We’re More Afraid of the Solution Than We Are of the Problem and That’s the Whole Disease – Ben W.

I'm Ben Wilson, I'm an alcoholic, I'm English by birth, I'm Irish by disease, Scotch by absorption, and American by adoption. I've been doing this thing wrong for a long time. I just want to thank Bob and Rick for asking me to be here. And I've been doing that short, simple prayer and asking, it's only because there's a tape recorder going, that I don't use the F word. Now, it has absolutely nothing to do with cleaning up my mouth, because the big book is specific about this. It says we describe spirituality in everyday language, so tough shit. But I want to tell you why I'm not going to use the F word. Unless there's a power cut. I was speaking one day and there was a power cut, and I just managed to slip it in, and it wasn't on the tape. But I was speaking in a place called Benicia in the Bay Area about ten years ago. It was a Christmas meeting, big meeting like this, and I'd finish speaking, and I had mentioned the F word just socially a couple of times. And at the end of the meeting, the secretary came up and announced and said, does anybody here drive a black Jaguar? And of course I wanted everybody to know it was mine. And a tree had fallen on it. So I'm really very careful about this. Those southwestern plains do not withstand trees very easily. I've been sober since December the 12th, 1970. And my definition of sobriety is outlined on page 419. And I'd like to say that I haven't written the full first chapter of the 1911 of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. I haven't poured anything down my throat, up my nose, in my arm, or up my ass that would change my mind. As I say, this is not the party line, I'll tell you. I'm a great believer in doing it wrong, but doing it. And that's probably what'll come through this. Because I didn't get so much information. sober right and I probably haven't stayed sober right and I've dated too many newcomers and I've done all the things that are wrong, quote, but we buried the people who were being critical. I was in a meeting in San Francisco a few years ago and there was a young man who felt offended because something he'd mentioned in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous had got back to him and I got to share right after that and I said you know, that we in San Francisco, we used to have Charlie Manson and Jim Jones attending meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous and if you're complaining about somebody else's behavior, guess who's sick? The spiritual malady of alcoholism is mentioned in the big book. It's on page 64 and it talks about when the spiritual malady is overcome, we straighten out mentally and physically and the spiritual malady as I see it and this is not the description in the big book, is a four part problem. It's that I have bad luck and I blame other people and I drink and then I feel shitty. And then I blame other people and I feel shitty and I drink and I drink and then I blame other people and I feel shitty and I have bad luck. And it's continuous. It's like the squirrel in the cage and what happened when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous I quit drinking and I blamed other people and I had bad luck and I felt shitty and absolutely nothing changed except they took the drink out of the square and it became a triangle. And until we quit blaming other people, very little changes. Wow. I was at a meeting about 20 years ago and a newcomer, he'd just raised his hand less than 30 days sober and he'd said, if you want to feel better, quit complaining. Never seen him again. Just came into my life and changed it. You know, and the things that I hear in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous that change my life are those that I'm willing to put into practice. This isn't about profundities and theories and all that other stuff. It's about doing the deal. And I drank enough to get to Alcoholics Anonymous. I'll share that with you. I loved booze. I really did. It made me important. I just loved it. I mean, it was great. I used to drink with important people and that made me feel better. And good things happened when I was drinking and bad things happened to me when I was drinking, but I just drank. I knew that was the deal. I don't come from an underprivileged background. I was at a meeting at lunchtime. This is fractured, this pitch, so just put a comma there and maybe we'll get back to that. But somebody was talking about high-bottom drunks. I really want to tell you that I'm a high-bottom drunk. And some of you are new and you don't realize that there really is some status in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I'm a high-bottom drunk. And my claim to being a high-bottom drunk is that I took my last drink in 1970 on the fourth floor of a maximum security penitentiary. And that's my claim to being a high-bottom drunk. And we've buried all the low-bottom drunks. I was sort of wandering along through the story of my alcoholism, my drinking, and I was saying I didn't come from an underprivileged background. We had horses at home and if you ever rode horses it's easy to look down on the other people. I became a high-bottom drunk. I became an officer in the cavalry and our status was from some 350 years of looking down on the people who walked. On my 13th birthday my father gave me a silver flask. It was a half pint flask. It wasn't an American flask. It was an