If You Try to Meditate You Are Meditating — Step Eleven’s Best-Kept Secret — Steve P.

Let's have an AA meeting. My name's Tim R., and I'm an alcoholic. Welcome to the Monday Night Leadership Speakers Meeting on NabaZoom, where a member of Alcoholics Anonymous with one year or more of sobriety tells his or her story. Tinsley's going to read page 29. My name is Tinsley. I'm an alcoholic. And this is a reading from page 29 of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Each individual in the personal stories describes in his own language and from his own point of view the way he established his relationship with God. These give a fair cross-section of our membership and a clear-cut idea of what has actually happened in their lives. We hope no one will consider these self-revealing accounts in bad taste. Our hope is that many alcoholic men and women desperately in need will see these pages, and we pray for them. We believe it is only by fully disclosing ourselves and our problems that they will be persuaded to say, Yes, I am one of them, too. I must have this thing. So it gives me great pleasure to introduce our speaker tonight. This is a guy who I've gone to a lot of meetings with, including but not limited to the Grateful Group, which meets at 8 o'clock on Sunday on Zoom. And in person. When conditions permit. But he's also a neighbor of mine, and I see him when I'm out walking around the neighborhood, which is really nice to catch up. Haven't seen each other much lately due to the circumstances, but it's great to have him speaking tonight, and I'm really looking forward to it. And with that, I give you Steve. Thank you. I'd like to do a sound check. Could somebody give me a thumbs up? Thank you. Thank you. It's always good to know you can be heard. My name is Steve. I'm an alcoholic. My sobriety date is April 6, 2009. Kinsley shot me a text some weeks back and asked me if I would tell my story, and I said yes, under the premise that, you know, service work is something that I take seriously. Not to say that I do everything I'm asked, but, hey, it's okay. I wanted to give some coherency, you know, to the story and stick to the format of strength, hope, and experience and also talk about the steps and make sure that I cover those and what they meant to me. Many times I feel like I'm unqualified for speaker meetings, but then I realize how important they were to me and my sobriety, early sobriety in particular, one of the first speaker meetings I attended, there was a guy that I knew when I was eight years old, and he started telling his story and it became clear to me that I knew this kid, and it was pretty amazing. And since that time, I felt like it's kind of a sacred thing for me when people tell their story, and I realize that the qualification is not lecturing. I'm not educating. I'm not instructing. I'm just sharing, right? And I don't mind that vulnerability because I was unable to be that way when I was drinking and using, which non-coincidentally led me to drink and use. So I think it's a privilege to do this kind of thing. Doesn't mean I'm any good at it, but it's just something I take seriously. So, again, I was, you know, 2009 is when I came, you know, here to the program. Got here at 48 years of age. You know, you can't rush these things, right? You have to make sure that the drinks really aren't working for you, the drugs really aren't working for you. And, you know, for me, addiction has always been like an invisible mouth, a mouth within the one that I have, which sort of takes away any good that's destined for the better part of me. And when I was younger, it worked. And then it's, it stopped working. And then I spent close to 15 years trying to repair the relationship with drugs and alcohol and failed miserably. I had a sponsor when I came in, and he was pretty hard as nails kind of guy. And he used to say things to me such as, I want you, when you talk to me, I want you to tell the truth. And if you can't do that, then entertain me. And ideally both at the same time would be nice. And so, you know, I thought, okay, he's just a funny guy. But I realized how deceptive I was in my language and how I would fudge my words just to cast myself in a favorable light. But he saw through it. And some of you guys may know him. His name is Knox, and he's still out there. And, you know, he was a pretty amazing first sponsor for me. And, you know, I learned a lot from him. And I always thought that AA was a bumper sticker. Program like everything was encapsulated in these quippy cliches. And then I realized that I had the brain of a goldfish. So I didn't really even have the capacity to take in much more than basic comments. So AA logic, if you want to call that the aphorisms that we share at meetings are perfect. And they knock down my critical filters and enable me to enjoy what the program has to offer. So let me, and lastly, before I transition into the story, you know, another question that Knox used to ask me is, he would say, what have you done for the program today? And at first I thought, well, Jesus, you know, I come to the meetings. You ask me, you know, I do the service work. You know, what else do you want from me? And he said, you know, if you tell somebody that there's a meeting tonight or if you give somebody directions, you're doing something for the program. And that's what he meant. You know, he wasn't trying to give me assignments or, you know, I wasn't trying to be Billy Big Book or anything like that. And I could approach this program in bite-sized chunks, courtesy of that kind of advice, really. So in terms