Ricky Leigh

Gratitude...An Action Word

 

My name is Ricky and I'm an alcoholic. I am COMPLETELY GRATEFUL to be able to say that by the grace of God, all the wonderful people that God has put in my life to guide and support me and some hard work, I've been blessed to be sober since March 25, 1989.

And, with great gratitude and love to Dave F., I have this terrific opportunity to share for a few in my favorite recovery publication in the U.S. This is the seventh city I've lived in since I got sober and due to my career in the music industry in radio and as a businessman, I've travelled the country extensively and have seen most of the others. They all have helped people in recovery; those who need it and their loved ones. As you and I get to know each other, you'll find I'm big on rigorous honesty and thus, like Dave, I'm not the 'strokey' type. He deserves the High-Five I'm giving him. We're blessed to have The Solution News and the crew of writers that he's assembled as a part of our life in sobriety. So I'm humbled by this opportunity and grateful to Dave for helping me blow the dust off since I published my last column in Hits Magazine on May 25, 2005. After eleven years and hundreds of columns at Hits, I thought that was it for me.. I hope that through sobriety, I've finally learned to NEVER say never and that I do Dave and his readers justice for this blessing.

Gratitude... GRATITUDE... G-R-A-T-I-T-U-D-E! That is what I'm feeling as we speak. I NEVER knew the true meaning and value of the word before I got sober. And early on in sobriety, I needed the experience, strength and hope of those who came before me to learn what gratitude truly is and how to achieve it. I remember being about three months sober and sharing all that I was grateful for in a meeting when a friend, who basically cross talked me right after I shared and said: "gratitude is an action word." After I prayed through my resentment towards him for embarrassing me like that in front of everyone at the meeting, he and the other five guys that are six of my closest friends to this day and are all between 21-41 years sober now began to lead me down the path of finding this oh so critical cornerstone of my recovery.

The first question that I can remember my old sponsor Bill, who's 41 years sober and a walking, talking, breathing example of the excellence and grace of this program asked me was "why are you here, Ricky?" As God spoke for me to him, my answer was "cuz I wanna be happy!" He then laid out what I NEEDED to do in order to find REAL happiness. That "happiness is an INSIDE job" and that I needed to trust God, clean house and help others." That "what you DO Ricky speaks so loud, I can't hear an f'in thing you SAY! That it's what you DO that will validate what you SAY!"

And what are those things? Bill and those other great men taught me that I MUST DO the following to learn to like and love myself and others so that I can have what it takes to help others; to find the greatest level of comfortablility in my own skin. TO BECOME TRULY GRATEFUL. And I MUST do them all consistently one day at a time in order to build the strongest fence of defense around me and against the disease.

"Constant vigilence" is what they called it. That it's a major key component to becoming a grateful person. DON'T DRINK OR USE NO MATTER WHAT! Work the steps. Find a comfort zone for the number of meetings that I attend each week. Close work with a sponsor. Sponsor others. Pray & meditate. Have a home group. A commitment. Read the literature. Continue to give away what was so freely given to you, Ricky. Do all of this day by day, keep your recovery as the #1 priority of your life and you'll experience a life so great that you couldn’t conceive of even in your wildest imagination. There have been moments, days andsometimes weeks where I've let aspects of my life other than recovery supercede it in my list of priorities. My career, mostly. And when I have, I suffered. And there's no pain like the pain I've experienced in sobriety because I'm not medicated anymore. I have an enormous amount of respect for the "cunning, baffling and powerful" nature of the disease of alcoholism. Even as hard as I've worked the past nineteen plus years I've been sober, it still has kicked my tush on many occasions. Days when the best I could do is just be sober. I know you know what I'm saying.

I've learned through my experience in sobriety that I can get through the lowest of lows with out picking up a drink or a drug or having to medicate myself with other outside things AND totally enjoy the extraordinary joys that the God of my understanding has blessed me with. That most days, I'm comfortable in my own skin from the time that I wake up to the time that I get off my knees at night and call it a day. What a miracle, huh??!!

There's NO price tag big enough for inner peace. Serenity. For the gratitude that I feel overall in my life now. No price for the feeling I had last week when an old sponsee of mine called me to thank me for the help that I gave HIM and that he just celebrated three years of sobriety. "Funny" how this program has retrained my brain and heart to the point where I feel like HE helped ME more than I helped him by allowing me to sponsor him. That it's NOT about ME. Again, it's by the grace of God that I feel the gratitude that I feel now.

A little over a year ago, I had another case of the "nevers" come to an end when I decided to build a Twelve Step recovery radio show that honors the traditions and has taken my feeling of gratitude to yet another level. In 1995, I told myself and others that "I'd NEVER do radio again." As a direct result of God's grace in my life in sobriety, I was released from "the bondage of self" enough to find sucess as an exec w/Hits along with my own marketing and promotion company. I was hired primarily by major record labels to get their records on the radio and their videos on TV. I had lost the thrill of being on the air as well as being a part of breaking records.

Last August, I was watching some tabloid media coverage on Britney, Lindsay Lohan and all of the celebs whose lives were being destroyed for all to see by this disease. My sober friends in the industry were as upset as I was with the complete lack of concern for these folks and that they chose to castigate them rather than use the valuable TV time to acknowledge that these celebs are sick and suffering from a deadly disease.

So God put the lightbulb on in my head to start a radio show in order to put the experience, strength and hope that I've been blessed with in recovery and in broadcasting to good use. I wanted to do my part to carry the message and more importantly, utilize the media properly so that YOU can have another great vehicle to help those who're still sick and suffering. I hoped to create a place where those in recovery, those seeking it and their loved ones can call their own.

It's been one God shot after another since I called my buddy "Indian Bob" to share the idea. He had a friend of a friend who got us on the air 9/16/07 and now, by the grace of God again, we're grateful to share the amazing message of 12 step recovery via many great radio stations and the Internet with listeners in all 50 states and over 120 countries worldwide.

There's so much more that I could use to express my gratitude for God's endless supply of blessings, yet, ironically, I've just reached a place where I'm speechless. Probably a good thing. Bottom line, I'd rather go on letting my actions speak to my gratitude to you, this program and God for my sobriety....

Ricky Leigh, Host/Program Director

"Recovery Radio Live"

www.RecoveryRadioLive.com

 

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