Taking the Wisdom of the Old Timers for the Newcomers – David

Hello everybody my name is David I'm an alcoholic and it's good to be here good to sober today. I was listening to the sad experience that one of our friends mentioned about his cousins and I'm afraid as you all know it's a sad fact that most of our brothers and sisters don't make it. So I'm one of the lucky ones to be sitting here sober. I've just made a couple of notes, I haven't got it all written out in great detail but there are just some points about the founders. You probably have read the books, the two books, Dr. Bob and the Good Old Timers, and pass it on, it tells you about Bill W's story there, and the amount of effort and time that those people put into AA, they spent years and years of their life just putting AI on the map really and and getting the whole program going and I regretted that of gratitude to those guys really wonderful work I've always found that the programmers is very user friendly because I'm sort of person if you tell me what to do I'll do your thing but if you if you talk about your experience and you know i can take what i want from that and it's it's as i say it's very user friendly and it seems to suit me very nicely actually and that is why ai i found it is is so inviting really it's a wonderful way uh the message is passed on from one person to another really with myself just a couple of points I'd like to mention I when I get my change out I've got it here I always carry my AA chip with me it's always there so I probably look at that AA chip as many times as I get money out to change and it's just another reminder for me anyway that's so important to me I go to four meetings a week because really I'm uncomfortable with that it it puts me on an even keel and it reminds me about the situation really because I always think this is my opinion that the drunk David goes with me when I got sober the drunk David didn't jump on a train and bugger off he's with me all the time and that's just the way it is how I feel from the service point of view I do do service and I find that one of the one the best forms of service I do is telephone duty because as I say it's a reminder to me about the situation and I'm often speaking to guys and girls who are really you know they've come to the end of their tether and I am privileged to be able to pass them on to somebody else or invite them along to a meeting And it's a wonderful way of service. That is the way that I came into the fellowship. I picked up the telephone and I spoke to Norman Woodstock, who was a true servant of AA for years. and really that was the first time that anybody asked me the question David do you think you've got a drinking problem and I said yes I have and I find myself eventually at an AA meeting it's interesting the way I look at booze even now I remember a few years ago my wife we were spending Christmas at home and my wife asked me to go do some shopping which I went out to do some shopping and she said look my father likes a drink so get some drinks in for William Williams for him so sure I put the took the supermarket trolley round and I got him a four pack of beer. I put it in the trolley and as I went around I kept looking at this and I thought that's not going to be enough. Anyway, I got them another four pack but in the end when I came out of the supermarket I had four packs of booze that's 16 bottles 16 cans of boozy and when we got home my wife said what's all that for? What's all there for? I said, well, you said your father liked to drink, didn't he? And he drank one or two cans of beer the whole time. I'm making that point. It's just the way that I consider other people should drink, really. So, yeah, I'm wild at it differently. I'm wide at it different to civilians, really My sobriety date is the 15th of August 1978 and it's just as I say it's really great to be sober there's something here I don't know whether you'd be interested but I did fish out the AA preamble from 1940 so there it is it's quite lengthy but I just read out a couple of paragraphs you might be interested in It starts off by saying we are gathered here because we are faced with the fact that we are powerless over alcohol and unable to do anything about it without the help of a power greater than ourselves. We feel that each person's religious views, if any, are his own affair. The simple purpose of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous is to show what may be done to enlist the aid of a power greater than ourselves regardless of what our individual concept of that power may be and then it ends where was it there's something else I just wanted to read read out another paragraph could you I'm just trying to teach it's not interested in sobering up drunks who are not sincere in their desire to remain sober for all time not being reformers we offer our experience only to those who want it. And the last couple of paragraphs, we do not speak for AA as a whole and you are free to agree or disagree as you see fit. In fact it is suggested that you pay no attention to anything which might but might not be reconciled with what is in the AA big book. And the Last Paragraph reads, if you don't have a big book it's time you