The Obsession Was Lifted When He Stopped Half-Assing the Steps – Chris

I'm known as Crispy Chris, the central office gave me that moniker. So I have been sober for about two and a half years. I have a sponsor who has a sponsor, and I sponsor other men. So I guess I'll get started by saying my story is a little different than a lot of stories that I heard in the room in the beginning, which made me think maybe I was in the wrong place. What I mean by that is it seems like every meeting I went to, the first time I tried anyway, People were saying that, you know, they had a drink when they were four years old and then they had arrived or whatever. And that wasn't me. So I grew up – well, let me back up a second. So I was born actually in Mississippi, and my mom was married to my dad for about two years, but my dad was an alcoholic. So she wasn't very happy with that situation and figured it out pretty quick. So she got remarried and moved to Alaska. So, yeah, that was interesting. So I ended up growing up in Alaska about 14 years, which is pretty neat, hunting and fishing and camping and that kind of thing. um but um so growing up in alaska my uh father was a pretty my stepfather was a pretty um well-known person in the community he was a you know well known and they were throwing parties all the time him and my mom and and my mum would make uh liqueurs and things like that so um when we were kids we always had access to alcohol and our parents would let us try it out and whatever and it wasn't a big deal right i remember drinking the liqueirs and strawberry daiquiris and beer or whatever, and I'd have a little bit. And I never said, oh, I want more. All the way up through high school when my friends were talking about how drunk they got the night before and were throwing up or got their eyebrows shaved or whatever. I was like, that does not sound like fun. Plus, I'd seen – I'd go visit my dad in the summer in Mississippi, be my biological father and uh you know he'd drink sometimes when i was there and and i knew enough to know that i didn't want that happening with me so i didn'T have any desire to drink at all and really didn'T drink um other than you know we'D have family get-togethers or something like that and there'D be wine or there'D bE uh you KNOW a cocktail or something and i'D have a little bit but again it was like i could it made no difference to me if i was drinking coke or i was drinking, you know, a martini or whatever. It really didn't, it wasn't anything special for me. So I went off to college eventually, moved here to Georgia to go to Georgia Tech. And even then, I just wasn't interested in alcohol. I remember when I turned 21, I decided I was going to have a beer. And I'm not a beer drinker. I mean, even after drinking for many years, I'm still not a bear drinker, I'll drink it if I have to, you know to get the job done but um so i decided to go out and get a beer so i went out to the gas station i bought a budweiser um and i started trying to drink it and it was horrible i hated it i don't like carbonated beverages anyway so i shook it until it was flat and tried to drink it and i still hated it i put sugar in it to try to drinkit and make it more palatable i still hate it but i drank the whole thing because i was like i'm 21 and i'm gonna drink it damn it but that was it I never was like oh I want to have another beer and then going all the way towards really the end of college it wasn't really anything you know special for me I was drinking a little more towards the endof college but it was again I'd go out with friends and I drink and we might get drunk and hung over and I might throw up or something like that but I wasn't like the next day oh I wanna do that again it was just you know doing some things with friends so graduated from college and got married and all that. This is, you know, in my early 30s, actually late 20s. And, you now, everything was fine for a while. You know, I got a job and all that and wasn't drinking. But then what happened actually is my dad, my biologic father who was still living in Mississippi at the time ended up moving here to Georgia not too far from where I lived and he was actively drinking. And something about seeing him drink and what was happening affected me. So, you know, he'd come over, I'd like bought a new house and he'd come over and try to help me mow the lawn or something like that. But, you know, there'd be a new bruise, you know, on his arm or, you know, his car would have a new dent or he would have lost yet another job or whatever. And, you know, it's interesting because I grew up away from my father. I think I missed out on that getting adjusted to your dad not being a superhero thing. So, you Know, when you're young, your dad's invulnerable and he can do anything and can't do anything wrong, whatever. So when he, I'm in my 30s, but I haven't really gone through that process and I'm seeing all this stuff happen to him. And it hurts me inside to see this stuff happening to him. And this is when I discovered that drinking made that feel better. Now, isn't that crazy? Seriously. I mean, alcohol is affecting my dad's