Kevin, I'd like you to meet Bob. We have the newcomer and the old timer, and that's how Alcoholics Anonymous works. Thank you so much for participating.

0:17 All right, so I am going to start our sharing for our panel, and they are going to each share their experience strength and help with us for 20 minutes. And I would like to start off with Charlie C please, for 44 years.

Charlie C

0:37 Thank you. Hi, I'm Charlie. I'm an alcoholic, and I would like to thank my friend Mike for inviting me to do this. Mike is one of those activists. He's always on the go, and he's a good aa guy. We've known each other for almost 40 years.

1:24 and I'm here with my friends, and I'm really, I'm the mascot of this group. I'm also the one that has really the Least to say I'm sober 44 years, I guess, over on the 11th of June of 1981 it had not, it had not been a good year. So far in 1981 and I got here, just like most of us do. I have I, I wish I had something really dramatic to tell you, like I came here in my urine soaked pajamas, you know, showed up at me. But then I have to constitute what, what is urine soaked? Exactly, because I say that. I mean, is it? Is it soaked? Soaked, or is it pint? Is it a spot and and I would, I guess that pretty much anything the size of a quarter or bigger would be you wet your pants.

2:28 But I came here with what I think everybody comes here with, and that was desperation. It doesn't matter how old you are, it doesn't matter where you live, it doesn't matter what your skin color is or your religion. It doesn't matter how much money you make or what kind of a car you're driving doesn't matter. Nothing matters except desperation in sobriety, that's it. And I must have been sometimes you don't even know if you're dead. I didn't know I was desperate when I got here, I had no idea. Hi, friend. I had no idea I was desperate until I started taking actions that anybody else would have gone. Are you serious? I want to get sober. I need to get sober. I don't want to drink anymore. Like, okay, you're gonna you're gonna clean up ashtrays after them being fresh in here. What I was saying, I just want to get sober. Yeah, well, then take another commitment tomorrow night and you can you can sweep. Okay, fine, but you're probably not. You're misinterpreting what I'm saying. And he just kept giving me things to do. From the first meeting I went to, I was told, you know, you can help set up chairs. I feel I didn't ask what to do. I asked what, what were you going to do to show me how to stay sober, because I was a mess. I was a mess. I've been peeing blood for a while. I'd been you know, I'm one of those quiet alcoholics where I wouldn't say quiet, but got a big mouth when I drink. I

4:03 I just didn't have a flamboyant flame out because there wasn't much of me to start with. I never lived. I never have lost my ideals, because I really didn't have many ideals that I knew of. I didn't fall from a great height because I never took the time to climb to a great height. I was 30 years old when I got sober. I'd been married. I was in the middle of a divorce. The woman I had married loved me, and I did not have any idea of how to be a husband in that relationship, because I was mostly focused on me and I was and that wasn't like I was sitting around going, Okay, do this for me and do that for me. It was, what am I getting out of this? I'm not happy. I'm not happy. And I and I thought it had to do with the marriage, but really, all it had to do with was that's how I react to life. I'm just not happy. My mother had four babies. I was. Third one out of four, and they all died at birth, except for me. And I had no I had no compassion for my mom about that I was I felt sad for her, but I never understood, in a deeper way, how devastating that must have been to that to her, to have I just turned 75 last Tuesday, and all I could think about that day was my mom and how scared she must have been going in to have me when she lost two babies in the previous four years, and then she's going in now to have a third one, and she'd kind of just written it off, you know?

5:35 And so I lived a pretty self contained life. I had not much of an interaction with my parents. I don't think that we were back in the 50s. You weren't like your parents, best pal, like you are now. Back in the 50s, they were your parents, and you were your child, and you just when they gave you a look, you knew what to do. It's like, shut up. My dad had been a Marine Corps drill instructor, and when, when he when he would, all he had to do was look over at me, and I was like, Oh, okay. I was a nice kid. I went, my mom and I went to church. My dad was a Methodist, but we were kept. My mom and I were Catholics and and he dutifully drove us to church every Sunday. And we didn't have a lot of resources, but what we had was was enough to keep us going, you know. And I was, I was mediocre in school, I was a good speller. I was sick a lot, so, but I was out of school a lot, but I was a good speller, so I could manage to get through, you know. And it helped me out with girls later on, and I just was a mediocre everything. I went through high school with nothing and nothing to speak of except my potential. And man, I had that in spades, because everybody told me about it, everybody, you know, counselors and priests and teachers and everybody had to tell my parents of what potential I had and and I got out of school, and I didn't go to college, right? I went to I went to college, I managed to get enough. I went to college when I was 17, and I graduated when I was 30. You can fill in all the blanks.

7:34 And the point I'm making about this is this is the person that went into a party one time when I didn't even want to be in a party because I don't like people. It's just my nature. I just don't like people. I'm sorry. I got little better about 2530 years, and that's all started going downhill again, but, but I don't like people, and I demand their approval all the time, which is exhausting and and I got convinced to go to a party, and I went to this party and somebody, you know, standing or judging everybody, because that's what I do. I would have been a great judge, were it not for the fact that you have to base your decisions on facts. But

8:20 I'm at this party, and I'm just judging away, and somebody handed me a can of malt liquor. And, you know, my dad had drunk. My parents weren't heavy drinkers, and my my dad had a six pack of beer that would last him the weekend, you know. And Schlitz, always Schlitz and and so this guy hands me this can of malt liquor, which was in those days, I know what can of malt liquor looks like anymore, but in those days, this is a regular beer can, and a can of malt liquor went down about this far, and they had a bag you could put it in in the liquor store just for a can of malt liquor, where you put it in the bag, you twist the bottom, and they call it a freeway flyer. But anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. I got this cannon malt liquor, and I thought, If my father finds out I've been drinking, he's gonna kill me. I was 18. I just turned 18. If the Catholic Church finds out I've been drinking, Oh God, I'm gonna be excommunicated. But no one's offering me a Pepsi. I'm holding I'm holding this like I'm holding a lab experiment. At this party, I took, you know, open this thing up, and started drinking. And about halfway through that can of malt liquor, I came to the realization that I've been way too hard on you people. I began to feel every alcoholic knows this feeling where it's just I can't bear this. Glug, glug, glug.

9:47 Oh, yes. Where did that come from? I just felt alive inside. I felt happier. I felt joy for the first time, I never I didn't know what joy. Was until I experienced it after I took a drink before then, I had no idea what a drink, what joy was, and I felt joy and I felt attractive, like girls, my eyes are up here, attractive.

