Making AA Itself My Higher Power — the Sentence in Step 2 That Saved My A*s – Tinsley E.

I'm Julie, and I'm an alcoholic. Oh, this is getting much better. Welcome to the Monday night Blue Chip Speakers meeting at the NAVA Club, where a member of Alcoholics Anonymous with one year or more sobriety tells his or her story. I'm going to go off script here. How many people are in the audience who are here for the convention? Anybody? Wow, we've got a lot of people. Welcome. Woo! Okay. This reading is based on the passage from page 29 of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Each individual in our personal stories describes in their own language, from their own point of view, the way they establish their relationship with God. These give a fair cross-section of our membership and a clear-cut idea of what has 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 in our room tonight and listening later on a bluechipspeakers.org desperately in need will hear our speaker, and we believe that... that it is only by fully disclosing ourselves and our problems that any of us shall be persuaded to say, yes, I am one of them, too. I must have this thing. All right. Our speaker tonight is someone who really needs no introduction, but I'm sure he's probably expecting one. You know, if you hang around AA long enough, you realize that there are very few, and I mean very few people, who can concisely and clearly express the power and magnitude of this program, and the life-giving properties that it gives us. There are very few people who can ever do that, much less do it in 45 minutes. But our speaker is one of those people who can. So you're in for a treat. And with that, I give you my friend Tinsley. Oh, thank you. My name is Tinsley. I'm an alcoholic. My sobriety date is May 3rd, 1999. And this is my home group. And so that's kind of a good treat for me. I have a story. I sponsor and I sponsor men. And I am 58 years old. And I like to give my age because I've been to speaker meetings and I spend the whole time wondering how old the person is. Anyway, in my story I'm going to tell you how I fell in love with alcohol and then tried to break up with it and then was on again and off again with it. And then how I've finally been able to stay off the stuff and how I'm still in love with it. I managed to have a good life now without it. I always like to tell this story at the beginning because it really sums up how it was for me when I was drinking. There's a couple and they're down there on their dock on the Gulf of Mexico watching the sun set over the Gulf of Mexico. And I don't know if you've ever been down there by Sarasota. And it's just beautiful the way the sun hits the water. Well, anyway, this is a couple of earthlings. And they're having glasses of water. And they're having glasses of wine. And they're watching the sun set. And just as the sun hits the Gulf of Mexico, the silence is broken by the husband saying, I love you so much. I can't live without you. And the wife says, now is that you talking or is that the wine? And the husband says, that's me. I'm talking to the wine. And that's really the way it was for me. Really the way it was for me. I loved drinking. And I did it with a lot of ease. I didn't really have a problem with drinking. I had a problem with sobriety. And I couldn't do it. I couldn't manage to pull it off. I didn't know there was a better life. And that's what I found here in AA. My story begins here in Atlanta, Georgia at Piedmont Hospital on June 4, 1957. My parents were Emory students. My mom was an undergrad. My dad was in law school here at Emory. And I had it pretty damn nice growing up. If I had to classify my upbringing, I'd say that it's of the silver spoon variety. Got everything I wanted. The best summer camps. I got a car when I was 16 years old. Wrecked it, of course. Wrecked it sober. How about that? But anyway, I got everything I wanted. I went to the finest prep schools. I went to this high school where you wore a coat and tie. And we had the school patch on the coat there. And a favorite apparel of teenagers everywhere, right? Well, anyway, that didn't help me much because I always felt like I was different. And in addition to going to the prep school, and I should also add that during the warm summer months down there, a warm part of the year down in South Florida where I went to prep school, we had to wear short pants. So I had the short pants and the coat and tie in the school patch. And Tim Bridgeway likes to refer to that as my Angus Young period. And if you don't know who that is, I'll tell you after the meeting. But anyway, yeah, I always felt like I was different, you know, because my friends went to the public schools. And I went off to prep school. And in school, I was a really good student. I was a straight-A student until, you know. And then I was pretty darn nerdy, too. And I was not only in the chorus, but I was the president of the chorus. The glee club, we