Steps 1-12 by Beth B. (4.5hrs) – Part 2 of 2 – 2017 – Sandy B.

mention anything about that book. And, you know, and so that's really, you know, that was a big huge thing for me was I started to search for something deeper. It wasn't just I need a way to stop. See, I first came into the program the first few months was I didn't even want to stop drinking. I just wanted to stop the pain from happening. And then on that 91st day, I knew that I wanted to to stop the drinking. But after I shared with those people on that night, I knew that I wanted something more. I wanted my life to be okay. I want it to feel connected and that's really when I started searching. And I went around for a long time to meetings around Staten Island, not for a lot of time, after that point was only like another month or two, to meetings and I kept hearing, you know, don't drink and go to meetings, bring the body and the mind will follow and all this other stuff. And I didn't get it. I knew that wasn't my solution. I know that wasn't going to be what was going to keep me okay. And I don't know how, you know, God works on these things but one day I got dropped off. One night I got drop off at a meeting in Secaucus, New Jersey. How I came to be there is my parents lived there at the time, and one night we went out for dinner. I wasn't going to go to a meeting that night, but I was feeling okay, and they didn't think I was feeling okay. And they said, we think you need to go to a meeting. And I said, well, you know, I mean, by the time we get back to Staten Island and I get to my meeting, it's going to be too late. And they said oh no, right here in the glove compartment we have the meeting list for New Jersey. Yeah, you got to love family, right? So I said, well, you know, and they said, Well, there's this meeting that's right in our town, and it starts in another 10 minutes. And great. So I looked at the meeting book, and I said it's an open meeting and, you know, discussion. And I said – and I didn't know what, you know, the BB meant from it. You know, I had no idea. And I said, you know, I hate open speaker meetings. They just, they make me want to drink. Don't even bother. You know, and they dropped me over this meeting and I heard things that I never heard before. And one of the things that I heard that changed my life is an older woman that was one of founders of the group said, the time of your death has been changed. And when she said that to me, all that, that's all she said. And she said it to the whole group, although it really felt like she was looking at me. I felt like not only was she saying that I could be dead right now, but somehow I understood that she was saying that my life was saved for a reason. That the time of my death was not changed so I could get a better car. You know what I mean? And I knew that and I don't know why I knew that because that's all she said. The time of your death has changed. And I immediately knew that what she was talking about was my time was changed so that I could get sober and help other people to achieve sobriety. And I can't explain how I knew that, you know. And that was how I came in. And, you know, people told me, I was told by this group, I was handed the 12 and 12 book and the other books too. And I was told to read all the books but specifically for the 12 and 12 books to read a step every day. And then I said, you know, what do I do after the 12th day and they said, read it again. And I said, how long do I do this for? And I figured they were going to say 90 days. And they said so further notice, you know. So I checked with another person from the group and they did the same thing and, you know, kind of a consistent deal. So, I said well, you know, I don't even understand stuff in step 7 and 8. You know, just new. And then they said don't worry we didn't tell you to understand it we just told you to read it, you you know, and so I learned discipline. And I learned to open my mind. And really that's what Step 2 became for me was opening my mind, thinking that there could be a possibility of something better if I'll let it happen. And that's really how I got to see Step 2. And, you know, and I tried to pay attention. I wasn't raised with religion. Both my parents were Jewish of birth, but neither was raised with any religion and they didn't raise me with any. In fact, kind of you could say atheists. They taught me that I could do anything myself, right? And so now here I was in a situation, I needed to, like they said, have that mustard seed of faith. And it says in the book, do I believe or am I willing to believe in a power greater than myself? And I reached the point where I was willing to belief. I didn't believe. And, you know, I questioned a lot of stuff and I went to a lot other people that had time And, you know, I picked a sponsor who was really good. And I said, what do I do? And they all said, just keep reading a step a day. Just keep getting down on your knees twice a day, 20 minutes at a time, and pray. I said well, I can't do that. And they said, hey, do whatever you can do. Just pray twice a week. And I says, you now, what kind of prayer? They said it doesn't matter what kind prayer. Well, I didn't have any experience. I didn' t have a set of prayers. I got a couple from the program, you know, and I said, you know, who am I praying to? And they said, I remember one guy said to me, it doesn't matter who's listening to your prayers. I'm going to tell you that what matters is if you get on your knees twice a day and pray, your life will get better. And I had the open mind to believe it because their life was getting better, you And I thought, okay, I'll pray twice a day. The knee thing has never been good for me, but