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We hope that you enjoy today's speaker. Hi, I'm Bill. I'm an alcoholic.

Uh, by the grace of God and Alcoholics Anonymous, my sobriety date is January the 5th of 1990. My home group is the Design for Living Bigbook Study Group in Wall, New Jersey. If you ever find yourself on the Jersey Shore on a Sunday night, we seem to be getting a lot of attention lately, the Jersey Shore.

It's all of a sudden on the map. Um, I want to thank the committee for asking me to come here and for graciously being so hospitable to my wife and I. Um, you know, I I'm I'm always in awe of any AA committee most of all because I know that probably there's a lot of people or there's a small group of people in this room who for the last 365 days have probably put their heart and soul into this event.

And having done that a few times, I know there's also probably another group of people who have done nothing the last year, but have a lot to tell the people who've done everything the last year, how they could have done it better. And that's a difficult part of being involved in AA service sometimes is uh that's just what you open yourself up to, you know. Um but the reward is not the thank yous.

The reward is staying sober. So regardless if somebody has something to say how you could have had better ribbons or been in a better hotel or a better weekend or whatever it will be, that's just the story of AA service. I I learned a long time ago from a a man who's a lot smarter than me that if you want to stay involved in AA service and you always have to get your way, it's probably not the right career track.

that um that more often than not probably you're going to have to do things like compromise and and do things that don't come naturally to people like us. And um but that was a good lesson for me to learn. Um because you know I I love uh AA history and I love AA comes of age and I love that they've stressed that point over and over again that um no matter what the group always knows better than any of the smartest people that have ever come to AA and that even if the group is wrong they'll find out a couple of years later um but that their right to be wrong is more important than my right to be right and for a guy like me to say that that it have come a long way in that way that that I'm not always right.

Um, I also want to say thank you because I travel a lot for work and I'll be very honest, I get to eat in some pretty good restaurants from time to time, but last night I got to go to Waffle House and whenever I come down south, I go to Waffle House. I can't get that where I come from. We have Pancake House, we have all we have Cracker Barrel, but Waffle House, for some reason still stays below Virginia or just around that border.

and I can't say I want a triple order of home fries scat smothered, covered, diced, and peppered. Um, so I I appreciate that. Um, and for anyone who's new that's here, I just want to get a couple things out of the way.

Um, the first thing is that this is a podium, not a pedestal. And so I'm standing behind it, not on top of it. Um, if I say anything that sounds offensive to anyone in this room today, I'll be glad to hear what you have to say to me afterwards in the hospitality room.

But I also want to stress that I don't mean to ever disrespect the podium of Alcoholics Anonymous. I don't ever mean to hurt anyone's feelings in the audience. I just also I just believe very strongly that um the way I drank was not very respectful.

where I come from and how I was raised to deal with other people is not very respectful. So, in order to be truthful and make some things very clear, sometimes some of those things sound maybe a little bit off color, but it is not meant to hurt anyone. And I would encourage anyone that hears anything that I say like that to wait till the end because probably there's some reason that I'm mentioning it that later on has played a pretty important part in my sobriety.

And for anyone new here that doesn't like AA and doesn't believe in God, I have another message. And that message is if that were the requirements to be an AA, I you would have a different speaker today. There's no requirement that you have to like Alcoholics Anonymous to come here or to stay here.

And there is no requirement that you have to believe in God when you walk in the door. And um and I'm I I could I I hated Alcoholics Anonymous. And now I love AA today.

um a a real lot, but I don't think it comes in comparison to how much I hated this place at one point, and I'm going to get into that quite a bit. But where I come from, this is not where we grow up and want to come. This is not what we look forward to.

I come from an Irish Catholic family. That doesn't make me an alcoholic, but it sure gives me a lot of other uh ways to believe and think. And one of those ways is that people who come to AA are quitters and people who come to AA are traitors.

And drinking is just a way of life where we come from. And there's us and there's them. And there's a lot of uses and them where I come from.

And I'm going to explain a couple of them. AA is not the only us and them. And I'm probably going to be brutally honest about the uses and them that I come from.

Um, so I want to get and then I want to get three things out of the way so I don't lose track of them. Like the speaker said last night, no sa no souls are saved after 60 minutes. That's just the way it goes.

You know, whether it was Joe or Charlie who used to say it all the time that the mind will only absorb what the behind can handle. I I believe that. You know, you can only absorb as much as it can sit in a chair.

But there's three things I just want to get right out of the way. And that's Alanon, Ikipa, and service. The first is Alanon.

So, let me just be as honest as I can be about Alanon without telling any terri I have no Allenon jokes. I have no Allenon handshakes. I have none of that.

I have to be entirely honest. Without the Worldwide Fellowship of Alanon Family Groups, I would not be your speaker today either. That's just as simple as I can put it.

Although my mom wasn't the most active and probably the greatest member of Alanon, because of who she married to and because of how her son turned out, she wound up gracing those doors. And um you know, one thing that I'm clear that she learned is that God had a plan for her son and that God's bottom was none of her business. and that as hard as it was and as painful as it was to watch your son hit bottom that she had been interfering in God's bottom for a long time and fixing and managing and controlling whether it was her husband, me, the household, keeping up appearances.

We all know the same old story and I believe in the family disease of alcoholism to the core and I'm going to talk about that today. But I am clear, you know, sometimes, you know, if you're new, again, I I really identify with new people, you know, um I try not to forget what it's like to be new because I went through that period of time in AA where I forgot what it was like to be new and I just became a preacher and dogmatic and militant and there was either one way to get sober or there was no way. And um what I found to be useful to newcomers is to really be honest about how you were as a newcomer.

And that's what I try to do. Um you know, I came into AA in the 80s and um I'll just share one thing about AA in the 80s. There were a lot of other fads going on.

There's always fads in Alcoholics Anonymous. There's always some new trend going on. And um last night the speaker mentioned old-timers.

And the reason I love old-timers is because they love good old basic Alcoholics Anonymous. >> You know, that's what they love. And and AA in the 80s was a different place.

Not that it was better or worse, but if we were a teenager, it was a different place. First of all, you could go to treatment whenever you wanted to go. There was no restrictions.

Health plans hadn't caught on yet. And um if you were a kid that was in and out of AA in the 80s, you knew the best treatment centers, the worst treatment centers. You had the whole deal down.

And so um but if you're new, sometimes you hear things in AA that don't make sense. And so when I tell someone that they should read the big book, it's not so that I can become their teacher. It's because I want them to know what AA is and what AA isn't.

