Steve B. from Mount Kisco, NY speaking in Copenhagen, Denmark

Hello, Danish people. I'm Steve, and I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Steve. I'm concerned about that introduction because I don't know what the heck he said. He could say, this is Steve.

He's on the run from the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the United States. He's here hiding out in Copenhagen. He'll be back. I don't know. Yeah.

So it's always gets I always get when they do that too, I always never know what they're saying. They're probably telling their story. So because mine's boring. Well, I've, I've been in Denmark about, a day and a half, so I think I can tell you all about it, because I'm an alcoholic. Right?

On the the 21st, question on the 20 questions is, do you need to have facts in order to have an opinion? If the answer is no, you're an alcoholic. Right? Because I could ask any of you, come up here and give a 45 minute lecture on the Russian economy. You know nothing about it.

You could do it right now. Right? Because you're alcoholics because you had to learn how to tell stories, like where you'd been since October, and it was May. You know? You know, in October in the States, of course, we have Halloween, and alcoholics wake up in their Halloween costume in January.

So they have to kinda explain why they've got that nun in the front, hooker on the back little outfit still on, but that's just in LA. My my sobriety date is May 25, 1979, and, I have not found it necessary to take a drink since that time. I, I I I'm a sort of an atypical member of AA. I haven't had a relapse. I don't think that's normal.

Most of the people I know have. It's good if you don't. You don't have to. I'm so worried about that table in the back. I just know halfway through my talk, it's just gonna fall.

You guys break so many you know, I gotta tell you, you'll notice I digress, but I feel like such a wimp. You understand word wimp? Okay. Because I just okay. Wimp being here, especially the bicycles.

I gotta talk about the bicycles for a minute. You don't wear helmets. Everybody in the states wears a helmet. All the kids wear and now and and and there's nobody on the streets wear and then you got your kids in the front and a cardboard box in front of they'd have you arrested in the states for that. And then, oh my god, where are these?

Those women dressed like they're going into the opera, riding a bike. And I'm sorry to say appropriately. You know, they're looking good doing it. I I think there's like this blonde factory of just I mean, I know you guys are doing this because that's all I've been doing all day is watching the bikes. Watching the bikes.

Watching the bikes go by. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, a brunette. Okay. Okay. 11.

Redhead. At the redheads, I wanna yell, they stole you from Ireland. Because you're lucky you don't have to make up for resentments from the, from your ancestors. But, I tell you, it's just an amazing thing, and the bites are so tall. And then I realized and I'm I'm thinking, okay.

Do they look better coming towards you or going away from you? This is see, I'm spending too much time alone. It's really good to be at the meeting. This is what happens when you're alone. In my head, he talks to you.

Hello. Hello. Hi. Hi there. Does he talk to you?

Hello there. How are you? We'll be having a day today, probably a crappy one, so you should just stay in bed. If you're new, he talks to you a little differently than he talks to me. To me, he says, alright.

You got 28 years. You got 28 years. You got You could have 1 drink. You'd have just 1 drink. Just have 1 drink.

Just have 1 drink. You drink. You were very young when you got. Very, very, very, very young. You were 11.

Everything he says is true. You could have just one drink just one drink. How about a nonalcoholic beer? What's that? What's a zima?

What's a mousi? What's a what's a what's what's what's stoli vanilla like? You know? Now I know if he ever ever talked me into taking that one drink, the minute it had hit my stomach, boom, he'd be right there going, you rotten stinking loser, you. You just threw away 28 years.

Why don't you drink your miserable self to death? Right? Because that's the way it talks. So now if you're new, talks to you a little differently. He goes, okay.

You got 90 days. You got 90 days. Is 90 days a big deal here? 9:9:98 chip? You get a 98 chip here?

Okay. 90 You got 90 days. You got 90 days. Now this is alcoholic logic. Listen.

90 days. 90 days. You got 90 days. You better drink soon or you're gonna have so much time you can never drink again. Right?

You get the no. See? Now because real logic, real people other Danish people logic is not drinking, life better. If I continue not to drink, life should probably get a little better or continue the way it is. That's not alcoholic reasoning.

Not drinking life better drink. Right? Or or he's saying, alright. I know what. Let's drink tonight and we'll get sober tomorrow.

Somebody back there said it with me. Right? Because his voice is in your head. Because he always wants to get sober tomorrow. Today is just not a good day to get sober.

