Step 4 Without the Fourth Column — Eight Years of Pointing Out What Everyone Else Did Wrong – Marshall S.

Happy Anniversary! Good to see you! Good to see you! I didn't know you were coming. You met Julie. Kim told me you were coming. It's your birthday, huh? Good to see you. Did you meet Marcia? I met Lisa at the Vinings. She told her story at the Vinings a couple of months ago. Oh, okay. She did a great job, too. My name is Lisa and I'm an alcoholic. Hey, Lisa. Welcome to the Monday night 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 Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Each individual in 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 aagroupshipspeakers.org desperately in need will hear our speaker. And we believe that it is only by fully disclosing our sins and our problems that any of us shall be persuaded to say, yes, I am one of them, too. I must have this thing. I met this gentleman, Marshall, a couple of months ago in another meeting that I was in at Vinings. Thank you. He was pretty cool and kind of helping me. My brother was at the meeting. It was awkward for me. So he was instrumental in helping me feel comfortable. I give you Marshall. Thanks, Lisa. Well, I'm Marshall Shoemaker. I'm an alcoholic. S-H-O-E-M-A-K-E-R. I give you my name because when I lived in Charleston and I would do this, I would give my sponsor's phone number out. And... A lot of people didn't see the world the way I did. But he got too many phone calls and complaints, so I don't give his number out anymore. I see my... Besides that wonderful passage that Lisa wrote, I see my purpose here. AA's 12 steps are a group of principles, spiritual in nature, which if practiced as a way of life can expel the obsession to drink and enable the sufferer to become happily and usefully whole. Well, I am happy to say that tonight I feel happily and usefully whole. And I've been sober since August 7th, 1986, which is 35 years. And I have not felt happily and usefully whole for all of that time. But I have found a solution to untreated alcoholism, both active alcoholism and then being an AA and not really working the steps. But I gave you my sobriety date. My home group is the Saturday morning men's group at St. Luke's Church over on Northside. And my sponsor is Jim. I've been working with him about six months. I went to Jim after my sponsor John B. passed away. John B. really taught me about the principle of love, which I needed to learn quite a bit about. And Jim McDaniel, he demonstrates that principle in the way he treats me and listens to me and gently guides me. And hopefully God will take my tongue and discipline it. I... I'm 65... No, 62 years old. And so I got sober when I was 26. I grew up in Greenville, South Carolina, two and a half hours up 85. I went kindergarten through 12th grade at Christ Church Episcopal High School, except for one year in prep school in 10th grade in Boston, which is actually where I learned to smoke pot. But that's not that important. But I'm a drunk. And so I'll get to the alcohol thing in a second. Dad was a corporate guy, and Mom was a housewife. And I grew up in a white house on a hill that my grandfather had built, so where my mother and uncle grew up. And I had lots of, you know, educational and other opportunities as a child. And it seemed like a pretty good deal. Dad was a little bit heavy-handed. He was a lot heavy-handed. And I was the youngest. And I was the oldest of three sons. And he was in the Marine Corps, so he thought, you know, the output of the cow runs downhill. And so it started with me. And he whaled me. I whaled my middle brother. And he whaled the third brother. So we all got our licks in. For some reason at age 12, I started drinking. I think I had observed in my parents' behavior that drinking seemed like a pretty cool thing. They were sort of the 50s cocktail party generation. And they would go to probably three or four cocktail parties a week, man. It was unbelievable. And I got a lot of time with maids and nannies and au pairs while they were going to cocktail parties. And eventually I learned to mix Dad's Johnny Walker Red. And I noticed that if I mixed him strong, he was more pleasant to be around. And so I'd mix him strong. And I was proud to be mixing his drinks. And I liked the effect they had on him. He was sort of your type A. Personality. And it calmed him down for dinner. My mother used to say, don't bring up any problems until Dad's on his second scotch. So I guess I was somewhat trained in a minor way to be a drunk. But anyway, I adopted my own motivation. At 12 years old, I stole some of my dad's Johnny Walker Red. My friend Howard Newton and I went up to my bedroom, which was on the end of the house. Got wasted. Puked all over everything. Sprayed Brut cologne all over everything. Woke up the next morning in the shower naked in vomit and Brut. But boy, I wanted to do it again. And it's like every alcoholic describes. There was that moment of just wonderfulness. All my self-centered anxiety and my fear of Howard and my fear of everybody and my fear of not being accepted just went away. It's like alcohol really works. Other than the