The North End Group in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

My name is Trent. I'm an alcoholic. Alf asked me to speak, a few weeks ago, and and, no bigger honor. I've been fortunate enough to I've known Alf almost 6 years, I guess. Met him briefly.

He was at my last weekend, when we brought in recruits because, Fred, of course, is related to Alf, and, I wanted as many people as possible, at a party I was having. And so he called in Alf, and Alf brought a truckload of people. And, and it was it was we didn't really get to know each other all that well there, but I've got to know him. I know him a lot in the last year, and he is an example of exactly what works, and that's work on the program. And he's not afraid to share it, which is just as important in my eyes, because it doesn't do anything if we get the program and then we don't share it.

And Alf is dedicated to sharing the program and sharing what he has and that's a message of hope and and, so congratulations Alf. It's been, it's been an honor to work with you and been an honor to, to have you around in in our group. We're very lucky at this group to have some of the people we have here and off, of course, is one of those. So I don't wanna share too much about what it was like for me. I'm one of those guys that don't believe that's all that necessary.

I think that most people here probably or those who are here that are admitted alcoholics, know what it's like. They understand what it means to be an alcoholic. I'll give you a little bit of history as to kind of what brought me here quickly. I was born and raised in Halifax. I guess you'd just call it pretty normal family.

I didn't think it was a normal family, of course. When I started to try to get sober, I thought that my family was, I think, probably like a lot of other people think, it was a lot more messed up than it actually was. A big reason why I was messed up was because there was one messed up individual and that happened to be me. I had my first drink at 12 years old, my brother introduced me to, rye and grape juice. He would have been 14 at the time, so he didn't understand the, the magic of mixing proper drinks, that's for sure.

I don't really know what happened, but I know I felt right. And the only reason why I know that is because I was I was talking to somebody the other day and and we were kind of talking about drinking when we were younger. When I was 13, I I just decided in the middle of the afternoon, Saturday afternoon, had a hockey game at 5 o'clock and I decided to just get in my parents' circle in it. And, the phenomenon of craving which they talk about in the book and in the doctor's opinion, as soon as we introduce alcohol into our bodies, the craving becomes, so that we can't stop drinking. And at 13, that was present Because as soon as I had, I just wanted one drink.

I remember that. And the next thing you know, I was falling down drunk. And there was nobody home. It was just me. So there wasn't anything in my life that would have made, you know, nothing external, and I'm a believer that external things don't make us alcoholics.

It's an internal condition. And, you know, my mother came home and I told her that I'd taken Tristan and and, the cough syrup and all that sort of stuff and there was some adverse reaction and I don't know what was wrong with me. And she's like, well, you gotta go to hockey here. I have a couple of sandwiches. So I threw up in the car.

I didn't play hockey that night, and to this day, my mother is always hesitant when I take Dristan even though she knows now because I've told her years later that that was actually one of my first real drinking experiences, where I drank to get drunk. And that pattern repeated itself for years. Whenever I did drink, I always snuck drinks And even at 15, 16, 17, I'd be drinking with my friends, but I didn't want them to know how much I was drinking so I was drinking sneaking drinks behind their back even though we all drinking, and that's, you know, pretty clear indicator to me anyways that I couldn't I could never satisfy that craving. And eventually alcohol didn't didn't give me anything anymore. And, you know, I part of my story is other things and and, you know, in some ways, I'm thankful for that because I believe it took me down a lot faster than than well, alcohol was taking me down pretty quickly, but I kind of more or less just magnified that by adding other things to the mix.

By 19, legal age obviously here, nobody wanted me to drink anymore. I had done so many things. By the time I was in the legal age, I was hiding my alcohol at that point. So I was hiding it up until I turned 19 because you're not allowed to drink. By the time I was 19, I had fucked up so many times that nobody wanted me to drink anyways.

So from day 1, I've been hiding my drinking with exception to people like Fred, and he's here too. So, obviously, that says something. And I surrounded myself with the right kind of people. And, you know, the people who didn't get it and the people who didn't didn't like being around people like me and and probably some people in this room, they slowly pulled back, you know, and I used to curse them and say, you know, those sons of bitches, who do they think they are? They always think they're better than me, and they were, because they had something inside of them that made them feel okay, and I I didn't.

I didn't know what it was. I was missing something that other people had and I didn't know what it was, and I only felt right when I had alcohol in my system, period. Never felt right. No matter what was going on in my life, I always felt like something was wrong, and I could never figure out what it was. I was introduced to the program in 19 93 by a friend of my father who knew somebody in the police force who was in charge of their employee assistance program, and I'm not quite sure whether he got it or not.

