Step 6 and 7 Took Him Two Years – Tom A.

All right. Thanks. My name is Tom, and I am an alcoholic. Good evening. Yeah, this is my home group. My sobriety date is March 1st, 1980. Thanks, honey. My wife is here. She comes to cheer sometimes, but it's a little disappointing because, you know, I sometimes bring, Kim is not an alcoholic and I sometimes have brought her to meetings and she really likes like those speakers that are like really entertaining and a lot of fun and have these like stories that belong in a movie or on a TV. And mine isn't really one of them. Maybe, maybe, maybe an ABC after school special. Tommy, Portrait of a Teenage alcoholic. This is my home group, and I do have a sponsor. His name is Tim, and it's a little intimidating that this is going to be recorded because there's the possibility that he could hear it. But I started drinking at a very, very freakishly young age. I think that I was like a child prodigy when it comes to alcoholism and I think there's something weird and very kind of when you stop and think about it sad about that but um I remember uh like Brian uh having a taste of alcohol like illicit alcohol right like I came from a family Like, you know, right away I kind of want to say like the family that I came from wasn't any more screwed up than any other family in my neighborhood. I wouldn't say it was normal. I don't know what that is, but I certainly know that I can't sort of point my finger at them and say that's why I became alcoholic without question. You know, I have an older sister and an older brother. I don'T think they're alcoholics. My mother is one of those people that will say, I've heard her say this out loud, when offered a third drink at a party, she will say things like, no thanks, I'm starting to feel it. so you know i i don't know what happened with me right but i took to it very very quickly and quickly kind of gave myself over to it right um i remember really at a very young age i probably between the ages i don'T really remember i know i was in elementary school it was before the sixth grade, right? I remember getting together with two of my buddies. One guy snuck a pack of smokes. Another guy snucks some of his father's pornography and I snuck two beers out of our refrigerator. And we climbed up on the roof of the elementary school, the three of us i was i was probably in the fourth grade i might have been in the fifth grade but it was i probably you know certainly was not older than 10 and i know i didn't feel any effect from that that i can remember in terms of the the beer but i just remember thinking it was cool and i remember thinking that that that it was um it made me feel like like with these two guys We were up to something that was way out of bounds, and I liked that feeling as a kid. The first time I ever got drunk, I was probably 11 or 12. And what I remember about that experience was we were drinking wine out of those little paper cups that people have sometimes in their bathrooms. And I don't remember how many of those cups I drank, but I really loved the way that it made me feel. There's a lot that I go back to because I just, you know, like at the time, I'm 11 or 12 years old. I don'T have words for any of this. It'S through painstaking patience of people who have been willing to talk and listen to me over the years that I've been able to kind of find words for this. But at the time, I just knew that I had found something that was magical for me. I have heard people who have had religious experiences talk about that moment when they've had that religious experience where they felt like this great burden had been lifted off of them and they were free and they felt warm inside and they knew that they were loved and they built a part of and not separate from and that's exactly how I felt that first drunk that I had and so for me the hook was set really really early the kid that I brought to that first drink and again I don't know why this is I have an older sister she was very bright academically she did really well in school and got a lot of praise for that she went on to become a lawyer and has been successful her whole life and I think by the time she was 9 years old she knew where she wanted to be in life and was on her way I have an older brother who is very good athletically, very good in sports And, you know, as he got a little bit older, you know, did some things with the drinking and the drugs as well. But when we were growing up, you know, that was his thing. He was very good at sports and got a lot of praise for that. I got my first D in school in the second grade. uh and uh i i sort of became like resigned to i was gonna be good at being bad you know i was the troubled kid from the get-go and um before i ever drank and I always you know Brian talked about it I think it's a common thing with us I always felt separate from like I didn't quite fit in like you know like the cool kids were over there and I was never going to fit in with them and I didn' t really have a place in life and I did' n't really fit in in my family and I din' t have a purpose or a direction or any