 Welcome to Fairfield University's presentation of Charlie Smith telling his story of addiction, recovery and hope. We are delighted that Charlie is with us tonight. I'm Susan Burge, I'm the director of Counseling and Psychological Services. And before we start the program, I want to talk a little bit about the wonderful resources that we have at Fairfield University. Counseling and Psychological Services is no charge. It is confidential. It is provided by licensed psychotherapists. Students utilize us for stress, anxiety, depression, maybe trauma, sexual assault, maybe abuse, maybe family issues, and when they're struggling with alcohol and drugs. And so over the years, especially the last 10 years, my partner Lisa Arnold and I have worked very hard with a group of wonderful people, both inside the university and dedicated to this project to create a collegiate recovery program. This is a program that is for men and women who are in recovery from alcohol or addiction. They are dedicated to getting an education, a Fairfield University education, while maintaining their sobriety. So this is quite a challenge. And I have to tell you, they're really courageous. They're brave men and women who do a superb job and mostly, mostly feel good about themselves and their accomplishments as they inspire us and others. Again, with their bravery. Before starting this program, there's some people in the room who have built this program that not only consists of support, academic, spiritual programming, but importantly now, residential living. We have a house near campus in which four men, five men, including our house manager, live. So those on the board, those involved with us, please stand up because you made this happen. Father Michael Duty, Barry Derbyshire, Chris Pates was instrumental in getting us started. Welcome back. Dawn D.B. Oss is our academic advisor and support people person. Lisa Arnold is a clinical director. She's gonna talk to you in a minute. Programs take a lot of effort in terms of people, but they take a lot of effort in terms of kindness and generosity and willingness to be vulnerable, willingness to lean in, willingness to step up, and that's what Charlie Smith did. When we first got this off the ground, he got in touch with us and he said, I wanna help. He would come out, he visits twice a year, he meets with the men and women in recovery and he has been a generous funder for all the good work that is done in this program. So we are so proud to have an alumni, a member of our board, and importantly, someone who models for us how to do the right thing and then do the next right thing. Lisa's gonna introduce him, but Charlie Smith, welcome home and thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Thank you, Susan. So I was outside yesterday morning putting up all those beautiful lawn signs that you see. It looks like a lot of people saw them. And I snapped a picture of one of them and I texted it to Charlie and all I could think of was the caption who to thunk it because I know Charlie Smith in recovery. I don't know the Charlie Smith who was here as a student who was active in addiction and off the rails. So I watched his YouTube video a couple of months ago. He did his first one in April and the story is amazing because he shows his vulnerability. He shows his resiliency. He shows what it was really like in all different parts of his life where he struggled tremendously. Anybody who hears this story is going to, it's going to resonate in many different ways for different people. And it certainly did for me. And I think one of his take home messages is, you're never alone, even when you think you are. So his story is really, really great and he's going to tell it now without further ado. Mr. Charlie Smith. Well, thank, thank, can you guys hear me okay back there? You raise your hand. Okay, great, thanks. Well, first of all, I'm overwhelmed. I want to thank both Lisa and Susan for the invitation to come here and speak. It's surreal for me to be here 30 years after graduating from Fairfield University to come speak to you all tonight. Being a part of the Collegiate Recovery Program in addition to continuing to have an impact on the university means a lot to me personally. So it means a lot to me that all of you are here. And look, I know what most of you are thinking. I know a lot of you here are first year students. You've been here a couple of weeks. You've probably made some great friends already. You've probably started to connect. There's probably some parties going on. There's probably some assignments that your teachers have given you. And you're sitting here coming to this event to listen to a 53 year old guy talk to you about alcoholism and drug addiction. To be honest with you, I'm not so sure that I would have been in this room 30 years ago but I can tell you that I'm really glad you are because if the university had had somebody like me come to this university 30 years ago and tell you what I'm gonna tell you tonight, I think that my life would have been a lot different. I think I would have avoided a lot of pain and a lot of suffering in my own life and in the lives of others that I'm hoping to help some of you avoid. I'm also hoping to help someone else avoid that. And so that's one of the things that I'm here to do tonight. And this is a first year event. I think they call it a Thrive first year event which means all of you freshmen that are here that were able to sign in, I hope you all did, are gonna get some class credit for being here. I don't know if any of you have any interest in doing public speaking after you graduate but when you take an agreement to be at an event where your audience is required to be there, it's a big ego boost. So I think tomorrow I'll start the prison systems and work my way from there. So thank you for being here. Let me tell you a little bit about where I'm gonna take you tonight. I'm gonna speak for about 50 to 60 minutes, no more. I'm gonna tell you about where I came from. It has a lot to do with how I got here. I'm gonna tell you about my time here at Fairfield. I spent four years here at Fairfield like many of you will when some of you already have. I'm gonna tell you about a really important part of Fairfield. I know most of you that are here that are freshmen at some point have been doing orientation with the academic and the administrators telling you to look to your left, look to your right, look in front of you, look behind you. Some of those kids won't be here next year. That was my experience. It is true. You are all at a point now where the choices that you make will impact your life. I believe and you'll hear me talk more about tonight when you choose certain behaviors, you choose certain consequences. Some of you will, some of you chose to come here tonight. Some students chose not to. Some wanted to and couldn't get in. I mean, I feel bad about that but this will be up for them to see. Some of you will choose to prepare for your classes. You'll do homework and you'll prepare papers on time and some of you will cram. Some of you will go to a party the night before a big test and not prepare and some of you will not. Some of you will be offered something at a party, some drugs, some drink that you may not want. You'll take it cause you're in some pain. Some of you will not. I'm just here to tell you all of the choices that you make as adults and you all adults now have consequences both good and bad. So I'm asking you tonight to think about those choices and to at least choose on purpose. Know the decisions that you make. Know why you're making them and then realize that the consequences are yours because that's what happened to some of the kids that weren't there. But I'm here to tell you also about a much more important part of Fairfield University for me because the other thing that happened to me in the four years that I was here is I met some of the closest friends that I've ever had in my life and you'll excuse me at times I do get emotional. Sometimes I do use