called it. And that's not really cool for a teenager to be. And I always felt bad about that. I felt like the head nerd, of course. And it was much years much later that a guy, you know, I was in the chorus. And it was much years much later that a guy, you know, I was in the chorus. And it was much years much later that a guy, you know, I was in the chorus. And one of us said, Well, if it makes you feel any better, I was the President of the Library Club. And I said, Well, if it makes you feel any better, I was the President of the Library Club. And I said, Okay, you win. I thought a lot better about it then. But you know, and then came the time. And I was pretty churchy. But then came the time when I was 15 years old. And I went to a party. And somebody handed me a beer. And it was a malt liquor, of all things. But I drank that beer. And, brother, Brother, I had arrived and didn't feel like the nerdy guy anymore. I felt funny. I kind of found my identity, and I went back home. I remember thinking about that. That might be the only time I ever drank with any control was that night because the next weekend I went out, of course, and got just wasted and just got drunk as hell the next time. But it was a real red-letter day for me, a real banner day. And I think that's what distinguishes us from normal drinkers. A normal drinker probably doesn't remember with such clarity the first time they had a beer. Well, I do. And I can tell you right now that I love Coca-Cola. I love it, but I can't tell you the first time I ever had one. But I can tell you the first time I had that beer, and I had arrived. I didn't feel like the nerd anymore. I felt comfortable in my own skin. It became my solution right off the bat. And for a long period there, years and years, drinking was fun. I never knew it was okay to tell anybody that in AA, but let's face it, it was fun for a second until it turned on me. You know, I let alcohol into my life as an invited guest, and then it turned into a friend, and then alcohol turned into a constant companion, and then alcohol turned into a ruler, and then alcohol turned into a tyrant. And nothing I could ever do would get it to turn back from being a tyrant into any of those other things. But it turned on me. But for a while, it was my friend. It was my best friend. And, you know, and I definitely had some good times when I was, you know, a teenager drinking. And, you know, after I wrecked that car, my grandmother bought me a 1970, 1974 Dodge van. A white van, right, with no windows on it. Nowadays, they call that a creeper van, right? So I got a creeper van, and I remember we fixed it up. We put an 8-track stereo in it. Some of you are way too young to remember that. Others aren't. And put speakers all around it, and then we put foam rubber on the floor, and we put shag carpeting. All. All around on the back. And then I hung some beads behind the seats. And it was fun. And you drove around in that and drank a lot and did other stuff. And, you know, having that van really raised my expectations, if you know what I mean. Which were not met. Not in that van, at least. But anyway, and it was fun driving around, listening to the Allman Brothers band, and drinking beer, and no consequences, and, you know, 18, 19 years old. Then I went off to college, and I came up here from South Florida, and I went out to Emory at Oxford College, which is out in the woods, out in Oxford, Georgia, here, a small school, where everybody pretty much knew each other. And it was there that I really honed my drinking abilities, because we had a keg party every single night, and I always had every single one of them. I used to pick the keg, and I'd put the kegs up in my creeper van and bring them back to the school. I knew how to tap it and everything. But it was there that I noticed something about my drinking. I noticed that my friends, they'd get pretty drunk. But then they would do something really strange at about one or two in the morning, when there was plenty of alcohol left, they did something really weird. They all got in cars and went off to like the Waffle House and ate. And then they went to sleep. That was unfortunate. That was unthinkable to me. You know, who wants to eat when you're getting drunk? That just ruins, defeats the purpose. And it wasn't until years later that I realized that I was first noticing that I had the allergy to alcohol, that I couldn't stop once I got started. See, I always knew that I was an alcoholic. I just didn't know what that meant until I came into AA. And so alcohol, it was fun. Drinking was fun. And you know, I was doing other stuff at the time to fit right in with the drinking. In 1964, I saw The Beatles on Ed Sullivan's show. And wow, that just blew my mind. And I still love The Beatles. My son and I were watching them on YouTube tonight. But I saw, I heard that music and I saw that energy and I heard those guitars twanging. And the next day, I begged my parents like a