I'll talk about that another time. But all I had to do was just allow myself the chance. And that's what I learned from this program is just to allow myself a chance and let the higher power, God, do the work, you know. And it's been such a miracle. I mean every day is a miracle and, you now, every day I give thanks so many times throughout the day. I mean now I don't even like have real organized twice a day prayer. It's like throughout the day, because I can't even believe what God had in store for me. You know what I'm saying? And it's just like, it's more than I could have ever imagined. And so now, you know, I have a faith that it will be better even if I just keep coming. That's all I have Which one? 3, 4, and 5. Okay, sorry guys. Okay hi everybody my name is Beth and I'm an addict and alcoholic. And I'm honored to be here for the second week running because I think this is a great group and I think, you know, I think it's wonderful that more and more groups are really focusing in on the recovery. You know, for, you now, and I shared this a little bit last week for the first couple of months that I was coming around the room. I've gone to a lot of our rooms with speakers and some with discussions and it, you know they used to talk a lot about the don't drink and go to meetings and bring the body and the mind will follow. You know all that stuff and I really thought in the very first couple of months that you could get sober by just coming around church basements an hour night and drinking coffee. And I thought I could do that. That's something I could, you know, until I found myself drunk. And then I realized, you now, that it's like they say in the book, drinking is but a symptom, you know? And you know last week I shared a little bit about why I introduced myself as an addict and alcoholic because my problem is more than alcohol, my problem includes a lot of drugs And I want to also say that my problem includes a lot of other things besides drugs and alcohol. And when my sponsor told me that the name of my disease was never enough, she wasn't talking specifically about chemicals or substances. What she was telling me was I got to be careful all the time. I got to be careful with all my relationships with people that they don't become addictive. I had to be carefully with everything and, you know, today in sobriety, you know, sometimes I see myself acting a little abnormally. And I think, you know, for the women in the room, you can understand why I always think I need one more pair of black shoes. I'm always just one short of the exact number I need and I think if I could just get that next one, it's all going to be good, you know? And that's, you know, there are regular normal people that are not alcoholics and addicts who think that too but you know they don't act like I do about certain things so I have to watch that and I have to say you know what, I can get another pair of black shoes, but I got to throw one out. I'm not going to be living in a sea of black shoes you know so like I put boundaries around it and I was thinking today about a year ago I was sitting with a guy that I used to work with and we were at work and he's across the desk from me and I said, you know Joe, I have a real problem and he looked at me and he what's up? And I said, pistachio nuts. And of course he laughed because he's not an alcoholic, right? And I said, you know, I think it's getting to be a problem for me. And he said, well they are really good. I mean they're known for being addictive, you know. And I said, so my thumbnails are bleeding. You see regular people that are addicted to pistachio nuts stop when their thumbs start bleeding. I stopped, I stopped the day after you know I really did but I did notice that I got to that point where my thumbs were bleeding and it's funny because what I've noticed in sobriety is we drink, we drug, we eat pistachios whatever until the consequences are greater than what you know the benefit we're receiving or the supposed benefit we receiving from the substance and you know so the day that I noticed my thumb bleeding, I said you know what those pistachios are not that good. You know and I stopped but sometimes alcoholics when it's alcohol you know it's like we tell ourselves that the benefit is so great even long after it's not being great and you keep doing it even though consequences are obviously piling up and we keep like not looking at the consequences or else disassociating them from the alcohol. And, you know, I was famous for doing that and there were many things and last week I told some horrific stories I know about some places where I got but one thing that I was starting to notice when I reached my bottom and became willing to get help was I started to notice people were dying around me. You know, I started to notice that, you know, first there was one guy I knew that overdosed. And then there was another guy I new that had a, you know, drunk car accident. And then, there was another guy that I knew had a heart attack that was like 20 years old. And then, you know, one guy, you know, left my house. He was going to pick up drugs at 6 in the morning and, And, you know, next day the cops are on my house telling me he's in a dumpster, that he died, you know. And I thought, these are not my consequences. Like, I thought this is all about the other person. They did something screwed up. And I disassociated it from myself. And it was really only after I got a little time away from drugs and alcohol that I started to see that I was there in that picture with those people, you know. And for whatever reason, you know, we were all in this circle of friends and we were doing similar things and for whatever reasons people were