I Couldn’t Get Drunk, and I Couldn’t Get Sober – AA Speaker – Harvey J.

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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 evening everybody.

My name is Harvey Jason and I'm a very grateful alcoholic >> and I am sober today by the grace of my beloved and benevolent God by the program, the steps and the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous and the friendship, the example and the love and the inspiration of men and women like you in rooms like this. I want to thank Kurt for inviting me to speak this evening. It's always a great privilege and it's an honor to speak at a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Never sure that it's a pleasure, but uh but it's certainly an honor and it's a and it's a and it's a great privilege. Happy birthday. Happy birthday to Kim and to Mike and to Glenn.

That's worth the price of admission. Really is to hear the expressions of gratitude. And welcome to the 17 people who felt comfortable standing up and declaring their new.

And welcome to those of you who didn't feel quite so comfortable. It's a very, very big thing to be an alcoholic. I'm thrilled.

I tell you, I'm thrilled to be an alcoholic. I am so grateful. If I were not an alcoholic, I'd have nothing.

I'd have the kind of hopelessness that Jeff talked about. Thank you, Jeff. That was wonderful.

It was a wonderful expression of gratitude. There is no life that I could possibly imagine that is more gratifying than the life in Alcoholics Anonymous. There is none at all.

I came to uh I came to alcohol very late. Didn't come to alcohol until I was in my 20s. Then I drank and I drank and I drank and I drank and I drank until the booze drank me.

And I don't have to do that anymore. Isn't that a wonderful thing? Is this a familiar pose?

Anyone? Funny thing is I spoke out of town in a meeting in Arizona and they had a they had a glass you know for the for the speaker and it dawned on me at that time that an optimist sees a glass as being half full and a pessimist sees a glass as being half empty and an alcoholic sees a glass as being completely redundant. Absolutely.

I was a bottle drinker, you know, at first. Actually, when I first came to booze, I thought it was highly dramatic, you know, to have a a water, but a crystal glass, you know, in the ice and the clinking of the ice, the beads of of perspiration outside, the condensation, it was all highly dramatic. And then after a bit, I didn't give a damn about the the ice, and I didn't care about the crinkling, and I didn't care about the condensation.

I wanted to get there as quickly as possible. and to me as quickly as possible was right down the hatch. And then they reached a point for me where I couldn't get drunk and I couldn't get sober.

And that's a very awful awful place to be. I have no uh experience with astronomy or science. So I don't know when it was that the world stopped revolving around me.

But but I believe it was when God brought me into the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. See, this is not something I would have done by myself. You know, I there is no doubt in my mind that God brought me to you.

And by bringing me to you and holding you in my embrace and you holding me in your embrace, my life has changed. I live today in a state of grace. Absolute grace.

And you know what? We heard a lot of people talk about gratitude tonight. And it's interesting to me that grace and gratitude come from the same Latin verb, gratus, same thing.

You know, all my life I chased happiness. You know, I wanted to be happy. I wanted to be happy.

And then so belatedly I realized that happiness is is not an objective. It's nothing that one can pursue. It's a byproduct.

It's a byproduct of a way of life. And that's what Alcoholics Anonymous does for me. It fills me with gratitude.

It puts me in grace. Teaches me to care about other people. It is the most incredible thing.

And I believe that the most important component of happiness is gratitude. I think it's the most important for me. It's the most important emotion there is because I've come to the conclusion that with gratitude um there's no room for any negativity.

Do you know what I mean? If I'm grateful, I I can't be resentful. I can't be hateful.

I can't be raged. I can only be grateful. And who am I grateful to?

I'm grateful to God. I'm grateful to God. and with God all things are possible.

I never thought I could have a life like this. You know, everything was about me. It was all about me.

There's a story about that that I'm going to share with you. Excuse me. A guy goes to a Dodger Stadium and there's 4,000 people in the stadium and he starts to sit down, take his seat, all of a sudden he hears somebody yell out, "Larry, Larry." He gets up and he and he looks around and it too many people.

He can't figure out where it's coming from. He starts to sit down and again he hears Larry. Larry and the guy gets up and he looks he can't figure starts to sit down.