bought one. Read it, study it, live with it, scan it, scatter it, and then learn from what it means to be an AA. So it's quite a powerful preamble, really hard-hitting preample. I think we use what I feel is the sanitised version now. But this is big stuff, really. Yeah, back to myself. As a kid, I was a pretty insecure sort of lad. As I've heard it say so many people, not too happy in my own skin. I think that's the way to sum it up. And I always felt a little uneasy. I remember my, I've got, well, I had an older brother and my parents. And when they went out for socially, there was always a drink involved in it. And I remember serving, I suppose it's serving my apprenticeship and standing outside many pubs in South London, drinking Coke and eating crisps and wondering what went on with that magical place there, which was the pub. Because I used to look out of the window and the twinkling lights and everybody seemed to be happy and having a great time. And the one thing I remember is that when my parents and my brother came out of The Pub they were always far happier than when they went into The Pub. So I thought this is something I've got to experience really. and I eventually left school, I left school when I was 17 and I obviously got a job and I could go into a pub and stand in my corner and I remember my first serious drink like it was yesterday. It was 60 plus years ago and I went into the leather bottle opposite the Nelson Hospital on the A3 south of London and I had four points. I believe it was bitter and I remember drinking this beer and what I thought was a wonderful thing happened to me and it was almost as though i've been catapulted from this insecure sort of kid into somebody who was superman i was everybody's friend everybody loved me the world was my oyster and everything was possible and basically i think that feeling i had i chased that feeling for for 19 years i drank for 19 years maybe a little longer than that and as we know that alcoholism is progressive illness and throughout that time I could see in hindsight I could see the way that I progressively drank more and more and more until booze had me by the throat really. That was about it. When I left school, I really wasn't sure what I wanted to do with my life and I bobbed about from job to job. I was a milkman, a clean easy brush salesman and I really made a smart career move in 1962. remember there might be one or two of you who are old enough to remember the 1962 winter when it froze up for 10 or 11 weeks well I was a milkman during that time which was just the last job as you should really have in that time and I was the milkman for a few years and I bobbed about not as I say not knowing what I wanted to do in my life and I eventually almost fell into the sort of job that was really suited to me i was a self-employed salesman and it seemed to fit in with my alcoholic drinking because as long as i got the results in um nobody bothered me as long like you know bought the bacon home and when i started when i starting uh the job when I got my arse in gear I was doing ok I got some decent irons and decent money but as time progressed the amount of time I spent working decreased and the amount of time I spent boozing increased I got married when I was 24 and I married this lovely lady she really once to go to therapy because she's still with me at that time and I she was a teacher and so when we were both working it was fine because she was bringing in an income and I was bringing my income was intermittent and she obviously had a steady income so I could always tell her that obvious things will get better next month and I could always fob it off as my income reduced I could tell her that everything was going to be fine we were all going to march into the bright new world next month and she seemed to you know understand that but the fun started when she told me that she was expecting a baby and I thought even at that time I could I realized that my drinking was was was getting out of hand all my relations and my friends were tearing their hair out about the amount of booze i was consuming i was mildly concerned put it that way and as i say when she left work that's when the problems really took off um i my boozing increased my the amount of work i was doing decreased and i was getting in serious financial difficulties and something that um um not particularly proud of but they talk about not wishing to shut the door in the past um and i i tricked her into signing a piece of paper which she thought was for the application for the buildings and contents insurance actually it was an application for a second mortgage so that I could get some money and pay off them the more my pressing more and more pressing debts now I didn't make any repayments and by this time we had two children and the fellow from the finance company came knocking on the door one day and i was out i was probably boozing at the time and the fellow said in so many words to my wife look if you don't get your husband to clear this these debts up we are going to repossess the house and kick you out and at this time she had two youngsters and he went away and in sobriety we talked about this and I said to her well why didn't you tell