The Intellectual Knowledge of the Big Book That Had No Application – Jim M.

my name is Jim Martin I'm an alcoholic thank you I've been sober since March 29th 1989 thanks to sponsorship like think Scott Jeff and Jim for inviting me me to come up and being so hospitable. I've known all of them for many years in various capacities and there's a lot of connections between this group here and our group back home and it's really it's nice to be able to come and hang out and enjoy some good times with you guys. I'd also like to shout out to Cliff over here, who if you guys want to hear a good talk, you need to come tonight. Cliff was a big part of my early sobriety and went and stayed with him for a few days before my wife and I got married. And I would go anywhere Cliff was when I was first couple years. I just love Cliff and it's great, good to see him. And again, thank you all for having me. I was born into an untypical alcoholic home in that both my parents were sober, sober members of AA. Both were active and AA was a constant feature of our home life from the earliest that I can remember. We lived in Washington D.C. for the first few years and moved out to uh moved out to Bellevue my dad was seeking a geographic cure of some sort I'm not sure where it was but but we moved out and and again you know they very active started groups and a lot of people around people people over the house all the time and and and I always loved alcoholics because they told raunchy jokes and had stories that my other little friends didn't get to hear, you know, corrupted me at an early age, all sorts of things. And so I always loved people in AA. At the same time, I felt, as you hear in these rooms constantly, that I had been left out of the meeting uh that in which everything was explained uh i i would go to school and i just didn't understand what these people wanted you know or or where they were coming from it just it just didn't make sense uh i always felt uh apart from spotlights always on me the focus is always you know on me when i mess up and and and you know i i you know that's that's how i started life I when I was six or seven I used to think that you know soon they're gonna get me figured out and there I'm gonna get locked up you know I'm nuts I'm crazy I don't you know III stay awake at night thinking about stuff and it just runs and runs and and and you know that's that's not a healthy seven-year-old attitude. It's not a good place to be. I had a bunch of little friends, and we all lied to each other about stuff, and that's kind of what I did, you know? I was the kind of guy that I was smart, but I did well in school, but it was never enough, kind of like Jim was talking about this morning you know it's it's whatever the achievement was didn't didn't fill that hole didn't make me feel any like i'd done anything it was just i'm covering up for all this other stuff and so i've got to keep overachieving to do this and i was also the kind of guy that let's say there's a sport activity is you know uh whatever if if i don't straight out of the gate be in the first one two or three people you know let's say it's a race you know and if i'm not one two or three then i i'm i'm going to do that anymore i quit you know uh i'm not willing to put in the work to do what's necessary to over you know to overcome whatever the problem is so i would quit and then begin to complain about the people who are doing it you know they have the problem you know and uh that that led to some problems later uh i uh my first drink was uh an accident we uh we went to see it really was we went a play uh my family actually my mom and dad me went to see this play and they served me the wrong thing a couple times. And I got wasted and they were laughing at me and it was a good time and I enjoyed myself. And that didn't, you know, it's funny, I'm like in 6th grade and usually you have some mandatory drug and alcohol education around that time and And I remember seeing this book that was like an artist's depiction of how somebody felt when they were drunk. And I thought, I like that picture. That looks interesting to me. And, of course, I've heard all these people in AA. I mean, they obviously had a good time. you know um and uh i never even you know i'd been around a had been to many meetings and heard many things i could have told you you know how what's the proper way to do a fourth and fifth step i probably could have reeled that off you know if you have a sponsor what should you do you know what kind of thing how many meetings should you go to what kinds of things you could do i knew you know I could probably quote you some of the big book even but it had absolutely no application to my life whatsoever it's just intellectual knowledge uh that that i just knew these things but they had no application to me and that's that's how i looked at it and as soon as uh you know i i was another another aspect of how i was was that the way that uh i i would be what i thought you wanted me to be uh people who i was always looking for people to follow and to emulate, and when I would find somebody, then I would want to do the stuff that they did. So, you know, I started hanging out with two guys who are now in AA. It was good to show you anything. They're both sober less than me, though, which is, I got that on them. But I started hangin' out with these two guys, and one of them was just a crazy Irish guy, and he just fun he did stuff that I didn't have the guts to do but I could hang out with him and kind of catch a little of the afterglow of that we'd go down to Platt Smith and start fights with Air Force people do all kinds he got kicked out of like six apartments his dad was real happy about that it was all his fault