Recovery and discovery roundtable with Skid Row guests and community calendar

If death is the realm of freedom, then from death I escape to freedom, which is a quote by Fran Fernand. The title of this poem is A Defying Voice. To remove my whisper from general population to maximum security, I gain a voice. To remove my voice from maximum security to administrative segregation, my voice gave hope. To remove my voice from administrative segregation to solitary confinement, my voice became vibration for unity. To remove my voice from solitary confinement to the supermax of Camp J. And now they wish to destroy me. The louder my voice, the deeper they bury me. I say it, the louder my voice, the deeper they bury me. Free all political prisoners, prisoners of war, prisoners of consciousness. Herman Wallace, Angles Free. Okay, that's Herman Wallace speaking from solitary confinement at Angola Prison in Louisiana. And I would like to report that on September 1st, 2015, a settlement was reached to end long-term solitary confinement in California. We hear more about that in our community calendar. Welcome to the Qumran Report. May the peace and blessings of the Lord be with you. May the life-giving, creative spirit be upon you and upon your family. My name is Melvin Ishmael Johnson, coming at you live from Skid Row Studios. And I'm in the studio with my co-host, Earlene Anthony. I'll call in numbers 1-800-893-9562. This week on the Qumran Report, our topic is recovery and discovery. I'm delighted to have with us in the studio Ron Smith, Larenda Hawkins, Nick Paul, Mary Lindcombe, and Anna Pepe. Pepe, I always mess that up. Pepe. Welcome to the Qumran Report. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Let's go around the table and introduce yourself and any organization or project you are working with. Let's start with Larenda. Hi, I'm Larenda Hawkins. I'm a domestic violence survivor. And I... Larenda Hawkins. Larenda Hawkins-Smith. I'm sorry. Newly married. I am a violence prevention specialist with Peace Over Violence. And I am gearing up for my, I believe it's the third annual Cries from the Heart domestic violence awareness event that we have at San Julian Park each year. Yes. Yes. Thank you for having me. My name. My name is Ron J. Hawkins-Smith. There you go. And this is my wife, Larenda. I'm a member of the Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council. Specifically, I'm the Skid Row representative. And we are currently starting, kicking off our first annual all Skid Row job fair to take place in October in Gladys Park. We're really happy about that. And we're working on hygiene kits for you. For both of these. Thank you. Oh, nice. Thank you. Thank you. Hi. I'm Mary Lindholm and an anonymous member of AA. Not anymore. I was waiting for the laugh. Okay. I'm in it for the laughs. But I'm also a local singer. I sing in the open mics for Skid Row and some of the events that they have. Yeah. That's right. Wonderful voice. I remember you performing at one of our events a couple times. Yeah. Okay. I'm Nick Paul. I'm involved with LAMP Downtown on Skid Row. And they have art groups and poetry groups. And I enjoy going there. And I'm an artist, performer. I also do open mic. And I'm really glad to be here tonight. Okay. Thank you. My name is... That's the long version. I am in recovery. I'm a recovering alcoholic and drug addict. Initially started out that recovery. And then later on found out that I had a whole host of other issues that I had to deal with and heal from from my childhood in order to attain that recovery. That wholeness that I needed in my life. And I'm very, very passionate about recovery. Okay. And you're also being very modest. Because you're the one who initiated this monthly program on recovery. To do something on recovery every week during this month. Yeah. It saddens me. I've been out in California. I'm from the East Coast. I've been out in California for like going on four years now. And I see a lot of people struggling with maintaining their recovery. And I don't hear a lot about ongoing... Ongoing recovery. And the celebration of recovery in people's lives. It's really missing down here. And so I just feel like I want to do something to get that moving and bring it to the forefront. Because there's such a desperate need. Especially in the Skid Row area. Okay. Let's go around and I want to talk about three concepts. We can start talking about them one at a time. There's recovery, relapse, and triggers. Okay. And I want to know what each one means to each one of the guests. Your view on how you define them. And let's start with Loretta. Well, with recovery, I feel like we're all recovering from something. I myself, it's not alcohol necessarily that I use. But I have been in bad relationships and gone from one to another and to another. So recovery means... Just constantly trying to heal from that. And it's an ongoing process. That's what I think of recovery. I think there is healing. But I think it's important to remember and be reminded that it is an ongoing journey. Okay. And okay, let's go around recovery first. We come back to the other two terms. For me, recovery has... The meaning of recovery has a real... I think it's a real... I think it's a real... I think it's a real... Strong significance in me because... Because recovering something is getting back something that was lost. Because I lost my mind. I lost my life. I lost my livelihood. But most of all, for me, it was that I lost my relationship with God. So when I first started into recovery, I was at a