lot of kids did in that time. And I went out and got a guitar and started playing the guitar. And, you know, it was really fun. And I still do it to this day. And I feel blessed that I can do that in the bars that I'm in a lot without even thinking about taking a drink, never even think about it. And so I feel very blessed that I've been able to do that job and do it sober and have a good time doing it. But I really bought into this thing even as a teenager that if I wanted to be really good on guitar and then I'd heard about Jimi Hendrix using drugs, you know, didn't he play guitar really well because he was on drugs and drunk? Of course. And really, I really bought into that. And that's really the big lie in show business, in my opinion, or in arts, is that somebody would get something out of alcohol that would fire their imagination, like they say, in a vision for you. And in the big book, in Bill Wilson's story, right off the bat, he talks about that. And I remember reading this book and reading the stories or what I could identify with the most in the book. And Bill Wilson. He's talking to his wife, and she's giving him a hard time about his drinking. And he says, We had long talks when I would still her forebodings by telling her that men of genius conceive their best projects when drunk, that the most majestic constructions of philosophic thought were so derived. Here's a man that felt the same way I did, that I've got to get out of it before I can get into it, you know. And Ernest Hemingway. Didn't he write those great books? Because he was a drunk? And then the answer that I find out over the years is that their gift comes from God. It doesn't come from a bottle or a baggie. But I had to find that out the hard way. So drinking and drugs hooked me right off the beginning with this job that I was getting in the music business. And really, I know that another place in the big book, there's a story I really like where it talks about, oh gosh, I always get this wrong, but someone correct me if I say it wrong, that an alcoholic chooses his goals to match his behavior and a non-alcoholic chooses his behavior to match his goals. Well, what was my behavior? Well, my behavior was I was a drunken fool. So what job do I need to get? Well, I need to get a job where it's okay to be a drunken fool. And that was the music business. Because in the music business, there's only two rules. Rule one in the music business, no drinking during the gospel numbers. Okay, that's pretty obvious, right? Rule two, no gospel numbers. So basically, it's wide open. Do whatever you want to do. You know, do whatever you want. As long as you can stand up, you can be employed, gainfully employed in the music business. Not really true, but I pushed the envelope in that one for sure. And in addition to my alcohol problem, I have an attention problem. I would chair every meeting here at NABBA if y'all would let me. Please let me. But I would. And alcohol fueled that too. I remember, you know, the book talks about we do insanely crazy, silly things when we're drinking. And I'm paraphrasing there. But I remember in high school, shortly after I stopped being a nerd and became a person whose grades were slipping and were dropping, drunk and stoned, shortly after that, I started doing attention-getting things. And boy, this sounds so crazy when I say it, but I went to a party and I shot a bottle rocket out of my ass. Okay? And so I went to school on the Monday. And what happens on the Monday? I'm no longer the president of the chorus. Viewed as that. I'm viewed as the guy who did this wild stunt. And of course, I'm not the president of the chorus. The problem with that is you've got to top it. But anyway, so all of this, you know, drinking just fit perfectly into that until the consequences started. And I'll just tell you some of my greatest hits in terms of consequences. Hooked up to machines in hospitals, bleeding, perforated ulcer, no health insurance, parents had to fly out, parents had to fly out, parents had to fly out, to where I was on tour and come get me and pay the hospital bill and bring me home. Divorced. A lot of loss of work, which, like I said earlier in the music business, that's kind of hard to do, but I managed to pull it off. Yelled at a lot. Everybody was mad at me. And alcohol ceased to become a luxury and became a necessity to me. And it turned on me. And it made everyone mad at me. And it made me hate myself. I used to drink because I hated myself and I hated myself because I drank. It was a vicious, vicious circle. Cycle. Circle. But anyway, I can remember by the time that I, by the time that I got to my first meeting at AA, which just happened to be in this room in 1990, by the time I got here, everybody thought it was a good idea. Everybody thought it was a good idea. That I go to AA. Even the dope man thought it was a good idea that I come to AA. And when the dope man is the voice of reason, brother, you got a problem. But