instructions, you know. And when I took that, when I brought that kid to the first drink, now, I don't think that those kinds of hang-ups, in spite of the fact that I hear that story a lot in AA meetings, I don'T think that that's what makes me an alcoholic. I think the thing that makes me an alcoholic is my reaction to alcohol when I pour liquor on top of all of that kid. And the magic that happens, the way that it seems to just scratch that itch that I can't reach by myself, I'm not going to live with that itch anymore. I'm just not. I'm no longer going to be able to live like that. I am not going to live from that first drink, that first drunk. I wanted to feel like that as much as I could, as often as I would, with as much intensity as I did. I drank for effect from that day forward. There was never any pretense for me about social drinking or trying to control it. It's the only beef that I really have about the big book, right? Because in the book it says it's the great obsession of every abnormal drinker to enjoy and control his drinking. And I've got to tell you, if I'm enjoying it, I'm not controlling it, and if I'M controlling it I'M NOT enjoying it. That's how I was. And so, you know, if you collapse this relatively small period of time in which I was consuming alcohol into maybe, and I've said this before, I think it's kind of a good visual illustration. If you collapse that period of Time That I Drank Alcohol into maybe a 15-minute highlight reel, right? And we just played it on a projector here. I think most of the people in the room here would probably spend the first five minutes of that highlight reel going, wow, this is bizarre. Look at this little kid. He's an alcoholic, but he's so small. You know? Like it's like seeing, you know, Gary was somewhere today, he was talking about seeing this little kids, this little child play the banjo, you now, and he was really good at it. And I probably didn't even weigh 100 pounds yet. But there are scenes where I'm drunk and I have my friends. I'm in a disgusting Burger King in Jacksonville, Florida, and I'm about to throw up, which I did a lot when I drank. but I was about to throw up and I'm laying on the bathroom floor which is a tile floor and it's wet. You know why, right? But something about the coolness of the floor is going to keep me from throwing up. And then you fast forward and you see a 13-year-old kid being let out of school in handcuffs. because of his illicit activities there. And so the first five minutes into this, you think, God, this is freakish. This is weird. This little kid, you know. Before 10 minutes is over watching this highlight reel, you're thinking, this kid's really in trouble. This kid's like a statistic that's just waiting to happen. he's going to be another tragic story that is quickly forgotten about because they're so common of kids who end up dead or end up put away for a long time or endup with some kind of brain problem because I was this is an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and I talk about my drinking but the truth is I would do anything that you put in front of me at any point in time without even knowing what it was. If you told me this will alter my mood, I'm down with it. And so I did things to this day that I don't even, you know, it's like Alice in Wonderland, drink this, okay? You know? And so, you know time goes on and it's just trouble and problems. And I'm yielded to this, right? Because from my perspective, it's like, this is the thing that makes me feel good. And whatever limited insight I have when people ask me, why do you do the things that you do? The only answer that I can give them is I like the way it makes me feels. What's wrong with feeling good? That's all I've got. That's the only remedy that I have for living in my own skin at a really young age, right? And so there's more legal problems. There's more getting let out of school in handcuffs and there's mehr family counselors. And I used to love going to family counselors because we'd go to the family counselor and I would lay this tale of woe on the family counsellor about how oppressive my parents were and how they were just too restrictive and I was just rebelling against their efforts to control me. And so then the counselor would meet with my parents and they would say, you know, you really ought to lighten up on him. He's just... So every time my family would say we're going to see another family counselor, I mean, I was kind of put out by the inconvenience of it, but at the end of it I felt like, well, this is going to work out to my advantage. You know, here comes a later curfew and a higher allowance and more, you know, less pressure about grades and school and, you know, all the rest of that stuff. And so, um, so I let me know we went to, we went to plenty of family counselors and they were sincere people who tried their best to help, but the hook was set, right? I had found something that could reach that itch and there wasn't any counsel that was going to scratch that it's the way that liquor was going to do for me. And so it just continued and I kind of gave myself over