And I've had to learn that what AA isn't. Includes the notes in my big book, includes my highlighted pages, includes any special spiritual thoughts I thought I might have had one day that I should share with others. What AA is is the black print in the big book.

And and that print is very clear on a lot of things. But sometimes when you're new, you hear things in meetings that just don't make sense. And so when I mentioned my mother's participation in Alenon and my early entry into AA, one of those things I used to hear was, "There's nothing worse than a belly full of booze and a head full of AA." Well, that's not my story.

I wish it was. It's just not mine. I might have thought about AA maybe the next day at 3:00 in the afternoon when I woke up.

Um, I might have thought about AA before I went out drinking. But you know um I sometimes hear people in meetings talk about crossing a line. Now I'll try to stick to the singleness of purpose because sometimes line has a different definition inside certain rooms.

But I'm talking about the line of alcoholism where people say they crossed the line. So you're looking at at a guy. I don't know anything about a line.

I've never seen that line. I don't know where it is. I've never crossed it.

I've never been on the social drinker side of it. I don't even know about anything about it. I don't have any judgment that if you were on one side of the line and came to the other that you're not an alcoholic.

That's not my business. I can just share my story. I'm a rip, roaring, get hammered, get violent alcoholic from the very start.

I've never not known how to take a second drink ever in my entire life. I just don't know anything about that type of drinking. Now, if you want to ask me, I'll tell you what the worst thing is.

Having a belly full of booze and your mom's head full of Alanon. That's That is That is That's a bad combination. When you're a 16-year-old boy who drinks the way I drink, then you're in for some trouble.

Um, and the first drink gets you drunk. That one will drive you crazy. Especially if you're like me, and I've been wearing my drinking like a badge of honor since I started drinking.

I was not ashamed of my drinking ever. Not until the end. Soon as I found out that I inherited the gift from my dad and my uncles, that I could drink better than most people, that I could sit down with kids who are four years older than me, who are 50 lbs heavier than me, and I could drink them under the table.

Um, I wore that like a badge of honor. So, I would never admit the first drink got me drunk. Maybe the first shot of tequila after the eighth tall boy got me drunk.

But you know, I went to DWI class when I was 17 years old and I would hear people say this. So I have a real debt of gratitude to Alanon for my bottom and then Ickpot. It would be hard for me and sometimes I speak and I forget to mention it, you know, because um especially what young people's AA looks like today in AA compared to when I came into AA.

Um, you know, I talked about what I about all these fads in AA. And when I came into AA, it was very popular to be a recovering Catholic or, you know, there were other authors out there and I needed to get in touch with my inner child and and I'm not saying people don't need to do that. um or you know um you know that you need to get in touch with your feelings but I my experience is the kind of drinker and alcoholic that I am is that once I stop drinking I don't need to go on a search for my feelings that's just how I drink you know I haven't had a feeling for a very very long time and even when I was newly sober have a feeling light up in Newport I mean I I stayed away I there was no search required And so I have a debt of gratitude to Ikipa because in 1992 I was on the committee for Ikipa and you know I had heard all this thing about young people's is not AA and all this other stuff and um I'm so glad I learned so much from that committee.

So many lessons against my own good thinking that usually is you know gets me into trouble to begin with. Um, but so many lessons and now IPA returns to that same hotel in a couple of days. It's hard to believe, you know, now I'm old and and Icka's coming back to the same hotel.

But, you know, a couple of lessons I learned there and I learned them from good people is, you know, I was an alternate GSR in 1992, but I really didn't go to assemblies. I heard about this guy called a delegate. I had no idea what this guy's job was.

It sounded to me a lot like principal, guidance counselor, social worker, or somebody with some kind of authority. And I even heard that this delegate kept track of our young people's committee meetings. And you know, the earliest seventh tradition story and for me is that, you know, going back to 1992 and Ikip was going to be in Time Square.

We decided that we needed a $7,000 neon sign that said 36th IPA. How else how could you possibly have a couple of thousand people come to New York City, young people, wanting to dance and not have a $7,000 sign and and we were pretty flush with money. And um and we voted to buy that sign.

But uh the delegate appeared at the next meeting and um but I share this because it's an important part of my personal story is that he didn't appear with a service manual to shove down our throat much like I don't need to put a big book down anyone's throat. Um he appeared with the cost of the electricity bill at the New York intergroup office. He appeared with the cost of a soft cover big book that could get sent in a correctional facility.

and he explained to us how many of those books could be bought or how many months the lights in that office could stay on and taught me such a huge lesson. And that person is the same person who told me if I was going to stay involved with young people's AA that was not a place to learn about the other 24 spiritual principles, the traditions and the concepts that I should stay involved in general service. And as a result, I did.

And you know I I I was a panel 49 um delegate privileged and and currently I serve as a non-rusty director on the a world service board. Um but all because of that early involvement um in young people's AA and and I look around the country today and it is amazing to me that from the mid '9s and the early '9s I can rattle off the list in my head of area officers and area delegates and alternate delegates and people who are serving in general service positions today who came in the doors through a young people's service conference. Now I've been to Occupy.

You have one of the greatest in the nation. I mean, I wish I could say that I ever I ever came from a place, but anyone who's ever been to Occupy, you know why it's one of the greatest. Um, so I just wanted to get those things out of the way.

You know, I've raised my hand a lot probably to accept a service position in AA, but I've learned that ego gets us into them and humility keeps us there. That's just the way it goes. And um, you know, many times I have not gone my own way.

And you know, I'll just share this little personal note is um in my per in my professional life, I deal with a lot of very difficult situations both financially, union, labor-wise, a lot of difficult situations. And I often joke around in my head if I'm talking to my CEO and he'll say, he'll call me to his office say, "Bill, I need to go down to Florida in 3 weeks and this is the list of problems that needs to be dealt with and this is going to be an ugly meeting, so just be prepared." And I often laugh to myself when I leave one of those meetings and I think to myself, you know, this wasn't as bad as like the spring assembly in 1999, you know, or you know, the icka meeting in 19, you know, the host committee meeting like, you know, you know, I learned so many skills in young people's AA from computer skills to learning how to dress to come in and talk to hotel staff the right way to learning how to deal with people not in AA. Um, I am forever grateful.

So, you know, just so you know a little bit about my drinking. And like I said, I don't want to be disrespectful to anybody here. I told you I come from an Irish Catholic family, a large one.

42 first cousins. Not a lot where I come from. My mom has nine brothers and sisters.