English half pint. It was 10 ounces. I want to tell you that it's really important for you to know that I had to drink 25% more than you to get to Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm not a high-bottom drunk. I'm a high-bottom drunk. I'm not a high-bottom drunk. I'm not a high-bottom drunk. I'm not a high-bottom drunk. I'm not a high-bottom drunk. I'm not a high-bottom drunk. I'm not a high-bottom drunk. I'm not a high-bottom drunk. I'm not a high-bottom drunk. Because when I drank a pint it was 20 ounces. But this was a half pint flask and my father filled it up with sherry and I went out fox-hunting that day and it came back empty and the fences got smaller. And on my 16th birthday my father filled it up with scotch whiskey. He said, young man I think you've graduated to scotch whiskey. And I brought it home empty that day. day. The horses had got bigger and the fences continued to get smaller. We called it jumping powder. Great description of alcohol, jumping powder, allowed me to jump big fences. And I was a coward. This is not a socially acceptable word in my family, but on reflection, I was a coward. It came out of my fourth step quite by chance. And I did things to overcome cowardice. I didn't like discipline at home and I was a coward and so I joined the army. And then I went to a place where they invented discipline, which was the place that West Point is modeled after. It's a place called Sandhurst. And they shouted at me a whole lot. But there were some brave people who were in and out of our house. We had some race horses at home. And the people who were around us who were my heroes were steeplechase jockeys because they were always getting injured and they didn't seem to care about it. They'd get strapped up and a morphine injection and ride in the next race. And so they were my heroes. So that's what I did. I became one. I was a skinny little kid and I could ride at 140 pounds. And that's what I did. And one afternoon some long, long time ago, I went out on a horse of ours. He was sort of an alcoholic horse. He'd sought out lower companionship. He'd run in the French Derby and ended up in our yard. So he'd come a long way down, I'll tell you. And I rode this horse and he won. And ten minutes later, I'm shaking hands with the horse. He's the Queen of England. And you imagine what that did to a young alcoholic. I had arrived. I had really arrived. And a little later on, I got injured quite a lot. And I found it was easier to sit on bar stools and talk about it than ride them. And so that was my sort of career of drinking. And I was in the military and I went abroad and the booze was cheap and all this stuff. And I've recently started to drink. And I've recently started to drink. And I've recently sort of coined a phrase that seems to gel with the way I live, which is I'd rather make bad decisions and have good luck than make good decisions and have bad luck. And it sort of explains five broken marriages. Bad decisions and extremely good luck. I managed to be single today after all that. I ended up, as I said, in the penitentiary. I'd... I'd gone a long way down very quickly. And I think that's great for the alcoholic. I just hope you don't have soft landings because it's so easy to try and sort of reorganize things on Plan B. And I went to, as I said, to the penitentiary and that's where I took my last drink. And after that, some miraculous things happened. A man put the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous in my hand. And he said, you can borrow it for the next 24 hours. Thank God he didn't say I could borrow it for a week because I'd have put it to one side and I wouldn't have read it. I read the big book in a day and it's real easy when you have a learning disability, a reading disability like mine at that time. If I read the word God, my eyes would drop three or four lines and then I'd read a bit and then it came to God and three or four lines and turn the page. And so I'm through it pretty quickly. Started in the middle looking for vicarious pleasures and maybe some casual sex and then got to the beginning and got to page 32 and it doesn't mention God on the whole damn page. Had to read about that guy. What a jerk. 30 years old, quits drinking, not really in trouble. He was doing some spree drinking. Now, I have no idea what spree drinking is. I'm sure it was. It wasn't my idea. And he quits for 25 years and he starts drinking again and within three years he's dead. And I said, Ben, you must never, ever drink again. And the next morning, without the benefit of ever having met any of you, I went on my first 12-step call. Now, I know the counsellors here will tell me I was too new to go on a 12-step call. There are people whose sponsors would criticise this. But I haven't had a drink in the ensuing 35. I've had a drink in the ensuing 35 years as a result of going on that 12-step call. I walked the exercise yard of the oldest penitentiary in England and I fell into step with a guy called Ralph. And I said, Ralph, if you and I join Alcoholics Anonymous, we need never come back here. And when he was discharged about a year and a half later, by that time I was free and I was out and I got a good job and the girlfriend had come back and we had a house and cars and all that stuff. And I was there waiting. And I was there waiting. I was waiting for him to come out of the joint and be discharged. And I did what it tells me to in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. I took him home. 12-step work includes taking people home. I didn't keep him for long. It also says don't keep him for long. I don't know where he is today, but I know where I am. And I haven't taken a drink since. There were 400 meetings in the British Isles when I got sober. 