Pretty Sure Normal People Don’t Try to Funnel Crown Royal — Maybe a Hardcore Frat Party 😆 – Josh B.

My name is Alex, and I'm an alcoholic. Welcome to the Monday 8 p.m. Blue Chip Speakers meeting at the NAVA Club, where a member of Alcoholics Anonymous with one year or more of sobriety tells his or her story. This reading is based on a passage from page 29 of the Big Books of Alcoholics Anonymous. Each individual and our personal stories describes in their own language and from their own point of view the way they establish their relationship with God. These give a fair cross-section of our membership and 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 aabloochipspeakers.org will hear our speaker, and we believe 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. Tonight's speaker is Josh, coming to us from the I Can, We Can't group here at NAVA. And I have a feeling the presentation is going to be as put together as he looks tonight. Here's Josh. My name is Josh. I'm an alcoholic. I always do something whenever I speak. There's a lot of commotion. We come in with all this stuff running through our minds. The world is on us. So if everybody would just kind of get quiet. Stay here a second with me. And if you'll close your eyes, we're going to go through a little breathing exercise and just kind of get grounded in a one accord. So just follow my lead. And then I'll do what the program taught me to do, and I'll invite God into this room and to fill me. And hopefully one person in here hears something that maybe their mind gets cracked a little bit, saying I might be an alcoholic and I might need this thing, too. So if you would, please just kind of just close your eyes and just get grounded for a second. I'll lead us through. Three breaths. Big, deep breath in. Breathe in, God. Out, self. And God, God, I just pray tonight that someone hears something that opens them up. This is your playground. This is your book. This is your work. This is your house. I just pray that you use me and that you fill this room with your presence and you just do what you do. This is a divinely inspired program. You've changed me. You've changed so many lives. And I just pray that one dart hits one heart tonight. So we love you. We thank you. Amen. Cool. Still Josh. Still an alcoholic. Thanks for doing that with me, guys. My sobriety day is 3-17-17. So St. Patrick's Day of 2017. Got the luck of the Irish. No, I just really got arrested. That's all. But, yeah. There's something that I want to... Is anybody here in their first 30 days? Raise your hand. Let's freaking go. Thanks a lot. Welcome. Welcome. Glad you're here. All of you. Right? We were all there at one point. Now, raise your hand in the air if you've got a DUI. I consider myself an alcoholic. But raise your hand if you've ever overdosed. Raise your hand if you've ever got divorced and burned your life to the ground. Well, the reason why I ask those questions is because a lot of people think that you have to answer yes to those to be an alcoholic. And that's not the case. Right? The fact that I'm an alcoholic means I'm bodily and mentally different from my fellows. I've suffered from a three-part disease that requires a three-part solution. And that's why we have the triangle. Unity, service, and recovery. Three-part disease that requires a three-part solution. I have an alcoholic mind. Right? I'm maladjusted to life, as Dr. Silkworth tells me. That's going to lie to me. Right? It's going to come up with some trivial excuse that runs parallel with this sound reason, this pile of evidence over here that shows if I pick up drugs, I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I'm going to die. One, I'm off to the races and it leaves nowhere good. But yet, because I have no effective mental defense against the first drink, yet, hint, the word powerless, right, I have no power, I buy into that lie over and over and over and over again. And then I have this allergy, right, of the body, this phenomenon of craving, that once I put it in my body, I can't stop. I can't. Anybody ever heard once too many a thousand never, never enough? Oh, yeah, that's me, right? Like, I cannot so much as put anything in my body that changes the way I feel or else it sets off the allergy. Period. Point blank. End of story. Period. But then here's the kicker is you have this spiritual thing, right? You have this spiritual malady as the book calls it. And the definition of a malady is literally dis-ease. Disease. Disease. And Dr. Silkworth so beautifully tells me that I'm restless, I'm irritable, and I'm discontented unless I can again experience the sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks. That, oh, right? It has so much power over me that he even says it's the sense, the sense of ease and comfort. Just to know that I'm clocking out or I'm in the car to go meet the guy, right? That thing inside of me starts to unwind a little bit. Right? That's how much power it has. I don't even have to have it yet and the bubble guts stop. Right? Period. But then you put me in a place like jail or you put me in a place like rehab or detox, right? And those places are good. I mean, I needed every drink I ever took plus one more to get me to where I got, right? But then you take away the only solution that I've ever known in the anxiety inside. Why? Because alcohol or mood or mind-altering substance were the only thing that ever eased that thing inside of me that felt like it was grinding long before I ever took a drink. And I do want to say this because it breaks my