Christian-based recovery center. So for me, the whole concept became not freedom from drugs as much as it was regaining a relationship. Okay. It was a relationship with Christ. Okay. Mary? Yeah. Recovery is the most important thing in my life. I too lost everything. My mind, my spirituality, and my body, and everything. I was completely insane on top of it all. And I ended up in the hospital and it's kind of described in one of the books. You feel like it's a flimsy reed that you're holding onto and it turns out to be the strong hand of God. And that's kind of the way I look at recovery is the strong hand of God is with me and I'm not the same person. I can change with the help of a higher power. I found recovery was like recovering from my family. It wasn't... It wasn't... It wasn't just the drugs and alcohol. Amen. Because I'm one of those grateful alcoholics. It's like I was glad there was alcohol and drugs to be had when I was going through that. But unfortunately, there came a time when they stopped working. And when they stopped working, it was like slamming on the brakes going 95 miles an hour. And recovery for me has been getting back in touch with the gifts that God has given me, my creative talents. And the longer I'm sober, the more I discover new things that I can do that I never thought I had or things that I never thought I could do. It's like I'm getting the grace of knowing how to do something. I never studied this, but for some reason I know how to do this artistically. It's like I'm a vessel or a channel that something's coming through. And I'm really grateful for that. So... Okay. Hello. For me, recovery is more about God recovering me. I came into recovery through the back door, as they say. I was involved for many years in bad relationships with alcoholics and drug addicts. My father was an alcoholic. And I did a lot of comparison. I was nothing like him. I was nothing like my alcoholic uncle. I was nothing like the other alcoholic and drug addicts that I met. I was nothing like my other alcoholic and drug addicts that I had in my life. And so my addiction started really with prescription pills, prescriptions. And then it moved on to street illegal drugs and then it moved on to, well, alcohol was always there. But I wanted to escape the feelings that I was feeling and the pain that I was in. And it worked for me. And I was in denial for the longest, longest time. I would not do it again. I knew it was too late. I would not admit that I had a chemical dependency. And I didn't believe in God. I thought that God was just a useless entity out there who really didn't do anything. And I made a pact with him that I would give him in my arrogance. This one last shot to prove himself real in my life before I finally really did myself in. And thank God that he heard that voice of desperation in me. And he presented himself in my life. Okay. Do you want to say something, Arlene, about recovery? Okay. Let's go around and talk about relapse. What is that? Well, relapse to me, of course, can mean different things. But for me, I see it when I start exhibiting certain things. I see it when I start seeing certain behaviors and tend to want to go to the same places where I've gone before. And just briefly, I grew up with a parent who was always sick. So I had this feeling of being in crisis a lot and needing to help. And just there was maybe a need, unconscious need for. And I just had this feeling of being in a lot of trauma to always be in my life. So I need to keep checking myself. But the relapse can happen when I feel myself going down that path. Relationally, just relationally. I just need to just constantly. And it's God. It is God. I mean, I have to definitely stay in prayer, stay in the word. Because it's too easy for me to feel like I can fix things myself in my own power. And that doesn't turn out well, usually. But yeah, there's those old habits that kind of die hard. Yeah, I want to take charge and just try to fix things in my own power. And to me, that's relapsing. Okay, and then how about triggers? Yeah. Yeah. You know, I say this. I feel like none of us should have triggers. But I mean, we do. I mean, it's nice to think that, you know, as a Christian or what have you, you know, we're healed. We're saved. We're, you know, new creations, which we are. But we still are human. And we still have those buttons that can be pushed at any time. And yes, I'm sorry. I mean, but they are still there. And those triggers are real. And I feel like denying them is when I get into trouble. Yeah. Okay. Ron, relapse and then triggers. Relapse for me is proof, you know. I'm going to quote Nietzsche. I often skip steps when I climb and no step forgives me that. So for a very long time, I thought that in order to stay clean, in order to stay focused on what was important to me, I had to work these steps, hit every single step. I couldn't skip one thing. So the first time I relapsed after doing everything that I was supposed to do, then I was like, hey, you know, what's going on? Why isn't this working for me? Why didn't it work for me? And so that became the proof that it wasn't in my power to fix me. You know, that's when I finally understood that, yeah, it takes a higher power to do this, you know, because I am good at following a program. You know, I am good at setting goals, getting it done. But this wasn't what was fixing me. So what ended up happening is, you know, it's. It's like I'm presenting my faith in God. So, yeah. So relapse to me just means proof that God is there. And then the triggers, how