starting to drop off and, you now, that scared me only because I was sober because when I was drinking I wasn't scared of dying, you know? I was scared of living, you know! I remember, you know, when I first got sober, I finally agreed that alcohol was my problem. And it took me a few days of drying out to realize that alcohol is my problem and it took me probably two years into the program to realize alcohol was the solution and that I was my problem. And alcohol was really what made me able to react to life, you know, to deal with what was being dealt me. You know, I hear a lot of times in this program about life on life's terms, you now dealing with life on lives' terms. But that sounds hard. That doesn't sound like fun. You now what? That's what I was doing when I was drinking. I was dealing with life on life's terms, you know, you gave me life and I drank. And then more life came at me and I drink and then I started to fight back at life. You know it was only in this program that I started to find out that life is fine and that I don't have to deal with life, I have to like experience it. And that was an incredible joy to me and a lot of that came from, well, it all came from step three and I was real glad to hear Kevin's talk this evening for his 10 minutes because he talked a lot about step three. And I think step three is, you know, it's an incredible step. It's the freedom step. It's the step that allows me to step into life and let it take me. And, you know, that was incredible to me. You know, I never experienced life like that. I was brought up, and I went through this a little bit last week, I was bought up in a family of very self-sufficient, independent people. You know? My mother was a bit of a feminist back in the day, the 60s and stuff, and, you know, a peace activist and all of that. And, you Know, basically she raised me and she raised my sister really as people who could take care of themselves, who could deal with life on life's terms, right? That's how I was raised, you Now, life gives you something, you give it back, you You're dealing with life. That's what I was taught was, you Get a punch, you Give a punch. You get knocked down, you get up again. I was never taught to let go and see where life is going to take me. And that was completely different for me when I came in a little while to AA and finally found myself at the group that became my home group, which was in Secaucus. And I was just chatting with Ron outside because when I chose that group for my home group, I lived in Staten Island still. And I found myself in that group and I heard things that I had never heard before about working the steps and about saving my life and about reaching out and helping others. And when I heard those things, I felt like I finally had come home. And I remember the first meeting I went to there, my parents dropped me off at an 8 o'clock meeting and they said what time should we come back? And I said 9.15 because that will give me a few minutes to talk to people after. And sure enough then my parents were the early people and they showed up at 9.05 and I could hear their car outside idling, you know, because I still had my keen sense of hearing at a mere three or four months. So I heard the car outside idling, and 9 o'clock passed. It was an 8 o' clock meeting. 9 o´clock passed, and nobody's getting up and holding hands and saying a prayer, and everybody's just sitting there and they keep on talking. And they went, they had, a format was they went around the room. It wasn't a circle. It was actually a long table. But they went about it. They went around a room, and somebody got a chance in a row to share on the topic, which was the big book. It was a Friday night big book meeting. And so people were sharing and I thought, looks like about, it was a big meeting, maybe 50, 60 people and it looked like about another 10 people to go. We weren't stopping. So I went outside and I said to my parents, I don't know, should I leave? And they said, what do you think? Do you want to leave? And I said, no. All I want to do is sit there and hear these people. And I never felt like that in a meeting before. And maybe there were great meetings. There actually was a good big meeting in Staten Island, but I wasn't ready to hear the message. You know and that night I was ready to here it and God I remember it got to be 915 and still they're sharing. And by 930 there was one person left to share and this woman by the name of Diana and I love Diana very much. But Diana likes to share for 20 minutes. And she's a very lovely lady and a very wonderful, wonderful person and a great role model to a lot of people in AA. But I just didn't get how she could start sharing an hour and a half into the meeting and go for 20 seconds. And I walked out of that meeting, and it was almost two hours. And I thought, I don't believe I just sat there for two hours, that was my first thought. And my next thought was, wow, like something going on there, you know? And I said to my parents, would it be okay if I came every Friday night? And they said sure, you Know, so I was actually newlywed at the time, and I used to take the bus from the city, because I worked in the city. I would take the boss to Seaclockus, walk to the meeting, and then my parents would pick me up after and I'd sleep over at their house because they lived up near there. And next day my new husband would come pick me up at Seacockus. And it never even occurred to me that that was an odd thing for a newlywed to do, choose to have a night away from your brand-new husband because I felt like I finally had come home. And it's an incredible feeling, you know, and it's a feeling of trusting in the process. It's a feelings of hope. It