me that he called and she said well it would just have given you another reason to go and she was quite right she was quite right and as time went on I really couldn't understand I couldn't understand these social drinkers and I still have struggled trouble in understanding such people but I just couldn't understand how a guy could walk into a pub have a couple of pints and then go home and have a bite to eat it really wasn't it was beyond my ken and i drank i used to drink barley wine now barley wines are fine as long as you hold your nose and drink it you're okay because it tasted like paint stripper but it did the job of getting me drunk which is what i wanted And I drank by wine to excess, of course. And I suppose as time went on and my booze increasing, it became more and more difficult for me to live with myself, put it that way. I think that's a reasonable way of summing it up. And it was all about I, myself, and me. And it wasn't the fact that my wife, we've got a couple of youngsters and my wife was doing her best to look after them. Well she had three youngsters and one of them was in his thirties you know and it must have been such a ghastly situation for her but as I say my drinking progressed and progressed until I got to the stage where I phoned Norman and Woodstock up. Because I thought to myself, I just can't handle this anymore. What I really wanted when I phoning AA, I wanted somebody to tell me how I could continue to drink and all the crap associated with it was taken out of the picture so that I could amicably carry on drinking. And after Norman spoke to me, he suggested I went to a meeting and I went to a meet and when the chair finished speaking and we went round the room and when it came for my turn to speak I burst into tears and I said I'm my first words in AA was I'm desperate I need some help I'm not so desperate now but I still need help now and then when When the meeting finished, I was given a beginners pack and a list of meetings. That was in mid 70s, 76. Now there weren't too many meetings in Oxford at the time, but I took the beginners pack home and I read it, I read all the leaflets in the beginners' pack and when I was reading leaflets i really couldn't understand what they were all about because every word on every one of those leaflets applied to me and they had me cold you know i could just identify with everything that was written i thought well this is crazy i've never met these people but they seem to know me like the back of their hand um and i went to a couple of meetings after that and i soon i pretty soon realized the score i really pretty soon realised that i was an alcoholic um and i always think wouldn't it be lovely if i didn't pick up another drink and we all skipped off into the bright new world but it didn't quite work out that way because the last thing i wanted to do was stop reading and I went to meetings and I drank and I carried this on for just about two years just over two years and when I went to meetings by this time I'd heard the stories of most of the people in the rooms their stories were horrendous some of them and they were sitting there at a meeting quite comfortable within themselves quite happy with their lot laid back as though they hadn't got a care in the world and I thought well I want something like that I want to be that way I want to be in that mindset but I wasn't prepared to do anything about it I was just, I thought, it was almost what I wanted to happen was that I walked into an AA room and somebody sprinkled the magic sobriety dust on me and everything would be fine. Or I wanted somebody to take me into a corner and say, David, this is the last piece in the jigsaw. This is what you've got to do. And it didn't, nothing happened like that and I was in despairing of myself. And I remember I was Oxford, I think it was a Wednesday, and this is where people talk about the higher power, well the higher came into my life then as it did when I phoned up the AA helpline that was the first step and I said to myself David you can do one or two things here you can pick up a drink as you normally do or you can get yourself to a meeting now as I mentioned earlier there weren't too many meetings in the Oxford area at the time and there wasn't a meeting on a Wednesday in the Oxford area. So I jumped in the car and I drove up to London, and I drove up the Marylebone Road and I went to the meeting at on the corner of Thayer Street in the Hind Street off the Marylbone Road. And I listened to the chair well I didn't know I didn t take anything about what the chair was saying and at the end of the meeting I said to the I rushed up and I said this to the secretary Peter his name was Peter I d never met him since after the meeting. I said Peter I ve got to speak to you I ve gotta speak to so he said well okay we ll have a cup of coffee then so we went to the local coffee shop as soon as we sat down I started to tell him how bad things were doing it and I can't get sober blah blah blah and after about five he said just a minute David let me get word and edge raise with you so okay I stopped talking and he said let me ask a few questions he said are you reading the big book no okay do you have a home group no have