They Cared About Me Even When I Was Sober – AA Speaker – Derrick F.

>> Welcome to Sober Sunrise, a podcast bringing you AA speaker meetings with stories of experience, strength, and hope from around the world. We bring you several new speakers weekly, so be sure to subscribe. If you'd like to help us remain self-supporting, please visit our website at sober-sunrise.com.

Whether you join us in the morning or at night, there's nothing better than a sober sunrise. We hope that you enjoy today's speaker. >> >> Good morning.

I am Derek and I am an alcoholic. And that's for those of you that don't know me. For those of you that do, let the tape record show that I was able to bow with grace and dignity.

Um Let's see. What am I here for? Oh.

Um I'm here to tell you about myself. That's the only thing I can do with at least any sort of reliability. >> >> I will start out by telling you that I wore my boots today.

After sitting here last night watching the speaker, I figured, "Oh, I better wear something high this morning so I'd at least be taller than the podium." It worked. Most things do when I give them a try. Um I guess what I'm supposed to do is tell you what happened what it was like, what happened, and what it's like now.

And there's a lot of information in there and I can't possibly cover it in an hour, but so I'll just sort of pick out a few tidbits here and there. Um I come from a sort of lower middle-class family, born in Omaha, moved away from there in a hurry. Um My family background was one of sort of I would call it a moderate amount of the standard abusive behavior.

Um, one of my earliest memories is of waking up with my mother standing there hitting me with a 2×2. And then after I was sort of numbed a bit and out of bed, I discovered that it was because I had taken a fence post out of the creek behind our house. And I thought, okay, I really must be pretty rotten to have done something that, you know, taking a fence post deserves being beaten, so I learned in a hurry that what they told me must have been right, that I was stupid, that I was ugly, and that I would never amount to anything.

Now, I've kind of over the years found that if you tell an adult something about 187,000 times, they'll believe it. Tell a child the same thing twice, and they know it's absolutely the truth. Um, throughout my entire career of living with my family, that was pretty much what things were like.

Um, my mother married my stepfather when I was I think it was six or seven. I was seven. And before I was 10, I ended up in the hospital eight times because I was a clumsy child.

I fell down a lot, as all abused children do. We fall a lot, but we never get beaten. Um, I What I remember just a few years ago telling one of my grade school friends about some of the occurrences in our household, and he absolutely didn't believe it at first.

And I said, "Well, why would you not believe it?" And he said, "Because your mother was so nice, and your stepfather was so nice. They wouldn't have done that." I said, "But, that's the whole thing with a family that has abuse going on. Everybody's very nice publicly.

There's that private life behind the closed doors where it's not quite so pretty. Um And it's taken a lot of years for me to to be able to come to terms with some of that and to realize that a lot of what they told me just wasn't true. As far as my drinking career, that was interesting.

See, I would never do anything wrong. I mean, I couldn't because I knew I would get beat up for it. So, I didn't have my first drink till my 21st birthday.

Unlike most of the kids that I knew, um I went to a bar that was fairly close to where I lived. Anybody know where the Saddle Creek Bar in Omaha is? Well, they should have put a plaque up there for me.

That was where I had my very first drink and I got drunk. And I stayed that way for Oh, let's see. 21 to 33, 12 years.

I didn't ever bother to sober up during that time. I'd wake up in the middle of the night and have a few beers and go back to sleep. Um I used to think that there were reasons for why I drank, that I drank to forget things, to forget the abuse, to forget that I was stupid, ugly, and would never amount to anything.

And I thought that I'd drink so that I could pretend that I wasn't those things, so that I could pretend that I was a worthwhile person. Um I used to think that I drank because that was the only way that I knew how to catch a man and it was to get drunk and become obnoxious until they would take me to bed to get me off their case. But what I finally figured out was, hey, it worked.

What I finally figured out was that I drank because I was addicted to alcohol. It was as simple as that. I drank because I couldn't stop.

I drank because I had to. That for me to function, I had to have alcohol in my system. Um There's There's a lot of things that I could tell you about what happened while I was drinking, but most of those are pretty irrelevant.

I was a typical sloppy, disgusting drunk. Um One One of the primary memories that I have is when I was in college, which I didn't start till I was 26, I remember walking across campus one day with $1 in my pocket. And I was crying and crying and crying and asking the question, why me?

