The CPH12 v1 conference in Copenhagen, Denmark

Thank you. Thank you very much. My name's David and I'm an alcoholic. And, as I I think Kai said, my own group is A Vision For You, in London on a Wednesday. And, I came to the fellowship in December 1988 and I haven't had a drink since then.

And, the reason that I feel I haven't had a drink is that I've done my best to follow the suggestions that were given to me, which were in accordance with the principles of the AA program, and the AA program works. And in general, the result for me has been that I don't drink and I have happy days. And it's really going to summarize that, that is the result. And it's in fact, it's better than that. It gets better steadily.

If you were to chart the graph, the happy graph, it would go steadily upwards, you know, a few sort of bumps along the way, but it's still getting better. I came to AA at the age of 26 and, at that point it felt like that was the sort of the end of my life, or as good as, I've heard many stories in AA, and in comparison with most, or with many, I represent what you call a high bottom. Many of the things that happen to alcoholics physically, yet to happen to me. Just to sort of give you a sort of feel for how I was, I started drinking, I don't remember my first drink, I don't remember any sort of great epiphany when I had my first taste of alcohol or anything like that. But I started drinking steadily when I was 18, I went away to college, and for me it was just, you know, I was, I felt as though, I hadn't done all the things that 18 year olds were supposed to have done by the time they're 18, and suddenly here I was part of the crowd.

You know, when I joked about what had gone on the previous evening in, the next day. I knew what it was the jokes were about. I was part of it, and it's the first time I felt like that. And furthermore, I found out in comparison with others, I was quite good at drinking as well. So it was nice to find something I was good at.

And that's it worked for me for a few years. My recollections of my college days are still very happy ones. I don't have, a great sort of history of police sales or anything like that. The nearest I got to getting a police record is when I was a student and I tried to pinch a road sign, and the police car that was parked 15 yards away, I hadn't noticed, just rolled down the window and shouted at me in a very bored tone to put it back. So I turned around and put the road sign back, and that was the end of my life of crime.

And, right up until the time I came in, I never got into any serious trouble. However, inside I knew that there was something wrong. Steadily I was drinking more and more. I just about scraped through each level of being a student, and more and more difficult each time. And I knew that I didn't want to hold down a job because I just, you know, when you're a student you can just miss lectures the next day or that's, you know that's the student life I led anyway.

And I managed to stay a student until I was 25 and it really wasn't because I was a good student, you know I just drifted from one thing to the other. And by the time I got to the age of 26, I'd been in my first job for about 9 months. I was living in London, and I'd been there for about 6 or 7 months, something like that. And on the face of it, I had everything that I thought was worthwhile. Finally, I had another girlfriend, I wanna say another one, not that I had a lot, but just the, I didn't, the ones I had, I didn't have them for very long was my history.

And she was everything I wanted, I had the job that I thought was perfect, and I was miserable as anything. And I didn't know what to do, and I just felt that I wanted to drink all the time. And the thing was, I've been trying to control my drinking. I knew that if I drank as I wanted to, I just drank till I passed out. That was fun for me.

And I knew also that I couldn't do that as much as I wanted to if I was going to hang on to this semblance of normality that I had. And I was struggling to hold down the job, I was lying about why I was missing the 2nd days off, why I was obviously below par, and you can only joke about a hangover once, well once or twice, and then after that you're hiding it. Now these are not serious things in many people's life, but for me this was, you know, I knew that, I didn't want to be doing this. But the main thing that really sort of bothered me was the fact that I knew inside I felt desperately miserable and lonely, and nothing could alter that. And except for drink.

And it was getting to the stage where the drink wasn't doing it either. And I had this, I could see these two paths ahead of me. And one was to try and seek some sort of psychiatric help, so I thought about that. Another was to actually to drink more, and act and I remember my last New Year's resolution before I came to AA, was not to give up drinking, it was to get drunk more often. And it may seem like it's a funny situation, all this was going inside, on inside my head.