to it. And, you know, it was for me by the time I was 14, I'd already been arrested three times. I was on my way to court and I had just gotten arrested the day before for the same charge in school. and I had this friend in the neighborhood who would periodically sort of get sent away to these youth homes and juvenile facilities and that sort of thing and so he sort of knew the ropes and so I went to court and they said we're going to do a pre-sentence investigation and my friend Blair said oh yeah you're getting sent away that's always what happens the first time you get sent way is they do this pre- Sentence Investigation And so I was, but I was resigned to that. It wasn't like you could scare me with any of that, you know? I mean, it was inconvenient, but it didn't really surprise me. I was perfectly content to drink liquor, listen to Lynyrd Skynyrd, and get ready to go to prison. That's the life that I was going to live. You know, that's who I that's like where I was going. I was perfectly content to do that. And I, you know, and it felt like the cops were out to get me and my family was out and everybody was out to get me. And if everyone would just leave me alone, I would be OK. And my family just had to do something. And so they brought me to this rehab program in St. Petersburg, Florida, that they had heard about. and it was pretty it was kind of like one of those boot camp type places where it's like sit down shut up punk and you're getting a haircut today and a lot of you know I think later on years after I got out of there they got shut down because they were like abusing kids and stuff I think for me if I would have ended up in one of the sort of 30 day hospital programs I doubt that it would have had the same effect and so for whatever faults that program might have had and there were plenty I think it probably saved my life because there I was on March 1st 1980 and I remember that day pretty vividly because my parents got me up and said we're going to see a family counselor and I was a little bit put out by that because I had plans for that day but I thought well okay you know another family counselor I'm ready you know okay I had no idea that I was being hoodwinked and tricked and all the rest of that stuff and I was gonna I was going to spend the next 17 months in treatment but that's what happened so I go to this treatment program and and they spend a few hours and I lay the tale of woe and it's getting late it's like oh man what when can we get out of here and then they start reading me the rules of the program and I remember standing up and saying wait a minute you guys got this all wrong I'm not staying here we came and I was sincere about this we came here to get some help for my parents and the dude that was doing my intake said to me without missing a beat it was beautiful he said we are going to get some help from your parents we're going to relieve them of you for a while so there I am oh man it's over, you know it's like, um, it's over and I think about this a lot because I think at the moment that that happened, it was like the worst day of my life you know I would have given anything to get out of that situation today I understand that as the grace of God being poured out on me and so it's interesting how I respond to grace that's not the first time and it hasn't been the last time that I have been afforded great bountiful abundant grace and my response to it has been this is the worst thing ever because you see for me as an alcoholic one of the things that i know about me is that i get it right i've been in enough meetings where i understand that the ego is the problem so i can say that and i believe that that's true but when i'm in it i can't tell the difference between me and my ego. So when you are attacking my ego, I just feel like you're attacking me. And if you're attacking my eco, you probably are involved in saving my life. Right? So now, with 30 years of sobriety, I feel like, I hope I've gotten to a point where sometimes I can just pause and bounce that off of a sponsor and begin to have some dialogue about, wait a minute. This may just be the part of me that's sick, that's fighting this new piece of information. All right, but anyway, so I'm there in rehab and I think, again, I don't have words for it, but as I look back, the two things that I'm thinking are what happened to me? this was just supposed to be a good time this was just going to be fun this was me and my friends you know raising little hell this was just that's all it was and here I am and the other thing that I'm thinking for a long time while I'm there is has it really come to this I mean yeah I know I'm kind of screwed up but man this seems a little drastic you know this seems like and so you know from there it's like okay it's 8 o'clock I've got 25 minutes you know I just kind of want to talk through like pivotal moments since I got sober that have been really important for me I was in that program still I was about a year sober and I'd gotten, you know, I guess I would preface this by saying a lot of my early sobriety I think is just a case study in