Why did I have to be like this? And I hadn't eaten for a day or so, but I knew that I would not be able to avoid spending that last dollar on a six-pack of beer. And that's what they were then for cheap beer.

It was 99 cents. And that was very typical of me and very typical of my behavior to be crying whenever I was drinking. Um in fact, I was crying so much that the government tried to have my face declared federal wetlands.

Um It was It was just getting worse and worse every every day. There were And I could tell that things were getting worse, but I also knew that I couldn't quit. Um I could tell in different ways, like the people that I was hanging around with.

I initially hung around with a lot of social users. People that could have a couple of drinks and that was it and, you know, nothing more to worry about. And pretty soon they were people who were drunk a lot.

And then there were people who were drunk all the time. And then there were people that I didn't know. Because if I hung around if I would find new people people that didn't that I didn't know, they didn't know me and they didn't know what a sloppy drunk I was and they would put up with me for a day or two.

Well, as you can imagine, there came a time when I was with the wrong people at the wrong time and I ended up getting arrested for the crime of sodomy, which was real thrilling. Ended up in prison and I did my time there and was very comfortable there in a strange sort of a way. I always knew where my next meal was coming from.

I always knew I would have a bed to sleep in, but at the same time I was scared half to death. And then I started realizing that for me being afraid was a normal state of existence. I was afraid of everything.

I was afraid of being rejected by every human being that ever drew a breath because I was being rejected by myself. Um I finally had my belief system validated in that I was no good one day when I was severely beaten and stabbed and raped by seven very large men. Um and yet at at the time it was no big deal because they just simply proved to me that I was the piece of that I thought I was.

Um Then came the day that I got out and when I walked out the door of that place, I said, "By God, I'll never drink again. I know I never will because I can't go through with that." I had to say that. I had to say that because that's what people expected to hear from me, that I couldn't cope with it, I couldn't go back there and all that sort of stuff.

And for the first couple hours I didn't drink. They had a coming home lunch for me and I thought one glass of wine will not hurt me. I will not get back into it because I'm not going to drink beer.

I'm going to drink a smart little glass of wine to celebrate my getting out of prison. So, I had a glass of wine and I was fine for the rest of the afternoon. And at the coming home party that night, somebody brought a keg of beer and another one brought a few cases and on and on.

I drank a case of beer that night and cried and cried and got lots of attention. It was because I was in so much pain from having been in prison and all, poor me, God. Well, I was in pain, but it wasn't from being in prison.

And it wasn't too long after that that I hit my first of several treatment centers. Um I went into a treatment center for an evaluation and this is what I was told. Excuse me, you have a lot of problems, but drinking is definitely not one of them.

Did I need a better excuse than that? Not on your life. I left the treatment center on the 10th day, which was I was there for a 10-day evaluation and there's this liquor store right down at the end of the driveway.

Hm. I hit that place on the way home. Stayed drunk some more.

Um as you can imagine, I did have to have some sort of way to support myself and so I would go from one job to another job to another job because they all figured out that I was an alcoholic. Well, actually they did I don't know if they figured that out or just that I was sick because I was always sick. I couldn't come in today because I had the flu.

Next week, I can't come in today because I have diarrhea or a stomach ache or a tooth ache or, you know, I just the list goes on and on. Well, then I finally got a job that I absolutely loved. It was yet another job milking cows.

And I told my boss that I was an alcoholic and that he had to make sure that on that every day I took my little Antabuse pills. Because I was going to go that route and he said, "You can't possibly be an alcoholic because you're never late to work." I start work at 7:30 in the morning. Who in the hell had to be late?

I was passed out by 8:00 at night. So, I didn't have to worry about being late. Um I It was just one of those things.

Well, the way that job ended was in a blackout one day I left. I don't remember leaving. What I remember is going into town to run some errands.

It was right before Christmas. The next thing I knew I was getting out of a van in a city that I didn't know and it turned out to be Chicago. Um how I got there, I'm not sure.

I think I hitchhiked. Hitchhiking was absolutely not okay in my book. Only sleazy people hitchhiked.

They were too poor to have a car and I had a car. Um I But, apparently that's how I got there. Well, when I got back to Omaha, I started retracing my footsteps and found out that a lesbian friend of mine had asked me if she could borrow my car to take her lover to the hospital who had fallen on the ice and broken her leg.

I gave her the title, signed it, and said, "Keep the son of a I don't need it anymore." I don't give nothing to nobody, especially a woman. Well, now to the next subject. Sex.