I was an alcoholic who wasn't really treating the disease, in either of the ways that give any sort of comfort. I wasn't drinking enough, and I certainly wasn't doing the program, and I was extremely uncomfortable. And as I say, one route was just to give up on all this responsibility, forget about trying to hang on during these periods of dead time, which would be the times between when I got drunk, which just seemed to be pointless. You know, the whole time in between I was just thinking about the next time I could get drunk. So the answer was just give up on responsibility and just drink.

And I used to go past and see people on the streets of London who obviously were in real trouble, and part of me was envious because I thought, well, at least, they're just drinking, they don't have the responsibilities. None of these things which I'm supposed to I have and supposed to be working towards are giving me any satisfaction whatsoever, I simply cannot see the point. And I really did wonder whether I just expect too much from life. Perhaps life is just a lonely business and I hadn't realized it yet. Perhaps I was, up to this point I'd been a hopeless idealist.

The, at that stage I still had, just I was beginning to drive people away, but I still had friends, I still had a social life. And the way that it felt to me was it didn't matter how lively the company, how entertaining the company, you know, you'd have a laugh but it didn't seem to affect the inside, I felt bad and it didn't really touch it. It didn't matter how intimate, the relationships I had were. It didn't stop me feeling lonely. And I just didn't know what to do next.

And say the drink was beginning not to work, I, one of the options was just drink more. Just go for it, forget about everything. And, fortunately, I had heard about Alcoholics Anonymous and 1 or 2 people had made mention of of it to me. And up to that point I just discounted the, I just laughed off the idea that I had a drinking problem at all. I was always curious though, whenever I, I used to answer those questionnaires you get in women's magazines in the dentist waiting room, which is the only place I would admit to either.

You know, are you an alcoholic? And you do get these sort of ticks. I always came out as an alcoholic every single time. But I just assumed that what they were doing, these were this was a set up. The government was trying to reduce the bill for the National Health Service, and so, if they persuaded people they were drinking too much, then, you know, that would lower the number of admissions to accidents and emergency, and you know I just thought well obviously that's why they're doing it.

It never occurred to me that it might actually be revealing some truth, until the end. And so finally in desperation, I just thought I've got to do something about this. Life is not meant to be this unhappy. And I thought about going to a psychiatrist or getting some sort of self help group. I'd heard about this therapy group in Islington, I don't know if any of you know London at all.

Islington is quite a trendy area, Tony Blair lives there. I quite fancied the idea of that because that seems sort of bohemian and arty and, interesting, but it costs money and I couldn't afford it. I thought about going to my doctor, but, I didn't want my health card here, my national health card stamped with mental case. That didn't suit my self image at all. So I did the only thing which seemed open to me, which was write to somebody called Claire Rayner.

Now, if I was in England, everyone would know who this person was. She is the sort of main TV agony ant, you know. The American version is Dear Abby. I don't know who the Danish version is, but you know, somebody you write to in magazines, Dear, you know, you make your name up and stick a false name at the bottom of the letter. And I told her what my problems were.

And I told her that I was desperately lonely and unhappy, and the main reason was that I, was male and born in Britain. And, I didn't know how to express love because I was too stiff up a lip and you know, I wasn't emotional enough. And I never once mentioned drink. And she wrote back to me and said, you know this is a very common problem in Britain, And, can I publish your letter? Thank goodness I made the name up.

And and here's a list of psychiatrists. And I looked down this list, and I just thought I can't do this. And finally, I did the right thing, which people have been suggesting to me, which is to phone up Alcoholics Anonymous. And the way that I viewed it at the time was that I just had this image, it just suddenly dawned on me, and this was the thought process, at the time. That all those relationships and friendships that I had since I was 17, 18, I'd gone to college, had been made while drunk.

So, I thought maybe, you know, it's being drunk is good for breaking the ice, you get to know people, but somehow it's flawed. You can only go so far and then it stops. And you can't go the whole way and get full satisfaction. So I've got to go back to being not drunk and learn how to do it, go back to being 17 again and work my way forward from there. And the first thing to do is to give up drinking.