Larry this goes on six, seven, eight times and he's getting very frustrated. The ninth time he hears somebody yell, "Larry, Larry." The guy gets up. He raises his arms in frustration.

He says, "For God's sake, my name is not Larry." This this is this is an autobiographical story. I mean, this is really the story of my life. I mean, it's all about me.

I perhaps I'm the only one here that felt that way. You know, I'm not altogether certain. You know, old habits, old habits are very hard to break.

I'm sorry. I I felt I'm going to share this with you, too. See, old habits are hard to break.

There's a guy who just comes into Alcoholics Anonymous and he's driving down the freeway and he sees two obviously homeless men and they're on their hands and knees and they're pulling up grass and they're eating the grass. And the driver pulls over and he gets out. He says, "What are you guys doing?" And the one guy says, "Man," he said, "Yeah, we're homeless, you know, and haven't had anything to eat.

Haven't had anything to drink. All we can do is is is eat the grass." The guy said, "No, this is you got to get in my car. I'm taking you to my house." gets them in his car, starts to drive, and the second guy says, "Hey, mister, it's really nice of you.

You know, really nice to do this." The guy say, "Oh, don't worry about it." He said, "It's a pleasure. You You're going to love my house. Grass is about 3 ft high." So, that's old habits, you know, old habits.

And and when I see, you know, old habits coming into my life, I have to I have to banish them, you know. I don't want them anymore. I want the life you've given me here.

I want to be like you guys, you know. I want to be like you. And and I find that it's so fulfilling.

I, you know, I I'll tell you what what happened to me. I um I was born in London. For those of you with more perceptive hearing of accents, I'm not from La Hoya.

I was I'm from I'm from London. I was born uh in London. I was born in the middle of World War II.

That's another thing. I was speaking there was a bunch of young people at this particular meeting and I said you know I was born in the middle of World War II and so forth the bombs were falling and at the end of the meeting the people in the line to thank the speaker this young kid he says to me wow he says WW2 I said yes he said oh man he said it's like the civil war right I said uh well sort of you know another brilliant example of our illustrious educational Anyway, so I I'm born in I'm born in London and and the bombs are falling. I I was born, you know, I realize more and more that what I have and I venture guess what we all have is a is a non-discriminatory disease.

I mean, it it crosses alcoholism crosses the sexes, it crosses all economic stations, all social platforms, all sexual preferences, everybody, you know. And um and I realized that one doesn't have to have a a deprived or an abusive childhood. I had a childhood that was fabulous.

I was an only child. Uh I grew up in an observant Jewish home in London. And I cherish my Judaism and I always have.

And for me, Alcoholics Anonymous and Judaism have the same four words at their root. And that is do the right thing. Do the right thing.

But I grew up in a home in which I adored my mother, I adored my father, and they adored me. And my childhood was absolutely idyllic, really idyllic. And my mother instilled in me a love of the arts, love of poetry, all the good things, you know, a love of morality and all these wonderful things.

Well, I was the bombers were falling on London, the V2 rockets, and our house was bombed, which is not why I became an alcoholic, but the house was bombed and actually These V2 rockets were designed by the German the Nazi scientist Veron Brown and I was recently in the airport and I saw his paperback and it's called I aim at the stars and I stood there looking at the title and I realized it needed a subtitle and it should have been called I aim at the stars but sometimes I hit London because because he he really you know he destroyed our house and I was I was Um, you know, I was in the first shipment of children to be transferred to the country because in England when the bombs were falling there, they got the kids out of the way. Now, when I was doing my first fourth step, I was, you know, when all the whole thing, why did I become an alcoholic? Why did this happen to me?

Why? Why? Why?

And I realized that my earliest memories were all revolved around love, but being loved. So when I was in this first shipment of kids to be shipped off to boarding school, the school had been an all girls school and I was among the first four or five boys was about three or four years old to be sent to this boarding school. And every night, every night there was bunks, you know, regular dormatories with bunk beds and so forth.

And every night when the lights were out, the girls would come by and they would lift me out of my bed and they would cuddle me and they would pass me from girl to girl to girl and they would stroke me and cuddle me. This is a fantasy I've been chasing all my life. But but you see you know this was love.