life. He's getting hurt. I can see how much he's hurting family members and there's already people who are cutting him off and telling him he can't come over their house anymore or whatever. And even his stepdaughter, when she had a baby, she refused to let him see the baby and all this other stuff. I can see how alcohol is affecting him, but it's affecting me seeing him like that. And drinking makes me feel better. So I start drinking. That's crazy. So when I say, when I started drinking, I mean, I started drink to change the way I feel. I started to drinking to cope and to, and to feel better so once I started like that, I mean prior to that my wife and I would have friends over and you know we'd have you know whatever some vodka or you know wine or that kind of thing but again it was like normal kind of drinking but once i've discovered that alcohol would make that feel better i started hiding it right away when i mean hiding it uh i i'm an it and i work from home most of the time don't drive much and that kind of things or didn't at the time and i had a little home office so i'd go out and buy these uh you know pint bottles of um stuff and i'd start you know hiding under my uh couch at work and things i mean my work my home office and stuff like that, which is crazy because my wife was okay with us having alcohol in the house. She had no idea whatsoever that there was any kind of problem. In fact, before I started drinking vodka, we went through this wine-drinking phase where both of us were trying out different wines with our friends and stuff like that. And we eventually discovered that Trader Joe's would sell wine by the case for nothing. So she was buying this stuff, wine, for us to have at parties and things. And at some point I was drinking like one bottle of wine a day, right? And she just kept buying more and replacing it, which is – I think that's really funny. I asked her retrospectively. It never occurred to her that there was anything wrong with that. She just thought I was thirsty or something. I don't know. So – but the thing with the wine was – I remember this now. The thing with a wine was that I'd have to pee all the time. And we lived in this small house, and there was one bathroom that was right next to the bedroom where my wife slept. And I was drinking through the night, so I'd have to get up and pee like 10 times, and I'd wake her up or whatever. So I was like, I've got to find a better way to handle this thing, and that's when I discovered vodka. So this is already a strange situation, right? So I started drinking the vodka and hiding it. And not only was I hiding it under the cushion. And I was hiding it, like, in trash cans because my wife didn't like to take out the trash. And I Was even doing, like – as I was drinking more, I was going more out of my way to hide things. I'd like – we had this wooded area next to our house where there was, like no property or anything like that. And I would, like hide vodka bottles in the woods and behind bushes and things like that, I mean this doesn't make any sense. Again, my wife has no idea what's going on. And to this day she's never found any bottles that I've hidden or anything like that. So it's strange that I was doing that. But so that kind of continued. But mostly I didn't have any issues with that. I mean consequences because, you know, I'm in IT, like I said. I work from home most of the time. And at the time I was doing projects where they'd give me an assignment and, you know, I'd work on it for a week or two or three weeks or whatever. And then I'd present what I'd done at the end. So I wasn't even like on phone calls or anything like that. My wife is she's much better now, but she was one of the worst backseat drivers ever. So whenever we would whenever I would drive and we were together, we would end up getting in fights. So we just decided she was going to drive everywhere. So I'm working from home. I'm workin' all kinds of crazy hours. I don't really have to talk with anybody on the phone. I don'T have to drive anywhere, so I'm drinkin' all I want, you know? The thing is, before I even started drinking, I was working crazy hours and I'd sleep during the day and I'D be passed out on the couch or whatever because I'd, you KNOW, work for three days straight. So it didn't look abnormal to my wife. She had no idea that there was anything goin' on. So for a couple of years, I was able to drink successfully and it made me feel better. but then you know some some little annoying things started happening like you know my wife would come home for she she was working uh so she was gone during the day every day so she'd come home from work and she'd find me on the uh on the floor in the bathroom with vomit next to me or something that's a little embarrassing so she'll be like are you okay and i'm like yeah i just feel a little sick you know um so that was really kind of when some issues started happening but then Then we'd been trying to get pregnant for a number of years, and she finally was able to get pregnant. And I said to myself, okay, now I'm going to quit. And, and I tried, but I was unable to. And then