That was It's not something that I'm very comfortable talking about, but that's okay. I will. I It tells a lot about me and it tells a lot about my drinking.

I'm one of those fortunate people who knew that I was gay right from the time I was a child. I had my first lover when I was eight. But that's okay.

He was an older man. He was 8 and 1/2. He was also my best friend.

We also shared the same last name. He was everything that I wanted to be. By the time we were in high school, he was voted the best looking boy in our school.

He was bright, he was witty, he was charming, he was everything that I wanted to be, but I knew I wasn't. And I spent years saying, "How did I ever get my hands on somebody like this? What could he possibly see in me?" Well, then we broke up when I was 21.

And at as I said, on my 21st birthday, I had my first drink. By the time I was 21 years and a week, I found my first gay bar. And I discovered this strange little thing there that some of the people didn't yet realize how ugly I was.

And I was toting tricks out of this bar like they was, you know, going out of style. And the manager of the bar got incredibly pissed at me because I kept taking the men that he wanted. Well, I was a little tiny fright.

I mean, I didn't quit growing until I was 26. So, I was really quite tiny and cute and innocent looking and all of these sorts of things. So, I was able to grab almost any man I wanted.

I'd find a way. I'd buy them a few drinks if they'd take me home. If I thought they wanted to be some big butch thing, I'd let them buy me a few drinks and I'd take them home.

And it just it became one of those things where I could say, "Well, he wanted me at least for an hour." And they all wanted me for an hour. But it didn't take long for them to realize that I was too disgustingly drunk to be around for more than an hour. And in bed I would generally keep my mouth shut.

Um and it didn't take too long before that wore off. Maybe 6 months before the cute stopped working. But then I made this discovery that I wore certain clothes and acted in a certain way, some of these men would take me home and beat me up.

And I worked very hard at getting only the ones that would beat me up. To the point where to this day I haven't forgotten it, neither has the owner's wife of a particular bar in Omaha which shall remain nameless. I allowed them one night to hang me up from some chains dangling from the ceiling with nothing on and do anything they wanted to me.

And they proved I was no good. They proved that I deserved abuse and that I deserved to be treated badly. Um it was I would it was like I was in heaven because I was right.

For the first time in my life, I was absolutely right and these men were proving it that I was absolutely no good. Um Initially I had at least certain standards that I would only, you know, like if you were if I were to rate all men on a 1 to 10 scale, I would only go with home with somebody that was an eight or above. And then pretty soon it was a five or above.

And it got to the point where a one would do. Anyone would do. One experience that will that will never hopefully leave my mind was that I woke up one morning and didn't know that I had brought someone home with me and I rolled over in bed and I screamed.

This man was How would I describe him? Unbelievably obese. And there was not one square inch of his body that wasn't covered with zits.

And to me he was physically very ugly. He was repulsive and I would never on a sober day have said yes to him. But then after I screamed I realized how badly I must have made him feel.

And at that point I don't think I cared. All I could All I wanted to do was figure out a way to get him out of my house. And he was He was charming and nice and wouldn't leave.

He finally did. Well, it was about a week or two weeks after that that I was sleeping under the West O Street Viaduct in Lincoln. And I came out of a blackout in the middle of the night and there was some 60 plus year old wino there and I was begging him to let me suck his dick.

That was the night I checked into my first treatment center. I figured that that was as low as I could sink. But it apparently wasn't as low as I could go because I didn't stay sober.

And then I went to another treatment center. And then another one and another one until I had gone through six five different treatment centers six different times. Well, surprisingly enough it never worked.

Because I And I now know why it didn't work. Because I went for almost every reason and everybody but me. I was not ready to quit yet.

When I finally did, well, I got started going to AA meetings in Lincoln and and I discovered that it would work very, very well there. I could do things like go to the meeting and you know how you act like you put in $5 and take out four? Well, I used to do that every week so I could go get drunk.

Then I figured two or three times a week I could go in and act like I put in five or 10 and take out change. I mean, they'd pass that little pot full of money. I couldn't resist that, not when my stomach needed some beer.

Um and of course I had to get drunk in order to steal the money to get drunk again. Well, so I don't know. It It managed to work.

But when I finally quit, what happened was I had been going to meetings for 3 years and claiming sobriety because I had not drank. I was smoking dope. I was shooting.

I was snorting a little of this and that and what have you, but I did not drink. I went to the Al-Anon club at home and I told everybody how to stay sober. And the funny thing they were.