foul language but not that much. Mom you can wash my mouth out later if you need to. But I met some of the closest friends that I've ever had in my life. Most of this front couple of rows is filled with them. They graduated with me 30 years ago. They are men and women that have walked through hell with me when I was in hell and they helped pull me out. They showed up for me when I was on campus. I'm not just here tonight to talk to the students that may identify with some of the pain that I've been in. I'm here also to talk to the students that do not. I would say to a person none of my friends that are here tonight experienced anything like I experienced as a child. But they all have been here for me. They did something that no one had done for me before I came to Fairfield University and met them, my software, which was they accepted me and they validated me and they didn't judge me. And so when you walk by that kid in the campus center on a Friday night who might be put with his laptop out, I was gonna say pad and paper but you guys don't do that anymore. With his laptop out and he's working on an assignment and you think oh it's too bad for him. That kid may be fighting for his life but stay here to avoid going somewhere else. I just ask you walk by him and say good luck on your test, good luck with that paper. And when you're done we'll be hanging out in campion because that's what these guys did for me 30 years ago. I'm gonna tell you what happened after I left Fairfield University. The real title of this talk is what you don't deal with will deal with you. And I didn't deal with a lot of things. There's a lot of things I didn't tell these guys when I was here that I was embarrassed about and that I was ashamed about. Ultimately it dealt with me. And so after I left here I ended up, drugs and alcohol took over my life and at some point I had no control over. How much of those I consumed and when I consumed them? I also lost control of what happened when I took them. What I didn't want to happen happened and what I wanted to happen did not happen. I then found recovery. I got sober 11 years ago. It completely changed my life. I have an amazing life. And I'm gonna tell you about that at the end of this talk as you guys say on InstaSnap or whatever it is, wait for it. It'll come at the end. But I'm gonna tell you how I live today because there's two things I want you to know about this talk. I have overcome a lot of adversity. It is true. But I am not the hero of this story. The hero of this story are the values and the lessons that I learned. I paid the idiot tax. You can either choose to listen tonight and learn from it so you don't have to pay it yourselves. The values and the lessons that I live by today are the real and the values and the lessons that I didn't live back by back then are the real heroes of this story. So I hope they'll come through tonight for you. I grew up in Southern Maine about five hours north of here. My mother was a first grade school teacher and my father was a college professor. To the outside world looked like just any other normal family. I think at some point in my life we're even on the cover of Catholic Church Magazine in 1977 as a model family. From the age of five until the age of 20 I was violently and emotionally abused by my father. I'm not talking about a strict guy. I'm not talking about a heavy-handed father. And I'm not talking about a guy who wanted his rules to be followed or you get the belt. I'm talking about a violent man. From the age of six I experienced closed fist punches to my face to a bloody nose. I've had my head bashed against walls and brick fireplaces in my home. At the age of 20 while I was on break from this university I went home for Christmas and had a 45 caliber pistol pointed to my head, his knee on my chest. And I knew that gun was loaded. Someone in my family knocked him off and I went to my girlfriend's house. I drove in my 1968 Chevy Nova green with a white roof, that's right. From here to White Plains, New York and I really never went back to Maine. I don't tell you that for effect. I don't tell you that for sympathy. And I don't tell you that because I'm a victim of that. I tell you that for two reasons. One, because it's the truth. It's the truth. And I never wanted to admit that that was the truth. I didn't want to admit that that was my life. And I think one of the greatest values I've learned today is the value of the truth. That's why I'm so glad that Susan and Lisa are here. Because one of the goals that I have for tonight, one of the asks I have, I don't have a podcast, I don't sell mugs or t-shirts. All that I ask is if you are in pain, if you've experienced something like I've experienced that you'd be willing to talk about it to somebody that you deal with it, you learn how to deal with it. This podcast, this talk will be on a YouTube channel, my personal email address is on it. Susan has my cell phone number. I want anybody in this room to feel comfortable being able to talk about it because I didn't. The second reason I'm telling you that is because by statistics, 75% of people that suffer from substance abuse, alcoholism, drug addiction, bulimia, eating disorders, have suffered some kind of childhood trauma growing up. 75%, what you don't deal with will deal with you. And that's an important statistic. They now have a test called the ACE. It's called adverse childhood experience where they can predict by the number of these experiences that you've had. And they don't have to be as bad as mine. Or they could be worse. It could be bullying, it could be cyberbullying. It could be growing up in an alcoholic family with a mother or a father who's a drug addict or an alcoholic. It could be a vicious divorce. It could be witnessing domestic violence, sexual abuse, physical abuse. They all qualify as an adverse childhood experience. As children, growing up, we're supposed to be safe. We're supposed to feel safe and protected. We're not supposed to engage that fight or flight resource in our brains at such a young age as I had to. And so if you've experienced that, your physiology, your neurotransmitters have been changed. And so they predict that if you don't deal with those things, that you could run into trouble and have to avoid them down the road. So those experiences created two behaviors in me that I want to tell you about that I think are pretty defining of how I grew up and what I experienced. The first is I learned to be dishonest. I had what I call a damaged personal truth. My core belief about myself was damaged. I didn't think I fit in anywhere. When I went to school and I saw the other kids getting dropped off by their parents, by their loving parents with their shiny lunchboxes, I knew that their lives weren't like mine. I knew I must not fit in. So in order to fit in, I learned to lie. I learned to be dishonest about who I was. See, I wanted them to think that I was like them. So I told them that I played sports like they did. I told them I watched sports like they did. I told them I went on family vacations like they did. I told them my parents did homework with me like theirs did. It wasn't true. But I knew that they were covering up bruises, and I knew that they were holding back tears from what happened to them last night. And I knew if I wanted to fit in, that I had to lie about who I was. And that continued through most of my life. The other pattern, because some people will say, well, Charlie, you went through so much. How did you end up becoming so successful? First of all, that's a loosely defined term. Everybody should define that for themselves. But the second pattern that I developed was I developed a healthy work ethic. Not a healthy, a hard work ethic. I don't believe any of us do anything in pattern. That means I don't believe any of us, any of you in this room, no matter of your age, do anything in pattern that you don't get a payoff from. We do things in pattern because we get a payoff from doing them. We get something out of