I told myself, well, when the baby comes, then I'll quit.And the baby came and I was unable to quit and um then after my son was a couple of months uh my my dad actually died of alcoholism um he was actually over here at the va hospital off of claremont road and um i guess one of the things i'm thankful for is that i was doing a side gig uh with some contract work in the va hotel where he was i was actually like two floors down from where he was in the hospital. And things at that point had gotten so bad that I basically cut him off. And had I not been in that building already on a regular basis doing that work, I don't know that I would have even gone to see him because things were that tough between us. But I was able to see Him. And I remember when I went to see He lying there in the bed, I was so mad at him, I was like, how could you do this to yourself? I mean, you know, how could you doing this to us? There's people who love you and care about you, who depend on you. You know, How could you do this? I mean, it's they talk about it in the big book about how alcohol alcoholism is different than other diseases because, you know, if someone has cancer, you feel sorry for them. But if someone of alcoholism, you get angry at them. You're like why you are making a decision on a regular basis to put yourself in this in this scenario, you So I was mad at him. I couldn't even really talk to him. But one thing that happened when it was obvious that he was kind of near the end is my uncle, who's in Al-Anon, wrote him a letter basically forgiving him for being an alcoholic. And I was able to read the letter to him not my words, but I'm glad that I was able to say in my own voice at least some things that were comforting to him, I hope, before he passed. And it's a tough thing. You know, I mentioned about the superhero thing, to see your dad laying there, I mean, you know, machines, keeping him alive. And one of the things that really kind of struck me is they have these air pads they put on your legs and stuff because I guess blood isn't flowing around your body very well anymore and they need to keep the blood up in your abdominal area to keep you alive. So they had these pads that were like squeezing his legs and staff to keep them alive. And it was just tough to see my dad like that, you know? And you'd think looking at that, I would say, I need to quit drinking. But no, I drank a lot more after that. And it was because that was a difficult thing to see. It was painful. And the only solution I had to deal with that kind of situation was to drink. So it was kind of on. In the meantime, you know, I work from home. My wife has returned to work. My child is a couple of months old. I'm taking care of him at home. And I'm drinking and I'm in blackouts. You know, there's a number of times that things happen like I was changing his diaper. Sorry. I was changing his diapers one day and I was really, really hungover and the room was spinning and my head was pounding and he was crying and I turned my head away for a minute and he actually fell off the changing station. It's about this high and it was a hardwood floor and he fell on his head. And I was terrified that he'd have brain damage or whatever, but I can tell you as part of this disease, it was hitting me right away because I immediately denied it to myself. I immediately could not admit to myself that that had happened. And my wife was there, and I was like, oh, it's okay. It's okay, even though inside I was terrified. You'd think that would make me quit, but it didn't. So things aren't that great. And then my stepfather commits suicide. And as hard as it was to see my father die of alcoholism, dealing with my stepfather's suicide was even more difficult. At this point I'm drinking almost all the time and I'm crying a lot and I am having a hard time functioning because I am trying to deal with all this stuff and I go to my doctor and I told him about all this anxiety I was having so he prescribed me lorazepam which is a benzodiazepine which you should not take when you're drinking so I went from blacking out every now and again to being in a blackout for a week or two I don't even know how long basically from when I started taking the stuff until the end I don' t really remember anything but one of the things that happened while I was in one of those blackouts on the lorazepam and alcohol is I had this baby Bjorn thing that I'd take my son for walks with It's like this little fabric carry that you can put the baby in, and they just kind of, like, you hold them on your chest or whatever. And apparently I decided to take him for a walk when I was in a complete blackout, and, you know, I took him for A Walk. And it's a busy street. You know, there's cars going back and forth and everything like that. I don't remember any of this. My wife told me retrospectively, you know, and she didn't know where I was when she came home from work. And she opened the door to find me there drooling out of the side of my mouth with the baby, you now. And I don't know how the hell one of us didn't get hurt. and you know that continued too i mean well she also