10:15 You know, I feel like single line, ladies, no pushing. Plenty here for everybody. So never happened, but I like to think that way, and I drank that way for the rest of my drinking career, for the next 12 years, I drank that way pretty much every day I was I drank because I thought it made me perform better. It made me smarter, it made me drive better. Some people disagreed, but I felt better driving. It made me sharper and and it made me feel like a human being for the first time. And I don't know any non alcoholics who drink, who say that when they drink, it makes them feel like a human being. The mind it did for me, it filled in something in me that I didn't have before, and I had no idea what that was. I thought everybody got that effect from alcohol. I thought that's what alcohol was for, was to have for everybody to feel that way, to feel deeply about things. I've heard people say I usually drug users, but I hear them say that, you know, I I drank to get out of the world, if you get away from everything. Well, I drank to become part of the world. I felt far enough out of the world when I was when I was not drinking. I felt far enough detached from things, and when I drank, it made me feel whole, and it made me feel connected, and it made me feel like I could breathe. And then, as everybody in this room knows, or else, you sure wouldn't be here as this morning, it something changed, and I started, I started to have more consequences to my drinking. I started to have more trouble with my drinking. I started to make rationalizations about my drinking. I started to involve other people with my drinking and get in trouble and embarrass them, or humiliate them or hurt them. And I don't mean punching people. You can hurt people a lot worse with your vocabulary than you can with your fists truly and because once you've hit them, the bruise goes away, but once you've told them something that they can't unhear, that stays forever, and that's and so I had done that, and and I was ashamed. I was always ashamed, I was always embarrassed, I always felt guilty all the time, and I didn't know why. No matter how much I drank, I couldn't stop drinking, but when I did drink, I I couldn't turn off all of that noise. I didn't feel like I was relieved of life. I didn't feel like I was reconnected to the world. I felt detached and lost and drunk. And I wound up being brought to an AA meeting by a woman who I was bringing her to the meeting, and she convinced me to come in because she and I drank together, and she needed a ride to an AA meeting, and I picked her up, and she 12 stepped me in the car on the way to the meeting. I was just going to drop her off. She had 22 days of sobriety, and she 12 stepped me. And she told me what she found when she was in detox. She was in a detox back in the day when, I mean, Betty Ford wasn't even open. Then it was, it was, it was place called the care unit, and she was in there, and a hospitals and institutions panels came in and spoke to them, and she didn't make it in sobriety. She's, she she's sober now, she's, she's not drinking now. She never has gone into aa again. She got 30 days and left, and I left me there, and yet, I am a beneficiary of the hospitals and institutions work, because if they had not brought the message to her, she wouldn't have brought it to me and and she didn't bring it to me in any kind of a way that I mean, if she told me what I should be doing or How I should be able what she learned from this high position of sobriety, I would never have come back. I would have thought you are so full of crap. Get out of here. That's not the problem. The problem is, how much burnt toast should you eat before you start drinking? I need to know stuff like that. I need to know what the latest treatments in alcoholism are so I can drink safely. You know, I don't need to hear your your pious crap about a higher power doing what you know, falling into the flow of things. No, I just need to know what I need right now. And so she brought me to the meeting like I said. She didn't stay. I did, and not because I was a better person than her. I was just probably, at that moment, more desperate than she was, and and I stayed i I wound up getting a sponsor and Bill McDonald, who died about two months ago, and he walked me through my first 26 years of sobriety, and he had me active. He had me doing the steps, and I didn't even know I was. Doing them, because I don't. It's my belief now, and based on the people I've come up in sobriety with, like Bob and Sue and anybody else in this room, Mike and there are other people in here, I know, I don't know that I could take the steps just sitting down and reading them in the book. Bill said from the first time I asked him, he said, Okay, you're gonna get a commitment at all of your meetings that you go to. And I want you at least six meetings a week. You can have one meeting off, one night off.

15:32 Don't work for you. Say that. I said, okay, and you have to have to have a commitment at every meeting. And you need to have a job there where you do something, do something. Okay, so I got commitments. I did those. And I want you to go out for coffee with everybody after the meeting, so you can get to know people.

15:53 People. No, not coffee with people once you go around the meeting before when you get there, and I want you to shake everybody's hand, and if you don't know them, ask them their name. If you know them, call them by their name. Once you get phone numbers from the men, I want you to call one guy every day and tell him that you met him at the meeting last night, and that you hope that's not having a good day, and you hope to see him tonight, and that's that. And call me every day. So I did all those things, and it was just like I was in a an ox yoke. You know, you've got the thing over your neck, and your hands are in shackles, and you have to do everything they tell you to do. And what happened was, but by the time I got eight months over, I felt like I was being used by AA, these PI see what you do here. This is a cult.

16:41 It's the world's worst cult. They tell you to go back to your family. Don't stop giving us a lot of money. Be kind to people. Don't tell them what you're doing, you know. And, and, and so I I did what you told me to do. And, and at eight months sober, I was standing at a meeting feeling sorry for myself because I was mopping the floor like as the Irish were built to do, and and it occurred to me when I looked up at the people standing there to thank the speaker, that I knew every single one of them by name, and I like them. And it just hit me. It just leveled me out. And I asked him when, when are we going to do the first three steps? And he said, are you doing everything I asked you to do? And I said, Yeah. And he said, What are you talking about? I said, When are we actually going to do the steps? He said, which part of the first three steps do you think you're not doing? It's a lot more than talk. We're not going to sit knee to knee and wish ourselves into turning our will in our life. You either do it or you don't. You either come to believe you can't make yourself come to believe. I can't sit there and go, Okay, I wish I'd come to believe and click my heels together three times. I believe and everything becomes Technicolor. It doesn't work that way. It's drudgery sometimes, but you have I had to do it, because if I didn't do it, I would have drunk again. I know I would have, because I would have forgotten what I was. And when the when the act of doing these things that we asked people to do around here became too much, I would drink again, because I forget what I was, and I would think that maybe that would get me back to some normalcy. I'd feel better, you know, quickly. And it changed that. Having that thing, that event, changed me. And I did all the steps, and I, you know, I started, I went back to school, and I got a good head start on a degree, on a master's degree, and I got I started teaching at a Catholic school. I didn't have a credential, so I went back to get my teacher's credential and all that stuff and and I taught for seven years, and I thought, this is exactly what maybe this is what I was supposed to do. You know, I'm loading trucks, which is what I was doing before and and over a period, I got I got married, I had two children, I had a new career. I got a new career, right? I got snatched out of teaching to write full time. I made a living writing for 25 years, 30 years and then, and in the meantime, my sponsor drank again. He had 26 he had 33 years when he drank again. And I was desperate. And I've been friends with Bob for a long time, and always looked up to him as he was like when I was new. Bob would speak of my home group. And I think you know, he's old timer, esteemed, old timer that people looked up to, and then he was friendly to me, and so he became a friend, and we would talk on the phone from time to time, and he would give me direction when I felt like there was something that my sponsor wasn't he my sponsor would say, call Bob Regan. And so I would call Bob. And so when Bill drank the first. Thing I did when I got off the phone with him, literally, the first thing I put the phone down, and I picked it up again, and I called Bob and said, Would you sponsor me? And this is 2000 I have to say it was 2006 or seven right around there to that 2007 Yeah, and my and Bob changed my life. He changed the whole course of my life at that point too, because I was going through a terrible divorce I want I wound up with full custody of my children, and everything was seen to be like erupting. Things were falling apart and and Bob was that sane island that always had something that he had learned, that he shared with me, that he learned in it, and it helped me. It kept me moving. And just to end, I moved, probably near the end here, right? Two minutes, okay, one minute. 30 seconds. Do I hear? 20 seconds?