I'm hungover. It's Monday. It's Tuesday. It's dark. It's cloudy.

She left me. She stayed. I gotta mow the grass. I don't have to mow whatever. You know?

I had this shrink who was trying to help me get sober, and he went, why do you drink? Everything. You know? I I never if I was in a rehab and my relapse prevention program would be, like, 5 minutes, what makes you relapse? Everything.

I can drink over anything. What? Oh, oh, I oh, I oh, work. I was stressed at work. That's why I drank.

Yeah. Or I don't have a job. The relationship, it's too much. I can't handle that. I don't know if she's the right girl.

I don't have a girl. The kids. No kids. You guys are having a lot of kids here too. Besides bikes and girls, I've been counting kids.

There are a lot I don't know if there's a population thing here, but you're trying to make up for time or maybe it's just the winners. I don't know. So this guy this guy is always trying to get me to drink, And the reason he's trying to get me to drink is I'm an alcoholic. And I didn't understand that until I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. Now I I came I said I'm atypical because, a, I loved Alcoholics Anonymous from the minute I got here.

This is the greatest show on earth for whatever it is you put in the basket. You know? I mean, where else can you see one old timer getting a fist fight with another old timer over gratitude? You know what I'm saying? Date in your 1st year.

Don't date in your 1st year. Now that's always a big controversy because the men's sponsors are going, you can date in your 1st year, but don't get serious. See, that's where all the you can't have a relationship. That's that's where the conflict comes. So I loved AA from the minute I got here.

I mean, it was just it was just crazy, And all the guys that I got sober with were World War 2 vets with 3rd grade educations, and I was a nice college educated kid. And one of them, I don't remember, he was about this big. He stuck his finger in my chest and he said, Steve, if it's your mother's fault, you're drinking wine, she's waking up sick? And I couldn't answer him. I'm still 28 years later trying to find an answer because if I ever can, I'm gonna dig him up and tell him why it's her fault.

Because if I could blame it on somebody else, I would. The other thing that I came to Alcoholics Anonymous with, which, I have in common, I believe, with all the people we read about in the book, I desperately wanted to stop drinking. And that's okay if you're here tonight or and you don't. In fact, I think a lot of people come to AAA because somebody sends them here or because if you have a drinking problem, you're supposed to go to AA. Whatever reason, whatever gets you here, if you come here for whatever, the coffee, because it's free.

And I've had 3 cups. So I've had caffeine, and I free based 2 cigarettes before we started the meeting. I'm just ready to go. It's probably a few drug addicts in here too. I I I I'm not a drug addict.

I I I I just never never could be one. I couldn't wait. Drug dealers make you wait. They do. They're like rock bands.

They make you wait. You know, they just can't start on time. I don't care what what time it's supposed to be. Concert starts at 8 o'clock. It's gonna be 8:30 before they get there.

And that's the way that must be in the drug dealer union thing. And I always knew when the liquor store was gonna be open. Now I've done a few drugs, but I just I am to drugs what a heavy drinker is to alcohol. It says in our book we have a very radical definition of alcoholics and not alcoholism in the book of Alcoholics Anonymous. It says that there is a heavy drinker who in many respects looks like an alcoholic, who may even die a few years earlier from his drinking.

He is not an alcoholic. Say what? I don't know. Let's just all get up, go down to the hospital, take one of you, say, hey. This is our friend Joe.

He's drinking a lot. We think he's gonna die a few years early from his drinking. What do you think he is, doctor? And the doctor's gonna go, he's an alcoholic. No.

Not Alcoholics Anonymous. Dying from drinking is not good enough in AA to make you an alcoholic. It just makes you a wussy drinker. No. This and I can't remember who said, but this is what makes you an alcoholic, in my opinion, in Alcoholics Anonymous, and all of this is my opinion, of course.

It comes out of the book. It is right. It is correct, but it is only my opinion. Look, it's what I, you know, it's what I've based my sobriety on, some of it for a very long time, some of it since, 2 hours ago. It's liable to change.

Some of it has never changed. I was very lucky. I got into a group. It got me into the book. I came into Alcoholics Anonymous.

I never ever wanted to do anything the normal way. Can you relate to that? Anybody here? Never wanted to do it the regular way. No.