missing the point. I just was like, I don't know that I intended to do this. I don'T think I could say this out loud but it was like as I look back on that first 10 years of sobrietry, Now, I got sober when I was 15. And so a lot of that is just being a kid and being a dumb kid. Right? But it's as if my early effort at sobriety was, okay, it didn't take me long to sort of figure out that like, drinking and using drugs was like not going to be a good life for me. right this wasn't working it was causing problems I didn't have too much of a case to make about that that was pretty clear early on ok now how little of this stuff do I have to do in order to just not drink you know that was kind of my whole approach to sobriety and recovery and big book and sponsor God, that sounds like accountability and I don't like that. You know? I like those meetings where it was like take what you want and leave the rest. I was you know nobody can tell you what to do. Everybody's got to find their own way. My program might get you drunk. Your program might get me drunk. We've all got to do our own thing and find our own way. Look, I'm not here to criticize anybody's approach to AA, but I would say that what happened to me was I got to a point in my sobriety where that was no longer sustainable. I think one of the first pivotal moments that I started to mention was I was about a year sober. I was in this program and I'd been really sort of struggling the whole time with, like, is this really necessary? Right? I get it. I don't want to drink anymore. I don'T want to do drugs anymore. I get IT. You know? I'VE BEEN A BAD KID. I'VE SERVED MY PUNISHMENT. NOW CAN YOU PLEASE JUST LET ME GO? That was kind of my approach to the first year was like I was... My effort at recovery was somehow about earning and providing some kind of restitution or whatever, I don't know. And so I remember finally getting honest with someone about that, right? Finally becoming willing to talk about that and say some of that stuff that was rattling around in my head, say it out loud. And if you're here tonight and you're relatively new and you've got stuff rattling around in your head, tell us about it, okay? Let us know what your ideas are. We want to hear about that. We enjoy that, not because we want to make fun of you, but because we can relate, right? I had this idea, and the idea was, I just want to be a normal guy. I don't want to drink anymore. I don'T want to do drugs anymore. I just WANT TO BE A REGULAR GUY. Why do I have to do these steps and go through all this treatment counseling and meetings and therapy and be rigorous honesty I just want to be a regular guy that doesn't drink and another great moment of grace for me was as I'm finally sort of it was cathartic saying this stuff that had been rattling around in my head out loud for the first time as I hear myself say it as I heard these words coming out of my mouth I didn't really need anyone to tell me I just knew that's not possible it's just not an option for me I'm not going to be a normal guy this is the best shot I've got right so fast forward to I'm about three and a half years sober we move from Florida to Chicago and I'd been involved with this rehab program. I'd never been to an AA meeting yet. I'd, I'd be involved with like the book and some of the principles and steps in literature and it's some familiarity with it but I'd ever been to a meeting before. I'd've been to, I'dbeen involved with these group of people that I got sober with in this treatment program. I spent 17 months in the program and then after that I just went to like their aftercare thing for twice a week forever after that until I moved to Chicago. And so I get to Chicago, and I'm not all that interested in AA. I'm Not Against It, I'mNotForIt, I'm kind of ignorant about it to some extent in terms of the meetings and all the rest of it. And I happen to meet these guys who are going to this young people's meeting, and so I've been living in Chicago now for about six months, and I don't want to drink. The thought of drinking or using drugs doesn't cross my mind. There are moments when I think about suicide. But when I went to my first AA meeting, somebody asked me how I was doing and I said that I was being a little bit crazy. I said I was not doing well because I thought that doing well meant I didn't want to drink and I didnít want to drank. Now, I was out of my mind crazy from untreated alcoholism. but I was confused because I thought that wanting to drink and alcoholism are the same thing and I have come to appreciate that they're very different that wanting to drink is a symptom of alcoholism and I was one of those guys that was really going to be on his way out I was already gone because I didn't want to drink anymore. So why would I do this? I don't want a drink. What does AA have for me? I'm not struggling with that. So I didn' t really get it yet, right? Kind of thick-headed. But I went to my first AA meeting thinking, well, maybe I could meet some people and make some friends and kind of have a network, right, kind of get to know some people, maybe meet some cute