And I imagine that what would happen is that I'd learn how to stop drinking, and then develop a social life through AA, whether you organized theater trips, you know, where the coach picked you up, the coach driver sort of ushered you out, stood over the entrance to the bar, make sure you didn't go in, sort of counted you back onto the coach, and then through that you made friends and you learned how to do it without drinking. As you can tell, I had no idea about the disease of alcoholism at all. No idea of the hopelessness of my fight. And the one thing I do remember thinking about my drinking, I tried to stop so many times and, there were 2 things I was aware of. 1 was that this drinking pattern that I had, I drank just about daily, I didn't get drunk, daily but I got drunk more often than I wanted to.

But I, it seemed to be imposed on me from outside. I I couldn't break out of it. It just seemed to be something that I did despite myself and the harder I fought against it, you know, inevitably I'd be back there doing it again. And the other thing was that it was getting worse. I'd had an uncle who had died of alcoholism at the age of 43, caught pneumonia and died in 24 hours and he weighed 5 and a half stone, I don't know what that is, pounds, but you know he was emaciated, he was thin.

And, it was a tragedy. And I just had this, I could see myself going in his direction. I didn't understand the degree to which all my problems were just one problem, alcoholism. So, I got to my first meeting and I thought that I'd have to sort of explain, what I was doing there. I turned up to my first meeting in a suit.

I went to a meeting that was nowhere near where I lived, nowhere near where I worked. They offered the chance, I phoned the office and they offered the chance for someone to come around to my flat in West London, to have a chat with me and take me to my first meeting. I turned that down flat because I just did not want the Alcoholics Anonymous van parked outside my apartment. What would the neighbors think? Not that they really would have cared, you know, I was one of these people that, you know, was promoting world peace but couldn't talk to his neighbor, you know, you know, that sort of person.

So I eventually went to this meeting, and I was really struck by the the stories of everybody. I can remember that just one or two little details. Walking up to the entrance and just at the last moment sort of hesitating and thinking, you know, what am I doing? This, yeah, this covered. And somebody said, are you looking for the AA meeting?

So I said, yes. And you know, that was too late. I couldn't really back out. And I just, it felt as though I was being sucked in. You know, I realized that the process that was going on was that there were greeters at the door shaking my hand saying, oh, you're new.

How do you know that? You know, and, come in, here's a cup of tea, sit down, somebody talk to me, I there's this sort of whirl of activity. I'm 6 foot 1 or something, but I I had this impression of all these faces bearing down on me, surrounding me, from above, and I just couldn't escape. They seemed sincere, and if I'm honest, I just felt a little bit sorry for them, you know, that, these poor people, they were so enthusiastic about this. So, it was so teary me.

So I just I just went with the flow and I listened to the story and, a lot of what I heard of course, I listened, you know, I heard, I was told to look at the similarities and all I heard was differences. But I heard enough to go back to my 2nd meeting and it was about my second or third meeting, but I heard somebody in this position here, which we call the chair in England. And it was, it made an impression on me in a way that I hadn't, well, no other speaker had. She just started out by saying that, Alcoholics Anonymous had saved a life, as a result of the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. She'd had a spiritual awakening.

She didn't care who knew that, because this is what now made life worth living. And I've never heard people, anyone talk about, something like that in such a matter of fact straightforward way before. I'd noticed the, you know, the steps and I've not really registered that they would have anything to do with me. I had those scrolls, I don't know if you have, I presume you have them in Denmark, you know the big sort of display scrolls with the steps. But she just talked about how that she'd done these things called the steps, and her life had changed.

And the reason that I took notice wasn't just what she was saying, it was the way she was. You know, you could tell either she was a complete liar or, you know, she was a very different person from the person who'd come in. She just sparkled. And I, that's when I first got an idea that there was something amazing on offer here. And, I just fell in with this crowd and went to the meetings that they went to.