He introduced me to the program, but whether or not it was the program that I needed, I don't think it was. He was telling me to use a TV as my higher power if I needed to and all the things that sometimes we hear in these rooms, that didn't work for me. Now whether or not I was ready, I don't know. But I know I didn't wanna drink anymore. Every time I quit, I legitimately didn't wanna didn't wanna drink anymore.

You know, there's we have no defense. This book tells us we have no defense against the first drink. The only defense I have against the first drink is is having worked the steps and and applying the program to my life. I believe there's 2 ways to treat our alcoholism, and we can choose to do to do it one of these two ways. And And I choose the program, and I've only done that for about 6 years.

It was 6 years there where I didn't understand what it took. So I'm trying to treat with the fellowship. And for me, there's a distinction, the fellowship, and the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. The fellowship is the meetings and the friends and and the relationships we build, and then there's the program which is the the kind of the structure to, you know, what we have to do, the work. And the fellowship wasn't keeping me sober and I thought that's what I'm supposed to do.

Like people are meeting makers, make it. Go to meetings. Go to do all this sort of stuff. And I'm like, oh, okay. Rah, rah, rah, rah.

I'm doing the travels to the meetings. I was down to Soshore doing that sort of stuff and, I could never get more than 6 or 9 months. It would be these anniversaries and I'd be lying about stuff and I know people here have heard it before. I was setting up the meeting in Chester because it was I was fortunate enough to be around, 3 other members who wanted to start a meeting in Chester, and we started it. I live next door.

So I'd set it up, and I'd start drinking again. So I'd set it up early, sit in literally the house right next to the meeting and drink while the meeting was going on with the lights out. But I set it up, you know, so I was at least contributing. It was my my, yeah, my level of service at that point. But if I'm gonna treat it with the fellowship, then eventually I have to treat it with alcohol, and that's what happened.

You know, I I some people say that alcohol saved their lives, and I and I truly believe that I think I would've killed myself if it wasn't for alcohol. There's no way I could've lived with the internal condition if it wasn't for alcohol. I couldn't live with who I was and and there was no answers and that's the thing. I did all the psychotherapy and all this sort of stuff and, you know, my parents, and it's wonderful to see Alf's family here tonight because it's a wonderful, wonderful thing to have the support of the family. My parents did everything they possibly could.

They had no understanding of what they were dealing with. My father chased his father around for years in the city here. He actually had gone to some meetings, I guess, in the sixties, and it didn't work out for him. He died of, I mean, he died of liver cancer, so the odds are it was it was because of his alcoholism, but he still didn't understand because people who don't drink don't I mean, we're not just out there having fun. Like, that's the thing.

And and my family never understood that. They thought I was just partying too much and it really doesn't come down to that because it wasn't very much fun. Like I don't know if it's hard to explain to people who don't drink and and those who do drink obviously bottles. That became one. I mean, I've told this story before.

I was crying, with a wheelbarrow of empty bottles on the way to the liquor store because I didn't wanna do it, and that was the only way I could get money or selling my mom's snowsuit out of her closet or or my grandmother's fur coat that had my mom's name sewn into the side that they called when I sold it. So that wasn't, one of those experiences that my family, they didn't really understand. When my mother got the phone call, she just you know, but again, they they just said, you know, my old school therapy. That's gotta work. And, at whatever cost to them, I guess, they they gave it a shot.

And so for 6 years, I bounced around this program. I had no idea what I was doing. No idea whatsoever. But I was told by this guy from the police, that, you know, if you keep drinking, these things are gonna happen to you. It's gonna be institutions, death or jail or jail or death.

And, I did some pretty horrible things. I wasn't a nice drunk. I was friendly, but I did horrible things to get the money I needed to do the things I needed to do. And I've heard people say, you know, when you're sober up, you cheapen up. Well, I'm not gonna do the things I did when I was drunk to get the money that I got when I was working.

That's not who I am. Plus I don't jail well. And I found that after 3 years in the program, I found myself in jail and not like a weekend, you know. And I swore to myself, this is it. I'm never going back to jail.

I'm never going to do it again. And no more than 30 days outside and I was drinking again even though it was a violation of my parole. I did not wanna go back to jail. I did not wanna drink, but I was drinking. And I still didn't know what to do.