I certainly did. I came in here, 1990. Sat right there in the middle. I listened. But I had a case of the yeah buts. Yeah but, yeah but. And the yeah buts are on a page of the big book. I don't know where they are right now. But yes, what you tell me is true. True, but I haven't done these things. Or yes, no, but I haven't done that. And I had a case of that. Also, it was very sarcastic, very pessimistic. I was sure that this thing worked for you, but I wasn't so sure that it was going to work for me that I even fit in here at all. Because frankly, I had a lot of stuff going on in my life, a lot of good stuff. And the big book talks about that peculiar mental twist that we have where we may be hardworking people, successful in every other aspect of our life, but we have that one thing that differentiates us from other drinkers. We have that allergy. When we start, we can't stop, right? I was doing good with everything else except for that allergy part. And there was a lot of self-centeredness in it too. But so I came in and I remember I bought this very book right here from that cabinet back there. And you notice it's a soft cover book because I really didn't feel like I had hardcover recovery in me. But it stuck with me over the years. But from 1990 to 1999, I would characterize that as an ocean of half measures, and I was adrift on that ocean. In and out of the room for nine years, just trying to come up with my own plan, trying to manage my own recovery. And because I really thought that, you know, this whole half measure thing, you know, I was going to have to, you know, half measures avail us nothing thing. I thought that at least half measures shouldn't that at least avail me half? You know, but no, nothing, no sobriety at all. And, but yet I tried. And I had to try everything before I could try it the way that it was suggested in here. And certainly all of those things in that wonderful paragraph and more about alcohol. So these are the methods we tried to control our drinking. And to those methods, I would add, I went out at one point and bought a breathalyzer because I was just sure that cars were the problem and not alcohol. You know, if I could just, you know, make sure I was sober enough to get home every night. So I'd go out to the bar with this breathalyzer. And it spilled out in my basement, actually, somewhere in a box. But. The damn thing must have been broken. It said I was drunk every night. I never did figure out how to calibrate it. But anyway, that was one of the methods I tried to control my drinking. And it didn't work. It didn't work. I had to find out that the only solution is complete abstinence. Staying away from that first drink, right? That's what I needed to do. So I came back and hopefully for the final time in May. Of 1999, and I arrived in different shape that time. I arrived really beat up, you know, and I arrived in tears. And I think it helps if you arrive here to pick up your white chip in tears. Because when I arrived here, sarcastic or pessimistic or whatever other way, it didn't work for me. But I arrived in tears. I had that gift of desperation. And I remember I was at a meeting and I knew what I needed to do, but I just didn't have anybody to help me do it. Yeah, I did. But I just I had this thing where I would come right as the meeting was started and then leave right after the prayer and wonder why I didn't have anybody's phone number. Then I'm told over time that we joined the 2020 club. That's when you get here 20 minutes early and leave 20 minutes late. So. But after that particular meeting, I remember hanging around and a guy came up to me and said, Are you here for the first time? And I said, No, I'm kind of back in and has a real mopey, you know, and but I remember talking to him. I remember that time I talked to him and I hung around for the first time ever. After a meeting, I hung around and that guy talked to me like no man had ever talked to me before. Because I've been yelled at, I've been prayed over and preached to, I got a check up from the neck up. I got all kinds of advice and the way people used to address my drinking problem was they would say stuff to me like, Well, you know what your problem is, is where they would say, Well, you know what you need to do is, but yet this man was saying, Well, you know, I drank like that and I drugged like that. But here's what I did and here's how it's worked out for me. Nobody had ever talked to me. Nobody had ever talked to me with any experience before they lectured me and told me what to do. But here is a man with some experience. And you know how it says when the student is ready, the teacher appears with a student was ready. Finally, after all those years, the student was finally ready and the teacher appeared and he said stuff to me like, Well, if you want what I have, do what I did. And I was real curious to know what he was talking about. Yeah. And for those of you who know, know my sponsor, you