told me one time that i um i passed out my soup and she had to let you know grab me by the head and lift me out of it but um but that continued after the razapam even you know i would drink i don't know how many probably thousands of time i drank with my son in the car you know from when he was months old until he was years old And I never got a DUI. I don't know how, and we never got in any kind of accident or anything. I don' t deserve to be alive, and I don''t deserve to have my son be alive either because I risked his life and my life so many times. And I'd tell myself, I'd say, I'm not going to drink today. And I d not drink for a couple of days, a couple weeks, maybe even a couple months sometimes, But then I would drink again because what would happen was it was okay when things were fine, but then something would happen. Something would happen at work or my wife and I would have a fight or something like that, and the only means of coping with that stuff for me was to drink. So I didn't really have a choice almost. So that continued for quite a while. um but uh i said all right this is enough i need to do something about this and um i went to aa and the thing was that i mentioned about how i felt like i was different because the meetings that i were going i was going to everyone was talking about how you know the first time they drank they were they were hooked in and they were that they started blacking out right away and and all this other stuff and they weren't they'd also lost uh you know their jobs and their wives and, uh, their houses and we're in jail and, you know, all this other stuff. And I just couldn't relate to that. You know, I felt like I must be different or maybe I'm making a bigger deal out of this thing than I really, than it really is, you now. So, um, so I kind of gave up on AA after a while. It's kind of sad, but I actually even went to AA meetings drunk a few times. Um, the guys had to drive me home from one meeting cause I was so, you Know, so messed up one of those times i remember part of that i actually had uh one of the little um travel bottles that i'd bought at target or something that isn't leak proof and i tried to close put some vodka in it and close it but it was leaking all over my pants so i looked down on my pant leg and it was all you know i mean what a mess so i was that guy at the a meeting you know And I'm looking at the rest of you saying, I'm not as bad as you guys are. So, you know, I drank for a couple years more, and then, you know, we decided to move to a new house, and at this point my wife is kind of figuring out what's going on, and she's giving me ultimatums and things like that, and I said, I don't want to drink. And she said, well, you're not going to drink in the new house. well you know that lasted whatever a week or something um and uh so i went to a again and i tried it but it was still kind of like you know i didn't get it still i got a sponsor but the only reason i got sponsors because people kept saying get a sponsor get a sponsors all right screw you i'll get a sponsored sponsor so i got sponsor and he's like you know i don't even really do any of the steps one two three or whatever i was whatever and then he's like fourth step you got to write stuff down i was like fine so i kind of wrote some stuff down but it was a half-hearted attempt i got my 30-day chip and for some reason at that point i don't know why um it's like the obsession was lifted i didn't think about drinking at all for nine months so it wasn't going to aa on my own i wasn't thinking about drinking at all so i waslike see i'm not an alcoholic but then um one day i decided i was going to have a drink And it's weird because there wasn't anything going on. It wasn't like I was bored or tired or angry or anything. It was just a normal day. I was sitting in my office at home doing some work, and I'm like, you know what? I'm going to get some vodka. So I went out and I got a quart because I always want to get a lower amount to try to control how much I drink. And I poured it in a shot glass, andI put it on my desk. and it was like um making out with this shot glass for like 30 minutes i'm not kidding you so i set it there and uh and i was working for a bit and then i would like look at the shot glass with the vodka in it and then I would like work for a little bit and I would like smell it and I'd like pick it up and like twirl it for you know like I said about 30 minutes and then remember thinking to myself eff it I took the shot and I was back on the races again. That was it. Another six years, another six years driving drunk with a kid in the car. You know, my wife threatened to leave me. Um, at this point I'm starting to, the consequences are starting to get a little worse. Like, um, I work for a large corporation and we have these conference calls with, you know, 50 people and CTO and whoever else. And I'm like going on drunken tirades, yelling at the CTO, you Know, and I don't even remember it. You I remember so many times waking up the next day and saying, oh crap, what did I say? And I can't remember. And then people call you and they're like talking