If I Can Stay Out of the Results of My Life My Life Is Golden – Bill S.

Adam. I'm Bill Stocker. I'm an alcoholic. Thanks, Jerry. It's good to know I'm needing a time of desperation. When there's nobody else to find, I'm always here for you, Jerry. I'll always be here. I'm grateful to do anything for Alcoholics Anonymous. It's nice to be here tonight. We were kidding around before the meeting. I enjoy the time before the meeting and the time after the meeting. Sometimes more than the meeting itself. And you folks might feel that way after this meeting. So I'll tell you what. I'll just tell you my story and we'll leave it at that. I'm one of those guys, I'm sure you've heard it in Alcoholics Anonymous before, where even as a kid, I felt like I didn't belong anywhere. I felt different for some reason. I couldn't put my finger on as to why I felt different, but I just couldn't seem to connect to people like I see other people connecting to each other. But I learned to pretend. I can pretend to like what you like as long as you like me because I do. And I kind of lived that way for most of my young life. By the time I was 13, I found myself in a position where I was in a car. I was living in San Diego, California as a kid. And my family had a house on the lake at Lake Mojave in Arizona. And I guess we were going to pick up somebody from the bus station in Las Vegas. My brother and my older brother and my cousin were going to do that. And I was just 13 years old. So I begged my mom and begged my mom and cried and kicked my feet until she made my brother and cousin pay. And they stuffed me in the back of this little car. We took off from about an hour and a half drive to Las Vegas. And back then, I don't know how many of you guys have been here to Las Vegas recently, but they changed the Fremont Street. It used to go all the way through. You could drive all the way down to Las Vegas Boulevard. And there were lights from all the casinos on the side of the road. And I just remember driving by those lights, man, and looking out the window thinking, wow, man, this is pretty damn cool. I was pretty excited to be where I was. And then what happened next is my brother pulled out of his pocket a baggie with some green stuff in it. And my cousin reached under his feet in the front seat and pulled out a six-pack of beer. He cracked open a beer. My brother rolled a joint. And they passed those two things around the car. I'll tell you what, man. I took a hit. And I took a drink. And all those feelings that I had of not connecting, of being different from, of not fitting in all vanished that very moment. I felt like I belonged where I was. And the people in that car were lucky to have me. And I didn't stop at the one drink. I drank as much as they would give me. And I smoked as much as they would give me. Until I was in the backseat of that car, giggling like a little schoolgirl, kicking at the windows. I was completely embarrassing. They stopped off at a Denny's on the way home after picking up whoever the heck we were picking up. I don't even know at this point. Stopped off at Denny's. They left me in the backseat of the car because I'm acting like a clown, right? They were embarrassed by me. So they leave me in the car. I'm stuck out there while they're having a nice breakfast. The next thing I remember, I wake up. That lake house and this little twin bed and these flashes of how I was acting went through my head. How embarrassing that was. How can I act like that? And I could hear my mom in the other room talking about me. And she's not all that much happy with me. I know I'm grounded for life. And I sit up in that bed and I reach down and I could feel that my pants were wet. Oh my God, I peed myself. How embarrassing is that? But in all of that, I could not wait for the time that I could do it again. Because it's what alcohol did for me. It made me free. It got me out of myself in that moment. It made me feel like I belong. It's something that I've been looking for for the previous 12 and a half years. Now being a teenager, you can't really get your hands on this stuff. But when I was able to get my hands on it, I certainly was first in line. I could not wait to get that feeling in me one more time. It progressed to other outside issues. I found myself at 16 years old. My mom would do my laundry and she'd find these little tiny brown jars in my pants pockets. And she couldn't figure out what these little things were. But she would just collect them. She collected about a half dozen of them. She'd hide them behind the soap. She'd put them in a box above the washer and dryer. After she had about half a dozen, we had a family friend who happened to be in Alcoholics Anonymous and had a history with drugs. And she knew exactly what those little jars were. At the time, I was living in Boulder City, Nevada. It's a small town outside