The Friday Night Speaker Meeting in Austurbaejarskoli in Reykjavik, Iceland

hi good evening my name is Carl I'm an alcoholic

I would like to thank you for asking me to come here and speak tonight

it makes me I used to do a lot of drugs I'm kinda nervous with people behind me

especially if you don't yeah exactly exactly I've had a great time here in Iceland I've just been here for a couple of days and then

and I've been kind of a dream of mine to be in Iceland I I'm I'm half Icelandic you and I can't speak a word of of the language back to my middle name is unison and the family name from my grandmother my grandmother's family it's always been a dream to be here and I feel I felt right at home after I got off the plane because many people in the United States often tease me for the way I look so it sucked because my hair is so blown out

where did that come from and I hope you're on ice landed in Swedish and so finally I get to come visit and I'm very excited that Alcoholics Anonymous very strong here is very very strong and and I love that idea anyway I yeah I didn't start drinking until I was eleven years old hi res

it's kinda late these days I see people getting sober at twelve sometime

yeah and they have some gnarly story right at twelve years old but I didn't know it at the time but it it after came an Alcoholics Anonymous and and found out what alcoholism was in looking back I can tell you that I believe I was an alcoholic right from the gate once I added alcohol because it because of what happened to me in the first twelve hours of my drinking what happened was my parents were out of town for the weekend I stole a bottle of wine from my father I locked myself in his study and I started to drink and halfway through that first bottle of wine notice I said first bottle of wine I I got this feeling that actually I don't even need to describe the meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous everybody understands that feeling it was just like

I remember taking a big deep breath just

I didn't know that I've been short of breath for the first eleven years of my life

but all of a sudden I

and that's the last thing that I remember that night was that feeling that I got and the next thing that I remember is I came to it with the next day and I was in my bedroom and there was a cute everywhere all over the wall of the floor in the pillowcase in my underwear I mean everywhere and I knew I was gonna have to do it again and I made it into the bathroom and I realize that people all over the bathroom and I slipped on the bathroom floor I hit my head on the toilet bowl going down and as I crawled back up to get my head back in the toilet bowl I felt that wonderful wonderful feeling that I would feel many times later my life and that is how nice and cold that porcelain fields and

and

I love that and I

and I got my head back in the toilet bowl and I started the he even and I made it into the dry heaves stage you know that

right

that part in my mind started talking to me right there on the

in my mind says this is all right we're gonna do this again

so so right there within within twelve hours of taking my first drink everything that makes me alcoholic happen

the first bottle of wine I got an abnormal in the book calls it an allergic reaction alcohol this thing they call the phenomenon of craving kicked in I lost control of the month that I drank the best way I can describe the the phenomenon of craving and in my life is that when I drink alcohol the more I drink the thirsty I guess it's just bizarre right I've got this Cup of coffee here right and by the time I'm done speaking maybe I'll I'll I'll finish that that Cup of coffee

but you know what

if it were a

I'm not going to after drinking this I'm not going to be stopping by fourteen coffee houses on the way back to the hotel I'm not going to it does not set up a phenomenon of trading but if it moves I if I put a drink or two any

it starts making all the decisions for me the best way I can describe what alcohol did in my life also for the feeling that I got from it is that is that alcohol did for me what the phone booth did for Clark can't just bone right totally changed I turn into Superman immediately

but if that if that if the fact that when I drink I lose control if that was the only thing that made me alcoholic well then a couple of presidents ago we had a Ronald Reagan his wife came out and had this big campaign up just say no back in the early eighties if if all the if if the only thing that made me alcoholic was that when I drank I lost control well then when Nancy Reagan said just say NO I would've gone

and I would have gone about my business and had a fantastic one in this

no not for me tonight

but I have this other thing that we even after taking a dear price whether it be in a day a week or a month ago I paid a dear price in my life from my drinking my mind starts painting the fantasy that this time it's gonna be different this time I'm gonna be able to control it if I just do more cocaine while drinking then maybe I mean I'm not lose control all sorts of things will go through my mind