of my story, you know, what it was like, I was born in Atlanta. Technically, I guess it was East Point. And we moved to Birmingham and we came back to Atlanta. I also have family in California. So, but Atlanta is where I grew up. I grew up on the south side of town, about half a mile from a street called Stewart Avenue. And if you are from Atlanta, then you'll know pretty well the seedy past associated with that. It's now called Metropolitan Parkway. They changed the name because of a double murder. And they thought that would cure the problem down there. And, you know, it didn't. And I still have friends that live down there, amazingly. The time. That we moved in, it was nice. It was a very functional area. My father, he had access to the airport. My grandmother lived next to Perkison Park. My other grandmother lived next to Sylvan High School, which was close to Lee Street in West End. And we lived in Perkison Woods. There's the Gilbert House, which is this old antebellum house. And so that was my stomping grounds. And, again, it was functional. And. And the fairgrounds were nearby. And there were a lot of things that worked. The environment was then, it was conducive to, you know, again, all the healthy things in life. I played baseball. I was really good at baseball as a kid growing up. And the other thing that was abundant down there was music and musicians. There was a guy named Tommy Rowe who was before my time. But he used to have jams. He used to have jam sessions at Perkison Park, which is a tradition that carried on into the 70s. And there were a lot of bands down there and a lot of musicians that would have jam sessions. And there was a band called Spontaneous Generation in, like, 1969 that had a regional hit called Up In My Mind. It's out there on YouTube. You can hear it. The flip side was Pictures of Lily by The Who. And they were older, like, sibling types to me. And they were very accomplished musicians. And, you know, that's how you would learn. You would learn from these people. And, you know, they had a sophisticated knowledge of pop harmony and music. And it was great. And a lot of people played music. And so it was easy to wind up in bands. And it was easy to do things. I played guitar. But I played bass. And I found out if you played bass, you could get a lot more work because nobody wanted to play bass. You know, it's not so glamorous. To me, it was plenty glamorous. I could meet all the women that I wanted to. I played bass. I played baseball. There was all these things that happened. And so there was a vibrant scene down there. Now, it's tempting to believe that drugs came my way because of that. But I actually had a lot of medical problems growing up. And I had my first taste of opium. Now, this is about alcohol, but I have to mention the drug aspect of it. So I was on painkillers and analgesics from a very early age for a legitimate reason. And I became familiar with the comfort. And I became familiar with the comfort offered by these things. And so by the time I was 12, I had a lot of experience with those kinds of things. So when the community, you had a lot of Vietnam veterans coming back to the area. There was also the white flight that was happening at the time. There was forced busing. And so a lot of families just left for the suburbs. And my family experienced some misfortune. We were at best middle class. And when the economics hit, we were. We were pretty much public assistance level. And that was okay. You know, we still found a way. But when the drugs came into the area, you know, I embraced them. And by the time I was 12, I was pretty proficient with all the drugs that you probably know from back then. Two and all, second alls, barbiturates, quaaludes, LSD. And I just, I don't know. It just felt natural to use those things. My father was. He was a successful salesman and then he washed out because of alcohol and he started working security for concerts. And he did that back in the 60s, like Atlanta Pop Festival, some of these old things. And he hated rock music, which made him a perfect security guy for that kind of stuff. And by virtue of his relationship with a lot of people, I got to meet a lot of those musicians. And it was a very interesting thing, too. So another thing that happened. That defined, I guess, my my early life was I took a job in a market. It's it was the building still there. It's on the 166 overpass. It's called Brothers Three Package Store. It was down from Stewart Lakewood Shopping Center. And it was basically a front for bookies, professional gamblers who were trying to declare income legitimately while. Operating. It was kind of like Goodfellas. I was the kid there and they had all these Cadillacs and they had all these jewelry and big wads of cash and things like that. And I found out by accident that I had a mathematical talent, which which I still have. And I was able to spot trends in betting, which enamored or endeared me to them because we were able to put together something. Some formulas. This is nineteen seventy five that would allow us to make money off of the dog track in Florida and the horse track in Alabama. And so by virtue of that, I got full entree into the entire world of gambling, not just on Stewart Avenue, but also in the region. But it also came at a price because a lot of people don't like it when there's a fix. Now, the math involved was not that heavy duty. And it only works with animals. If you try to apply it to humans, it falls apart because it's it's more difficult. These days in Vegas, they call this a model. They're building a statistical