They seemed friendly, and I just developed this circuit of meetings. And I found out pretty quickly, how to get what that person got or this is the way it was presented to me. And they just said, if you want what we have, the answer is to do the steps. And the best way to do that is to pick a sponsor. Just ask somebody who has experience of the steps themselves, to show you how to do it.

And get somebody to say to you who's done the steps as they are in the big book, the book Alcoholics Anonymous. The way it was explained to me was that just to emphasize how important it was, was that the organization was named after the book. You know, it's called something else before the book was published. And they felt it was so important that they, that became the name of the organization. I don't know how true that is but, it certainly made an impact on me.

So that's what I did. I wanted what was an offer, I didn't really know very much about my disease at this stage, I asked somebody to help me, and, we went for it. Now I picked somebody who I didn't like particularly, he was from a different social background, in a different age group, but people said he was a good sponsor. He had some he had a way about him which I wanted. And I looked at his other sponsors and he seemed to be able to pass it on to them, so I thought, well I'll ask him.

He also, it's it's actually, just to make a point, it's a good job that I didn't wait until I I found somebody that I related to, because I'd still be waiting now. I didn't because the truth is I didn't relate to anybody before I did the steps. You know, there was always something wrong with everybody I met. So, it would have been a, you know, a lost cause from the start. So I just asked this guy, and I decided to trust him.

And I heard that reference actually to the Taliban and big book Nazis. What we've, our groups call all that law. And it always strikes me the absurdity of a situation. I mean, I don't know, have you ever tried to make an alcoholic do anything? I mean it's just, this is impossible.

My sponsor couldn't make me do anything. I did what he said because I trusted him, because I wanted to know what he had to say, and I wanted what he was offering. And the reason I knew that, if I didn't do what he suggested, that I wouldn't be following the path that he was on, and I'd be doing something else. So it just seemed to be silly. It's like, you know, if I ask directions to, you know, I don't know, from London to Oxford or something and they point to the M 40, and and so you say that's the road, and you say yes, but I want to go down the M 25.

You know, it's it's just stupid. I can only go down the route which is going to take me to to what I want, and I can't blame this guy and expect him to change the information because I don't like what he's saying. And, so I think that that is important that the trust is accorded by the one who trusts. It cannot be demanded by any sponsor, or it can be, but it's it is an impossibility for any sponsor to control anyone. It just cannot be done.

And so, that's another accusation, actually controlling. I don't know if you've heard that word. It is an impossibility, and anybody is free to go to another group. People go where they want. There are no, obligations.

But I wanted what was on offer and I decided, I made a decision to trust this guy. That was really the first decision I made. And through him and through listening, I got my first useful piece of self knowledge. I mean, I was told first of all that self knowledge wouldn't help me to stay sober, but there was some self knowledge that was good, and if I made use of it, it would help me, and that was knowledge that I was an alcoholic. But I had to make use of it, and the use of it is to do the steps, you know, take the action afterwards.

But I was, actually the other thing that's really registered with me, that was said from here which I, I've enjoyed everything actually that so far as I've heard it. Fantastic. But, it was made clear to me that, I should not share in meetings at that stage. I was told very directly to shut up and listen. I was told, you have nothing that we want to hear what they say.

And I basically, some of you feel that now. Yeah. But, this is what I was told. But later on, when I had some experience and some recovery, some knowledge of the AA program and the steps, which is a truth, it's not, you know, it is just what you do to get sober. Then I was told that I must actually for my own, I was obliged to for my own recovery, I had to carry the message.

So I listened, and I have to say actually it was a relief. I I, you know, I didn't know what I was gonna say, I was trying to listen, you know, copy whatever said. If somebody was emotional, I tried to be emotional and it, you know, just wasn't me and, you know, I just felt very awkward in meetings. But to be told I didn't have to say anything, it was just fantastic, and I just listened. So I learned first of all about alcoholism, and the the things that registered with me, these are the things that registered with me and and my experience first of all this point that it's the first drink that does the damage.

