Don’t Look for the Spiritual Part of This Program — Stay Sober and It Will Find You – Julian R.

Good evening, everybody. My name is Julian, and I am an alcoholic. My home is Boulder City. My home group is the Mustard Seed Group here in Las Vegas. My sobriety date is May the 25th, 1965. I usually don't mention that sobriety date. Every now and then, though, I thank one of my early sponsors. I had so much trouble getting this program that for several years after my first birthday, I wanted to kind of low-key my birthday. And my sponsors one day kind of pointed out to me, said, isn't it kind of selfish to hide the fact that this program will work for someone who is as screwed up as you are? And with that in mind, I'll take Lee's words and go from there. The first thing I'd like to do tonight is to welcome the new co-hosts. Welcome to the new co-hosts. Those of you who are either coming back or you've made your first contact with AA, we hope that you found what we have found here. Essentially, the reason that we have all the people in this room tonight and in hundreds if not thousands of other meetings throughout the country tonight is the fact that we found a way to live without alcohol that we like better than the one that we had with alcohol. And that's why we keep coming back, and we hope you'll join us. Thank you. It's a pleasure to have the chance to visit with you tonight. It was a little bit on the unexpected side. But I keep coming back, and I have been coming back since what I hope will be my last drink back in May of 1965. And the reason I keep – one of the reasons I keep coming back, I think I'm one of the fortunate ones. I'm sick enough that I stay well, if that makes sense to you. In other words, I have a need for you people, and I have a need for this fellowship to the extent that I am not comfortable parting from it for any great length of time. And during my sobriety, I don't believe that I have – there have been a couple of work assignments that kept me out for a month or so. But generally speaking, my meeting – have been continuous in attendance. And it's worked out. I don't go to as many meetings today as I did during my early days. But I keep on because I still have a need for you people and this fellowship. The end result, though, is that what I have found here is what the big book refers to as a design for living. And it is a way of life that I never would have found had it not been for Alcoholics Anonymous. It's a way of life that I would not have had the chance to participate in. And I think as far as the old Southern expression goes, had it not been for this fellowship and my participation in it, I would not have amounted to a hill of beans, as they say back in the Carolinas. Alcoholism is a disease of self. And when we look at that, we see that it's a disease of self. And if you look at the pages 60 through 62 on the back of the – right after how it works, you'll see the different forms of self diseased appearing in there. You'll find that self-centeredness, self-seeking, self-will predominate the language of those two pages. And I was one of those self-centered individuals. I grew up in Piedmont, North Carolina. I was an only child, a spoiled brat. And I really was not well equipped to meet life and cope with life on a daily basis as it comes down the pike to us. Had it not been for you people, I would really not have amounted to a hill of beans. Now, along those same lines, we talk about – we talk about spirituality. We talk about God. And these are terms that were foreign to me. You gave me my first acquaintance with a higher power of my understanding. I think it's interesting to note that your newsletter that I got as I came in tonight has a little bit of the early history in AA and a little bit of the early history of the big book. And that first paragraph in there mentions a gentleman by the name of Jim B. His story was the vicious cycle. And he is the man most likely responsible for the phrase, God as we understand him, appearing in the 12 steps. And I'm very grateful and very indebted to that man because had that language not been there, I very likely would have had a difficult time grasping this program. Um, I am one of the thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people who feel very indebted to that language being there. Because thanks to you people, I was able to find a God of my understanding and one that has made my life completely different. Um, as I said, I grew up in North Carolina. I grew up in a middle class family and had good parents. Uh, we had a little alcoholism in the family. Tonight it's not important to me why I am an alcoholic. For many years this was really a question that bugged me. Why me? Why am I an alcoholic? Today that does not bother me. What is important is the fact that I realize I am an alcoholic. And as far as the wherefores and the whys, today I could care less. Um, it took me a long while to get to the point that I could say I was grateful that I was an alcoholic. And I know many of you will wince at those words, and I did for many years. Uh, I progressed in degrees. I would say I was grateful