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A testimony from Otis


Hello my name is Otis and I'm a believer in recovery from drugs, alcohol, and co-dependency.
I was born an only-child in Bakersfield, California in 1956. My mother and grandparents informed me at an early age that my father left us after his business burned down to the ground just prior to my birth and that he later died in a car accident. My mother also said since she was legally blind and in the 50's it wasn't politically correct for her to be raising me without a husband she gave me up to be adopted by my grandparents, her mother and father, when I was four. She told me later that she had hoped that, with the responsibility of raising me, my grandparents would curb their drinking.

My grandfather was an Irish WWI & WWII navy veteran, and my grandmother was a fiery Protégés woman. I know they loved me very much, and all my basic needs were covered. When I turned six we moved from the bar they owned in Calaveras County, California to Norco in Riverside County, California. My grandparents were big drinkers and every weekend would get together with the neighbors, and drink until my grandfather would start falling down. After the neighbors left, my grandparents would argue. Often, I would cry in my room hearing them in drunken rages yell at each other about ridiculous stuff. More than a few times my Grandfather would leave for one of his three-day haircuts, and would sometimes be found by my Grandmother or the neighbors sleeping on the front lawn. I vividly remember once witnessing my grandfather in a drunken rage try to break my grandmothers back over his knee, I remember begging grandpa not to do it and crying as I ran from the kitchen to my bedroom. Fortunately he didn't succeed.

While in Norco I met a close childhood friends and for the next several years this family, the Hernandez family, would be my island of refuge, and to this day, I call Che and Vangie "Mom and Dad." Every weekend, they would let me stay at their home, take me to their church, and have me pray with their family. This was my first experience with religion, and this family led me as a child to accept Christ into my heart.

You are my hiding place; you will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance. Psalm 32:7

At 11, we moved to Santa Cruz so I could be closer to my mother. We settled in Capitola, I met two brothers, who were going to a church in Santa Cruz at that was a sister church to the one I had attended in southern California. These two brothers also went to a Christian school that I also wanted to go to. I got to go and worked a part-time job cleaning a cabinet shop on the school grounds for my tuition. A short time later a church member sponsored my tuition.

I constantly lived with the underlying fear that my grandparents would come to a school function. So every time the school invited them I would conveniently loose the information or tell them I forgot hoping they wouldn't show up. Most every Saturday; a group of us kids, along with the church's youth leader, would go and sing in local convalescent homes. One time, as they dropped me off, the youth leader insisted on us singing to my grandparents. I was so ashamed and embarrassed.

I wasn't more than thirteen when I discovered that being the clown, or hurting myself on purpose would get the attention from the teachers I wasn't getting at home. This didn't make up for the fact I was failing miserably in my studies, so after attending the church's school for four years the tuition from my church sponsor was canceled. I began to develop a rebellious attitude, one of the specific reasons is that I was cornered and pressured by a youth leader who convinced me to break all my Beatles and Santana albums because "it's sinners music", so left with one Glen Campbell album. I quit the Christian school to attend Soquel High School. It was then that I turned my back on God.

Long before attending public school I was mentored on the guitar by my only friend that to this day has been consistent with his moral values. It was with him and his brother that I had my first band experience. But as soon as I started to attend public school, I also started drinking, smoking marijuana, doing hallucinogens, and consuming any other drug I could get my hands on. I thought this was all par for the course because I was pursuing a professional music career; in fact why go to school, why apply myself to studies that I would never use? I didn't need it! So I would cut classes to get high with the dopers, and would play music at any high school party I could find. During my years in high school, and as a result of the crowd I hung with, I constantly dealt with rocks begin thrown at me, being called names, and was beat up repeatedly during and after school, this all because I was considered the looser stoner, doper, choir boy.

It was when I was fifteen that I moved out of my grandparent's house to live with my mother and step dad. Hurt by the move, and my behavior my grandparents went back to Southern California. One year later after being busted for pot, I moved out of my mothers house to live on my own because I didn't like rules. At sixteen and living on my own I worked at night cleaning restaurants on the wharf, and local stores to pay for my rent. I would always offer to clean the bar of the restaurant, for obvious reasons, and when the boss wasn't looking I would smuggle bottles of alcohol into to alley and pick them up later that same night and take them home.

I was also collecting a small SSI check for going to school full time. And because I wasn't going to school, the school principle informed the SSI folks and they canceled the checks. By the late-70s, I was living with a band in Ben Lomond, and it was there one afternoon I received a call from a man who called me son. Yes, the father who was supposed to be dead from the car accident is really alive. Soon, I was on a plane to meet my biological father and his wife. After being picked up at LAX, we went directly to a huge fancy party in Los Angeles. I don't remember what the party was for but during the first few hours of knowing my father I was pretty much blown away. Next thing I know I'm driving my father and his wife home as the designated driver, but the real surprise was when we got to the house. Walking in the door I saw children sleeping on the floor, and to my astonishment, I was informed I had a brother and two sisters I never new about. After talking to my new brother and sisters I was thankful that it was my Grandparents who raised me.