My dad has seven. They get married. Do the math.

A couple of kids, four point whatever each set of aunts and uncles, and you get to that number pretty easily. And and I grew up in a family that doesn't believe in this disease. So, the family I come from does not believe in alcoholism.

And you know, during the 70s when I was a pretty young kid, um the economy was really bad, much like it is today. And um in New York City, a lot of people were getting laid off. They were laying off cops, firemen, paramedics.

All the union trades weren't working. Everybody was on the unemployment bench. And a lot of my uncles really went off the deep end.

But we don't talk about alcoholism. You know, if something bad happened and the kids happen to hear about it because in my family, you try to keep information away from the kids is no one would ever say he has a drinking problem. Someone would say, you know, the electricians haven't worked in 2 years.

Of course, Uncle Frank is like that, you know, or why' my dad even do something? Well, you know, the the police department hasn't gotten, you know, raises and they don't haven't had a new contract in 3 years and we're living on the same thing today that we lived on 3 years ago and now we have two more kids. But never ever talk about alcoholism.

But I saw a lot of tragic things growing up around alcoholism. I just can't get away from that. And and I stress that I do not blame my parents or my genealogy for being an alcoholic.

I know why I'm an alcoholic. The big book makes it clear to me that I cannot safely drink. I have an allergic reaction.

That reaction causing me causes me to keep drinking. Worse than that, the next day when I am completely physically sober, I feel completely uncomfortable in my own skin and my brain tells me the only way to not feel uncomfortable anymore is to drink again. And we all know what it's like to be in that vicious circle.

But I come from a family that has a lot of other things going on, you know. Uh the 12 steps and the 12 traditions are not the family guide. My family, they they're not handed to you, you know.

Um I pretty much, you know, where I grew up and raised, you know, I did I was a racist, anti-semitic, homophobic, sexist, and and and that's not said as a joke. That's just in things I picked up hearing certain people talk about we hang out with certain people and we don't hang out with other certain people and you know and certain rules about how it is to be a man in society and what men do and what men don't do and you know I I'll skip ahead about 30 years from being no about 20 years from being seven years old maybe 18 years old but it was shocking to me as a young man getting sober to learn that most of the things I was taught make you a man do not make you a man. And most of the things I was taught that make you not a man actually make you a man.

That was you know I when I talk to new people how who are struggling with this way of life and it is a way of life and they don't catch on fast so they think like something's wrong because because they're not getting it as fast as someone else. My experience in Alcoholics Anonymous has not been that learning this new way of life has been the most difficult challenge. My experience in Alcoholics Anonymous is learning my unlearning my old way of life has been a much more difficult challenge because it was so imbred in me how I should live.

So when you grew up in the household I grew up in um you know every weekend when you have 42 Irish Catholic first cousins, it becomes like a revolving door of christenings and confirmations and graduations and first communions and um when you go to one of those parties it's the men with the men and women with the women. That's not I didn't hear that in a for the first time. You know I heard that in my family and I might not have heard it but I witnessed it.

We get to one of those parties, one of my uncles brought a couple of decks of card. One of my uncles brought some rolls of quarters and some singles and the men are going to stay here and the women will stay there. And if it's New Year's Day or Thanksgiving Day, then there's football games on and so somebody probably brought a bookie's phone number so that somebody can call in a last minute bet on a football game.

That's just how we roll in my family during the 70s, you know. And maybe the men and women cross paths at the dinner table. Maybe.

And at the end of the night, it all ended the same way. It all ended like a cops episode. Just turn on cops one night and you can watch My Family.

There are kids up screaming, being held in the arms of parents, partially with their dayclo, partially trying to get them in pajamas. They should have been in in bed hours ago. Someone is screaming at someone else, and someone is trying to get someone's keys from someone else.

That's how it goes. And in my family, you know, you don't disrespect someone. And if you're a woman, you definitely don't respect your man and disrespect him by asking for his keys in front of someone else.

You just don't do that. If you drove there, you drive home. That's what men do.

And so those things were just ingrained in my head. And I saw a lot of tragedy as a kid. And and what I didn't see, I heard about.

I knew that two cops on the St. My dad went to the St. St.

Patrick's Day, by the way, is a season where I come from. It's not, you know, I don't want to say St. Patrick's Day, you know, because that kind of doesn't give it enough.

St. Patrick's is a season. It starts at the end of February and it closes right before Easter.

Um, you know, at the end of March. But I knew that two cops my dad knew were driving home from the St. Patrick's Day parade at four o'clock in the morning and that one was in a blackout and took out his weapon and killed another.

I knew that. I knew that a lot of nights I went to bed and at 4:00 in the morning cuz I told you I come from the family disease of alcoholism. So that means that if you're a drinker and I know you drunk and sober, I know that when you put your keys in the door by the sound it makes, whether you're drunk or whether you're sober, I know from the way you open the door and the way you're walking, whether you're hammered and it's going to be a nightmare or whether you're just coming in and for some reason or not you haven't drank.

But when I showed up in Alcoholics Anonymous, I wasn't ready to share a lot of this stuff. I wasn't going to tell you that I used to lock myself in my closet at 4:00 in the morning. That there was, you know, that I knew the progression.

I knew that it started with the voices and the yelling and the screaming and then wedding pictures being broken. Like, I knew the progression. And I knew enough horror stories that I would just be locked in my bedroom closet in tears hoping and praying that somehow a gun wouldn't go off.

that somehow my dad wouldn't kill my mom and maybe kill himself or my mom wouldn't kill my dad and maybe kill herself or some horrible combination of that kind of tragedy. Um, but the mysterious thing about the house I grew up in is that 5 hours later, briefly 10:00 on a Sunday morning, when you wake up, it's like you went through the flux capacitor and Back to the Future. Like nothing happened.

Like all remnants of any trouble from the night before is gone. There's no glass on the floor. The pictures that are broken are safely hidden.

Mom is cooking breakfast for before we go to church. And my dad is sitting down in his favorite chair listening to the Emerald Society bagpipe band drinking some Irish whiskey. That's just normal where I come from.

And no one is talking about what happened the night before. So that you start to believe almost like it's delusional, like almost as if it didn't happen. And you would think that someone who has witnessed that would not want to drink.

Now, when I say drink, and I got to be very clear about this. Um, when I say my first drink in my family, which is not to post a child for mental health, so I'm admitting that I am not talking about what a lot of other people consider their first drink. Like going to Yankee Stadium and sitting in right field bleachers and splitting a beer with my dad is not drinking where I come from.