I you know love my mother adored me. My earliest memory, I was 18 months old and in our in our house, we had a um a rocking chair in the bathroom and my mother had given me a bath. This is a really early memory.

I mean, a year and a half old, but I remember it vividly. My mother had given me a bath and she'd wrapped me in a towel. She had me in the rocking chair and her arms around me and the feeling of being so protected and so loved was so secure and the warmth in the bathroom and her arms, you know, it's a memory of being cherished, of being absolutely adored.

And I think that that's the kind of thing I wanted. You see, when I grew up, I wasn't handsome and I wasn't tall and I wasn't athletic. And so subconsciously I believe you know I still needed to be loved.

I needed to be really adored. And so all these by the way insights are retro retrospective. I believe that what I did was I I was whoever you wanted me to be.

You know I just masqueraded as different people. Your love was crucial to me. And so I just pretended I pretended you know.

I I and after a while in my adult life I really had no no identity of my own. I was just different people, you know, it was just masks. I just wore masks, but I still didn't feel the need to drink.

I had And yet my alcoholism, I know, was with me constantly from from, you know, as I was growing. I'll give you a perfect example of my alcoholism. I was 19 years old.

I'd made my way to New York. I was living with a woman who was a couple of years older than me. And Castro was beginning to come to power in Cuba.

And I got it into my head, this is gospel. I got it into my head that he needed my services. Absolutely true.

Now, I had no money. My girlfriend had no money. So, I said, "What we have to do is we have to hitchhike down to Key West, Florida, and then we have to get a banana boat or a boat to get over to Havana, and then I will go up and see, you know, I'll see Fidel and Sh." We were on firstname basis, you understand?

And and we'll get So, we hitchhiked down to Florida, which was an adventure in itself. We get down to Key West. There was no They closed the H.

There was no boats going, nothing. Everything was closed and we were stuck there. And I here, I mean, I had visions of Fidel and Chay and Ral and Harvey, the four of us riding down on horseback, you know, from Oriente Province into Havana.

People throwing hosanas of flowers. I believe this. Absolutely.

So, we're stuck there with nothing. I did actually the only sensible thing I could do. I helped my girlfriend get a job and what else I alcoholic but I had important thinking to do.

Anyway, here's what happened to me. I um I'm diverted too much. I I I had picked a career for myself uh in which public adulation was crucial.

That was it. Yeah. That's all I wanted to do.

Uh I meanwhile had met somebody in New York, another woman and uh and I married her for all the wrong reasons. All the wrong reasons. Um she was absolutely gorgeous and she was sexy and she was wealthy and she was socially prominent and you know all the wrong wrong reasons.

And I was a wretched husband since come to believe that that love at first sight is simply a side effect of serious drinking. So I married this woman and I was a really loathome loathome husband. Uh in fact the last image that she ever had of me was lying in a drunken heap between the luggage between the cases at JFK at the airport in New York.

And that look, you know, of bewilderment and disgust and horror and disbelief. That was a look that I'll never forget. And that was a look with which I became very very familiar over the years.

In fact, when I was wanted to make amends to this woman, I couldn't find her. She'd um she'd gone back to England or something, but my younger son managed to track her down and I called her and I was terribly terribly nervous. It had been like 30 years more since I'd seen her.

Was terribly nervous and she was one of these women that was very cold from the outside till you got to know her and very intimidating. And I finally got her and she picked up the phone and that voice was was older but the same voice. I was petrified.

My heart was banging, you know. He said, "Hello." And I said, "Um, hello, Helen." And she said, "Who is that?" And I said, "Well, you know," I said, "This is really, uh, Helen." I said, "This is really a a voice from the past." Um, she said, "Who is it?" I said, "Well, I mean, I haven't seen you for like over 30 years. We've had no contact." She said, "Look, if you don't say who it is, I'm putting down the phone." So, I said, "Uh, actually, um, it's Harvey." And there was a long pause and she said three words.

She said how utterly bizarre. She said utterly bizarre. So I said, you know, reason I'm calling.