No. No. Not the excuse of profanity, average way. The average way was for those average, dull, lame people, not creative, autumn tone people like myself. When I was 8 years old, my father was in the army, we were stationed in Alaska, they told me something wet stuck on metal in cold weather, it was 30 below, I took below 0, I put my tongue on the monkey bars.

Who knows? They could have been lying. I only did it once. I've talked to people who have done it more than that. You know?

So something happened besides the desire to stop drinking, which is where I sort of started this. I wanted to do it the average way in AA for the first time in my life. I wanted to do the steps. I wanted to do the steps, the 4th step, the way it was out of the book, the way everybody I knew it stayed sober. I just wanted to do it that way.

I wanted to do it the way the people said that worked. And then I got to be creative in the rest of my life. And and I have to tell you, I I found that to be true. That if I will take the program that those drunk, ruined, bankrupt crooks that founded this program they were crooks. They they sold bogus stock in the book, if you know our history.

I mean, these guys these guys were not saints. That's what I love about. They call this pigeons. A newcomer was a pigeon. You know what a pigeon is?

Pigeon is somebody a salesman is selling to set up something sell something that ain't very good. It's a pigeon. So I wanted to do it that way, and so I came into Alcoholics Anonymous with a great desire to stop drinking. And if I don't say anything else tonight, I I some of you are very lucky or unlucky. You've been able to go 30 days, 6 months, a year, some amount of time without drinking.

I never got one day once I started drinking alcoholically, and the time I got to Alcoholics Anonymous. So my great blessing was that first day I got was the first day I'd ever gotten, and I couldn't deny that. I couldn't deny something's happened here. I went and hung out with these really strange people and heard some really strange stuff about God and some steps and not drinking and one day at a time and call me. Yeah.

I'd call you, right? Call her, but not you. No. No. Really, I was very fortunate.

When I got sober, everybody was older. You couldn't do that 13 step thing. You know? And if you're here on the 13th step, God bless you. Whatever.

It'll I I tell the guys, the guys I sponsor that are new, I say, get right into a relationship. It will help you with your step work. It's 9 o'clock. She didn't call. Where is she?

You told her not to call you today. Oh, yeah. Click. It's 10 o'clock. She didn't call.

Yeah. It's just amazing. You know? Does she like me? Do I like her?

Do I like her more than do she likes me? I mean and these are the calls you get at 4 o'clock in the morning, and they've been thinking about it since 9, you know, but they couldn't call you at 9. They have to wait till 4 o'clock. So I walked in there, and and see what I didn't understand was this is it as I was saying that there there's a certain kind of alcoholic who will die. There's a certain kind of heavy drinker who will die early, but given certain certain circumstances, life, whatever, they will alter or quit or modify their drinking.

They are not an alcoholic. What makes me an alcoholic is everything in my life is right there. Every good, loving, kind thing I have in my life. Everything that makes life worth living, forget the stuff. Although the stuff was important, stuff's still important.

But you know if you hang around here for a while, it starts to be about the inside stuff. You are beautiful. You are god's snowflake. God loves you. You know, all the stuff your sponsor tells you when you hate your own guts.

Sounds like your mother. And if you take so much as one drink, you're gonna lose it all, and you cannot not drink. That's what makes me an alcoholic. Yes. I have the physical allergy to the drug, ethyl alcohol that when I drink it, I want more.

And and and when I realized when I say that in a room full of alcoholics that when I drink ethyl alcohol, I want more, I get flat line. Right? Because in your head, you're going, well, of course, you want more. That's why there is more. If there isn't any more, we'll go get more.

Because once you drink, you want more. I mean, this is what a normal drinker does. I don't want any more. For those of you on tape, the very tall, blonde speaker, Put that on XA. Alright.

But this is what I'm not that's right. I love to play with people on tape. Listening to it. And you're in the car. Stop that.

Okay. Watch the road. Alright. Alright. So here's what a nonalcoholic does.

They go, I don't want anymore. And then then watch this. This is the magic part. This is what they do. They walk away and they leave We were talking about this earlier.

That's alcohol abuse. Watch these idiots when they go to dinner. There's 4 of them. They order 1 bottle of wine, and I've been watching them. They've been I've been hitting the bar going to the bathroom.

No. No. No. No. No.