this is all junior high and uh this guy this guy was just you know he was nuts but he was fun you know he was just so much fun and the other guy was was a little less insane than that but but you know they were doing stuff and having a good time and and and and i i just really desperately wanted that and so i did what they did which was drink and and take drugs and do everything else and And essentially when it started off, it was just kind of a situation of, okay, this is an every couple of weeks thing. You know, and these guys are doing this all the time. But I could manage to hang out with them at that kind of level. And for the first year, you know, it Was great. I mean, we just had a great time. There weren't any real consequences. uh you know i had a girlfriend and all these things that you know weren't possible before that because i was just way too self-consumed to ever talk to people and then problems start coming in because if you're going to accelerate your your partying you must have money and when you're in eighth grade you know you've got your lawn mowing you got your paper out you got you're You know, selling the Christmas cards, you know. I got a job working at a coupon counting place where they owned, this place owned several grocery stores and these people. And all the coupons would come in. And I got an idea. I got to job there. It was a nice job. This was like 82, you knows, something like that. It was like $9 an hour to count coupons. And I would, you know, I'm getting pretty more accelerated now, so this is becoming every couple of days going out, weekends and maybe a weekday during the week kind of thing. And I was just, you Know, I would look at those coupons and just that's a lot of coupons I mean, grocery stores get coupons all the time. And they pile up quick, and there's all these different things. I would look at these boxes of coupons and just go, well, looks like 1,463 coupons in that box. You know? That looks like, you know, if that's 1,263, this looks like about 924. You know, this Looks like about 648, you Know, and I got fired. So that wasn't good, you know. So, you know, I've got, I'm starting to have to lie, cheat and steal to do what I want to do. And this is the early 80s and this is basically my attitude was that, you know, if I have a job, I am really just providing money for the military industrial complex to hasten the nuclear Armageddon that's coming down on us and you know the best thing you can do is just live it up as much as possible before the end because it's coming I mean end of the world's coming it's just a matter of time and you now so you know that's that's my attitude I also began to have the attitude that if if I'm cool and I am NOT cool okay I'm not I don't know if anybody ever saw that movie almost famous where the guy says there's cool people you're not cool i needed somebody to tell that to me but nobody ever did like these guys i was hanging out with they were cool but i was not cool I'm the kind of guy that we would go out and and we would go let's say we were going to walk over to somebody's house or something we would get drunk and i would end up falling in the mud you know or something and you know getting all dirty And, you know, we'd walk in and they'd be spotless and, you know, have it all together. And, here I am, there's Jim, you know, I'm the guy, you know, that gets in a fight with the football player and gets beat up in the front yard and, you know. That kind of thing. And, just kind of a sloppy drunk. And embarrassing, do stupid stuff and, just not cool. But I thought I was. So I began to have this attitude that I'm not going to speak to anyone unless they speak to me first, because they need to have respect for me. And I got kind of lonely. No one would talk to me. Around the time I went to high school, a lot of my friends, this one friend of mine decided to uh to have an adventure and he went to uh he went to live at a rest stop out in Nevada and he ran away from home and this other friend of mine got sent to the local juvenile detention facility for a year and a half and uh this other guy uh he went to the other high school in my town so I went to a new high school and and and it just got worse and worse and and I'm basically I'm I'm stealing money from my grandparents and my parents and I'm partying all the time and we're drinking large quantities of alcohol. And I loved AA then too because my parents would always go to these conventions and meetings which provides a convenient time to have two or three hours at least where nothing's going on and they're not there. And so people would come over to the house and we would just get wasted and drink just tons of the cheapest beer that you could buy. Quantity before quality was the motto. So we'd get the old style, and at that time they had the actual beer where it just said beer on it. Which was just the cheapest stuff you could possibly buy. And it was just going downhill. And I'm in high school, and, you know, I managed to hold – I could hold it together enough for a while, but then it just got to, you know, i'd do well in a few classes and get C's and D's and F's in the others. And I began – I got to the point where I couldn't intellectually do it anymore. I couldn't, you know, I used to be able to get it together for a semester and get the parents off my back. And I couldn'T do that anymore. And as I said, I wasn'T talking to anybody and just seemed like, you Know, I was surrounded by all these preppy people and, You know, they weren'T any fun. And it just got worse and worse. And I decided that, You Know, what I need to do, and, you KNOW, I don'T know how you guys talk about this kind of thing, But I smoked a lot of pot, and I drank a lot. And