you got a sponsor no are you going through the steps no and he asked me about half a dozen of these questions all of which I said no to and at the end of my answering his questions he looked at me and he said David there's not a lot more I can say is that and he we soon parted company after that and I just wondered what he was talking about because it was still double-dutch to me and I remember going away from that meeting probably more confused on when I went into the meeting with him and I couldn't work it out what was going on and I I suppose my brain processed it and what I put it down to was the fact that I wasn't putting anything into AA, and I was expecting everything out of AA. I wasn t doing anything to help me get myself sober but I was expecting so much and it was a gradual realization really and I went to one meeting about two or three weeks after our meeting, my meeting with Peter and I found that at that meeting I wanted to stay sober more than I wanted to drink and that's the first time that had happened to me. And I got small bits of serenity. As time went on, I found that I became more and more comfortable in my own skin. When I tried to put into practice what Peter had talked to me about, getting a home group, a sponsor working the steps doing things that people people usually normally do to help themselves get themselves sober and I remember in my early days when I after this time I was really fed up with things and I said to one old timer I said look how long do I have to keep going to these bloody meetings and he up to me he said you have to keep going to them David until you want to go to meetings and I thought yes it isn't had to its want to I want to and I want to go through meetings now and I found that sobriety is progressive as alcoholism is progressive I mentioned service well I found the services an excellent way for me to get myself out of my skin and do something about Alcoholics Anonymous. Try to put something back into AA for all the benefits that I've got being sober today. For me, AA is like a foundation of a house and the foundation has got to be solid. I go to meetings and I hear about people, I go through the beginners meeting in Oxford on Sunday and I heard some people say I took a drink and I went out and nine times out of ten people then say I stopped going to meetings I stopped going to meeting so it didn't happen to me for three months six months but eventually happened to them and that is a that's the thought that I bear in mind that I am one day away I've got to do this on a daily basis and not think that I'm Mr. AA I'm not I'm just not just a drunk who hasn't had a drink today and I tried to put in what I get out of AA and I found that with service I get so many benefits from that. I get so much peace of mind and serenity. I do sponsor a few people. Different people have different ways of sponsoring. I always let the sponsor do the running, and I encourage to phone me if they want to but it's really this there's some writing and I'll do whatever I can if I'm asked but they've got to want to to take the first step then on I'll take another step with them I go to the Friday breakfast meeting at 730 in the morning it's great about 30 35 people at that meeting and it's it's a great meeting and um i get some you know i guess they have some wonderful sharing of the routine um but anyway i think i've spoken enough and thank you so much for listening to me thank you I was always told the first drink's a mental drink, and the actual physical drink is the second drink. And I've always kept that in my mind, you know? And you know when you're going, don't you, to be quite honest, because I know when I stop going. You know, there's the whole outlook and everything on life isn't it, you know, listening to people is a big thing isn't? You know say listen with respect, listen truthfully. I wonder if there's a fellow from Bracknell, Melvin, and I think the thing that touched me most about him and I've never lost it to be quite honest. is the fact that AA gave me time of day. Gave me time that my family couldn't give me. I remember, I was coming out of a relationship and it was madness and I wanted to be right. I don't know why I wanted to be rightly doing, you know? And I was trying to get in the arguments to get these sort of things out. And we used to have a meeting and funny if that big book is, this is another thing I find. So that big book is from the 11-step meeting on the Oxford Road, and someone was going to throw it in the bin. And I thought, you know, it's like... I don't know why, I wasn't... You know, I kept it, and you can still see the yellow smoke on the pages, you knows? And I was in this meeting, and I couldn't work out what people were saying about feelings and emotions, but I knew what the truth was, and I knew a lot of people said the truth would set you free. Anyway, getting back to what I was saying, i was living off the options road when melvin said can you come back for a cup of tea and uh he used to have the old roll-ups didn't in there what do you call them i can't remember the name of sweets now right and he starts at me and he's turned around that he's talking to me and the thing is about certain people there