heart. I was low-bottom, y'all. Like, that was just my story. Everybody's experience is different but I do want to cover one little section of the preamble. Okay? Anonymous is a fellowship of people. They changed it. They share their experience, strength, and hope with each other. This is the part that I really hope hits home. It says, they may solve their common problem. Okay? Because I have the circumstances I had in my life where alcohol drove me to doesn't mean that you do either. Our common problem is my mind lies to me. I have an allergy of the body. We all think the same. We feel the same. We drink the same. It might manifest different but let's focus on the common problem here. All the isms, right? Just because my story was a certain way or my life looked a certain way doesn't mean that I'm not that this thing's not for you too. Okay? And like, growing up, I grew up in Georgia. My dad, I believe, was an alcoholic. I'm not supposed to diagnose anybody. I know he's an alcoholic. But anyways, I grew up in a dysfunctional home. That doesn't make me an alcoholic. You know, from the outside, like outside the house, like Josh was an all-star pitcher. He made straight A's. All this stuff, like from y'all's perspective, it didn't look like Josh had it going on. But on the inside, that spiritual malady thing was already on me and I felt separate and apart from. Right? Separate and apart from. And then when my dad bought me alcohol at the age of 11 on New Year's Eve and I took that first drink, it did something for me that nothing else had done before. And I call it Little Josh. It allowed Little Josh to come out and play. I could say the things that I wanted to say. I could move the way that I wanted to move extemporaneously when before I was full of fear. And I always say this, I mean, Bob D says it, a lot of circus speakers say it, but like, man, if alcohol and drugs didn't do for you what they did for me, then probably won't let them do to you what they did to me. Right? They just, they did something for me that nothing had ever done and that was the only thing that ever eased the thing inside of me until I finally got beaten to a state of reasonableness and then I got a sponsor and I came in here and I started working some steps and all of a sudden, this whole inside of me, this spiritual malady started to unwind a little bit through this process. And at 11, I mean, maybe not for some people, but for me it was, so I started using other things and I mean, we're an Alcoholics Anonymous. I got sober in Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm here for the traditions that keep everything alive, single needs purpose, all that stuff, but the part of my story. The first thing I ever did was drink at the age of 11 and then when the drugs and all the other stuff as I was drinking through that, the consequences got too heavy or the physical aspects, I put that to the side and then before I knew it, I was lifting up the couch cushions at my mom's house, scrounging up quarters to go to the corner store to buy a 211 steel reserve at 6.30 in the morning. But yet my alcoholic mind for years told me, Josh, you're not an alcoholic, you're just a drug addict. But my mind is out to kill me. The book tells me my disease centers in my mind rather than my body. So I have to, I have to keep my mind in check. Have to. Sponsorship, meetings, being willing to be honest and vulnerable, which the fifth step taught me, right? Like I didn't have that tool in my tool belt before I got here. I mean, I was looking for something to change the way I feel almost instantly and that's what I saw, like that's just what I saw, you know? And my dad and my mom got divorced when I was 11. I moved up to Sugar Hill from like Norcross, area and, you know, my dad got really, really sick. He ended up having a heart transplant on Christmas Day. He got evicted from his apartment, couldn't work, no nothing. So my mom let him move back into our house where we were staying in Sugar Hill after all the abuse as a kid, all that stuff. And, I'll do it in a second. So my dad moved, my mom moved my dad back in. I woke up at 17 years old. It was the summer after my junior year had ended and my sister was kneeling at my bedside and she was shaking my bed violently. I was kind of upset because I really wanted to sleep in that first morning of summer and I looked up and she had this horrified look on her face and she said, Dad's dead on the bathroom floor. I remember looking at the clock. I knew exactly what time it was. It was like time stood still for a second so I got up out of bed. I ran to the bathroom. There was my father cold, deceased, and purple on the bathroom floor and I don't know, I don't know if it was like a minute, I don't know if it was two minutes, I don't know if it was five minutes but I stood there for X amount of time and then my immediate thought after that was, I wonder if he has money in his wallet and I literally stepped over my dead dad's body to go to his nightstand to pull the wallet out of his nightstand and take all the cash out to go get a drunken high. And this is at 17, like I was in my cups and I do need to retract a little bit because I feel like my story starts to play out before then. I was probably seven or eight years old and some of you guys may wonder why I'm telling this and I'll bring it full circle but I was sexually molested as a kid by an older brother down the cul-de-sac, someone I looked up to growing up and I feel like that's when my thought life started and I think a lot of alcoholics