55 million people and probably less meetings. I don't know how many there are in Las Vegas. Certainly less than half the meetings in San Francisco spread over the whole of the British Isles. And so I am one of the greatest. I'm sort of anti something. I'm not anti a whole lot, but I am anti that ridiculous saying about 90 meetings in 90 days. You cannot have a numeric solution. You cannot have a solution to a spiritual malady. You know, shut up. It got born in Minneapolis somewhere. And he's permeating Alcoholics Anonymous like the plague. Talks in the book about we have a daily reprieve for God's sake. And somebody's 90'd it. I got to less than nine meetings the first 90 days I was sober. The nearest meeting was 18 miles away. I didn't have a car. I didn't have a driver's license. The bus came at four o'clock in the afternoon, dropped me off in my hometown. It was the middle of winter. The library closed at six. The only places open were bars. And I had to wait for the meeting till eight. And then I always had to walk the last five miles home. And when anybody's home, I'm going to be home. I'm going to be home. I'm going to be home. I'm going to be home. I'm going to be home. I'm going to be home. And he talks to me about how difficult it is to get to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. The furthest I've ever hitchhiked in a day is 300 miles to a meeting and back. Very recently, I went to a meeting up in Northern California because there's a friend of mine, Mike Zander, who lives up I-5, a long way up I-5. And he's always asking me to speak. And he also asks a lot of other people to speak. And they always turn him down. It's too far. And he says, when anybody asks you to speak, the answer is yes, please, not where is it. If you want to stay sober, it's yes, please. And I just want to share one of those trips I had. It was a little over 400 miles round trip. And I got there and it was at a prison, a conservation camp up in the mountains. And I was there for about a month. And I was there for about a month. And I was there for about a month. And I was there for about a month. And I was there for about a month. And I was there for about a month. And I was there for about a month. And I was there for about a month. And I was there for about a month. And I was there for about a month. And it wasn't a, you know, I get to speak occasionally at meetings like this and much more often at meetings like that. Because that's what I do. I drive 400 miles in a night to go to a meeting and speak to six people in orange jumpsuits. But you see, at the end of the meeting, I had a spiritual awakening. We're saying the Lord's Prayer and I look across the circle. There are six guys in orange jumpsuits, three of us from outside, and the warden. And the warden, who is my litter mate in Alcoholics Anonymous. He got sober the month before I did. And Don Kvornan standing there in the full uniform of the warden of the camp with a gun on his belt, holding hands with two guys in orange jumpsuits. And you can't experience that driving less than 400 miles in a night. It does not happen around the corner. The benefits I get from 12-step work are directly proportional to the inconvenience The benefits I get from 12-step work are directly proportional to the inconvenience that I've suffered. One of my great heroes who I... He didn't live long enough for me to 12-step him was Winston Churchill. And I just want to share his definition of success. He said that success is moving from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm. He had just described AA sponsorship. He had just described AA sponsorship. There's a guy gets a mention in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous for six people he was sponsoring and they didn't get sober. I took somewhere between two and three hundred people to their first meetings the first three years I was sober and none of them got sober. None of them on my watch anyway. One of them was my baby sister. January 1971 I took her to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. She looked around and said, What a wonderful place for you, Ben. And added that if her husband was ever to get sober it would be the right place for him. She didn't go to another meeting for eighteen and a half years. And after a second meeting she has been continuously sober for seventeen years. And after a second meeting she has been continuously sober for seventeen years. My girlfriend of the time, the bimbo of the year, We got arrested together. I was the bad dude who led her astray. She was non-alcoholic. And in January of 1971 I did what it tells me to in the big book. I walked into the police station at the time. I was in my hometown. And I told the sergeant on the desk about Alcoholics Anonymous. It tells me to spread the message. I went in there and I talked to him. And I took Gwen with me as moral support. I was six weeks sober. Now I know the H&I committee and the public information would say I didn't have the sobriety requirements of that job. But I was the chairman of that particular committee. Now we didn't have an election. I was the only person sober in that town. That's how I got the job. And the desk sergeant