and that's the thing that lead me to the gates and standing and that the thinking that alcoholic thinking and I and I got it right there that that next morning

in fact

when I was younger between four years old and nine years old my family lived on the island of Borneo in Southeast Asia and I had while I was there a contracted the same call tropical weren't right easily cured once it was diagnosed but it took about a week to diagnose what was wrong with me and during that week every time I ate I threw up and just threw up through it and just threw up a lot just constantly throwing up and finally they figured out what was wrong with me they made me drink a little Cup like that of some very chalky type substance I drank it done about it but when I was done throwing up and from the end of the of the topical worms my mind did not kick in and say let's try some tropical once again

I didn't do it but there I am eleven years old I'm thinking just as badly my mindset this is all right we're gonna do this again right

so I have a strange mind and once I started drinking before I started drinking hours this goofy kid short hair playing violin doing really well in school love my family once I started drinking everything changed out when the violin in came the heavy metal guitar want to grow my hair down to my **** school became a very secondary issue and my parents became the enemy immediately black lights went up in my room locks when on my bedroom door posters went out my god became Jimmy Page and Ritchie Blackmore in and my parents were going

and I was back behind that locked door going

that's where I am twelve years old and that's it that's the summer that we change schools in the United States from sixth grade seventh grade we moved into what they call a junior high school and a typical morning in junior high school would be a truck early for school not for study hall anything but to meet my new friends the very edge of the school property and if it every school in the state has at this end of the school property there's always a losers corner where everybody hangs out before school smoking and drinking and all that stuff and we would meet at this little place about four five which would always be every kid would have an assignment one day a week to rate his parents liquor cabinet night before and put in and make a mixture right to the parents don't know how much was was taken and you can imagine about progress at about six or seven of attending that jar around there with whiskey vodka vermouth cream to menthol makes dinner

green things would be floating around in it and we be handing that around

handing out around and of course it was the early seventies or smoking that commercial pot anybody remember that stock for finger lakes ten dollars a bag seeds and stems and the whole bit and we pack all their seeds and stems and leaves into a homemade pipe maybe made it made out of plumbing fittings on the screen or if you're really desperate that morning would be a toilet paper roll with aluminum foil and pin holes in it we get all those seeds and stems and leaves in there hit the lighter the seasons every popping burning holes in our clothes and we look at each other you go to school today like no no we don't

now is it this point that many people that speak in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous often interrupt themselves and say I don't mean to offend anybody but drugs are part of my story I think it's a bizarre thing for an alcoholic to apologize other alcoholic for doing drugs while drinking

why would I apologize to you for doing drugs this is silly right

in fact the most bizarre example of ever seen of that I was in a speaker meeting one time you years ago much like like this one but a a large large speaker meeting and the speaker was up just giving one of the ugliest heinous blow by blow drunk a logs I've ever heard and I gotta tell you when I'm on a speaker meeting and the drunk a lot gets ugly uglier it gets the more excited I get I think I would like on the edge of my chair then I don't think I would like drooling that night

right

and at one point in this ugly story the speaker said you know I had I had four do you wise that's a drunk driving while drunk and the judge said I got one more do you why I was gonna go to prison for five years and sure enough two weeks later I'm on the freeway I'm in a blackout I hit the family of four they all wound up in the hospital and I wound up in prison in prison I sodomized men I was sodomized him well I don't mean to offend anybody but I did some drugs to