are triggers tied into relapse? Yeah, like most people, man, we I mean, I have some triggers. But again, it's like I can't I can't allow myself to focus on what another person does or let what another person does or what happens around me in life. Force me to do it. I can't do something else. I mean, I have to own it that no matter what trigger is pulled, man, I'm the one holding the gun, you know. So, I mean, if I don't use, I don't use, you know. Okay. Mary, relapse and trigger. Okay. Well, with relapses, I had a few along the way. My father was a raging alcoholic, committed suicide from this disease. And he was a priest and everything. And so I would have very confusing double double life going on. And with relapse, it always ended up me. I kind of look at it as it sounds kind of dorky, but the dark side and the light side, because if I hang out with negative people or I'm I'm getting negative in my head, it's just a windmill. Of course. Bad thoughts going down and down until I'm going through people's lives, ruining their lives and triggers. I just had a couple recently that were just outrageous. It was horrible. This person got my number. That was the wrong number. And he was texting me for weed. And about about a week or two later, he was calling me for heroin and asking me for black. And I didn't even know what black was. I never did that. when I was out there. So it just really triggered me. It just brought me down. I had like a snapshot in my head of what the worst time in my life was and how the lowest I had ever been. So that was terrible. So thanks for letting me share. Okay. Well, let's see. Relapse, that's like a two-edged sword. There's relapse where people say I slipped, which I don't agree with. That terminology, I slipped. You slip like on a wet floor or you slip on a slide or you slip in the shower. You don't slip in recovery. There's no accidents, you know. I believe like if you're going to drink, you drink. It isn't like something that just happened. Like it was there and I just drank it. It's like things lead up to people going out. I've been real lucky. In my sobriety, I've been sober over 34 years and I haven't gone out and drank or used yet. There's always the yet because nothing is guaranteed, absolutely nothing. But I think what has helped me is I've stayed with positive people and I've stayed away from some situations, you know. But you can also slip in sobriety and not drink or use, which I mean, you can be just as crazy as somebody who's drinking and using. Like if with me, I have a horrible anger thing that I'm going for therapy for. Because when I get upset, it's like I feed off that. It's like an excitement. It's a drug. It's a high. I love it. It's like sex, you know. But it's embarrassing because I have no control over it. And I've had a couple of situations happen recently. I've had a couple of times where I've been in a relationship with people that have been very embarrassing and I'm knowing my triggers and I know where to get help for it. Okay. And as far as triggers, something that could make me drink, it's sometimes there's people in your lives that you just have to weed out like a garden. You know, every once in a while, you got to go and say, I don't like the looks of that. I don't like the looks of that. Because people can slowly bring you down to certain levels. They can. And I've learned to respect myself and my sobriety too, that I don't have to deal with these people anymore. I respect myself too much. I love myself. You know, I'm a child of God and he wouldn't want anything to be tarnished by some people or situations. So I have to steer clear of that. And it's been good for me. I mean, I've been most of the time pretty happy. I would say 95% of my sobriety is that. I mean, I've been really, really good. But there's days and nights just like everybody else where we get all self-obsessed. You know, it's like there's a hundred meetings in the LA area where we can go, but we'll sit at home and say, nobody likes me. I'm not going anywhere. I'm sitting here. I'm going to be miserable. You know, and if I stay like that, I will drink. You know, and what's good about going to meetings is that you can come no matter what. You can come in a good mood. You can come in a bad mood. You can be boring if you want to. Just bring your body and the spirit will follow. You know? Okay. So. And? I've also been blessed with uninterrupted recovery. God created the world. Is one day really one day or is it a thousand years? That's how I feel about my recovery. One very, very long day. I have been sober and clean. My anniversary date is August. Eighth of nineteen seventy four. So forty one years I just celebrated. And I thank God for that every day. Because I really feel it's his doing. I mean. Okay. Mm hmm. Yeah. Take your time. I just really believe I know for a fact I'm a miracle. There's no way that I should not have been dead by now. I'm a miracle. I'm a miracle. There's no way that I should not have been dead by now or locked up in some insane asylum. It's definitely the hand of God in my life. Okay. Look, let's play. I would like to play a little short clip from Bob Bowen, who was on the show in 2012. And I asked him about the concept of recovery. Okay. How does your photography program fit into the concept of recovery? I think you were telling me a little about it when you were explaining the reaction of a lot of women. What are your thoughts? This may sound a little strange, but I happen to believe everybody's in recovery. That's just a personal. Everybody's been