That is bonding. That is in the father-son handbook. Okay?

That's the only tool my dad had. You know, if I wanted to spend time with my dad, it was going to be in a VFW hall. a Knights of Columbus Hall, an American Legion Hall, or an Irish Ginmill.

End of subject. And long before I started drinking, I knew the rules of drinking. In fact, I always talk about the when I first started drinking in bars, you know, bar in high school, um, I knew a lot that other kids didn't know.

You know, I knew that when a man puts a $5 bill on the bar, the bartender makes change for you. You don't put it back in your pocket. You leave it on the bar.

It's what men do. I knew that an upside down shot glass meant you had a drink coming. I knew what points on every type of game meant.

I knew what a Super Bowl box was. I knew there were numbers on this side and numbers on this side. I knew what that meant.

I knew how to play every game of pool and I knew how to play every game of darts. I am a kid who was raised in bars if I was going to spend time with my dad. Now, I've gone fishing with my dad.

Now, my dad, you know, listen, I'm a product of the late 70s and 80s, okay? But I have very other than alcohol, there's probably hardly any other substances in my story. Now, I don't say that because that makes me some kind of spiritual giant.

My dad was an undercover narcotics cop. So, um, when you grew up in my house and even after he left, uh, there was no way I was going to come into contact with someone that and then my dad went on to run the DEA task force in the, you know, the section of New York I come from. So there was no way that I was going to like be caught buying something or selling something to someone that worked for my dad.

So but I say that because you know a lot of times we get I have my own belief on the third tradition and that's what it says in the long form. A is for those who suffer from alcoholism period. I really don't care what other problem anyone has.

I care if you're an alcoholic and if you're an alcoholic welcome home there's a place here for you where you can find help. If you have a million other problems, welcome home as well because we got a million other people with every other problem that you could. But the the identification is is that you're an alcoholic.

But I want to spin it for you for a second on how it worked in my head. I believed for a long time that because I didn't use drugs, I didn't have a problem. I believed for a long time that because I separated myself from other people, because they did this and I only did this, that I was okay.

Now, Grant, now you should know that that's far, far from the truth. I drink like an animal. What alcohol does to me is unbelievable.

Whether it's page 21 or 22 of the big book that talks about Jackal and Hyde, it's unbelievable what happens to me when I drink. And so those times that I split a couple of beers with my dad, I don't count as drinking. What I count as drinking is being in the back.

Uh, and I'll date myself a little, so you know, iPods and CDs didn't exist, but being in the back of like an old Nova or Monte Carlo or Duster, listening to Black Sabbath with like five guys and going out one night and getting my first eight pack of Miller, the small bottles. That's my first night of drinking. And that night, although I didn't know it, I changed my life forever because I had the spiritual experience of all spiritual experiences, I forgot who I was.

Not only did I get hammered, but I felt comfortable in my own skin. And you know, I I can sum up my drinking story a lot of times very easy. you know that prior to that, you know, age 12 and 13 little adventure, I was not too bad a son.

I was not too bad a kid. I was not too bad a brother. I was a pretty good boy scout.

I was a pretty decent kid to have on your baseball team. But I hated myself. But take a couple of months after that one night with Black Sabbath and two eight packs of Miller.

My life had turned upside down. I was a horrible son. a horrible brother, not a good student, not a good kid to have on your baseball team if you need somebody to show up and uh and not a good boy scout anymore.

But for the first time in my life, I liked myself. Now, I run into people all the time of all ages, but I only have my spiritual story. All I can tell you is that by age 13, I had a choice between hating myself and liking myself.

And as soon as someone introduced me to an option of liking myself, 13 years, although it seems very young, I can assure you, is 13 years too long to hate yourself. You know, I run into young kids and I see them and I sometimes I hear people say, "Well, it couldn't have been that bad." Or, you know what? If if there's people I know that we used to write in the book that we've raised the bottoms and I and I understand that that hopefully everybody doesn't have to be as bad as everyone else.

But for anyone that thinks that young people don't have bad bottoms, that they've been raised so thank God they were saved all these years of misery, I have some news for you. Go to your local young people's conference. Pull a couple of people aside.

Ask them about their bottoms. If if anything the way you know uh Bob B from Minnesota is definitely one of my favorite speakers and he always talks about you know is there a big difference between AA today and when he came into AA and he always says no but the world has changed the surrounding community has changed what has become acceptable now wasn't acceptable 40 50 years ago for the normal child and so kids are now doing things way earlier than they ever did them. And you start drinking and you're you're out to all kinds of things.

Because if there's anyone who's new or who's sober and young here and you're sober like a year or two, I'm sure you'll identify with what I'm going to say cuz someone said it and I identified with them is there's nothing worse than being like 24 years old and speaking at a meeting and having someone or have the whole audience as they're sharing in the discussion meeting tell you how lucky you are to be an AA, how lucky it is that you are 2 years sober at age, you know, because when you wind up at AA as a teenager, it does not feel lucky. It does not feel like you won the lottery for life. Like you beat everyone in the race.

You got here 40 years earlier. It's the people that I run into, men and women that I run into. It means that you have been a disaster since word go.

It means that you have accomplished more wreckage and tragedy in 1/4 of the time it takes the average person to get here. So that is not a sign that your life is going well or the bottom has been raised. It is a sign that you need to be an alcoholic synonymous.

And you know my drinking took off. And I already talked about I'm not a line crosser. I've never crossed a line.

I just know what it's like to be hammered. And I know that I like being hammered. And I know that I like wearing drinking on my arm like it's a badge of honor.

And there's nothing I like more than to be 17 years old and in your parents' house when they're away on the Saturday of a football game that Saturday night. And I like nothing more than to bounce quarters off a table into a shot glass. And I like to be sitting across from a guy who's like 100 lb heavier than me and 3 years older than me and on a collision course because I'm going to make him puke or pass out before I do.

It's just going to happen. And that's how I've drank from the word go. Now, the way I drink, it's a bad combination because at 3:00 in the morning, my experience of the type of drinking that I do is that I lose control of just about every muscle in my body except for my mouth, which seems to to work better.

My mouth works better at that time. And so that's a dangerous combination in an Irish ginmill in New York at 3:00 in the morning when you're underage and you shouldn't be in there and you're in the back out the back door where you're puking your guts out and you're lying on the pavement and some guy with steel tip boots is kicking you in the ribs cuz I just don't know how to shut my mouth. And even when he has thinks that I've had enough and goes back in, eventually I am going to get back up and eventually I am going back in after him.