No. That's all the booze they've had all night. So they each get 4 a bottle of wine, if I remember correctly, and I do, is 4 6 ounce glasses of wine with a little bit left over. Am I right, anybody that's a server? Yeah.

Right. That's about right. Right? Okay. So they drink they're sitting there for hours with that one glass of wine.

Why do I know this? Because I'm over in the corner with my Diet Coke monitoring them. I'm a retired professional, but I can watch. And then they go, oh, time for the movies. And they get up and they leave it.

And you don't know these people, but you really have to fight going over to them and going, wait. Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me. You didn't know if there's wine left in your glass.

But you just finish that, then you can late leave the restaurant. You know? Finish that for me. Okay? I'm right here.

I'm in charge. Okay. There you go. Just finish it. And they go, no, I'm done.

They're doing the thing. They're walking away. I'm done. The walking away thing is they do well, come on. Look, I tell you what, Just finish the drink, and there won't be any trouble.

Okay? Because you're not leaving wine on the table. That's that's gonna it's not gonna happen. They go, well, what should I do? Well, just chug the thing.

Just do that and chug it. Then they say something stupid like, well, if I did that, I'd get sick of you. Why do you drink? That is a normal relationship to the drug ethyl alcohol. When you've had enough, you're done.

See, I said that word. You don't know what it means enough. You've gone home tonight. Is there an English translation I missed? Enough.

What is enough? No, no, no. Because see, when I take 6, 8, 12 ounces of ethyl alcohol, and it hits my stomach. The sun rises. It goes down my legs, up my chest, flushes my face.

Careful, boys. Hold on. We're not there yet. Alright. Hold on.

Don't go before me. Alright? It comes out my hands and fingers and my whole body goes. Now if your sphincter got a little tighter or there's a little bit oh, sphincter doesn't translate, I see. Or there's a little sweat on your lip, or he's talking to you now.

Hello. Uh-uh. You understand the kind of alcoholism that I have. Because for me, alcohol fixes everything when it's working. I understand it if you wanna drink tonight.

It's been 28 years since I've had any ethyl alcohol, and I understand what it will do. In fact, I had a guy I sponsored. The scariest, one of the scariest things I've ever heard in sobriety. I sponsored him. He had about 38, he had about 13 years when he went out.

He went out on coke, Crack. Another drug I don't understand. There may be a few crackheads here. I I I don't understand it. It's a strange addiction.

Apparently, you can't do it in your own home. You have to rent a motel room, I I or a hotel room that has porn on it and get a hooker that you can't do anything with. And you can't buy all the Coke and crack at once. You have to buy it, like, at $40 increments, and so you're constantly too much trouble. Give me a big bottle of booze.

Settle in. Me and ethyl. Ethyl alcohol. See, and I so I that's they they explained that to me. They explained to me that I the one of my problems was I had a physical physical algae to the drug ethyl alcohol, that if I drank it, I wanted more, that I craved more.

They explained that to me. I'm going, alright. Great. I just won't drink. And they said, but you can't do that.

Said, see, you can't not not drink. That's your real problem. Because if it was just the fact that you had an allergy, I mean, there's no such thing as strawberries anonymous. Right? Right?

People who eat strawberries and bust out in hives? We don't have meetings for that, do we? There's nobody standing up in front of what do we got? 50, 60, a 100 people in here going, yep. It's been 28 years since my last strawberry.

Yeah. I haven't had a damn desire to go out eat a strawberry and break out in hives in 28 years. It's a miracle of god, the steps of my sponsor. I just wanna thank you people for every good, loving, kind thing in my life. That happened, does it?

Physical allergy to strawberries. They just don't do them. I'm allergic. How about crab? Allergic to that too.

Don't do it. Peanuts? Make me swell right up. Don't eat peanuts. Alcohol?

Oh, I'll drink that. Lose everything I've got. A little drink it costs me, my wife, my kid, my job, my car, my self respect, every good, loving, kind thing I ever had in my life, I'll give you one more chance. Now, some of you have that same problem with other things, and God bless you. I didn't.

Anything that got in the way of ethyl alcohol went. You know, I got tired of doing this, so I stopped LSD. I got stopped smoking. Oh, Come, please. And, you know, and then when I I love to do, you know, amphetamines and go to those bars, so can I drink more?