In other words, the craving is set off by that first drink. And, I knew that was true for me because I could feel this sort of ting, I remember having a drink and just almost being able to feel this sort of tingling in my arms, you know, and I think, well I've got the taste now, let's get going. So that that registered. The other thing that, registered was this description of the mental obsession. But one sentence in particular, it's referred to a number of times in the big book, but there's one sentence in particular that seemed to apply to me.

And so it's the obsession of every abnormal drinker that one day they will be able to control and enjoy their drinking. And that just fitted me perfectly because occasionally, I could control my drinking. I didn't lose control every single time, you know, I still had a job and I was just about hanging on to it. I mean, if I had perfect control, I wouldn't have been in AA, but as I said, I wasn't drunk every single time. Sometimes I stopped after the 3rd fight or something.

But, I never wanted to, and whenever I controlled it, I never enjoyed it. You know, I wanted to drink until I passed out. And, but I knew I had to control it if I was going to be able to live this life that, you know, people painted as normal. You know, the job, the girl oh, by that I forgot to mention the girlfriend that got rid of me before I came came to my aid. That's what I was gonna say, the job and the girlfriend, but she wasn't in the picture.

But this idealized image, I knew I had to control my drinking if I was gonna have these things. And I just could not reconcile the 2. I couldn't see how I was going to control my drinking and enjoy my drinking. Now, if you're not an alcoholic that doesn't matter. It's it's, you know, you just, it isn't an issue.

But for me, I couldn't picture a happy life without being able to enjoy my drinking. And when I heard this, that it cut through everything. You know, I was worried have I drunk enough? Do I get, you know, have I suffered enough? Do I need to have a But when I heard this, I thought, well I know that corresponds to me.

Deep down, that is me. And I knew that, this is, I was in the right place. The other thing that they impressed upon me, and I just had to take this on trust, but I'd heard enough people describing, things that was similar to me to trust them. Was that they said, if you start drinking again it will get worse. And alcohol has always gets worse.

And all the things that you're hearing, the rest of us describe, the chances are they're gonna happen to you if you start again. Alcoholism never reaches a sort of stable position. It's a disease that gets worse if you're drinking. And they made the point that you know, even if you're not drinking it seems that you pick, if you pick up a drink you start off worse than when you came in. Now, I don't know whether that's always true, but I heard enough people coming back who said that was true for me to believe it.

The other thing that really made me feel as I was in the right place is when people described how they felt. They, it was the first time I'd ever talk articulated to anybody that sense of loneliness that I just talked about before. And every single person I spoke to seem to say that they had that too. I just couldn't believe it. And they described this in different ways, they referred to it but they had that.

The other thing that made me want to state court was that they took, when they talked about doing the steps, they said that that went. This discomfort, this loneliness, this feeling of isolation. Not only did it solve the drinking problem, it solved, well it seemed to me all my other problems. And that the way that, it was put to me is that, you have a lot of different symptoms. You know, if you asked me, I would have said drinking might have been sort of 3rd or 4th, You know, the rest, you know, you could put all the others under the headings of either sex or money, but basically all the other problems, you know, they were as much on my mind.

But they said, you know, if you're anything like us, and to be honest you sound like you are, it's all one problem, and that's alcoholism. And the good news is that the steps will deal with that, and certainly that's worked for us. And then, I started to hear people, describe the experience. I started to look and, the guy that I picked as my sponsor, he was the one who made the most outlandish claims about the program. He said that he, since he started working at Brown he never had a bad day.

Now, he had, he talked about having 3 heart attacks in sobriety, he walked with a stick, he was out of breath after 50 yards, but he sat in meetings and he looked at ease and he just said, I've not had a bad day in sobriety. Now, I believed him. Him. There was something about him that made me think that was true. And, just let me tell you that I've discovered that that is a possibility of a good day every day is there for anybody who does the program, I believe.