I said I I'm going through a stage of my life where I mean I I really need to give you I I was a dreadful dreadful husband. She said, "No, no." I said, "No, no, I was I was a a horrendous I was a terrible faithless husband." There was another long pause and she said, "What do you mean faithless honesty?" You know, and I but she was very generous and she stopped me from it, you know, and she said, "Look, it's okay. You don't have to go into detail." And she was very very generous with me and that was the beginning of my amends and it was a great way for me to start off the amend process.

Um since then I I married um somebody else uh who is the who I just absolutely adore. And this coming November, God willing, uh we will celebrate 39 years of marriage. And uh she's very little credit to me.

The credit is to you guys. The credit is to you. And she is a black belt Alanon.

I love Alenon. And I do. I love Alenon.

I tell you what, I think to be married to a woman in Alanon is fantastic. I will never ever again have to take my own inventory. It's wonderful.

But um and we have we have two grown sons who who are the apples of my eye. They're adults and they're the apples of my eye. U but I have a marriage today which is absolutely blissful.

I mean, it's a marriage literally. It's made in heaven. And it wasn't always that way.

It wasn't always that way. What happened to me was that I was in New York and I'll tell you how the drinking started. I came I came out to California um to do a job and um I went to was asked to go to a very important dinner party and uh involving my work.

They it was supposed to be a social thing but I knew it was not. It was a professional thing and it was a sit down dinner for 12 people and I went there and there were a lot of famous people there and I suffer have always suffered from terrible inferiority from really really feeling less than all of you being really insecure as to who I really am. And I mask that with a sense of grandiosity.

Well, I'm sure I don't have to tell you that the mixture of insecurity and grandiosity is an atrocious mix. It's an atrocious mix. I sat there at this dinner party feeling about an inch high and I wanted to get out and I love telling jokes and the host who was my agent um was like gesturing to me, you know, you know, live in and up there and I started to talk and I couldn't speak.

I mean, I was literally mute. I couldn't I couldn't get a word out. I was completely wordless and I I just wanted to run away from there.

Just run away from there. And I got out at the earliest opportunity and I went back to the hotel where I was staying and some friends of my parents uh owned a company called Bowl of Wine and the man had sent me a case of Bowler Wine. got back there and I opened the bottle of wine and I drank the whole I've drank the bottle of wine immediately and after a couple minutes I felt a little bit better and I drank another bottle of wine and then I realized these people at this dinner party were lucky to have me there in the first place and I had a a a real awakening that I had my elixir here, you know, but if it was good with wine it would be better with booze.

And then I had it. Then I had the magic formula. And then I began to drink.

And then Vodka was my drink of choice. Scotch was next. Anything after that was fine, too.

But I drank and I drank and I drank. And I didn't drink every day. But what I would do, I have a Bible in my study at home.

And I would go into the study. I' I'd come to in the morning, whether it was in jail or on the streets or at home in the floor of my study or in the car. And of course, my my mouth would be that terrible dry dry feeling, the carpet, you know, shaking.

I used to shake shake like crazy. My head was throbbing. And so I'd come through that morning and I'd put my hand on that Bible and I'd swear to God that I was not going to drink that day.

And I wouldn't drink that day. Then the next day I'd come in, I'd go into the study, I'd start to take that pledge on that Bible and then I'd think to myself, "No, you know what? I I know I'm not going to drink today.

I don't have to take that place today. And there we are. You know, and the the worst thing in the world really uh for me certainly is when one lives with someone else and they don't know the amount one drinks, it is very difficult to get rid of the empty bottles.

I have in my study I have floor to ceiling bookcases. I've always been a book collectors. Tons and tons of books.

And I would come home all the books were in disarray. My wife would always be looking behind the books for the empty bottles. There reached a point where I was buying gift wrap paper and I was wrapping up my empties in gift wrap.

This is insanity. And I was throwing them on the neighbors lawns, gift packages, empty bottles. I mean, I I I got put them in mail shoots.

I I anything to get to get rid of these bottles. And I and I would I would um what happened? I would have a shoulder bag.

I always had a shoulder bag. And I would go to three different liquor stores because, god forbid, you know, the people would think I had a problem with booze. So, one of them was a Thai market and I would go in there and the the beer was always in the cooler on one side and the liquor was behind the woman and I would go in there and I would say to I always wanted to have two beers, two Heinekens and I'd go home, I'd always put the bottle of booze, the fifth of the quart, whatever, in my shoulder bag.