So jumping forward anyways to 1999, I found myself in that weekend when Alf was there, and it was one of these big huge drunks where you plan a, you know, a couple weeks in advance and do all the manipulative things you need to do to get money. And 4 and a half days later, I was, being driven down to Lunenburg by my mother once again who was who was there to well, to actually get rid of me. They put a a a bond against me stating that I wasn't allowed near them, near the house, near all that sort of stuff, and they dropped me me off. I said that's it. No more.

And I have a younger brother who I mean, it's it's different the connection you have with the younger there's a huge gap, 18 years. So he would have been, like, 8 or 9 at that point. They said you're not to see him. You're not so all these things were really, really devastating. And I thought this is it.

I gotta this this is it. I'm done. And I remember talking to the guy, and I said to the counselor, and I said, I can't do this anymore. This is 6 years, six and a half years in the program trying to get sober, and it wasn't working. And I was blaming the program, and he I said, I can't do this anymore.

I I just can't recover anymore. And he said, well, you're finally ready. I didn't get it, you know. And and all along, I was trying to recover. I was trying to do all these things that that I thought I was supposed to do, only only to find out all along that there was people there who would tell me what to do if I was just to listen.

And that we could do it if if you were to listen and to apply the things that somebody in this program is telling you. Now mind you, I was getting a lot of mixed messages. I was getting a lot of wrong messages. I've learned through the big book to sift that out. You know, I believe that the big book, and I've heard other people say it, it's a it's a bullshit sifter.

You know, it allows you to if you know what's in the big book and somebody opens their mouth in a meeting and is talking out of the big book, you'll know it. And you'll know whether or not to take what they're saying to heart and to actually apply it to your life or you'll know whether they're talking out of their ass. And that's one of the the gifts that this book has given me is that I understand now who in this program knows what they're talking about and who doesn't. If nothing else, that's significant because I can sit comfortably in a meeting and know what to listen to and what not to listen to. When I was first around the program, I didn't have a clue.

I didn't know what people were talking about. I was hearing people say stuff, and I was taking it to heart, and I'm like, that's a good plan. You know? And they don't know anymore about that sort of stuff that I know. I don't know anything about relationships, anybody more than anybody in here.

I used to say, and this was one of my things, I used to say this room is collectively live my life. If I apply little bits and pieces from everybody else, I'll be able to live my life. Well, that's load of crap. I can't tell somebody how to to deal with a relationship. I can't tell somebody how to, a financial adviser.

Maybe I could help them with their finances, but I can't there's all kinds of things I can't do. I just cannot do it. And yet for all these periods in the program, I was trying to get these people to help me with all these different aspects of my life that they could not help me with, and they were legitimately trying to help me. And they're like, I don't know why that's not working, you know. And I'm like, well, maybe it's because you've been divorced seven times, you know.

And it never clued into me that I'm asking the wrong people for the wrong help. So I ended up drinking again when I got out of the detox, and that was the last time I ever drank. I basically blacked out for almost 3 days, and I was a blackout drunk. I was the type of guy who would walk wake up walking after a night downtown. I have no idea where I'd gone, what I'd done, that sort of stuff, but it was perfectly functioning the whole night.

And I had a card in my pocket, and I'd gone through the 28 day program in 1993 and met a guy named Eric See. A lot of you guys might know him. He's been around a long time. He'd gone to Crosby at 14 years. He'd retired and decided to take the effort to go ahead and do Crosby detox and he gave me his card.

I was actually at an Al Anon meeting. The only one I've ever been to in my life and the only one I've on me, and the only one I've ever been to in my life and the only one I shouldn't say the only one he's been to, but it's in the middle of nowhere. Like, I was in the detox in Lunenburg. We drove an hour to this meeting. He happened to be there.

I hadn't seen him in years, and he always gives me a card. So sure enough, I call this place, and they let me live there. And it's a 24 hour, you know, long term rehabilitation center, health care place. And that gave me 10 months of learning how to live sober. I didn't learn how to recover in that house.

It's there. The people running the place know more about recovery than than I will probably ever know, but I wasn't listening again. And, you know, god willing, I've stayed sober since then. But when I was there, I wasn't listening to what people were telling me. And people were telling me I've gotta do this, you've gotta do that.

These are the things that are gonna help you stay sober for the rest of your life. And what did I do? I was kind of around the I'm just trying to keep that from stopping. I was around the surface of the program. Again, I was doing service work.

I was doing all the things that I thought I was supposed to do. I felt okay inside. I felt like I was a little bit better. I had removed the alcohol from my life. Of course, I was better.