that something occurred in my life to cause it to change. I was grateful that something allowed me to get into a fellowship such as Alcoholics Anonymous. But today I will tell you, uh, straight out, I am grateful that I am an alcoholic. Because had I not been, I would not have found this way of life. Uh, my parents, I can't blame them. They were good parents. If anything, they were good to a fault. Uh, only thing that I know is that alcohol affected me differently from other people. From the time I took that first drink, alcohol did something for me. And I liked it. Uh, the first thing I did, I was a good person. Uh, the first drink was at the age of 14, we had a community dance down in a community dance hall. And another fellow, myself, walked down at intermission and got a fifth of Apple Jack. And we sociably drank it on the way back to the dance hall. It took about 10 minutes. And the second half of that dance was just delightful. Now, before that, I really didn't feel like I fitted in. I was in a neighborhood where all the people were drinking. I was in a neighborhood where all the guys were a little older than I was, a little larger. And, uh, I just didn't feel like I quite fitted in. But that night at the dance, the second half of that dance was great. And I went on home and made it to home and got into the house and didn't wake anybody up. And then all of a sudden, that ceiling started to spin. And I made that mad dash. And I lost. I threw up. And Dad came in and he said, uh, son, what you been drinking? He just point blank. He said, what you been drinking? And I said, somebody put some wine in my Pepsi Cola. And I usually start off my talk by mentioning this because three things happened that night. Alcohol did something for me and I liked it. I really liked it. It took away the fears. It took away the anxiety. It made things just great. Secondly, I drank to excess and I got sick. And thirdly, I drank to excess and I got sick. I told a lie. Now, those three qualities followed me throughout most of my drinking career. Maybe not all together at first, but later on all three. The sickness, the fact that I thought that it was doing something for me, and the untruthfulness, the lying, continued on and progressed to just about a routine. But I got in so much trouble that night I didn't want to try it anymore for a while. And about two or three years later, I entered the University of North Carolina. And it was right a week after my mother had passed away. She had cancer and it was a slow illness. And she passed away about one week before school started, but I made the decision to go on to school. And my first night on campus, I got four king-size Budweiser's. And I drank them. I did not get sick. And the hurt. And the hurt went away. The hurt was eased a little bit. I didn't feel quite as grieving. And it worked so well I did it the next night and followed on the night after that. It wasn't long before I was in to a fraternity house and drinking the hard stuff on the weekends. And I began to get to the point I could hold it pretty well. I wasn't getting sick. The other guys had trouble. They would get in fights and they would throw up. And they would get in accidents and so forth and so forth. But here, Julian could drink. And they started complimenting me. And they complimented me on it. They complimented me, you know. I was not a jock. I wasn't burning the books up. Here was something I could do well. I could drink. And I took full advantage of it and ran it into the ground. They still, I was talking with a fraternity brother here some months ago, and they referred to me as mole because my eyes were always just about closed. And that was something that kind of stayed with me over the years. But to make a long story short, I got out of the university just in time before they kicked me out. I told my parents that things are going to be different. Let's go around. They're going to be different. And they were. I went into the Army and I drank a great deal more. I wanted to see the world. I wanted to travel. I was single. And I went 200 miles from home down to Fort Jackson, South Carolina. That was too far away. So they moved me to Fort Bragg and I spent my last year at Fort Bragg. Now this is significant because basically what happened was I never was forced to cut the cord with the family. I was always dependent upon the family for additional money for help, go home, get food, get laundry, so forth. And I never had a chance really to grow up. This is what it boiled down to. So the alcohol was really grabbing hold of me full blast. But I made it through the two years in service without a great deal of trouble. My first sergeant told me that I had a very poor attitude. And I almost took that as a compliment. But to make a long story short, I was able to get out without getting into trouble. And I went back to school and I said it was going to be different. And once again it was. I flunked out. I drank my way out in about five weeks. And this time I got into so much trouble that I had to take a job some ways some distance from home. And I went up to Winston-Salem, North