of Las Vegas here. There weren't, you know, 5,000 people living in this town at that time. And my parents told me that either I could go to treatment and take care of whatever was wrong with me or they could hand that stuff and some other things they found over to the police in Boulder City and they know what to do with me. And everybody in this town knew everybody and the police certainly knew me and that scared me. And given those two options, I opted for treatment. And they stuck me in this little treatment center. Actually, it was a big treatment center. They stuck me in this treatment center and had a six-day detox followed by a 30-day program. And after six days, they make you go to meetings of A and A. And I remember walking into my first meeting at 16 years old, looking around thinking, God, this is terrible. How lame is this? Everybody here is old. They're like my age now. But everybody here is old. They're sitting around smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee. It looked much like a purgatory. I wasn't certain I wanted, I could not believe, first of all, that my life had taken me this direction. I couldn't believe that I had screwed up possibly this much to end up in this position. But I sat back and I listened. And I'll tell you what alcoholics have at Alcoholics Anonymous and they have some good stories. I enjoyed your stories. So I hung around. I'm one of those guys that I can BS you to death. And I had counselors in this treatment center and I knew exactly what they wanted to hear. And I made sure I was the guy to tell it to them. And boy, I graduated treatment center with honors. Right? And I get out of there and I want to make sure my parents know that I mean business. So I go to Alcoholics Anonymous. Every single week I go to a meeting. Once a week I'm in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous just taking up space and listening to you guys tell your stories. But what happened is about a year went by and I don't know if you guys, you might guys have felt this, but when I'm separated from the drink for a certain amount of time, all of a sudden I start feeling those weird feelings. You know what I mean? I start feeling the separation again. I start feeling like I don't fit in anymore. But then I start getting this little bit of anxiety about me. And I get this fear that sits in a pit in my stomach that I can't quite put a name to, but it's there. And once in a while it kind of kicks me. And I'm always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Because you know what? The shoe always drops on me. And it just gets so overwhelming. It gets so overwhelming that I got to do something about it. And I remember when I was 13 years old and I took that drink of beer in the backseat of that car and how it made me feel. And I think I'm going to go back after it. In fact I do. And I just start drinking again. To be honest with you man, at 17 years old I couldn't imagine the rest of my life without a drink. I couldn't picture it. I mean what happens if I finally find that perfect blonde and we land on a beach in Hawaii and I can't have a Mai Tai? Well what happens when I finally get married to somebody and I can't have a glass of champagne? That seems ridiculous to me. And I don't understand alcoholism. I don't understand how somebody can suffer from alcoholism. I don't go buy a case of water and drink it in one night. It just doesn't make any sense to me. So I just go back out and I start drinking again. And I think things are going pretty well. I had a lot of fun drinking. I'm not bashing drinking. I think it's great for other people. But for me it just wasn't it. It was it. But it wasn't. I'm not a complete idiot. I can build a pretty big life pretty quick. But I can burn it down faster. And what I would do is I would drink myself into disaster. And then when I'm at the bottom, I'll go ahead and decide, you know what? I need to straighten out, man. This isn't going to work for me anymore. I can't live like this anymore. I got to change. I need to go get a job or something and just lay off the drinking for a little bit. And then lay off the drinking for a little bit. I go get a job. All of a sudden my bills are paid and I look around and think I overreacted. Right? And I go back and I start drinking. And I think it's just because I changed my mind. And this would go on and on and on. And things just got worse and worse. And what would happen to me is I was in my 20s. I would find myself at my mom's house is what would happen. The apartment I was renting would finally put an eviction card on my door and I'd have to leave. I've got nowhere to go. I'd call mommy and daddy and say, hey, this time I mean business. I'm not going to. I'm not going to drink anymore. I promise. I need a little help. And they would let me inside their house. And this went on for quite a while. I'd