Why the Fellowship Is Not Enough for Recovery – Pat

I'm a recovered alcoholic. My name is Pat Rogan, and thanks to the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous outlined in this big book of Alcoholic Synonymous, which is the program of AA, I have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body. I can't even express to you how grateful I am for AA and this fellowship. AA didn't just save my life, but it gave me a new life, and this new life is just incredible. And I got to tell you, last week I left here and I went played softball on Friday and tore my hamstring. So like this is the first day I've been walking around really without any kind of pain. So it's good to be here though. So last week we touched on how I came to find out what it meant to be powerless in this program. I spent, as I said last week, that I spent my first three months in this program dying a death, a slow death from just not going to just not drinking and going to meetings. I mean, that's that's kind of all I heard was meeting makers make it just don't pick up the first one. And and my reprieve ran out at about 90 days. And and I told everybody off at the meeting. and if this don't work this is some kind of cult that somebody hugs me again I'm going to punch them and I don't know why you guys are talking about a life beyond your wildest dreams you're in AA and I left that meeting and Brian H approached me with this book in his hand and said do you want to know about the program I said I've been coming for three months and he said no you've been visiting the fellowship he said let me tell you what the program is and we sat in his car, and he read the doctor's opinion to me. And what I learned was that I suffered from an illness. I thought I was crazy. Did anybody else think they were crazy when they got here? I mean, who gives up families? Who gives up careers? Who givesup children? Who givesop their freedom unless you're freaking crazy, right? Well, you can be sick. You can be sickness. And I was relieved to find out I was an alcoholic. So relieved that I called my ex-wife and said, I got good news. I said, well, I'm an alcoholic. I know what the problem is now. And she said, no, you're an asshole. Who drinks a lot. And she hung up the phone. And my sponsor confirmed that. And what I found out is that we have this twofold illness. Later we talk about the spiritual aspect of the illness. But the doctor talks about this twofold illness, this obsession in the mind and this allergy to the body. This idea that overcomes all other ideas to the contrary. This idea allows me to believe that this time it's going to be different. This time it is going to okay. This time I'm going to control it. And once I fall prey to that obsession, I pick up that first strength and I suffer from this physical craving that takes place once I put a substance in my body. and i go i they describe my life in the doctor's opinion restless irritable discontent fearful tormented call it whatever you want you know i like the word torment i got that from mary clapton that's what he called it tormented you know and then there's this ease and comfort that comes to that what the third or fourth drink right that you know and then boom off to the races right and then then then the remorse oh my god i'm so sorry Yeah, I know I promised you. Yeah, Your Honor, I told you you'd never see me again. I know, I Know. The halfway house. Yeah, i know, i tested dirty. I'll be back next Friday, not a problem. And then I would repeat the same over and over and over. I usually would make it about three days before I would fall prey until that emotional barometer that Charlie always talked about, that emotional level that would get to a point where I just can't stand it anymore and i i will pay the price tomorrow for relief today one of my favorite paragraphs i think it's on page 34 and more about alcoholism we always talk about believing the lie well that's not always true is it that's always true what about when we deliberately go out and get drunk knowing what the consequences are going to be right knowing that we're going to pay a price tomorrow we talk about living one day at a time is something new to us You go, you know, you're going to jail. F that! I need help today. I need relief today. Right? Our friends are telling us don't do it. Don't do it. You're going in jail. She's leaving you. You are gonna lose your job. F it. F it. That's where I was. We say stuff like, no, you are going to jail. I don't care. You know what? I'm leaving your ass if you pick up a drink again. I don't care. We suffer from this two-fold illness. By the way, the doctor's opinion is not the doctor'S opinion anymore. It's fact. We are chemically different. Our bodies react differently. Chemically, our brain chemistry is different. I'm not going to do a Ben T on you and go down with the amygdala and all that kind of stuff, the dopamine and the serotonin and all that kind of stuff. But we react differently. The non-alcoholic, the more they drink, the less they want. My brother says, hold on, man. I'm starting to feel it. Stop. I am going to be sick. Not the way I react. He goes to bed. I go to town. You know what I mean? thank god there's a solution thank god there's a solution and the solution is twofold right and the first part of this solution they talk about is the power of the fellowship and i don't mean when when i tell my story and if you were here last week and you heard my story you know i don'T mean to discount the power in this fellowship because this without this fellowship i'm not here I'm not here. They did wrap their arm around me and took my ass to Denny's every freaking night, you