Certainly, it is my experience. Whether or not I enjoy the day is down to me and what I do, it is not down to what happens to me. And for me, that's the great freedom of AI. It isn't just enough to be told that I have to learn how to do it. I had to be shown.

I had to be given the tools and program to put into operation to be able to do that. And I'll explain a bit more about what that means to me today later on. But, as I say this guy made outlandish plays, he pointed to the promises in the big ball and said, You know this isn't sort of if you're lucky, these are promises. It's, you know, it's a guarantee. This life is on offer and furthermore it's a daily program.

You know, if you don't you don't do these things tomorrow you might drink, but if you do them today you ensure that you don't drink. But also, you ensure that you get these things, these promises. It is within your grasp if you do these things. And he told me that misery is optional. Now again, I don't know whether I believed, I mean, a part of me thought, he's probably exaggerating just to try and sell the program to me.

He's certainly well meaning, and you know, he's even if it's sort of 75% true, it's it's worth doing. I did notice that there were others who seemed very unhappy, And some of them had been around a long time. And, the thing that I also noticed was that none of those people talked about doing the steps as they were laid out in the big book, Alcohol's Anonymous. So I picked somebody who had had this happiness and also seemed to be able to point to a definite reason as to how he got it. As I say, I followed this, this course.

I learned about my disease. I, I met, I accepted that I was an alcoholic. I met, I realized that I was powerless over alcohol. Actually I should go into that a bit. I thought initially that being powerless over alcohol meant that when I took that first drink, remember I registered with that, that I couldn't control my drinking.

And they said, no it's not. For them, being powerless about alcohol is not about once you've taken that first drink, it's about the bit before you take the first drink. It's saying that, if you know that once you take the first drink and it's the first drink that does the damage, and that's, you know, that's what caused the problem. If it was simply good enough to know the answer is easy, just don't take the first drink. Fine.

Don't drink, go to meetings, that's the answer. But there is a problem and they said it. That if you are like us, an alcoholic, only you can decide, but if you're like us, in regard to alcohol, you are insane. You will take that first drink, you have no choice. There is nothing you on your own can do about it.

Sooner or later that time will come when you will have no mental defense and you will take the first drink. And I thought about that and I thought because you know, I thought well I wasn't drinking constantly. Said, Yeah, that's not the point. The point is that at some stage you will take the first drink. And they pointed to the person who had a long gap in their drinking and then started.

And, so I accepted that I was insane. I was powerless over alcohol. And, from that point on, it was in a sense admission of hopelessness. And but I also accepted that, there was hope in AA. And that hope lay in, resorting to a power greater than me, a higher power.

And that's what the rest of the steps were about. It's harnessing or allowing that higher power into my life so that it can, save me on those occasions when otherwise I would drink. And as I say my sponsor took me through the steps and, I'm sure his time is moving on. The details of which, it's uncanny actually. I mean I was, I've been listening to the description of the steps today, and I have never been to the home group of Tom and Peter.

I've never seen them before this weekend. And the way they have done it is exactly the same as the way I've shown. And the results that I got are exactly what they described. And, you know, the one thing that unites us is the big book. This is what was impressed upon me, that if you do what's in the big book, you will get that result.

Even down to the 4th step and the inventory and that that 4th column or you know, you might call it an extended 3rd column where you put your defects of character. What's what was wrong with me? Why what was it in my reaction that made me feel as I did? No matter how just or unjust the action, what is it in me that feels bad? And as they said, this was the key thing that I discovered that, that the problem was my self centered reaction to the events that took place.

And I listed every resentment I could ever remember having, some minor, some major, some against myself, some against others, some against God. I did an account of sexual conduct. I included thoughts in my head that I resentments against myself, but I thought if I ever told anybody these thoughts were whirring around in my head, I'd be locked up. And it refers to, I mean I try and keep it language delicate but it refers to, sexual conduct both real and imaginary. And, you know, should we say I had, rather more of the latter, in my step 4.