Carolina. It's about a mile from here. It's about 100 miles away in the northwest corner of the state. And I got a job as a – they called the word a juster. That's a fancy word for collector. I was a repo man for a finance company. And they gave me northwest North Carolina, which was the moonshine country, to work. And I still marvel that I did not get killed on that job. I was naive. In the mornings I felt too badly to reason with anybody. In the afternoon I was too anxious to get back to drinking. To waste time. So I got the job done. And I did very well. Only problem was I was having trouble holding the cars on the road. I started running off the right-hand side of the road. And then I would tear one up on the left-hand side of the road. And this started posing problems. I started missing Mondays. And this posed a problem. And then I got promoted. It was kind of a left-handed promotion. They said, you're doing a good job, but we don't want you driving any more of our cars. So I got promoted. So they brought me inside and made me a loan manager. And one weekend I took one of their repossessions and drove it off, wrecked it. And the end result was I got fired. Well, that pink slip said, unauthorized use of company repossession. And my response was, everybody did it. I just had a little bad luck and I happened to get caught. That's just the way it went. Well, that is the way it went. And I was fired. And it was sometimes. It was sometimes later before that I realized that booze was the real problem with that particular job. I was having trouble with Mondays at that point. I was having trouble with checks. This was before the days of computers. And you could write checks and you could, if you knew a little bit about the banking system, and I had worked one summer at a bank, you could write on a non-par bank a check, a cash check, and let it float over to your bank. And it would take a week for it to get back. And I would start kiting these checks and piling them up. And then I would get drunk and find out, forget, you know, to go by and make a deposit or what have you. And they would all come crashing in on me. Then I'd get a telephone call at the office chastising one of my customers for being late with a payment. And on the other line, a bartender would be holding with one of my bad checks. And he did not talk to me as nicely as I talk to my customers. It was also there in, it was also there in, um, um, uh, Winston-Salem that I had my first, uh, contact with AA. I had been dating a girl for some time. And this was a better than average relationship. My relationships were getting shorter and shorter and shorter. Uh, and this girl asked me, uh, to see and talk with her cousin. She said, Richard has been sober in AA for two years. And I want him to talk with you and see if you can't learn something from him. Well, I thought that in order to preserve harmony, I'll, I'll go ahead and listen to, to Richard. She called Richard up and that was a third party, 12-step call that most of us wouldn't work with today. But, uh, he came on out and he gave me the literature. And very dutifully, uh, handed me, uh, the literature. Made a pitch, told me a little bit about his story. And told me where our meeting was and made his exit. He went through the formalities. And the meeting was scheduled for the next night. So I really didn't have a whole lot of chance to get out of that one. I had to be there. It was no, it was a command performance, so to speak. And I went, it was to the Marshall Street group in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. And the man talking that night, um, he was old. He, he must have been 65 years old. And, um, I was, I was 24 at the time. This was, this was 1961. I was 24. And he talked about jails and he talked about DTs, lost jobs, lost families, the whole bit. And I thought to myself, boy, uh, he's fortunate. Uh, he's got that program. He needs it. And, and three weeks later I was fired from that first job for drinking, which, which I covered up and denied, uh, in, in denial. But that was, that was the start right there. Now, heretofore, uh, I had a job. Uh, I had met two people, uh, in Alcoholics Anonymous where there was a salesman in my hometown. And I had dated a girl in college whose father had two years of sobriety in AA. And, and I met him. Seemed like a nice enough guy. And he offered me Coca-Cola's when I visited there at the house. And, and I thought that was very charitable. Um, so, uh, I knew that AA would work. There, there was such a thing and that it would work. But, uh, beyond that, I, I had no knowledge whatsoever. And, uh, I was not ready to quit drinking. I wanted to quit getting into trouble. As it turned out, I had four more years and I went down very quickly. Uh, I am a returning letterman for, for those of you who are not here on your first trip. Uh, and I, there was a question in my mind as to whether or not I was ever going to have the opportunity to get sober. Because I was in and out and in and out, uh, for a period of four years. And during that four year period, I experienced that night everything that man talked about and