downside of puke. And then the downside of puking. And so I started a lifetime of trying to get to that window of wonderful sort of acceptance and glow and ease and comfort that's described in the big book. And I worked at it for 14 years. I didn't really. And back in Greenville, we all had fake IDs. And we'd go out to the country stores outside of town to buy the alcohol and get drunk on the weekends. And it didn't seem to be a big problem. I mean, you know, every now and then my parents would catch me, but they just would sort of look the other way. I played sports all through high school, so the drinking wasn't until after the Friday night football game. And I got really good grades in high school. And so I got the opportunity to go off to college in New Jersey, a place called Princeton. And I went off to Princeton. And I thought I was on the way to being President of the United States. I was on the way to being President of the United States, frankly. And so I got to Princeton, and I taught all these New Yorkers how to drink. And they adopted. You know, they liked the mixed drinks I was mixing for them. And for the first two years in college, I managed to do the control drinking on the weekends. As a matter of fact, my second year in college, I rode crew. And that's a twice a day, you know, every day of the week sport. And I had that year, it mentions in the big book, a year of perhaps controlling and abstinence before crossing the line. And so I would do obnoxious things like a college frat boy type drunk. But I didn't get in any trouble, and I had good grades. And so I thought I had it wired. And then I went to Washington, D.C. to be an intern. And one day I showed up to the Congressman's office. And I had snacks. I had nasty hair because I hadn't bathed the night before. And that was my first inkling that maybe this drinking lifestyle was a problem. But I ignored that. And then I decided to take a semester off from college. So I went to Bogota, Colombia. And this was in 1980 when the guerrillas and the cartel were, you know, exporting cocaine to the U.S. And so they liked to arrest American students down there to prove they were tough on drugs. And so I wasn't supposed to be doing any drugs while I was down there. I was always drinking, but I was also doing some of that other stuff. And I had my first intervention down there. My fellow students pulled the six people aside who were doing a lot of drugs and said, You've got to stop doing that or we're going to send you home early, which meant losing my semester of grades and being humiliated. So we all who were doing the pot and stuff, we all promised we wouldn't do any more. And then we went to another hotel. And we filled a mirror full of cocaine. And I had this guilty feeling that stuck with me like, Man, I just lied to my friends, and here I am doing all this crap. So anyway, I went back to college. But by this point, my lifestyle of being intoxicated all the time, it started to affect my short-term memory and my ability to function as a reasonable social environment. And I just had a hell of a time the second semester of my junior year. And I decided to do another geographic, which means dropping out of college. But I called it taking a year off. And so I took a year off. And I went to Detroit. And I became a community organizer to save people from capitalism, so to speak. And so I would organize in the day. And then I would just get drunk at night. And eventually, I was living in this commune of Christian Marxists. And I was busting furniture. And the women were telling me to behave. And I was busting more furniture. And they eventually got tired of this behavior. So they said, you know, you've got to stop doing this. You've got to stop being such a horse's ass, basically. And so for the second time, I said, oh, yeah, I'll stop. But I didn't stop. I found a priest to go live with. And so I was starting to have behavior that other people were noticing and not liking. And they were giving me feedback. But I was missing the picture. So I went back to college for my senior year. I did everything except for my senior thesis. So I failed to graduate. So the great star from Greenville, South Carolina, goes back to Greenville, failing to graduate. At this point, I was a dedicated 5 o'clock drinker because my parents had infused me with the notion that if you drink before 5 o'clock, you're an alcoholic. So if you wait until 5 o'clock, and I mean watch your watch, and at 5 o'clock you start drinking, then everything's fine. So I did that for a year selling computers in Greenville. And I had this terrible, I mean I was a terrible employee. I was drunk at night. I'd go to work. I was hungover. I couldn't get anything done. At noon, I'd go to a meet and three. And then I would sort of clear up for about two hours of work. And then by about 3 o'clock, I'm looking forward to getting drunk again. So my employer got about two hours out of eight every day from me. In college, I had a girlfriend who later became my wife. And she finished college. And she was like the women who seemed to be attracted to me. She was magna cum laude. She was a normie. She was like