20:56 Glad you didn't go. I'll tell you. I'm going to tell you something from I hit financial I ran into a patch where I was not making enough money to survive. I had not planned well. I retired at 66 and had not planned well, and things started to snowball, and I wound up in debt. And I went to Bob and said, what, you know, I don't know what to do. And he said, Well, you have a you have an income problem. Yeah, I can see that. And he goes, Well, you need to get more income. Light bulb. He said, you know how to teach. Why don't you go back and be a substitute teacher? So I did that, and then I got a long term substitution and I went back into teaching, thinking, I know how to do this. I can do this, but I hadn't done it for 30 years, and I found out that some things are not transferable. Some things are some things do not grow in the interim, and it's been hard, and it's been revealing as to it's been humbling, to put it that way, which is exactly must be what I need. But I know one thing, and that is, I trust my sponsor. I trust Alcoholics Anonymous, and I have for 44 years. I trust the process of that one higher power stays with with me through and I also know that I have learned how to love these kids. You know how to how even though, even though I'm shocked that more school shootings aren't done by teachers,

22:39 I found I found through the I found some examples I've had in here that I really do love these kids. I'm in the right place. It's hard some days, but so what I'm guided by a higher power. I have a great sponsor, I have great friends that I love, and I have you. So thanks for having so

23:03 thank you, Charlie, and next with 48 years, we have Sue R please.

Sue R.

23:16 Hi, I'm Sue I'm an alcoholic.

23:21 Thank you so much, Mike, for asking me to There you are. For asking me to share my experience strength and hope. Today, I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to say. I'm just all muddled up here, but I love listening to Charlie, and he made me laugh. And I'll tell you something, it was the laughter and Alcoholics Anonymous that saved my life when I crawled in here in 1976 I was 23 years old, and I felt like I was going to die or go insane. And it was the laughter in these rooms that kept me coming back. And I didn't know if I was really an alcoholic. I'd sit out there, and I grew up in an alcoholic home, and I swore I'd never drink like my dad. And I thought, How in the world could I be an Alka? Am I really an elk? Aren't I too young? I'm 23 and the laughter in these rooms kept me coming back. I was just drawn to it like a moth to a flame, literally. And one day at a time, I kept coming back, and I want to welcome our two new people here. I'm so glad I always love when we have new people, because I never want to forget where I came from. And when I got sober in 1976 it seemed like every single time I'd get up at a podium, somebody, I mean, come into a medium, somebody would get up at a podium like this, and they'd say, if you're sick and tired of being sick and tired. And I thought, oh my gosh, you know, I mean, that just resonated throughout my whole entire being. I was so sick and tired. And the main thing I was sick and tired of was that I couldn't live up to my word. You know, I wasn't. I didn't raise. I wasn't raised to live like that, but I was never able to do anything I said I was going to do, and I felt so bad about it. And I love that the theme here is I am responsible, and that we have that responsibility pledge here in Alcoholics Anonymous, and I got sober, where Charlie got sober, and one of the first things my sponsor told me is the program is based on love and service, and she said, but we don't do this just when we're in the mood for it. It's a discipline. We do this day in, day out, and you'll have a schedule of meetings, and if you have a meeting on a certain night, that's the most important thing is for you to show up at that meeting and and these commitments, these service commitments that Charlie talked about, that that I ended up getting, like washing ashtrays, taking cookies to the Sunday night meeting, all these little things like that. And when, when I was first asked to do things like that in alcoholics, especially the cookie lady, that sounded like a big deal. I thought, gosh, these alcoholics, they're going to be waiting for those cookies, you know. And don't they know that you can't count on me for anything. You can't count on me for anything. And one day at a time, I showed up and brought the cookies every single Sunday night, and at the end of that time, I felt like a spiritual giant, just because I had been able to do that and and I could see that Alcoholics Anonymous was making a difference in my life. But I'll tell you the first time that I remember drinking, because, like I said, I grew up in an alcoholic home, and I was never going to drink and be like my dad, and so I lived up to that vow until I was about 12 or 13 years old, and then I went with my parents on a trip, and I got to take my little girlfriend along with us, and we talked a man into buying us a bottle of booze. I don't know what it was, scotch whiskey, bourbon, something, and he brought it up to our room. We were on a different wing of the hotel than my parents, and thankfully, he just left it with us. And so we drank the whole thing, and I came out of a blackout in the lobby of the hotel in seersucker pajamas and a sombrero. And we were in Atlanta, Georgia.