is like I'm going to be okay. And I can't explain why I felt it. I didn't have that many real details in common with a lot of people there. They were an open meeting, as this one is, and they felt actually very strongly that any substance could be a problem for people with addictive personalities. And they had people in that group not only were drug addicts, even not alcoholics, but they had food addicts and all kinds of, you know, debt people and, you know, people in debt and all kind of like, you know, every different kind of person in there. And codependents, they had like all of that stuff. And the thing that all these people had in common was nothing to do with their substance of choice. It was 100% to do with they all wanted to seek a common solution. And that's why I felt at home there, because I was finally able to put aside the stuff I did when I was an active alcoholic and start working on grabbing a hold of my future and grabbing ahold of my destiny. And, you know, that's really what I found out. You know, last week I shared that, you Know, I found up there that the time of my death was changed, you know. And I knew that there was something real behind that and I said, ìYou know what? I want to work on a solution too. Tell me what do I have to do?î And so they gave me all the books and they could read a step a day and so I started to do that and called my sponsor. I was not great at calling the sponsor but I called other alcoholics And I started to get better. And so, you know, the thing is that for me, step three is like an exercise in changing my mind. So where I used to deal with life like it was a challenge that I had to meet, I had To change my mind and say, life is life. I'm the challenge. Maybe I need to put myself to the side and experience life the way life is. And I started to, you know, do things differently. But at first, I didn't understand the deal about changing your mind. And I asked a lot of questions about it. You know, how do you do everything the opposite of the way you used to do? And people explained to me all these things. In the book, in the big book, it talks about spiritual experiences. It says, Huge Emotional Displacements and Rearrangements. And it talks about the ideas, emotions, and attitudes which used to be the guiding forces of these men are cast aside in a completely new set of motives and ideas come to dominate them, right? And so it was like I read that and I said, how do you do that? How do you take everything that you know and believe in and not just throw it out the window, but turn it upside down? Do the opposite. And it's funny how God works. I started to watch TV in early sobriety. I hadn't really watched TV the last number of years of active alcoholism because I was very, very busy. I was very busy, and truthfully couldn't focus on anything like a TV set. And so I started to watch TV, and one of the shows that I enjoyed in early sobriety was a show called The John Larroquette Show, that some of you may remember. It was a story about a guy trying to get sober, working in a bus terminal. And it was a real funny show, and they showed him going to meetings. This was one of those early shows that they showed people going to meetings, now they show that all the time. And I love that David Crosby was his sponsor, you know. And unfortunately that hasn't all worked out that well for David Corsby. But, you now, another show that I discovered in early sobriety was Seinfeld. And it was, you kno, well past its prime. You know, it was in its mid to later years. But it was still on in prime time TV. And I discovered Seinfel. And I watched an episode one night where, and you guys all know it's a very famous episode. George is in the little luncheonette where they all eat, and he decides that since everything he ever did his whole life made him the loser he is, what he really should do is the opposite of everything he thinks is right. And the first thing he does, he orders chicken salad instead of tuna, and then he goes up and talks to a woman that he never met before, which he would never do before. And he does all these opposite things. And sure enough, by the end of the episode, you know, he's dating this beautiful girl who knows George Steinbrenner, and, you Know, by The End of That Season, of course, he's working for the Yankees, which is his dream job. And I said, that's what they mean. They mean if you feel like ordering tuna, you order tickets. And it means all the little things, because all day we make choices in our life. Every day I make little choices. Do I go here? Do Igo there? Do I take this shortcut? Do Igothatway? Every day of my life I make choices. And it's all about making different choices for all those little things. And if I work on the little thing, the bigger ones will come easier. And so it's all about, like, these little things. And so I started to make different choices. And, you know, one of the things for me was I used to always be the designated driver. You might find that funny, me standing here after everything I told you last week. Everybody thought I drove just fine. And I used to actually shuttle people back and forth between the bar that closed at 2 and the one that closed before, because other people would say, I can't drive, I'm too drunk. Beth, can you drive me? And I literally would shuttle people black and forth. And I was the organizer. Like, people would all call me and say, where are we going tonight? Well, you know, I'd say there's a really good band playing at this bar, or, you now what, it's dark night at that bar, or, let's go to this beach or something. And, you know, all of a sudden it would take off and I would organize. And so in sobriety, I started to notice that