girls. You know? That's what got me to my first meeting. I should go check that out. I've heard about it. I should go to a meeting. So I went to Young People's Meeting in Illinois, Naperville, Illinois. At the time, it was the biggest Young People'S Meeting in the state. They had about 100 kids there and it was wild. And I loved it and I fit right in. And it was as if Imagine a third-grade classroom where the third-graders decide at the beginning of the school year that they don't want teachers and structure and rules and principles. Imagine what that class is like. That's where I was, right? And maybe that sounds condescending or whatever. For me, I think if I would have tried to sort of fit into a mainstream AA meeting at that point in my sobriety, I think I would've took one look at that and said no thanks. But I fit in there, and I began to make some friends there, and I became to kind of get involved a little bit. Still no sponsor, still no home group, still commitment. Take what you want and leave the rest. A lot of self-will, a lot of untreated alcoholism, right? No real surrender to the process. Now, at the time that I'm doing this, you know, if I could go back in time and talk to that guy, that guy would argue with the guy standing in front of you right now that that's not true, right. So it wasn't like I was aware of any of this or purposeful about it. I was just really very, very defiant. You know? Nobody tell me what to do. I'll figure it out for myself, thank you. And so I went during this time to a lot of AA meetings. I started going to meetings almost every day. And it was about don't drink and go to meetings. And I kind of sponsored myself through the steps. There was a time when I would have claimed that Bob Dylan was my sponsor. because whenever I needed advice, I would just put on a Bob Dylan record. But just crazy stuff, right? Just a guy who was going to a lot of meetings and could sound like he knew what he was talking about. You know, because it's not hard to learn the lingo. There's only 164 pages in the book. It's not that complicated, right. You sit in a handful of meetings and you start learning how to say, I'm going to turn that over. this too shall pass you know and after a while you start to believe it and you start to get relief just from saying the words right and then I became I started going I started going to college and I ultimately became a counselor in a treatment center and and that was crazy right because I secretly thought that because I knew something about alcoholism, I'd been sort of formally trained at this community college and I was a certified addictions counselor that I think in the back of my mind, again, at the time, I would have denied it. But as I look back, I think I thought my case was different. I thought that because I knew so much about alcohol and alcoholism that I could afford to do less and that this was about knowledge and that is was about being smart and that was was about being clever and witty and thinking things through and it makes me crazy when I hear that in meetings sometimes think it through smash the thought right you guys hear that sometimes I'm powerless my smasher is at best unreliable okay thinking it through doesn't work for a guy like me there are times when it feels like it might that's not a those aren't bad things but they are a poor substitute for this alcoholic dealing with his powerlessness right i am powerless i've got that itch that i can't reach and if I don't have a spiritual remedy for that I can tell myself to think it through all I want but the itch is still there after all the thinking is done I'm going to reach for something that will scratch it so that something if it's not in here is probably going to be something if not booze something that is going to be very self-destructive right my sponsor puts it this way you have an addictive engine inside of you now it burns alcohol that engine really well that's what it likes to run on but it can run on other things for the time being right it could run on gambling it could be it could go on pornography it could cash and success it can run on stuff and adoration and power and self-righteousness it can running lots of things okay so I have this friend right this is back in Illinois I have a friend who joins this group he's my roommate and he and I have been friends for a long time we've been crazy in sobriety together went to a lot of young people's conferences went to a lot of meetings together and we're roommates and every six months we're sitting out on our balcony chain smoking and he's talking about killing himself about every six months I mean you could set your clock by it and here's a guy who had a sponsor and was trying as best he could to do what he thought was right in the program and everything else and and there we are having that conversation again and I'm trying to talk him off the ledge right and he went and joined this group this group that was in the area kind of had a reputation of being like hardcore the Nazis right they're very serious about this whole they need to lighten up right they're all about their