Then I'd come home the brown paper bag with two beers so I could say to my wife, "Two beers. There's two. That's all I'm having." So, I would go to this Thai market.

I get the two beers out and then I'd look at the behind her at all the bottles and I would say um what did she want? Uh oh, that's it. Yeah, that what the the clear vodka.

That is that Yeah, that's what she wants. That's what she put that in here. that I would go home and I would go into the study and I would come out reeling and my wife would look at me invariably and say two beers two beers and I would say now I have no control over alcohol you know I have no I can't take it you know two beers now this you know in retrospect some of this stuff can sound amusing and I can guarantee you as everybody here knows it's not amusing because my sons, who were growing up at the time, didn't know who was going to come out of that study.

And while I was never physically abusive with my sons, I was verbally abusive. And I was wretched to my wife. I gave her a terrible, terrible, unforgivably terrible time.

They never knew who to expect. And she was bewildered. And she was a gasast.

And she was ashamed. And she didn't know what to expect. I can never ever atone for all those days and weeks and months and years except by doing the things that you teach me to do.

Except by being the kind of person that Alcoholics Anonymous wants me to be, the kind of person my mother inspired me to be and the kind of person that God wants me to be. I um lived a life with hopeless hopelessness. I was hopeless, you know, and I traveled all over the world with my occupation.

And instead of being excited to go to different places and see different sites, meet different people. All I could think of was now I can go away, you know, I've got a job for a couple of months and I can I can drink the way I want to drink, you know, without somebody looking down my back. And I went to do a job 13 years ago and I was working with a guy who is really argu director in the world and I never let him see me drink.

Never let him see me drink. But I had drunk so dreadfully one day, one night that the next day was very, very important for my work. Very important.

And I couldn't do a thing. I couldn't do a thing. I was convinced I was going to be fired, that my career was over.

Well, it wasn't. But I didn't learn my lesson because I'm stupid, you see. And I have a terrible addiction to alcohol.

I think that when I pick up that bottle, everything is going to change. Well, what I've come to realize is that what's in that bottle, what's in that, and I direct this to you 17 people who are new here, what is in that bottle is lies. That's all it is.

It's lies. Because if I'm dissatisfied with myself or my life or any part of my life or situations, I think it'll improve if I drink. And when I drink, things that are important to me are not important anymore.

Things that bother me don't bother me anymore. It's all lies. So I I can persuade myself I've got no problems until the next morning when I come to shaking with my head throbbing filled with shame and self- disgust and self-hatred.

Then I realize that nothing changed except one thing and that is that a little bit more of my soul got chipped away and chipped away and chipped away. that I was betraying the life my mother encouraged, the life God gave me, that I'm letting myself down. And I will tell this specifically to you 17 people.

If you ever now, from now on, ever contemplate picking up another drink or another drug, let me tell you what you're doing. You're spitting right in the face of God. >> You're spitting directly in God's face.

Because what you're doing is you're saying to God, "I want more. I want more than you're giving me in this life. I want more.

I don't want to spit in God's face anymore. I've spat in God's face for a long, long time. I'm through with it.

I'm not doing it anymore. Today, by the grace of my God, I have 4,369 days. It's a couple of weeks shy of 12 years.

They have been the most glorious 12 years. They have been a phenomenal 12 years. I have learned things from you people that make my life rich and full.

And I'm not talking about the material things. My sobriety is not based on dollar bills. It's not my sobriety.

My sobriety is what's inside. My home group is the Beverly Hills Roxbury Men's Stag, which started in 1946. It's every Wednesday night.

And I go there and I learn from these men who are my family. These men who I love with all my heart and I learn and they embrace me and I embrace them. And I see how a real man deals with life with whatever problems.

You see, I'm not naive enough to believe that the application of the 12 steps will stop any problems in coming into my life. But what I do absolutely believe firmly believe with everything that makes me me, I believe that there is no problem whatsoever that can come my way, whether it's cancer, whether it's bankruptcy, whether it's my wife leaving, there is no problem that can't be dealt with, not solved, but dealt with by the application of one or more of these steps. How blessed we are.