model. Back then, it was more intuitive. And I used to use this accounting machine and it was pretty amazing how it worked. It was amazing that it worked at all. And, you know, I went on to college and actually got a degree in mathematics and I was admitted to a graduate program. And I turned them down. Mostly because I was really deep into, you know, drugs and alcohol. But I made a lot of money that helped finance my college education. There was also a lot of threats of violence if I continued to do that kind of thing. It's sort of like if you go to Vegas and you count cards, your name gets on a list and it becomes kind of ugly. But, you know, that put me. In a different world altogether, I couldn't really relate to other people my age. It was it was very difficult to do that because, again, I had full entree to these clubs and to these situations. The women I'm 15 years old and these women are just overwhelming. You know, to me, they're just like, you know, goddesses. And they were, you know, generous with their affections. That's a polite way to put it. And and so I really enjoyed that lifestyle. I went to off. But I still had these medical issues and which required surgery. So I was in a situation where I had to take work that provided. Access to medical care insurance. So I worked for a company that wrote software for nuclear power plants to manipulate control rods in the nuclear core. Once again, I find myself in these odd situations for which, you know, on paper, I'm not qualified for. But I wind up. Doing it. And then I later worked for a military on a military contract for aircraft, which required the security clearance. So so here I am, a total drug addict and alcoholic. And I get these security clearances and I'm working in an industry that I don't even give one damn about. And I felt like, you know, I was still having a good time. The relationships that I attempted to form then. Sort of always fell apart. You know, most of the women that I wanted to date were fairly they had it together, but it didn't take them long to figure out that I was totally full of crap. And I had the maturity level of, you know. A young person. Now, I'm trying to keep this on track. I don't I want to get to the steps. The. A couple of other defining events were as I continue to have. Surgery into my thirties, and I was using the drugs again for chronic pain, and I use alcohol to modulate my drug use and use drugs to modulate my alcohol and. I did what any good alcoholic would do is I decided I needed a change and literally one day I decided I was going to move to Geneva, Switzerland, and work for the well, World Health Organization. And I did. Okay, and I basically went there and I didn't move there, but I went there and sounded it out. You've ever been to Geneva, Switzerland. It's one of the most boring cities in the world. People are very uptight. I'm not sure why I picked it. I think I was trying to approximate a degree of respectability. And I didn't get the job there, but I hung out and I met people. And so I sort of. I flunked out of Switzerland and I said, I know what I'll do. I'll go to Paris. So I went to Paris, France, and I said, I'll work for UNESCO, which was another kind of World Health Organization. So the thing is, is I'm trying to become somebody. I'm trying to regain the dignity that I lost through drug and alcohol use. It took me a long time to put all this together. I learned the language. I spoke French real well. And I you know, it's something that I'm glad that I learned. But I flunked out of Paris. And, you know, the jails over there, just like jails here, except they're smaller and they're much more uncomfortable. They're not built for people that are 6'2". They're just not. And then I said, here's what I'll do. I'll move to London. So I went to London. At least they speak the language right now. You talk about a drinking city. That city is just calibrated for a drinker. And then it was there that I cured myself of drugs. Right. I was proud of myself. Because I didn't score. I just drank. And I came back to the United States in the late 90s with my tail between my legs. So this incomprehensible demoralization that we talk about in the program was something that hit home very hard for me. And I found work once again. I was lucky. I was fortunate that I had skills that were in demand. I was very much an underachiever. And I never really exploited what I had because I wanted to use. And so I consulted some physicians. I consulted psychologists. I went to psychics. And I tried to get people to tell me what it is I should be doing. And boy, I got a lot of advice, none of which worked. And so there are programs out there, like in Malibu, where you can make pottery and ride horses to get sober. I mean, it's not AA, and I'm not saying that you can't get sober doing those things, but Scientology, they have a rehab, Unification Church, they all have these things. And I tried a lot of those, but it never worked for me. And I knew about AA because my uncle got his one-year chip in 1974, and I thought AA must be some kind of religious outfit, like a cult, and who knows. I mean, who knew that I would be in this program later? So I hit bottom in, again, 2009. I pretty much exhausted all my possibilities and became a waste case. I had no capacity for consuming drugs or alcohol at that point. And I went to rehab, and I went to detox, a familiar path for a lot of people. The problem was that physically I could rebound from this. But mentally, I could not. Mentally, I just took the biggest hit that I ever took in my life. And, you know, spirituality is