I decided that my problem is that I'm smoking way too much pot, and I need to quit smoking pot. And if I quit smoking hot, I'll at least be able to get out of high school because it wasn't looking good. So I quit smoke and pot, which really wasn't a big deal. But I continued to drink, which seemed to be acceptable to most people. You know, it wasn't as big of a problem as all the other stuff. And I got a job working for some people in AA. I wonder how I got that job. I got I got an job working at this restaurant that everybody there was in AA and again at this time, you know, all this this girl that we knew this girl, she she moved off to go the art institute of chicago and and my friend was uh deep into methamphetamine abuse and i could not stand to be around him because he was so annoying that he would just talk and talk and talk and he'd just drive me nuts and i'm like drink shut up and drink you know he would just keep on going and he was just really annoying so um so i again i'm kind of like isolated from all these people that i knew and i'm and i're not talking to people so i don't make friends you know i don' t have any other friends really so uh i'm hanging out with these people in aa and i am still drinking you know still doing that kind of thing and here i am surrounded by these people and they are like well do you want to go out with us to a movie after work or something well okay you know I don't have I don' have anything else to do yeah so I started hanging out with these people in a who are all new and and seeing that they were making progress in their lives yeah you know and I should go back a little bit and say that you know my relationship with my parents at this time was there waiting for me to graduate high school so that they could kick me out that was pretty much where we were at is that is that you You know, they had talked to me many times, and I had lied to them many times. And it just wasn't going anywhere, obviously, to them. And they were preparing to detach with love. And I wasn't looking forward to that, not having much of a work ethic. But, you know, again, when I'm going into my senior year in high school, i'm like i better you know i kind of see the handwriting on the wall you know dimly as it might be uh and so so i got it i got this job and and my opportunities for for drinking became fewer and fewer because i'm hanging out with all these people in aa at work um all my friends are off you know just going nuts you know my other friend one guy that got into the uh into the youth detention facility, got out, went into the army, you know, went to Germany. The other guy's off and living on his rest stop, and everybody else is gone, you know? And so I just kind of naturally started hanging out with these guys, and I started dating somebody who was in AA, which was, again, you You know, I'm she pretty much asked me out, you know, because I am not talking to people very much. And I'm just you know there's a big cloud and I'm you know like Scott Redman like what huh where you know I needed people to say you know here's here's the here's what you need to do. and it was vital to me at that point that that occurred. I ended up, I was so befuddled that I ended up taking some suggestions from people. Imagine that. And one of them was, if you're a guy that's dating somebody in AA and you're not in AA, wink, wink, you probably ought to go to Al-Anon or something. just you know so i was again i'm i'm like okay you know i i can do that so i went to al-anon i got a sponsor because i knew all those things you know that's what you do you just don't show up and and and i started working the steps and and they were very i i never want you know a lot of people make jokes about al-anan and that kind of thing and and I really don't do that because they were very nice patient people with me and obviously i mean they they had to have known and i know that they knew but they never said well jim you know you probably ought to go over there but they ever said that you know they just they just were nice to me and let me do stuff and and and uh very nice people and they um they finally i just reached the conclusion that And, you know, I quit drinking because I have zero opportunities to drink now. You know, going to Al-Anon, I'm dating somebody in AA, all my friends are gone, I'm going to college, I don't know anybody there. So, you Know, I guess that's kind of the way it is. And so I quit Drinking and it just made me uncomfortable, you Know, to think about it even. And I ended up going on a trip out to Idaho, and I was sitting in the hotel room. It was a work thing, and and I'm sitting in a hotel room and I thought I was I heard a song. There was a song on the radio. And I thought, you know, if if I wasn't in the environment that I'm in now, I'd be right back to doing all that same stuff. stealing running the streets out all night drunk you know falling in mud you know being a jerk I would be right back like that you know in two or three weeks because at that time I was thinking about transferring to another school and all these kinds of things and it just hit me as like a stark revelation that you knows that's just that's that's the way it would be and that's not That's not an Al-Anon kind of attitude. Al-Ans don't think like that. I stewed about it for a little bit because that's kind of how I am. I ended up finally talking to a guy that I had known for many years who got sober long before all this happened. I got him as a sponsor, and right immediately after that, we got married. we went out hung out with Cliff and then came back and got married that again interesting set of circumstances I was going to college working, we got married she was she was working