them. Sometimes it's not a good payoff. Sometimes we don't do things in pattern so that we don't have to fail. We don't try new things. And the payoff is not failing. Because if I don't try, I won't fail. For me, there were two things that were acceptable to my father for me to be out of my house. One was school, and the other was work. So from the age of about 13, I got my first job picking peas, and I worked from the age of 13, and I still work today because it meant I could be out of my house. I used to think that my father gave me a healthy work ethic, but he did not. What he did is he put the fear of God in me that if I was home, I was unsafe, and so to be not at home was all I cared about. And I was a compliant worker. I don't say this to brag. I say it because this is the truth. I'm 53 years old. I've never been fired, laid off, terminated, written up, demoted from any job I've ever had since I started working at the age of 13 because I was compliant. See, I got validation at work. I was the kind of worker that every boss wanted. And I needed validation. In fact, all of us do. All of us need validation. We all need to feel a part of it. So when you grow up like me, you don't feel a part of anything. And so I felt a part of it work. I felt accepted at work. And so I learned to work and I worked hard. Pick peas from the age of 13. I used to work at a restaurant, washing dishes when I was in high school, and then I'd go into the city of Portland and bake bread til four in the morning. Drink a 40 at 15 and come home. See, drinking and drugs, I started drinking at the age of 12. They did something for me. Wasn't about what I drank. It wasn't about how much I drank. It was about why I drank, and I drank to forget. I didn't drink to hang out. I didn't drink out to socialize. My drinking was on purpose. When I picked up a drink or a drug, it numbed my feelings about what was happening to me, and I could avoid it. And so I learned to depend on that. And that's how I got through high school. I'll tell you, there's a lot of power. And I'm gonna repeat this a few times, so remember it. There's a lot of power in what we think about ourselves. What we think about ourselves is 10 times more important than what anyone else thinks about us. And what we say out loud is even more important. My mother also told me when I was very young that in order for me to be safe that we had to get you to college. I can't protect you, and I'm here to tell you, my mother is here, and I love my mother, and she's taking responsibility for everything that's happened in our family, and I appreciate the fact that she's here. I don't hold anybody responsible for my life today. But she would tell me, if we can get you to college, you'll be safe. And I heard that. And so what did I do? I worked. I did well enough in school so that I could get to college. Not because I had aspirations of becoming a doctor, or a lawyer, or a rocket science, anything. I had no aspirations. I had aspirations to live, to survive. But she told me if we could get you to college, you'd be safe. So I applied to colleges. Fairfield University was my number one choice because it was the furthest. I did go to a Jesuit high school. I was not the greatest student. I'll tell you more about that. I was not living up to his potential regular report card comment student. But I got into Fairfield University. And I'll tell you about the day before I came here. And it's kind of surreal because I look around this room and I see the faces of a lot of freshmen. And I know y'all just came down here for Move-in Day. The day before Move-in Day started in Scarborough, Maine, I was packing my room to come down here with a lot of excitement, a lot of anticipation, just like you. My father walked into my room and he saw my pink shirt with a white collar and a gold tie bar. You'll have to Google Rocky III, 1980 something to see such a relic, but they do exist. For me it was my favorite shirt. I said, hey, they'll probably have some events down here where I'm gonna have to wear something nice. So I was gonna pack that shirt and he looked at that shirt and he said, that's a fucking drug dealer's shirt. Drug dealers wear those shirts. You're gonna take that shirt to Fairfield? Now, in all transparency, I do have a bit of a sore pass and at some point I am a recovering addict. I did have a small distribution network. However, he was a lot of things but not a predictor of the future. I never wore that shirt ever when I was dealing drugs. So he was wrong about that, okay? Now you know everybody has a tell. Maybe a picture when he's gonna throw a pitch. Maybe you've heard card players when they have a certain hand they have a twitch in their eye. My father had a tell. When he was coming at me his tongue would come out of his mouth and his fist would clench. I couldn't see any blood in his veins. His knuckles were raw. And I said to myself that day, not one more beating, not one more beating in this house am I gonna take? And that day before I came to Fairfield I ran down the stairs of our house. I didn't have any money in my pocket. There were no cell phones. I didn't have a quarter in my pocket for a pay phone. You guys even know what one of those looks like. I didn't have a quarter for one of those. And I left my house. I didn't know where I was going. I just knew I needed to get away. I knew I could not take it anymore. I was 17, 18 years old and something in my mind said no more. And so I left. We lived on a little rural road in Scarborough, Maine. I started to walk up the hill. When I heard the engine of his station wagon I had become very attuned to the sound of that engine. It meant he was either coming home or leaving and both of those things meant something to me. I thought maybe he was just leaving. He did that after he got into a rage until I saw him turn the car towards me. And as I got off the side of the road thinking he would pass, he continued towards me. And so the day before I came to Fairfield, he came at me and I jumped beside a boulder that had come to rest at the bottom of our hill and I got away and I could see him skid to a stop with his hands on the steering wheel. Fuck, I missed him. And so I walked. I walked to Cape Elizabeth. I don't know how far that is. I was young at the time. It felt like forever. I just was walking. And I went to my friend Peter Melius' house and I sat. I will tell you that a lot of things in my memory are blocked out so I don't exactly remember what happened but our family had a big carpet and a big broom and a lot of stuff just got swept under. So it probably went something like this. My mother drove to the Melius and said, oh, you know, little Charlie's a little sensitive. He just got into it with his dad. We have to get him down to Fairfield tomorrow. I'm gonna bring him home. And that's what happened. The next morning I got in that same station wagon that was headed for my legs and drove here. Five hours, all of my stuff packed. Like nothing had happened to them. To me, everything had happened. And I wanna tell you that the ride from Scarborough, Maine to Fairfield, Connecticut was like a laden's carpet ride for me. I mean, it was a whole new world. See, I knew two things were gonna happen in about five hours. They were dropping me off and they were leaving. That was the day before move-in day for me. And I wanna tell you that that feeling that I had, see, I always grew up. Every summer, I just wanna unzip my skin, walk out and be somebody new when I went to high school. Be better looking, be smarter, be a better athlete. And now, only one kid from Shevers went to Fairfield University. So now I was at Charlie version 2.0, could be created. He came down here as Chazz. They joke, when you give yourself your own nickname, you really know that you don't like to be yourself. So I'd give myself a nickname and I was coming to Fairfield and I was gonna be a new version of myself and that feeling, that joy I talked to you about lasted for about 20 minutes and then it ended. It was gone. You