27:21 No idea where I got a sombrero, but I fell in love with alcohol, you know, like the book says, I love the feeling produced by alcohol, because I don't care about anything anymore. I'm not scared that my dad's going to come home drunk, and are we going to be up all night long while he, you know, rages through the house, and thankfully, he was never physically violent, but it was terrifying. And I didn't that fear was gone, and my insecurity and everything, it was just all gone, you know. And alcohol did something for me when I first got sober in 1976 down in the Pacific Group in West LA, Clancy. I heard Clancy say alcohol does something for the alcoholic, it doesn't do for the general population. And when he first said that, I thought, Oh, they're just making that up. So we won't feel bad. But I have come to believe that that's true, and that I have that abnormal reaction to alcohol, and the book calls it an allergy. And I think I have it, and I think I still have it, and to this day, you know, been sober over 48 almost 49 years in two weeks, and haven't had a drink. But I think all it takes is just that one drink to reactivate this, this disease that is part of me. You know, it's just, it's in me, it's in my DNA. I believe that. And you know, whether it's true or not doesn't matter. I believe that's true. And so I am really, really grateful that, that I landed here in Alcoholics Anonymous, but I don't know if those pajamas got urine soaked, like Charlie was talking about. I don't remember them getting urine soaked, but I do know that I vomited in a trash can, and when I woke up the next day, that room was vile. It smelled bad, it was horrible. And yet what I remembered, my takeaway from that experience was, this is the best thing I had ever had. I mean, this was the best time I had ever had, and I couldn't wait to drink again. So I was willing to pay the price, so willing to pay the price for drinking. And so we there are not that many opportunities to drink at that early age, but I started sneaking across the state line to Mississippi, where you can drink at age 18. And there was a bar where we would go, and I didn't even have a fake ID, but they would serve us anyway, and this was my favorite place on earth. They talk about Disneyland as the happiest place on earth. This bar was my favorite place on Earth, and I couldn't wait to go back there. And I was supposed to go University of Alabama when I graduated from high school, but I decided to go to an all girls school in the same town with this bar, because I didn't want to get too far away from that bar. I had sort of struck up as something with the bass player in the band and and that was another thing for me, alcohol, booze and boys just seemed to go together, go together. I'm seeing some heads nodding, and I'm glad. And that was, you know, that was my life and and I had been a really good student. I had been really motivated. I loved doing well in school. I loved getting my teachers approval, my parents approval, and all of that, but once I got a taste of alcohol, there was just no comparison. And I didn't see this happening at the time, but it just took me down a dark road, and slowly but surely, anything that was healthy or good just left my world and just kind of went off the radar screen, and I became the classic underachiever, because I was just searching for that high. I just wanted to party. I just wanted to drink and have fun, and when so, while I was in this school, we were not allowed to go to this bar where I love to go, and so I would sneak out every night, and I would walk out with a stack of books because we were only allowed to go the library at night, so I go out with a stack of books and go out to this bar, and I got caught. Long story short, I got caught. My mother was looking for me. She tried to call me. She couldn't find me. We didn't have cell phones in those days, and she had to involve the school, and they couldn't find me. So they call the police, and the police found me with the bass player, unfortunately. And so the school gave me this ultimatum. It was like, you know, shape up or ship out, kind of a thing. And I knew there was no way I was going to survive in this school, you know, I just, I never once thought, oh, maybe I should only drink on the weekend, or, Oh, maybe I should do my school work before I start drinking. Or, no, never had a thought like that. Never thought of alcohol as a problem at all. I thought I'd better transfer to University of Alabama, because I can live in an apartment there and nobody will know what I'm doing. That was my solution. But when my mother and dad picked me up at the police station, that's a day that I never want to forget, because when I walked in there, I loved my mother with all my heart I still do. She's 97 years old. She lives on the Gulf Coast of Alabama, and she was the choir director and sometimes played the piano or the organ for our church, the First Presbyterian Church. And my mother seemed like a saint to me, but the thing that saved her from being too pious was she had a killer sense of humor, and I just adored her. I loved her with all my heart, and I felt so bad for what she was going through with my dad, the alcoholic. And that day, when I walked in there and my mother was crying in the police station, I felt like the lowest creature on the earth, just the lowest creature that there is. And I wanted to go up and hug her and say, Mom, I promise you I'll never do anything like this again. I'm going to go back to school. I'm going to make you proud of me. But I can say those words, because somewhere deep down inside of me, even at age 18, I knew this wasn't the last time something like this would happen. I knew I was powerless, but I didn't know I was powerless over alcohol. I just knew I couldn't be good for very long. That was all I knew. So I did transfer to University of Alabama, and I met a guy there who had come out from California on a motorcycle. He was, sort of, he was stoned on reds and sort of like this on a sofa when I first saw him. And was love at first sight. I couldn't wait, I couldn't wait to come out to California with this guy, because I had been to Sandy I had been to Coronado to visit my aunt when I was 16. And I thought, everybody's surfing and the sun is always shining, and I'm never going to have a bad day in California. And so I he was arrested for sales of cocaine, and I didn't let that slow me down. As soon as he got his probation after being in jail, transferred, I came out here to California with him, and I just hit the skids. I went from bad to worse, and I just, you know, was circling the drain by the time I was 23 years old. And I ended up at the UCLA emergency room lying on a gurney in the hallway. And I lay there and I cried and I felt like I was the loneliest person in the world, and I still didn't know that this had anything to do with alcohol. I just knew that I was really sick, and my life had gotten to the point where it was very small and very dark, and all I did was get up and go to work and. I try to make it through the day, and I was making excuses to go home, and I was always sick, and I'd get in the car to to come home, and I would look for a liquor store where nobody knew me between downtown LA and West LA, and I would end up getting lost on the way home from work, and I didn't know about the freeway flyer, but I would stop, and I would, I would get my bottle of wine, and I would start drinking in the parking lot or in the car or whatever, and I would end up getting lost on the way home to my own apartment, and I was afraid to go out. I was afraid not to go out. I was just full of fear. And so this, this one day, my girlfriend Dana, took me to the UCLA emergency room, and I lay there, like I said, crying, and I felt like I was the loneliest person in the world. And they they wanted to send me to they referred me to a specialist, and I had been going to so many doctors, one of my big problems was insomnia. I couldn't sleep, so I had lots of sleeping pills and tranquilizers and stuff. And the big book talks about that, you know, that doctors will start prescribing these heavy sedatives and stuff, and that was what happened to me. And I had all this stuff, and I was combining it and drinking. But I always drank. And I would, you know, I would drink a fifth of wine to go to sleep at night, along with my sleeping pills and stuff. I mean, it's, it's amazing that I live to tell this story, I think. But I I just, I was at the bottom. I had a moment of clarity that day, and I thought, Oh, my God, you're drinking just like your dad. You're an alcoholic soup. And I got on the phone, and I called the central office in downtown LA and a woman answered the phone, and she said, and I said, you know, I feel like bugs are crawling on my skin, and my arms and legs are going numb, and I hear voices. And do you think this has anything to do with drinking? She said, Yeah, honey. And it gets worse.

37:04 And I knew she knew I had sat across from the desk all those doctors, and nobody could figure out what was wrong or anything this lady knew. And I knew she knew it was the first time I heard the language of the heart that I that I have later heard so much here in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, and it saved my life. Saved my life. She said, Would you be willing to go to a meeting? And I said I'd do anything. So they sent a lady named Marty Liguori out to get me, and she drove me to meetings every night for that first week. And what I noticed about Marty when I got in the car with her, she was talking a mile a minute, and she said, we don't take the first drink or anything that affects us from the neck up. And up. And I knew she was talking about those sleeping pills and those tranquilizers. I knew it was all. It all had to go. And she drove me to meetings every night for that first week. And she was talking a mile a minute, but one of the major things I noticed was Marty smelled good, and I knew I didn't. I felt like stale booze was seeping out of my pores, and stale cigarette smoke and everything else. And Marty smelled good. She was an attraction to the program. You know, sometimes they say you might be the first copy of The Big Book someone sees. And Marty was that, for me, she was that first copy of the big book, and I wanted what she had. I wanted what she had. I was 23 years old. She was a much older woman, much older. She was probably all the way in her 50s by bed.