And that's, you know, one of the things I've learned that that removing alcohol from my life will make my life better, but it's not a permanent solution. And I started to find that out. You know, I've had a lot of gifts in this program. Freddie coming into the program was when I was almost 2 years sober when he got a phone call from him at my office, and he said that I hear you have a birthday coming up. And this was a guy who a year later was trying to get booze off me.

And, not that I was carrying on booze, but that sounds bad. I'd won it as a prize, and he was there, saw it. Mine was bigger than his, so he wanted to trade. He was still drinking. You know?

And I and I didn't ask my family to be at my first, and it is a regret. And I think that that's special and smart because it's not a regret that I wanna have. I did bring him my 5th but it's not the same. So I'll jump ahead to 4 and a half years sober and going absolutely insane. I didn't understand what was wrong with me.

I didn't understand why I felt the way I felt. I had done, you know, the central service work. I don't think I had done any general service work at that point. I was volunteering at Alcare Place, doing some stuff with the committee and and helping their board whenever I could and just little tiny things and I'm like, why am I not getting this? Like, it's no better than drinking because I was.

I was going insane and it was the internal condition that would screw me up again. And I was starting to get that feeling again that this is untreatable. I'm gonna have to treat this again. And my only solution up to that point was treating it with alcohol. And I truly believe that either the guilt of that last weekend or the 10 months at Alcare Place gave me four and a half years of sobriety because I think that there's an amount of time that I used to get from guilt.

If I did something horrible, depending on how horrible it was, I had a period of sobriety that was directly related to how horrible the thing was. So if I felt guilty enough, it might be a month month's worth of guilt, you know, 2 weeks worth of guilt, whatever. 4 and a half years of guilt or 10 months of living at Alcare. And that was, you know, I mean, and I don't wanna make it sound like, my god. That was the thing that saved my life.

Trust me, living at that house. I made friendships there that will be stronger than any friendship I'll ever make anywhere else, present company excluded. I heard somebody else say the recuperative powers of the alcoholic ego are amazing because I was one of those guys that we get drunk and then 2 or 3 days later, smoke clears, everything's okay, you know, and I come back into the meetings and I start spewing my bullshit again, talking like I've been sober for years, like I know everything about the big book. I'd never read the big book once. Maybe that's why I was having problems.

Yeah. That's definitely why I was having problems. You know? And I struggled in the in in the meetings. There are people there and this is just my opinion, you know, but a meeting maker won't make it without the program.

I don't care how many meetings you go to. It's not gonna fix the internal condition. I'll go slowly nuts just going to meetings, and I learned that. This program is built around the 12 steps. It's not a self help group.

It's a 12 step group. You know, and I've heard people compare it to going to the gym and and if you're going to the gym and you're sitting out front drinking protein shakes and talking to people, it's not gonna be nearly as effective as the guy who comes in and and hits the weights or the lady that comes in and hits the weights. Sorry. But that's the big difference for me. I mean, I can either do the work or I can't do the work.

And what had happened at four and a half years was that I realized I hadn't done anything. And somebody gave me a CD and he's not here tonight. Fergie. I was hoping he'd be here. And the CD basically kicked my ass more than anybody had ever kicked my ass before.

And if anybody wants copies of this stuff, talk to me after the meeting, and I'll make sure you can get a copy. I've given out probably a 100 of them in the last 12 months to people, and it pretty much has the same effect on most. They get angry first, and then they understand. So I decided I've been in a relationship for a long time. I kinda left that out, but I had met a person in sobriety and and I got engaged.

And, you know, she welcomed me into her life when I had absolutely nothing to give her. I was living at Alcare Place, And not that I recommend relationships for guys in Alcare Place. But I was in there and I was in a relationship. So what can I say? But I decided we we were gonna have the wedding late last year, and I decided or she decided that we should move the wedding up because her grandfather was ill.

So we decided to do that. But I was planning on having the steps done by the time I got married. So now she said, well, we got 45 days instead of 9 months. And I was like, oh, shit. Because I had made that commitment to myself that I was not gonna get into that to I wasn't gonna get married until I had this shit taken care of.

So I started on that process and it's funny because I didn't realize until I got really into the book that there's no real, like, long, drawn out process to the steps. Nowhere in the book does it tell us to take a year to do our steps. Nowhere does it tell us to take a step a year or anything like this. It says actually we set out on a vigorous course of action. After step 3, vigorous course of action.

Gotta start. You know, after 5, let's go home and sit there for an hour then do 6 and 7. Bang bang. Like, this stuff's not supposed to take forever and I didn't realize that until I got into it and started doing it. That it's that it's not tough to do it quickly.