know why? Because the same thing happened. I came to Fairfield and I saw the same kids getting dropped off in their nice cars with their nice clothes. They had on their khaki pants and their polo shirts and their Reeboks. It was the 80s, okay? Reeboks were really cool in the 80s. And I knew at that moment that I was in for the same thing because I didn't fit in here either. See, I came down from Maine with my jean jacket with the plaid interior and the Herman survivor work boots and I didn't look like them, or most of them. Sorry, Mike. He came from upstate New York. I found out a few nights ago, he also had timberland work boots and a jean jacket. So, see, but I didn't know I fit in. I didn't know that I, I didn't think there were other kids like me because of what had happened in my house and the damaged personal truth I came down here from I was again on the outside, you know? And I continued all those patterns. I was shooting Nyquil in front of the medicine cabinet to quiet my mind. You know, my mind was just talking to me. You are a loser. You won't make it here. You're gonna end up back at home. You won't make it anywhere. Just kept talking to me and talking to me and it wouldn't shut up. Nyquil made it shut up, nothing else. And Booz made it shut up. See, I drank and used drugs unlike other people. That happened to me at that age and the dishonesty continued. I'll tell you a funny story. I played freshman football because that's what cool kids do, right? They play football. The cool kids played football. That's what I thought. Not true. Cool kids play chess. Cool kids are on the debate team. Cool kids do a lot of things. But for me, there was only one thing cool kids did. They played football. So I went out for football. Freshmen, and I wasn't a good athlete. So freshman year I tore my ACL playing football and never played another down. It was my first time in a game. My geometry teacher said, hey, Smith, you're good in math and Coach Hoyt needs somebody to keep stats for the varsity basketball team. Why don't you take that on? Well, remember, if I was at school or at work, I didn't have to be at home. So keeping stats for the basketball team counted. So when I came down here as a freshman, I went to my freshman dorm and they gave me a varsity letter for my efforts with the varsity basketball team. And I pinned that to my dorm room, little pegboard above my desk. And when my roommates asked me what I lettered in, I said football. See, I had learned to be dishonest about who I was. To fit whatever situation I was in, to seem cool even though it wasn't true. And when you do that, you develop guilt and shame because you know it's not true. And so that's what happened for me. And it got worse for me freshman year. I remember going back to that same dorm room, group of guys. They're all from kind of Bergen County. Some of them had grown up together, going to high school. And I remember saying to them, I kind of avoided it for a while and I said to them kind of, that time of freshman year when everyone's picking roommates for sophomore year, I said, hey, where are we roomin' next year? We're gonna room together, we're gonna go to the joes, we said, oh, we met some guys from Regis, we're going up to Campion. We thought you were gonna room with Art and those guys. I said, okay, yeah, that's probably what I'll do. And once again, there I was by myself. I didn't fit in here and I didn't fit in there. But one thing that I wanna tell you guys about tonight that's so important and everything that I've done is the value of resiliency. See, I never quit. I never stopped pushing forward as much pain as I was in. And even though I was covering it up, I never thought that that was my lot in life. I knew there must, I didn't know there must be something better, I just knew I had to keep moving forward. And things just like that turned around for me. In an unsuspecting snowball fight, up at the quad, the first snow here on campus, I grabbed ahold of one of my closer friends. This kid, Aaron Brown, who was on the basketball team, Aaron was about six, eight, six, six, six, eight, John, big, from Detroit, Michigan. And me and my work boots and my jean jacket and Aaron Brown and his full coat and gold chains walked up to the quad for the snowball fight. And that night, two kids, Hugh Coyle and Chris McKeon, who's sitting in the front row here, said, hey, after the snowball fight, why don't you come up to Joe's and hang out with us? Changed my life. Now, see, I didn't just fly back here to talk to you guys, although I'm thrilled to. I came back here because every year, about 13 of us fly back to play in Chris McKeon's charity golf tournament, which we all did yesterday. See, that's what happens here at Fairfield University. When I was in that room, looking to my left, looking to my right, looking in front and behind, I didn't know that the closest friends I'd ever have in my life were in that room. I didn't know them that day, but I know them today. And a bunch of those guys that were there yesterday, they're here today. And so they said, hey, this kid Brian's roommate is not gonna make it. He was one of the other frontier behind you kids who made those other choices and he wasn't there. So I got to move up and live with these guys. And that's why I say I'm not just talking to the kids in this room that identify with what I've been through. I'm talking to all of you because they didn't know what I had been through, but they accepted me. Chris said, come up to Joe's. This guy's moving out. Next thing you know, I live on Joe's four. And the rest of my experience here at Fairfield was incredible. We moved down to the beach together. We hung out together. And 30 years later, we're still friends. When I went, when I hit rock bottom, which you'll hear about later, and my life was at its worst, it was these guys that got on planes and came to California to make sure I'd be okay. And I also want to tell you that it's not just the students here, it's the professors. I don't want to point them out, but Dr. Phil Lane is in the back of this room. He was my economics professor when I was here. He helped me. He showed up for me. He believed in me. He gave me an internship into New York City, along with some of the other faculty members in the economics department. And he didn't know what I was going through. When I saw him today, he was just what we do. There's so many people that are willing to help. I don't care if there's a line out the door at counseling services tomorrow like there's a Drake concert on Saturday. If you guys need help, ask for it. And he showed up tonight. He has a family. His wife lives up in Massachusetts and he came tonight. Had coffee with me this morning. This is an incredible university from that standpoint because that's what I developed here with those friendships. And so I finished here at Fairfield University and I graduated. And it was one of the hardest days of my life. I remember being down at the point, drinking my last drink, smoking my last smokes as long as I could until the landlord was gonna throw us out because I didn't want it to end. It's the closest thing I ever had to a family. It was the closest thing I ever had to belonging. And we were all gonna go our separate ways. And I was gonna be back alone. And I dreaded that. I was so scared of being alone. And so I left here and I got a job. I got a job actually in banking. I went to work for a bank in New York called Dollar Dry Dock as a loan officer. You think what you say out loud is important? This is a copy of a 1986, 1987 Fairfield Now President's Edition. I talked about the internship that Dr. Lane and the other professors gave me. And I said, I went to work in a lot of different departments in the bank. Mortgage lending is one field that I found intriguing and maybe where I start my business career. Just two years before I even sent out a resume. So again, think about what you say out loud. Think about the intentions you have. It creates pictures in your mind. Your thoughts create