get better inside their house. I'd go out and get a job. I'd find an apartment. I'd drink myself almost to death. I'd come back to their house and this would go on and on and on and on. Eventually what they did is they went and bought a futon. They had a three bedroom house and it's just them living there. But they put the futon in the garage. Because to be honest with you, you don't let guys like me sleep inside your house because things come up missing. So they'd stick me in the garage and at this time, boy, I had really done a number on my life at this point. I'll tell you what. And I was afraid just to go out the door. What they did is for entertainment they gave me a little computer. It was an Osborne computer. It was built like a suitcase. It had a handle on it. And you open up the keyboard and it had a little four inch screen on it that all you could do is type ASCII characters. It's not like the internet now where you've got pictures and stuff. It was just letters on a black background. But I figured out, you know, when I'm not drinking, man, I'm a lonely dude. And I figured out that I could get on this little computer and get into these bulletin board services, these little chat rooms. And I would log into those chat rooms and I'd be chatting up chicks and whatnot. And finally I got one on the hook. And she started talking to me and I was talking to her and this went on for a couple of days. And then she said, you know what, we should meet. I said, you know what, I agree. I think we should meet. Let's do that. And she said, well, let's go here. There's this little bar. It was called Pool Sharks here in Las Vegas. Okay, we'll meet at Pool Sharks. And we set the date and time. I went to my mom and I asked her if she would give me a ride. And she agreed. She gave me a ride to Pool Sharks that night so I could meet this girl off this computer. I made sure that she dropped me off at the place early because I don't want my date to see me getting out of my mom's car. That would be kind of embarrassing. So she drops me off early at this bar. I go in and I sit down at the bar. Now she gave me a pretty good description of what she looks like. So I had an idea of who I was expecting. So I was looking out the window waiting for this girl to show up. And finally this little car pulls up. It's a fairly new car. And the door opens up and out pops this little blonde. And I think, well, that looks like the description of her. And she comes into the bar and we exchange pleasantries. We give a hug or whatnot. She sits next to me. And being the gentleman that I am, I offer to buy the first round of drinks. My mom gave me $10 so I could afford it. And so I bought the first round of drinks. When those were gone, I drink fast. It didn't take me long to finish mine. I waited for her to finally finish hers. And then she offered to buy the next round of drinks. And when she did, she pulled out some sort of credit card or bank card or something. I thought, wow, she's got a bank account. And she bought drinks. And she must have bought a lot of drinks that night because the next morning I came to inside of her apartment. And I got up from that bed and I looked around. I thought, wow, that's a pretty nice apartment. She's got a car. She's got a bank account. She's got an apartment. I never left that apartment. Within six months, I convinced that poor lady to marry me. And I put that woman through nine years of absolute hell. Because I'm a guy that goes out for a quarter of milk, doesn't come back until the next Tuesday drunk as a skunk. And this would go on over and over and over again until finally I came home from a runner on a Monday or a Tuesday. And the place was empty. She cleared the place out. Every stick of furniture she was gone to. She finally got smart and got out. But this is the way I am. I'm always looking what's in it for me. What can I get from you? I'm sleeping on a futon in my parents' garage. This looks a lot better, so I'll use you for it instead. That's just who I was. After that marriage ended, man, I went nuts. I had nobody complaining to me, telling me I should not drink so much, or telling me not to drink at all. I loved that freedom. So I went back to my mom and dad's house and slept on a futon again. And that went on for a little while. They finally got sick of me being around their house, and they stuck me in one of their rental homes. It was a small place. I'm a guy that I don't pay my bills on time, sometimes not at all. So I'm sitting in this little rental house, and the power's out because I didn't pay the power bill. And it's either because I didn't want to, it got in the way of my drinking money, or I was just too afraid to go to the mailbox and see if it was there. But regardless, I didn't pay the power bill. So I'm sitting in this dark house. At this point in my drinking, I got to that spot