can guess what he told me to do. He told me that there were five things I should do to stay clean and sober. One, get a competent, no one go to a ton of meetings to get a competent sponsor of my own gender. Three, work all 12 steps in order for learn to pray and five work with others. I said, That's it. He goes, Yeah, that's pretty much it. Because, you know, they say this is a simple program for complicated people and I can complicate stuff like crazy. You know, I knew that there was 12 steps up on the wall and 12 traditions and a principle behind each of the steps and a principle behind each of the traditions and how that's 48 things right there. And I was a busy guy. But he was talking about me doing five things. And I still couldn't believe it. I was like, Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. And I was saying, Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. And he said, Yes, you will continue to do those five things that helps me to simplify this, because, yes, this is a simple program. It's just not easy. And it's not easy because it involves work and works not fun. If work was fun, they'd call it going to fun in the morning. But they don't. So the first thing he recommended was that I go to a ton of meetings. And boy, that sure has worked well for me because now I go every day on average every day. And I enjoy going. In the beginning, it was like, well, how many of these meetings do I got to go to? Then I find out that I only have to come to AA meetings until I want to go to AA meetings. So that shift of perspective, this whole thing's about perspective, in my opinion. I only have to go to AA until I want to go to AA. And then it becomes a pleasure. And the meetings change the way I feel. That's what I wanted out of alcohol. I wanted it to change the way I felt. And it did all right. It made things worse every time after a while. But the meetings change the way I feel. And also at the meetings, I hear some stuff that reminds me what it's like. Because I can forget what it was like. I cannot recall with sufficient force what it was like to be out there until I come to the meetings. So I try not to miss the meetings. The more I miss meetings, the more I miss drinking. And I don't need to miss drinking. And then he recommended that I get a competent sponsor of my own gender. And guess what? He appointed himself as my sponsor. And if you know him, you could easily see that happening. But he appointed himself because I wasn't going to ask. Because I still was holding on to that old behavior of managing my own recovery. And, you know, my sponsor is not my ride. He's not my banker. He's not my psychiatrist. He's not my psychiatrist or marriage counselor or any of those things. His job, his gig, is to take me through the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. And to steer me back into the rooms when I don't want to go. And my sponsor was really, really nice at first. But then he started telling me stuff about me that I didn't want to hear. You know, he started pointing stuff out. And, um... And, you know, I think really my recovery began when I became willing to sit there and listen to what he had to say rather than just never go back and be around him anymore. Because that's the way I used to deal with things that were problems in the past. My philosophy was that there's no problem so great that it can't be run away from. But in this instance, you know, I came back even though he was telling me stuff about me that I didn't want to hear. And that was a change for me to do that. And the 12 steps have really become a great road map for not only my sobriety but for my sanity. Certainly, in step one, I could understand that by this time in my life, I was powerless over alcohol. It had become my master every time. No twist I could put to it. No organic wine drinking was going to solve the problem. It was my master. I was powerless over it. And my life was unmet. I was unmanageable. Not just because it was unmanageable but because I was drinking too. There was a tie-in between those two things. See, they've got to link up. If they don't link up, then I'm going to blame something else on my woes. And what else am I going to blame? I'm going to blame you on them or her or it. But the problem is me and my behavior and my thinking mainly. But then when I got to step two and they started talking about that higher power, I went like, Screech! What? What in the world does God have to do with my drinking problem? So I tried AA without seeking a higher power and I couldn't stay sober. And that's what it had to do with my drinking problem. See, I've got a powerful disease and I need a powerful solution. I need a solution that's more powerful than alcohol. It ain't much more powerful than alcohol because alcohol is pretty damn powerful. But the only power that I've ever found that's more powerful than alcohol is alcohol. But the only power that I've ever found that's more powerful than alcohol is alcohol. It's more powerful than my desire to drink is the power that I've found in Alcoholics Anonymous. And you've got to love this program. They couldn't make it any easier on it. We get to pick what our own higher power is. And that's what really saved my ass is in step two in the 12 and 12. And I sat down there and my sponsor says, Check this out. And there's a sentence in there. It's one of the only sentences I've memorized in recovery. It says, You can, if you'd like, even make AA itself your higher power. Because I could see how 60 people with a desire and a plan to stay sober is greater than one person's plan to stay clean and sober. 