there. You know, if good exists, evil exists. I mean, you can't have one without the other. And I took some solace in the fact that the depths of despair that I was feeling could be counteracted by some possible spiritual experience. And I did. I had one, actually, when I was in detox. Some would say. It's just because of the hallucinations that you get. Look, I've had plenty of hallucinations, and I know what a hallucination is versus a non-hallucination. So I kind of felt like I could get another shot at this. And so I came into the program, and I met my first sponsor at a Cocaine Anonymous meeting. And since that time, I've been in AA. Okay. So in terms of, and, you know, that kind of wraps up how it was and how I got here thing. I wanted to talk a little. I wanted to talk a little bit about the steps, since that's really where the meat of the program is. The, excuse me, I made notes here to try to, you know, keep things on track. Step one is we admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable. Right? So my problem, and it could be yours, too. That's entirely up to you to make this determination, is that I could never find relaxation for my desires. And in some cases, I still cannot. I'm plagued. I'm plagued by wanting stuff, and I couldn't even tell you what it is. And I want satisfaction in my terms. But when I experience relief, when I experience serenity, then I understand what it's all about. Okay. I don't think anybody ever schedules the day that they come into the program. I've never seen anybody whip out a day planner and say, hey, April 6, 2009, that's the day I want to get sober. I suppose there are people who do that. I'm just not. I'm not one of them. I also thought this was a catch-and-release program, and what I mean by that, if you've ever seen any of those animal shows, I like watching nature shows, and they take the tranquilizer gun, and they shoot the animal in the ass, and then they take the animal, and they clean him up, and look at his teeth, and tag him, and then they release the animal, and they go, go, you know, run, run like a boy in the field, and all this crap. And you're supposed to experience, you know, that's what I thought. They, you know, AA cleans you up. They send you back out, and then they check in with you. You know, obviously, it's not that, but that's how naive I was in my thinking. So, step two, came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. Obviously, the restoration of sanity implies lack of sanity, right? Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. And they saw that I was crying and everybody was asking me what was wrong. And I just, I made up some crap about, you know, somebody in my family died. Well, metaphorically, somebody did, right? I wasn't able to say no to alcohol. But the sanity here, right, is very important. And I can still black out on emotion, right? I tell the story of, I was in San Francisco and I got on the BART and I missed my stop. My eight stops, eight, because I was consumed. You know, I'm sitting there thinking about things. So I still have that capacity to lose myself. But the sanity that the program gives me back is absence of the chaos, absence of the affliction of the mind. So step three, made a decision to turn our will and lives over to the care of God as we understood him. The good thing about AA is that as we understood him, has been included in absence of that phrase, I wouldn't be in this program. My parents never inflicted any specific religion upon me. And for that, I'm grateful. They never required me to believe a certain thing. We went to church more as a networking thing to go and meet other people in the community. You know, here's the dentist. Here's the lawyer. Here's the physician. You kind of met people, right? Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. That's how we viewed it. Now, the concept of God, it's beautiful to be able to choose one's own conception. No one has ever asked me to tell them what my conception is. Now, I've been to meetings where people have claimed to have been Jesus, but I've never been to meetings where somebody said, I must believe in Jesus. Right. And I've benefited from people sharing with me kind of their higher power. But nobody's ever asked me to do that. So, you know, I, one time I joined this band, they were, they were Satanists, for lack of a better word. This is, I wasn't in the program yet. I didn't really care if they were Satanists or not. Supposedly, they were getting paid gigs. That's what attracted me. And when I joined them, you know, they were very serious about what they did. But I soon came to realize that they were very serious about what they did. They were boring as hell. They just smoked weed and got drunk. And, and, you know, their religion was not really powerful. I just said, you know, you guys, your problem is that you can't get laid. That's why you're so angry and you smoke so much weed. So I don't care that you're Satanists. You're just boring as hell. And I investigated religions aggressively and with serious intent. I was always one of those people who was trying to find God in some fashion. I don't know. I don't know that I have, but I found something that works and something that facilitates my sobriety. So step four, made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. We're going concerns. People are like businesses. And I, and I, I bought into this comparison since day one. Because part of the inventory not only reveals those things in me that are unsellable, those items that must be removed. But they also reveal assets that have been long