know, fed me four Grand Slams and French Slams and ham over my hammies, whatever the hell they were called, you know. And they fed me and bloated me and then sent my ass home, you Know. But it's not enough, you Now. But there's power here. And I don't know about you, but as soon as I walk into a room of AA, hey, I get that third drink feeling. Like no matter what's going on out there, no matter how I walked into that meeting, there's this sense of safety. There's a sense of relief. And the power is here. Bill uses that Titanic analogy where we all come from different places, the poor, the middle class, the rich, the wealthy, all the different religions, people who normally wouldn't mix all come in here and bind, bond. They bond together because they have a common problem, just like the people on the Titanic. When that Titanic hit that iceberg, nobody was asking for a financial statement at the railing, you know? They had a common problems. They were on a sinking freaking ship. We need to come together and we need to get out of this predicament that we're in. This is the same thing here. The only difference is that on the Atlantic, once they got to shore, they realized they didn't mix. They didn't need each other anymore and they go their separate ways. But here, I am always dependent on you. Always. It's imperative that I work with the newcomer to maintain my sobriety. And it's imperative when the newcomER walks through that door and someone like me or you are there to greet them and put our arm around them and swap stories and swap war stories. That's where our war story is valuable. That's why we're here today. That's what my story is value to the newcomEr who finally says, yeah, I felt like that. yeah, I did that. Yeah, that happened to me. What did you do? How did you get out? That power of the fellowship is real. I was at, my son belongs to South Point Church up in Jacksonville and I love going up there with him. Pastor Russ is one of the people I love to listen to. It's a non-denominational Christian church up there. And two of the founders were in the church one ofthe weeks that Shannon and I were up there, Tony Buscelli and Mark Rumel were two of the founders of the church, and we don't know who they are. They're two Jacksonville Jaguar football players, a linebacker and a quarterback, and not that that's relevant, but they get my attention when they're football players. And they asked Tony Buscelli what the most inspiring moment of founding that church was, and he says, meeting Mark Brumell. And he said, Mark and I became so close that no matter what was going on in my life, I could call Mark. He said, And Mark would just look at me and go, okay, Tony, what's wrong? Let's go talk. I could call Tony or Mark in the middle of the night, and he would meet me wherever I needed to meet him and help me out. And they asked Mark the same thing, and Mark said, hey, Tony's my rock. No matter what I need, Tony is there. Anytime I need help, Tony Is there. No matter What's going on in his life, he'll drop it, and he'll come and help Me. He said, like he said, he looks at Me, he can see it in My eyes that something's wrong. Who's your Tony Buscelli? Who's you're Mark Rommel? Find that person. Find that a person who is chasing what you need, has what you want and latch on to them. Billy G. Billy G was my guy. You know, Billy had two years. I thought, oh my God, how do you get two years? That's incredible. He was like God to me. You guys have had 30. I didn't even believe you. you know i want nothing to do with you with 30 years you know but if you had a year or two man holy crap that's something man and i went i wanted to be where billy was i didn't want to know where there was a meeting i want to go where billie was going to a meeting because billy had something man billy has something i wanted and billy was chasing guys like garrett and like ben and like zeke and like uh you know those kind of guys um uh i could go on and on i mean so that dennis is one of them you know they were chasing guys that just they were on fire they were in fire with this thing you know pastor mike was was one who was on fire i'm not saying all these guys stayed sober but man they were en fire with his thing at that time they were carrying a message of of depth and weight you know it was it was It was amazing. And that's how, I mean, I didn't go to a meeting just to go to a meeting. I went to a meet-up because I wanted to hear something that had depth and weight. My guy said, what meeting do you go to? I think I'll just scroll down to the one-on-one. Who's speaking? I don't know. What kind of meeting is it? I don' t know. What are you going there for? Are you going to have your paper signed or what? Well, you know, it's right down the street. I don''t want to go all the way up to Pompano. all i go what if they what if you needed crack and you were going up to how far have you gone for your drug of choice oh how far are you going for a drink but now you're telling me it's inconvenient to get to the pompano beach group rather than the one-on-one club you know find your tony basselli find your mark rumel find your billy g and and chase them man find out where they go that's that's kept me in these rooms for that three months that i was dry that i always dry, you know. The great, the tremendous fact is that we found a common solution. The fellowship's here to support us, but it's not enough. You know, I think this spiritual window that we come in here on that we call a pink cloud, you Know, I Think We Have This Spiritual Window, We have this period of time where we've got this reprieve where we're open to this program of action. And I think if you