But when my hand looked like Gene Wilder in Blazing Saddles, I switched to downs, you know, anything anything that would allow me to keep drinking. And then I walk in here and you people tell me I cannot not drink. And then if I do drink, I'm gonna have this craving to drink more, which will ultimately kill me. Have a nice day because that's the first step. Yeah.

Powerless over alcohol, and my wife is unmanageable. Now, I I gotta when I talk about the steps, I usually talk about them and and not in an hour pitch, but in in three ways. One, the first time I went through them, the second way is the way they've sort of manifest themselves in my sobriety through them throughout my sobriety, and it hopefully, I will share with you the way they are today. Because the way they are today are is not the way they were 5 years ago. That's why I keep coming to meetings.

That's why I still have a sponsor. That's why I still make calls. I I don't know how to do tomorrow. I don't have the same they didn't tell me you're gonna get old. You know?

They didn't tell me that I could get 28 years of sobriety, but I was gonna get 28 years older. I I don't know what I thought was gonna happen. I didn't think at all. I just thought about not drinking that day. I never dreamed about having 28 years.

I never dreamed about having 28 years and speaking in Denmark. I never none of that ever occurred to me. I just didn't wanna die drunk, and I wanted you know, see, this is the problem. When you make love to a gorilla, you're not done till the gorilla's done. And that was the problem when I got to Alcoholics Anonymous.

Some of you have never thought about quitting. I've met people with lots of times, 20 years, walked into a meeting. For some reason, I have no idea why, said I had never in my life thought about quitting drinking, walked into a meeting, haven't had a drink since. I've I've I've met those people. I know they exist.

I know some of you have come to a meeting with no intention of quitting drinking. Because we all came to our meeting because there was a little heat on. Right? Nobody just walks in here to be spiritual. You know?

There's a little heat on at home. There's a little heat on at work. There's a little heat on from the heat. There's a little heat on there's a little heat on somewhere. There's a little heat on for me, you know, my, soon to be ex wife, and I absolutely have no idea how I did my 1st year of sobriety.

If I look back on my 1st year of sobriety today, I say I couldn't do it sober. My ex wife who had she put up and and I wasn't a violent drunk. I was a put a lampshade crazy drunk. You know, the kind you really like to take out in public. The kind that when they're drunk has never met anybody they didn't like and thinks everybody else is drunk too.

So so so she just I the book says it it that that that the alcoholic is sort of more or less always insanely drunk. That was me. Now I could get a little snarly, but for the most part, she just left because it was crazy. But the good non alanine co alcoholic that she was, when she left, she just moved across the street. That's what we call in the United States from the co alcoholic to the alcoholic.

Because every day, I had to come out and look at my shoes to get to my car to make sure I didn't see what guy's car was parked in her driveway. Because she made sure it was parked where I could see it. I don't know how I did that. She She lived there across the street from me for the 1st 6 months of my sobriety. Have no and, of course, I didn't want her till she left, and then I wanted her.

Right? Because an alcoholic's always wanting out till he's out, then he wants in. I mean, you know, when we exit, we're not going nowhere. They don't know that. We won't ever tell the nonalcohol like that.

But we go, I'm leaving. Of course, they throw themselves. No. You can't leave until they go to an Al Anon meeting. But if then your stuff's packed.

Bye bye. Alright. But had they not known that, had they just let us go, we would be outside the door. I made my exit. She's supposed to stop me.

Cut. What do we do now? She's not stopping me. So I have I have no idea. And see and what's so strange is because I honestly believe, and this is this is my belief, that the reason I don't drink today is I have had a spiritual experience brought about by the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, the god of my understanding, that have expelled the obsession to drink and that for this alcoholic, anything else I would still be drinking.

I don't know about you. I know people who are sober a long time that say they've never had that, and that's okay with me. Anybody who comes here with a problem with ethyl alcohol and gets help, God bless you. I'm glad you're here. But if you're an alcoholic like me and if it's 1 to 10, I'm a 10.

I'm I I've got the worst form of this disease that is possible to have. I was the very first person in my family to get sober. My grandfather died of this disease. My grandmother and my grandfather had 4 daughters. 50% of them died of this disease.

I'm adopted. I've had 2 mothers, 2 fathers. 50% of my parents have died of this disease. I was the very first one to get sober. And my aunt who passed away at 82 a couple of years ago, it sick with 16 years of sobriety was the very first person in her generation to die of natural causes, if you don't consider smoking, die of natural causes primarily because of the delight that Alcoholics Anonymous brought into her life, because of me carrying the message to my cousin who carried the message to her.