about something, but you don't remember what you said, so you just kind of have to pretend like you know what happened or like kind of probe them for what happened without letting them know that you don t know what happened and that kind of thing. But I still didn't lose my job and my wife was threatening to leave me, but I figured She kept threatening and, you know, and wasn't actually going to leave me. But what happened was after about six years, I remember I was sitting in the master bedroom in my bed and it was like someone turned the lights on and I felt this overwhelming fear that I was – I had this feeling like I was standing on the edge of a cliff. And if I did not stop, I was about to fall off and lose everything. I just, I don't know where that came from, but it came. And I said to myself, I'm not willing to continue hurting people that I care about in this way. I'd seen my dad do it, you know, to my family, to his children, to wife. to me. I was not willing to continue hurting people that I cared about, so I was either going to kill myself or I was going to really do AA, and I decided to really do AA. So I went to a meeting. It was like maybe two days later. I had to wait because my mom was in town, and my mom is, you know, she's so nosy. I didn't want her knowing what was going on. So I had to wait for two days. That was horrible. I decided to detox myself too, which was also a bad idea. I remember sitting there shaking and my heart was going crazy and my sides were aching and all this other stuff. I could have died. But I remember thinking to myself, there's no freaking way I'm going to go to the doctor and admit that i have a problem um but i went to aa it was sunday night um there's a there's a meeting at nab at 8 p.m and um i walked in the meeting and i sat down and as soon as the meeting was over i went up to the front and i went like this i need a sponsor and two guys came to me and introduced themselves and it's it's funny you know alcoholism is such a strange thing because you're in a situation where your life is literally on the line, but you nitpick over stupid stuff. For example, these two guys came up to me, and I didn't want to pick one or the other because I didn'T want to hurt someone's feelings. I mean, it'S like if I got hit by a car on the side of the road and two paramedics came up, and I'm like, well, let me decide which one I want, but I don'T wantto hurt anybody's feelings, so let me... You know, it's so stupid. But anyway, I picked a guy. And there at NABAClub they have this gazebo outside. So we went out to the gazebo after the meeting and he called his wife and said, hey, honey, I'll be home late, which I appreciate that he did that. And he sat down and he took as much time as it took to let me unload what was going on with me. And I was completely honest with him. I said, look, I've tried AA before a couple of times. I have a lot of problems with many things that AA says. I have an extreme issue with this God thing. But I said, I don't care because you guys figured out how not to drink and I don' t want to drink. So tell me what you did because I want to be sober. So he said, all right. He said, i'll agree to be your temporary sponsor. We'll call me every day, go to 90 meetings in 90 days. We'll meet once a week and go through the big book. and he did that and um and i did that i did everything he told me to do pretty much without reservation there's there's a few times when when i was like but but but then even before i could really get it out of my mouth that little voice in my head said you said you were going to do this thing so so i did and um man i was going to they said 90 meetings in 90 days it was like 90 meetings in the first month i was going to i actually practically lived at nabba the first couple of days i was just going to meeting to meeting because i was afraid i was so afraid i was gonna drink i didn't want to be alone um so um so anyway i followed what he said and um and things started to get better and i remember a meeting with him was was such a relief for me um it was it was nice to be able to sit down and talk about what was to someone about what was going on in my life, what I was really feeling because that's kind of part of the whole deal with AA is like learning how to deal with the crap that life throws at you without drinking and being okay with it. That's the deal. So being able to talk with him and going through the steps and working through that stuff was already helping a lot and I felt a lot better. The poor guy though because i did call him every day and i talked to him for an hour or whatever every day because i was just so screwed up i remember when i um it was like two weeks into my sobriety and we had a vacation scheduled family vacation so it was actually in another country so we were out of the country no cell service and the only way that i could call him was using this crappy little wi-fi app on my phone and the Only place i could get service well enough to talk to him was like under this light in the middle of the grounds of the hotel. So you can imagine, I'm sitting out here, you know, at night in the