don't grab that newcomer in that window, they're destined for relapse. To me it becomes how long can I hold my breath? I could hold my breathe for about three months and then I ran out and then couldn't do it anymore. I leaned on you for three months. And at 90 days, I couldn't it anymore, I was at a place where I can't stand the way I feel for one more second and i can't drink i was in a hotel room before i got here saying i can stand the way i feel for one second and I can't stop drinking that's a problem when you can't live with or without alcohol that's the turning point right there can't leave with it can't lead without it neither solution is working at this point thank god there is a solution a tremendous fact is we have found a common solution that's the great news that this fellowship carries that we have a way out but but it talks about uh whether you can quit because our solution spiritual let me just tell you that right a great fact right it's just this and nothing less that we've had deep and effective spiritual experiences that have revolutionized our whole outlook on life and towards our fellows. The central fact of my life today is that God has entered my heart and lives in a way which is indeed miraculous and is commencing to do for me what I could not do for myself. What was that? I couldn't stay stopped. That's what I couldn'T do. Now, God has enterED my heart and solved that problem. That's not great news for everybody. Well, why would I need that? Because the second fact says that I've lost the power of choice. I have lost the, I can't bring into my consciousness with sufficient force, the pain and suffering. The book says a week or a month ago, bullshit. I couldn't remember the promise I made this morning. I left the house swear and I wouldn't pick up a drink and I came home drunk or didn't come home for a couple of days. And I meant it with all my heart because I knew that my marriage and my children were on the line when I said, trust me, I'm not going to drink today. I meant it with my heart, and I could. I shared with you guys last week, promising a judge that he would never see me again. And I was drunk before I got home because I can't, because I'm an emotional freaking cripple, that's why, because I cannot stand the torment, that restless, irritable discontent. It's just too much for me. By the way, I think Tom is on there today. I stole this from Tom, because we hear that God has entered our hearts and lives, and we hear hearts and live. We hear it both ways, right? And I think that, and Tom, I stole it from Tom. That if they ever asked Bill, is it lives or lives, Bill would have said yes. Whatever you want it to be. I mean, I have an opinion that I'll speak to you after a meeting if you want to hear it. But I don't think it matters at this point. I don't think it matters at all. I think you have to get to a point where you're open to whatever solution we have to offer. I think it's on, what is it, 34? You can tell I'm really prepared here. For those who are unable to drink moderately, the question is how to stop altogether. We're assuming, of course, that the reader desires to stop. Whether such a person can stop on a non-spiritual basis depends upon the extent to which he's already lost the power to choose whether he will drink or not. So I'm assuming that everybody here has a desire to stop. I'm assuming that everybody that I sponsor desires to stop, and if you don't think you're powerless, our book says go try some controlled drinking. Go try to stop for a year, it says in the book, which that's just unheard of. I mean, scratch that shit out right away. A year? Holy crap. I couldn't stop for a week. Now, I don't recommend that with anybody that uses any other type of drug. I love it more about alcoholism. It says that someday we'll find a pill to solve our problem. Science may someday accomplish this, but it hasn't done so yet. If they had a pill that would allow you to drink normally, how many of you are taking more than one? How many are crushing it, smoking it, cooking it? Yeah. They have no idea who they're dealing with, man. So there's this, and I got to cover it because there's this asterisk. I'm not going to tell the joke because I got a bad review from the seminar telling that joke. It was one person out of 400 that didn't like it. So I'll never do that again. it's true all right there's a asterisk that uh says please read fully explained it says on the bottom of that page and in the first printing of the first edition the appendix two wasn't in it uh bill just was against it bill was so on fire with his experience that he had in towns hospital he that's all he wanted to talk about was that white light experience that he had in town so that conversion experience transformational experience that he had and he didn't want a discounting of that hank and jim burwell wanted to put the appendix in the very first printing but after the printing goes out the 3 400 books or whatever they start getting all these phone calls like why are we not having this spiritual experience that bill had no we're not having his white light thing and bill agreed that it was time when the second printing to put second printing of the first edition to put the appendix two in the back this is the term spiritual experience and spiritual awakening used many times in this book which upon careful reading shows that the personality change sufficient to bring about recovery from alcoholism has manifested itself in us in many different forms we learned two things in the very first paragraph that a spiritual experience is nothing more than a personal a spiritual experienced or spiritual awakening is nothing more than