38:35 But I wanted what she had. And she took me to that meeting, and I went to my first Pacific Group meeting, like I said, it's a gigantic meeting. There are like 400 people there. I was filled with fear, and a woman walked up to me in that room, and she was only two years older than me, and she was two years sober. Her name was Pam, and she had this big, beautiful smile on her face, and her eyes were sparkling. And to this day, I can't tell you what she said to me, but she did give me her number, and she wrote my sobriety date in a big book, and she said, this will be your sobriety date. And later on, when I heard norm alpie speak on one of his talks, he said, who you are? Speak so loud I can't hear a word you're saying. And that's what it felt like. It reminded me of when I met Pam that night. I knew that I could trust her, and I didn't trust anybody, I didn't trust anybody in the world, and I felt safe with her, and I wanted to stay close to her. And she told me to call her, and I said, Would you be my sponsor? Because I heard all this buzz around me, get a sponsor, get a sponsor, get a sponsor work the steps. And she said, Yes, she would, and she became my sponsor, and she really, she saved my life, and I loved her with all my heart, and we lost her some years ago, way too early. She was only around 60 years old, and but things that she said, and her smile and her. Laugh have stayed with me, and they are just a permanent part of my heart and soul. It's just emblazoned inside of me. What she gave to me, you know, and like I said, she was 26 years old, and she was sober two years and she was the perfect sponsor for me. She was the perfect sponsor for me. And anyway, one day at a time, my life has changed and over any given period of time for the better. And I love Alcoholics Anonymous and and what I think is the most remarkable thing is that I can be happy, joyous and free on an ordinary day, doing ordinary stuff. To me, that is the miracle of this program, because I felt like I was born worried and born bored, and here I learned that I can be happy, joyous and free on an ordinary day, doing ordinary stuff. And I really love that. But it's also true that my husband, Bob and I have been able to travel a lot and do a lot of fun things and have a lot of interesting experiences, and I'm really grateful for that. And I just want to tell you a tiny little story that I like, and I just got the idea about this a minute ago. I hope I can tell it. I haven't thought about it for a while, but we went on a sober trip. We like to go on these sober trips where it's like 500 sober alcoholics and Al Anons, and they have meetings every night, and you know, there's always something to do. And so at one of these meetings, we had our Al Anon one night a week, we have an Al Anon speaker. And our Al Anon speaker was a lady named Kathy from Ohio, and I hope she'll forgive me for telling her story of hers, because I love it so much. Lynn is nodding, so I think she probably knows it. But Kathy said that she had a friend, and the friend, something went on, and her little son was suddenly going to not a public school, but a private school, like a church school, type thing. And he came home and and said he learned the Lord's Prayer. And she thought, okay, okay, when you're I'm busy, I don't, you know, don't have time to talk about this now, but we'll talk about later, whatever. And then that night, she was walking down the hall, and she sees her little son in his room. He's down on his knees and he's got his hands folded, and she stops in her tracks, and she listens to him saying, Our Father who art in heaven. How do you know my name?

42:40 And Kathy said, I'm so grateful to be in a program that has connected me with the God who knows my name and so am I so my thank you all for having me.

42:56
Thank you Sue and next, with 50 years, we have Judy F.

Judy F.

43:15 My name is Judy, and I'm an alcoholic.

43:18 I'm so grateful I got to sit in the first seat here because I have a gimpy leg today. And I never thought I'd sit in the meeting and say that I have a Gympie leg, and it's because I'm old and my sobriety date is February 23 1975 and I have to say that in my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, I was 22 years old, I never would have thought that I would be sharing at an old timers meeting. And I want to know what happened.

43:58 Was I present for it all.

44:02 Thank you. Thank you so much. I identified with everybody who's been up here so far. I want to tell you I had an experience this week. I was watching a commercial, and the commercial was on some sort of medication that they're telling people to take for something but one, and you know at the very end, how they tell you that you might suffer from these things if you take this medication, and it said, do not take this medication if you're allergic to it. And I thought, Well, how would I know if I was allergic to it, unless I took it. And then I thought, Well, that's true with alcohol. If I had known I was allergic to it, would I have ever taken that first drink? I don't know. I grew up in an alcoholic home. My dad was an alcoholic. Was a periodic. I never knew that he drank. He never drank at home. I drank very, very similar to him. I was a periodic, and I never drank at home. And I also had an alcoholic brother and my parents, my dad, was in and out of AA before I was ever born, he got sober in Ohio, in Akron. That sounds familiar and but it didn't matter that he got sober in Akron because he couldn't stay sober for 22 years. So whether he actually, you know, met anybody important back there. I don't know it would didn't make any difference, but my brother, my parents were at an alcoholic synonymous convention, and I was about 12 or 13 years old, and my brother was home, he was in the military, and he was supposed to be watching us, and he decided that, because we never had alcohol in the home, never that my sister and I needed to experience drinking or have a drink of alcohol, and so that was my first drink. It was my first drunk, and it was my first blackout, and I never drank any differently from that moment on until my last drink. And but he insisted. And you know, my parents are at this Alcoholics Anonymous convention, and here's their children at home drinking and getting drunk and blacking out. And I don't read, I don't actually remember that I had that feeling that other people talk about, I don't remember. I don't remember the whole weekend. And so when I was just graduating from high school, and the world was out there, and I am not a people person either. I like people think I am, but I'm not. And when I drank, if I drank in a bar, I moved the chairs away from the table because I didn't want anybody to sit with me. I was there, and I was there for one reason only, and it was not to socialize and you know, and for some reason, it's kind of like sitting in an AA meeting. Sometimes I like to go to a meeting and not have anybody sit with me, for some odd reason. That's like an attraction. They, you know, they feel like you got to be sitting right next to me. And if I move over a chair to make room, they got to move over with me. And so, you know, it's, it's hard, it's hard to be in a bar drinking. And, you know, I was young, I wasn't quite, I wasn't 22 yet, and I was a lot taller. I was thin. I had, you know, I had this image of like that. They used to have billboards with that slinky woman with her cigarette and her holder and she was all in a black dress and everything. And that was who I became. And yet I didn't like people. So it was kind of a I was, I was odd to say the least. And so when I had my my my dad finally came. Got sober. He got sober at the rafters. And I find it kind of amazing that I'm sitting at the same table with people from the Pacific Group, because I got sober at the rafters. And I'm going to say, make a comment about the Pacific Group, because I was young, that I did not get along with people from the Pacific when I got sober, because I had this idea that the only thing that I was going to have to do In Alcoholics Anonymous was just not drink. Everybody else was going to have to take those steps. They were going to have to do all that service work and everything. But I wasn't because I was smarter than the average alcoholic, and that you were going to have to do these things because, first of all, you drank more than I did, probably, and you were dumber, and and when I got sober, we didn't, there weren't a lot of women. I mean, when I went to the rafters, the first time, there were old men there, and, you know, they were probably in their 30s, but I and I used to go to noon meetings. And all of these men would be sitting in these noon meetings. And so they were my examples. You don't work. You don't have to work. You drive new cars, and you can sit around all day and just chit chat. And that was my introduction to Alcoholics Anonymous. And. And so When, when, you know, I had been working, I didn't know how to hold jobs down too much, because I couldn't, I didn't like that commitment. You know, they expected you to be there at eight o'clock and work until such and such a time, and eight was early, and working until five. That kind of cut into a lot of my play time and stuff. So I didn't know how to be accountable at a job. So I didn't keep them for very long if I showed up, sometimes I'd get jobs and I wouldn't show up at them. And this is sober, you know. Because I knew nothing about accountability. I knew nothing about commitments. I just thought that life was just about having fun. And so I had been working, and I quit my job because didn't they know who I was, and I was working in a home for functionally disabled people, and they didn't know who I was. I could have lived there with these people. So anyways, I quit my job, and I had I was sober just a few months when I quit it, and I was living at home. I had quit school, I had quit this job, and I was living at home, and my dad was very curious as to how my job hunting was going as I was laying by his pool, sunning myself, and he'd come home, you know, when you're new and Alcoholics Anonymous, you pick up the lingo. You know, don't worry. God's got it. First things first. Knew not a clue as to what any of them meant, but I had them down path. So my dad came over, I was laying by his pool, and he said, So how did the job hunting go today? And I was surprised. You know, am I supposed to be looking for a job? And I said, Don't worry, Dad. God's got it. And he just, he walked away, and he was shaking his head. So he went to these men that I was going to noon meetings with, and said, you've got, don't let her come to any more meetings until she finds a job. So he sent me to these men, and they helped me fill out and that was when you filled out applications and you took them in. And so these men helped me fill out these an application so I could carry it with me to go on a job interview. And the reason I wasn't getting any jobs was because I put down every single job I'd ever had, and if they called they wouldn't even know who I was, you know. So they helped me fill this application out, and then I went on my first job interview. I had to get there three hours early because I was sure I wasn't going to go in. And I went in, did the interview. They hired me on the spot. I stayed at that job for over 30 years because I knew I didn't want that experience again.