How incredibly blessed we are to have this design for living. This is extraordinary. Welcome to you who are new.

Welcome. Welcome. It's a small step to come into this church, but what a huge gigantic step it is to move into another life, to another sphere of existence to really be propelled into the fourth dimension.

What a magnificent life we're given here. I wake up every single morning with such a sense of optimism, with such enthusiasm. It is absolutely I I I put a lot of uh prayer, faith in prayer.

It takes me a long time to say my prayers. It takes me about See, I believe that when I talk to God, that's called prayer. I hear God talk back to me, that's called schizophrenia.

You know, I don't I don't uh I don't wait for that, you know. So I say my prayers and I say my prayers and at night it takes me a longer takes me double the time about 40 minutes and there are some nights you know when I'm when I'm tired and I don't want to and I always say my prayers and I say my prayers in English and in Hebrew because I believe that God is at least bilingual you know and I and I I feel that if I didn't say my prayers if I didn't say thank you and help me it's in gratitude it's in gratitude as crucial as I believe gratitude to That's how much I don't like ingratitude. I am grateful.

I am so grateful to God. There's nothing like it. There's nothing like it.

My career has changed totally. I have a new career. New career in Alcoholics Anonymous.

I've always loved books. And um sure enough, it has always been a pipe dream of mine that one day I'd open a really first class first edition bookshop. you know, a really super stuff with signed Hemingway and Dickens and Fortnite.

You know, one year into this program, my youngest son and I were given that opportunity and we opened a shop and we opened a shop on Sunset Strip in in Los Angeles and this is not false modesty, very little credit acrewing to us. The shop was successful almost immediately because he's an Alanon and I'm an alcoholics anonymous and you've taught me how to react. You've taught me how to act, how to respond, how to deal with people, how to be fair, how to be honest, how to be equitable, and how to be tasteful.

And we treat people with the greatest respect. And in return, it comes back to us. And it has been absolutely marvelous.

It is absolutely phenomenal. And what happened to me was that after all these years of drinking, I woke up one morning. See, I came home one day.

I had discovered that in my my study the bathtub it used to be a maid room and bath and in the study there was a bathtub and so when the man built the the study for me it's all oak and the bookshelves he used huge heavy oak and covered the bath the bathtub one day I was in that bathroom and I realized if I could pry up that top I would have a perfect place for my empty bottles so I waited till my till my wife and my boys were out of the house got out my toolbox box and I spent a long time. I'm not a strong guy physically, you know. I spent a long time in there and I got this enormous heavy oak tub, you know, and there was a virgin tub facing me, this tremendously empty bathtub and I thought this is fabulous, you know.

I I I mean, I felt so gratified that I was able to do this and think of this. I felt I deserved a Nobel Prize, you know. So, I began putting the bottles in there.

Well, one day a few months later, maybe about almost a year later, I think it was, I came home and I started to put my key in the lock at the front door and the door opened without the key and my father was standing there with my wife, both of them looking very serious. And both my sons had medical problems and I thought, God forbid something's happened to one of the boys. And I said, "What's the matter?" And very quietly, my father said, "Yeah." And I start walking through the house behind my wife and my dad.

And I didn't think about it. And as we start going towards the back of the house, a big house, I thought, "Oh, no. This couldn't be.

This couldn't be." We walk, they lead me right into the bathroom, into the bathroom of the study, and the top is up. And in that tub, virtually filled to the top of the tub, are quartz, half quarts, fifths, half gallons, gallons, miniatures, pints, half dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of bottles to the top. And I looked at it and my father, they were both very quiet.

My father said to me in a soft voice, "What's this? How do you answer something like that? Why would the neighbors come and do something like this to me?

I didn't know. I did I didn't know what to say. I don't know what I said, but it didn't stop me.

But one day, one day was June 27th, 1997. I came to on the floor of the study and I was just wretched. I was, you know, I was just wreaking and the same old story again and again.

But something was different. Something which I believe was a was a word from God. And I knew it was over.