through something. And I think what happens in this country, I don't know what happens in other places, is that we see recovery, we usually think of in terms of drugs and alcohol. And a person says they're in recovery in many cases. They're in a program or they've been through a program. But on a wider scale, everybody, everybody that I've ever known has had something happen in their life. And they're recovering from that. There could be death of a person. There could be death of a loved one. It could be even a loss of a pet. All right. And so what I'm saying is that the women that I work with, the ladies that I work with, yes, some of them are in formal recovery programs, but I generalize it. I go beyond that. And by saying that and feeling that way, it makes my relationship with them so much easier, so much better. The term that I like to use is discovery. Hmm. Because when we recover, we, in some ways, we revisit an earlier state of our life. We recover it. We kind of go back to it without the problems. When we discover, we acknowledge that something happens, but we're looking at what's ahead of me. Moving forward. Yeah, moving forward, moving forward. The word re means go back. To return means to, you know. To re, whatever. Mm-hmm. And so I see my relationship with the ladies there as one of discovery. I like to introduce ideas and thoughts and opportunities for them so that they can discover part of themselves that they hadn't paid much attention to. They don't have to worry about. They don't have to get locked into, you know, a formalized way of getting over some bad times. Mm-hmm. So that's. I find that by interacting with them in that way, it opens up all kinds of possibilities. It really, really does. They're, they're parts of themselves. They're skills that they have revealed that they hadn't even given any thought to before. And I'm finding it true for me too, you know, that there are things about my relationship with people that I never even gave any thought to before. So I look at it, not so much. I don't dismiss the concept of recovery, but that's not my emphasis. Okay. And one of my pieces in working with them as a volunteer is discovery, the next chapter in your life, the next good thing that's waiting out there for you to grasp onto. Okay. Okay. Let's pick it up on comments. Let's go on, come in about comments on what Bob was talking about there. I liked the fact that he's, that he made the point of recovery and discovery. I mean, I thought that was really great, put in such a great way because that is what happens for me anyway. anyway, you know, as I reconnected with God, I've discovered an entirely new life for myself, you know, something I hadn't really envisioned, which was a life in Christ, a beautiful wife, you know, all of these things, you know, so it's like every day there's something new, something better than what I had before, something better than those things that I thought I had lost. So it's been great. I liked when he said that we were all recovering from something because even though I put the alcohol and the drugs down, they were removed, okay? All of that pain that I had anesthetized all of a sudden was on the surface and all those issues that I never dealt with all of a sudden were there. I was a big open sore that needed to be addressed and needed to be healed. And I thank God for his gentleness because he started dealing with each one of those. One of the big things for me was dealing with my father who was an alcoholic and very abusive. He was not your happy-go-lucky drunk. And so there was a lot of physical abuse, mental abuse, emotional abuse, and there was sexual abuse in my family. And those were all things that were very, very difficult. As a result of all of that abuse, I had a distorted perception of what relationships look like, what love looked like, what affection looked like, what tenderness looked like, you know, what a healthy environment and home was like. And I had no idea what that looked like. And so I kept going for the wrong things, you know, and I kept getting hurt over and over. And so it wasn't until I started to face that and God started to heal me with that. And one of the big ways that he did that primarily for me was the way that exactly it needed to be done was he helped me to reach out to my abuser. I didn't want to. I felt I had every right to hate my father. I had every right to want him dead. I had every right to plan his murder and torture, you know, and he kept saying, yeah, no, I exist in you now. And love and hate can't coexist inside of you. I need to get that out of you. So he did heal that relationship with my father. I reached out to him. I went and visited him. And I was scared to death of this monster that I had known as a child who turned out to be shorter than me when I met him again because he spent time in jail. And and I was I was shocked that when I saw him visiting me, I was like, oh, my God, I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I'm going to die. And when to leave him, I was filled with forgiveness, compassion, and I started to cry. And I realized I had feelings for this man. So he healed that relationship. And and as a result, other things in my life started getting cleaned up and healed. Beautiful. Anybody else? Yeah, I'd like what he had to say to in my recovery. I've gotten closer with God. brought up in Michigan, I never had a problem with God. It's like people say, oh, I got sober and finally I found God. God came into my life. God has always been there for me. Drunk or stoned or