go through traumas but I'll kind of pull that in because that's like when I look back in hindsight because hindsight is always 20, 20, 20. That's like when something happened inside of me that I was eventually going to have to dispose of later and I couldn't for a really, really long time and I'm a firm believer. I stand up from the podium and I've spoken a lot of times and I say this stuff because I think the world has a stigma that those types of things only happen to women. Right? Those things happen to women and I can't tell you how many times I've stood up at a podium like this and disclosed that because I'm free of it today. Thank God for the steps, right? And the work that's done there. Like, I'm free of it. I can't tell you how many times people have come up and shaken my hand at the end of the meeting or when I'm done speaking and go, me too, man. Me too. And I feel like those are the most powerful words in Alcoholics Anonymous ever. Me too. When I first got here and people were describing how I thought, how I drank, how I felt, I was thinking, me too, right? Me too. And those are some of the greatest words in Alcoholics Anonymous. So, and I'll tie that into a solution later. I've got to be careful with my time as well. So, 17, walked in on my dad dead on the bathroom floor, went and took all the money out of his wallet. I don't know. This is a progressive disease. Like, it got worse. It just got worse, you know? I started ending up in rehabs and detoxes. My first trip to a middle institution was Charter Peach for Injury. I started at the age of 18. And I remember my mom kicked me out of the house. I had nothing to drink and I remember I was like restless, irritable and discontented like I got when I didn't have something to drink and I got really mad and I turned and the first thing that wasn't white on the house, I just slapped and it was a window I can't show you but I was a quarter inch away from cutting my corotid artery. So, my girlfriend at the time called 911, ambulance came, 1013 me and they took me to Charter Peachford. But I was suffering from the disease. It was the disease of alcoholism. It was homelessness or something else, some other excuse that I layered on top of that which put me in there. Right? But it was untreated alcoholism. And I'm so oblivious, right, that I go in there and I sit in there for like 10 to 14 days and I remember I got released on the 4th of July on Independence Day and the only reason I remember that is because I had 311 tickets for Lakewood Amphitheater to go see a concert that day and I was super excited I got let out. So, less than six hours after I get out of a mental institution in there for a week and a half or two weeks, I'm in the parking lot of Lakewood Amphitheater with some friends and one of my buddies has a funnel and another one of my buddies has a bottle of Crown Royal. So, I decided that it would be a good idea to mix the two and funnel Crown Royal. I don't think, I mean, I could be off base here. Maybe like a hardcore frat party but I'm pretty sure normal people don't try and funnel Crown Royal. I don't know. You know what I mean? Like, I just don't think that that like registers in their brain and then I blacked out and I woke up to the lawn with the concert being over. Everything was pitch black with my girlfriend at the time driving around the amphitheater because she didn't know if I was dead or arrested and it just got worse. I started ending up in, anybody here ever been to the Salvation Army ARC in Atlanta? The Men's Rehabilitation Center? No? It's right by Georgia Tech. I had burned all my bridges like at that time when I would walk up to my mom's house because of everything that I had put her through she would literally bring me a blanket and a pillow and make me sleep on the porch. I had burned it down. So I wound up at the Salvation Army off Marietta Street and I don't know if you guys know this but man, anybody ever heard of the Bluff? Fortunately or unfortunately two turns away from that rehab I was in was in the Bluff. And for a guy like me that's allergic to alcohol and other drug goods that is a bad place for a guy like me to end up. And I started making new connections. I eventually ended up getting kicked out of that rehab. I had nowhere to go but my family, right? Because I'm this actor everybody thinks I'm doing so well I can put on this facade, right? I got this double wife I wear these masks but my uncle is loading up an unlimited MARTA card for the month because he thinks I'm doing so good in rehab but yeah, I'm in there and I'm drinking and I'm using it the entire time while all these guys are getting sober and then I get kicked out for a cell phone and now I can't go back home, right? So I wound up sleeping in a tent behind the door of a MARTA station that I stole from Walmart for about three months. And I would get up and I would go to QT with my toothbrush and my toothpaste and I would go into the bathroom and I'd brush my teeth and I'd walk out and I'd take a honey steal a honey bun on the way out and I'd go hop on MARTA and go do what I had to do throughout the city. And it just got worse. Like, I mean, I drunk a lot all that stuff is really bad but the solution has been even better. And I'll give you two more little stories and I got until 850 so we're doing okay, guys. We're doing okay. Calm down. I was at my mom's house she had let me back in one more time and I went through DTs or withdrawals so I woke up one morning and I was withdrawing and DTing and shaking and somebody can yell it out