a personality change sufficient to recover from alcoholism the other thing we learned there it can come quickly in a spiritual experience or slowly over a period of time in a spiritual awakening both sufficient to recovery from alcohol ism and it is true in the first printing gave many readers the impression that these personality changes or religious experiences change must be in this sudden the nature of sudden and spectacular upheavals change happily for everyone this conclusion is erroneous in the first few chapters a number of sudden revolutionary changes are described though it was not our intention to create such an impression many alcoholics have nevertheless concluded that in order to recover change they must acquire an immediate and overwhelming god consciousness change followed by a vast change in feeling and outlook among our rapidly growing membership of thousands of alcoholics such transformations change though frequent but are by no means the rule most of our experience of what the psychologist william james calls the educational variety because they develop slowly over a period of time quite often the friends of the newcomer aware of the difference change long before he is himself he finally realized he's undergone a profound alteration change in his reaction to life that such a change could hardly have been brought about by himself alone what often takes place in a few months could seldom have been accomplished by years of self-discipline. And so if you sponsor people, you've seen that before they did, right? You see the change in their behavior, the change and their thinking way before they see it, right. I had a guy who was sponsored at one of the local fraction resorts down in Pompano. We were doing this big meeting outside and he comes up, Pat, I need to talk to you. And I said, what? He said, you know, we got a new guy in last night and he stole my food. AndI said, man, that's awesome. He said, no, maybe he didn't hear me. He said the guy, I got a new guy in the house last night. He stole my food. And I said, man, you're the best, you know? I guess if he thought he said it louder and slower that I would understand what he was trying to say. You don't understand, he said. Newcomer stole my, the middle shelf is mine. My food's on the middleshelf. He took and ate my food." I said, man, you are amazing, right? And he walked away shaking his head. I know he's thinking, I got the wrong guy. I got to get another sponsor. This guy's not even listening to me, right. About three weeks later, he comes back to me. He says, hey, got a new guy in the house last night. I said oh boy. He says yeah, I fed him. Good job. What's the difference? What's a difference? Perception. Perception, right and you go a lot of times, Not so much in this room, but probably some in this room. There's probably some people in this room that can't believe they have to sit here and listen to me for a freaking hour. I can't believe I got to listen to this BS for an hour. The court ordered my ass in here. I'm here with the bus. This is just bullshit. And then there's another half that think my God, we're so blessed to be able to come to an AA meeting and intermingle with this fellowship and listen to somebody talk about the steps. And you're both in the same place, in the same seats, listening to the same person, and it's just a difference in perception. You know, you just perceive it differently. So with a few exceptions, our members find they've tapped an unsuspected inner resource, which they presently identify with their own conception of a power greater than themselves. Most of us think this awareness of a powerful greater than ourselves is the essence of a spiritual experience. More religious members call it God consciousness. Change, change, change. More emphatically, we should just say that any alcoholic capable of facing his problems in the light of our experience can recover change provided he does not close his mind all spiritual concepts he can only be defeated by an attitude of intolerance or belligerent denial not changing that's the only thing that will defeat you here is hanging on to your old ideas we read it and how it works we've got to let go gotta let go of my thinking and open up my mind for some new information we find that no one need have difficulty with the spirituality and program willingness honesty and open-mindedness are essentials of recovery but these are indispensable notice the words are different order it's more of a who than how right there's a principle which is bar against all information which is proof against all arguments which cannot fail to keep a man an everlasting ignorance that principles contempt prior to investigation and we know that that was William Paley not over sprints or now personality change sufficient to recover from alcoholism that's our solution and they asked us a couple more times uh for amplification it's on another page but then please read on the on page 47 whether you can quit on a non-spiritual basis there's the key you know there's a i love the way the book the book talks about three different types of drinkers in that chapter. It talks about my brother, the guy who can take it or leave it alone. But it talks about the other guy or gal that's just like the real deal, right? Who drinks the heavy drinker, the hard drinker. The one that sits with us, beside us when we're drinking, when we are on our runs. But they were able to stop her monitoring. My buddy Jimmy D, we got we were getting drunk together at very young age up in pittsburgh and i moved down to south florida and a couple years later jimmy moved down south florid and we ran down here too and jimny drank and