had her act together, you know. But she loved us drunk. And so she, we decided to move to California. And so that's not my wife. That's my, that's Ghislaine. No, her name's Julie. Anyway, so. Where was I? Oh, okay. Wife number one. We moved to California in 84. Moved to Noe Valley in San Francisco. And I basically plagiarized my senior thesis using the Berkeley Library. And get drunk. And hang out with the lefties. And keep Reagan from invading Nicaragua in our own minds. And, you know, just a waste. A wastrel. But I was getting my senior thesis done so I could get my college degree. Well, in April 27th of 19, I'm going to get to the recovery part in two seconds. In April 27th of 1985, I went to a dead show with my wife and my brother. And did some mushrooms. And got inspired by Sugar Magnolia to propose. And I proposed. And she said yes. And I thought, oh my God. And the next day she said, are you sure? And I was too proud to back out. And so we're going to get married, you know. And we planned a wedding that summer. But I did back out. We spent a lot of money on these engraved invitations. And I just couldn't address the invitations. And so the priest we were talking to said, you need some help. And I said, well, what do you mean? He goes, you need to see a therapist. And so I went to see a therapist. And the therapist said, your dad's an alcoholic. And I said, oh, yeah, I knew that was the problem. And he goes, and maybe you got a problem, too. And then I said, well, that's a crappy therapist. And so somebody else said, you got a problem. And they suggested AA. Well, at the time I had gotten into grad school in Berkeley and actually in seminary, if you can believe it. And I was going to study to be a minister. And I started going to Al-Anon meetings because of dad. And at Al-Anon, after I opened my mouth, they said, you need to go to AA. And so I started going to AA. And my wife and I lived in a nice apartment in Berkeley. And we got married because we had to to keep the apartment. And so I spent a year playing with these Christians who wanted to be ministers and, you know, going to AA. But I never really got it. And it wasn't until after nine months of going to AA meetings and slipping on this and slipping on that and then slipping on some plum brandy that I just lost my mind, you know. That whole thing about, you know, stop drinking. Stop drinking. Stop drinking for 30 days. Keep coming back. And then go back out again. It just tore me down. And I had a sponsor, thank God. And he said, you need some extra help. And so he suggested this place in the Napa Valley called Gene Duffy's, which is an old drying out farm up in Calistoga, Napa Valley. And up at Gene Duffy's. And they taper people off bourbon back then. This was back in 1986. And just singed a lot of AA meetings. And so for three weeks up there, I tried to prove to them that I was gravely and psychologically ill. But I wasn't an alcoholic. Because an alcoholic is like the guy, you know, the guy. Anyway, it wasn't an attractive idea to me. And so they kicked me out. And that day, I called a buddy of mine in AA in Berkeley. And he said, well, you need to go to a hospital in San Francisco. And so I went to this hospital called Marshall Hill Hospital on California Street. And my wife took me to the hospital. And I was sitting there. And the nurse was clearing out my stuff. I said, what are you doing? And she goes, well, I'm looking for needles. And I'm looking for, you know, alcohol in the mouthwash. And I went, oh, my God. I mean, these people really think I got a problem. You know, here I'm being admitted to a 28-day treatment program. And I'm still in doubt about what's going on. And then she just said, you know, honey, everything's going to be okay. And for some reason, I just thought, okay, I'm in the right place. And I feel like that's the first day to which I actually surrendered 100% to the fact that I was an alcoholic and just forgot about all of the bullshit between my ears. So I spent 45 days in the hospital stirring up the shit and getting in trouble with people but not getting kicked out. I got a guy kicked out, but I didn't get kicked out. And so they said, Marshall, they observed the fact that when my wife, who lived in Berkeley, came over to San Francisco, you know, I'd flip out. Or she called me. She called me on the phone or I'd flip out. They said, you know, we don't think you're going to be able to stay sober if you go back home. And I said, well, what is your idea? And they said, there's a beautiful halfway house in San Francisco called the Henry Olaf House. And it was beautiful. It was this pre-earthquake Victorian, which means pre-1907. And it was on a hill near Golden Gate Park, which is actually where the Grateful Dead got their start. And so I said, what the hell? I'll go there. And I kind of thought of it as my fraternity experience. I wasn't in a fraternity in college. And so I went to Henry Olaf House, and they had group therapy. And a lot of it was devoted to us telling each other what horses' asses we were and stop behaving that way. But they also forced me to get a job. They said, you've got to have a job, and it's