whatever, he has always been there for me. And then when I got sober, I got closer to my higher power. But then getting sober, I came across the crazy madness of people who call certain religions religion and they're not having to do with religion at all. They're a bunch of hate mongers who worship, I don't know what it is, but it's not the God of love that I worship. And coming to terms with that and knowing that I don't always have to save the day by saying the right thing, being able to hold my tongue, not always having to put my two cents in and not having to do with the God of love, that's been a big thing for me to discover and finding my own tribe of people too. When I was drinking and using, I was very isolated and would think about all the wonderful artists and people that I would love to meet one day and being stuck back in Michigan where the people that I ran with weren't really that creative. I had a handful of outcasts that were either in like, punk rock bands, or whatever the hell they were, or whatever the hell they were, but not like a big area, a big field of people. And once I got sober, I started associating with all the people of my dreams that I had wanted to meet. And they've influenced my art and that's all part of recovery. And I know I can lose it all at any time just by drinking and using. And living downtown, I see it all the time. It's in my face every single day. I think, there by the grace of God, go I. That is me. I see people in wheelchairs with no legs and I see people sleeping, turning over wheelchairs and using the seat of the wheelchair as a pillow. And it bothers me, but it influences my art at the same time because I'm getting more in touch with my poetry and my writing and including these people in my stories. And my recovery has helped me with my work too, with my writing. We do inventories in AA, like something upsets us. So we write a couple of pages. What I like to do is I, instead of writing pages, I put them into a poem or I put them into a short story. And if somebody really angers me, they're going down. But it's a way for me to deal with it. I'm like, oh, wow. I'm like, oh, wow. I'm like, oh, wow. I'm like, oh, wow. I'm like, oh, wow. I'm like, oh, wow. I'm like, oh, wow. And then when I share it with people they say, oh, I've met people like that before. Or oh, I see. And it's so much more mature to write about it than it is to act on it, to get back at people. me when I was drinking or using. I was completely cut off from him in my own mind because I felt like he didn't want anything to do with me while I was drinking or using and so anyway that was just thought I had on that that you mentioned so. And is there time for me to chime in? Okay. But um I just want to say that I do facilitate an open mic night where we are blessed to hear some of Nick Paul's actually quite a few people here um but I want to chime in on that what stuck out for me again is that I do agree that we all are recovering from something and if it hadn't been the hand of God I shouldn't be here. I agree with Anna. I am a walking miracle. I was in a relationship and I should be dead and it was literally the voice of God that told me what to do that actually saved my life. And from then on I'm like oh wait there's it's that voice I had been ignoring all my life. So then I learned that for me anyway it's more than just knowing there's a God. You kind of have to obey and just kind of let him lead because the decisions I was making were not good and once I surrendered my will to him and just I mean there takes a lot of humility and just being like you know I'm not going to do what I'm doing you know so that's that's helped me and my relationship with God grew deeper through me having to almost lose my life but before then I mean I knew there was God and all that and I thought you know I was Christian whatever but it wasn't until that turning point where I'm just like oh wait this God is the only thing that must love me enough that he actually saved my life physically and spiritually but yeah. I should have been dead and I mean I threw a bible away my mother's bible and that was something I never thought I would do but I just was like and yeah so it's been a journey. How important is significant others in the concept of recovery? Very important. What was the question? How important is the concept of significance? Significant others. Others. Yeah. Miss the others. Yeah. So yeah very important. In having somebody to share with I mean and somebody to you know confess with you know when times get hard having somebody who understands is really important so the person doesn't have to necessarily going through recovery in the same sense. Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me. to go into recovery and there were two people that I told one was you Melvin ish me and the other person was Lorinda who am I just met through you and and so Lorinda stay with me you know through that recovery we weren't dating or anything but she remained my friend for what was it a year while I was in recovery it was after a year that I finally got you to go out with me okay I think he might be clean before he actually said he was going into recovery he actually said that he was actually going to Chicago and then he said I told everybody that I was going to Chicago and you two were the only two that I told you because I mean my my name is Melvin Melvin Melvin my addiction was very personal I mean I didn't get high on the streets I didn't have buddies that I got high with I was you know I was basically a loner