full time it was I'll tell you what you want to learn about step 6 and 7 just put a wedding ring on you'll figure it out you know I'm 20 you know I'm twenty years old you know and that's it just blows my mind you know back then it's like yeah I'm twenty I'm a man no I'm a man who restricted his mental growth and emotional growth at about the age of eleven so if I'm sober for a year maybe I'm 12 now or 13 and uh and so that was that was interesting that was a difficult you know transition and and she was in AA she still is sober to this day and and uh I don't think I really I was the kind of guy when early in sobriety that I'm going to I became very rigid uh i'm and these are all good things they're all good disciplines but i became extremely rigid in that okay we get to the meeting early and we stay late and that means that i show up at 7 15 if the meeting starts at 8 and i'm going to be there at 715 exactly and i am going to stay until the meeting's over at nine, I'm going to stay till 930. Exactly. You know, and I'm going to do these activities while I'm there. And, and, and that's how I approached all these things, you know, I was just, I mean, I've been doing I'm gonna call my sponsor every day at this exact time. And all that stuff was great. But I took it, you know, to where I'm like compulsive about this kind of stuff. I was just goofy is what that's what it amounts to me all is all these people and a always have have helped me with everything that that's going on where the problem lies is up here and and so i but i'm sober i'm working which is far better than i had you know been able to achieve you know before and i i'm married you know we're doing well there you know we have we have fights about stupid stuff like everybody does but you know things are going pretty good so up until about you know five or six years of sobriety i think what what really occurred is that i emerged from under the you know thc cloud that had you know invaded my mind for 10 years and i emerged form that and all of a sudden i'm like you know well who are all these people you know what am i supposed to do you know i kind of started to grow up in that all these disciplines and reading the big book and you know all the things that you guys are familiar with going to meetings going to do uh commitments you know going out of town to meetings and and having service work and and trying to sponsor people and and and all that sort of thing working the steps i should back up a tiny bit and say that that you know making my amends uh was i i had lot of financial amends to make. I had a lot of family amends to make and without doing all those things, one example kind of sums it up in that my grandfather was a three-star general in the Air Force and I stole from him and he didn't know about it but you know I did and what I turned him into as a result of my guilt over having done that was this you know autocratic jerk who you know bossed everybody around which was not how he was that's how I thought of him after having done this these things and when I went I was getting ready to make amends to him and I told my sponsor I said well you know this is gonna turn out one or two ways you know either he's gonna you know reject me from the family as a whole and you know not want to have anything to do with me ever again or he's going to call the cops you know And that's how I saw it. And like I said, I was goofy. I never even thought, gee, I wonder if anyone ever made amends to him before. Has he ever had any experience with alcoholics before? Maybe. So I go to the – and he couldn't have been nicer about the whole thing. I mean, it was a perfect amends experience. And I was completely not expecting that at all. I was expecting rage and anger and all kinds of bad stuff, and that at least I would have gotten it done. But then as a result of that, I had a relationship with him after that that was a great thing. So anyway, I've got about five, six years of sobriety. The sponsor that I had had a number of problems in that he ended up getting divorced. It was not a pretty thing, and it was one of those things where another lesson to be learned, when somebody gets divorced in AA, some people tend to want to take sides and forgetting that both of these people are still going to be going to the same meetings, hopefully. And that was the case, and so I'm like, hey, I'm taking sides. you know it's my sponsor i'm on i'm on the side i'm with them you know i'm going to back him up 100% which is totally cool but he ended up having a lot of resentments built up about this whole deal and he ended up kind of fading out of AA relatively quickly he stayed sober but he's not going to meetings hardly at all none down where we go and he was just in a real bad way he was real upset about the whole thing And so I'm sitting there, and I've got to get another sponsor. So I did. That was a difficult decision, hard thing to do. But again, coming here, talking to people, working it out, it was okay. As things progressed, I began to get, as I said, I was kind of rigid. and there was a situation with somebody else that I knew that really, really made me mad. I was rightfully, what is it? I had righteous anger over the situation, which it kind of takes a lot for me to get there, but once I'm there, it's not good. This person really made be mad And this person was, you know, not sober more than a year or so. And they're just, she's not doing it right, you Know? And she got married to a guy, and why would he do that, You know? He was a friend of mine. Now, what is going on with this? And I judged. I began to judge. And that's not a good thing. And basically where I got to is, okay, if you're my – you know, I can sense things. You know, when