53:17 And I was sober, yet I didn't know that there was something that was going to happen to me that would give me the courage to be able to do that again, that would be able to give me the courage to stand up here today. You know, I didn't know that there was going to be a transformation in me that would attract people to me just like you were sharing, is that, that I know today, that I'm an example of Alcoholics Anonymous, you know, and I've been through all of the I've been chairperson of the convention, I've been in H and I, I did all of those things, and, man, I resented them to hell because the Spirit wasn't there. And I think that that's what has to be present for you to really comprehend and understand that service that you're doing, to be non resentful, to be to be challenged by it in what you're going to be doing. You know, I, I worked for a lot of years, and I retired. I I was kind of like Charlie. I didn't have it up here that I was going to be able to my sponsor. By the way, I'm current with my sponsor today. I have a sponsor. I'm in two book studies a week. Those are the things that I do to keep me accountable, first of all, and to keep me learning, God, I never want to get bored in this program. I know what being bored in this program is like. I get restless, irritable and discontent, and. Dougie and, man, I want to do things. I always thought I was going to be somebody when I got sober, you know, and I had that attitude, man, don't you know who I am? I've been the police have been called on me in sobriety. I've been removed from places in sobriety because of, well, I thought it was for mother, for other people, but it was because of my attitude and my pride. God, that pride is such a terrible thing. It is such a terrible thing, and I'm okay. Oh, good.

55:40 I didn't think I could talk for 20 minutes, but I guess those are the things that you know. I'm a I am a follower of Bill W I just absolutely love bill. I talk about him a lot. I think I know him. I do a lot of reading of his material and stuff. And when he talks about that emotional sobriety, you know, and he had that, you know, that letter that he wrote, he wrote the 12 Steps when he was God, just newly sober, newly sober, when you think about it. And then, you know, he wrote the emotional the letter on emotional sobriety when he was, like, 15 years sober, how much he had grown in that period, and the things that he he realized that he would need to do in order to maintain his sobriety. And that's where, to me, where that emotional sobriety comes in is in those it's going back to those steps. It's in looking at step six and seven and understanding the character defects that with 50 years of sobriety I still have, you know, just because I took step seven or so, I thought I did, they didn't just magically go away because I thought I had to do it, and I had to go back to step seven and reread it and do the seven step prayer and understand that maybe he doesn't want all of that crap, you know, maybe he wants me to continue learning from it and and I do On a daily basis. I do on a daily basis. I had to make amends the other day at a meeting. It was business meeting. So, you know, it's okay if you lose your cool, so long as you make amends afterwards. Because we all know how business meetings are. And I realized that, because I was in fear that I I picked, I chose somebody to make fun of and and to make them look smaller so that I felt bigger. And that's a big character defect of mine. And so after the meeting, I realized that I owed an amends. And so I went up and I made an amends after the meeting and the relief. I mean, it's amazing what it's not some of your forgiveness, sometimes it's some of my own forgiveness, and realizing that it's so true, what The Book says is that we strive for progress, not perfection, and I always wanted that perfection, you know, I wanted it in you, so that I didn't have to work so hard and and today that that that I'm just one of God's kids. I'm just one of God's kids doing the best that I can, and I found a difference in the service work that I do, I found a different kind of service work. A lot of people, if you're from Santa Clarita, know what time central office is open and the days that it's open, but I get the privilege of going and unlocking the door, answering the phone, being of service there, and I found home. It's just amazing. I just opened myself up. God, please show me what it is I'm supposed to do in retirement. Because I didn't know. You know, I didn't know. And he directed me. And today I get to be of service for central office. I get to be of service for in general service work, and my heart is so much freer today. It's open. It's open to any possibility that God has to offer me, and from that 22 year old who sat in a meeting and wanted to flip everybody off because they were sitting too close to my dad and I arguing about Clancy. And my dad loved Clancy. He absolutely adored Clancy, and we got into these fights all the time because I was a little bull headed, and I thought that maybe I should be in Clancy's shoes. Right? Other than Clancy. And those are two biggest shoes to fill today. You know, I just want to be a person among people. I want to just be just a simple alcoholic going to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and in if at all possible, be some sort of an attraction, and the only way I can do that is if I'm taking God with me and I am level with everybody. I'm not up here, I'm not down here. I'm just level, sitting in a seat and allowing somebody to sit next to me, sticking out my hand and saying Hi, I'm Judy and doing those things that I never thought I was going to have to do. And today I am in the best I am the happiest. I am in the most joyous spot I have ever been in. And for that, I am so so, so grateful. Thank you.

1:01:05 And last but not least, for 58 years, we have Bob R

Bob R

1:01:18 I'm Bob an alcoholic. Thank you for allowing me to come out here to even the guy that invited me is leaving. I'd like to thank the two lady speakers and the 27 minute participant. The rest of us are just going to have a little fun today.