Back at home in Santa Cruz my days and nights were filled by working a full-time day-job and playing clubs at night. I got away with drinking underage in these clubs by asking the older band members to put ice cubes in dark beer so it looked like Coke. After years of rejection by young women in high school, I used my position as a musician to take advantage of women. I had also become a skilled liar, and thief.

In the late-'80s, now 27, I was working full time with a top-40 band on the Esplanade in Capitola, and it was there I met my first wife. We were both big drinkers, and I knew what I was getting myself into. Her brothers warned me but there was no stopping the wedding. From the very beginning I just fell in love with her four-year-old son Gabriel, and because I never really had a father, I thought maybe I could be a father to this child. It was about one year into the marriage I adopted Gabriel as my own and to this day he calls me dad. It was about four years into the marriage I was blessed with my daughter Christina.
Because of my addictions the marriage was in troubled from the beginning. I found myself reliving my childhood, except this time, I was repeating my grandfather's behavior, drinking and arguing every weekend with my wife, and scaring the children. I was putting my kids thought the very thing I promised myself I would never do if I had kids. In drunken rages and while under the influence of cocaine, methamphetamines or sometimes even both, my wife and I would beat each other up, one time, I put myself in the hospital after putting my fist though a window. My only escape from the dysfunction I helped to created at home was by working a full time job and gigging as a full-time musician three to five nights a week. It was after years of repeatedly staying out all hours of the night, putting my music and drugs first, that my wife of nine years found someone else, and served me with divorce papers while I was doing a local gig.

I'm not suggesting that I didn't love my kids, I did and still do! I attempted to be the best dad I could given our circumstances. I did the entire little league, soccer, and Cub Scout thing, and I was willing to work this marriage out for my children's sake. I wanted so much for my kids to have a father so I stopped drinking for a while, went to a few AA meetings, and even bought the Big Book. The marriage didn't work out, I realized later for the better. Going to AA meetings and just owning the Big Book didn't work either. I had no clue what working the program even was.

In his heart a man plans his course but the Lord determines his steps. Proverbs 16:9

After staying with my mother for a while, I asked a friend to let me stay at his house for a few weeks. A few weeks turned into three years, and now after years of continued drug and alcohol abuse, I found myself 38 years old. My kids had moved with their mother to Utah. My on-fire music career had gone from playing good paying gigs all over northern California to working small smoke filled bars within and easy crawl from home. It was at the one of these bars I met my next wife, Kendall. After weeks of rejection and being called a blanking lounge lizard, she finally went out with me, and we married one year later.

Now while all this was happening my mother had been fighting breast cancer and lost her battle in 1995. It was only because of the efforts of my wife, and hospice that I was able to have my mother die literary in my arms. I'm thankful that I got to be there as she passed, and as I lifted her into bed be we both exchanged I love you. My only regret is in the hours prior to here passing when I could have been comforting her; I suppressed my feelings with a six-pack of Bud and a pint of tequila.

My downward spiral continued, the clubs that used to call stopped. Other bands wouldn't call me for fill-in gigs either. My reputation had turned into a drunken bar fly musician. My bar tab at the local watering hole was always between one to two hundred dollars a week. I continually tried to fool myself by thinking I was a social drinker and tried to convince Kendall and others of that by saying "oh my music paid for my habits," and "It's a break-even thing". Kendall new better but didn't complain until the processed checks showed up at the end of the month, month after month. After any gig I did get our house would be "Party Central" until sunrise, after years of never getting caught, killing myself or someone else, I was finally pulled over arrested and convicted for a DUI on April 5th 1995.

Four more years would pass and in the late part of 1999, I was recommended to play a wedding for Tim and Jen M. Who would have guessed that the person who recommended me for this wedding would also be involved with a Christ centered twelve step recovery program and the owner of the business that gave me my first job after getting kicked out of high school almost 30 years prior? Tim and Jen came over to talk to me about playing their wedding. I had know idea they where both in recovery but I did know they went to church, so I did my best to cover up the smell of marijuana, but the thing I was really kicking myself about was that the biggest picture on the wall was a Budweiser sign I used to line cocaine on that I forgot to take down. Surprisingly, they hired the band anyway.
Soon after Tim and Jen's wedding, I got ill with a fever that would range from 99 to 104 and didn't go away for six weeks. I was sick and on my back! The doctors took a chest ex-ray that revealed a spot on my lung. Naturally, I started to get worried. I pondered things like: What have I done with my life? What kind of example have I been to my children? Have I ever done for anything good for anyone? Have I really just partied my life away? Now, I probably have cancer, and I'm going down for the count. Is this really it?

While this was all going on in my head, and to my surprise I was recommended to play a Celebrate Recovery clean and sober New Year's Eve party. When I got the call for the event, I thought, "Well, I can keep all my money instead of giving half of it to the bar. I will be well the next day. I can pack up my equipment that night, and I don't have to worry about getting pulled over", and I actually thought "I can stop at the bar on the way home that is only three blocks from the house and still get the buzz on afterward". It was truly a win-win thing in my mind. Boy was I in for a surprise. The night of the party, I saw Christianity at its finest, with people who really cared about each other and loved the Lord, and best of all, they were not judging me or pushing their trip. They weren't acting better than everyone else like so many of the Christians I had encountered before; and they even liked the Beatles and Santana.