you reach this heightened state of judgment, you can sense the hostility of people in the room when you haven't even spoken to them or talked about the situation. And I can't talk to my sponsor about it because he won't understand. You know? This is a big deal. you know um i i uh i began to uh okay if you're my friend what are you doing talking to them you know why are you talking to this person when you know that i'm your friend and you know that i don't like them and you Know what's the deal and and so i i started to cut myself off from people and pretty soon you know i i'm not talking to a sponsor i'm Not talking to these people that were my friends. You know, I don't feel like I can talk to my wife about it because she's a sponsor of this person. It was just a bad deal. And and I ended up calling Scott that Cliff knows because I'd met him a couple years before and telling him about, you know, my psychic abilities to predict the future with all these people and what was going to happen. and I just laid it all out. I said, you know, this is what's going on. I'm isolated here. I'm the only one who knows what the right thing is to do and they're not paying attention to me and he just laughed and laughed and laughed. He just thought that was the funniest thing ever and I wasn't particularly amused with that but I was just desperate for something because it was horrible and it was just a bad thing and so So, Scott encouraged me to work 4th and 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th on this particular subject. Which was absolutely vital to my continued sobriety. Because one thing he said is, these people are over in their house tonight and they're sleeping. And you're up here, it's 2 o'clock in the morning and you're talking to me. You're talking about how nuts you are. And why is that? you know, they're fine, you know. And you need, you're the one who's going to drink and they're going to be off do-do-do, you know. They don't even know they made you mad really because they should be able to figure it out. And so I, that was the first time I'd been to big book meetings before. I had, obviously I'd worked the steps. I'd made amends to people. I'd done all those things. But he encouraged me to go, you know, look at the big book. And in that time, looking at the prayers and looking at those steps again, it was like a completely different experience in having done that. And I will say that getting down on my knees and asking God to remove those defects of character under his direction was a liberating experience. It was an emotional experience because I was in so much pain from doing all this stuff that it's just I was ready to get to be done with that. And in doing so, you know, I'm not perfect at that, but as he said, you Know, why don't you get a hobby? You know, you sit around thinking about all these people all the time. Why don'tyou go do something else? You knowgogo help somebody else, go read the newspaper, you knowgo dig a hole in your backyard, I don't care. You knowsomething, whatever. and and uh that was vital to to to me in that that uh i don't need to get into judging people i don'T NEED TO GET INVOLVED WITH GOSSIP NOT SAYING THAT I DON'T UM BUT I I'VE LEARNED ENOUGH FROM THAT SITUATION TO AVOID IT WHENEVER I CAN UH I WOULD SAY THAT IT'S YOU KNOW 90 PERCENT BETTER and I can shut it off before we get, you know, real carried away. During that period of time, we had a son. He was very sick for a couple years, but he ended up doing great. Again, you Know, we're married and going through all the things that people do. And one thing about having kids is that there's always, it's almost like getting married again in that, you know, okay, well, we're used to being able to, I mean, I remember we used to be like, you now, we'd get up and go to work and come home and man, I'm tired. You know, I am going to take a nap. You know? Let's eat, let's eat nacho cheese cups for dinner. You now, or let's see, let' s eat frosted mini-wheats for dinner, that sounds good you know and that's and and well i'm gonna after the meeting i'm gonna take off and go do something oh no big deal you know and all these things and you have you have kids and it's it's total it's not that way anymore i mean you can't get out of the car if the kid's in the car anymore you can'T you know you canT just take off to do whatever you want to do so you know fortunately we were able to break that kind of thing out and say okay i'm going to i'm Going to go to these meetings and you're going to go to these and we'll go to these two together and we will get sitters on these nights and work all that kind of thing out which my wife is a lot smarter about that sort of thing than I am so she suggested that which worked very well but sometimes that's a big conflict and it's tough because I'm self centered and children require when they are little you know constant attention that means i don't get any attention you know and and with two alcoholics in the house that means you know the two the two biggest babies in the house aren't getting any attention you know and being able to work through those things and still have time you know for us to go out and do things and and be able to talk and and and work things out um took took a while to do but it was it was really important and to still be able to maintain you know a level of being active in an alcoholics anonymous you can't can't do it all but you know talking to you know I talked to my sponsor a lot more after that we had a daughter a couple years after that and essentially you know the last few years my sobriety I sponsor some people I go to four meetings a week I have service commitments I've done GSR and you know all basically all the things that