got to make eight bucks an hour because you've got to pay your own way here. So I got a job. I did the group therapy. And I started going to AA meetings in San Francisco, which is kind of nice because in Berkeley, I'd already sort of in my own mind, of course, nobody else cared, but in my own mind, I established myself as a slipper. So to get to go to a fresh city and start over and just be a newcomer was really a gift. So I did the six months there. I worked. I kind of rediscovered my computer skills. And then I went back home to the East Bay and moved back in with my wife and started doing work, started becoming more functional in the workplace. I went to grad school. But I wasn't really ready for that at two years of sobriety. I just wasn't clear enough in my head to deal with grad school at that time. I tried being an alcohol and drug counselor. And then I just got back into the computer industry, which I'm still in now. At the time I was in sales, really the most important thing that happened to me was because the first three and a half years were basically sort of the abstinence years for me. I mean, I had a sponsor. I tried to get into the book. I would do a four-step every now and then. My sponsor would look like he swallowed a frog and say, that's a really good attempt. I never got to the fourth column. I was just great at pointing out what other people were doing. But I stayed physically sober. But at three and a half years of sobriety, a very important thing happened to me. I was in a meeting in Berkeley, California. And I was talking and I was probably ranting about something, some resentment. And this old Irish-looking guy named Tom Daley came up to me and says, I can help you with that anger. And so he said, meet me in the Buttercup Cafe. And so Tom showed me how to do a 10-step, you know, fears and resentments and the fear behind the resentment and then pray to have it released. And then write them out as frequently as I can and then read them to somebody. So kind of like steps four through five, over and over and over. And at the same time we had this initial conversation, I said to him, he says, so what's going on in your life? I said, well, my wife wants to have children. And I said, and he says, well, great. And I said, no, it's not great. I don't know if I want to have children. He goes, why not? I said, because sobriety basically sucks and I'm going to kill myself if it doesn't get any better. So I don't want to have any damn kids. And he said, you know what? If you keep doing these steps, you're going to feel better. And plus, if you have kids, it will give you something to live for. So for a totally selfish reason, I agreed to have children with my wife. Best decision I ever made. Besides getting sober. So I said, yeah, Emily, let's have kids. So she got pregnant with my daughter and my daughter was born. It's an amazing thing. I happened to be going back to business school. I was commuting up to Davis to go to business school. I had some flexibility around work and I wasn't really committed to working that hard. And I'd inherited a little money so I could cover my butt for dropping out to go to business school. But anyway, she had my daughter. Two years later, she had my son. And we were like the perfect family. I mean, she's this little 5'3 blonde, you know, German chick. And I had a Volvo and my kids were little blondes. And we just looked like the perfect family, you know. And I was working back in computers. I didn't work that hard, but enough to keep a job. And things were going pretty good. There was one negative stream through all this. I had a terrible problem with anger in sobriety. At this point, I think I'd been to two anger management classes. Mainly to stay out of jail. And then at eight and a half years of sobriety, I was working down in a software company. And I don't know, I was stressed. I tried to tell her not to talk to me for 30 minutes after I got off the freeway there. Because it was an hour of commuting. It's not her fault, I'm just making excuses. Anyway, so I come home and we get into it. And she's smart. She talks faster than I do. She can out-argue me. And I just decided, I made this stupid decision. I'm going to win this argument. So I slapped her. And I never did it before. And I've never done it since. But I did it that time. And so she called the cops. And I got arrested. And OJ had just gotten caught. So the cops were always going to arrest somebody. So I got arrested. And, you know, I'm sitting here eight and a half years sober. I'm working for a hot Silicon Valley company. And I'm in the back of a cop car in those puke seats so they can hose them out. And we're driving to the jail. And the cop goes, you better leave her. I said, what do you mean? He goes, once it gets to this point, it'll never get better. And I understand now what he was talking about. I had so violated the trust in the relationship that it never fully returned. And eventually we did get a divorce. But the positive thing, if you can characterize it this way, is I realized I needed to grow up. I needed to grow spiritually because I was an asshole. I mean, I was a stone-cold