I was the only one that thought that was strange that night everybody at all go ahead and mention that

so

by the time I was fourteen

this set I'm like the neighborhood drunk by the time I'm fourteen and I'm I'm having problems blacking out tonight I'm getting all sorts of trouble and my parents are trying to figure out what to do with me and and I'm smoking a lot of Potton through a series of events I wind up down in the basement this guy's house and he opens up this hermetically sealed bag the most incredible pot I've ever seen in my life you don't need to be in that high times magazine you guys get that thing with this strain really exotic pot in there and I've never seen it but this guy opened up the bag he rolled up the joint it's like an incredible and you can smell it in the room even before he left and he takes that hidden

handed down to me about four foot eleven I don't know what to expect from it so I did take a big hit I've been smoking commercial pot my whole life take the hidden

explodes in my lungs and down on the ground barking like a dog I always call it getting high but I wound up on the ground a lot you know

I

I had a back up to him and he takes another hit in your face

and he asked me a question that changed the course of my life he said

can you tell any of this at school

yes

no no no it's fourteen years old in the neighborhood drunken on the neighborhood drug dealer I forgot to mention but my father was a neighborhood Lutheran minister

I wish he would have thought it was funny he

not my parents good good people good good people and they always tried to help me they saw me deteriorating in front of their eyes I mean within a few years they saw me from when they were describing the bright eyed intelligent young young child in just a few years later I mean my hair's down in front of my eyes and whenever they could see my eyes are bloodshot and you know I I used to have a vocabulary when I was a younger child now fourteen my vocabulary man

while

I called my mother man

but you see they would they would try to help me but they always blame my problems on people places and things everything that we get away from that damn group the kid he's hanging out with that things will get better for him they thought if we can get him out of the public school system to get into private schools then things get better but you see the thing is

I'm an alcoholic my problems are not people places and things my problem is my physical and mental relationship to alcohol that's my problem if you change the people places and things in somebody's life like mine all that happens is that I'm loaded with different people in different places ruining different things that's all that happened right and they tried to do everything they could and when I was about seventeen I barely scraped out of the public school system there in Seattle and they decided that Seattle was my problem if they can get me out of Seattle things get better they sent me a prostate to Washington State University three hundred miles away I spent three years at that university on my parents money and I got about ten credits at any given time my grade point average matched my blood alcohol content about a point two five I did nothing at that school absolutely nothing

when I was hit by the time I was twenty two this little story about to tell you we'll let you know exactly where I stood with my family now at Christmas time my parents wouldn't don't just didn't just send out Christmas cards to their friends and relatives they sent out a big long Christmas letter that said everything the family had been doing that year I don't know where they got that custom but they're within a bunch of people that do that custom they write a big long Christmas letter and I was twenty two years old I got a hold of one of the letters that have been sent out the previous Christmas and as I read it it let me know exactly where I stood with my family

the first paragraph talked about what my parents have been doing that here in the second paragraph talk about what the Morris children had been doing that you're in that paragraph went something like this our oldest daughter Christina just graduated from Cornell University in Ithaca New York with a master's degree in marketing he's now working for a large pharmaceutical company in the Midwest as a marketing director she travel to Europe this summer if you saw this she saw that her hobbies are this this and this and she's in the church choir and she has a very full life is a very happy young woman we're very proud of her our oldest son Eric just graduated from western Washington State University with a degree in advertising he now works for a large advertising firm here in Seattle and he loves to golf and he loves to travel he's about ready to be married to this wonderful woman named Mary Lou who works for this was a while ago mind you he's about ready to be married to this wonderful woman named Mary Lou who works for a very small company here in Seattle named Microsoft

you still there to

and they love the golf together they loved to travel together he's a very happy young man we're very proud of him our youngest son Carl just turned twenty two