sobriety date and they're also they're not all about taking direction from a sponsor and they are all so freaking happy all the time You know, it's just enough to make you crazy and resent these people. And they have a structure, you know what I mean? It's like you walk into the meeting, and it's a big meeting. It's a great meeting. It's not a big meet. You walk into it to the meeting and the meeting starts at eight o'clock and at 759 without any bell ringing or any nonsense, the room just gets quiet because we know what we're here for. And with all these people in the room, there's not a bunch of getting up and milling around and coffee and all the rest of that. We're like spending the time focused on what it is we're here to do. And I remember going to this meeting and I remember having a simultaneous reaction to it. And the reaction was, I absolutely loved it and I absolutely hated it. I loved it because I didn't hear what I had come to refer to as like the cheap AA rhetoric. right? The book talks about weight and depth, right? I saw real people with real problems solving them. Right? Living life sober, comfortably, and with some sense of purpose. And they had enthusiasm and they had life. And that really bothered me. you know, because they also talked about like, here's one of the things that used to make me crazy. I sit in this meeting and, and every, it seemed to me like every third sentence was under the direction of my sponsor. Well, I did this under the correction of my sponsor. I did that on the direction, my sponsor, and here's what happens. You know, everything worked out. I'm like, man, do these people go to the bathroom without talking to their sponsor? I mean, God. They had this way of trying to engage people. Like you were not going to be on the sidelines if you were going to go to this group. In spite of the fact that it was big, it felt small because the second time I went there, people remembered my name. And they came up to me and they said, do you have a sponsor yet? you know so it was that kind of thing so my friend Brian who was suicidal and all that he joined this group and he was there for about 6 months and I used to make fun of him all the time but that guy got a life right under my nose because we stopped having those conversations and he seemed to get some direction and purpose and feel comfortable in his own skin and I didn't have that I had a bunch of crazy relationships. You guys will love this. I used to date women in the program a lot that were really new. And it was like one crazy... You know, you guys seen that show Intervention? They should do another show called Intervention Love. It would be this thing where like, We're both in AA and we love each other and we understand each other and isn't everything wonderful? And things would be wonderfully intense for, in the beginning, it was like great, you know. She's the one. Right. And then they would get intensely bad, right? And there'd be all this drama and nonsense and all of a sudden whatever sanctuary I had created in AA was now contaminated and I had to go create another one somewhere else where this girl wasn't going to be there. And so there was a lot of that drama. So I went to this, my friend Brian got a life and I noticed that and I went into this meeting with him and I remember at first thinking this is good for him, it's not for me. If I ever get in enough pain I might come back here though because these people seem to have something that isn't there in a lot of the meetings that I'm going to. And so six months later, at the end of another crazy, broken relationship, I went to that group and essentially just turned myself in. Right? I was like nine-and-a-half years sober, crazy out of his mind, right? I don't want to drink anymore. I haven't wanted to drink in a long time. That battle is... But in terms of emotional sobriety or spiritual centeredness or any sense of humility or living life comfortably in my own skin with some measure of dignity, that wasn't there. Let me give you just a few examples. When I was six and a half years sober, my parents kicked me out of their house. I hadn't had a drink in six and half years, but they kicked me outside. They kicked me inside of their home, and they should have, because I was not a good guy to live with. When I Was Five and a Half Years Sober, I was still capable of shoplifting and did on occasion. When I was seven years sober, my bank sent me a letter saying, we are closing your account because we think you're perpetrating fraud because I had bounced like 40 checks in one month. And I remember sitting in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous talking about that and at the end of sort of laying out my tale of woe about my bank and how wrong they were. I just said, this too shall pass. I did not have a solution for life. So I remember getting with this guy. My friend Brian got this sponsor and it seemed to be doing good work for him. So I asked this guy Mike to be my sponsor and Mike was not at all afraid to give directions. He was not timid. He was no hardcore or like in your face. He was just very