Middle of this hotel area like this talking to my sponsor for like an hour about all the crap that's happening. You know, all the feelings that I'm going through and that kind of stuff. But you know the guy saved my life. He did. He listened to me and he told me to slow down. He said one day at a time, you know and even one hour at a Time or one minute at a time if you have to. You can downshift, you know? He'd tell me, you know, keep your head where your feet are and that kind of thing. And those things just helped me so much. So I started to get better. And we started working the steps together and I worked them for real, you know? I wanted to make sure that I had everything done because I didn't want to drink anymore. I wanted to do everything right, and I remember going to the fourth step, and I just wrote a lot of stuff down, but there was a couple of things that I had never admitted to anybody, not even myself, much less God or anyone else, and there's a bit in the big book on step four where it basically says those deep dark, those things that you keep in the deep dark corners those are the things that are going to bite your butt later you know and i didn't want to drink again so i dug down for that stuff and i put it down and i was terrified i thought that he was going to fire me after he you know found out the stuff that i actually did um but what was funny about it is we went to sit down and I told him all that stuff and he kind of laughed and he said um he said Chris I've worked with a lot of guys you know I've heard a lot of things. Nothing that you're telling me is anything that shocks me. And then he laughed and he said, I guess we're over the temporary sponsor part at this point, right? So yeah, like I said, things started to get better. So I started making amends after a while. And I remember turning to my wife and saying, honey i'm sorry and she turned to me this is after i was sober about maybe nine months and she turned and she looked me in the eyes and she said i've been waiting for you to tell me that and i you know i made my amends with her and she was very grateful so that was the beginning and then uh i made mine ends with my mom i was terrified to make my amends with my mom because she was married to my dad, who was an alcoholic, right? And her dad was actually an alcoholic too. And her brother was an alcoholic. They all died from alcoholism. And she'd say all the time to me, honey, I'm so glad you're not an alcoholic. I'm sorry, but I'm going to destroy her world by telling her that I was an alcoholic. So I remember when she was visiting one time, you know, we sat down together and I said, Mom, something to tell you. She said, okay. And I told her, I said I'm an alcoholic. And she gave me a hug and she said, I love you. Thank you for telling me. And prior to that point, actually my mom and I hadn't really been talking much because we had a lot of contention between us over many different things but that have me being open and honest with her and vulnerable allowed her to be as well so it's like all that animosity and stuff that had built up between usover the years just melted away and suddenly you know i was with my mom that you know I used to cuddle with when I was a kid you know we were we were close again so even today I've been sober for about two and a half years and we still talk regularly and we have good conversations it's amazing and stuff that she used to say that you know would piss me off and you know i'd say god i'm so tired talking to my mom most of the time i'm okay i still do it sometimes but most of time i am okay and um so i mean that's good that was the beginning of things getting better and then i remember uh going through the steps uh further on and at some point my sponsor said all right it's time and i'm like what do you mean it's time. He's like, it's time for you to start sponsoring other people. And I was like, what? Because I didn't even have a year or whatever at that point. But he told me he thought I was ready. And, you know, that's one of the things that says in the big book is this is the thing if you want to keep it, you got to give it away. So I said, all right, you know, I'll do it. I don't know what I'm doing, but I'll do it and I started raising my hand in the meetings and the second day I raised my hand. Someone asked me to be their sponsor. And before I knew it, it was about a month. I had like six sponsees. It was crazy. But it is absolutely what I needed at that time. It really is because there's a lot of stuff that has happened in my sobriety that I could not have handled before. Like I've had two of my family members die, including my grandfather just recently. And there's been many other things that have happened. A good friend of mine in the program has died relapsed and died and um and those are things i could not handle before on my own if anything if i showed up at like the funeral for that kind of thing then i was sulking and feeling bad and thinking about how this was impacting me and drinking or whatever else but like with my grandfather i was able to show up and be helpful and and take care of him and ask