where it seemed like I could not drink enough. I could not get drunk enough. I could not get high enough anymore. It was no longer working for me. I felt just as bad after drinking as I did before I started. The magic was gone. That feeling of freedom, that feeling of being part of, all that stuff was gone. And I'm sitting in this lonely, dark place, all by myself in this little rental house, and I got so much fear and loneliness sitting inside of me, and I don't know what to do with it. And I remember there was this girl who lived in Bullhead City, Arizona. I figured that if I could make it to Bullhead City, Arizona, she didn't know me very well. So if I could make it to Bullhead City, Arizona, maybe I can get laid. Maybe getting laid will make me feel better, because that's what I'm looking for. I just want to feel better. I don't care what it looks like. I don't care if it comes in a bottle, a bag, or has two legs. I just need to feel better. So with that idea, what I did is I took what was left of my six-pack of Budweiser and what was left of my bottle of Jack Daniels. I threw it in the car about 10 o'clock at night, and I set off for about an hour and a half drive to Bullhead City, Arizona. Before you approach Bullhead City, you come around some windy roads. Pretty windy up in the hills until you see the lights of Laughlin, Nevada. Woo-hoo! Yay! Laughlin, Nevada. But I was going around one of those turns a little fast, I guess, because I see in my rearview mirror lights, and I think, oh God, I can't get a third DUI. I already had two DUIs, and I couldn't get a third. I knew I couldn't get a third because in the state of Nevada, that's a mandatory prison sentence. By this point, I had been in every jail in southern Nevada. Jails don't bother me. Right? Jails are not a big deal. But prison, that seems like a commitment. And I was not willing to do that commitment. But in all that fear, I went ahead and pulled over my car. The officer came to my window. I rolled it down. I handed him my driver's license. And I watched from my side mirror as that officer walked back to his patrol car. And this most amazing fear washed over me. I couldn't imagine spending years in a state penitentiary. What am I going to do now? How am I going to get out of this one? This is absolutely insane. My head's running a million miles an hour, like it does when I'm full of fear. And in that fear, I punched the gas, and I took off. I'm going down the road towards Laughlin. I got him behind me chasing. I look out in front of me, and I see three or four more sets of lights coming towards me. I do the math, and I turn around and head the other direction towards, back to Las Vegas. Something happened while I'm going, driving down the road. I get this idea, dude, you gotta, I don't know if you guys have ever had these, man, but my head starts saying, dude, you gotta stop this. You need to just own up to your responsibilities. Take your lumps, man. Just deal with it for once in your life. And in that moment of clarity, I pulled over the car. I was in the middle of a blackout. There's pieces I don't remember. But in the police report, it says that their guns were drawn on me. So I'm sitting on the side of the road with my windows up. I got all these cop cars around me, and I got, their guns are drawn on me. And I am just scared to death. Absolutely petrified of what's going to happen. And again, in that fear, I punched the gas again, and I take off. I was doing, I guess, 110 the wrong way on the highway. They called off the chase. Because I was going to kill myself or kill somebody else. And they had my driver's license. Anyway, they knew who I was. They knew who they were after. But when I saw the heat was off, man, I kind of slowed down, and I got this great idea. About halfway between Las Vegas and Bullhead City is this little town called Searchlight. And in the little town of Searchlight, there's a casino. And in that casino is a bar. And I thought, you know what, dude? If you can make it to that casino, if you can make it to that bar and have a couple of drinks, they can't prove that you were drinking and driving back there. Brilliant. I thought, that's absolutely brilliant. So what I did is I made it to that casino. I parked my car right out front because I know they're coming for me. I go inside. I belly up to the bar. I must have got through maybe two shots and half a beer. And sure enough, in comes the door. It's Barney Fife from the Laughlin Police Department. And I come to the next day in Laughlin Jail. And when I went to court, the judge had written down a sentence for me. He looked at me and said, I've seen your file. I tell you what, Mr. Stalker, if I find out you've had so much as a hot toddy, and I had no idea what a hot toddy was, but if I find out you had so much of a hot toddy, I'm going to make sure you do five years in