that was happening too. I started To notice like I went to this Friday night stigma group every week. And afterwards, we would say, oh, anybody want to go to the diner? How about a movie, right? And I noticed that if I said, yeah, you what, let's go to a movie. and someone would take out a newspaper and I'd say, wow, I'd really like to see this and it's playing in 15 minutes. You know, everybody want to go. And all of a sudden there'd be all these people going. But I noticed when I started to say, you know, why don't you guys decide what you're going to do and if I feel like going to that movie you're going to, I'll let you know. All of a suddenly nobody's going to movies. And so I kind of felt bad about that because I said everybody was at a great time at the movies. But then I thought, you know, maybe just like it's my turn to stop organizing and it's other people's turn to start organizing. Right? Maybe I can let that happen naturally. And so, you now, it was like little things like that. Those little things, you kno, where I just thought let me try something different. And I would walk, because what would happen was I would pick a certain movie. Okay, here's what would have happened. When I would pick a certain movie, I'd say, Iíd like to see this movie. Three people would say, oh, thatís a great movie. I want to go see that too. And two people would says, I already saw it. So now Iím stuck on the organizer. Now Iíve got to choose between the ones who said they really want to with me and the ones who said that they already saw us. And you know, the people that say, well, I didnít have dinner. Iíd really rather go to the diner. And now itís all me. Now Iím like controlling. So I had to put that to the side and say, you know what? Everybody's going to decide for themselves. And I picked where I feel like going. Sometimes I went nowhere. One of them went to sleep, you now. And I started to notice I felt better about myself. I didn't feel like I had be responsible for everybody in the world, you kno. And so, you kow, why would I do that, right? Well, it's not really about the movie. But it's about, I knew I needed to be different from what I was before. Because people said to me, the same Beth that walked down those church steps three months ago will always end up drunk or high. So I've got to end up at some point being a different Beth walking down those steps if I don't want to endup drunk or high. I've gotta do something to change. And I can't change my inner core, right? My inner core is the thing. I can change some of my behaviors. I can change some of my thoughts. And why would I want to change my behaviors and thoughts? Well, because they got me in trouble, right? Because they made my life a mess. Because it says in the book all my scorecards read zero, right. I was a nothing. So why not change? You know, it was just like George in the Seinfeld. Why not change ? I was loser. Everything that I did up until that point I thought was totally right got me nothing but a seat in one of those chairs. I had this penny list, owed plenty of money. People were mad at me, my family, you know. I mean, I had nothing. Why not change? You know, and I don't, some years later I was stuck in a rehab that I go to pretty often and I was talking to the women there about changing your mind. And I said, you You know, we only change our mind when we're changing it for something better. And I like to look at, I work in an office in the city. I've been doing various types of office work for a lot of years. And when I first started working in an office, we used to, we didn't have computers. Not like any computer that you guys know today. And we had, we used to type up a lot of stuff on typewriters and they were these little typewriters and some of you too young to know about these but they had these little metal bars that held the letter on the end of them. When you pressed the button the thing would come jumping out and fly out at the paper, you know? And if you typed too fast what would happen was they'd all get jammed up together and be a big sweaty mess, you know, and it was terrible. And then, you know, when you made a mistake they used to have this stuff they called correcting tape. It was like this white tape and you rubbed your pencil eraser on it and God knows it never really took out the mistake. It never did. And so every time you typed something you customarily would have to type it two or three times before you got something that was anywhere presentable, right? And then they came out with the IBM Selectric typewriters, with the little balls. And all of a sudden you could type fast. I'm not a fast typer, don't get me wrong. But every once in a while I'd get on a little roll, you know, where I'd type one word fast, you know. I didn't like it when that would happen and my things would all tangle up. So now I got this little ball and I had no problem giving up that old typewriter. No problem. put the correct tape right in with the ball, I was a happy, happy camper. And I had no problem giving up that little tape with the pencil eraser. No problem changing my mind, you know? And time wears on and, you know, and I work in banking and I worked with a lot of numbers and I remember, you now, we used to have this giant ledger paper with columns and rows and every month we used have to manually accrue all the interest and everything and we would write it in pencil. We would do it in a calculator, although I worked for Japanese bank and there were other people that used the abacus but I wasn't that advanced so I used a calculator and when, and then we would right the number in pencil but let me tell you, you could spend four hours getting those columns and rows to all put up because