drugged just like me just with me we ran together for a couple of years jimpy got married jimby had a kid i had a kit jim and i were going to this biker bar in margate one night i'm not sure why Neither one of us had a bike. You know, those nights where you're just looking for some action, you know? Looking to get your ass kicked or something, you Know? And so we're in this bar and Jimmy gets a call from his wife. And she said, if you don't come home now, I'm leaving you. And Jimmy went home. That sissy went home! i never saw jimmy again now i know jimny had to shake rattle and roll i know i don't even know if he went to detox or not but i'll tell you what he drank a drug just like i did but he was given a sufficient reason and he stopped he went home he stopped running that was like i don' t have to be 37 38 years ago jimby's like three kids still married to the same person. I'm on my third marriage. Nobody tells me what to do, you know? I'm a grown-ass man, you know. Jimmy was given good reason, right? Ill health, you're gonna die young, your liver's failing, stomach's burning up. Given good reason the non-alcoholic will stop or moderate. I'm not that guy. I'm beyond human aid. I have placed myself beyond human aid. The facts, the tremendous fact, the fact, the central fact, the great fact, you know, that I need that spiritual experience to be able to recover from this illness. The chapter, I think we agnostics is probably the best chapter that i've ever read probably the most man i don't know what inspired him to write that chapter but that changed everything for me everything for my my i want to tell you my religious background i was raised catholic right so here's what i heard when i was a child that if you follow the rules you're going to go to the gates of hell and if you don't follow the rules you're gonna go to the fire right and there was this halfway house called purgatory you know that the catholics had i'm not sure how you got to go to purgatorian not heaven or hell because if you weren't bad enough to get burnt or good enough to go to heaven you went to halfway you know and uh and i wasn't capable of following i was a little kid in grade school who lied in confession right i mean because i wanted to be the norm you know i would i would take a poll i'd ask the kids what do you what are you gonna how many times did you lie you know did you steal anything and i would just get this you know consensus of what the crowd was and i would go in and tell them whatever they were going to say i just wanted to me part of the group you know i would leave confession with guilt i just i just i just lied to the freaking priest and when my grandmother stopped forcing me to go to church i was done with the fairy tale that's the way i saw it this is like this is a kind of disciplinary trick this is like santa claus you know and and it's just it's just bs right no i was the real truth is i'm incapable of following rules and there's a lot of stuff on this fun side of the island that doesn't line up with these rules so going to go to the fun side of the island and i'm going to play over there and just deny all of that you know but the truth is there was something called a conscience you know there's this thing deep down within every one of us that uh it is gone and uh i just denied it for years and when i got here that was still my con my conception and i think it was genius and by By the way, Bill says half of us get here either agnostic or atheist. Half of us give you either agnostics or atheists. And that's not an obstacle. That is not an option. And I believe I was an agnóstic. I just had no knowledge. I had no knowledgability. It wasn't that I disbelieved or believed. I just have no knowledge of God. That's all agnostics means. The atheist believes in the proof of the non-existence of God, that may be a problem. and that's why this fellowship is sufficient at the beginning just lean on us right lean on us the book is asking us to asking me to lay aside everything i think i know for a new information take some new information everything i know john williams you say every pat everything you know is killing you when you get here it's what you don't know that's going to save your life so lay aside everything you think you know for some new ideas wow what a new idea that was why don't you choose your own conception of God by the way it doesn't say create it says choose and there's a power in this fellowship there is a power here they're asking me the agnostic to go from willing to believe to coming to believe. They're asking the atheists to go from no to maybe. That's all. No to maybe, maybe. Well, why is it? Well, here's your choice. Go on to the bitter end or accept spiritual health. Die an alcoholic death or accept spirit. Spiritual health. And if you're not convinced, your misery can be refunded. Try it on your own and come back and tell us whether you can or not. I don't suggest that. I don'T TELL ANY OF MY SPONSORS TO DO THAT. BUT LET ME TELL YOU SOMETHING, BEING CONVINCED IS A REQUIREMENT FOR RECOVERY. IT'S A REQUIREMENTS. THEY'RE GOING TO ASK US IN STEP THREE, RIGHT BEFORE STEP THIRD, THEY'RE GONNA ASK, ARE YOU CONVINcED? WHAT ARE YOU CONVINCED OF? THE FIRST TWO. THAT'S A RECLARMENT. THAT'S SOMETHING BILL GOT FROM WILLIAM JAMES. William James says there's two requirements for a spiritual experience. Facing an insurmountable obstacle, facing defeat, and seeking a solution through a power greater than human power. Through a deity, he said. That's the requirement. But I get to choose my own conception of God. And somebody asked me that question. What would you want? See, I had this punishing gut. By the way, I don't hear that