I knew it was finished. It was done, gone. And I I got up and I called this agent of mine who had been in our program that from all those years ago and I said to him, "Listen, uh what had happened was I was writing I'd written a script and the script was a film script and the protagonist was a recovering alcoholic, strangely enough." And I called and I said to him, "Listen, I'm calling you Bobby." His name is Bobby Litman.

May he rest in peace in case anybody knew him. Helped hundreds of people. And I said, "Bobby, listen." I said, "Since they're paying me, the studio is paying me to do a rewrite on this script, I um I think I should go to one of your meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous, I get an idea of what the room looked like and you know, stuff like that." Yeah.

And um he met me on the corner of Pico and Robertson on Sunday morning, the next morning. And uh he he put his arms around me and he said, "Harvey, you have no idea how lucky you are not to be an alcoholic like me." I said, "Uh, yeah, thank thank God." And he took me to this meeting. I'd never seen anything like it.

A couple of hundred chairs, you know, and keys on the chair and people smoking and drinking coffee and looking so happy. And uh I I sat down in a chair and the main speaker was a woman, Molly B. And she got up to speak.

And while she was a woman and I'm a man and while her experiences were different than mine, the emotions were exactly the same. Exactly. And as I sat there listening, I became aware that I was ice cold and the tears were streaming down my face, streaming down my face.

And I knew that I was home, that I was really, really home. And that is the feeling I get every time I walk into a meeting with Alcoholics Anonymous. That this is home.

This is really in every sense of the word, home. This is what I've been seeking and searching for all my life. And God has given it to me with you people.

And I um I left that meeting and I bought a big book. I was given a 12 and 12 and uh I began going to meetings every day, meeting, meeting, meetings and I got into the steps and I got a sponsor and little by little my life was changed. Little by little my life was changed and I um I had occasion to go to Paris uh four months into the program and I wanted a drink every day.

I wanted to drink and I and I didn't drink of course. And I got on that plane and I had never flown sober in my life. Never flown sober.

And I got on that plane. I went to Paris and it was a big reception and the waiters were going by, you know, with the trays of booze and champagne and so forth. And suddenly I looked at one of the waiters as you passed me and I looked at the glasses on the tray and I realized I didn't want any.

And not only did I not want it, I didn't need it. God had completely removed the obsession from me. He has completely taken it away.

And from that day to this, I have no it has no appeal to me at all. I am completely free from the enslavement of the bottle. God has done that through Alcoholics Anonymous.

I take these steps very, very seriously. I try and incorporate them into my everyday life, into my everyday activity. I have a sponsor.

I sponsor a lot of guys. I go to a lot of meetings. Thursday meeting, all my guys come to my house.

We do a book study and we do we go right through the book again and then we do the 12 and 12 and then we share. It is the most exhilarating experience imaginable to me and to my guys. I love these guys.

And you know, as much as they say that how grateful they are to me, as I've told them, they give me infinitely more than I could ever give them. I mean, we've got a life here. I, you know, I talk to people.

I I'm fortunate in the sense that I'm blessed that I get to speak a lot and and I talk to people who are not in Alcoholics Anonymous and try and explain to them the kind of life that we're given, the freedom, you know, the the exaltation of this, the the wonderful joy, the true joy. See, I've been given something beyond happiness. I am I am joyfilled really filled with joy thanks to all of this.

And it's difficult to explain this to somebody when people say you know you still going to those meetings you know how many days you have to go to you know do you graduate I mean what's the deal you know and it's it's it's there's a guy I'll tell you the story the guy that is walking down the street a guy an alcohol anonymous he's walking down the street and he suddenly hears he turns around and there is a ghostly apparition behind him and it's a guy called Jim that he used to go to AA meetings with who's dead and he looks at this app he says Jim is that you. Jim says, "Yeah, it's me." He said, "But Jim, you're dead." Jim says, "I am dead." "Yes, I came down from I tell you why. I came down.

I had to share something with you." He said, "The meetings that I used to go to with you on Earth, they're lousy. You the meetings we have up in here, they're unbelievable." He said, "We don't sit on these rickety little chairs like you and I used to sit on down in earth down here." And every member, every person that comes in has his own armchair and a foot stool and there's an ebony table next to him and servants come and pour coffee and tea and cold drinks. The guy says to Jim, "That sounds great." Oh, it's fantastic.