That's just how it went with my drinking. And you know, my drinking never changed. I wish it did.

Um, but it never did. You know, we talk about progression sometimes. I'm not a real big fan of that word.

I I understand what people are trying to say, but I was an alcoholic as much as when I went to my first AA meeting as a teenager as I was when I last got sober at age 23, a month before my 24th birthday. That's just the facts. I might have not known.

And you know, there's a lot of people who travel on a country and I guess some people believe that they can actually give people a spiritual experience in a podium. And I know that I can't do that. I can give people a little hope.

Um, and maybe a couple of clues. And what I found is my successes in sobriety are not what help people the most. It's my absolute failures that seem to be helpful to people to be honest enough about what didn't work and what doesn't work.

um you know a as a teenager in Alcoholics Anonymous and uh I was tricked into coming to AA there was a pins petition filed against me which is a person in need of supervision and um my high school counselor um I was talking to him a lot and he was the counselor for the bad kids in school and not the regular guidance counselor. The regular guidance counselor had thrown her hands up a long time ago with me. I was not a savable cause.

So he got sent to this other guy, Mr. Pavey, Frank Pavey. And God rest his soul because he kind of tricked me into going to AA the first time.

He said that maybe even if I didn't want to go for myself, maybe I'd understand why my dad was so out of control. And when I went to AA, it was a smoker's paradise. Thank God.

And you know, at that age, I got suspended or detention or grounded everywhere I smoked. You know, I was young. But in AA, they just said, "Light him up." It was great.

16 years old, kicking back in a chair, smoking with the 50-year-old guy with no problem. He just was wanted was glad to see you at the meeting and wanted to see you come back. Um, but I remember, you know, those days, and I want to share these with anyone who's new that, um, my only advice to someone who's new in AA is the following.

I can't judge you. I can't teach you. I can't do a lot of things.

But I can tell you that before you pick up another drink, it might be very worthwhile to find out if you're the real alcoholic that's described in the big book because maybe you're not and so you're a social drinker or you're a hard drinker or you know the speaker last night talked about it. But if you are a real alcoholic, you don't have the same option as those other people. If you're a real alcoholic, I can't even tell you how many Sunday night meetings I meant to come back to as a teenager and in my early 20s.

You know, something better was going on on Friday or Saturday night. And my plan was I'm going to drink and come back to AA on Sunday night. Now, I eventually made it back on a Sunday night, just never that Sunday night.

You know, months later, things like that would happen. And AA was a scary place to me. you know, um, first of all, it was filled with old people.

Um, there was not a ton of young people, especially my age and and where I lived. I wasn't in an urban center. My parents lived on Long Island.

Um, and you know, I always say, you know, I travel a lot for work and I've traveled for AA. A man told me when I was 17 years old, maybe the most spiritual statement ever made to me in my entire life, and it's not one you can find in the big book. It's not one you can find in any of the top 100 spiritual bestsellers of today.

It was the following statement. He pulled me outside a meeting. I was 17 years old and he said, "Billy, it's a shame that you may be too cool to get sober because you're a pretty nice kid, but cool people don't get sober." I should have listened to what that man had to say that night.

Instead, I just like everything else in my life, someone tells me something, I just agree with them and then as soon as I walk away, I'll do what I want to do. Because if I'm uncomfortable in a meeting today or there's a good chance it's because it's like a mirror in my face because the worst thing I like to see in AA is some young guy who's too cool to get sober because I know what it looks like. I know what too cool to be sober looks like and sounds like.

It means that I'll never be in the meeting when the preamble is read. I'll be outside smoking a cigarette. And if the hot girl outside stays for another cigarette, I'm staying outside for another cigarette.

And when I come inside the meeting, I'm not just going to come in and sit down. That's just not in my repertoire. I'm going to come in and high-five or shake hands with a bunch of people and disturb the meeting and then sit down.

I'm going to get up a million times. I'm not going to stay to the end of the meeting. and the only thing I'll ever be on time for is sober softball.

End the subject. I know what too cool to be sober looks like. And I'd hear people tell their stories and I'd hear people say things like yet.

See, that was a problem for me as a teenager um because I was willing to concede most of the 50 and 60 year olds yet. They drank till they were 40 or 50 years old and they had a few yets and I was willing to concede their yets were pretty bad. However, when they were saying what it was like, like the last 15 minutes of what there was of their story of what it was like, I felt like I was getting jipped of.

Like, wait a minute. They've been to an outdoor heavy metal concert in the summer where there's like beer trucks with kegs with these spets that are attached to the truck and you can drink as much as you want in the sun and there's bands playing all day in Giant Stadium at Monsters Iraq. Like I hadn't been to Monsters of Rock yet and I planned on going, you know, I wasn't willing to give up Yankee Stadium.

I wasn't willing to give up going to Jet Games on my own. I had heard all these things. And so I was just too cool.

And you know, when I went when I would go out to the diner after a meeting, you know, I sat with the cool people. You know that's cool people say things like time doesn't matter when there's 10 people at the table with a year between all of them. You know that's what cool people say.

Time doesn't matter. You know and then they point at the other table. The uncool table.

The uncool table scared me. They like went to big book meetings. They went to traditions meetings.

They went on AA commitments. And worst of all, their whole life looked like it was AA. And so I made fun of that table for a long time.

And you know, um, I wound up becoming a volunteer fireman in my hometown mostly because they drank. You know, you could do it when you were 17. And they had a keg in the firehouse.

And um, like anything else I ever did in my life, even at that young age, 17, 18, and 19, as a volunteer fireman, I found out that I was really good at the task at hand. and I would have that same dual reputation. It is unbelievable how good he is at that.

But unfortunately, he has a drinking problem. Like that would be the story of my life. And you know, my dad's job kept me out of trouble for a long time.

A long time. For me, a long time is like 17 years. Because of my dad's job, I didn't get arrested until I was a senior in high school.

um and arrested by meaning charged with an adult crime. And I always love these wood podiums because now I know it's all fancy and high tech, but in the good old days, every police department had a wood podium like this and it had a a piece of metal at the bottom and a and a ink roller. And when you got arrested, you would come inside and they would take off your handcuffs and they'd hold one hand behind your back and the officer would put his hand your hand in his hand and he would roll your fingers across and then they'd reroll the ink and roll your fingers across.