asshole. And at the time I was going to Berkeley meetings. We had teddy bears. We talked about John Bradshaw. We talked about our feelings. But we weren't really working the steps. And we didn't have sponsors. We had therapists. And so I ran into this woman, this sort of hippy-dippy Berkeley chick who used to wear clown pants to meetings. And she changed. And I said, Marianne, what happened to you? She goes, I worked the steps. I said, I thought she was besting with me. I said, what do you mean you worked the steps? And she goes, out of the big book. I worked the steps. And I said, they're in the big book? The steps? And I was serious. Because every time I'd worked the steps, we'd done it out of the 12 by 12. And, you know, I didn't know they were in the big book. And so she introduced me to this farmer in Southern California who's five hours away. I didn't meet him, but I called him once a week on the phone. And Jim, down in Bakersfield, would read to me the book. And he'd say, read it ahead of time. And answer these questions. And he would read it. And I'd start interjecting. And he goes, you know, you white collar guys are really good at manipulating people. So why don't you just not talk and listen? And so I would listen. And I had the most amazing experience. You know, I'd been trained to look for the subtext and the metaphor and the context and whatever. But the black and white print. And I listened to Jim read the black and white print. And I finally, the light bulb went off. This is not a James Bond movie. This is a James Bond novel. This is the historical record of how the founders found God and cleared away the wreckage of the past. And then became useful to others by helping them do it. I mean, it's just as simple as that. It's right here in this book. The first 164 pages. But it took me eight and a half years of sobriety or dry-ity and getting arrested and screwing up my marriage to realize this was the solution. So, thank God I finally got the point. And didn't have to go to prison to learn it. There was wreckage from that experience, though. A couple of years later, I worked in high tech. I worked in finance. I still had these beautiful kids. But my wife didn't really trust me. And her family lived in Vermont. And my family lived in South Carolina. And when we needed to move up to a bigger house, it was a huge financial commitment in California. Because this was the boom years going up to 2000. And we just didn't really want to spend the money. Plus, we both thought we were probably going to get a divorce. And we didn't want to get stuck on the West Coast. So, we moved to South Carolina. We moved to Charleston. Because I really liked to sail sailboats. And I thought, you know, we'll find a sailboat and a nice house on the beach. Unfortunately, Charleston got very expensive while I was gone. Because all the New Yorkers, you know, moved down there. So, it wasn't in my price range to have a sailboat or a house on the beach. And so, anyway. I got to scrambling. I was driving a concrete truck for two years in Charleston from 2000 to 2002. Just because I couldn't get a software job. And my wife and I would still argue. And, you know, there wasn't any more physical contact. But there was still this very damaging verbal stuff. The psychologists call it contempt. And so, one day she just left. Took the kids. And this was in 2002. And it just devastated me. Because I thought I wouldn't see my kids again or see her. And it took her leaving to realize I loved her. But I didn't figure that out for a couple more years when she finalized the divorce. But those were rough years. I was about 16 years sober. And my wife was gone. And the kids had moved out. She was still in Charleston. And, you know, I was a mess. And thank God I had a strong sponsor. And I had a physical job. I'd get up every morning at 630. I'd call my sponsor on my way to the plant to pick up my truck. I'd drive my truck. I'd go to a meeting. I'd sit on my sponsor's back porch and moan and piss. And he'd just listen and listen. And then one day he said an interesting thing. He said, Marshall, are you aware of anybody in the general public who's got a rifle and they want to put a bullet in your head? And I said, no. And he says, well, what's the problem? That's beautiful, isn't it? It puts it all in context. Nobody's hunting to kill me. It's all in context. And so I just... I just kept soldiering forth, being an emotional mess, losing my... I thought I was losing my kids. She didn't divorce me, but she did move to Atlanta. And a year later, I moved to Atlanta. And those... Before I moved to Atlanta, though, I would make that trip to Atlanta once every two weeks. And she'd make it back. And the loneliest I've ever been in my life, perhaps except when I was... The last few years of my drinking was driving back from Atlanta to Charleston, having visited my kids. But AA saved my butt. And kept me moving forward. So eventually, I moved to Atlanta in 2004. And in 2005, I only pulled the plug. And I got back... I moved to Atlanta because she kind of... To chase her, really, and chase the kids primarily. And I got back here and there's a lot of work