are certain kind of animals you can see it in the eyes can't you tell me and it's looking at me and i'm looking at him right and this really used to talk about having an accident you know And I identified with the axe. Because, you know when you're sharing for the first time and you're being honest? I hated that experience of being vulnerable when you shut up. Because I think, who's going to pick up on me? So I used to sit next to Melvin and he had the axe because I think I'd work out things in my head. If I say something honest about being that and I have a quick head cap on and I know he don't like him and she's not too keen on knowing what he's doing I'd workout right and I'm not going to get slaughtered by the whole room there's always going to be a certain amount of people if someone else, you know what I'm saying if someone has a pop at you he's going to have a go at you you're not stupid are you and he sat up at me in his kitchen and the difference I think I felt with Melvin there different times it wasn't like someone looking down at me it wasn' t like being the coppers or anything at all it was like on a level and I knew that he was going to talk to me and I'm not going to swear but I had that attitude And I thought, this bloke is prepared to waste time with me. No, no, I don't listen. I don t care. And I laugh it off. And that was a big change in my outlook on life. I was aware that someone was giving their time to me. It's like sometimes, like, I mean, I ain't got a lot of patience with a lot people. You know, if someone s genuine, I move over the nerve for them. But if someone's, like playing acting out here or they're trying to make it, you know, it's like some people think they've invented misery or whatever when they come in this is manageable if you don't want to drink, you don'T have to drink and people said to me the responsibility is yours now and I get back to Melvin and I've looked at him and the longer I've been sober, the more I look back the more i think that was quite a profound moment in my life really because something was working between the two of us because we're both um a bit wild so you know i mean you know and um and another time i've been touched you know they should say no don't only takes a moment just listen like you know i wouldn't know noise to be listening but um i remember someone used to say in the meetings it only takes some moments we love the whole lifetime through see i thought you had to have love love love love love i think we all start coming away it's just a moment and you cherish it and it grows And it was one of my... I'm going to get out of this now, I'm pretty tired. It was when my little girl was in the hospital and she'd been hit by a fella. She's alive and well, got two children, she's great, I never sort of say this bit. And it Was The First Song Of My Life, I really didn't know if I'd changed. You know like you go through things, have I really, really, bottom line, have I changed? Or is the lunatic going to come out and play? Like you said, the drunken Davids. I was always worried about the crazy Bernie coming back. Especially right now, I'm clued up now. I'm not going to be drunk, so I ain't going to leave evidence. You know? And this was... My little girl was there and, you know... And I'm thinking, I've got... And the peer pressure, another thing, you knows, right? I've gotta do this fella that's done this to her, right. And I forget it, and the door opened and Mick come through the door. As soon as I saw Mick in the hospital, I knew I was safe. I knew it. I knew I wasn't going to act, I knew I'd have the courage to walk out and to turn around to have that, and I'm not giving you know... That lad did not set out that morning to hit my door with a van that was an accident and AA gave me the ability to believe that whereas my old crowd you know people would have hurt him just to prove how much you make down mind you wouldn't be that madness you know and some of us have gone through a lot of ideas and the result was nil and see we let go absolutely that people step around nothing they just say to me half measures of elders nothing you know nice stuff i'm swearing and um but repetition is the art of learning isn't it david you know yeah i still think trust like you said there at the the beginning of AA with that if it hadn't been for the preamble I wouldn't be alive you know I would I would have stayed in AA because I come into AA and I'm not going to go off on long because I get this now, I come in to AA and I thought was full of old Bill and Freemasons you know what I mean I thought I'm lying around here and someone said to me listen to the pre-amble thank God they did you know and it's crazy isn't it preconceived ideas can kill you but what do we do Does anyone want to share? If anyone wants to share who hasn't shared already, would anyone like to say something? I love what you said there, you've got to keep going to meetings until you enjoy going to them or want to go to them. There's an American fellow around our neck of the woods who used to say there's three times you go to AA, that's when you want to, when you don't want to and at 8 o'clock. It's true and as soon as you stop going to the meetings and you