It's actually easier to do it quickly than it is to do it over a long period of time. Because of the fact that once I got into it, I understood the benefits of doing it. And if nothing else, that's that's the one message I like to give is that the hope of something better. I mean, my life was shit. I had no family, no friends, no job, no house.

I was looking at jail again, you know, and this time it was gonna be probably longer than a year, and so I'm thinking, oh, now I'm going federal or something, you know, and like, oh, maybe I can go to school or something. That'll be cool. You know, these are the things that are going through my head, and at the same time I'm trying to get my life back together and trying to get sober. So I'm doing steps. I get through the 5th, bang, bang, bang.

I did 9. I realized today that 9 wasn't done effectively enough and I about it in appendix 2 in the book, they say that there's varying types of spiritual experiences and I understand mine was almost immediate. I have I have a God, you know, he's of my understanding. I choose to call him God. You know, I'm Baptist.

Just not the same god that I grew up with, but he serves a much greater purpose than the one I grew up with. I want to do another 5th today, and the reason why I was saying I get to that later was upon doing 5 today, I realized there was 2 people that I didn't do effective nines with, which was making my amends to those people last year. And it's been bugging me, You know? And and I talked to my sponsor last night, and I said, I'm doing another 5th tonight. I I don't do it with my sponsor.

I do it with the priest. And and, for some reason, when first did it, I didn't wanna burden my sponsor with the stuff I was gonna be telling them because I felt it was so horrific that I didn't wanna, like, have it affect our relationship as friends. And now that I've done it with this priest, I choose to do it with him again. I see now the advantages of doing it with another alcoholic. But given that I had already spilled my guts to for 4 hours with this guy, he understood and put things in context.

It made sense to do it again. So I did them last year. The spirituality all of a sudden blossoms. I understand what it means to to have worked the steps, and I'm telling everybody that this is the way you gotta do it. This is amazing.

This is it's, you know, the god shock kind of thing and it's like holy shit. Wow. I can't believe for 4 and a half years I wasn't doing this because it was so immense, the the change. I mean, it was it was it was a change at a molecular level. I mean, that's how big of a difference I felt.

30 days later, it's like I'd never done them, and I'm like, oh, this is just the same shit all over again. I don't understand what had happened in the 30 days. I don't understand why all of a sudden I'm feeling this way again. What's going on? I listened to another CD of the same guy, and it's on working with others, and I'm like, oh, shit.

That's what I'm not doing. I wasn't working with anybody. I hadn't I hadn't I mean, I shared all this. I told people all this sort of stuff, but I wasn't doing any work with anybody. And so I started doing trying to find people to work with and friends, and I was doing the the lame stuff by sending them stuff by email and saying you gotta do this, you gotta do this, you gotta do this.

If you wanna do it, I'll help you with it. Too close. They're friends. They're too close. They're not gonna take that sort of stuff from me constructively.

They have. You know? Some have. Some haven't. Some are are far past where other guys were and but it's not the same.

I was fortunate enough to work with Alf, an amazing experience, amazing. To see somebody work, unbelievable. And and they talk about it, and I'm gonna find page 89 in the book, working with others. Life will take on new meaning to watch people recover, to see them help others, to watch loneliness vanish, to see a fellowship grow about grow up about you, to have a host of friends. This is an experience you must not miss.

We know you will not want to miss it. Frequent contact with newcomers and with each other is the bright spot of our lives. And that for me is so true now. Every time my program starts to feel like it's missing something, that's where I go, working with others. You know, and and I realize there's so many other things that I'm when it when it gets weak that I'm not doing.

Like I said last night, I talked to my sponsor and I said I'm doing another 5th, and he says why are you doing a 5th if you're doing your 10th every night? And I didn't have an answer. I was like, that's a really good question. And I said, I'm not perfect. And he said, oh, no.

No. I wasn't saying that you were claiming you were perfect, because I've made those claims before. But it's true. If I'm doing a 10th effectively, then I probably don't need to be doing a 5th every 8 months. You know, so by doing that today, it made me realize, you know, going through the exercise of the steps every set amount of time is important for me, but doing them every day is critical because if I don't do them, then that's gonna build up all these other things that have caused me problems in the past.

My character defects have not gone away. I know that from the last year. There's a lot less of them, and they're a lot I guess they're not as bad as they once were, but they're all there. Every time things start to go bad, you know, they creep up and they creep up in different ways And that's why I think that it's so important. And I'm, you know, I'm I'm I guess I'm being toned down tonight.