But I remember the first time that happened to me cuz it was a Suffach County Highway Patrol officer and it was about 3:00 in the morning and I had just blown a 0.25 and he said to me the following. You know, you shouldn't be talking to me right now. You should be passed out.

you have a problem. You know, you know, I and and I know he mentioned my dad's job and and and he said I had a problem, but you know what? You know what I thought?

Like I'm the guy who gets everybody home. I'm the guy who doesn't pass out. I'm a next day puker.

You know, like I'm the guy you can count on for a whole night of drinking. You know, I'm the guy who goes all with you. I will stay up and go out all night.

I'm the guy who will leave a bar at 4 in the morning in the summer on Long Island, go to 7-Eleven, get a couple of cases of beer, head out to the beach, turn over a lifeguard stand, break it up, light that on fire, and have a bonfire until 7 or 8 in the morning. That's my kind of drinking. Then I will go to bed.

That's just how I operate. And then I will wake up at 4:00 in the afternoon. I will need a big gulp from 7-Eleven because my throat is killing me.

I will need a new pack of cigarettes and maybe some sugar. Like, that's the story of my life. And you know, early on when I went to my first DWI school, I learned about AA talk.

And I learned because like a lot of other things, when things are used against me, I pay attention. Or if I know that someone else has the keys to freedom, I learn. And so I remember being in a circle at DWI class one time and they were going around making everybody talk.

And it took me about 4 weeks, but finally I realized the guys who knew the lingo, they didn't get picked on. Like the guys who said, "Oh yeah, I'm doing a 90 and 90. I went to the meeting after the meeting.

I got a sponsor." Like I learned about that lingo. It's funny cuz I have a friend who's a criminal defense attorney in Chicago and he got sober young, too. And he always says that he's amazed by the gift of the gab of alcoholics.

That he'll have someone in his office one day telling him what just happened the last month and the next day he hears them talking to a probation officer and he just can't believe that it's the same person. But I know that game, you know, that you go in and you tell them what you want to hear. And you know, I was in and out of AA for a long time.

And um, you know, I want to tell you about some significant events in my sobriety. um is that number one, I have been in a fatal car accident as a result of drinking and driving. That does not make me an alcoholic.

It comes with a whole other set of problems, but not alcoholism. I happen to be an alcoholic who did that. If there's anyone here who is a family or friend has a relative that was hurt, injured, killed by a drunk driver, I do not say that to have you like me.

In fact, I don't expect you to. And I don't expect you to even have to talk to me. If anything, I have great respect for you that you're in a place like this.

Um because I had to learn that I had a debt to pay to society. And you know, I I recently went recently, a couple years ago, to my high school reunion. Now, I didn't go to my fifth Well, I did I didn't go to my 10th high school reunion because I was too embarrassed because I was just too embarrassed about what people knew about me and I didn't have the wherewithal at a couple years sober to deal with that.

My 5-year high school reunion, I got thrown out of cuz I got into a fight in cocktail hour before it even got to the regular part of the reunion. um my 20th high school reunion. I'd like to tell you how tough and brave I am.

But the truth is I pulled into the back parking lot past the valet stand and sat there and wondered if I had enough to get in. Could I walk in that door and could I deal with everyone and could I deal with people who know a ton of things about me? And it's funny cuz leading up to that reunion, I would get these cryptic emails cuz they had kind of this biography sheet that you had to send in, of course, to the perfect person in high school who's now like the reunion chair person who's lived a completely different life than I have.

And so it said, "Where are you? Who are you? What are you doing in life today?" And I would get these cryptic emails from people I went to school with basically saying, "How the hell did you turn your life around?" Um but I went to that reunion but they had our high school yearbook there and um there was a section in it I predict in 20 years and of course I was too cool to fill that out or not present but there were two about me there.

One said St. John's Hospital will dedicate a wing to Billy and the other said Billen will break every bone and tear every muscle and ligament in his body. Now, when I saw that the last time, which is a long time ago, you know what I thought?

That meant I was cool. I thought that meant I'm a good guy. When you're going into the neighboring towns, Fireman's Fair, if you're going to get into a fight, you want me there with on your back.

Like, I'm the guy to bring with you. You're having a keg party, you want me there. You're going to, you know, Guns and Roses Metallica, I'm the guy that you want to go to that concert with.

But what that really means is that two people had a better idea of what was going on in my life than I did. because I stand here today. I have no left kidney.

I have no spleen. I've had my ribs broken so many times from being kicked with steel tip boots. Um and and I love the speaker last night because you're looking at a guy who's made more mistakes sober than he ever made drinking ever.

Who's fall harder in sobriety than I ever fell drinking. And that's why I loved last night's speaker so much. um that you know I love page 70 of the big book tells you if you fall short of all these ideals will you drink?

It says not necessarily not if you're sorry for what you did and you're willing to change. Um but I wound up I had a debt to pay to society and you know two things about that debt to pay to society. One is that regular meetings I was sober when I went in a couple of months and regular meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous were brought in and out of that facility.

And so if I have a soap box in AA, it is not my own story for sure. It is corrections work in Alcoholics Anonymous. And if I have a soap box, it's to tell people who might be conf if there's anyone who thinks that because they were never arrested or never in jail that they don't have a message to bring to incarcerated alcoholics that that is completely wrong.

In fact, many of us who come here with a record can't get back in. It's so funny. You know, when you're an alcoholic in jail, first they won't let you out and then you get out and they won't let you back in.

It's it's a it's an anomaly. But for those of us with a record, that's what happens. So we depend upon men and men and women volunteers who can get cleared by the system.

And you know when people go into facilities, you know, sometimes they have a tendency to want to raise the ante on their story. You know, got to add a couple of fights, add a couple of this, add a couple of swear words. And the truth is inside those facilities, you know, like where I was, I don't need to see myself come in.

I need to see someone who's 180 degrees different who used to be like myself. Because what I've learned in AA is the gift of being an alcoholic is that I've learned is that there's kind of a spiritual law that basically says that the only person able to help the hopeless is somebody who's been equal equally as hopeless. And that's why we need alcoholics to come in there to share that message.

Now want to tell you about another significant event. I was an atheist or agnostic, if you want to put it that way, until I was five years sober. So, I want to take you through those couple of years.

First, uh, in the correctional facility I was in, you were not allowed to have a Walkman that, so I'm really dating myself now, but you couldn't have an AMFM cassette Walkman. You could just have a cassette Walkman because AMFM radio interfered with the guards radios. And in my minimum correctional facility, they had a box of tapes.

And so I listened to a tape one week back on my cot. And I'm not going to identify the speaker. I've long worked out this resentment.