you know you write one number wrong, you'd never find it and eventually you're erasing your pencil mark so much, there's a hole in the paper. Horrendous. And they came up with computers and, you know, spreadsheets and stuff. You know what? I had no problem giving up that ledger paper. I didn't even hesitate one minute. Give me that computer. You know? And now, of course, you guys are all spoiled young people, right? You go on Word and you type your thing and you hit spell check and grammar check. I hate to tell you spell check and grammar check doesn't really save your butt, you know. Read it yourself, you know? I caught something the other day. I work for a large company and I get something called the daily quality quote. They're like a quality officer, people whose job is just to think about quality all day. And they send us an email every day, a quality quote, and she sent an email the other it was quoting someone very, very high up in the company who's considered, we call these six sigma champions of quality. Like these people are award-winning quality people nationwide, you know, known. And she misspelled a word. And she wrote the word exacted instead of exalted. But the context clearly didn't call for the word exactly. And I wrote back to her and thousands and thousands of people get this email every day. It's the quality quote. And it was about striving for excellence. And it was about doing it right the first time. So I wrote back to her, I think you meant to write, speaking of striving for excellence, I think he meant to writing bolted instead of exacted. And, you know, her answer back to me was one word, damn. You know, like 20,000 people on his email chain. She didn't even bother to send, you know, she didn't even bother to send a correction out because so many people are so used to spell check and grammar check that they figure if spell check and grammar check didn't catch it, it doesn't exist. So anyway, the point is that we never mind giving up what's not working for what is working. And so I was at the point in my life where things were clearly not working. So I was open, I was willing like they say in the third step and so I made a decision and when I made the decision to give up my life and my will to the care of my creator. I did it with let's say reluctance or trepidation because I didn't know what was going to be on the other side, I just knew what I was doing wasn't working and what I would be suggested to do was working for other people you know but I knew that What I had, which was self-sufficiency, was no longer working properly. And I was told that relying on an outside power, a group, anybody but me, you know, is better than relying on me. I was specifically told that my mind was a bad neighborhood and that I should never go there unsupervised. I remember that, you know, always. And so I said, well, what do I have to do to, you know, do the third step? And, you know, it really tells me in the prayer, you know, tell me, it says build with me and do with me as thou wilt. And I love that because, you know, there's a pretty way of saying let me be of maximum service. find me something to do in my day-to-day to be of service. And it's not just to be of service to AA or alcoholics, to serve the community that I live in. Right? Because all of a sudden, like I said, now I found myself living in the world. And all of the sudden I found myself not fighting life but trying to live with it. And so I want to give back. You know, it really is the community, the world that's holding me. And, you know, I can say it's God, it's a higher power. But, you Know, I live in this earth with a lot of people. And I'm only here because all of them are forming a tight net around me, keeping me up, you know. So, you know, it's kind of good when I can give back, you know, when I do something good for the community. I love doing, you know, community type work. I work in a couple of peace groups and I do a couple of volunteer projects in the schools in the city, cleaning up and stuff. And I love doing that. You know, that's a way for me to give back to the community that somehow lets me live in it, you know, despite all the things that I did, you know not to deserve it. And so you know I say it's a good thing that life is not fair because if life was fair I wouldn't be living this good life, you know. It's a good thing that I get so much more out of life than what I gave to it. So right now, you know, I'm trying to kind of balance it out a little better, give a little extra to make up for that fact, you know. So it tells me that. And then I love the part also, relieve me of the bondage of self. See, because to me the third step is the freedom step. You know, when I went to rehab, they told me a lot about people, places, and things. Stay away from them, they said. Danger, right? Well, you know what does that mean? So you know me being the intellectual right I had to break that down. Well what does it mean? You know does that mean I can't go to like abandoned buildings where people are smoking crack? That's pretty obvious right? Does it mean that I can go to restaurants where they're serving alcohol? Does mean you know I can pay at the billboard where there's a beer sign, you know. What does it mean? You never talk to the people that drink? All right. See I got, see and then I found out from one of my very wise friends in this program that not only do I have to still talk to people who drink sometimes but it's actually a requirement because my primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety. See, I can't do that if everybody I know is already sober. So, you know, now I got to talk to people that drink. It's actually a requirement. So I had to find out