I was like

it's about the same time the to

but my my parents came to me it was after one more wrecked car one more time in jail or something and they just said you know what we've had it up to here we've tried to help you again and again and again and all you ever done a spit in our face and so you know if you want to live that way go ahead but not around here please do not come back to this house please stay out of this into the neighborhood just go take that car in the driveway and go now my cars I've had a lot of cars ever since I've been sixteen years old and they would always start out is perfectly good used cars but they would die of alcoholism along the way I don't know your car's did that but minded this will tell you exactly why I drank if I were physically sober on any given morning meaning I just haven't had a drink yet that day and I'm a little restless feeling discontent just generally pissed off right when it I'd always be that when I'm not drinking right now I come out of wherever I happen to be living with me my parents basement or a park depending on what part of my life we're talking about and I walk up to a car that I've owned for awhile and I. T. the dents in the broken window nine god I deserve better than that now we're getting a nice smell the rancid smell of stale alcohol in the carpet

let's see the cigarette hot box burns on the seats and when I turned the key in its only hit nine one or two cylinders and I be looking through a cracked windshield in the rear view mirrors hanging off and I'll be driving down the road and some of the young guy with blades buying a nice BMW off to work and I look at him

just a little edgy here but all I would have to do is go drink for a couple of hours and after I would drink for a couple of hours I'd walk back up to that very same car now is an approach that same car I say to myself

by that sixty two Dodge cornet it's a classic

when I get in it wouldn't smell bad anymore and then the most miraculous thing I'd ever experience prior to coming out the whole economic would happen when I turn the key now after drinking for a couple of hours as far as I was concerned with like but it's like a mechanic had been working on my car well I've been drinking right and this this car to drive you mentoring look the way they think corners at seventy miles an hour I had no I had no idea that the ability for alcohol you're totally changed my perception of my surroundings we're gonna leave me the gates insanity or death or here I gotta tell you

that from the time that I had that reaction at eleven years old to alcohol with it with the what what happened to me when I drank and my thinking

my choices in life we're gonna be jails insanity that or Alcoholics Anonymous I am now thirteen and a half years clean and sober in Alcoholics Anonymous and the choices have not changed the choices are exactly the same my choices in my life are because I'm not a holler jails insanity death or Alcoholics Anonymous choices have not changed my life has changed completely but my choices in life are exactly the same

so I headed south I lived on the streets of of Portland Oregon in Santa Cruz California and Hollywood for about a year and a half the words are demoralizing in fact when I made it to Alcoholics Anonymous a few years later I got to tell you

that I'd never heard those words full incomprehensible demoralization ever used together before before I came down college none but I gotta tell you when I heard it the first time in Alcoholics Anonymous I did not have to nudge the person next to me said what do they mean by that I knew exactly what they meant by that to make a long story short I'm back up in the Seattle area about a year and a half later and in a drug deal goes very very badly it just went really really badly just one of those nights that I just wish we could not have happened it went so badly that I joined the navy is what I did he went that badly on my way into the navy I passed a potential test this should scare the daylights out of what I'm about to tell you but on my way in the navy I pass this potential test that qualified me to become a nuclear engineer

that should scare the daylights out of that then United States Navy we think thinking maybe possibly or anywhere in the neighborhood of of putting meaning anything nuclear

however they maybe take another test when I showed up there for boot camp and I could not pass that test it's called a urinalysis test is what that one is gonna pass that

so about a year and a half later on a lower rank than when I first came in the navy yeah

here's the here's the problem

when I was out there on the ship in the middle of the ocean I would look around and I could not deny the fact that I was in the navy I knew I was in the navy I made a big gray shirt I'm the middle of the Pacific Ocean I would look around and see the other guy's hair cuts I look at their uniforms I looked down my god I got the same uniform on I'm in the navy I can't deny that ship would pull into a port I would leave that ship and take a drink I would totally forget that I was in the navy and I would come back to where I had last seen the ship when the drug was over and sometimes the ship was no longer there and I it's a lonely feeling standing on that here in a foreign country going where's the ****

and then if even a lonelier feeling when you're standing in front of the captain of that ship and all these gold on their shoulders everything they're screaming at you because they had to send another boat to get you and I mean it's just

it's hard to explain I I if I look the best thing I could say if I knew I'd tell you to I

but my whole life my whole life I was baffled by I just want to go out and catch a little bonus right but then these horrific things would happen and I

and you know maybe I'd be behind the the the the the bars in in jail and somebody that loves me whether it be a woman in my life or my mother or my brother or sister come down to get me and they would look anything but you promised you promised

and I would say I would want to say to them

I know it looks bad now

but the other day when I was going to take when I decided to take a drink it seems like a good idea that