He said, "The the speakers are wonderful." He said, "The home my home group." He said, "Winston Churchill's our secretary." He said, "It's it's fabulous." Fabulous. So the guy said, "Jim, it sounds wonderful." He said, "Yeah, and the best thing is next Saturday night you're the main speaker. It's, you know, the laughter.

Jeff alluded to it. The laughter, the music, the music of AA. I mean, this laughter is fabulous, isn't it?

It's fabulous. We don't have to deal alone with any problems that come our way. What an extraordinary thing.

It is in every sense of the word a miracle. A miracle. And some people see these miracles and some people don't see the miracles.

I believe that we're blessed enough to see them. There's a there's a story about a guy that goes duck hunting and he shoots a duck and the duck falls down and the guy's dog rushes the the duck falls into the water. The dog rushes up to the water's edge.

Then the dog hops on top of the water and the dog walks on the water, gets the duck, walks on the water, comes back, runs and drops it at the guy's feet. Well, naturally, the guy can't believe his eyes. He can't believe it happened.

So, he shoots another duck. Another duck falls right in the water again and again. The dog rushes up to the water, jumps on the water, walks on the water, gets the duck, walks.

The guy can't believe it. He thinks he's going crazy. So, he calls over another guy who's shooting.

He says, "You watch this? Would you please just watch my dog?" Shoots again. Same thing.

The dog rushes up, comes back. He says to the guy, "Did you notice anything unusual just now?" The guy thinks for a minute. He looks at the dog.

He said, "You know what? I did. Your dog can't swim." See, some of us see the miracle and some of us don't see it.

But I I I tell you true, we are blessed. Each and every one of us is a miracle. A miracle.

And what is a miracle? You know, if you look it up, the miracle, the definition of a miracle is something I believe like an extraordinary occurrence in a world of reality. And that's what has brought each and every one of us in here.

An extraordinary circumstance or situation. When I consider what my life used to be like, the desolation, the helplessness, the hopelessness, the morbidity, waking up with the sense that my god, my god, it's done. I did it again.

I did it again. Yet again, I had to give up a lot of stuff. I had to give up self-hatred.

I had to give up sense of shame, sense of disgust with myself. You know, I'm grateful for so many reasons. And I'm grateful today that I have not today done anything for which I need to apologize.

I haven't done anything today that I'm ashamed of. I haven't told a lie today. I've been in touch with God today.

I've been helped by other alcoholics today. You're helping me. And I have helped one or two people today.

My gratitude is limitless. It is absolutely limitless. And I have you to thank for that.

As I said, old habits are hard to break. And I see people and I I I'm no one to diagnose whether somebody is an alcoholic or not. I can't tell anybody whether they're an alcoholic.

As we all know, it's a self-dagnosed disease. But I see things I see characteristics in other people that I that I know are mine that I know are mine. I'm constantly fighting bad habits.

You know, sometimes old thinking comes to the four and thank God I'm able to stop it. And thank God I have the 10th step. And I'm too lazy at night to write out a 10th step.

But in my prayers, I do a solid review of the day and I and I go back and see if I have any need to apologize, need to do this, need to do that, you know, and as I say, I believe I was an alcoholic before I took my first drink. There's a story about the guy, a traveling salesman that goes door to door and he gets to a door, knocks on it, and a kid answers the door. Kid's like 10 years old and the kid is wearing full makeup and he's got a joint in one hand and a tumbler of scotch in the other hand and he's wearing his mother's bra.

And the salesman looks at this 10-year-old kid. He says, "Um, is your mother or father at home?" The kid looks up. He says, "What the hell do you think?" But I mean I will um I I will I will leave you with a couple of words that that I I really like and that that are important to me.

And that is that I say, I thank thee, dear God, for another sober day, and for a chance to live in a decent way, to experience the real true joy of living and the happiness that comes from giving. May God continue to bless us all. Thank you so much.

Thank you for listening to Sober Sunrise. If you enjoyed today's episode, please give it a thumbs up as it will help share the message. Until next time, have a great day.