It was where everything I said seemed to be just magical for them. I One woman one night was sitting in a meeting bitching because her ex-husband wouldn't pay any attention to her kids and on and on she went and I just looked at her and I said, "Girl, what's that don't make a father." And she remembered that. I forgot it, but she remembered it.

And about 5 years later she said that was one of the things that kept her sober was hearing that. And I'm going, "Oh, okay. Well, isn't that nice?

I'm so glad I was able to help." Well, you know, here this this time is going by and I'm I'm truly at this point despising myself because I'd go out on the porch, smoke a joint and go back in and collect another medallion. Cuz I wasn't drinking. I didn't have to drink.

I had my weed. I had my everything else. And I I couldn't face those people unstained because I had a secret.

And they didn't know what the secret was. Well, I can claim that I've had one of the world's finest planned drunks. Because it worked.

I knew at that time that because of my mouth and because of saying all the right things that nobody would believe I was using. I knew it. So, what I did was I went to a meeting one night and I got pissed.

Because I tried to tell them that I was using drugs and they wouldn't believe me. So, I went home and on the way home I bought two six-packs of beer. Took them home.

Sat down and I drank one six-pack just as quickly as I could and I called up this woman that I knew would call up my sponsor and tell him. Called her up and said, "Hey, I'm drunk." And she goes, "Oh." I said, "You bet I'm drunker than Now, get over here." So, she called up my sponsor. Some of the people in this room know him.

Well, the two of them came over to my house and we had a discussion. And I said, "I'm sick and tired of living." And here's what they said to me, "No, you're not." And I said, "Don't tell me I'm not. I am." They said, "No, you're not sick of living.

You're sick of living the way you have been." And they were right. And from that minute on, I've not ever wanted to have a drink again. I'm not sure of exactly why other than to say they were right.

I was sick and tired of living the way I had been. Um I did manage to stop drinking. I don't know for sure what all was going on with me at that time because I was still I mean I was numb for the first couple of years.

But I remember that on my first anniversary, I thought, "My God, this has been so easy to stay sober." And yet I remember walking down the street and in tears again because I wasn't getting any attention for staying sober. I got a lot of attention when I was drunk. All negative, but I got a lot of it.

And that night, I went home to discover a surprise surprise sobriety party for me. And I thought, "My God, these people do care." Um and I was stunned that they cared about me even though I was not drunk. They cared about me enough to not chase me away.

That they told me that I was okay. I didn't believe them yet, but they told me I was okay. I knew I still had a few of them old.

Um and during the first few years, what I learned how to do was stay sober. I didn't learn how to live. I didn't learn how to quit lying.

I didn't learn how to stop keeping secrets. But eventually, I did start learning those things, too. Um because the one thing I learned was that if I keep secrets, I'll go right back to drinking.

Because I started thinking back to all the behaviors that happened. For the first four times I was in treatment, I was told, "Don't tell anybody you're gay." And I I didn't. I left and got drunk.

It was easier. Um The fifth and sixth times that I was there, I said, "No, I have to tell them that." But I still kept a lot of other secrets. I couldn't tell anybody about the abuse that went on in my house.

Abuse only happens to rotten people. I knew that, so I couldn't tell that. There There were just so many things I couldn't tell.

Well, after the first year or so of staying sober, I started telling people little by little what had happened to me, what I had lived through, and I kept finding out that I was hardly the only one, that I wasn't the only kid in the world that got beat up, and I wasn't the only one who was told that they were stupid and ugly and would never amount to anything. Um By the time I had been sober about 5 years, I started thinking, maybe just maybe I was starting to see some success in my life. Well, that was scary, but I said, "I'm going to try something.

I'm going to go back to school." And I went to school to be to learn how to be a computer programmer. I thought $10,000 wasted. Um But I didn't know that.

I I really thought I wanted to do that. So, I went to this school, and 3/4 of the way through it I discovered, no, I don't want to do this ever as an occupation. But I finished it.

I finished that school and I graduated and I got my little diploma, and I still have that sucker at home. Never used it, but I finished it. That's all I cared about.

Um So, then I turned around I was out of that school maybe a month when I went back to school. I went to beauty school. Like all good little princesses should do.

Um For those who haven't, anybody in here gone there? Mhm. And lo and behold, I discovered I was good at it.