what's going on? What normally takes away the shakes? A drink, right? A drink, yeah. So I drank and I got some other dry goods, right? Non-conference approved dry goods. And I sat there and I didn't go to work because I felt so bad but I drank and I drank and I did the other stuff and I did the other stuff and as the day went on I started to feel worse and worse and worse and worse and by God's grace and God's grace alone He was after me. My mom caught the flu horrible flu bug so she did not go into work the following morning and I walked up to her door at 6.15am and I knocked on her door and I said Mom, I feel like I'm dying. And she immediately picked up the phone and she called 911 by the time the ambulance got to my mother's house my blood pressure was 80 over 38 I was fading in and out of consciousness and I was coughing up blood. I was checking out. So they rushed me to the hospital I was too ashamed to tell them to tell anybody about I probably sat there three to six months had to get it surgically removed I was septic in my left lung they leaned me over a table they stuck a needle this long through the back of my left rib they drained a liter and a half of pus and blood off my lung and showed it to me I had endocarditis which comes from some of that intravenous alcoholic use right where bacteria got in my bloodstream and anything that gets into your bloodstream always flows through the heart and that bacteria latched on my heart and now I have a defective heart valve and then they said oh yeah Josh you got hepatitis C so my mom was Catholic I laid in that hospital bed 21 days I think priests came in and reading my last rites twice maybe three times and they nursed me back to health as best as they could and after 21 days they let me go home they were like dude you're not out of the clear yet like your heart is screwed up they were like you have to come every day Monday through Sunday to continue getting IV infused antibiotics to fight the infection on your heart because you're not out of the clear so my mom the angel that she is moves her work schedule around because I sure as hell don't have a license or a car right takes me to the hospital at 7am and it wasn't even 48 hours 48 hours after I got released from that hospital and this is the first step all day drink of choice not for this guy drink of no choice why? because I have no choice I drink no matter what and I'm not period right there is no choice involved I have no defense until this right until this and it wasn't even 48 hours after I got released from that hospital I showed up at 7am completely loaded getting my antibiotics at 7am doing the same thing that damn near just killed me for 21 days and that is powerlessness in my life I have no power right my mind starts to crank up those excuses the blaming that person this situation 30 day that girlfriend that party that cop blah blah blah right to get me to buy it to pick up that first one and then I'm off to the races one more time I mean at this point I had done a lot my mom's tape I stole a bunch of money and holocaust jewelry or whatever it was and she ended up calling the cops I was in a blackout I went into the woods to go drink I got there I couldn't find something so I decided it would be a good idea to go back to the house which I thought I had just come out of like 10 or 15 minutes ago probably more like two and a half hours and I got back to the door that was locked that I thought I had just walked back out of and it was locked so I had steel toe boots and I remember I kicked it in and the door swung open and my mom was standing in the living room with two Hall County police officers and they went there you go there you are Josh put your hands behind your back and I ended up getting a felony charge and I went to jail and every time I would go to jail I don't know about you guys for those who have been but every time I would go to jail there was these people in there that seemed comfortable in there like it was like getting their weight up they had a bed to sleep in they got some food they had a place to rest and like that was never me in there right partly because I probably didn't have the only solution that ever calmed me down inside or made me feel comfortable in my own skin right so once again that restless irritable and discontentment would start to fire up when you take away my only solution and man just like those times when my family would sit me down and be like Josh if you guys if you do this one more time like you're kicked out of here it's over like you're gone for good and the disease is so cunning baffling and powerful in those moments you hook me up to a lie detector test when I tell them I'm through I mean it with every iota of my being and I'm passing that lie detector test but yet once again I have no power so I end up picking back up and same thing with this I remember getting released from jail it was my release date I was kind of like man you guys belong here I don't I played semi-professional baseball like I went to college like this is for you guys kind of throwing my middle finger up and then I got out of jail and started to fire back up the thoughts right you put me in a jail or a rehab for long enough where someone's thinking for me and my free will is stripped away it's a little bit easier but then you give me back into the freedom you take me out of that bubble and Josh's alcoholic thinker starts to fire back up and that's a dangerous place to be and the thoughts started coming oh you got out you have 30 days before you have to go see your