your feelings. Your feelings create your behaviors. Behaviors create habits and habits create the results that you get in life. So think about what you say. I took all of those things, including my compartmentalizing, including my pain and created Charlie Version 3.0. I went to work. I used that work ethic that I had and I got to work at the bank. And I had some success. Continued drinking and abusing drugs. And I'll tell you that alcoholism and drug addiction is three things. It is chronic, which means it does not go away. It is progressive, which means over time it gets worse. It never gets better and it's deadly. It's wiped out four direct members of my family. My uncle Joe, I believe, is dead as a result of untreated alcoholism. Both of his nephews died from untreated alcoholism. My sister took her life four and a half years ago from an intentional overdose as a result of untreated alcoholism. It's deadly disease and I'm sure you all know or have read about somebody who's gone as a result of not being able to control what they take once they start. That's alcoholism and addiction and it's worse. It's when you're having negative consequences associated with the behaviors that you're doing and then you continue to engage in those behaviors despite those negative consequences. That's it, it's very core alcoholism and addiction. But who wants to think they can't drink or you do drugs like they're friends? Who wants to think they can't have the one thing that's making them feel okay? I didn't, because I didn't know there was anything else to make me feel okay. So that bank moved me to California. You'd think Maine to Connecticut was a carpet ride. You'd try going from Connecticut to California. I knew nobody in California, but I showed up just like I did here at Fairfield University and I unveiled Charlie version 4.0. I landed in California a successful banker from Connecticut and I grew up in Maine, Connecticut much cooler. Lesson from California, they don't really care. They don't think either of them are cool, but that's okay. I still needed to make up somewhere cool and I did. Now the truth of the matter was I continued to lead this double life. I would take girls out for dates and limos, big stretch limos, fancy restaurants. I had student loans out the ass. I was in debt up to my ears. I would scrape change out of my car and drive to the utility company to not have my electric bill, my lights turned off, but I was a big shot. Ego is another big part of alcoholism. Selfishness, dishonesty and ego. I had to be something. I had to shield myself from the truth and so I acted the part. And what I like to say is that what you don't deal with deals with you while alcohol and drugs were starting to deal with me. I know all of you can't see this, but I wanna draw something that a lot of people don't understand about the progressive nature of drugs and alcohol, okay? I'm gonna draw this little box over here. All of us from the beginning of time have been given a reward system. We all have a reward system built in of things that we do that give us positive results. These are things that from early time on, finding food, exercising, having relationships with close friends, physical contact, these are all things that sustain life in us, okay? We also produce a neurotransmitter called dopamine. Now don't completely check this out with your psychology and science teachers. It's not, I'm not gonna get that technical, but we create a substance or a neurotransmitter in our body called dopamine. Dopamine reinforces these positive behaviors. There's something in all of us from a biochemical standpoint to say that's good for you. Exercise is good for you. Eating healthy is good for you. Connecting with your friends is good for you, okay? Going to work on time is good for you. You're getting out of boys. Keep doing it, keep finding food, keep exercising. You know, it all goes back to primitive time. Find a fire, you know, build a fire, stay warm, find a cave, go to sleep. So this dopamine was created with a reason. So we create natural dopamine. When we consume drugs and alcohol, we increase the amount of dopamine in our body by a multiple of two to 10 times. So what does our body do? Our body says, hey, that's too much dopamine. So it stops producing dopamine. So if you're using drugs and alcohol in an unhealthy way and you're starting to use them and drink them and smoke them and ingest them to numb how you feel, at some point you decide I don't wanna do that anymore. Your body says, well, you need to. Because all of these simple pleasures, all of these simple natural occurrences, the exercising, the food, playing basketball, going to concerts with your friend, they all over time get eliminated because the only dopamine your body is used to is the dopamine it gets from drugs and alcohol. It's hijacking your reward system. And if you can see when your body reduces the amount of natural dopamine, you need more drugs, more alcohol to get to the same high that you had yesterday or a week ago or a month ago. And this process continues in cycle for alcoholics and drug addicts until there's no more natural dopamine. That's why isolation is a big part of addiction. So in the end, you find lower companions that are kinda doing the things that you do so you feel normal. And then you find yourself not fitting in with anybody and you've stopped enjoying all the natural things that you used to enjoy doing in life. And the only enjoyment comes because your body is saying all of these things here are gone. The only reward I get, the only satisfaction I get is from taking drugs and drinking alcohol. That's why people will look at an alcoholic drug and think, why? Why don't you stop? Isn't it bad enough? No, it's not. It's not. My body is telling me I must consume drugs and alcohol. And I'll tell you, I had a very successful real estate business. I had 35 employees. I'm gonna tell you where this disease led me. I'll tell you a few separate incidents. I call them incidents. Horrific parts of my life where what I planned to happen didn't happen and what I didn't want to happen happened as a result of drugs and alcohol and that system being hijacked. May, 2005, 2006, I run a 35-person commercial real estate company. We're building 4 million square feet of shopping centers in the state of California. We're dealing with some of the largest banks and institutional equity partners in the country. We go to Las Vegas for an annual convention. Every business, your parents, I'm sure you've probably heard of them going on to a trade show or a conference. Well, this for the real estate industry was the biggest conference, the biggest trade show that our business has. It's when every national retailer, target, Home Depot, Staples, all the lenders, all the tenants are in one place where I can attack them for four days, okay? I have four primary objectives while I'm in Vegas. I have a dinner Sunday night with an investment banking company. On Monday, I'm taking two of my best employees who have done an amazing job leasing my shopping centers to play Shadow Creek Golf Course in Vegas. Tiger and Phil played there in the last $10 million challenge. It's a very incredible opportunity for them to go play with us. And then Tuesday and Wednesday, it's work. You line up your meetings, you set your appointments, meetings, every 20 minutes where you can really get work done. On Sunday night, I picked up a drink. And I don't remember that dinner on Sunday night. I didn't make it to the golf on Monday morning. I don't know where I was. I don't know what I was doing. I have vague recollections from my credit card statements, but that's the only information I could get. But see, I was still in a position of power. I could still stave off the consequences of the lack of decisions I was making. And there I was on Monday morning in my suit, probably even nicer than this, walking with no money in my pocket, no cell phone, I think I had a blackberry at the time, walking back to the Mandalay Bay. I didn't