It's these are things that I'd never told anybody. I would not like to to have admitted to it, and my sponsor did not throw me out of the room when he heard it, he just nodded and said, you too. And in fact, I was rather insulted, when at the end of it all, having sort of got all this off my chest, and, at one point, by the way, he got up to make a cup of tea and said, carry on, carry on, I can I can hear you? So I read the stuff back, and I thought, oh, this will be a good time to sort of revert to some sex conduct because he won't be able to hear me in the kitchen. At which point he shout, I heard his voice go through, yes, speak up, I can't hear you.

So I had to shout this, stuff through to him. But, I, that was my 4th and 5th step, just as described. And I got that result. It was sometime after the 5th step, I can't remember precisely when, but it wasn't exactly at the end of the final session, that I was just sitting in a meeting and suddenly I noticed that that loneliness and that isolation had gone. I felt part of what was going on in a way that I had never ever, I don't think, felt before.

And, whenever I think that I'm having a bad day, I just remind myself of that. You know, the change that has occurred. And as I go through this, I realize I've got to close-up close in a few minutes. I just want to explain, I I have to, there's a number of things I should say. First of all, I'm just as powerless today as I was on the very first day.

So I still have to do this daily routine that that I was given right at the start. Now I sometimes hear people say that they only do the program, I think it's a sort of an effective modesty or something. I only do step steps, you know, when my back's against the wall and I'm pushed into the next one. Well, I, I had to face this when I was through the first 9 steps. You know, things were going well and I thought perhaps I can just coast a little bit.

You know, I'm feeling good, I don't feel bad, I don't feel like I need a drink. Do I need to keep up this effort? And I heard a story of this guy who, really I heard his mistake and I learned from it, but he drank again. And he fortunately, he came back in and he said what had happened. And he said that, all that had happened, the only reason he drank was he stopped doing what suggested.

And he said something that was really, that sort of struck home with me. He said, I didn't even get a chance to feel bad before I had a drink. We are powerless and if I wait until my back's against the wall before I do the next step, I might be drunk first. I do these, I have to feel good to stay sober, but I have to do more. I have to carry the message.

I have to go to groups to, as was explained, to offer fellowship to newcomers. If I really accept that I'm powerless, I must do these things regardless of how I feel. It's not in response to how I feel. And the other thing is that this idea of, we need never have a bad day. In London anyway, it used to cause such trouble there, this guy used to say.

And, first of all I would say it is my experience that what I the other thing I should say is that the program does not mean that it's not magic. It doesn't allow me to harness this force which manipulates everything to my liking. I don't suddenly, have the job exactly that I want. Everything doesn't suddenly go my way. I have the sort of disappointments and difficulties that most people have in their life.

But what the program enables me to do is to respond to those with dignity and to deal with the feelings that I have in association with it. So, as I heard someone describe, I can't help the first thought comes into my head when something happens that I don't like. And very often it is resentment, still. I think I'm a little better than I was, but I don't, you know, sometimes I despair how resentful I get. But now, I can do something about the second thought.

I can write inventory. I do step 10s daily. I can keep that stuff clear. If I'm fearful, I can remind myself that I've taken step 3. And also I can phone a newcomer, I can go and put some service into the meeting.

There are things that I can do so that, I don't need to feel bad about what's happening. And this is true even for sort of major things, you know deaths in the family. It doesn't mean that suddenly I'm pleased that this has happened. It doesn't mean that you know, I'm sort of dancing down the aisle at the funeral. What it does mean is that I, rather than feeling self pity and thinking this has happened to me, poor me, how could my role, I'm feeling compassion and love for those affected.

I'm able to be useful and the bond of love between myself and those around me strengthens, even in adversity. As they say, it's a design for living that works even in rough going. And that is the truth for me. But it's a choice that I make. I have to choose each day to do these things.

I'm amazed that I feel the time. I can't believe. I'll stop there. Thank you very much. Yeah.