go back out, oh I'll go back to that. and just remembering to do the basics of suggestions the suggestions you do on day one when you first get that sponsor phone a newcomer pray in the morning, pray in afternoon pray what you don't want just silly things they will keep us over and it's funny after a bit of time you stop doing them and then relax on your meetings before I know it I'm back out but you are absolutely right and going to the meetings didn't make a difference. But thank you very much for your time, I've got a lot from it. Nice to see you, thank you. Peter Markerholic. Peter. Mine's on the key ring. So we can't knock the front door. Crazy. But I rang AA a long time ago and for whatever reason the desire to drink, and I was on a crate of beer a day just to keep normal. If I went out I got drunk. and the desire to drink was taken away and I didn't suffer any withdrawal that does not make any sense at all and I went down the first meeting it was a non-com at the time and from the time I said oh I'm Peter an alcoholic it did a peace come on to me but I could never go anywhere unless it was alcohol and suddenly I got freedom being an alcoholic actually because I don't have to go where there's drink. I still go where this drink, but I don' t have to have it. But I could actually go out and visit places and I didn't need a drink when I got there. It was absolutely amazing. And I've been drinking a few years, probably seven or eight years as you know. I stopped when I was 32 or 34, I think. It just gives you life. And I'd been through crap since, you know? stopped drinking my daughter after about three months i think it was about three months she said thanks daddy i'm not drinking and i remember that and it still brings tears to me honestly i don't know where it was it's hong kong she looked at me said thanks for not drinking daddy because i used to make a crime on my terms and that's not why i stopped i stopped because i was going to die possibly i was emotionally and spiritually bankrupt but i was a high-end drunk i was working i was doing a job and never being in trouble apart from i was destroying myself and three months ago i run a marathon because two and a half started running a marathon so yeah i've run a few since but i'll be tired from that time but thanks very much david nice to see you thank you hello there thank you for taking the meeting and uh thank you david you know it was really I'm very early, I'm only two and a half years sober but the reason I thought I must come to Oldtimers convention today is you know ten years ago my dad passed away and when he passed away he mentioned, before he passed he mentioned that you know Sai you just need to quit drinking and you'll be okay. You are not a bad man, you just need to quit drinkin'. And I still remember when we did cremation and I said, Daddy, I'm not going to drink from now. I promise on you. And the very that evening, just after a few hours, I was drunk. you know and today I came for the meeting because I really wanted to take all the good things from the old timers and I don't want to take anything you know which which the way I have not listened to my dad you know I thought I must come here then take whatever you all have which is which is so important because I've always not listened to my father, you know? And then I think, you now, if I could relate to you when when you mentioned from Oxford to London, you drove and you spoke to the chair and he took you for a coffee. And I remember first time I went for a meeting that was in India and I just I cried and I said you know I really need I could understand the pain we were talking about and my first sponsor said do you know that you're going to die that was his first thing he said and I said what do you mean I'm going to do it so he told me all about illness and everything. He told me exactly what your sponsors told me, that have you got a sponsor? Do you understand what's going on? You have to understand that if you don't, then also keep coming back. He always said, keep coming back. And I kept coming back, and he told me to do 90 and 90 first. And I did that. And the moment I did my step one through three, I was coming to England. And he says, as soon as you reach England, you need to go to the meeting. As soon as we reach there, you need get connected. So I said, you know, can I not be, can you not be my sponsor still? And he said, no, it doesn't work like that. You want someone to be there physically. I said oh we can FaceTime. And he says no, no you don't understand you have to get, so I got a sponsor here, you now. And he has helped me with my steps and after a year I thought, you kno, I've done it. But he told me to go back to my step four and that's when I realized when I was doing my step but I realized that yes I have a lot of work and I've done my steps again and this time I've not done it thoroughly you know and you know I when we were talking I was thinking where is the yellow card in it there's no yellow card here on the table I'm thinking well it's in my head though you I remember one of the most important things for early comers is, you know, when I came here there was a sponsor I had and somebody said, oh, you need to take another