my family members what I could do to help them. And I remember, in general these days, I feel so grateful to be a part of whatever I'm a part of. I feel grateful that I can show up and connect with my family and be there for my son and be There for my husband and be there for other people. I really do. In fact, before like my son play soccer before when like, you know, I'd have to take him of soccer and stuff, I would piss and moan about, you know, having to drive and I've got other things to do and I need to be working or whatever. But these days, I feel grateful. I really do. Sometimes I sit there and I'm watching my kid play, you now, he plays goalie sometimes and he blocks a lot of goals but sometimes they make goals or whatever but I just, I sit there and I'm watching him play. And I'm like, I am so glad to be here for this. I am. So anyway, rewinding a bit and going to the God topic. One of the reasons I had such an issue with the God thing. I was raised Southern Baptist and very traditional Southern Baptist, fire and brimstone, that kind of thing. In fact, I remember being on the playground when I was maybe in fourth grade or something like that, and there was some kids from some public school who came to aftercare at our... I was going to a church school. I didn't say that. So I was Going to Church School, and we were on the playground in aftercare, and there were some kids from public school who were there and I told this girl that she was going to go to hell you know so the thing is my stepfather wasn't uh he had his own problems he he was physically abusive uh to me and my brothers and sisters and and we lived with that for 14 years um and from from when I was very little I spent a lot of time you know in the corners of in the corner of my closet crying and praying to god to make it stop you know and i went to the thing is that you know he'd do whatever he did and then um you know he'd always threaten to do something worse if we told anybody and i was going to this um you know church school thing where we went to church and i also went to school we all went every sunday including him And there was one day that was particularly bad, and I just couldn't hold it in. And I started bawling. And they took me to the principal's office, and they asked me what's going on. And I told them. And I went home, and my mom said, did you say something about your dad to the people at the school? And I said, yeah, I did. And that was kind of the end of that conversation. And it was like, I don't know if it was the next Sunday or shortly afterwards, we went to church and my stepfather wrote a nice big fat check and put it in the till. And that problem was gone. And there's another time too, I had a good friend of mine who is very religious and his family went to Church regularly too and I went to Church with him one time. And they said, does anybody have any prayer requests? And I was probably about nine at the time or something. I raised my hand and said, you know, I'd like to pray that my dad would stop hitting us. And, you Know, there was all kind of the whole church was abuzz and people were talking to each other and they were talking to me and someone was taking care of me while everyone was deciding about what they were going to do and blah, blah, bla, bla. um i didn't hear about that again i don't know what happened but that also just went away so by the time you know i got around to uh coming to aa i was like i don'T WANT TO HEAR ANYTHING ABOUT ANY KIND OF GOD THING BECAUSE GOD ISN'T LOOKING OUT FOR ME YOU KNOW but one thing that was um that worked for me uh was to look at this in a scientific kind of way as like an experiment um i look at the steps as like um you know so chemistry class i was never very good in chemist i'm really good a lot of stuff but i was ever very good at chemistry class because there's always you have to put this exact amount of this thing with that other thing and then stir it this way, and then it changes color or whatever. And I'd never do it right. But I look at AA and the steps as an experiment. If I want to get the same results you got, I have to follow the same steps that you did. So I looked at it that way. I said, I'm going to do everything that my sponsor tells me to do, and let's see what happens. Two-and-a-half years sober, man. And, you know, life happens. I mentioned some stuff that happened. My wife and I still have fights, situation happens at work, and that kind of thing. And sometimes I feel like woe is me or whatever, but most of the time, like I said, I get to show up and I'm grateful to be here and of service to other people. So that's what I used to basically open the door with the God thing. And even when my sponsor said pray every morning and say God help me not to drink today and at the end of the day pray and say, thank you for helping me not to drink. I started with that. It felt weird, honestly, because he said do it on your knees and do it out loud. So I would do that, and I was like, this is so ridiculous. It's like I'm speaking into the air and no one's here. But like I said, I made a decision I was going to do whatever my sponsor