probation officer you can just drink a couple beers and be fine you're not really an alcoholic anyway right so what happened was is I bought the lie one more time and I took that drink and because I'm an alcoholic Josh takes a drink the drink takes me and then I have no idea for me this alcoholic it's generally some sort of vehicle with flashing lights showing up to take me somewhere that's just my experience right so I bought that lie one more time and what happened was is less than 21 days later I'd violated my probation and I got sent back to jail and once again God's grace was all over me because he put me back in the same jail cell with the same people eating the same food off the same trays after I'd sworn with every iotamite being less than three weeks ago that I was never going back there again and what that was was the solidification of the back house of the first step that my life had become unmanageable and when I sat down in that jail cell or that pod that morning after literally swearing I'm never coming back I sat down and I had a moment of clarity and by thank God my sister we partied the first person I ever drank with I mean we did we partied and she had reached the bottom before that so she had gotten sober in AA she had been sober she had gotten married had the kids had the car had the job right all the stuff that we looked at so I knew it was like a real life ebby I knew that AA worked because I had seen it work in someone that was so close to me that was cuffing the same cloth as me so when that moment of clarity came it was like you've got to do something different and I knew AA was the answer for me I tried baptisms and all this other stuff through religious organizations and like no baptism ever got me sober like it just didn't right I got released from jail I went to the serenity house in Beaufort and I went to a meeting immediately after I got out of jail when I walked into that meeting I had a probation officer when I walked out of that meeting I had a probation officer and I had a sponsor I didn't have a cell phone y'all my sponsor was appalled because I would call him from a different number every single day and he's like most people don't even call but now I have to answer every number that calls me because you are actually calling me and I started going through this book once a week the black parts that's the solution that's the words yeah but I also have to apply those to my life and I started taking commitments and I started going through the steps and steps one, two, and three right like I mean those are experiential steps you got a third step prayer you got all those things and here's the thing is I had been in AA before when the back problems were on me right courts, girlfriend, mom whoever it was I'd come in and I would always do the AA waltz where I would do steps one, two, and three and then I was out the door one, two, three out the door right no real work right right the work has been done the first tangible piece of evidence that somebody wants to get and stay sober is right in that inventory and in that inventory the first time that I did it I saw these things like the resentments change the fear whatever it was like the rows were like the same and then it was like the same old parts of Josh showed up in all of those situations and it was like oh I get it now right and I write all this stuff and I end up doing my fifth step and then you know in the book it talks about there's if we looked in every dark nook and cranny of the past that I swore that I was never going to tell anybody right like being sexually molested by an older brother down the road when I was like six or seven years old those were the things that not even my mom was going to know that stuff was going to the grave with me right and as I finished this fourth step and then I go home and I take an hour and then over the next couple days that thing inside of me that I should have gotten rid of that I didn't get rid of starts to bubble up inside of me and I know I'm standing at a turning point and I remember being at work and I couldn't even move and it was like I either hold on to this and I go back to drinking or I become a dry drunk or I can do what the program asked me to do and I can dispose of these things so I called my sponsor and he didn't answer but then eventually he answered and I got rid of that and I told him about the time I was sexually molested again as an adult in the rehab I told him all the things that I never wanted to do to tell anybody else because my secrets keep me sick my secrets keep me separated from you and you and from God and that's why in that step it says ourselves or the ministry of God to ourselves and another human being all three of those are equally important right the process I mean this is the greatest show on earth it is the greatest show on earth how am I doing on time okay so I got two amends stories for you and then I'm going to get to I'm going to get a little bit more current I'll give you one amends story so as you do a fourth as I did my fourth and fifth step I saw this concrete evidence now I could go back into the world and make my amends admit my wrongs to my fellows right where it wasn't just like oh I'm sorry but I don't really know what I'm saying sorry for let me just go ahead and act in that behavior again right like it was there was clarity now from the work and I start going through these amends and I mean things are just happening and like the promises that Mary read is like man those are nine step promises like yeah we get