1:01:43 The I'm going to tell you about. Well, first of all, my sobriety date is January 24 1967 58 and a half years sober and and I've averaged three or four meetings a week for 58 and a half years. So it's not like I've come and gone or taken a vacation. I couldn't afford a vacation when I came in, I was desperate, like Charlie said, and I'm so grateful because I was raising up Irish Catholic family in New England and and studies were very important. Academics were very important, and so they expect a lot of me and my brother and sister, neither my brother and sister alcoholic, nor were my parents alcoholic and and I didn't know I was alcoholic. I was a good kid. I my mother had a I found my few years after my mother died, I found this baby book that she had for me for the first five years of my life, and the baby book the first four years she wrote these two pages of wonderful things about us. What it was, sweet little boy, I was how helpful and sweet and kind, just everything positive for four years. My fifth birthday, she wrote one sentence that not as nice as he used to be. That's where you're going to get today. Friend,

1:03:23 I like our friend, Don Locke. He used to talk to people in any audience by name. He came out there about 15 years ago, and he said 20 years ago. And he said at the convention, he said he had a little he had a little dark side to him too. Anyway, he came up and he said, Would you he said, Would you sponsor me? And I said, I will, if you won't tell anybody. So that explains Don, he's still nursing home down by Ohio Street Meeting, and he's still hanging in there, barely by alpha red, but we went and saw him a year or so ago, Charlie and I went.

1:04:07 So anyhow, I'm going to skip through the drinking pretty fast. My drinking got bad fast, but it was ingrained in me that you have to graduate. You have to you when you start something, you gotta quit. You can't quit. It was bred into me, and so I, I got through high school. Well, I was accepted at a number of colleges, and I chose to go to Notre Dame. It was, it was the I see Bruce left. He had his USC hat on. Notre Dame USC tonight, he listened to the first three speakers, but and he asked me to sponsor him a year ago at this meeting. Anyway. Hell with him. I. Ah, we so I got to go to Notre Dame, and I my freshman year, they locked us up. We couldn't get an alcohol and so I didn't. So I got good grades, and everybody's proud of me. And sophomore year, I thought I learned the ropes how to get down a fire escape into town and so on. My grades suffered, and I was on disciplinary and academic probation for the next three years. But like I said, it was bred into me that you finish what you start. And so when I studied enough and I my grades were barely good enough, but I graduated with my class, and sometimes I make light of it, make people think I just went there and drank for four years. I did not I studied. I did my work. I did the work you don't get a business degree in four years from Notre Dame by getting being drunk all the time. And then as soon as I got out, I got a draft notice. So I hurriedly signed up for Navy OCS, and they sent me to Newport, Rhode Island. And again, they locked me up for 18 weeks with everybody else, and during those 18 weeks, I couldn't get alcohol, and so I was commissioned, and they said, you're now An Officer and a Gentleman. I remained an officer for the next four and a half years, gentleman for almost 24 hours. I thought I joined the Navy, because I saw the billboards. The billboard says, join the Navy and see the world. And they had billboards with Hawaii, the Caribbean and the Mediterranean. Now I got to go one of those three. So my first set of orders were to Kodiak, Alaska, but I didn't get to go. I bought the uniforms to go, and then the day I got them at today, after I got them, I got a change of orders to go to Asmara, Eritrea, Ethiopia, on the other side of Africa, not this side the other side of Africa. So I went there for the next year and a half, and and I drank, and my drinking got me in trouble. But again, whenever the ships really got down, I became like the poster boy for the Navy. I would do his work and her work, and everybody else and and everybody liked me when it's not drinking. And but I drank whenever, as much as I could, whenever I could, and and the big thing, I think one of the big things, was I, I had an affinity for sports and for how to coach sports teams. And so the commanding officer had me coach and all. He hated the army, and we were not army, but we were a tenant unit on army base. They had like 11 army teams and one Navy team, and they just beat the hell out of the Navy teams, all of them. And this guy, this commanding officer, said, You're the new you're the new athletic officer and a coach of every team. And and I said, Okay, and so we started beating the thunder out of the Army, and he just loved it, and my drinking and my problems and all that weren't so bad that he tried to get rid of me. He kept me and so and I finished up my tour there. I was promoted on time. My next, next set of orders were the Pentagon and the Chief of Naval Operations Communications Office, and I was there for the next year plus. And during that time, it was a tough time in the Navy. Is it was tough time in the country. And when I was in OCS, they had the Bay of Pigs invasion, and it was a real serious time. And I was in Ethiopia when they had the Cuban Missile Crisis, and we didn't know if the next missile was going to land us on us in Ethiopia or not. And then when I was in the Pentagon working, and I was on duty, President Kennedy was shot. And so all these big things. And we were the we were the hub of all the communications for the Navy and for the chief, the joints, Chief of Staff, and the White House and everybody else. And so it all came through us. And so I very I made it through that, and I might have stayed in the Navy, except I knew they didn't have any alcoholism programs or anything like that. They I knew there was I was doomed if I stayed in that I could my drink was getting worse. So I got out of the Navy, I was dating someone, and a month after I got out of the Navy, we got married, and she left me about 40 times in the first year we were married, several of those times for a week at a time, but mostly for one or two nights all around my drinking and finally, And I was fired from three jobs because of I not because of my drinking as much as I when I drink, I wouldn't show up for work, and they didn't. Didn't like that. And so I finally I got a job that's transferred me out to Southern California, and I was in the San Fernando Valley, and I really liked it, because you had no humidity. I could take the heat, but not the humidity, and so I liked, liked it, and I drank out here for the next year and a half. And finally I just hit bottom. I just couldn't go on anymore, drinking, getting up in the morning and starting to drink immediately, and I pass it out. I blacked out. I wouldn't I. I came to one morning in in my house and and I remembered somebody, there's only what was it? I was in college. We hitchhiked back to Massachusetts at semester break, or when the year was over, we'd stop in New York. We meet in Charlie's bar on the perimeter of times of Grand Central Station, and we'd meet there, all of us hitchhiking separately. And so we'd meet there, and we I was in the early group to get there one morning about 630 so we go in there and this but 20 minutes later, as a businessman walked in neat suit. It looked like the Mad Men thing had a little thin briefcase and went down the other end of the bar, and a bartender, what came up, and he poured him up like a double shot. He tried to pick it up, and he couldn't, it was and so he took it and he put it in a in a big schooner, like a 16 ounce schooner, and he picked it up, and it was shooting like a flame. He couldn't get it up to his mouth, and so finally, he took his necktie and set it down on a bar, and slid that drink up his necktie and drank it. And it worked. And bartender looked at him, and a bartender went down there, poured him another double in a smaller glass. He picked it up daintily and drank it down, straightened his tie, in his suit, picked up his briefcase, and he walked out. And I said to my friends there at the bar, I said, where I really get that bad? I'm gonna quit drinking. Well, just before I sobered up one morning, I came to in Van Nuys, in my bed, and I walked out into the kitchen, and I got a drip, poured myself a drink, barely, and I tried to do it, it wouldn't work, so I walked back. I had my undershirt and my underwear on. I crept back in the bedroom. I got a necktie. I came in and tied the necktie over my T shirt and held it down and slid it up my shirt, my tie, and it went down like a charm. So I'm not telling you newcomers to try that. It worked. And I thought to myself, when I saw told this guy, if it ever get that bad, I'll quit. I didn't quit right then, little while later, it got to the point where I just I got fired from my job. I repossessed my car. My mother came out to see the happy family, which wasn't and finally, I threw in the towel. Contacted a priest and Malibu, and he put me in touch with a woman, Alcoholics Anonymous. She took me my first meeting, and in the first meeting with the Arlington group down in LA a speaker meeting, and Al Marino was a secretary and the leader every week, and the boss of the meeting, and he controlled it, but they had good speakers and a big crowd. And so the second, first week, I had some woman speaker. I don't know who it was. The second week I went back. Norm alpie was the speaker. So I got to meet norm alpie. When I was a week sober. It was about 10 days, 11 days sober. They suckered me to go on this couple retreat down in Palos Verdes, and I went down there, and Chuck C and his wife Elsa, were there. So I got to meet Chuck and Elsa, and his next door neighbor was Warren Snyder and his wife, Betty. And so Warren saw that I was a newcomer, and so I became his. He became my sponsor, and so he gave me direction for the next two years. He got me into everything. I was at mastering phones at the simple office. I was secretary of the meeting. I got involved in general service. I was a GSR and then a district committee member. I was doing all these things for like, the next two years, and then he got galloping leukemia, and he died in six days. He had me on all these things. He was 56, years old. And so I went to call Betty, and I said, I don't know what to do. And she said, Well, call Chuck. I said, you don't just call Chuck.