more. Within the first four years of, uh, in and out process. Uh, I did not drink and go to meetings at the same time. I would go to meetings, stay around for two or three weeks. Then go off on a little toot, crash and burn, come back. Uh, the people in the group quit coddling me. They quit talking to me at two o'clock in the morning on the telephone. And they quit coming out to the house to see me. But, they said, you know where we meet, you know when we meet, and when you want to come back, we'll welcome you back. We'll be glad to have you. And that went on for four years. Uh, back in that part of the country, they gave a white chip for the beginners. And they told us not to sell any of the chip. Don't, don't wave it around if you're drinking. You know, break it or throw it away or something like, I hid mine. And I kept hiding them. Some years later, my wife went through some of my belongings, found a whole box of white chips. And I think there was one red chip in there. It took me about three years to get a 90-day red chip. But in between, there were just a large number of, of white chips. Um, now, my life really was just totally unmanageable. That first step says, you know, we admitted we were powerless over alcohol. I would verbalize that I was an alcoholic. It's easy to do. As a matter of fact, compared to some of the labels they were hanging on me, alcoholic sounded good. Uh, because I was ending up, in that four-year period, I went through about 20 jobs. And I went through also about 20 different types of institutions. There were missions. Uh, there were drying out centers. There were hospitals. There were psychiatric wards. Uh, drunk farms. Um, I went just down the list, everything that was available in that area over a period. And there were about 20 different types of admissions during that, uh, that 20 years. Uh, that four-year period. So, I went down very quickly. I was single. And, uh, I didn't have the, uh, uh, responsibility weighing over my head. And, and I went down very quickly. It was also during this period of time that my father, um, made one of the most difficult decisions of his life. And I couldn't cut the cord, but he could. And I called up one time with no place to go, several hundred dollars in bad checks out. Um, several other extenuating circumstances. And asked him if I could come back home. And he said, I'm sorry, but you cannot come back home. I said, Dad, what am I going to do? And he said, I don't know, son. And he hung up. He later told me that was the most difficult call that he ever made in his life. And that was probably also the most healing call that he ever made in his life. Because he realized that he had been enabled to do something. And he knew that I could never get well as long as he continued to enable. As, as painful as it was, he made the choice. And it was probably the start of, of my recovery. I'm sober tonight because of a lot of people in a lot of places showing a great deal of love and tolerance. And believe me, during that four year period, I was a real tolerance tester. Uh, I would walk up to, to one of the stellar members of the church. And say, would you be my sponsor? Get me sober. It doesn't work like that. But I didn't know I had to learn the hard way. And some of, some of their rebuttals were not repeatable here tonight. But you get, you get the drift. And, uh, but I am grateful. And then when I would come back into the AA meeting. That hand would be out there. And they would say, welcome back Julian. Let's try it again. Now, they did not say that I was too young. They would not say, you haven't had enough. They didn't say, you aren't ready yet. They may have thought that. But they kept their mouth shut. And they said, welcome back. Let's try again. And that's the reason that I'm sober tonight. And when I get my tolerance tested. Particularly with a repeater. One in and out, in and out. I want to remember where I came from. And what I have to be grateful for this day. But by this time, my life was just totally unmanageable. I had a, had one incident that just, I think, really shows how unmanageable it was. Uh, I had met this young lovely up in West Virginia. And I asked her to come down and spend a few days in my apartment with me. And we were drinking the whole time. And we were going to go over, take a 12 mile ride from Durham over to Chapel Hill. But I wanted to show this little girl from West Virginia our new interstate system. We had a new highway. Interstate 40. And, uh, I wanted, so I took a roundabout way. It was about 60 miles out of the way to get this 12 mile destination. But we got out on the interstate. We'd been drinking all day long. And it was raining cats and dogs. And lo and behold, we ran out of gas. And she was not about to stay in that car while I went back to look for gasoline. So we got out and a trucker picked us up and carried us down to a truck stop. And I asked the guy at the service station, you know, can you give me a gas can to carry back so I can bring the car back in and fill it up. And he said, sure. And we take care of that. And, uh, I thought to myself, I've got to do something