people seemed to be um involved with, and there was no real scientific evidence of it. And like, you know, if you couldn't put it on the table and I couldn't see it, I just wasn't buying it. You know, um, you know, one of the bumper stickers of my life that I always thought was really cool was um, well, there were two of them. One was if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem, Eldridge Cleaver. And the other one was um question authority. Question authority, very big thing for me, and um so yeah, so here I am, and at my first meeting, I'm at my second meeting, I'm at my third meeting, and they said get a sponsor, and off I go, and I get this really, really excellent sponsor who takes me through steps one through 12, and um and we danced around, you know, the parts that didn't make sense. Like I couldn't get with this thing about steps six and seven with the any reference to God and how that worked, but anything that that was more tangible, I was like, I had a good time with, you know, like I I could and I was motivated, you know. So if you're new, I really want to make a point here about the steps and sponsorship. Um, you know, sponsors have a variety of ways of taking people through steps. That's a fact. And not everybody does this the same way. This is not a cookie-cutter way of of how to approach this Narcotics Anonymous program. Um, but my experience was fantastic. I really believed in what he was asking me to do, even though some of it was like I had to drive the speed limit for him. I don't know if it was for him, it was for me, I suppose. Um but I um oh, and Chris, give me a little heads up when we're at 20 or near 20, would you please? Um I I did the steps to the best of my ability with him, and when I was done with the steps, that was about the same time people started asking me to sponsor them because I had a couple of years clean. And um and that reward was probably the glue that made me want to stay forever, and I have not used since my first white key tag, and um I heard that that was this easier, softer way. So if you're new, that is a choice that you can make. Now, there are a lot of people in these meetings that are very, very uh courageous and wonderful about sharing their relapse experiences, and they're incredibly valuable, not just to me, but to everybody, because that lets oh, I see the timer there. That's good, Chris. Thanks. Um I um I found it easier just to stay. Um I I like the softer, easier way. Um now I'm gonna back up to my first year again. Near the end of that year, I got clean in January, and near the end of that year, my dear friend Maud, who worked at that time in uh the Broward Sheriff's Office, she won't mind me saying that, she's not here anyway, I don't think. Um got she arranged for 40 of us to go into this place called the Stockade, which was basically a place where uh men and women were being housed before they went to trial. And almost all of them were there on drug charges. And on Christmas Eve, we went into these pods that of guys, and I went with the guys, obviously, um men with the men, women with the women, and um and we each we went broke up into groups of eight. And so I was with seven other guys, and we each shared with these inmates for like five minutes each. That's 40 minutes, eight times five. And then with the readings and everything, there was only a few minutes left for the meeting. And five of the inmates walked up to the front of the room where we were standing behind this little area uh that was away from them. And they wanted to thank, they said, we want to thank you for coming out on Christmas Eve because you've left your families and we really appreciate it. And there's really not much we can do to thank you, but we did do arrange this, and they sang a cappella five-part harmony, silent night. And I I and the other people in that room started sobbing. It was so moving and so deep and so profound. And I remember walking out of that facility that night, I had less than a year cleaned, and I thought this is the greatest gift ever. There's nothing in the world that could touch what just happened, and I've never forgotten it and I never will. Um I feel so fortunate to be part of this fellowship. And I've worked at it. You know, I really I I gotta say that Chris is a really important person, like to me, um, who's sharing the meeting, Chris. Hi, Chris. Um, because I value watching her and other people, not just Chris, but I'm just picking on Chris to begin with, because I see the amount of effort that she puts into chairing a meeting and organizing and really like being responsible, you know, for any commitment that she takes. And you know, it's always been a thing of mine. Don't take a commitment if I don't think I can fulfill it. And I've done all the service work I ever wanted to do since I retired. I wasn't able to do that while I was working and being um a father. Oh, and by the way, the wife never forgave me, the one with my son. I became a divorced father, like fucking what a nightmare. Uh it was not easy. My son is now 40. Um, fortunately, none of the other women I married I had children with. And I've been married five fucking times. Currently, I'm in a really good relationship with um, actually the mother of a recovering addict who has 13 years. So I'm looking at the clock. I feel like I'm really almost done. If you're new or even relatively new, and by the way, I hate to ignore the people with clean time, but that's what I do. Um please stay. Please, you know, there's a saying in here, we will love you until you're ready to love yourself, but you can start loving yourself today. You don't have to wait. You know? Loving yourself to me, if you're in these rooms, is don't pick up no matter fucking what. Don't pick up no matter fucking what. It's that's the way to work a program to start with. Everything else, like I figured out I have the rest of my life to work on what a shitty human being I had become. But one day at a time, I don't pick up the first drug, and that gives me the luxury of working on myself in whatever time frame I want to. And you know what? I'm not a terrible person anymore. I'm not like it's like I never lie, sometimes I do, but I try not to. So I'm done with my my um share, and Chris, thank you for asking me to participate. I'm out.

SPEAKER_00 23:26

Gary, thank you. I hear you, and I hope everyone else does too. You said, don't pick up, no matter F and what. That's the way to work a program to start with. Everything else follows. And you also said, quote, we will love you until you're ready to love yourself, but you can start loving yourself today. You don't have to wait. You got that right. Thank you, Gary. A reminder to everyone for more information on recovery from addiction through the Narcotics Anonymous 12-step program from a secular, non-religious approach, please check out our website, secularna.org. That's S-E-C-U-L-A-R-N-A.org. This is Michael E. for the stories of secular recovery from addiction through Narcotics Anonymous podcast. Staying clean, one speaker at a time.