Hey, Laura. I have a tendency to be a bit aggressive when I'm talking to people outside the rooms about the program, and that's because I don't feel it's my place to to to tell people exactly what they need to do, but I will tell you that outside if you ask me because I know what's I've been told and it's in the book and it's pretty simple, and and I don't talk outside the book when I'm talking to a member. If they wanna know what to do, I'll tell them exactly where to go in the book to find it. That's where all our answers are. That's all this program offers us.

It doesn't offer us anything else. It it you know, I mean, I I consider myself a recovered alcoholic. Some people have a problem with me using that word and I've heard it said in other places that they have a problem with me using that word. The book tells me I will recover from a hopeless state of mind and body. It uses the word recovered tons of times in the book.

You know, it's in the very first page. This is how we have recovered from a hopeless state of mind and body. That's all the program offers us. It doesn't offer us anything else. It's gonna help me with my alcoholism, and through that, it's gonna help me establish relationships back where I didn't have them before.

It's gonna allow me to be a productive member of society, which I think I've become, but it's a lot it's amazing because, you know, I'm coming up on 6 years, and at four and a half years, I thought I was going nuts. You know, last month, I was thinking, jeez, man. Like, I gotta get this I start feeling the pressure again of doing the steps because there's a little bit of pressure there, and I was doing exactly what I tell the guys that I work with not to do, which was take your time. And my priest was away on a cruise, so it was perfect. You know, I had that great excuse that I didn't have to do it right away, and when he called me back, it was a curse and a blessing because I knew I had, like, a week and a half to get everything done, and it didn't take me very long.

But the hope for me is that I'll continue to do the stuff that that that the big book tells me I need to do, and and it's frustrating, I guess, in some respects because I can't say what I wanna say, and that's and I I I can only show people what's happened to me and and hopefully through this meeting, which I know is is a huge part of a lot of people's lives, especially I'm not out here as much as as I as I used to be because I'm in the big book study mostly because that's where I find the most beneficial time for me is studying the big book. I find I wanna bite my lip or my tongue. I find sometimes it's tough when I'm sitting in a meeting, and we're not talking about the program, and we're not talking about alcoholism. And that's what that's what bothers me and that's one of the reasons why I find it really really important when I'm sharing to share about alcoholism to share about the program. There's 2 things that that I feel need to be talked about and that's either someone who's looking for a solution or someone who's found it and willing to share it and that's it.

That's all this meeting room is supposed to be for. Because like I said earlier there's no way that this is gonna help us with our relationships. It's not gonna help us get a job. It's not gonna help us find our lost dog. It's not gonna help us do the things that we want outside of alcoholism.

So I find it tough sometimes. Yeah. But and we actually had that that question whether or not, you know, should we sit by and not say anything or should we just not stop going to that meeting if we don't find it's helpful? And my response was the way I feel is it's it's my role to be at that meeting because at the very last chance, I need to be able to open my mouth and share the message of hope and tell somebody that if there's a newcomer in the room and he's hurting and he needs a drink, that there's a there's a way out. He doesn't have to live like this anymore.

You know? And I didn't hear that. I called a guy today who's I hope he's alive. I mean, that's that's how bad he is and that's really scary. And I just wanted to tell him that there's he doesn't have to live like this anymore because I was where he was at once.

Everybody here who's a member was there once. I'm assuming so. If not, why are you here? You know? I mean, that's the reality of it.

For those who don't feel like they've got it yet, that's it. It's right here. Guys like Alf chomping at the bit to work with somebody. You know, he's he's a year sober, and he's ready to work with people. It has nothing to do with how long you've been sober.

It has to do with work you've done in the time you've been sober, and he's done a lot of work. There's a lot of guys in this meeting that have done this group that have done done a lot of work. You know? And don't get me wrong. I love everybody in this program.

It just scares me when I see it be different than it was when it was started. And, anyways, you know what? It's been a phenomenal night to see Alf celebrate. It's nice to see Leo's family here as well. Another guy that's jumping at the bit to to do some serious work.

So, anyways, for those who aren't attending this meeting on a regular basis, please come back because, you know, we love to have love to have people here, and it's a great group, and the big book study again is a phenomenal place. And if anybody wants a copy of the stuff that I got, that that turned my life around literally because I was I was looking for a drink and I listened to one person's message and it changed my world. Talk to me afterwards and I can get you copies of it. So, anyways, it's great to be here and it's good to be sober. God bless you.

Thanks.