want any of that to happen. I spent the next two days doing the same thing. I didn't want any of that to happen. I had plans, I had ideas of what I wanted to happen. I was a responsible man, but for the fact that drugs and alcohol had taken over my system. Fast forward, 2007. I had taken a leave of absence. Drugs and alcohol and the progression of alcoholism and drug addiction starts to withdraw you from all the things that you enjoy. And so I wasn't a good worker, I wasn't a good boss, I wasn't a good friend, I wasn't a good husband, I wasn't a good father, just wasn't. And growing up the way I grew up, I can tell you that I swore on my life that I would be a good father. Now I never put hands on my kids, but I didn't show up the way I should have. I wasn't consistent in their lives the way I should have. And in 2007, I got a disagreement with my business partner, I took a couple of Vicodin, and I drove home that afternoon, I had a couple of drinks, we were having a New Year's Eve party, and I got into a fight with my wife because I showed up at home like she didn't want me to show up. And so I in a rage grabbed my kids, I put them in my car. My kids, I love, little five and seven years old, and I drove down to a park that I don't remember. These are the decisions that a person like me will make, and that's why when Lisa says, I don't know that Charlie, you wouldn't want to know that Charlie. They didn't want to know that Charlie. I didn't want them to know that Charlie. I didn't want you to know that Charlie, but that's who I became. The system that I had to make logical decisions had been confiscated by drugs and alcohol, and I was making these bad choices. So what happened in 2007, December, I got into enough trouble where I decided I wouldn't drink or take drugs anymore. Now keep in mind, I didn't change anything about the way I behaved. I didn't change anything about the way I felt about myself. I didn't change any of my behaviors. The dishonesty, the lying, the low self-esteem all existed, but I said I'll stop drinking and taking drugs, and that lasted for 45 days. See, you can put down drugs and alcohol for a period of time, but if you don't change the behaviors and you don't change the feelings, then ultimately you'll revert back to your body. I'll tell you, you need a solution. Your solution, drugs and alcohol, right? And so I was on my way to Hawaii to resolve a massive business deal that I had. I had a project downtown Honolulu across from downtown on the waterfront. One of my biggest investors from New York was flying out on Sunday night. Now you have to understand, there's nothing wrong in my life. Everybody's kind of accepting that I'm back on the straight and narrow. I kind of, I straightened out, got back on the rails as Lisa said I was off of, and I got back on the rails for a few weeks. And I had, again, an incredible couple of days planned. Now all I had to do was fly to Hawaii. We had a business appointment with four agencies from the state of Hawaii on Monday morning. In a big conference room at my lawyer's office overlooking downtown Harbor, my investor from New York City flew in. I had to have that meeting Monday morning, resolve these issues once and for all. We had an outline and agenda. We'd spent weeks detailing. And then all I had to do was get on a plane Tuesday night, fly back to LAX and go to Port of Ireland on vacation. And this sounds great. Who would fuck this up? Me. Because what did I do Sunday when I landed in Hawaii? I said those 45 days away from drinking and taking drugs, they've cured me. I'm good. That's never gonna happen again. So I sat down with my investor, I had a glass of wine at dinner. And I don't remember anything else. I didn't make that meeting on Monday morning. I didn't show up. I didn't make my flight home. I didn't show up. I don't know where I was. Well, that's not true. I know where I was. It wasn't where I was supposed to be. That's what happened. I did make a flight home. I don't remember driving to the airport. My wife and kids were at the airport waiting for me and they said enough. And that's usually what happens. See, we're good until we're good, then we're not good. And then somebody says I've had enough and they left me. So there I was at 42 years old by myself. Everything I had built, everything that I had worked for, everything that I wanted in my life was gone, including my own self-esteem. And I went to see a therapist that I had been lying to for about six months. Tend to do that when you don't want somebody to take away your toys. And he looked at me, because he had been trying to find me, my wife at the time had called him and he said, Charlie, it's over. I said, what's over? He said, it's all over. He said, you're gonna have to get honest. It was the scariest day of my life. I hadn't been honest. I hadn't told the whole truth to anybody, you know? But it was one of the most freeing days in my life because since that day, February 14th of 2008, I've changed my life. I have an incredible life today, okay? Yes, I am in recovery. I'm part of a support group. I have a lot of accountability in my life and I do certain things every day to treat my alcoholism and my drug addiction. I choose to do those things. I just have to keep doing them. But there's other parts that I've healed. See the damaged personal truth? I learned to heal that. See what I learned is what I think about myself matters. What my father thought about me, what you think about me, what my teachers thought about, it doesn't matter. What matters most is what I think about me. Advertising works. By a show of hands, this is the only couple of little participation parts of my little talk here. By a show of hands, how many people in this room have some product built by, sold by Apple? Phone, watch, iPad, tablet, something. That's a lot. Okay, one more. By a show of hands, how many people in this room have some product, shirt, sneakers, clothes, tennis racket, sold by Nike? Does advertising work? You bet your ass it works. So what do you advertise to yourself? What do you tell yourself about yourself, Charlie? Because when you say you're a loser, you project the image of a loser, but you're not. So what we say about ourselves is incredibly important. You have to look at the good. I'm not saying to lie. I'm not saying, Charlie, you're a great astronaut. I'm not a great astronaut. But you know what, I'm resilient. I bounce back quickly. I've been down, I've gotten up. I know how to study. I know how to return phone calls. I know how to do certain things in my life. That's what I advertise to myself today. So what we think about ourselves is critical. And what we say out loud as I evidence to you by this article is even more critical. But I will tell you this, if it's negative, you can multiply that by four to seven times. We're here in New England. Oh, shoot, I have a third. So just by quick, by a show of hands, how many people know the name Bill Buckner? Okay, good, good enough. Bill Buckner is a famous or infamous, depending on how you look at it. First baseman for the Boston Red Sox, okay? Bill Buckner is best known, besides the fact that he was really a very good baseball player, for giving up the game-winning run in a World Series game against the New York Mets in 1986 by letting a ground ball go through his legs. You can Google it, you'll see it. It's a huge sports blooper. What few people know is that 12 days before that game, Bill Buckner gave an interview to a local Boston paper in which he said the following. It's a big game. It's the World Series. The dream is that you have a good game. The nightmare is that you give up the game-winning run by letting a ground ball go through your legs. He said that. There's a guy in Russia who got trapped in a refrigeration car. He's found a little scratch and a little piece of wood and he started scratching notes to his family. It's freezing in here, I'm gonna die. These are my last words, I love you all. They found him, they unlocked the refrigeration door and found him