1:14:07 A month later, I called Chuck. Two weeks later, maybe I called Chuck. He said, be down at my house at 10 o'clock Sunday morning. So I knocked on his door. I knew where he lived. I'd been back and forth from Warren Betty's. They live across the driveway. So I knocked on his door at 10 o'clock, and he let me in, showed me where to sit, and he sat in his chair, and I started telling my problems for about the next minute and a half, and he interrupted me, and he talked for the next four hours, and then, and then he and then he looked at his watch. He said, It's time for you to go. The next guy's here. We walked to the door, and sure enough, the next guy was standing there waiting to knock and but I floated home from Laguna up to Reseda, where I lived at the time, or Van Nuys. Van Nuys, I guess. Anyway, that's how it was. And so he became my sponsor, and he got he kept me active in Alcoholics Anonymous. He taught me some of the great lessons that I've learned and tried to put into practice. He I was on the retreat in 1975 where they made the tapes and the book a new pair of glasses. I know the book, I know the tapes by heart because I've had, I've had real down spots in my sobriety, broken marriages and disappointed kids and things, all kinds of things, lost jobs. My job thing was just like, I got fired the day before I came to AA, and so I went out with the help of my cousin. Two weeks later, I found a job, I kept it for a year. Was a year, so I got fired, actually, yeah, I got fired. Got another job, I kept it for nine months, and they sold the company and let us all go. So I got fired again, 22 months sober. So I went out and got a good job, looked hard, got a good job and kept it for five years, and they said you're the best salesman west of the Mississippi, and you're going to be the next district sales manager, youngest one in the company. And then my boss got fired. I figured that was the time they brought in some guy from Milwaukee, made him the manager. And so here I am still a salesman seven years sober, and said, There's no way you can fire me. So three months later, he fired me seven years sober. But my I was, I was on the move, you know, I'd been so, so active in alcoholics, and honest, I've done all the jobs I was doing, all the jobs I never missed, the meetings I just did, did all the AA stuff, and so I So anyway, I got this job, and, I mean, I got fired from this job as a third one, I got fired from sober and I said, screw this. I went out, started my own business. I didn't get fired for the next 47 years. Three years ago, I sold it, and I don't know if those numbers correlate, but that's about what it was three years ago, I sold a business, and I don't have to work anymore, but I worked till I was 84 I was looking to think my Social Security. I started to pay his social security in 1952 when I was 15, and I've been paying his social security every year, except one was a junior in college every year from that until three years ago, when I retired, so I'm entitled to receive Social Security. Now tell you a couple of on my friend, how much time we got three off? Okay? We we got a guy. We got a guy out there that had no big black man. Good guy. Name is Mike H some of you know him. He, he, about 35 years ago, he got out of prison, and he, he, somehow he got back to Oxnard, where he had been from his drinking. I mean, couldn't stay sober, but he got a job in this liquor store that was owned by a guy in AA, and the only job he could get is a janitor. Anyway, about there about two weeks, and he was mopping the floor in the back, and also he heard a commotion at the register, and he looked down the aisle, and some guys holding up the robin the cashier, see, through the mop that will Mike's like, six foot, three away, about 290 threw them up, down, and he went after the guy. The guy looked up and he took off. And somehow Mike ran him down in the parking lot, laid on top of him. The guy says, Let me go. He says, I'll let you go. Give me the money. I'll let you go. So the guy gave him the $35 so Mike took $35 he walked back in, he handed to the cashier, and she said, I didn't give him any money.

1:18:54 Where about Alcoholics Anonymous? Do we hear things like that? That happened, and I have stories. I got friends. They go back. And it's just, it's been a magnificent life. Sue and I met 1994 she remembered me from I had spoken at the Pacific Group a number of times. She mentioned part one of my she saw me and she said, said, you're one of the purple you're the purple Panther coach who my daughter's team, softball team, and I said, Yeah, so we've talked, and she was married to somebody, and I was married and somebody, and so we stayed friends, and we went to some of the same meetings for the next 17 years, and 2010 or 11, neither one of us were married to anybody for about a month, and we've been together ever since, and it's my great joy to try and add to her life, and I and I try to make her happy. I got time for one little story before you throw me off. One story. She, she, she had a she likes a certain kind of meat at. A grocery store, and we have grocery stores like two miles from her house, real close, and she goes in it, but the woman that's behind the meat counter is the most miserable person. She and she's miserable to everybody. She punches her teeth and she ignores you. She walks by four or five times. She goes to the back and she leans against the thing anyway, just so instead sue, sue will drive into Camarillo, which is an hour round trip from our house, to get the meat, the same meat she can get two miles away, just so we don't have to deal with that woman. And so finally I saw Sue, I'll go get it. Tell me what you I'll go get it. So I I went in there, and I started, and I said to myself, I'm going to just go in there. I want to say my nice little Catholic prayer. And before I go in there, and I'm going to surround myself with the peaceful light that they talk about. And so I did, and I said my prayer, and I said a couple more, and I took the basket, and I walked in, and I smiled at her, and she sort of broke, and she didn't say anything, and I told her what I needed, and and, and all of a sudden she became pleasant, the same one. And I'm just sent standing in this, this aura of light that I'm thinking of, thinking, what did I bring here? And this little woman standing right about that far away, she comes into our light too, and she gets real happy. And so, wow, so I, so I got the stuff, and I thanked her, and she thanked me, and I wouldn't I paid for it now then the Sue couldn't figure it out. About every three days I'm asking if she needs some more meat. And, that's all we do. It's all we need to do in Alcoholics Anonymous, is say our little prayers and bring our little light and be kind to people and be gentle and magic happens. Thanks a lot. You

1:22:03 Oh, yes, do.