sponsor, it's not working and blah, blah, and I think, you You know, for me, because I was in such a pain and all of that, I remember how important it is to keep the things within the rooms. Because I remember early days somebody came to me and said, you don't need to leave your sponsor. He's not the right sponsor, and blah, blah, blah. So I contacted my first sponsor and said I felt very useless. I feel very, again, like a lost soul. And he said, is your sponsor doing the meeting? Is your sponsor during this steps? Is he doing service? And the answer was all yes. So that day I realized that it's so important that we just keep everything what we speak about and won't do talks behind. I've got a lot from you, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Thank you, and what time should we come? Do you want to share? Sorry. I'm David, I'm alcoholic. Thank you very much, David, for what you're sharing there and you've put me in mind of a couple of things that I've conveniently forgotten about. You said something about six packs of beer. I remember six packs a beer because I nicked them from outside the shop. It was coming up with Christmas So they had these piles and piles of booze stacked outside. They were all in six packs that were in a blister pack. So I think there might have been eight packs of six packs in one of these blister packs, I'm not quite sure. But I grabbed one of those, put it on my bicycle and I licked it. I was off. No, change me. That was when I was doing it on a bicycle that was for my paper round, right? So I think maybe they may have been a little bit not quite right about my drinking at that time. I can't remember anything about what happened to that. You know, that's an awful lot of bloody beer when you're about 30 or 40 years old. I remember oofing that away. When you mentioned the old Hind Street meetings, well, they were very, very, sehr useful to me It must have been about nine months before I actually went to one of them and they're all very welcoming at the time. I used to go at 1 o'clock in the morning there with, I can't remember now, and they all used to bugger off into their little Italian cafe-cum-restaurant that was across the road and it was called Giovanni's, and they had a very skinny girl as a waitress there. And that was really, really useful for me. You know, like you said, you know, I was beginning to sound out the people that were basically comfortable in their own skin. And, you Know, I'm very, very fortunate, you know that I was just presented with this opportunity of doing it. uh yeah that was when i was 24 and i put myself in front of this geezer who's came up and he went through the list and he said you've got alcohol related behavior not only did he give me a lot of uh they didn't have them he has mentioned a new comes back but i'm sure at that time they didn t have one it was into like 81 82 or something that they actually started putting them together as new kind of things. He gave me like where to find and now that you've stopped and that little card, that little white card, just for today, how do you work at this? And then he gave me this list of meetings. This is a London 400, it's 400, I knew there was one because i knew he went to one 400 meters a week in london we're having a laugh from this i'm going through them all and eventually i'm going through i'm ticking them all off i'm gonna do them all someone said 99 years old nah it's too much my colors work you know had someone else say 13 30 oh i can do that so i did that i did it again did it again kept doing it and i'm sure i went a thousand minutes in a thousand days okay what are what inspired me was i heard from from people and their example as you say you know they're sitting there having meetings and they're listening and they do an awful lot more listening than the bunny don't talk about how grateful they You know, I've seen a lot of stuff that's sort of faltered. My experience is that people do not stay sober because of fear. They don't stay sober because of what might happen. They used to go on about the yets. I've had enough of the yetzs and I've done without the agains because it was crazy, you know? It was crazy. And it's wonderful now to be able to say i've actually been sober longer there was no one as sober as long as me as when when uh there's no one a sober as well as i am now then when i joined you know so and like yourself you know there is no one that would add 40 years because hey at that time we'd only be running about 35 years in this country No, so it really is a privilege to be here, you know, and I hope a lot of people will take something from that. And it really was a privilege for me to hear you today, David. Thank you, that's what I came for. Thanks very much. Thanks for sharing. Thank you. We'll go for dinner now, yeah? Are you going? I'm praying for you Brian and David would you like to close the meeting with a serenity prayer first yes sure I don't know you're cool would you please join me in the serenety prayer using the word God as you understand it please God God grant me the serenITY to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things i can and wisdom to serve us thank you thank you you do know let's get the link