60 is greater than one. 60 is a higher power of one. And that's how I did it. I took it piecemeal myself. And then over time I find out that there is definitely something bigger than me. And that's what's going on in AA. The miracles that we see in the rooms. The people who are miracles. The miracles that occur. The stuff we can't explain. Just way too many coincidences. They become God incidences in my opinion. But that was the sentence that saved my ass. That allowed me to find a power greater than myself. So in step three, I turned my thinking and my values, my behavior over to the higher power that I found, which is AA. And I began to follow the suggestions in the program. And that leads me up to the action step. Step four. Where I make a list of not who I am, but how I am. All the resentments. All the fears. All the harms. All the stuff that kept me thirsty so many times. The stuff that led me back to drinking. You know? And, you know, I know that steps one, two, three got me sober. Steps ten, eleven, twelve keep me sober. And steps four through nine deal with the quality of my sobriety. How sober do I want to be? How happy do I want to be? It's all that four through nine stuff. Step five, I sat down with my sponsor and told him all the stuff I'd never planned to tell anybody. And, boy, the sense of freedom that I felt from that. And the sense of relief was very similar to the sense of relief that I was looking for when I was drinking. You know? Comfortable. Glad it's over with. No hangover. You know? It's like drinking without a hangover. Consequences. That's what the steps do for me. Get up to steps six and seven. You know, there's only three paragraphs in the big book. But that is the meat and potatoes of this whole program. What good does it do to make a list of... What good does it do to make a list of all the stuff about me, tells another person about it, if I'm not willing, or, as the step says, entirely ready, which is another, a great definition of willingness is entirely ready. I'm not entirely ready to have AA or God remove these things and then do something about them in step seven, which is a wonderful prayer. Wonderful prayer. And then I get up to steps eight and nine, and I can really see the tie-in. Between steps eight and nine in my drinking. Because I was the type of drinker that would have to get drunk before I would go out to get drunk. In other words, there were going to be some people there, and I was going to have to face them, right? And they were mad at me for one reason or another. Everybody seemed mad at me all the time. So I better show up drunk, because that will sort of blot it out and stuff it back. It never occurred to me that maybe if I worked on these relationships I had with other people, maybe I wouldn't feel so thirsty. All the time, maybe I wouldn't feel the need to punish myself, because I always, before I came to AA, I always felt like that I needed to be punished or something. And what did I do? Well, I beat myself with the liquor stick. You know, that was the one that did it. What a great way to punish yourself, really, if you're an alcoholic. And so, you know, steps 10, 11, 12, they call them the maintenance steps. Some people don't like to call it that, but I don't mind that. Because I. I definitely want to maintain what I got, this way of life. And steps 10, which is really, to me, a beautifully written part of the book. It talks about we don't even swear off drinking anymore. We don't even think about it. It just comes to us naturally. Ooh, finally, you know. But I had to get there. That didn't happen in step one or two. We have to get right-sized enough to where we're comfortable in our own skin, enough to know that, yes, there's a better way of life out there. Step 11, I'm continuing to pray. And I'm learning to pray not for those kind of prayers that I had when I was drinking, which is, God, get me out of this mess. I'll never do it again. Where I'm bargaining with this power that is so immense that I really don't, I don't hold any chips in poker. You know, they say that. I can't go to God and say, here's what I want you to do. Because, really, you know, he's everything. And I am, at that point, nothing because I'm drunk. And so, what do I pray for? I pray for God's will for me and the power to carry that