man I performed everything that I needed to do during the day then at night I locked up in a little room and performed that so so yeah so having Lorinda be my friend through that recovery process and as well as you I did regular check-ins with you too so although you weren't my significant other you know you played a significant role in my recovery you know having someone on the streets that I could report to and say hey you know I'm hanging in there I'm doing okay you know and and then also you have to be commended because um I think I saw some way your son started college right Berkeley you see Bert you see and now that is awesome you talk about that one of the top schools in California it's really huge because you know my my choices and my decisions that I made in my life I mean have directly affected him and he's been through a lot of changes and again just believing God just believing God in prayer and I was praying for this man when he was going through too but for my son to go through everything he went through and to become stronger and it's just a blessing I mean there's people who have been through less than he's been able to achieve what he's been able to achieve and I just he just has such a beautiful heart you know and I think the time that he did spend living in Skid Row was a blessing to him where he could develop that empathy because I just saw a quote just recently that I mean you must live with a people before you can actually know how to help a people or how to you know understand and I think he has gotten so many different perspectives and I think he's been able to achieve what he's been able to achieve and it's just deep into who he is okay beautiful significant others important people in your life really important to have significant others and to keep making more significant others point in fact when I got sober in the 80s the AIDS epidemic was a full tilt nobody knew what it was and everybody was dying so here I am getting sober my first couple of months, people are dying. And these are people that I loved and were supportive of me. My best friends were dying. And I would go to meetings and it was every meeting, it was like, did you hear who passed? Did you hear who passed? And this started affecting my sobriety. It's like, I'm not coming here if everybody's dying. I don't need to be reminded that there's some horrible disease that's killing everybody and nobody knows what it is. So I started like staying away from meetings, because I didn't want to hear about that, which is a real danger sign, because what that taught me was to always love, to love people, to make new friends, make new acquaintances, because there's going to be times when the people you thought you could depend on are not going to be there. And there may be some new people that will be there. And in my early recovery, I used to think, well, I can't be calling these new people. What do you talk about when you call another AA person? Believe me, AA people will talk your ear off. Ask them how they are and they will give you 35 minutes. So every once in a while, just go, and how does that make you feel? Oh, yeah. And then what did you do? Oh, and because AA people love to talk, you know, so I'm just saying that it's always good to reach out and to make more friends and to have, to make more friends. And so, you know, I think that's one of the things that I've learned is that you can't just be a friend and you can't just be a friend and you can't just be a friend and you can't just be a friend for lack of another word. The person in the relationship up to know, it's like, I need to make a change. If not for me, for these beautiful children. And a lot of times, that is what makes that person leave a relationship. Yeah. And I'd like to comment on that because one of my children died in March. She was 24 of a heroin overdose. And I have nine years clean and sober and I quit smoking cigarettes to just be an example for the people in my family. And after them, I have 27 year old. It's his birthday today. And my significant other, my mom is like the closest one to me. Her birthday's today too. And we're just very close. We talk almost every day and I'm constantly developing others as well. But just the sadness of losing my son is just, you know, I feel like I really screwed up. It's my fault sometimes. It's my fact. It's my fact. It's my fact. It's my fact. It's my fact. It's my fact. It's my fact. It's my fact. It's my fact. It's my fact. And that's just not the way it is. It was an accident. So anyway, thanks for letting me share. Did you want to say something? Yeah. I love the whole, one of the things I love about the program of Recovery AA or Celebrate Recovery is the whole extended family concept, which is very important for me personally. Significant others come in the form of sponsors, come in the form of accountability partners, come in the form of spouses. But I'm glad you waited that year. Because they say in the program, don't get in no emotional ties that first year of recovery because you're too raw. And, you know, there's a saying, two sickies do not one well make. Because a lot of times newbies end up going back out when the relationships don't work. Which they can't work because they're not well yet. So I'm glad for the extended family, especially in my particular case. Because I had the history that I have, the very dysfunctional family that I have, the two significant family members in my life over the last three years have passed away. And my mother and my oldest sister I was the closest to. The rest