pieces of those along the way but man you want to experience those the way they're meant or they're written do your amends right like there was this couple that I was looking for all over I owed them money I was looking on old phones I was looking on social media I was looking all over the place couldn't find them anywhere could not find them anywhere and I remember I was working for DirecTV at the time up in like Flower Branch in Gainesville and I remember it was pouring down rain I was in my rain suit you can't really get this signal in the rain so it's hard to do work and I remember I got off earlier I looked in the mirror I was like man I need a haircut instead of just going home and sitting on the couch I'm going to go get my haircut so I called got an appointment whatever so instead of turning one way out of the gas station I turned the other and as I'm driving down the road direction there's three lanes there's a big expedition broken down in the middle of the lane with its flashers on and that thing that the steps opened up inside of me God consciousness or spirit or whatever you want to call it tells me to go help because I've been in that situation and I know what it's like just to need to get your car pushed out of the middle of the road and it could be like Betty White you know what I mean it's somebody's grandma and I flipped around I pulled up behind this car I put my flashers on I'm already in my rain gear I was pouring down rain I run up to the window I knock on the driver's side window and the window rolls down and I'm like and it's Stephanie and Tim the two people that I couldn't find anywhere on my amends list God presented me an opportunity to be obedient or to listen and then I pull up to the two people that I've been searching for for six months I can't make this up God presented me an opportunity to help them push their car to a gas pump I filled up their gas tank I made my verbal amends and paid them their money back and I'm like and I haven't seen them since but if I didn't listen right if I didn't listen I would have blown that opportunity and never had that experience and it's like living this thing or hearing these stories like it's almost like you've got to be Helen Keller or something to like not believe by the time you get to the ninth step and you do your amends that there is a power greater than yourself working on your behalf through this process like period and I believe I've got tons of them I don't have enough time can we like extend this 30 minutes no I'm just kidding I don't have enough time but yeah that was one of the amazing myth stories where I just walked away going how the hell does this happen you know what I mean how the hell does this happen my life got better it hasn't all been sunshine and rainbows I might go like two or three minutes over but a couple things I do want to touch on you know everything I have in my life today is a direct result of Alcoholics Anonymous like I had nothing before I got here y'all heard it I didn't have a cell phone all I had was a probation officer and like because the program taught me that you guys taught me to suit up and show up one day at a time and like not necessarily buy into my feelings but talk about them and work the steps and like gain this traction and like do the things and like just keep going regardless of how you feel like trudge the road right because you guys taught me that I was able to become employable and I got to get a job and I got to keep that job and because I got to keep that job because you guys taught me how to suit up and show up one day at a time because I kept that job I was able to get insurance with that job and because I kept suiting up and showing up and staying sober and working the steps and I was able to keep that insurance and go through a year long testing process where because I was employable and you guys taught me how to get that job keep that job and keep the insurance I was able to get my hepatitis C cured right and because you guys did all those things and you taught me how to get that job and keep that job and get that insurance when I was three years sober I go to see this cardiologist and I was seeing one cardiologist for a long time and the whole staff flipped I walk in to see this new cardiologist and he's looking at my charts and he goes Josh this happens to people that are alcoholics right and you're young you're 30 years old is that the case with you and I was like yeah started telling him about the doctor's opinion he kind of correlated it to his overeating habits and he goes Josh we're heading towards a brick wall he goes it might be a year it might be five years it might be ten years I don't know but my heart and my spirit are telling me that you are no longer going to abuse your body I want to put you in front of a heart surgeon so at three years sober in March of 2020 two weeks before the world shut down they sawed my chest open and Alcoholics Anonymous gave me a new heart valve where my heart is now functioning normally you clap for that one that's legit Bill's story man I'm losing it I'm doing horrible with time in Bill's story it says for if an alcoholic failed to perfect and enlarge his spiritual life through work and self-sacrifice for others so work it's laborious it means that I have to self-sacrifice my plans and my designs then I would not be able to survive the certain not possible maybe trials and low spots ahead well when they're pumping me full of things that I'm allergic to I don't I don't know what else to do but do what the book tells me