out. And what is God's will for me? Well, you know, I'm not sure. But what is my will? Well, my will is to be drunk and selfish. And so, God's will for me is to be sober and useful to others. Okay, well, I can see that. So, that's what I'm praying for, is to stay sober and to be useful to others. And then step 12. Carrying the message. To me, that has been the key to my recovery. And staying sober is being of service. You know, all those years that I was in and out of the rooms, I never held a service position in AA. And since I've held a service position in the groups, I've never once relapsed. There's got to be a time. There's got to be a tie-in to that. But above that, you know, I'm going to find the relief that I'm looking for in alcohol, in service work. And I love it in Bill's story on page 15 when he says, My wife and I abandoned ourselves with enthusiasm to the idea of helping other alcoholics to a solution to their problems. It was fortunate for my old business associates to remain skeptical for a year and a half, during which time I found little work. I was not too well at the time, and was plagued by waves of self-pity and resentment. This sometimes nearly drove me back to drink. But I soon found that when all other measures failed, work with another alcoholic would save the day. Many times I've gone to my old hospital in despair. On talking to a man there, I would be amazingly lifted up and set on my feet. It is a design for living that works in rough going. On talking to a man there, I would be amazingly lifted up and set on my feet. I would be amazingly lifted up and set on my feet. But that's what I wanted alcohol to do for me. I wanted it to amazingly lift me up. I wanted it to amazingly lift me up. The set on my feet part, I was okay with, you know, stumbling around and stuff, but I did want it to amazingly lift me up. And I find that AA delivers everything that alcohol promised, but failed to deliver. The sense of ease and comfort, the camaraderie, the laughter. Boy, do we laugh at some weird shit. Am I right about that? You know, anything short of somebody dying pretty much is open territory in here, but we laugh a lot. And that's what I was looking for in alcohol, and it didn't make me laugh. It made me cry. It made me laugh in the beginning, but then it turned on me and made me cry. So my time is up, I think, but one thing I want to close with is that I have an opinion that, I have a lot of opinions, but this is yet another one, is that, um, it helps to learn to have fun in recovery. Because if this wasn't fun, I wouldn't do it. And, um, so I can remember early on in recovery, I was so one-dimensional that anything I associated with fun would be associated with drinking, whether it's going to a concert or certainly going to a ball game, and, you know, I've got to know about all the drinking stuff that's going on and what the rules are and the cut-off times. And, make sure I had a supply at all days of the week, and if I'm traveling, I've got to find out what their Sunday laws are. What a pain in the ass. But everything I associated with fun involved centered around drinking, and vice versa. And I carried that old behavior into the rooms with me. And I can remember going to meetings and feeling a little better, and, um, but then I kind of, I felt too good, and I kind of slacked off on my meetings, which was the best thing to do. And I remember somebody saying, um, I haven't seen you in a while. Where have you been? And I was kind of in a bad mood. And I said, well, the meetings have gotten boring. And, um, I said, yeah, you know, I'm not getting much out of it. The meetings are getting boring. And this man said, well, do you, um, do you play tennis? And I said, no. No, I play golf. You go camping? No, camping. He goes, well, do you have any hobbies at all? And I said, not really. And he said, well, AA's not boring. You are. And that's the way it was for me. My life was so one-dimensional. And now, I have fun. Damn it. I have a good time. I got a whole telephone full of names. And numbers. And I enjoy everything about this program. My perspective has changed. And, um, you know, to me, like I said earlier, I'm very much a work in progress in all spiritual matters. But I do believe that there are miracles that go on around here if we stick around. They say you don't want to miss the miracle. I do believe that. But to me, the biggest miracle is that the biggest miracle to me is that I don't drink. The biggest miracle is that I don't want to drink. Thank you for my sobriety. Great. Thank you so much. You guys know how the very first sentence in the ninth step of the twelve and twelves talks about how we need a careful sense of timing? Every time I read that, I think about Tinsley and that bobble rocket. Every single time. Thank God he has a careful sense of timing or we might have missed that story. And it's not just the Fourth of July so you might want to hide your fireworks from somebody else.