I know that it's hard I can't tell you what a good idea now now that I'm behind the eight ball I know that but if it

I couldn't explain it it's alcoholism thank

so this and I've been in the navy about a year and a half hours are you in a lot of trouble and this one morning I was driving my car into the base and and there's a depth perception problem going on there's a there's a guard shack or a marine stands duty if you can import your car to the base of the shown your idea and he checked the sticker on your car your everything's in order to fly you forward there's a depth perception problem going on they were so they said it was on my part and all of a sudden I could see the whites of this marine science and I'm looking down at my speedometer going like thirty five forty miles an hour I'm just drunk as can be I tried to swerve the car hit the median on the right hand side and flip up on its side I am right through the guard shack I can still see that marines on this big dive out of there

I believe that the marine was alright but the the thing that happened to me was that they they threw I was in the hospital for a couple of days

the most significant thing that happened to me there I was in a lot of legal trouble with the navy but that the most significant thing happened is that the navy doctors put me on this stuff called an abuse supposed to make me not drink smoke you know and and the doctors gave me a warning about drinking on top of enemies on that morning and they sent this prescription back to the ship's doctor and every morning I had to go into the to the to the sick bay they call it on the ship and the doctor would put the tip on my tongue every single morning to make me sit there for half an hour if they run into people like us we put it under a ton spit it out and stuff so they made me sit there for half an hour he would put it on my tongue

and when I started to experience there over the next seven to ten days

is the most cunning baffling and powerful side of this disease called alcoholism and that is the mental obsession and the spiritual malady that I had developed over the years that I could not function on this planet without drinking or the knowledge that sooner or later I would get to drink I remember counting those based on that interviews just

been about four days in

I'm on it use

now it's been about six days and

hi my name is

it has been about eight days

six hours

in fifteen minutes

I'm on an abuse

I started to look around that ship

and the other men

they're talking behind my back

all three hundred of them

have you ever felt that way in a

the only difference in the eighth we are talking behind your back

only friendly talking

then they started to think behind my back when people start thinking behind your back you got to be quick to catch on

and after about ten or eleven days of this I just snapped this one day might division officer my superior asked me to do a very legitimate task you said Morris while the passageway that's that's marked the hallway not I could not believe that of all the other men in the division he had asked me to do this lowly tax I forgot now the lowest ranking man in the vision and always in the most trouble and so I let him know how I felt that you obviously don't know who I am

he turned on his heels there in the passageway stared me down and he asked me the most embarrassing question I have ever been asked in my life he turned on his heels anything he stared me down he said

all right who are you

so later that day I just snapped I went AWOL from the ship is absent without leave I took off and I locked myself in a little hotel room in downtown San Diego with a bottle of vodka shot glass and I remember that the navy doctor to give me a warning about drinking on top of any states that son if you drink on top of that if you can get one of two reactions one reaction as you'll get violently ill

the other reaction is you might die I members during the battle of are going to start by thinking

I wonder which reaction I'm gonna get

took one shot and nothing happened authority had lied to me again as far as I was concerned