unused, that can be reanimated, not only for my benefit, but for those of people in the program. That's what that inventory is all about. And it took me a couple of times to get that inventory right. And my sponsor said, I like you. Finally, he blessed my inventory and he said, you know what? These words look comfortable next to each other. You're telling the truth. Everything here makes sense. He said, I think there's more that you've left. Out probably because you haven't remembered it, but it's a great way to start. So step five, admitted to God, to ourselves and another human being, the exact nature of our wrong. This step involves three different tasks. Three. You talk about your inventory to your higher power. You talk about it to yourself and you talk about it to another human being, which, generally speaking, is one sponsor. If there's a legal issue, you can always seek out. Some kind of confidential relationship, such as a priest or an attorney. But to me, it was important to work step five in that fashion. Nobody told me to do that. I just interpreted it literally. And it seemed minute in my thinking what my step for inventory looked like. So step six, step seven are interesting because they remind me of the crutches that I have. Operationalized in my life, the sarcasm that comes so naturally to me. Sarcasm is not humor. Sarcasm is is a bitterness. It is a pattern form of bitterness. And but it's an example of a character defect. And so I uncover that in the inventory. And it's also a defect that I wish to eliminate. Now, step seven says humbly. Ask him the higher power to remove our shortcomings. The humility piece is very important because that allows me to look at me in relation to reality. And if I can look at my relationship to other people in society at large without embellishment, OK, then I got a shot at eliminating those character defects. They are familiar to me and they give me comfort. Just like eating. Sometimes. Sometimes the wrong food gives me comfort. Those character defects are there. But if I have a degree of humility, then I got a shot at moving over to something more healthy. Step eight made a list of all persons we had harm and became willing to make amends to them all. Well, this is an interesting one, right? Because I looked at step eight originally when I had maybe 10 days of sobriety. And I figured out that if step four didn't have many things on it, then my step eight list would be very small. So I wouldn't have to make amends to people, right? Of course, that's hardly original thinking. But and I was called out on that. And I had to work on that step eight list a lot more than I originally planned to. It was effective to do so. It gave me a list. It gave me a working list of people. And step nine, of course, is where I made direct amends to such people where possible. Now, it's kind of a funny story, but it's emblematic of what I went through. I used to have a roommate who was a ventriloquist back in the day. And he was really good. And, you know, ventriloquists are like musicians. They have to rehearse, right? And he would sit the dummy on his lap. And we would be. In the room, all three of us, and we would be getting high, us, not the dummy. Right. But he was so good at it that the dummy had its own personality. And this guy would like insult me through the dummy and we'd be getting ripped out of our minds. Right. So it was it was odd because when I put together step eight and wanted to do step nine, this guy showed up on my list because he was a roommate and we had, you know, I owed him money. He owed me money. There was things that happened. And I showed up on his list to write and he had moved. He was like in Vegas somewhere doing, you know, he was in Vegas. He's been trilled with. So he contacted me and he said, you know, I need to make an amends. I'm in this program. So so I said, me too. And I said, now, will the dummy be making the amends or will you be making? I mean, this stuff could only happen in this program. Right. But but I never saw that coming in a million years and it it paved the way it softened my heart is what it did. It softened my heart and made possible other more serious amends. Let me tell you, not all the amends went like that. OK, it's it's not necessarily a cakewalk. Step 10 is what I call the everyday step. Continue to take personal inventory. And we were wrong. Probably admitted it. You know, I have a smartphone just like everybody else. And I don't know how many numbers I can fit in it. Probably, you know, 10 million. But it's amazing how rare rarely that I contact people. I text people and there's a guy here tonight, Carrie, who's a great friend of mine in this program. And we we communicate almost every day. But, you know, I still don't use the power of step 10. I really don't. I underutilize it. And again, I don't know if it's pride. I don't know what it is. But it's the everyday step. So step 11, saw through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood him. I'll let you in on a little secret. If you try to meditate, you are meditating. And it took me years to figure that out. Attempting a meditation. Some type of. Of concentrated breathing or directed thinking is meditation. It's not competitive. And I had to recalibrate my thinking again based on my disease, where I think that I have to like levitate or charm cobras or sleep on a bed of nails. OK, it sounds silly, but that was kind of what I thought I had to do. Sometimes if you've ever read the book, A New Pair of Glasses by Chuck C. He says in there, you know, a serious thought. A serious thought is a