But that means that I had it for a long time and I've only lost it in the last half of my sobriety. But I had it for a long time because this speaker said sobriety time inside jail doesn't count. Now that hurt my feelings a great deal.

Number one, because there's nothing worse for someone who's been an inmate in an institution to hear someone who's never been a sentenced inmate tell you how it is to live inside that zoo. And that's all it is. It is a human zoo and there are no spiritual laws in there.

It's the laws of the jungle. And it is not an easy place to live by our 36 spiritual principles. And it is definitely not an easy place to stay sober.

So when I heard somebody say that, it was kind of offensive to me enough so that I didn't want to be in AA anymore. But for whatever reason, I went back to AA the next week into that same small library in that same correctional facility. And when I put the tape back, there was another tape lying right there and it said Tom I Aberdine, North Carolina.

And I grabbed that tape and I listened to that tape that night and it was a story of a man who when he was 23 killed two people drinking and driving and was now the warden of a maximum custody penitentiary in North Carolina. And boy, that tape gave me the hope that I was looking for. And I consider that man a friend today.

And I called him. I remember I always whenever I see a taper table I always laugh because I remember being like 2 years out of jail walking up to the taper in New York and saying do you know this guy named Tom I taper said yes. And I said well he kind of saved my life.

Do you have his phone number? And I'll never forget he gave me the guy's work phone number. I called the North Carolina Department of Corrections and I asked if Mr.

was there and uh he got on the phone and we've been friends ever since. And and but that wasn't strong enough to convince me there was a God. Now, my oral my early sobriety was tough.

I've been homeless. I don't like to tell people that. I don't like to admit that I've eaten food that other people have eaten already.

Um you know, last year or two years ago, I went to the US Open. Where I come from, we don't go to tennis. It's just not it's not a sport where I come from, but the guys I work with were going with clients.

So, I went to the US Open and uh and now I've been there twice, I think. Um, and the people I work with understand I don't drink. If you travel with me and work with me, you're going to know that.

But I had to learn it's a it's a big decision to tell someone whether you're a member or whether you just don't drink. The two are not the same. If you're new, that's an important discussion for your sponsor.

Um, just because you tell someone you don't drink doesn't mean you have to disclose everything. But I say that because there's a lot of things the rest of the world can't they can't understand. They don't get what it's like to be us.

Because when I'm walking through Penn Station with a couple of people that I work with and we're in suits and ties like I'm dressed today and we're going home to where we live, it would be hard for me to say, "Hey, let's all stop right here. You see that seat over there in the waiting room. I used to live in that seat.

I used to buy a $2 ticket, the cheapest train ticket you could buy, so that the police can't throw you out." And that hotel across the street, I used to go in there around 8 or 9:00 at night hoping that some business person ordered food for room service and didn't finish it and pushed it outside the door. And so I don't want to tell people I've eaten food other people ate already. But those of us that have been there know what that's like.

Those of us that haven't changed our socks in 30 days, we know what that looks like. It's not a club you're particularly proud to be in, but it's definitely something you never forget. And so if you're new and your life feels like it's getting worse and not better, I want to make sure that you know that's probably if you talk to truthful people in AA, they're going to tell you the same thing.

AA is not like the yellow brick road when you first come in. You know, it it it is very difficult. Alcohol is my best friend.

I always say, you know, I like MASH unit, Alcoholics Anonymous. My home group is a big book group. We believe in a big book of Alcoholics Anonymous.

We believe that everyone should have a spiritual experience as a result of 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. So, in my heart of hearts, in my core, I guess I can be called a Big Book Thumper, but I'm a compassionate big book person. I know that when you're dealing with a newcomer, you're dealing with a broken man or woman.

You know, my home group might look very perfect. It has the shades. We have a GSR report.

We have an orderly treasury thing, seventh tradition. We read the singleness of purpose statement. But you know what?

My favorite AA is mass unit AA. And every city I've ever gone to, there's like a mass unit for Alcoholics Anonymous. It's like the place that everybody makes fun of, except it's where all the newcomers show up.

It's the place that except for not having a jukebox in a bar, it looks a lot like a bar and sounds a lot like a bar except that's where the broken show up and that's where the broken feel welcome. And like mass units, somehow those groups of AA are able to spiritually bandage alcoholics and get them one day of sobriety. the pressured prize, one day of sobriety, so that maybe tomorrow they'll make it to the perfect group.

Because I've met so many people, you know, everybody in AA has a gift. Not everyone's a great speaker. Not everyone's a great meeting chairperson.

Everyone has their gifts. Some people work miracles in the 15 minutes of the front seat of a car to and from a meeting that no one else can make. Some people answer the phones at inner groupoup dealing with real live drunk alcoholics that have the gift to deal with them that no one else has.

It's amazing the depth of the gifts that the the members of Alcoholics Anonymous have. So I I I honor that about AA that the only real sin here is not finding out your gift. That's really the only real sin that everybody has one.

And you know, I've stayed sober. I've buried my parents. I'm married now.

Um I have a sister, two brothers, three nieces, a nephew, and I'm on pretty good terms with all my family members. But I before I shut up here, I want to pass on three things. One, if you're new, I'll give you my I call it my Thanksgiving experience.

For my first couple years sober, Thanksgiving was like Groundhog Day. All my family was worried about is, are you still sober? Are you still involved with that icky paw thing?

Do you still have a sponsor? How many meetings are you going to? So, if you're new, it's good when your family says that.

But then what happens when you're 10 years sober and you have Thanksgiving dinner and you want to get up afterwards to go to a meeting? Then they're like, "You still need to go to those things?" You know, and and I stress that because it's hard for the rest of the world to realize the daily maintenance required to keep a fit spiritual condition, to not pick up a drink regardless of how much time you have. So, the last thing I'm going to say is this is I'm not here today because I've had a lot of bad consequences in my life.

I wish I was. If that were the case, I would be like 30 something years sober today. And I'm not.

And I don't meet anyone who comes into AA who tells me like, "Four months ago, I started going to therapy. 3 months ago I picked up yoga. Two months ago I'm in some group the therapy session.

I'm going to the gym every day." and I thought this would be the next thing to add to my life change. I don't meet people like that. I meet people who are at the end of the road, the last house on the block.

They've burnt every bridge. They've exploded every bridge. Burning isn't enough.

They've torn down every bridge. They have nowhere else to go. Those are the people that I meet in Alcoholics Anonymous.