So, but that didn't happen at first. All I know is I started going to meetings, no steps, no sponsor, didn't know what the hell you were talking about, no nothing, and I'm not drinking. And I'm like this big proponent, steps, sponsor, work. But there's this other thing that happens before, and I don't know what it is. Maybe it's just grace, but I don't know what the difference was between me sitting in that meeting may my first very first meeting was May and I don't wanna give any wrong impressions.

My very first meeting was May 1, 1979. My sobriety date's May 25, 1979. The reason I didn't get sober on May 1, 1979 was I had another plan. You probably have a plan too. I've never met a newcomer without a plan.

I don't know about your plan, but my plan has no recoveries. There are 0 people sober on the Steve Bordner plan. Maybe about 2,000,000 people sober on the AA plan, whatever you think that is. My plan was this, and it was a good one. He told me it was a good one.

This is a good plan. I was going to drink Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and I was going to give you Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. I was only gonna take 3 and give you 4. I thought that was incredibly generous of me. But you see, we call it surrender.

And when you're surrendering, you don't go. I will give you 3. Oh, you've got the big gun in my head. Okay. I'll give you 2.

Alright. You do whatever you want. You got the big gun in my head. Alright. Just take me.

You know? Well, so for about 3 weeks, I tried that plan and, of course, the, Sunday drinking turned into Monday to Tuesday to hang on. And and when I was at the end, I was so sick, I drank 2 or 3 days just to get well enough to get drunk again. You know, I found the morning drink, throw up 2 to hold down 1. You know, the whole deal.

You know the deal. You know the deal. You know what it's like. So I just I don't know. I don't know.

I just said, okay. Okay. Whatever you say. Whatever you say. You know?

Ever notice that with alcoholics? If I told you you had, like, stomach cancer, but if you went out here on the street and stood on your head naked for 2 hours a day, you'd live. Boom. You'd be out there. Yes.

Whatever. I don't wanna die. You tell them you got alcoholism. It kills almost everybody that gets it. You gotta go to meetings.

I don't know. Might wanna do it a sponsor to call and talk to for free. Now you're asking a little much. Get to know people. I don't know.

I don't know. And then there's some steps you might wanna do. I'm out of here. So all I know is I was willing I was willing to listen to those sergeant majors with 7th grade educations tell me what to do. And one of the greatest gifts I have been given besides sobriety is sponsoring guys.

Guys are the greatest thing that women I'm so sorry you don't get to sponsor them. Some of you might eventually. I have sponsored women occasionally. I've never heard of fist step, don't plan to. And we said, listen, you get to the fist step, go tell somebody else.

I'm not listening to that. I'm not that spiritual. I'm afraid I might not react to your sexual inventory the right way. Alright? So just being honest.

So but guys guys are great because they're so simple. I mean I mean, if you're here and you're new and one of your goals is to be a guru and AA, it ain't it ain't hard. This is not the men's society. Yeah. So you just can say the simplest stuff and they will just think you are great.

I mean, it's like you go she go, she says she says she she she says she she cheated with my best friend, and and she doesn't want me to go. She doesn't like me anymore. What should I do? Don't go out with her anymore. Wow.

He's so Zen. Because see, I would never have fought that. What? She doesn't like me? She's cheating on me.

Of course, I gotta keep dating her. You mean I can break up with her? I have that. Guys call me up and go, how could I make the fight with my wife go better? And I have to really literally say stuff like, well, I think if you don't start the fight, look, bitch, it will go better.

And they look at me, and they go, yeah. You sure? If I didn't say that, what would I say? Well, how about honey, darling, sweetheart, something like that. And don't talk about her family, that doesn't go well either.

You're just like your father. Don't say that. I mean, I've learned all that stuff here. I don't know. Do you guys tailgate here?

Tailgating? Tailgate? Do they tailgating? Does that translate? Tailgating?

Where you get really close to the car in front of you because they're not going fast enough? Because you think It's bikes in the woods. Bikes? Oh, you tailgate the bikes. Oh, that's real sweet.

Good. 2 £1,000 of steel and £35 a bike. I gotta go now. Alright. And the bikes with the kids in them.