and the refrigeration unit was not broken. The temperature was fine. He just thought it was. And he literally died because he believed it was too old. If you look up the POW casualties in the Korean War, you will find that it was the largest number of POW casualties because the Koreans were masterful at telling the prisoners of war that their families were being decimated. They fed them so much negative information that it was the largest casual, they died of hopelessness. So if you say something, that test is too hard, that class is too hard, that practice is too hard, it's too hot in here to do what I wanna do, I'm not confident. You've put energy out into the universe that doesn't belong there. So be careful with your words. See, I believe that it's not aptitude, it's attitude. These are the things I live by today. The principles I live by today are honesty and integrity. Where I'm supposed to be, doing what I'm supposed to do and any of you can do it. See, there's a reason that I was a B-minor student here at Fairfield University. You wanna know what that reason is? Because I didn't do what kids that get A's do. I wasn't willing to. I could have, I could have gotten up earlier, I could have studied more. I'll tell you another story. Story of the most successful magazine publisher in the entire United States. His junior year of high school, he was failing out of high school, both academically and from a discipline standpoint, was not gonna be asked back to participate in his senior year. He had promised his mother that he'd take the SATs. So he took them. In art, when we were growing up, most of the kids that are my age, young men, old people, whatever you guys are. The SATs had two scores, math and English, 800 each. Well this kid went and took them and he got a 1480, unheard of, unheard of. Some others said, did you know you were this smart? He goes, I had no idea. Said, you know what he did? He knocked it out, he went back to school. He finished high school. He did two years of community college. He went to a Harvard and got a Harvard degree and became the largest magazine editor in the United States. Most people think, oh, it's easy. He just got the 1480, figured out he was smart and of course smart people are gonna do well, but that's not the story. 10 years after he took the SATs, he got a letter from Princeton, New Jersey. They audit the scores every year. He was one of five kids that got the wrong test score. Got a 740. Was an idiot. And he says, it wasn't getting the 1480 that propelled me to success. I did what kids that get 1480s do. I took the actions that smart kids do. Success leaves clues. You can see it in sports. You can see it in business. Smart people, successful people. People that say you can do whatever you wanna do, it's true. If you're willing to do what the people that are successful doing that do. You can't do that by skipping class. You can't do that by jamming for homework assignments the last minute. You can't do that by taking shortcuts and you sure can't take that by burying your feelings with drugs and alcohol. But I always say, I'm here because of what I've done and I'm where I'm gonna be tomorrow because of what I do next. All that matters is what you do next, okay? That's all that matters. You do bad on a test, decide what you did that you didn't like about preparing for that test and change it. Don't stay stuck. There's no such thing as mistakes. They're a fabrication. They've been propped upon you by fake people. There's no such thing as mistakes. If there were, we would tell little kids and all of you have been little kids who fall down how many times before they walk. Forget it, stay down. That's three, that's four. You're never gonna, stay on the ground. Can we tell them that? No, get up and walk. Try again, you know? So I'm here to tell you when you choose the behavior, you choose the consequence. You all now have an opportunity to choose on purpose. And most importantly, I wanna thank you for choosing to come tonight and hearing my story. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm just gonna explain a little bit. How long was that? Oh yeah, I am. Thank you very much. Anybody have a question? Oh yeah, when I do these, no holds barred Q and A. You can see I unpack a lot of stuff. I really don't mind any questions at all. Yes. You know, I do a lot of things today. Thank you for asking that, Father Doty. So I do anything that I choose to do today. I still have a successful real estate practice. I have a couple of projects that I'm working on. I continue to make some investments. God gave me that little gift so I continue to use it. But most importantly, I spent a lot of time helping other people. I opened a sober living house in California for professionals. I have a six bedroom home that are open for men that are working, that have decided to get into sobriety. They're men my age that have been through what I've been through. So we've got six private rooms at a house called Archway House. I do public speaking, small and large groups. I spent a lot of time doing personal development work. These are all things that I'd never done before. But I believe all of us, all of you have a divine spark inside of us. I just need you to be you. And it's a hard job because all of us want to be what other people think we should be. Mansions and Mercedes, quick fix, so many followers. This, that, the other thing, man. We tend to compare ourselves, which takes away all of our power. Praised on our insecurities and our negativities. So I just need you to be you. So that's what I do today. I'm just me. And all of us have that divine spark. And if you follow it and you base your actions on what you want to do right now, and you be the best student at Fairfield University, whatever grade you're in, you be the best professor, prepare for class, you be the best employee. Let the results take care of themselves, you know? And so that's what I have. I have a lot of, and I travel. I have a full life, you know? And I have a freedom to choose what I want to do. Yes. Thank you, Craig. It's the hardest thing I ever did. And it could be the hardest thing you ever do. Who wants to think we're programmed? I got this, right? Fall down, seven, get up, eight. No one says, hey, ask for some help if it's too much, you know? No one says, ask for help to get up. So fall down, seven, get up, eight. And if it's too hard, ask somebody that you trust. Ask somebody who you'll confide in. That's why when Susan mentioned counseling services, it's confidential. There's a lot of stigma about being needed help today. And I'm here to break it, you know? The choice all of us have is to ask for help. There's no easy answer. It just takes a little bit of courage. It takes a little bit of faith. It comes, the most of the courage comes when you're tired of living the way you're living. When you're tired of that feeling inside, you know, the one in your stomach that says, I can't do this anymore. I don't want to feel like this anymore. I'm tired of living like this. You ask for help. And there's, the amazing thing is, so many people want to help. So that's why I mentioned, Dr. Lane, I said to him today, and imagine what you would have done if you knew what was going on with me. Because he did a lot and he didn't even know. You guys did a lot, you didn't even know. So I mean, I think the answer to that question is don't be afraid to ask for help. Think of it like just holding on to the last twig, hanging off the edge of a cliff, and there's somebody with their hand out. Would you grab it? Of course you would. Give your life that same attention. Treat your life with that same respect. Because the upside is huge. Helpful? Yeah, of course. How do we negotiate a relationship with your mother? Stop it. That's too personal. Oh, not at all. There's a certain power. He asked how I rebuilt the relationship with my mother. You can rebuild a relationship with anybody. You just have to forgive them. It's very simple. My mother happened to have taken responsibility