in my field. And there wasn't in Charleston. And so I was lucky because I got my... I got work. I got a lot of work. And I got in big city AA. Big city AA. I mean, and if you haven't been in small town AA, you don't... I mean, I'll talk about myself. It is a huge gift because I can find in Atlanta meetings I'm comfortable in. And I can find my people in AA, you know. And I don't... I'm not stuck with a group of people who are... We're all tired of seeing each other. And if a visitor comes in the door, we jump on them because we don't want to hear each other talk. In a big city, you've got options in AA. And it's a beautiful thing. So... So for the last few years, I've been trying to just do life on life's terms. And I've been a very slow learner in AA. The anger thing didn't completely go away. Although it's calmed down quite a bit. A good psychiatrist helps on that too. And probably aging too. But I've always had a sponsor and I've worked the steps. And since I was taught how to work the steps out of here, I can share it with another man. And I've got a great home group. But I learned my lesson. I learned my lesson that Marshall Shoemaker, recovering alcoholic, frequently does not perceive reality. I do not perceive me. And I don't perceive you in an objective manner. And the antidote to that is to have my sponsor aware of everything going on in my life. And so I call my sponsor and I regurgitate. And he suggests this and this and this. And often I call and I ask about his wife. I mean his girlfriend. His girlfriend's in the hospital right now. And we talk about that. But I am honest 99% with my sponsor. And I go to him to seek objectivity based in the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous as an antidote to my brain. You know, the book talks about the magic magnifying mind. And that's what's between my ears. If I'm upset, I'm really upset. If I'm happy, I'm really happy. You know, it's a life of extremes. And I know that an alcoholic mind is different from a normal person's mind because I'm always in relationships with normal women, so to speak. And they just don't react to the world the way I do, you know. They don't jump out of the car and yell at people, you know. They don't break the shower door when their daughter says, screw you, dad, you know. It's like they don't respond to stimulus the way I do. But anyway, I got to raise my kids as a single dad. My daughter is 29, married. She lives in D.C. She just got married in October. And she let me walk her down the aisle, thank God. And it was a beautiful thing. Because in her 20s, she kicked my butt with her thing about autonomy and not letting me be in charge because I knew how to run her life, for God's sake. But anyway, she didn't like that, you know. She's an independent young lady. And then now my son. Who's 26. I guess he enjoyed his sister's wedding because he announced two months ago that he got engaged to a wonderful young lady. And they're going to get married. And they both got good jobs. And they're both doing so well. And I'm so grateful because I didn't know anything about being a parent. The only thing I've done, anything good I've done as a parent, I've been taught by my sponsors. Because I got nothing from growing up about being a parent, other than tucking my shirt in and trying to be a tough guy. I mean, I really hate to say that. I'll talk about my family of wars in a second. But everything I know about being an adult, I've learned from my sponsors. So my kids are doing great. I have a loving relationship. I'm finally making some money in my career after being in it for so damn long. I mean, I call myself a consultant, which mainly means I'm a job hopper who's put a good wrapper around it. So I do independent work. And I get paid. And then I'm unemployed. And then I get another job. And then I get paid. And it's not steady income. But when it's coming, it's great. And it's kind of exciting to me. Because I have to recreate relationships and work with new technology. So, you know, things that... Oh, and by the way, I'll get into that in a second. So the family of fortune. So I went on a fool's quest when I got sober. Because I decided I was going to sober up my father and my mother. And they basically said, Screw you. And they said it over and over and over again. And I went to Al-Anon so many years, and I just didn't get it, you know? It's like, no matter how good I am, no matter how many amends I make, no matter how many times I reach out, they like to drink. My mom liked to take Valium. And they didn't give a crap that I was sober, you know? And eventually, some of my communications with my two brothers ended up being shit about my parents. And their disease and the behavior got shared with my parents. And my dad, three weeks before he died, he changed his will. And he wrote me out of it. And he has three sons. I'm the oldest. And he wrote me out of the will. And it was such a shock. And my mother tried to keep me from coming to the funeral. This is all just alcoholic, tacky bullshit behavior. But it's very painful when you're on the receiving end of it. And so I'm in a lawsuit with my brothers over my