I waited about two minutes just to make sure and I took another shot

all of a sudden I felt tingling in the face I looked in this crack will mirror that was in the hotel room and I was like bright red blotchy and purple in places

take another shot all of a sudden I could feel my heart going

I looked at my shared I was drenched in sweat then all of a sudden I was like hyperventilating

we're doing all right so all right

I must tell you you're a very sick group if you think this is funny

normal people do not find it funny

about eight about ten years ago I went back to the university to get my degree right and they are just to get rid of one of the credits I I had to take a speech class and in the first couple of days they just wanted to see see about you know just randomly throwing people out to see how they were doing they picked me and they said talk about a bizarre situation in your life

so I started telling the rest of my classmates about drinking on top of interviews

right they were not laughing there were two guys in the corner though going

I've been waiting for them to show up at meetings for awhile

so then I took another shot and I became my late sponsor NEC wonderful wonderful man saved my life and all college and he just passed away last March fourteenth

he called this next thing that happened to me projectile regurgitation straight up and out thank god at the hotel room I was in the toilet was in the same room with the bat

but I found the magic of drinking on top of entities that if you don't die and you hang in there and that's the thing that you got to hang in there and I would keep drinking and I will keep you can keep drinking I keep you can got to hang in there I told her that's the important part

and after about one to two hours enough at the end of your free kick out of my system and I'll quit throwing up and it would just be left with red faced hyperventilating and sweating not a target I'm alright with that

right on top of enemy for seven months I got very very sick I wound up in a hospital many times my second to Mike to look my last drunk I was left for dead in a motel parking lot it was one of those mornings you know I hated those mornings where you do you the last thing he remembers you're out on the street drunk and then the next thing you know there's these bright lights and these doctors with the master room and they they got these tools in their work and you always I would I would come to us

one of those bad night or that or I hated the mornings are coming soon you're in the hospital you got all that charcoal around your face from them pumping your stomach that's another sign another bad night right I hated those ones and that morning they had to do reconstructive surgery on my face they had to reset my jaw it was sent over here that to reset it and wire it shut my head twenty six stitches down my face they did some plastic surgery on it about eight months after that too they did a very very good job but you can still see like parts of it and around my mouth so

my last night of drinking or being lead out of San Diego jail one more time in hand because I hated those mornings also when the handcuffs were extra tight it means you're a real jerk the night before right and they bring you back to the ship by the shore patrol that the military police for bringing me back to the ship and the orders have been processed on me and the office of the deck what is our McKinney said stop I I've been given orders not to accept this loser onto our ship we're tired of him and hit the orders are bad conduct discharge ninety days in the brick and he said or and then he got sort of this disgusted look on his face or according to the uniform code of military justice that military law we have to offer him a treatment first

and I remember him having to discuss it look in my division officer came up and god bless that man he he took me from them and threw me into a car and took me up to the treatment center and I was still in handcuffs to the military police had to go to and they took me into this treatment center they locked the door behind me they took the handcuffs off me and there I was now I didn't even think you know it wasn't one of those days where I thought you know what I mean a lot of trouble maybe I should get sober and go to treatment it was just sort of like an interruption in the middle of a drunk and there I am I

right now I remember the feeling was you know Hey I just got a lot of the enemies out of my system man it's it's now good drinking time is what it is right that was the kind of the feeling and I and I mean this treatment center and everybody that showed up in that same week from various bases from the west side of the United States all came to the front all military personnel the got into trouble in the same week

that showed up there we're all going to go through this forty five day thing together

and on about the third day were in this group therapy session the counselor looking out for us we have not been assigned are small groups yet in our specific counselor but they're all of us all thirty five is when this large room and we're all just kind of sitting there nobody is happy to be there with arms folded looking down on the floor and this one guy his name was taco you're from some other base somewhere he raises hand he said I hear I'm supposed to be rigorously honest if I if I'm supposed to be able to stay here councillor no yes yes yes if your well I I need you guys to know that my real name is not pocket that's just a street name that I've had ever since I've been a young kid and my real name is Randy I want you guys to my new friends to call me Randy if you will and we all kind of look up from the floor for a second ago great nice to meet you Randy and we look back on the floor later that afternoon

the staff parades Randy in front of us and they slap a gold name tag on a Wednesday for his honesty Randy is now whenever staff is not around Randy is in charge of the floor

so we hated him immediately this guy was the one that was going to turn this in for smoking out the bathroom window or or not making our beds right we hated right