of my siblings, and I come from a large family, I'm one of ten. Do. Not like this whole recovery journey I've been on. They don't like about me opening up and sharing and putting out there the dirty laundry, the secrets that should be kept. And they're pretty much against a lot of what I've done and not very happy with me. But hey, I have to do what I have to do for myself and my recovery. And it's my journey and it's my life and they've got theirs. So we stay in touch on a very superficial level. Okay. Let's take a look quick. Break for our community calendar. And then we'll come back and open up the round tape. This is the community calendar of upcoming events. Wednesday, September 23rd, 2015 at 630. Drama Stage Veterans Theatre Workshop presents Veterans in Solitary Confinement. This is a reader's theater of a stage play if the shoe fits. The script has been compiled by Andy Griggs and Melvin Ishmael Johnson. Special guest speaker for that event will be veteran Bob Rosebaugh. All are welcome to attend. It's a free event and it's free parking. Refreshments will be served. The location is St. John Methodist Church, 1715 Santa Ana Boulevard, Los Angeles, California, 9002. It's Will's Chair and Disability Center. The event is available for the public and the public. Following the reading, there will be time for a Q&A, sharing stories and many ways to take action. For contact information on this event, please call 310-704-3217 or email information if the shoe fits dot net. Thursday, September 24th, 2015 from 12 noon to 4 p.m. This is the event. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. VA for Humanitarian Housing and Care. The location is 808 East 6th Street, Los Angeles, California, 921. The address is 808 East 6th Street, and this is Gladys Park. For more information, please contact Bob Rosebaugh, 310-490-6495. We're asking you to save this date, opening on Friday, October the 9th, 2015 at 8 p.m. There will be a preview performance of Catch the Tiger, a stage play written by Melvin Ishmael Johnson and directed by Bill White. The play is about J. Edgar Hoover's efforts to bring down black pioneer leader Marcus Garvey. The location is The Moments, M-O-M-E-N-T Theater, 665 North Heliot Drive, Los Angeles, California, 9004. And this is near the corner of Vermont and Melrose. For more information, please contact Drama Stage 1 at yahoo.com or 213-908-5032. And there will be more information coming forth about the performances and ticket information. If you have a community event that you would like announced on our show, send the information to Drama Stage 1 at yahoo.com, attention Earlene Anthony. And the call-in number for our show is 800-893-9562. Now back to our hosts. Okay, thank you, Ms. Earlene Anthony. I'm back with our in-studio guests. We're going to open up the round table and talk about what are some of the things we can do to improve Skid Row as a recovery zone. Who want to pick up on that? Yes, I think one of the things we can do and one of the things we have been actually working on doing is identifying the problems that are there and then speaking with our councilmen and other city representatives about it. In one situation, we were, as a part of D-Lanc, I kind of was involved in the efforts to have Skid Row declared as a medical marijuana-free zone. So we looked at, so we've been looking at the whole problem of drugs and some of the other issues in Skid Row and there is a lot of work to be done but there's no one quick fix to everything. So what we've done is we've started to partition those problems into smaller pieces and then we attack it a piece at a time. And some people, we were, I was actually being criticized by saying that medical marijuana places were a soft target and why would you go after them? But I looked at it like, okay, this is our first fight. Let's make it one that we can win, you know? And then with that win, we gained more power, more momentum to start addressing some of the more serious issues in Skid Row. Although, I really believe that medical marijuana establishments in Skid Row were a real serious issue. So we didn't have them in the historic core. They were not in the fashion district. They were not in Little Tokyo. They were all, they had five, and we still have five, concentrated on Skid Row. So that, and then the people who, the representatives from those other neighborhoods gave us some pushback about it. But then once our neighborhood came out and I was really proud of everyone on Skid Row And I was like, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. Who showed up and said that, you know, they did not want them in their neighborhood. And I think that kind of turned the tide. So again, it was a soft target. And what we were able to do was send a letter to the city council saying that this is what we want. We want this to be a medical marijuana free zone. And that's the first step into doing more of that type of work. Okay. Now, I would like to play a short two-minute clip about what I think is one of the first step in solving the, you know, that we have homeless problem before they throw away another $118 million. If death is the realm of freedom, then through death I escape to freedom, which is a quote by Fran Fernand. Microscope. The title of this poem is A Defying Voice. To remove my whisper from general population to maximum security, I gain a voice. To remove my voice from maximum security to administrative segregation, my voice gave hope. To remove my voice from administrative segregation. Let's talk a little about, do you think,