It was a little hard to conduct this balancing act of doing some old lady's hair one day going out and milking cows and shoveling the next day. But I managed. I didn't smell too bad on these days and I didn't offend the cows on these days.

Um And it it it went very very well. Um I got out of school and immediately I got a job in one of one of the more prestigious places in town and everything was going great. And I decided to move to California.

And I did. I talked to a friend of mine out there and made arrangements to move. I packed my bags and I was gone.

And about 3 weeks after I was there at this point I'd been sober like 6 years, a little over 6 years. Um Once I got out there I started job hunting, but I couldn't do very well at job hunting there because I didn't feel well. I didn't feel at all well.

Pretty soon I couldn't walk. And then I was having all these other problems. And I guess I was out there about 3 months when I got my little AIDS diagnosis.

And I thought, "Okay, now I'm going to die." And all I could think of at the time was, "God, let me stick around long enough to be sober 10 years." Just 10 years, that'll be enough. But the doctors told me I would only live about 6 months and I looked at this doctor and I said, "Sucker, you don't know me very well." By this time I had been sober about 6 years and I'd learned how to be a little bit stubborn. Just ever so slightly.

Stubborn enough that it's gotten me through 6 and 1/2 years of dealing with that stuff. Um Now a lot of people don't understand when I tell them this, but I will tell you the same thing I tell everybody else. Getting AIDS has been the second best thing to ever happen to me in my life.

I love it. But not for the reasons you might think. I'll tell you why I love it.

Prior to it, I had lost my family, most of my friends because I drank my way through them. I had lost just enough stuff that yeah, I was sober, but I wasn't very happy. And when I got this diagnosis, I had to stop and evaluate a few things like which is worth more, the diamonds or the family?

Which is worth more, the new car or the friends? And I started realizing that all the things in the world didn't mean But my family meant a lot to me and I needed to find a way to get them back. Well, I found it.

My friends meant as much to me as my family because they had become my second family. And I've gotten a lot of them back. Um Getting that kind of a diagnosis is like getting slapped in the face with a hell of a good dose of reality.

You know, reality being that we are human beings, we are mortal, we can't do a damn thing about our past. But we can sure as hell do something about our present and our future. Um Being in AA, I had learned all these things like I am powerless.

Well, I am over alcohol. My life had become unmanageable. It was a mess.

But then I had to turn around and and rewrite part of that step when it came to my AIDS diagnosis. I am not powerless over AIDS. I am powerless over the fact that I already have it and I am powerless over the outcome of it.

But boy, can I give the interim a lot of good direction. If it's based on everything I've learned from the AA program, it works well. Um I learned without any shadow of a doubt what living life one day at a time means.

Not just doing it, but learn what it means. I've gone to 78 of my friends' funerals. And I've gotten something good from every one of them.

I've gotten a chance to sit down long enough to realize how important my life is and how important the lives of my friends are and the the lives of my family. You learn a lot. I learned what it means when we talk about easy does it, just do it.

There's been a lot of things in my life that I desperately desperately wanted to do, but I never did because I was First of all, I wasn't sure I deserved to. I never had enough faith in my abilities to say, "Well, I can do that. I can do anything I want." For years and years and years, I had spent every spring and every fall in tears because I had had to leave the farm.

Through and because of a number of reasons, drinking was only part of it. So, what did I do? I went out and bought myself a couple of cats.

Now I've got something to take to the fair and I can show them and that's why I was tired when I got here the other day. Um But I can do that because I choose to do that. You know, it fits in with my program.

It fits in with making me happy. Because I'll tell you, if I don't make myself happy and and do what I can for me, I can't do anything for anybody else. Because I don't even want to.

Um I've learned, partly because of my life in AA and my life with AIDS, how incredibly precious life is. Even when you're having a shitty day. You know, one of those days where it's like, "Oh, the other day." I mean, everything in my life was going wrong.

I got my windshield busted the next Yesterday, I got robbed just down the street, not too far. This man jumped in my car and stuck a gun to my head, and he got my money. Thank God I wasn't wearing any jewelry, and he didn't shoot me.

But he got He got what he wanted, and I got scared enough to think I was going to wet my pants. I didn't, but it wouldn't have been any surprise. I mean, I've had a few shitty days, but not in a string, not like they used to be.

And even on shitty days, I'll find something to feel good about, because if I don't, then why bother? You know, it's like I sobered up not to be perfect. I sobered up to be normal.