on about the seventh day they took us all to our first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous at least it was my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous just earlier in the day they read it they they told us everybody in civilian clothes in the parking lot six PM so we're out there in about five white vans pull up they start calling off names to get into into one van in about maybe eight of us in the van and off we go

and the next thing I know I'm in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous I've never been to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous before I didn't know what to expect all I know is that I'm I'm sitting in the back row with all the other sailors are there and and then they start doing the reading and then I I imagine they read chapter three and chapter five and then they started sharing it with the participation and I didn't know there were different types of meetings at their participation meeting there were steps that either book study and speakers because I didn't know that all I know is that about ten to twelve people shared for three to five minutes

and I believe that that night I heard the message of Alcoholics Anonymous the way any newcomer supposed to hear

because I heard these two things I heard a lot of things they said a lot of things but I heard these two things and as they were as they were talking I I got this feeling like oh my god

they know

they know

I don't know what it is that they know that I think I know but they know

and I heard these two things that I think any newcomer supposed to here in the meetings of Alcoholics none of them in the big book when they tell us in in working with others they want to make sure that these two things you come across and that is what happens to us when we do drink and what happens to us when we try not to drink the physical allergy and the mental obsession right and I heard those things said in various ways I'll never forget this one guy who described in the alcoholic mind in that mental obsession he got he got called on he walked out of the way the front he introduced himself he said one sentence and he sat down he said my name's Frank I'm an alcoholic my mind would have killed my body a long time ago except that needed for transportation

like

well

all followed him all the way back to see like you're some sort of deity or something or

the next night we went to another meeting I got very confused at this meeting everybody at this meeting we're talking about something called a drug of choice he was a well my drug of choice it isn't somebody off of it well my drug of choice is now sitting there thinking was I supposed to be choosing out there

do you want me to choose now what what are they talking about

the next morning back to the treatments and I ask the counselor her name was merry whatever they wanted inside and non alcoholic but very devoted to working with alcoholics it's a strange thing right we we all work with each other because we have to save our lives but she was not a holic and she was very devoted to what you maybe like Dr silk with a non alcoholic who loved us for some reason I'll always remember this woman and she

I after merry last night in the meeting they were talking about something called a drug of choice what do they mean by that he said Carl let's play a game and I'm like eight days into this thing I'm still hallucinating right into it still seeing things floating through the air and that she got

let's play a game okay he said it

let's say Carl I walked into this room and I had a trade in on that tray I had a bottle of Jack Daniels and out of cocaine and an ounce of Thai sticks which one would you take it I started to drool immediately that Hong

I said I didn't

he started snapping things settle down my eyes sort of refocus she goes you can only have one which one would you take so I thought for a second I said well I guess I take the ounce of cocaine he said well then maybe cocaine is your drug of choice do you understand now I said no

she said what's the problem I said well merry the only reason I take the I out to cocaine over over the other two is because well I take that off the cocaine I get the hell out of here when I sell a quarter round now I have enough money to buy a quarter pounder tactics and a case of Jack Daniels that's what I would do

yeah whatever was going on

whatever was going on that morning I learned something very valuable that I needed to know about Alcoholics Anonymous that morning and that is what is a sobriety date right now I didn't know that I learned it that day I just know that later on in my life life I look back and go you know what I am very glad I've never been confused on that they're in the United States sometimes it may be here to people think that there's different sobriety dates on on things like I I work with a lot of new people and they don't see a guy that I've seen around for a while in my home group and I go to gym Hey good to see how long you got every once in awhile I hear something like this well my drinking sobriety date is January fourth my pot clean date is may third I blew my methamphetamine speed date last night right juggling three different sobriety date I'm very glad that I learned is one sobriety date now if you're doing that please keep coming back right but I gotta tell you don't get to take the sobriety chips in Alcoholics Anonymous if you're doing a little social heroin in between a a meeting