to get back in Ruby's good graces because I'm losing favor with her very rapidly. So, uh. So it was a five gallon gas can. And I said, you know, five gallons of gasoline is over 40 pounds. And there's no need to be carrying all that out there. I'll just put a gallon in here and save myself all the grief of carrying that thing around. And we did that and got back out to the car, poured it in the gas, cranked her up, took off. And I was so busy telling her how smart I was to put that one gallon, just the one gallon, and save myself the four gallons that I missed the exit the next one 17 miles down the road. And we ran out of gas. And we ran out of gas a second time. So when you people talk about unmanageability, I have an understanding of what you're talking about. This to me at the time was very sound thinking. Well, I had ended up in the state hospital on a couple of times. First time was courtesy of the sheriff. They gave me a free ride out there. I'd been in DTs for five days. And they put me not on the alcoholic rehab ward. They put me in the big top. And I stayed in there a month. And I got out. Soon resumed drinking. And a few months later, a few ups and downs, in and outs, I had no place to go. And this was also about the time that I had the conversation with my father over the telephone. And they asked me. I asked the state hospital if they would take me back, if they would allow me to come back as a volunteer in mission. And they said yes. So they gave me a place to stay there. They put me cutting pulpwood with the federal detention center there. But they gave me a place for 30 days. And at the end of 30 days, to show my gratitude, another patient and I arranged for a bootlegger to bring in eight pints of whiskey. And I was in the hospital. And we went out. It was a pretty lax condition that they had. They gave us grounds privileges. And there was a lot of forest around. So we went out in the pine trees and took our eight pints of whiskey and invited several other patients along. And we had a pretty nice afternoon. We asked one of the old timers there if he wanted to have a drink with us. And he says, no, thank you. He said, I'm on Valium and AquaVelva this week. . . . . . . . But I put the plug in the jug and kind of stumbled back to my room in the dormitory, or the hospital, I guess it was. And I remember that occasion very vividly. It's surprising that I do because I was very confused. I had a very jumbled mind. I was pretty well loaded. And yet I had a moment of clarity. . . foolish what I had done was that here these people were trying to help me, to give me an opportunity and to express my gratitude, I had gotten drunk. And then I started thinking about the people in Alcoholics Anonymous that I had met over those four years and you had something I wanted. I didn't know what it was. You didn't tell me that you were happy. You showed me by your example. And I thought to myself, you know, maybe if I do what those people have done, I can have what they have. And I said, no, I'm too young. It won't work for me. And then I realized I had met some people, a few, not many, that were a little bit younger than I was. I had met quite a few older people, lost more, lost less, drank shorter period of time, longer period of time. You know, any way you look at it, I fit right in the middle of a sandwich, so to speak. And it was working for all these people. It could work for me, too. And so I went back, got out of the hospital a few weeks later and I went back to my home group there in Durham. And it was a little bit of a change. And I was a little bit more comfortable. And I was a little bit more comfortable. And I was a little bit more comfortable. And I was a little bit more comfortable. And I was a little bit more comfortable. And I was an upstairs, it was over an old abandoned fire station. And the group met upstairs. And the fellow that ran the building was one of our members. We called him Curly. It came from the three hairs on the top of his head. And I think he had two, maybe three teeth. And I walked up those steps and Curly stuck up his hand, stuck out his hand and grabbed it like that. And he says, welcome back, Julian. We're glad to see you. And then he looked at me right square in the eye and he said, why don't you try it our way? Your way does not seem to be working too well. And I had no argument. So I started trying it your way. And also along the same lines, not only did I try to start doing it your way, I wanted to find out how you were staying sober. So I started what turned out to be about a two-year snooping campaign. Those of you who are not sober, I wanted to find out how you were staying sober. Now, I had met some of you who had been sober for a long time and I didn't care anything about what you had. But by and large, most of you who had been around for a while had something I wanted. And I wanted to find out how you were staying sober. The language was a little different, that I would hear from different people. But the meaning was all the same. The content was all the same. We talked about meetings, we talked about a big book, we talked about