knew who I was. I mean we're not a low profile family in that town. And he knew who I was. And I'd had my picture on the front page of the paper several times. I'd won some races and had my picture there. But most recently I did something else. Most recently I'd had said, Calvary officer jailed for fraud. He knew who I was. And I'm telling him that if he has a drunk who is so bad that he can't handle him, I'm the go-to guy. And here's my telephone number. And at that particular and precise moment, Gwen fell down and passed out drunk on the police station floor. You might say it was an inappropriate... Public information call. There would be people here who could be critical. Last year in November she celebrated 30 years of continuous sobriety. Doing it wrong is the way to stand by the gravesides of the people who are insisting on doing it right. This is a deadly disease. You know, I had a day when two people I knew very closely in Alcoholics and Homeless committed suicide the same day. It gets your attention. This is a really very unpleasant illness. And yet, we who have been privileged to come in from the cold can stay here. But we can only stay here if when it's very easy to stay here, we work like sons of bitches. And then when it's difficult, somebody will reach out and give me a tow. And they'll give me a pull through the bad times. I've had some bad times in sobriety. I love to hear people who are on that pink cloud and it's all wonderful and I haven't got any resentments and isn't it great? And we'll be here when you come back, sonny. Whoa. Tell you about a day in 1973. And the same woman, we lived together at that time. And she went off to live with a guy I sponsored. It was a bad day. The corporation I was running had just gone bankrupt and they repossessed the Jaguar of the week. And it was a bad week. And I got a ride to a meeting in Maidstone that was about 70 miles away. A guy drove 70 miles to pick me up and drove back 70 miles and another guy did the shift taking me home. And I walked into that meeting. There were six of us in a church basement and we had the moment of silence. And the two of them walked into that meeting. And I know your therapist would say go to another meeting. But I'll tell you what, it was a little over 100 miles further on up the road. That night was the nearest other meeting. I had to stay there and do Alcoholics Anonymous. The two of them were not to stay sober, though she got sober later on. And I stayed sober. And the next day I'm on the train. And I'm wanting to drink so badly. And the loving God of my understanding, the person I gave the decision and the task of doing the not drinking, allowed me to want to drink in a train without a corridor, without a club car that wasn't stopping. And I was beating on the seat and crying, wanting to drink just so bad. And by the time the train got to London I was okay and I was on my way to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. You see, I don't want the choice. I'm a bad chooser. I've got five ex-wives. Bad chooser. I don't want to choose about drinking because it works only until I choose to drink. And I chose to drink that morning. I left Oklahoma City in 1983 to visit an old sponsor of mine in southern New Mexico. And halfway there I'm wanting to drink. Things were not going well. I wanted to drink so badly. And I'm going through a little one-horse town in west Texas. And I slow down at the last building on the right-hand side, which was a bar. And I slowed down. And as I got level with the bar I looked up and there was a real estate sign screwed across the front door. It said, Felice. It was closed down. And I said the F-word and drove out of town. And said, thank you, God. If you're new or jaded you might like to hear the next thing that I... It's just a suggestion. And really we're not in the suggestion business but I can't help it occasionally. People talk about making gratitude lists. And I think gratitude lists are wonderful. It took somebody telling me to do this for me to get grateful for the things I was grateful for. But if you want to grow up in Alcoholics Anonymous write out a list of everything you're ungrateful for and get grateful for them one at a time. I had this old-time sponsor. I love Paul. He died two years ago. We did it from 1971 until two years ago. And he would tell me a couple of things that are not socially acceptable in Alcoholics Anonymous in 2006. Grow up and get over it. Whoa. That's not socially acceptable if you've just come out of treatment patting on the head and talking about the inner child. My inner child is pissed off. I'll tell you that. Oh, I love Alcoholics Anonymous. I love working with people. It changes my life that I can do the things that are talked about in Chapter 7 to see a fellowship grow up about me. There's somebody new who's moved here. Harry Williams is sitting in the front row. He and I played golf together every Friday for, what, 15 years in California. He's sponsored by a guy I sponsor, a guy who's lying in hospital at the moment, or I think he's at home now. He's dying of lung cancer. And it's a tough business being an alcoholic. I'd like an easier, softer way sometimes, but I don't think there are the rewards that we get for going through things. My mother was dying in, oh, God, I can't remember when, 1981, I think. And my father called up and he said, if you don't fly home today, you won't see her. Oh. And so I arranged with a guy who came to meetings occasionally. He