Peter T. at the 2nd Around The World Conference – 2020

Traditions Our common well-being should come in the first place because it is typically based on cohesion within AA For our group there is only one highest activity a loving God, as he will express in our common group knowledge Our leaders are not trusted servants, they do not govern The condition for unity in AA is a desire to stop drinking 4. Each group must be self-reliant, without affiliations that affect other groups or AAs as a whole. 5. Each Group has only one main purpose, to pass the message on to those abolitionists who are still alive. 6. An A-group must never go into debt for, finance or loan its name to close relatives or subsidiaries, or foreign companies. Otherwise there will be problems with money, property and prestige to separate us from our original purpose. 7. Each group must be completely self-sustaining and refuse to accept economic death from outside. 8. Anonymous alcoholics should always become non-professional, but our service centers can hire staff for special tasks. 9. AA should never be organized as such, but we can assign boards or committees for service. These are directly responsible for those they serve. 10. Anonymous police officers are never allowed to stand in front of or against external facilities, i.e. the names of AAs should not be included in any arguments. 11. Our contact with the public is based on the movement's own power, rather than on direct propaganda. We should always take personal anonymity from what happens in the press, movies, magazines and TV. 12. Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of our traditions and reminds us to set principles for ourselves. Thank you. We have a speaker meeting, and I have the honor to present our speaker, Peter. Let us welcome Peter. Hi everyone, my name is Peter and I am an alcoholic. Among alcoholics I am also a drug addict. Yeah, I haven't been so nervous before now It feels like I'm alive And that's good Yeah It's nice to have so many people here It feels really good Most of them are familiar faces So it's a safe relationship I also thought You who are in your first 30 days You are especially welcome for you we hold meetings that's why we have meetings because newcomers should be able to come and recognize themselves and have a place to come but also me who has been with a few days should also have a safe place to come to so to speak I've done this for 13 years and 9 months and 2 days it's worked Then I can say that my life has not always worked But the program has always worked My usefulness has always functioned And that's what's important That I don't take the first drink Then I will be able to save my life After that I am 37 years old I was born in a small society In Västernorrland, Ångermanland 1969 I have a little brother who is three years younger than me I grew up in an alcoholic family My parents were alcoholics Are still alcoholics But they are sober today I Pretty early My mother was one Who drank herself full every day And it also made me distance myself a lot from my friends and those around me Because I already started very early to not be able to be true to my environment I was old right from the start, so to speak, I became that right from start I could not be myself with the feelings I had in my family So that's where my alcoholism started It wasn't when I took my first drink But that's when my alcoholisme started That's how I see it And the last few days I've felt Since I'm going to talk today The process started in a week What am I supposed to talk about? But also this It also aroused a lot of things. Then it aroused how my mother was. Because she drank every day, she got alcohol and such things. What did men do at home and so on when my father was gone and such stuff? I don't understand today what happened. But that had taken me time. It also took me many years to understand that my mom was an alcoholic. Of course, I denied it, but I had been self-taught for several years. It was a very hard period and a very tough upbringing to have it like that. To never know when you got home how it was and what had happened. I also learned very quickly to check how the people were and which shoes stood in front of the door. Even as a little boy I also started very early With saving money I stole money from my parents Already as a 4-5 year old Which made them so That they noticed the money Because I had my money at a special place And then they came to me By checking up The bills I had What they had written It was the first time They disappointed me with saving money So this with criminality and dishonesty was something that I became very early far, far before My father was a businessman entrepreneur, he had employees and so on and was more of a person who worked evenly, even if you drank at work and it was his law how things work then you get it to look how you want and they did a little society where everyone knew all 4,000 inhabitants and everyone also knew how it was at home but no one really said there was someone who said something at home in a family where there was like-minded, so to speak. They also had the same problem with that family, if I remember correctly. I also searched very early for guys and girls who had the same problem as me. They were my friends far away in school. So there started my alcoholism. I already in the middle of town searched attention by bullying others, working with mobbing, those with weak girls, and so on. They chased after them, they were mulled with snow, and their lives were unbearable, so to speak. I also started snatching. I like fire. There was fire in many places, so to say. I also liked cycling after firecrackers, Efter vi hade varit tändt på Jag och några grabbar Så jag tror att jag är lite pyrman också Det där slutar Men jag börjar med droger Man vet att det ska hända grejer Verkar det som Och det gjorde det också När jag kom till högstadiet I skolan Så träffade jag enast killar Som hade också Problem med relationer Till sig själv och sin familj Skoldansen i sjuan Kommer jag ihåg Då hade vi en förfest Jag kom aldrig till den dansen För att Jag kan säga Jag drack alkohol första gången När jag var sju år gammal Det var på mina föräldrars flygplansprit De hade varit på Kanarjörna Och slagit varandra blodiga Och kom hem blåslagna Båda två ungefär Super sönder allting Då hade de småflaskor med sig hem som pappa ställde snyggt i bokhyllan eller vad mamma det vet jag inte så tog jag och drack upp en sån där flaska det var punch, det smakade väldigt gott och jag satt och sådär och jag somnade på soffan jag kommer ihåg också att jag fick lugn och ro det var någonting som ett lugn som infann sig helt enkelt de kom också på mig men de sa ingenting sen var jag och en kille som We smoked cigarets, we smoked weed and so on at the age of 8-9 years old, but I think it was when we were 10-11 years old that we bought folk beer and drank it when we needed to pee, and then we got a little hidden. But the first time I drank moderately, it was about the first we would have a party with classmates and so forth. and so on and I held up a quarter I had gotten someone's parents and bought it out to us I think it