prayer. And I like that. And to me, a sustained serious thought is a form of meditation. So I've been able to use that, especially when I'm busy as hell. Like if I'm engaged at work or taking care of something, I can meditate. And I can't tell you how free, how liberating that has been. Right. And it's been the difference between me using and not using. That's how critical I feel meditation is. And the prayer. And meditation. So that brings us to step 12. And where we carry the message. Now, if you look at the steps as whole, there's only three of the steps that involve other people. Right. There's there's step five. There's nine and there's 12. So if I'm the kind of guy that wants to assign blame to other people for my problems, I'm not in the right program. Now, those three steps are very important steps. And the quality of interaction that I aspire to have with other people by virtue of this program is very important. But taken as a whole, I have a lot of work that I have to do. Right. And that's also why, you know, a newcomer. I mean, technically, you can work step 12 when you have 10 days sober. And and I've certainly told people things when I had 10 days. I said, I don't know what I'm doing, but I think, wow, this is how it's supposed to work. Fine, whatever. But the steps are an inside job. A lot of it is an inside job. So that's the 12 steps. And so if I'm thinking about this in terms of my first sponsor, Knox, if he asked me today, what have I done for the program? I might say, well, I spoke at this meeting. And that would be a true statement. But it's also true that, you know, I picked up a phone today and I talked to someone in the program. Last thing I want to close out with is that two months ago, my mother passed away. She was in a state of decline. She had cancer and they sent her to home hospice. I don't know if you've ever experienced home hospice and if you have ever participated in anyone's care. It's probably one of the hardest things that you'll ever do because you you're on diaper duty. Medicine duty, food duty, spiritual duty. You pretty much are doing everything around the clock. And that process was exhausting in a way that I hadn't anticipated. But it was also exhilarating because I got to participate in her ultimate passage from this plane of existence. I think when I say, you know, I got to participate when she died. When she passed, I was there. I saw her breathe her last breath. And that's a privilege. And it's a life changing event, to say the least. And I was sober. Right. And I was in a position where I could look at this with a degree of maturity and dignity that I did not have, you know. Fifteen years ago, 20 years ago. I've got to be. I've got to be honest here. My mother was one of us, as was my father, as is pretty much everybody in my family. And not all of us got to this program. And, you know, regret is something that I struggle with. I wish that they had experienced this. But I was there. I suited up. I showed up. And that's not the only time that I've done it. But it brought together my 11th year. And it brought me sobriety in a way that I hadn't anticipated. So I'm going to shut it down with that. I know we got started late. And that's all I have. And thank you for letting me share. And I hope that you got something out of that. I think I can speak for everybody. We certainly did. Thank you for sharing the miracle, Steve. And I'm going to unmute some folks to give you some feedback. Everybody chime in. Oh, Steve, that was not only entertaining. It was totally engaging. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks, Steve. Steve, that was great. I love the way you broke down the steps, too. Oh, yeah. In layman's terms. And really, I learned quite a lot about you. I thought I knew. I thought I knew a lot. And I certainly was a person that frequented Stewart Avenue. So I knew all about those places. And I think they're still going on down there. But I'm glad you survived that. And next time I go to Vegas, I'd like to take you with me. Thanks so much, Steve. Hey, David. It was great hearing your story, Steve. Thank you so much. Yeah. All right. My brother is Jimmy. He always talks about Stewart Avenue, Steve. So I'll let him know I got to hear you tonight. Thank you. Yeah, thank you, Mary. Jim was a big part of my sobriety. He was there in the Grateful Group on Thursday nights when I was still counting days, you know. And he talked about the group in Syracuse. And he was a really big part of my sobriety. Guys like him, that's the reason I'm here. Thank you for sharing your story, Steve. Steve and I, like you mentioned, we're good friends. We met about three years ago, about three and a half years now, in the 930 meeting. And we talked or reached out almost on a daily basis. And he, you know, I wanted to be here. You told me last night you were telling this story. You know, we support each other. I guess about a month and a half ago, I was asked to share my story at a meeting in London. And I asked Steve to come. And right after the meeting, they asked Steve to do his story the next week. But, you know, Steve and I get together, you know, we talk about a lot of stuff. But everything is, you know, recovery-based. I mean, most of the time we talk, whether we text or in person or on the phone, everything centers around recovery. So, Steve, I heard part of your story that I, a lot of part of your story I had never heard before. So, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Thank you, Kerry. Thank you, Kerry. With the strongest dreams to me. Can't put the bump in the cake that it should be.