And what I frequently forget is that normal is okay. Especially when I see a lot of my friends not accepting normality, and that normal does not mean perfect. Normal does not mean I have a shitty grin on my face 24 hours a day because I'm so happy.

I'm not always, but I am always normal. I have ups, I have downs. I mean, I am absolutely always normal.

There's been an incredible amount of gifts in my life that come from staying sober. These days I am so busy I can't see straight half the time, which is wonderful. Because I know that I can do the jobs that I have to do.

I know that I have enough intelligence. See, I'm not stupid. To do the things I need to do.

To make me happy and to keep body and soul together. I'm very very successful at the things that I need to be successful at. One is staying sober for something over 5,000 days.

You know, that's that's a hell of a success for me. Because I couldn't stay sober for 5 seconds before. Um I'm successful with my with my businesses.

I have two. And I can't be satisfied with one. I have two.

Um I spend my time with things that are important to me. I have a 3 and 1/2 year old grandson that I mean, he's fabulous. This kid tell you a little story about him.

And this one of the proudest days of my life was on my birthday last year. He was 2 and 1/2 at the time, and we were in a restaurant, and this kid stands up and starts singing happy birthday to me. In this restaurant, and people are looking at him, and he turns around, and he goes "I love my grandpa." I sat there with tears running down my face, and and this whole audience that this kid had was applauding.

Well, that kid does love me. And he's not the only one. So do I.

And I learned a lot of that from him. You know, I learned from this child things about me that I that I didn't even know were possible. I learned that I I be the big person.

I can be the adult. You know, I didn't know that. Even after years of sobriety, I didn't know that.

But, I can be the adult if I choose to. Um I've learned that I can be positively stubborn. And I am very stubborn, hopefully in a positive way.

Um I'm stubborn enough that on the last four occasions when they told me I would probably die within a couple of weeks, I said, "You know me better than that, I know. I'm still around. I still fight." Um There's There's a lot of things that I've learned to understand absolutely that if I work this program, I will stay sober.

Absolutely. For For today. Um I've learned that the expression live and let live has another part to it.

And that's give and let give. It's very easy for me to give to somebody else. It's very hard for me to let someone else give to me on an emotional or personal level.

And I'm learning that it's okay for me to be a giving person. But, it's okay for me to let someone give to me, too. And it surprised me when that hit, but it did hit.

Um I know exactly what is meant now by easy does it because I'm able to catch myself overdoing it lots of times. Um There's absolutely no similarity between my life now and my life 12 and 1/2 years ago, or 13 years ago. I don't feel like the same person, and I even though I know I have the same body, I don't have the same soul.

That part of me has changed, and it will stay the way it is now. And grow. That I that I don't have to go back to that.

Um I I want I way back when said that I had not wanted to drink. There was one time, for 2 seconds, that I wanted to have a drink. I was on my way home from a friend of mine's funeral, and at his funeral I heard all these lies about him.

I heard that he died from cirrhosis of the liver. No. I heard that he had died from a heart attack.

Mhm. I heard several other causes of death, but never the true one. Never AIDS, because you see that's the secret.

We all keep that a secret. After all, if we tell that, we don't get bed partners. You know, that kind of Well, I tell it, and I still do.

But, for 2 seconds, while I was driving down that freeway, I want I thought, "Hell, I could just pull off and get drunk and make it all go away." And then I laughed. Because I thought, "Wait a minute, that's not even an option anymore." I have 100 different options for any kind of feeling, thought, emotion, problem, whatever that I'm going through. But, that has not been one.

It doesn't have to be one. Whereas before it was the only one. And I think as a result of all that, I can honestly say now that I'm happy.

I'm okay. Um I don't run around grinning all the time, but I don't hurt. Um Occasionally I do.

Occasionally I'm sad. >> >> And I'm grateful for every one one feelings. Because without some of the sadness and without some of the hurt, then I don't always enjoy the good parts.

And there are a lot of good parts. Um that I imagine most people have seen the movie Mame at one time or another, where she says to her friend the line you know, life is a banquet and most poor fools are starving to death. Well, I kind of look at it this way.

I may be skinny on the outside, but inside I'm just as fat as a house. You know, and that's that's all I can say about staying sober. Other than to say that if I can do it, anybody can do it.

You know, because I'm just like everybody else. I was a drunk. I stopped drinking.

I'm not. And that's really about all I have to say. So, I'm Ben.

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