prison. And he put me on probation. Now, a normal person wouldn't be in this situation in the first place. But a hard drinker, perhaps, might get to this situation and say, you know what, uh, all I gotta do is not drink for five years. I just won't drink. I mean, that'd be easy. And that's what I tried to do. I tried to just not drink. If you ask me if I drink, I say, no, I don't drink. You need to stop asking me if I drink or not. I told you I quit drinking. I don't drink anymore. And my head's going, I'm not going to drink. I'm not going to drink. I'm not going to drink. I'm not going to drink. I'm not going to drink. And this is insanity. But it's going pretty well. I'm about a year and a half without a drink. It turns out that probation's lightened up on me. They're not coming to my house anymore. I just have to see them once a month. Not a big deal. They're not going to find out. I just need a break. If I could get a couple hours off, it'd be okay. I just need a break. If I can just get a break, it'll be alright. And I believe that. And I go to the bar just to have a couple of beers. It's just a couple beers, man. Beers never hurt anybody. I mean, who has beer hurt? So I go out to the bar, and I have a couple of beers. But it turns out I suffer from alcoholism. And that is once I start drinking, I have little or no control over how many drinks I'm going to have. Once I start, I can't stop. I get halfway through that second beer, and I think, you know what? Another beer's not going to hurt. Another beer. Or I might be watching a game on the TV at the bar. You know what? The game's going long, man. I might as well stay and watch the game. I don't want to leave now. I'll miss some of it. Give me another beer. It feels like I'm just changing my mind. That's all it feels like to me. By 6 a.m., I find myself in handcuffs again. I got pulled over for a third DUI. And I came to What? And Clark County Detention Center here in Las Vegas. And I'll tell you what, I've come to there before. But this was different. And this was different in the fact that I knew I was stuck. You see, by this time, I had burned all my relationships. If I could find somebody that was even willing, remotely willing out bail me out of this one like they bailed me out all the others they couldn't do it because i was on a probation hold i had no bail i was done i i think there's there's two things you find in jail and that's that's that's god and exercise right and every time i go i always pray but this day was a different prayer i got on my knees in that cell and i said god i don't care what they do with me and i didn't care if you guys saw me you'd say bill five years is not a bad idea and i said i don't care what they do to me please just don't ever let me take another drink 64 days later still sitting in that jail i go to court and i find out that they lost my blood evidence and the judge has to release me back to probation and i got out of there and i ran to alcoholics anonymous that was uh i tell that story not because i think it's cool or sweet or any of that i tell that story to show the insanity of alcoholism the insanity that i put my life through when i'm drinking or when i'm sober when i'm sober when i'm sober when i'm sober when i'm sober when i'm sober when i'm sober When I'm stone cold sober through all those circumstances, stone cold sober on probation, looking at five years in prison, stone cold sober, I make a decision to take a drink again because I don't know any other way. I came back to Alcoholics Anonymous in 2003. I'll tell you what, I had gone through that ordeal and I was a little willing to do some stuff in Alcoholics Anonymous, right? But to be honest with you, I thought you guys went overboard a little bit. I thought, you know what? These guys might be really, really bad, but dude, I don't need all that. And I'm the kind of guy that likes to do just enough. I don't want to overdo Alcoholics Anonymous. So I just need to find my level of Alcoholics Anonymous. I don't know what it is. But I need to find just enough AA so that I don't have to get in any more trouble. So that's what I did. I came in Alcoholics Anonymous again in 2003 and I tried to do just enough Alcoholics Anonymous. And every time I would relapse because I'd stay sober for 30 or 60 days and I'd go up and I'd drink again. Then I'd come back with my tail between my legs and I'd stay sober for 60 to 90 days and I'd go out again. And this went on for eight years, trying to find the right level of Alcoholics Anonymous. Somewhere towards the end of those eight years, I managed to get a year and a half in Alcoholics Anonymous. I was doing enough for that. I was attending a meeting every day of the week. I was chairing and leading a big book study at a small club here in Las Vegas on Sundays. I met a great girl in Alcoholics Anonymous in Bill Stalker fashion. We