today. I don'T know what I was listening to when I was a child. You know, I DON'T know. I don't know if that's what I heard or if that is what I think I heard. I don' t know, but I don''t hear that today when I'm at church. That's not the way I hear it. I heard it a different way when I was younger. Maybe they've changed. Maybe I've changed, probably me, probably my perception of what's going on. I chose a God of love, a God of forgiveness, and a God of mercy. That's what I wanted my God to be. And it was just a starting point for me. I had no knowledge of God. But for now, I'm going to say God is love, God is forgiveness, God has mercy. And I'm gonna roll with that. And it's saying on that cornerstone, we can build the structure that's gonna move us forward. On that little grain of sand that a little bit of willingness to believe is enough to move forward. Because we don't have to have faith in anything from the start. We don't have to actually believe in anything. We just have to be willing to believe that we are not the power, that we do not have the power. Just move off. Just take a step off of no to maybe. And then from there you'll start to get results. From there you will make a decision. Then you'll take some action and then you're going to see some damn results and then your gonna come to believe. That's how this thing works. But just willing to believe is all it takes. There's no belief requirement here, not when you're new. At some point if you do this work, if you incorporate these steps into your life, if work these steps things are going to change, you're gonna change. You are gonna change, your perception going to change there's no doubt about it i was told that you know here's here's my i was dr bob when i got here that's why i suffered three months in this program right one thing bill learned with dr bob was what order to have the steps in right we know for bill for six months was selling the spiritual experience right bill wilson was going out there talking about his white light experience and people weren't 90-some he tried, nobody got sober. And he starts complaining to Silkworth about it. And Silkworth says, yeah, I hear what you're doing out there. Selling his spiritual experience. Bill, yes, that's vital. But tell him the problem first. Tell him the hopelessness of the illness first. Tell him about the obsession. Tell him About the allergy. Tell him that first. Get their heads going up and down first. And then give them your other medicine. And Bill took heed to that suggestion. First one he tries on is Dr. Bob. Well, I was second-stepped. I came into the Fifth Chapter Club. Probably Dennis is the only one that remembers this. Anybody else remember the Fifth chapter club? Yeah, I know you guys do. Yeah, nice. Yeah, yeah, I come into the fifth chapter club. John, do you remember John, the bartender? John, Camper John we called him. Camper john, we called them that because he had a camper behind Denny's and he used to live in that camper. And Camper Jon, he was the bartending. The Fifth Chapter was really cool. Because it had a fellowship room and it had the meeting room. So if you didn't want to hear the fellowship, you could go into the meetingroom, play chess or checkers or tell lies, sponsor people if you wanted to, be sponsored. And John was the coffee guy. He was a bartender. And John looked at me and said, dude, you don't look good. I said, no, I don't feel too good, John. I was detoxing. And John says, man, you need to start praying. Okay. He says, yeah, you need to get up in the morning, ask God to keep you sober that day. And then you need a sankham at night. I go, okay, John. And I start to walk away and he goes, wait, wait. You're not going to make it through the day. He said, you know what? You need to go through the hour. You know, and I took heed to that. I was doing a job down in South Miami opening up an appliance store. And I was dropping to my knees like at 10 o'clock and dropping to my knees again at 11, going into the bathroom, getting on the bathroom floor, please, God. and I started putting some days together and I just started getting through the detox and I thought maybe there's something to this prayer thing. So I go to the jewelry store, there's a jewelry store next door, it might have been a pawn shop, I'm not sure and they buzz me in and I go, I need a cross and he says, do you want a crucifix? I said, I don't know what made me do that except that I was getting results praying And so what am I praying to? And I still have it, by the way. I lost it twice. I lost in my yard once and found it again. Lost it at a customer's house. She called me and gave it back to me. It just reminds me of where my reliance is when I get up in the morning and look in the mirror. But I thought it was going to do something magical. I don't know. But it got me 90 days. John got me90 days. I started to believe that there was something in that prayer, but I didn't know what the problem was. I didn't know what it meant to be powerless over alcohol until Brian approached me at 90 days so I was Dr. Bob in it Dr.Bob did it for two and a half years and until Bill came to him and told him what the problem was the obsession of the mind, the allergy of the body and told his story to Dr.Bob and Dr.Pop says he's the first one that knew what he was talking about when it came to alcoholism and it came from experience it didn't come from a book Bob got it because he had both pieces of the puzzle finally So, you know, is this all about God or is this all about not drinking? It's about both. It's just which camp to take them to first, right? I think we're out of time. Thanks for letting me be here. Thank you.