After the event was over, I packed up my equipment, and on my way home, I stopped with Kendall
at the local bar I would have played at that night if I hadn't played the Celebrate Recovery party. As my beer was being served, I took a good look around. There were all my supposed friends out of their minds drunk. I, on the other hand, was stone straight. As I took a sip of the beer I had ordered my wife looked up at me and I will never forget what she said, "Doesn't seem the same any more, does it?" With that, I put down the beer, Kendall and I left the bar, and I have been clean and sober, and even quite smoking from that day January second 2001 close to 4 years ago.

I remember the night of the New Years Eve party Tim & Jen had invited Kendall and I to come to Celebrate Recovery, we have been attending most every Friday night since then.

Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is- his good, pleasing and perfect will. Romans 12:2

In February of 2002, I had and operation to remove the spot on my lung. Who do you think was in the waiting room of hospital during my operation with my wife Kendall? Who do you think visited me in ICU? None of my so-called friends from the bar! Not many of my musician friends either! Who was there? My new christian recovery family. Oh! And by the way even though they had removed 1/3 of my right lung, the spot turned out to be a non-malignant granuloma caused by valley fever.

Today I'm living proof that Otis's way doesn't work. But God's way does. I choose to know God more, praying only for the knowledge of his will for my life and the power to carry it out. With this newfound strength, I find myself extremely excited when I have the chance to share with others, while sponsoring, co-leading a step class, serving on a worship team, the prison ministry team, and any time I can share with others the joy that life does have to offer. As I started to attend this Christ centered recovery program each Friday night I started growing more each time. I found a real home in my open share group. This group of guy's knows everything about me and still like me! I bought the Life Recovery Bible and worked through the 12 steps in a week night step study group. This is where the real pick and shovel work of recovery goes on.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths strait. Proverbs 3: 5-6

I just have so much to be grateful for: This Christian recovery family who are always they're for me, never judging and always loving and accepting. I have a renewed healthy relationship with my children who have seen the changes in me. I know they like the new and improved dad but not necessarily the boundaries. I am extremely grateful for the relationship with my wife and how our marriage has grown because we both work a program, with Jesus in the center of it all. I love you, Kendall. Most of all, what I am grateful for is the relationship that I have with my higher power, Jesus, for He has taken me, and all the things I have done wrong in my life, to use for His glory. He has freed me by paying the ultimate price and now, I can be used to serve Him by serving others.
As I begin to wrap up I would like to talk now to the newcomer. Here are a few things I had to do to keep my recovery from getting hung-up or stalled.

  • Just admit to yourself you need help: When I first came here I told everyone that I was just a social drinker. I didn't tell everyone that I was social every night. It's ok to say to yourself I'm a mess. As soon as you stop living the lie and admitting the truth, and just quietly tell God your sorry. You will find immediate comfort within that admission.

  • Don't be to hard on yourself: No one that is really in recovery is going to judge you. And you know what! God has already forgiven you anyway.

    Romans 3:23-24 says: For all have sinned; all fall short of Gods glorious standards. Yet now God in his gracious kindness declares us not guilty. He has done this through Christ Jesus who has freed us by taking away our sins.

  • Service: There are a lot of opportunities where volunteers are needed. No one thing is more important than the other. All service is important! Service and the responsibility of showing up I have found to be essential to my recovery. So I would urge you to get plugged into service.

  • Find a sponsor: In Proverbs 12:15 it says: The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man is he who listens to counsel. I can't stress how important it is to find a sponsor. I wasn't here more than two weeks when I asked someone to be my sponsor. My sponsor is also my best friend. Don't be afraid to ask.

  • Start working a program: Even while I was looking for a sponsor I created a list of persons willing to be my accountability partners. Surround yourself with people in the program. ALSO you could sign up for a week night step study class. I am in the last few weeks of a twelve-step class. These classes have been essential to my growth in recovery. And don't forget there is a lot of meeting you can go to. Just start going to meetings!

  • Find a church: Before I was introduced to the recovery program I am involved in I thought I would never go to a church. Today I am privileged to be a member of local Santa Cruz Church. I also visit another church in Watsonville. Just because you come to a chruches recovery program does not mean you have to belong to the host church. Many of us here are from a variety of churches all over the Santa Cruz area and beyond, but the common denominator is that our higher power is not anonymous His name is Jesus.

    All things are possible through working the twelve steps and accepting Jesus as your higher power. IF GOD CAN DO THIS FOR ME, HE CAN CERTAINLY RESTORE YOU AS WELL. YOU DON'T NEED TO CLEAN YOURSELF UP FIRST. JUST COME AS YOU ARE AND HE WILL MAKE YOU WHOLE.

    Thanks for letting me share my life with you and for sharing your lives with me! Email me: cutheremusic@sbcglobal.net
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