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Submitted by: Susanne Johnson
If there is one thing that you will discover about 12-step meetings and people in recovery in general, there is plenty of laughter. Rule #62 as it is told says, “Don’t take yourself too damn seriously,” and many addicts and alcoholics today follow this example throughout various conventions, speaker meetings and summits. One who established this spirit of humor in recovery to absolute perfection is the comedian Sarge. He is celebrating this year 25 years of continuous sobriety this year and he can look back to a fantastic career of delivering an honest message about a serious disease wrapped in a bright and funny package of comedy to people who need to learn how to laugh again.
Sarge was born as Steven Pickman in 1961 in Miami Beach, Florida, as a son of a brief relationship between an Orthodox Jewish mother and a black father. He was given up for adoption before he was born and friends of the family agreed to care for him. In racially sensitive times, his mother never revealed that her child would be a mixed race baby, but his new parents took him to Long Island, New York. At age five his talent was discovered. He could play a piano by ear without ever having lessons.
Sarge was an addict and alcoholic, used and drank for about ten years starting when he was 19 years of age.
He used PCP, cocaine and alcohol. He lost his promising career at ABC and CBS because of the drugs. Knowing that his life could not go on as it was, he reached out for help, and entered a treatment center at age 29. The help he received was ironically initiated by a man he called his friend, but who he had stolen lots of valuables from during this troubled addiction times and an episode of homelessness in New York.
After he entered the door of the only treatment center he’d ever go to it was suggested that he say a prayer. “Ask God to remove the obsession to drink and drug from my life”. The man who did meet him at the door on that day, 25 years ago, is now his sponsor and friend and himself has almost 40 years of sobriety. “I always wanted him to be my sponsor and to be my guide. We have had a wonderful partnership since we met,” states Sarge.
During treatment, he was asked what he would like to be, if he would know he could not fail. After a bit of reflection, he remembered times at child where he was totally fascinated by comedians and he said to himself, “I would become a comedian,” and he did follow his dream. He became well-known and his career progressed in a beautiful way, when he was asked to perform in a treatment center for the first time. There, he found his passion to combine his experience, strength and hope of his own recovery with his gift of comedy and ever since delivers the message of recovery to numerous facilities, centers, jails, prisons, halfway houses, and events. He sees it as his career to be a sober man, and his profession to be a comedian and entertainer. “Doing therapeutic work in groups, using humor and spiritual wisdom is my life. The disease has become more powerful, the drugs have become more powerful, but the cure has not. It’s all about staying sober, not getting sober. I do serious work in a humorous way.”
For his own recovery, he trusts in M.A.P. (Meditation, Affirmation, Prayer) which he found to be the most helpful tool for his serenity and inner balance. “Tomorrow starts tonight! Start your day not in the morning,” he says, “start it the night before as you go to bed. If you want to stay stopped and clean, you need to be a warrior, not only a hero, and be very proactive. I can’t leave my brain running all night, I need to sleep. I have to turn my mind off. I invite the universe, I invite God to take over my brain and give me a good night’s rest in my nightly meditations. Take three deep breaths and ask the universe to turn off your brain as you would turn off a blender in the kitchen at night, the TV in the living room or your car.”
Sarge starts every day with a prayer, even before he gets up and do anything else. In the first minute of his day, he does not make coffee, he does not talk to his wife, he does not smoke a cigarette, look at his phone, or walk the dog. He starts with this M.A.P. to start the day right. “My first breath after I wake up has to be a grateful breath,” says Sarge. “I ask God where he wants me to go, what he wants me to do and what he wants me to say that day and to whom.”
Sarge resides with his wife and one child in Florida. He loves the warm weather and the view of beach and ocean, but he brings his wisdom and entertaining shows to the entire country and travels a lot. “A lot of the young people enjoy philosophy that’s on their level,” Sarge says. “Many of them do not find 12-step meetings exciting enough.” He is happy to meet them, where they need it.
Sarge loves to compare addiction to a Hollywood blockbuster, where there is always that bomb, the bad guy who installed it, the hero to disarm it to save the world, the clock ticking down and wires cut one by one until the bomb is disarmed.
The only way, when it comes to addiction, to save the day occurs if the bomb wants to disarm itself. It is the spiritual discipline that disarms the bomb, according to Sarge.
“If you don’t put your recovery first in the day when you wake up, you won’t be able to put it first when you need it,” he states, and also invites anyone to contact him via his website IAMSARGE.com or if you’d like to reach him personally and confidentially you can email him at sarge@iamsarge.com.