for what she did, which allowed us to be close. She didn't protect me as a kid. That was her job. She didn't do her job. Whatever baggage she brought to our family, that was just what she did. It's my choice to forgive her. And you can rebuild your relationship with anybody. That teacher that failed you on a test, that kid that passed you by and didn't include you when they were picking teams, that kid that passed you by and didn't include you in whatever they're doing down at the quad, you can forgive anybody. It's not personal. What I've learned is you don't take anything personal unless you believe it about yourself. That's why once you change your core beliefs and what you believe about me, it doesn't affect me anymore. You can establish or reconnect and re-establish any relationship that you have. Forgiveness is the key to doing that. It's all it takes. Helpful? Very helpful. Sure. Yes, Kevin. I'm not staging all these, by the way. They're just asking. I didn't, that is a great question. Thank you. So the answer to your question is, absolutely. It would be, for me, I'm in recovery from drugs and alcohol. I'm neutral to them. They have become, for me, after 11 years of continually working a program of recovery which I do every day to not matter. It's like, if you have a friend who's allergic to peanut oil or a friend who's allergic to shellfish and you see them eat lobster, you can give it. It doesn't bother me because I know, for me, it's life and death. See, for our kids that are in the Collegiate Recovery program, it's not, why don't they drink? They don't drink because their very life depends on not drinking. So when I was in early sobriety, I took very, very strict precautions around my sobriety. Is that my Siri? Siri. She's got a lot to say. Wow. She heard all that? Nice. So it came in stages. When I went on my first business trip, I took a sober companion. I had never gone on a business trip without drinking at the airport and at the hotel. And I could not go anywhere without protecting my sobriety. And I didn't view it as a weakness that I had to take someone with me. My wife at the time said, why do we have to pay for a babysit? Because I don't trust my, I don't know how to do this. I need help. And so as I got more and more comfortable with my sobriety and I got more and more comfortable with being around it, I spend lots of time with people that drink. It's not something I can do. So I avoid it. There are people that are dry from substances that aren't in a program of recovery that frown on people that drink. And there's some people that just can't be around it. It's an individual thing. So, and everybody I know is very sensitive to asking. I happen to be somebody that it doesn't bother. Now I will tell you that that's to a point. At some point when I'm at a function, no matter what it is, it's time for me to go home. I'll usually get a hotel. I'll usually have a safe place to go. Even with 11 years of sobriety, I don't take my sobriety for granted. And so if I'm in a situation where at some point it just doesn't feel right to me, the kind of socializing has gone, it's become more about the drinking, I just excuse myself, you know? And I just attend to my own business. And it's not because I'm being antisocial. It's because at some point, I respect my sobriety and I respect my life too much to put myself in that situation. So it's a very personal thing, but I suggest anybody here who's not comfortable being around it, there's lots of people that aren't comfortable being around it. I have more fun today, myself, sober. There are some people, many of my friends who enjoy drinking. It wasn't something I did for enjoyment. Like I said, it wasn't about why and it wasn't about how much. It wasn't about what and it wasn't about how much. It was why. So it's a very personal thing. It depends on where you are in recovery and it depends on what your relationship with alcohol has become. Helpful? Does that help you guys understand it a little better? I mean, for some people, it's just not an option. And for others, it is. And the more you know that, the more you can respect that. The more you know that this person does it, they're not a teetotaler, they're not a nerd. They're one of the most courageous people you may meet because they're having to do something that most people don't have to do. But it's no different than being a diabetic. It's no, there might be young adults here that are suffering from diabetes. They have to do things that some of you don't have to do. They have to take their chest and blood sugar. They have to walk around with a little vial of insulin. They have to give a shot to themselves every once in a while. We just have to do different things than you do. But we're no different. We're like everybody else. I think that's part of the stigma that exists too, that there's kind of the brown trench coat, bum on the street, the shaky hand, the guy in the wife beater that beats his kids and goes to bed with a six pack. I wasn't me. That's not necessarily an alcoholic or drug addict. They could be right up there. They're right among us all the time. We've talked a lot about asking for help and that's a really important, healthy thing to do. Another, okay. And so there's some people here and then I'll go back to you that are really safe and really confidential and really non-judgmental. The counseling services staff, Lisa, Julia Smith, myself, Father Michael Doody is down. Can you stand up, please? We have open hours, one to 3.30 up in counseling. If you're concerned about you or a friend, that's how this got started. We had students coming in saying, I'm really worried about my friend. And we'd say, you know, you think you can bring your friend up and we tried to find a place where we're gonna judge and we're gonna put them in touch with how to get help. And importantly, how to put back to fair how to maintain and continue their dreams. So really this help seeking, asking for help. It's what healthy people do. And so all the people that have talked about that tonight, I just want to reinforce. Another question over here. I'm an alcoholic, my name's Harold. Hey, Harold! And I'm ready to book them because I'm retired from a drug and alcohol redacted. You can't get, and you said some great things. And you made that comment about your friends intervening with you when you were using, remember? Yeah. I think what they don't understand is that you were trying to tell them that you'll never understand the overwhelming urge to use unless you've experienced it. And obviously they hadn't because I remember saying to my mother, put the cigarette down, mom. Just don't pick it up. I never spoke to my life. But if you don't understand the reasoning, you know what's going to motivate you. And what I also like to say is that you didn't go out for help. What would you say about intervention? Because I stopped with it. I stopped because of an intervention of my family. They cornered me. They said, you gotta stop. I think a lot of people are, thank you, and congratulations on your sobriety and for working in the field. Look, a lot of people are afraid to confront people with a substance abuse problem. If you've experienced someone with a substance abuse problem, they come at you with anger, defensiveness, denial. They don't want to admit their problems. And so sometimes it does take, and to be honest with you, I don't care what it takes to save a life. I come at it with love. I come at it with support. I love you. I care about you. I miss you. Are you willing to get help? And then I say healthy boundaries because if you're not, I can only allow certain people in my life. A lot of us are afraid to set boundaries, but it's a very loving thing to do. So I think intervention is done properly with the right skilled people. It can be very effective. But again, the alcoholic or the addict of the sufferer needs to be ready to hear the message. I know it's getting late, it's getting warm. Do we have any more questions? We'll close. Thank you all.