parents' estate. But I've been through a divorce, so I can deal with lawyers and emotional pain and being close to people and being in battle. And, you know, I don't agree with the advice some people in AA give about being passive. Screw you. If somebody's doing something wrong in your life, go after them. And I got that advice from some women in church when I was being passive. When my ex-wife wanted to take my kids away from me. If you're right and you're going to fight, just fight. Just fight. Try to fight with principle. But you've got to fight. And so my lawyer unfortunately got suspended from the practice of law recently because a client got mad. So now I'm doing the lawsuit on my own. So I've been filing the damn papers in Greenville County Probate Court. And I don't know why I'm talking about this. I guess I'm trying to say, hey, you can be sober at being some screwed up stuff, but you can stay sober and you can be happy. And so I've talked about family of origin, work. I've talked about, oh, you know, women. So, you know, another piece of bad advice I think that's given around here is that emotions are important. Now, they are important. It's important for me. It's important for me to realize I'm mad and write down the resentment or I'm afraid and write down the fear and pray to God and ask my sponsor what to do. But I cannot live in my emotions. And other people don't give a damn about my emotions. They care about how I treat them. And that took me a long time to learn. And I do not express my emotions in the workplace anymore because every time I did, I got fired, you know. It's like, forget about it. They want to know what I can do for them. And my emotional volatility is hell in relationships with women. I mean, it just doesn't work. There are certain emotions that are useful, but anger and agitation and depression and withdrawal and pouting, I mean, that crap doesn't add to a relationship. And it's taken me a long time. And a good couples counselor has helped a lot. A psychiatrist has helped a lot. But it is possible to have a positive relationship with a woman and it to be a partnership and an adventure and a damn fun thing to do. And how's that sound? Oh, and another thing that's happened, you know, in my later years in sobriety is I've started to be able to enjoy my normie friends that I grew up with in Greenville. You know, I think for a lot of time, I always sort of looked at the world as, well, I'm screwed up and they're screwed up. And I got to fix them or, you know, give them feedback or something. But I got a lot of friends who are functioning very well without my advice. And if I don't give people advice and just share, I mean, it is very powerful, this whole thing we do in AA about sharing. So I try not to give advice and I try not to give feedback. I think feedback's for... Well, never mind. It's just... Yeah, anyway, I just try to share. And I find appropriate sharing works really good in human relationships. And I'm going to stop at that point. So God bless you all. Yep, you're welcome. I've asked Tia to get out a chip. Tia, we have a chip system. We have a white chip. We have somebody right in front of us while we're recording the recording. We have a white chip. Come back to it. We have 30 days today. Gold chip for 50 days. Chip for 90 days. Yellow chip for six months. Green chip for nine months. And then we have a blue chip for one year. I'm Tim Oren. I'm an alcoholic. It's not my birthday. But I've been keeping this guy so good. He has 14 and a half years. And I've been having chips. I'm sure he's the right guy at the right time. He's stuck with me. It's been a great response. I highly recommend it. 19 years. 14 and a half years ago, it was his first meeting. And I met him. And he's done so much work in this meeting. We've got seven or eight, I guess six or seven hundred speakers online now. That's him. He's really expanded it. And Lisa's been working about a year. She's done so great with it. I came over to this meeting about 17 years ago. And I just show up now. But, anyway, I just want to say thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Nitwia, it's great. I'm not a finance guy. By the way, Marshall, I love your story, I really do. OK. ład I'm not a finance guy, potencial I can tell you the greatest investment ever is the time I... is the effort I've invested in sobriety is what it has given me back. It's unbelievable. You can't get. I used to say, I can remember I was doing chips. And I used to say, you know, I'm just such a lucky guy. You can't be this lucky. I'm a firm believer it had to be an act of the mind problem. I hadn't been Katya Brown in.. launches or stuff, but I wouldn't have been excellent And you can't draw five royal flushes in a row. It can't happen. But that's the kind of luck I've had in AA. I urge you to keep coming. I appreciate everybody here. AA has been really good to me. And I love the way my wife says it. She says, it's like water skiing. You just hold on and the road pulls you up. And that's been my experience. So thanks a lot. Thank you. Number two to 86. All right. That's it. We'll go back to the white jet. Thank you for meeting tonight.