was someone's friend sister's boyfriend who had bought it I took that quarter and poured it into a liter of water and drank it all at one go so it ended with I had slept in a snowdrift, it was 24 degrees cold out there, the police had found me I was driving home I don't remember anything I woke up in the morning I had my face broken I had a pair of long pants that were back and forth I had gone out with so it was like a very unpleasant experience to go and look at yourself in the mirror and not remember anything for 12 hours I spitted on the police car so that was about That was my first contact, and it was also the first alcohol party I went to. So I was an alcoholic from the start. I started high school, and I followed this with criminality as well. We worked with other people's stuff, mopeds, motorcycles and so on. I also bought my first car when I was 13 years old and so on, which we drove around in me and some of my friends. So it was pretty normal, we thought, on the country side up there. So things at school, so video apparatus and stuff, couldn't be in peace and so that was so. But I This with school and such I have also Got to read afterwards when I met When I did the good deed As I did once in time It was not so that I made a list directly I met people who had Had me to do And then I booked meetings with them Or met them and talked to them Then I met my old teacher That I had in primary school And she told me I had a hard time learning how to read and write, that I was very frivolous and that I created problems for others and so on. So this thing with school, it was nothing that... I never worked at school. Then I came to the university and I really wanted to perform in order to get somewhere. It didn't exist for me. In my family, my father had a relationship with Clark Olofsson, who was also involved in the Norma Storrs drama in 1972. This was a very big thing in our family as well. It was written in the newspapers about her and everything that had happened. And this was something that I started to think about and dream about and so on. So the only thing I did in high school, it was to buy a book called Rättvisanslotteri I still have it at home, read it and wrote an essay for my teacher in Swedish. That's about what I did. Then I had to go to work class and then I got into a lot of trouble all the time. I was so fascinated by him. He was also a role model, someone who had been on the running for a long time, someone that had seen and seen and so on. So this with alcohol, it was something my parents dealt with. I never wanted to be like my parents and so forth. I think it was so hard at home. So, I I applied pretty early to people who had to misuse, quite simply. To the A-team or to people who work with narcotics and such. It was like so that as I was between 7 and 8 then I had put together some money at home and I worked at the park administration and I had about 7-8 thousand kronor And then I went to Christiania, Copenhagen And got a huge bag of cannabis And came home with it To this little society There were several of my childhood comrades Who introduced me Who smoked out of what I sold So I was accepted I got an identity and so on misuse circles and so on and started this with school it didn't exist anymore and social was involved and so on it was like a mess and so on there was no one who could do anything else so I drank also alcohol but it was more It was more like, well, you just did it. I was looking for a heavy narcotic. And I became an established misuse in this society. What happened was that jag träffade en tjej som var relativt normal, som jag flyttade in hos när jag var 16 år, hon var 18 hon hade lägenhet och sådär och dit släpade jag mina kompisar och så där jag försökte mig på något jobb på sådana saker som var i tre dagar det skulle vara sex månader och så vidare så fick jag sparken så att när jag was 17 så hamnade jag på I was in Tullen, Helsingborg and went there for narcotic smuggling. What happened that time was that my dad was there during the trial I got five months in prison and I promised my dad that it would be over It was the last time this would happen and so on And I had also been clean for the first time in several years during that hectic time. So I remember that I promised him on the plane home that this was the last time I would end up with these things. I found a can of cannabis when I came home to my room, to my boy's room. I smoked one at night and went straight out. And two weeks later I was hunting again. So I came to my first prison sentence on my 18th birthday, and it was nice, but it was completely normal, I thought. And there I got to know more people and so on. So I was sentenced to, when I was 18, 22 years old, I was convicted of four years in prison. And sat for two years, for all kinds of strange things, criminalities, drugs, narcotic crimes and thefts and so forth. But during that time, the social services sought me out. They wanted to try, every time I was going to muck and so on, they tried that I would have some kind of planning and so forth. At some point there, I had also been in contact with a treatment center in 1989. I was 17 years old, it was the first time I sat in there. Then I got a call from the representative of a nursing home who had met my father, who is a medical nurse in Kolkberget and who lives in Kramfors. He works with the Minnesota model. He wanted me to come there for a study visit. And I did that so I could get out of this facility. It was a good way to get out. When I got there they read about the book Daily Reflections where I got to be at a morning meeting and so on. I got to know people and things that I had taken drugs with or something like that. And I also got to meet some... So it was my first contact with this. But I didn't want to go there, because it was nothing for me. But during this time, I was clean in between periods and so on. I also had a dream to become normal, to become ordinary, to meet an ordinary girl. There was a girl who worked at the social service that was my age. She was a few years older than me. A newly graduated social worker. so she came to me and talked with me and came and visited me in a prison room so when I snuck the last time on the 27th of November 1991 so so I decided that I would go to her every day and then I would get a job at a school and then an apartment and so on. I was quite determined to quit drugs, but alcohol was nothing for me. I had a vision that I would be able to sit there at the pub where I had been before and not take any drugs, just be able drink alcohol. So I tried that. I also met a pretty normal girl. Her dad was with AA, and her mother-in-law was also with AA. So she wasn't that normal, but she was a pretty nice girl. She also worked at Sönsvalls Bilskola. And what happened when she and I were going to have a glass of wine on a Friday evening was that the two wines she had bought, they drank up quite regularly except that she might have had to drink half a glass or so. So I took her a beer that she used to go to a beer school on and forced her into the binoculars. Then I went to buy a snack. So I went around to Sundsvall in the quarters with her.