moved in together the day after we met and got married with a friend. And that was it. Within six months, just before I relapsed again, she told me, she came to me one day and she said, guess what, Bill? I'm pregnant. I'm 39 years old. I don't have any children that I know of. Right. So this was pretty exciting news. My first thought was, man, I'm going to be somebody's father. How cool is that? The next thought was. Oh, man, I'm going to be somebody's father. I need to get to work. And I got a family to support now. I have big responsibility here. Man, I got to lay off some of these AA meetings. I'm going doing too much AA. I need to work longer hours. And that AA is getting in the way. And I start cutting back my meetings. I learned a vital lesson at that time. I found out. That the more work you do and the less AA you do, the less money you make. But I didn't see that right away. I just thought I needed to try harder. I just figured I wasn't working enough even now. So I cut back more meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm working longer hours. I'm in a business where I don't get paid unless I do something unless I work for it. I don't get paid by the hour on a salary. It's commission-based. And I'm pulling my hair out at this point. The bills are piling up. I don't know if I'm ever going to be able to catch up with my bills. My God, what a disaster. I've got a baby coming on the way. What am I going to do? I finally give up on that last meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm just working, working, working. My head is full and spinning. I'm completely full of fear. I don't know how to handle my life. I don't know how to handle the people in my life. And I just need a break. If I could just get a couple hours off. If I could just relax for a couple of hours, it'll be okay. I just need to breathe for a minute. And in that thought, I go to the bar just for a couple of beers. It'll be all right. Just a couple of beers. And tomorrow, I'll figure all this stuff out and get my life in order once and for all. I go to the bar for a couple of beers. It turns into a weekend. It turns into a weekend. It turns into 30 days. And then finally, after about 30 days of drinking and showing up drunk to the house, I come home from a runner and my now ex-wife was on the back patio. She was eight months pregnant. And she looked at me and she said, Bill, if I find out you've been drinking again, I'm going to have to leave you. I don't know about you folks, man, but I've had a lot of people leave me. I've never been offered the courtesy of them telling me they're going to leave. Normally, I just turn around and find out they're gone, right? This was an absolute blessing. In that moment, man, I was tired. And in that moment, I took inventory of my drinking. I took a hard look at my history with drinking, and I could see that maybe you guys were right about this alcoholism stuff. And maybe once I start drinking, I don't have an off switch. Maybe it's true for me. And maybe when I stop and swear it off completely and mean it, maybe it is true. Maybe I go back to it anyway. And in that moment, I made the realization that if I didn't do something different, I wasn't going to change. And I was going to drink again because I always drink again. And the next day, I was like, I'm going to drink again. The next day, I went back to Alcoholics Anonymous with a different attitude. I found myself at this house here on Ann Road in Las Vegas. Never been there before. I sat down in this man's house on his leather couch, and I listened to him give a talk from the book on step one. And I identified with everything that man had to say about step one. I could see that what he was talking, who he was talking about. He was talking about me. I felt like the only person in that room was me and him. At the end of that meeting, I popped up and I ran to him. And I said, look, man, I need help. Will you sponsor me? I promise to do anything you ask me to do. I just don't want to drink again. And he agreed. And he gave me a list of meetings. The next meeting was at a sober house. I still give book studies at to this day here in Las Vegas. And I walk in there and a good friend of mine, Sheldon, was sitting in a chair there and he was leading the meeting. He opened up his book and he started sharing his experience with step two. I like to think this is all orchestrated for me because I'm that damn important. But I think it was just God's grace. But what happened was this. He got to this part in the book. And this is the only part of the book I'm going to be reading during the talk. On page 52, the bedevilments. In the bedevilments, it says, we were having trouble with personal relationships. And I thought about my pregnant wife at home and how she's getting ready to leave. We couldn't control our emotional natures. I couldn't control