steps, twelve steps, all of them. They have got numbers on them for a reason. They talked about sponsorship. And with that in mind, I started pursuing this to see if for me it could work out. Well, I had gotten so much trouble back in that part of the country. I had a chance to go to work in St. Louis with a man that I had worked with previously, most money I had ever made in my life except a half a million dollars. And he asked me, why do you think you should except it was dishonest. I was working telemarketing and I was trying to line up bankers for our firm to visit. And I was doing fairly well, but it just started to gnaw on me. To make a long story short, I was a professional liar. And it was beginning to bug me. So I went to the club there on Lindle in St. Louis and asked if there was anybody around. And there was one person there who was a salesman. Usually that place was just jam-packed and no real type of opportunity for conversation, one-on-one type. But I asked him, you know, told him what my situation was. He says, well, he said, I think you pretty well know what needs to be done, but if you're going to want to stay sober, you've got to be patient. Or chances are you'll do better doing something else. And I didn't know how I was going to tell this guy that had funded my trip out there. And I still owed him some money, even though I was making pretty good money. And I went up and screwed up my courage and said, Paul, things are not working out for me. He said, they're not turning out here like I wanted them to either. He said, here's another hundred. Let me know where you end up. And I took off and I went to Atlanta and I stopped. And the. There was a guy that I had worked with some years before. He invited me to stay, spend the night with him. He had a garage apartment. They lowered the bed, the sofa bed, and the apartment disappeared. I mean, that was all. But I stayed there with him, not for one night, but several nights. As a matter of fact, several months. And of course, I found a job. And once again, I became involved in another relationship. And these were almost a. Guarantee for a drunk. I'd always end up emotionally distraught, romantically detached and drunk. And it just did not work out at all well. So I was I was scared to death. And then you people told me so. Well, you don't get involved for a year. You don't make any major decisions for a year and don't get emotionally involved. Certainly for a year. I'll listen just about as well as the rest of you have. But. About. About three months later, we were married. This this past January, we celebrated thirty nine years. She's never she's never seen me take a drink. But she's been a tremendous amount of support. And when you're talking about CPC and P.I. and the need for it. She had a teacher during her early years of schooling in high school in Atlanta. That talked about alcoholism in one of her social or civics classes. And it went into great lengths about alcoholism and also Alcoholics Anonymous. And what left her with the thought that alcohol Alcoholics Anonymous is there and it works. And based on that, she took that at heart. And when the rest of members of the group were telling her to run, run quickly, go. She took that at heart and she stayed with me. So that. That's something else that I have for which to be. Grateful. I stayed in Atlanta five years. The first year I was there, it was important to have some stability on the employment record. I had a job that I wanted to show some stability on, have a be able to put a year on the resume. And one year to the day that they hired me, they fired me sober. They can't do this. I'm sober. But they did. And the reason they could not was the fact that I could not get along. Well. I was in a job that I had to go with people. My interpersonal skills were zilch. And I just could not get along with other people there in the office, excepting for her. And so they fired me. And she said, well, you've got a GI Bill and I've got a job. Why don't you go back to school and get that degree? And I did that. And I did what any self-respecting drunk would do. I studied psychology. Found out it was virtually worthless. Got a job with the state of Georgia. Now with a college degree, you want to go into management. You want to supervise people. You want to control things, manipulate. I wanted something I could control. And the state of Georgia was very accommodating. They gave me 2,500 mice. 16 guinea pigs. And I think about 24 rabbits. And I took care of them for two years. And in the meantime, I came back home. And I was a little bit more of a So I started filling out applications. I did. Two years, nothing happened. And then one day, two offices got together. They said, we need a public affairs, public information. We need a public information officer out here in Denver. And three weeks later, I left. We left and went to Denver. The key, though, to my sobriety in Atlanta was the home group. I was a member of the Skyland group. The key also was sponsorship. And the sponsor that I had was a far less than perfect individual. And yet, for me, he was an extremely valuable