what to deal with the people, places and things. And they told me in the rehab under no conditions. No parties where there's alcohol, no parties where the people who you used to drink with, no, you know, you can't go to Thanksgiving with your family if they drink wine. You know, the whole, like, they gave me the list, you now, of all the many things I couldn't do. And I thought, I might as well be dead, right? I'll never go anywhere. I'll ever do anything. I'll just die, you kno. And what they didn't tell me was that's how I have to act until I've got the third step. because when I have the third step, I can go any place that I'm supposed to be at because I'm suppose to be there, so I have to go there, you know, and how do I know it? Because I'm put there, and it's kind of circular, right? Because I need to be here, and I need be there because I am there. But, you now, the thing was that I wanted to be free, like when I ended up at this sea caucus group, I saw people laughing and having parties and being around other people and going to places and enjoying themselves. And some of them worked in restaurants that served liquor. And they did all these things, and they didn't drink. And I said, what do you have to do? And they said, you have the work to stop. And they say, you don't have to work. You have to read the books. You have reach out to other alcoholics. So I did it because I needed to. And one of the things that I was, well, they told me that you have to go out on commitment. And that's a rule for that group. If you have 90 days, you have go out and speak in commitment. And if you don't have 90 day, you'd have to out for support of other people. So, and they don't get around. And they do, and the fact is we used to do a lot of rehab, still does a lot of rehab and detox commitment. And so I ended up, and you'll have to read the District 34 newsletter to find the details. But I ended up at a commitment in Secaucus for a place called Turning Point and was reading the big book with the clients there every week. And I noticed a funny thing, I noticed that every time I started my Saturday, I went Friday night to my big book meeting, Saturday morning I woke up and I went to this rehab and I read the book and discussed it with clients there. And I noticed that the whole rest of the weekend went like a dream, like everything was exactly perfectly timed and perfectly placed. And I didn't notice it at first. Actually what made me notice it was one particular day when that happened and I was talking in the rehab and I'm telling the women there, you know, were leaving that weekend to make sure that they had a ride home and if they didn't, I would drive them home. You're never supposed to take mass transit home from a rehab, all this danger. And they all swore to me that they have rides home. And sure enough, a couple of really nice things happened to me during the day. I went food shopping and people were nice to me in the store and all that. And then later that evening, I was coming back to Seacaucus to meet some friends for dinner before the meeting and, before the Saturday night meeting, and I'm passing by the rehab and there's this girl sitting at the bus stop outside the rehab. And I stop my car and I go, what are you doing? Waiting for the bus. Did I tell you not to take the bus? Well, yeah, but my ride fell through. I told you to call me. Oh, well, I didn't get to call you. Okay, here I am getting in my car. And she got in my core and I said to her, where do you live? Because she lives in Irvington. I live like ten blocks from Irvingdon, you know. And so I said, well that's going to be convenient for me. So then do you need to really go home right now? And she says no. I said well hang out with me. We'll have dinner, we'll go out to a meeting, we will go out for a movie, whatever. I organize a little bit. Sometimes I fall back into my evil ways. So we did that and we didn't end up going to the movie, we ended up going in the diner because you know more people want to go and I thought that would be good for her as a newcomer you know to sit and smoke and you know have cheesecake with everybody. And you know, that's what we did. And so and we were driving out of the diners parking lot and all of a sudden there was a car accident right in front of us. And, you know so we stopped to see if the people needed help because that looked like this one girl, the one driver who was making some trouble. And she gets out of the car. That's this girl I know from the program. And she lived in Rutherford and she was just passing through and had a car accident. And the other person was trying to claim that she did the act, you know, she was the damaging person and, you know... Unbelievably, there was I and this other girl there to be the witnesses and sign that police statement that, you Know, she was totally like blindsided. And I got home that night and I thought, after I dropped the girl in Irvington 10 blocks from my house, I thought how did that happen? It was like you know one of those twilight spots and then I thought back of all the things that had been happening to me on a weekend and I realized that every time I started my weekend thinking about other people, instead of thinking about me, I ended up every time being in the right place at the right time. And once I realized it, then I started to notice it every week. And then I thought, this is very cool, right? Because you just, you know, you waste an hour and a half of your time reading a book with some girls and then everything works out perfectly. And not everything, of course, you know, I didn't get rich or you know whatever happened. The wonders of the world showered on me but every little thing was starting to...