was sort of a part-time AA member, travel agent, to get me a ticket. And I was sitting on the bed getting my things done. Getting my things together, my passport and credit cards and money. And the telephone rang, and it was Saturday morning. And we did AA answering service on Wednesday nights. And this is Saturday morning. And a man on the other end of the line said, is this Alcoholics Anonymous? And I said, no, it is not. I was really pissed. And I said, but it is a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. And then something softened in me. And I said, well, I don't know. I said, how can I help you? This guy called Carson, and I'm looking for Carson. I've been looking for Carson since 1981. And if there are two Carsons, it's a guy with a blue pinto. And Carson had been 16 years sober two days before, and he was drunk at a payphone outside a liquor store, and he got me. And I said, stand still there. He told me where he was. I said, don't go anywhere. I will get someone. Now, I did not use the volunteer list, because I know how few of the volunteer list will go. I'm not a cynic. I'm practical, and I've been doing it for a very long time. I went through my list, and everybody was out. And I'm turning the page. I've got the telephone down, and it rang again. And the guy said, are you open to sell literature this morning? And I just went for him like a rat up a drain, you know. I said, this is not Alcoholics Anonymous office. And then I said, where are you? And he was a block away from Carson. And I put the two of them together, and I got on a plane, and I flew home, and my mum died four hours after I arrived. And that phone call got me sober across the Atlantic, when I couldn't have done that on my own. And when I got back, I met the guy who'd gone on, not Carson, the guy who'd gone to see Carson. And he'd poured out his booze, and he'd taken him home, and he'd done all the right things. And he'd said he'd come at 7.30 to take him to the meeting. And he was an old hand at it. He said, I'll be there at 7.30. Got there at 10 past. That's the hint for you if you're new. It's the hint of the day. Because at 7.15, they go grocery shopping. Rather than let you take them to a meeting. You get there at 10 past. And he got there at 10 past, and the guy was still there. But he'd changed. Two days of drinking in 16 years had changed him. And this is the disease of alcoholism. I got to see a guy in San Francisco three years ago in the middle of the afternoon. My business partner, Paul Peterson, who's in the program, he's sober a long time also. And we got to go to the Hilton in the middle of the afternoon. And we met a guy who'd flown down from New Brunswick, Canada to a conference. And he'd been 26 years sober on Sunday. And he was four days drunk on Thursday. And he was sicker and looked worse than anybody else I've ever taken to detox. And I have taken hundreds of people to detox. The longer we're sober, the tougher it is when it goes wrong. And all we've got to do is follow these simple instructions. There's no graduation. There's no promotion. It's still the same deal. I heard of a guy the other day who I knew real well who would be 32 years sober if 12 years ago he hadn't started drinking a couple of beers a day. You know, there's great joy in here, but the alternative needs to be recognized. We're more afraid of the solution than we are of the problem, is the human condition of the alcoholic when we come into sobriety. And unfortunately, it's very difficult for people to assimilate that very, very simple concept that this is about comparative fear. We're more afraid of staying sober than we are of drinking, however bad the drinking has got, until something frightens us so badly that we move into sobriety for just that window of opportunity. And anybody here who hasn't done the fourth step out of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous proves that they're more afraid of taking the fourth step than they are of drinking. They may not see it that way, but it is that way. About 12 years ago, I got six new guys to sponsor at the same time, like over a two-week period, and all of them had been over 10 years sober. Now, I ask people who've had any time and have drunk again, I ask them some questions. I never ask, why did you drink? Because I do not want to hear the ramblings of somebody who is insane. But I can ask some very pointed questions, like, did you do the fourth step out of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous? And they, you know, they go three for six, something like that. And then I ask other questions to prove whether they're right or not. But these six guys, one of them had been almost 20 years sober. I asked the questions, have you done the sex inventory out of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous? You know, I can look around here and see people's eyes roll back when I start talking about the ideal sex life. Twelve component parts of that particular action requirement in the fourth step. Just to buy, somebody likes history, Al, they're the guy who likes history. There was a misprint in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous from 1955 to 1988, continuously a misprint that was never found until 1988, because it was in the middle of the fourth step. Uh-huh. So I asked these six guys one more question. Have you ever shown anybody how to do the fourth step out of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous? They went O