and good sponsor. And he contributed much to my sobriety. I owe the man a great deal. Thank you. A great deal. Even though he was a less than perfect individual himself. And I like to remember that. You know, we don't have to be perfect to help. But I had made some headway with the first three steps. The first one, I finally got the hang of. Don't drink, dummy. And to realize that my life wasn't. Manageable. And that I was completely powerless over alcohol. And instead of verbalizing it, I admitted it on a gut level. And that worked. That was the difference. Some months later, and I don't remember exactly how many it was. I found myself going to work one morning. And I was walking up from a parking lot to the office building. And it was some distance away. And I realized, Julian, you haven't been kicked out. You haven't been kicked out. You haven't been kicked out. Locked up. Or strapped down anywhere recently. You haven't had a drink in that same period of time. That's probably a correlation. And I wanted to thank somebody. And I looked up. And I said, thank you, God. There's a very simple prayer. Today, my prayers are not a great deal more complicated than that. Earlier, I was. I'd grown up in organized religion. I had rebelled. And I was really having trouble with the spiritual aspect of this program. And we had a visitor in town one night that I gave a ride back to his room. And he said, the spiritual part of this program is bugging you, isn't it? I said, it surely is. He says, do not look for it. Stay sober a day at a time. Try to follow this program as it is set forth, and it will find you. And in my own case, that has become a reality. And I do not recall having a craving to drink from that moment on. I may have experienced a brief one in there somewhere, but I don't recall from that moment to today having a craving, that intense craving, that need for a drink. And then finally, the third step. And as I said, I've already spoken about Jim V. And God, as we understood him, because to me, it just made all the difference in the world. I got into a fourth and fifth there before I left Atlanta, but it was pretty much pretty superficial. Until some years later, when everything was going well, job, marriage, community, everything was just coming up wonderfully. Then all of a sudden, boom, I'm feeling rotten, miserable. And I did what is prescribed. I took the. Fourth step, as it stated in the big book and went into the details. That made a lot of difference. We were in Denver for about four years and had a chance to get out. And along with not drinking, had a chance to experience a lot of things in the world that I would not have otherwise hiking, mountain climbing, backpacking, things that would not have had a chance to otherwise. I was given. A tremendous. Chance to see the rest of the world. And that's the world without liquor that I enjoy so much more today. I would never have known. I would have sold myself short. Had you asked me back in 1966, what was good? I would have sold myself short. I didn't know what good was. You people have taught me that. Well. There were several other moves. I stayed active in the fellowship. I also became active in service. First on a group level, then on intergroup level. My first attempt at a GSR DCM was pretty pathetic. That was while I lived in Arizona. But then in 78, we moved here. We've been here now 26 years. And right off the bat, I came, went into Tonopah. Became just intrigued with the general service process. Intrigued with the traditions that Craig read tonight. You know. The steps are the reason I'm sober today. And those traditions are the reason this group is here today. It's just that simple. And I began to understand that. I've been given the opportunity to serve in several capacities. A couple of them at the general service conference level. And for that, I'm very grateful. I've been given a world that I wouldn't know otherwise. I've been given the opportunity to make friends with people. I found sponsorship to be one of the most powerful tools we have. It's a two-way street. And I'm at the bottom of it. It's a point now that I get probably more than I give. But this is a way of understanding people and communicating with people that I would not have had the chance to otherwise. And apparently, my communication skills picked up because I spent 25 years in a job which I think it's fair to say people did not love me. And I had to communicate with people under stress. In difficult situations. In crisis situations. And I learned that in Alcoholics Anonymous. But I guess probably along with that and a good marriage, I guess probably the most important thing for which I am grateful is what my friend Fred over in Boulder City used to say. Fred passed and left us last year just about this time. And very frequently, you would hear him say, I thank God for Alcoholics Anonymous, but more important, I thank Alcoholics Anonymous for the work that they do. I thank Alcoholics Anonymous for allowing me to find a God of my understanding. And for that, I am grateful. And thank you all for giving me a chance to visit with you tonight. .