told me to do. Another decision I made on my own, my sponsor didn't tell me this, was that if AA asked me to doing something, I was gonna say yes. So an example of that, I was at NABA in one of those meetings, and I got my 90-day chip. And it just so turns out at that meeting that the minimum requirement to chair a meeting was 90 days. And that meeting they do month-long commitments for chairing meetings. So I got mine 90-dayship, and then this grumpy old-timer said to me, yeah, now you've got your 90-date chip. You should chair this meeting for the next month. And I was like, who the hell are you to tell me what to do? And I Was so pissed off, I remember. And I stormed out of that meeting. But right after I got outside the door, I thought to myself, dang it, I promised myself I would say yes. So I turned around and I said, OK, yes. And that was one of the coolest experiences in my recovery because in that program as As a chairperson, or in that meeting as a chair person, you bring in a speaker every, not speaker, a discussion leader every month. So I was able to reach back out to a couple of people who were key to my sobriety and get them to come in and tell their story and lead the meeting. And that was just so cool. It was such a great experience for me. And there's been a lot of experiences like that that if I had said no, I wouldn't have been able to experience. There's a speaker that I really like named Rich Bruckner who says, how free do you want to be? You know, you can have hamburger AA or you can Have Filet Mignon AA. I want the filet mignon, man, you know. I got a home group. I got service commitments. I got phone numbers of people and I called them. I did what the steps told me to do, you know, because I want the whole shebang, man. There's no point in half-assing anymore. I mean, I spent 10 years of my life drinking and wasting time. I don't want to do that anymore. So I'm really grateful that I was able to realize all that stuff and move through all that. Another thing, too, I remember is when I was sober, just the first couple of days one of the old-timers in one of meetings was telling me that uh he really thought that i should uh do like a outpatient recovery or something like that because you know he was afraid i was going to relapse and i was afraid i was gonna lose my job because i i had a very good job and uh and i Was a breadwinner for my family and i I was so afraid that if they found out that i was drinking that they would fire me And I was also afraid that if, you know, it got on my insurance record that I was an alcoholic that they'd start – my insurance rates would go crazy and they'd Start refusing to see me. I'd seen the way they treated my dad, right? I mean some doctors understand but some doctors don't. One time I was, you Know, we were in the hospital seeing my dad one of the times that he had drank too much and, You know, ended up in the Hospital and the doctor was lecturing us about how we needed to get it under control and help him to stop and that kind of thing. He made us feel bad like we weren't doing our jobs, you know? So anyway, he really felt I needed to do that. I was afraid I was going to lose my job. But I remember thinking to myself, going over all the things I was worried I was gonna lose. I was afraid I might lose my wife. I was worried I might lose my son, not because of that I'm just thinking of all my fears I was scared I might lose my job, all this stuff and for some reason I was able to let all that go which was important for me because letting all that go was closing all the little doors that I was already preparing to open for myself to drink if my wife leaves me then I'll drink if my son dies then i'll drink right i closed all those little doors um and i'm very grateful for that um so yeah uh how are we doing for time still 10 more minutes Do you want to talk about Daryl? This has been a really, really great thing for me. My life is better than it has ever been. One of the things that used to happen before is, even before I started drinking, I was always thinking about what I had done wrong or what I had to do next and not focusing on what was going on in the moment. What I mean is, you know, I'd be at the park with my son and my wife, and they're looking at the birds and enjoying the weather and stuff, and I'm thinking about a mistake I made earlier in the day at work. And my son is trying to talk to me, and I'M getting irritated and snapping at him because he's disturbing my concentration. Or I'm thinking about what I have to do next at work or whatever. Most days today, I'm able to be in the moment wherever I am. And that is really pretty amazing. So if this sounds anything familiar with you and, you know, you're not sure whether AA is for you or whatever, I assure you it can work. But I think that it works once you're ready to stop drinking. You have to be ready. And it's not like a buffet where you, in my experience, it's não é como um buffet onde você pode ir e escolher três coisas que você gosta. Eu acho que não tem ponto em fazer isso, sem que você faça tudo de volta. E então veremos o que acontece. Obrigado. Thank you.