anything about my emotions, man. I was happy one second and completely broke in the next. We were a prey of misery and depression. We couldn't make a living. I had a job. I couldn't pay the bills. But we had a feeling of uselessness. We were full of fear. We were unhappy. We couldn't seem to be of real help to other people. It was not a basic solution of these bedevilments more important than weather. We should see newsreels of lunar flight. Of course it was. He said he read those bedevilments. He was in that meeting. And I put a thumb in my book. And I went to my car. I've got tears running down my face. And I'm driving home as quickly as I possibly can, holding that page open. I get to this little condo that we were living in. I run up the stairs to the front door. I barge in. I sit down on the couch inside that little condo. And I call my wife over to sit next to me. And I say, I open up the book. And I say, Look, this is me. This is the problem. I found my problem inside this book of Alcoholics Anonymous. And if the problem's in here, the solution's got to be in here too. I couldn't believe it. And I'll tell you what I was from that moment on. I'd been on fire for Alcoholics Anonymous. I owe. Boy, do I owe. From that moment on, I did everything my sponsor asked me to do. I got on that four-step, man. I was sponsoring guys within 45 days. He had me go into treatment centers and talking and detox two or three times a week. Made sure I had a home group and I had commitments in every meeting I went to. Because I finally found a solution. My sponsor likes to say, Hey, you can't think your way into, better acting. I spent my entire life trying to think my way to acting better. And I couldn't accomplish it. But he says, you damn sure can act your way into better thinking. So I take the actions inside of Alcoholics Anonymous. And as a result, my life gets better. My sobriety date is August 22nd of 2010. And it's been a little over 11 years that I've had a desire to pick up a drink or, or need to. I've got a beautiful 11 year old daughter. She's in the other room. We just celebrated her birthday over the weekend. We went to Universal Studios. What a great weekend that was. I've got a home. I've got a career. Got a car in the garage. Wonderful stuff because I stay sober and take actions on Alcoholics Anonymous. But I'll tell you what, the one thing I cherish most, that you guys have given me is that my life is just easy to live today. No matter what's going on in my life, my life is easy to live today. I don't have that fear in the pit of my stomach anymore. I'm not afraid to go to the mailbox to see what's in it. I found a way by taking actions on Alcoholics Anonymous for, for the most part, to be able to live in the moment. Not always, but I can reel myself back into it. I can reel myself back into it. And that's only because I take the actions on Alcoholics Anonymous. You know what? The problem is I got to the third step. And I didn't understand the third step for a long time because I'm a guy that came in from my parents divorced. My mom was Catholic. I was a Catholic until I was three. And then she met somebody else who wasn't Catholic. So they drug me around to different churches, trying to find something they can do business with together. And then in the apartment, well, they did that. I started hearing different faiths say, you got to, if you're going to come to this faith, you're going to have to forget those three rules and learn these five. And then I go to the next faith. Oh no, those two are terrible rules. You need to learn these six over here. And by the time I got done with that, I was like, Oh my God, this is all crap. And I came in to Alcoholics Anonymous with that attitude. So I, I see the word God and, and, and, and I don't like it. But with this last time coming to Alcoholics Anonymous, I'm like, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I decided to take the actions anyway. And the third step, my sponsor said, Bill, if you hired somebody and you paid them good money to manage your life, and it turned out the way it did, would you fire that manager? Well, hell yeah, I'm going to fire that manager. He said, that's what we're doing in Alcoholics Anonymous. That's all. And because I'm not trying to manage my life anymore, my life's gotten better. I'm a terrible manager. That's a fact. I am a terrible, terrible manager. I got a friend in Alcoholics Anonymous that's got me early on. He said something in the meeting and it stuck with me, man. All I try to do is the next thing and leave the results to something else. If I can stay out of the results of my life, my life is golden. I am overpaid in Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm grateful that you, you guys asked me to speak at your meeting. I appreciate you all. I love you all. I love Alcoholics Anonymous and thank you.