Except what keeps people here in my experience is the good life. Not the consequences that got us here, but the good life like a little at a time. And I'm talking like painfully little.

Like getting cable back, you know, at 4 years sober, you know? I'm talking about graduating from homeless to the single room occupancy welfare hotel to the guy who's him and his girlfriend and your home group just split up and he can't afford the rent. So, you're going to live in the living room on his couch.

But that's better than the welfare hotel to then graduating to your own place to live. Like a little bit at a time, those things get better. Cuz here's the last thing I have to say about consequences.

They don't work for a guy like me. About 10 years ago, a doctor said something to me like a lot of people have said to me, just in a different form, like you shouldn't drink. You shouldn't do this.

He said you shouldn't play softball anymore. I just had two knee surgeries and he said, you know, um, you he was basically saying, grow up. Like a lot of people have said to me, he was saying, you're not an 18-year-old boy, you can't do it anymore.

And I said, like I've told a million people before, you're right. I shouldn't play ball anymore. So that that semester I want to call it, but that season that that softball season, I said no to everybody who asked me to play, which is a big deal for me because I am a diehard competitor.

And uh I was walking to an AA picnic, friendly AA picnic in Chicago. And I'm walking down a hill and I see what looks like like a pickup game. like somebody's shirt is at first base and a squished box, some kind of cardboard box is at second base and something's at third base.

And the thought went through my mind like, you know, the doctor was talking about league, you know, he was not not he was not really talking about a friendly game among friends. Now, I want to share a little bit of my AA experience. I've been sober 20 years now.

I have played the following with other members of AA. Spades, Uker, Trivial Pursuit, golf, tackle football, softball, basketball, Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit. The I have not met a friendly game among members of Alcoholics Anonymous in since I've been here.

Like I run into people who seem to be a lot like me because what I am is a really bad loser and a worse winner. Like I'm a worse winner. Like that's me.

And that day I can't take you through my fourth step here. I had a hard enough time doing that the first time. But I can give you a peek in because that day I wound up in left field in that friendly game and there was a guy up at bat who I don't like.

Now, mind you, I've never met him before, but I don't like him. And and the reason I don't like him is a little peak into my inventory, is two reasons. He appears like he might be as good at sports as me.

I won't even say better, my ego. He might be as good and he's a decent looking guy, so I do not like him. And so, uh, the first inning, he had hit a very long ball.

The second time he was up at bat, he hit a wicked line drive. Now, anyone who's played baseball as long as me would know that you would catch it on one hop and throw it to second base and that's the end of the day. So, this is a true story about that night and consequences for this alcoholic that you're looking at.

That night, I had to take a Ziploc bag that someone brought hamburgers to the picnic in and put ice cubes in them. And then I had to talk to some guy who was a plumber and I had to take his duct tape and I had to tape that bag of ice around my shorts and around my knee because my knee was split open and I had blood all over my leg in my sock. And my knee that I had surgery on was like twice the size it should be.

And I had a limp in agonizing pain all the way to my car. And this is the truth. The only thought that whole agonizing death march to my car was that may have been the greatest catch that I've ever made, you know, like the only thought.

And two weeks later at Sunday Night Young People's Big Book in Chicago, the worst thing could have happened. This guy Lewis came up to my seat and whispered in my ear, "Yo, dude, that may have been the greatest catch I've ever seen." You know, but that's like my drinking. That's like horrible tragedy happening in a night and someone the next day at the bar telling me that what I did the night before is the coolest thing they ever saw or that somehow that consequences is going to stop me from getting on the ball field again.

You know what it did? It kept me off the ball field for 8 years until 2 years ago I I joined some grudge game against the North Jersey Shore versus the South Jersey Shore and ripped my hamstring apart. Like that's what consequences have never worked for a guy like me.

So it's it's a privilege to be here for my friends in Alanon. This is what I have to say. I buried my mom in 2000.

I buried her of a horrible of, you know, she died of cancer horribly. Um Christmas Eve 1999, I watched my siblings wrap their last gifts to my mom. I did a whole bunch of other stuff, you know.

And the next morning when I got up, I got my mother's wig, a couple of Polaroid pictures of a cat, her crazy Irish music, her Charlie perfume, her eyehadow. I then went to Dunkin Donuts and got two tall boys. I still call them tall boys, but two large chalk, two large cups of coffee.

I went to the hospital, the hospice my mother was in. I said I I jumped up in bed with her, put her wig on, put her eye shadow on, and we were throwing back two cups of coffee a couple of weeks before she died. And she said the following to me, which is um you know, if you've ever dealt with someone that's in that state, they hallucinate sometimes and you don't know who you're talking to.

And so she turned around to me at a point and said, "You know what, Billy? Don't ever leave AA. What AA gave me is the bu the ability to go get a half a quart of milk." Now, that sounds kind of crazy on its face.

So, I said, "Mom, what do you mean by that?" And she said, "Well, you know, you probably don't understand, but when you're the parent of a child alcoholic, when you run out of something in the house at night and you have and you can go out and get something, there's a chance that you're going to run into somebody who's going to ask you the hardest question anyone ever asks you, which is, "How is your kids?" "How are your kids?" or how is Billy? And so there was a lot of times that I would rather do without than face that question. And what AA gave me is that my life crossed a timeline where I couldn't wait for somebody to ask me that question.

I couldn't wait to tell them what Alcoholics Anonymous has done for our family. Now, she didn't know that 8 years later, my perfect brother, who had four Emmyms by the time of being 32 and, you know, is a proud gay man. And I say that because I didn't like gay people when I came to AA.

And the gay men and women of Midnight loved me regardless of how I felt about them. And by the time my brother told the family he was gay, I knew my job was just to be his brother. But my mom didn't know that 8 years later, AA would do so much for her family that me and my brother would be restored to some kind of very decent relationship and that after he was done drinking and drugging and was going to jump out of a window where he lived in New York City, he called me instead.

And I don't think I saved his life. I'm just amazed that AA made us friends again and so that I could be there. And so now I have another sober sibling.

So I'm going to close with if you if you still hate AA, you don't like speakers and suits and ties, whatever is your deal, find the AA that works for you, find the AA where you feel comfortable. Build, you know, maybe it's a little hard to build the fellowship you crave when you're new. You can do that when you're around here a little while.

But I assure you, the fellowship that you crave is created somewhere where you live. It just might not be the right meeting you walked into yet. So just stay searching until you feel comfortable.

That's all I have. Thank you. >> Thank you for listening to Sober Sunrise.

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