for six. And if you're a taker, you're one of the people sitting in this room right now who has done the fourth step and has not started to show other people how to do it. And you are on borrowed time. This is a giving proposition. If you've really taken the fourth step out of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, you can't stop showing other people. So you're probably missing something. Maybe in the middle of that ideal sex life. It says ideal five times, incidentally. If you've missed it, it says it five times. It means it. It means best possible solution. And perverts and deviants of my type don't believe that that's possible. It's a wonderful life, isn't it? I'd love to end with a couple of 12-step stories, but I just want to tell you what's been going on in my life recently. I moved to Oklahoma two years ago, and some things changed. I got to be the subject of some ongoing miracles about my heart. And I was lying on that gurney in the emergency of the heart hospital last December, and my business partner was looking at the monitor, and I got stuff up my nose and in my arm, and not up my ass actually, but... But I got stuff up my nose and in my arm, and not up my ass actually, but... But I got stuff up my nose and in my arm, and not up my ass actually, but... Things weren't... I wasn't feeling terribly well. Things weren't... I wasn't feeling terribly well. And Gerry's looking at the television. And I wasn't feeling terribly well. They took the picture, and it took me a month to have it taken, in which I'd been there for about so many weeks. And there was nothing else to look at. I was watching bad television, and it wasn't coming out, and there was nothing else to look at. Except me! Except me! And he's going, Aha! Aha! And he's going, Aha! Aha! Aha! And then he went, Oh shit! And my pulse dropped down to 32 per minute, and my pulse dropped down to 32 per minute, and I tried willpower on that. and I tried willpower on that. And it didn't work terribly well. And it didn't work terribly well. But they got it fixed and a little later in the afternoon they're putting a pacemaker in. And I was being wheeled to the operating theatre and I had my cell phone with me. Wouldn't I? And I get a call from a guy who said, Ben, Parco is my sponsor and he tells me to call you. And I said, okay. And I'm just starting the long run to the OR and he's talking about Ninth Step Amends and he'd killed two people. And he didn't know how to make amends to them. And I've done that. I've only won, but I did it and I know how to make amends. And if you've killed anybody and you don't know how to make amends, talk to me. And by the time we get into the OR, I'm laughing. He's laughing on the other end too. Everybody else is serious. They've all got masks on. They're not smiling. And I'm the guy laughing. And one more time, the hand of God. At just that moment when I should have been nervous. And, you know, why would I be nervous? I've had all that stuff done to me. I mean, today, there's not much you can do to me that's new. And I'll just share a 12-step story. It's about to get to the right moment. It's probably about the length of the tape. It's probably about the length of the tape. It's probably about the length of the tape. It's probably about the length of the tape. It's probably about the length of the tape. I'm tailoring it to be... You'll hear a lot of stuff around Alcoholics Anonymous that are excuses for not doing the deal. And the deal is that we go. And the deal is that we go whether there's anybody else to go with or not. Because if Bill hadn't gone and he'd waited for somebody else to go with him, there wouldn't be Alcoholics Anonymous. And I got a call one night. About 25 years ago from a guy in Folsom, California. It was a Wednesday night. I didn't have time to find anybody else. I'd just got in my car and drove. And I drove past the Folsom Wednesday night meeting just as it was issuing out into the parking lot. And so I pulled in and two of the best friends in the world that I have, Bobby Burton and a guy called Whitey Haney, were there. And I said, I got a 12-step call. Jump in. And we went to see a guy called Ed. And Ed was very, very drunk. Extremely drunk. And so we had a meeting. Three 10-minute speakers. I don't know whether he heard a word we said. But we each had a 10-minute pitch. And then we got up to leave. And we're in the hallway. And he said something like, you're good people. And, you know, I'm a smartass. You probably understood this. And I said, yeah. We beat the fire department, didn't we? He said, no. He said, the dog didn't bite you. I'm looking around for the dog. And we're all being brought up with animals, all three of us. And there's Whitey. And he's got a Dachshund licking his fingers. Well, this Dachshund is a savage dog that has to be put away when there are visitors. But because the dog knew we were about our father's business, he was licking Whitey's hand. I mean, this is very stupid. It's a stupid story. Except that because the dog was licking Whitey's fingers and didn't bite us, Ed was standing on the porch the following night at 7 o'clock when I came by to take him to his first meeting. And the last time Whitey saw Ed, he was 10 years sober in Carson City, Nevada. And so I'll suggest to you, if you're new or jaded, particularly if jaded, that you go on the call, you go with somebody or without somebody, but just make sure the dog doesn't bite you. Thank you very much. Thank you.