matter-of-fact and businesslike and direct. We were not buddies, right? That guy taught me how to live. He did. I remember him asking me, do you believe in God? And I remember answering that question like this. You know, Mike, I really wish that I did. And it seems to me like the people that I know in AA who have a good relationship with God, they're a lot happier than I am. I wish that I could just dumb down and buy into it. You know? But I feel like when I sit in meetings, when I'm with people who really have a strong spiritual life, I feel like I'm a kid looking through the window at the other kids inside the candy store who are getting the candy, and I cannot find the door. And he was brilliant. He said to me, he gave me on that first day, he give me some very clear instructions, right? One of them was, I want you to start praying in the morning on your knees. You need to ask for help. I don't care if you don't think your prayer is making it past the ceiling. As far as I'm concerned, it need not make it pastthe ceiling because God is everywhere and not limited by your ceiling. But I don' t care ifyou believe in that. Okay, just take the action, right? Just do that. And that problem that you have with God, just get over it and do that." So I did. I left that meeting with that guy thinking this, and I think this is grace. I think This Is Like, again, another moment where God is just pouring out on me. I left that meeting with that guy thinking, I'm going to give this guy six months and I'm gonna do everything he says to do to the best of my ability. I'm just going to, if I don't do that and six months from now I leave this group and I leave AA and I say it didn't work, then I'm a liar because I didn't do it. I'm gunna give that guy six month and I really gunna try, I'm really gunno just try to do what this guy says for six months. And if I'm as screwed up as I am in six months, if I're as screwedup as I am now, then I'll go do something else. Give this guy the benefit of a sincere effort. Let him try to help me. I think that's the hardest thing for this alcoholic to do, is to just stop and let you help me. my life since then has changed radically it's unbelievable to me it's not like I just walk on water and everything is just wonderful all the time life is still life I have 30 years of sobriety but that doesn't mean that I have some sort of spiritual credit card that whenever problems come my way I can just put it on the car, and I don't have to worry about it. I still need God as much as I ever did. I still Need Help as much as I Ever Did. My sponsor has helped me tremendously over these past 20 years since I've actually engaged and went from being a meeting attender to actually a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. the group, the sponsor I was taught how to surrender I'm married for 15 years these people taught me how to make a commitment I learned how to making a commitment by doing things like making coffee when I didn't want to because I was told things like I don't care what you want show up, you made a commitment, do it don't give me that, you've made a committment so i feel like now like if i learned i took those baby steps you know like i learned how to make a commitment this guy taught me he took me through a process i want to say this i'm running out of time but this guy took me though a process called the steps now some people go through the steps really quickly and some people not so much mine was a very calculated deliberate lengthy approach. I spent two years on six and seven. Okay? My sponsor today, when we talk about that, if it comes up in terms of the length of time people take working the steps, his comments are this. Most of the people that you sit in meetings with aren't taking steps, period. When we get to the point where everyone is taking steps then we can begin to have the argument about how quickly or slowly we should be taking them. But for now, it's better to take steps than to not take them at any pace. That guy has really helped me and that group has really help me. They introduced me to a God that I relate to, that I live with, that sometimes I struggle with. but I have a life that's unbelievable for a guy like me for a guys who was just had given up I got rescued by some people who cared enough about their own recovery to get out of themselves so I'm really grateful to have had the opportunity to try to do that here tonight and I think this is an awesome group I am really excited about I'm a relatively new member here and I'm really excited about it because there's that same thing that is here that when I walked into that group in Chicago where you can see there's like a light in people's eyes there's life here there's something going on there's nothing to join here not just something to attend. And I flourish in that kind of environment and I wither in the absence of it. So I'm very grateful to have had a chance to speak here, and I'm particularly grateful to the people who started this meeting a year ago for doing it and sticking their necks out and saying, you know what? AA can be more. Thank you. Good job, Tom.