to do and the day after I woke up from open heart surgery I had a man that was six days sober sitting across from me in the hospital room reading the doctor's opinion because I don't know what else to do y'all I gotta stay connected to this thing I've gotta stay connected I came home all the meetings were shut down and I started a zoom meeting every single night we went through the entire book twice for three years because I've gotta stay connected to this thing and it hasn't all been sunshine and rainbows there's been a lot of cool stuff I'm gonna get this in I die trying my mom had a cancer scare when I was five years sober I went through a five year breakup with somebody that I met in the program we ended that relationship and I was like amicably I got a call I remember my mom wouldn't even let me in her house seven or eight years ago eight years ago I guess at five years sober she calls me she has a watermelon sized cyst in her abdomen so big they couldn't even tell what ovary it was on and because of COVID you can only have one person take you into the hospital and stay there and make you comfortable when you wake up right because of the rule of one person and I'm born and raised in Georgia I got family aunts here I got family all over the state and that's why out of all the people that she could have called to take her to be there to take her to her emergency surgery and to sit in that waiting room while she's getting operated on and to be there when she wakes up to get her comfortable she calls me and says Josh I want you to be the one to take me in there and I have the privilege of going to buy her nighties and her little puzzle books and being there to cope with it and to comfort her and to be there when she woke up from that surgery this program is about healing my program my life in a little over seven years is completely flipped upside down company ended up winning a trip to Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands when I was five years sober and I'm sitting in Ecuador and we're putting new roofs on the school and we're putting toilets in and building playgrounds and we're doing all these things and I'm sitting in this field and these little Ecuadorian kids are like bringing me fruit and I'm looking around and it's the Andes Mountains and I'm like how the hell does a guy like I was sleeping in a tent I couldn't stay out of a jail cell how does a guy like that end up here here and it was like God and then I was like yeah twelve simple steps right I ended up winning another trip to New Zealand I got married to a beautiful amazing woman who's getting to speak in front of 12,000 people at a panel for her job got married I bought my first home I bought my first car I got all these things and like that's all good and well but the one thing that I have today that this program gave me was peace we've all had our time where I've looked in the mirror and go that's a monster looking back at me and today I love the man that I look at and I'll say this for the newer people who would have told me when I walked through the door beaten Josh if you do what we've done which millions and millions of people have done for almost a century now and it's produced the same result twelve ingredients you use those twelve ingredients you get a new life you're going to get the cake right if you do this I can promise you one thing that voice inside your head will turn off I would have been all in and what I've gotten in return is so much more than that I just found out today like an hour before the meeting I got a text I took a new job because I got married and my life has changed it's a new season I got a text like an hour before the meeting that I just won another trip to Dublin, Ireland and that's it and like that's not everybody's story but I'm just saying like all of these things when I got here I had nothing nothing everything I have in my life today my peace my wife my family relationships my job my car everything everything I have in my life today is a direct result of these books this book this program and those steps period point-blank end of story without this I'm dead somewhere dead so I went a couple minutes over thank you guys for letting me speak I'm just grateful to be alive and sober and to be an active member of AA so thank you what a great story there were a lot of me too's for me and the what it was like part and giving me hope for the me too's of the what it's like now part so thank you Josh we have asked Rachel to do the shift hey Rachel hey Rachel hey everybody I'm Rachel and I'm Paul hey Rachel and here at the Monday night blue chip secret meeting we have a chip system to mark your time in recovery we start off with a white chip if you're just coming in or just coming back I want to try this way of life after 30 days and nights we offer the silver chip whoops what's that two months we don't give that one up two months I guess it says that on there two months 90 days six months nine months do you have any birthdays one year or multiples thereof I appreciate that story Josh you brought me all the way back when I first got here and I'm so grateful to you guys 13 years ago I said to May the 8th I had a moment of clarity and I got out May the 9th and I ran to A that day and I've been so very sensitive thank y'all offer the white chip one more time in case there's any reconsiderations anybody just coming in just coming back thank God and your sponsors for the chips you hold thank you one and all for joining the blue chip speakers meeting tonight and we'll see you next time