you can do we're been active at our district level and and all those things what they serve to do is what I've learned is that I need to be involved in whatever I'm doing I need to be active and and take suggestions and be open to hearing that maybe you should do this my sponsor is very much that way he's he's a guy that that you come to him with something and he'll say well there's three or four possibilities here you know you can do this you can do this, you can think about it you know and then talk to me about it and then we'll figure out which one's the best one and And that's been really important to me in that he's always encouraged me to be involved and to do stuff and to be active in Alcoholics Anonymous and to sponsor people and to read the big book and to being involved in the meetings that I attend. Without that, again, I'm the kind of guy that I am going to shut off, I'm going to close down. When I have fear, I tend to slow down. you know i don't okay let's back off let's slow this thing down let's reassess let's overanalyze let's look at it again oh you know we need to take action we need to do things and with that uh it's it's been a great blessing to me because i've managed to be a part of things that that i never would have been You know, I sponsor a guy because of going someplace that I didn't want to go, you know, and be in some place just a fluke thing. You know I run into this guy who I'd known his dad's an AA and he ended up, you know, getting sober and getting me as a sponsor. I started going to graduate school last year which is something that I wouldn't have thought to do, five years ago because my sponsor said, you know, you ought to look at it. Go check it out. Go look at the possibilities and see what it is and talk to me about it. I went to Israel this summer which was an incredible trip because this Al-Anon guy I knew has been bugging me for years and I talked to everybody about it and they're like, yeah, go. It'll be great. I'm the kind of guy that I don't want to take risks. because I want the safe course. I want it the easier, softer way. And whenever I take those kind of opportunities to go and do something like that, the benefits of it are far greater than my perceived fears about it. Fundamentally, I'm a guy that when I start thinking about myself, I'm living in a van down by the river. That's where I'm going to end up. And I'm gonna look just like Chris Farley. I look just like, I'm going to eat Doritos and be playing a guitar with three strings on it. I'm just going to be unemployed. I'm not going to have a family. No one is going to like me. It's all over. Penny was broke living in a van down by the river. That's where I go. That's my gravitational, that's one pole that I'm attracted to. And Alcoholics Anonymous coming, you know, I've been sober 16 years. and it's vital to me because I see progress. You go and you hear people talking about the progress that they're making in their lives or the difficulties that they are having in their life and some of the people, you know, you go around long enough and you heard stories about people that go through things that are just unbelievably difficult and seeing people do that with grace and dignity gives me hope that I can do that as well. And without it, without that hope, you know, again, I'm insulating. I'm hiding. I'm, you now, in the van down by the river. And that's how it gets. And having a sponsor is critical because he's been sober a lot longer than me and he knows he's being sober. He's been through all these things. And he knows if he doesn't know, he knows somebody that knows. And I haven't really run across a situation where he didn't know. Which is good. But being involved and talking to people and going, you know, how are you doing? Remembering what they said the last time. You know, these are all things that my sponsor told me when I was new. Go up to people, ask them what they're doing. Ask them about themselves. Remember what they say, and then ask them about it the next time. How did that turn out that you were going to do that? And I know that you don't care, but you're going to have to do it anyway. Yeah, you're right. and doing those kinds of things uh allows me to become interdependent among everybody you know i don't feel like i'm dependent on a i feel like it's a place that i can go where uh the world makes sense to me you know in alcoholics anonymous and it provides me with with uh impetus to to move forward and do things and take risks that that i wouldn't normally do and it and it gives me hope that everything's going to be okay no matter what happens because I see it time and time and time again. I've seen a lot of people and worked with a lot OF people that for whatever reason they couldn't get that spark of hope that change is possible, that we can change and that we CAN get better. And only God can do that and only they can be open to it. I sponsored a lot Of people when I was new and I would And I thought that I could have the power to will that upon them. And it never worked, trying to make people get sober. Probably didn't hurt them any, didn't hit me any, but they weren't ready. And I need to try to keep some of that openness and willingness in my own life by participating and being a part of and talking to people, allowing people to give me crap. I think that I've heard a lot of that going around here and it's another connection to our group you come around and people are going to give you some crap about stuff and hold you accountable to things nothing is better for my ego than to get a little smack down every once in a while with some older guys again I think I'm done and I want to thank all of you and thanks Scott for chairing and thank you very much