Right? Okay. Good. Without the helmets. But I had to learn that you could just back off and let them go.

Or if they were tailgating you, you could get over and let them pass you. I learned if somebody didn't like you, you didn't have to have an opinion about it. That actually, if you're gonna be in a look. If you're in a home group, don't change your home group because of a resentment. Because if you change your home group and go to another group because of a resentment, they'll just follow you.

Now it won't be the same people. They'll have different names and different littler suits, but it's going to be the same resentment because I found out that if I have a the whole lesson listen, my whole lesson well, my whole lesson. I can't say that. One of the lessons that I've had to learn in 28 years of Alcoholics Anonymous is how to get along with you. People, places, and things.

Alright. Places? I'm in this great place. I don't know what that park's about. It's a little dinghy.

I think they were taking LSD when they made that park, But it's a little wacky in there, especially at night, but okay. And there's some spires in this town and some architecture. I'm not sure. I think somebody was doing something. But places, don't like the place.

I'll be back in New York soon. Things. Buy things, lose things, get things, everything. All of that takes it takes care of itself. It's the people.

I'm sure if I stayed here long enough, I would find with you the same things that make me mad with them back there that made me mad with them back there, back there, back there, because people tick me off. Not this group, of course. Them. Many of them need to die. The world would be a better place if they were out of the pool that is going to reproduce.

They'd have no business reproducing. I I don't know if they do it here. Actually, you don't have them. In the states, we have this little if you wanna cross, you push a button. Now any of you that know anything about electricity, the way you do this with an elevator, once you push the button, the circuit is set.

No matter how many times you push the button, that elevator is not going to come any faster. And yet, what do they do? They keep doing this. I want to kill them. I don't know why.

I'm sitting there. I've been having a great day. I've been Copenhagen. I've been looking around. Some little old lady from Iowa in my hotel is doing this, and I just need to take her out in the back alley.

And the body will be found, you know. 28 years. Yeah. You think you're gonna get well. Maybe they get a well speaker next time.

Not this one. Airplanes. I had to ride an airplane here. Alright? Airplanes.

Oh, my god. Alright. Look. Here's what happens in an airplane. The ticket says 37 a.

Your seat, you who are in front of me, is 30 7 a. Alright? So you get on the airplane. You stop at the first row. Now, I am a big humanitarian.

I'm gonna give you that one. Maybe the architect disdined the plane that the first row is 37 a. Maybe that is the truth. Maybe that happened. But you know what?

Oh, no. It didn't. It's number 1. What a surprise. The first row is number 1, not 37 a.

Okay. So that's 1, that means let's move it a while. Alright? No. No.

Not you. You go from 1 to the next row thinking it's 137 a. I need to kill you before we take off. Just think if somebody gave me something really to be irritated about. Because listen, I've in my sobriety, it's 2 things.

The ducks of trivia pecking at your ankles. That I mean, brushing your teeth 3 times a day, going to work, the boss liking you, the boss expecting you to be there because you usually are there, the boss expecting you to do a good job, Her the wife expecting you to actually pick up what she told you to pick up at the grocery store and be home sometime close to when you said you're. All of this stuff is new. I never did any. It's a lot of pressure.

It's a whole lot more pressure to explain why I'm drunk. You know? So so this sobriety thing. So it's the people. And and and and I will tell you, I said that I like to talk about the steps, because now I'm really on the 3rd step.

You know, powerless over alcohol. My life is unmanageable. Came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity. For me, that was the alcoholic group. It was the group.

If that's your higher power at the beginning, those people were sober and I wasn't. Man, I could not argue with that. That is just 1 and 1 equals 2. You know what I mean? That was real simple.

They were sober. Some of them were sober over a year, some were sober over 5 years, some were sober 30 years, and the ones who really impressed me and the ones who are gonna impress you tonight if you've got one day is a guy that had 30 days. 30 days. How do you get 30 days? Oh my god.

Tell me how you got 30 days. That was my hero. That I heck with the old timers. I didn't know they were talking quantum physics. They would get in those tradition meetings, and I think Bill's a revolutionary.

I'm in Akron, New York. But indeed, you're my bad. That's the good of AA. It depends on we're all gonna get drunk. The world's gonna go to hell in a handbag.

Blah blah blah How'd you get 30 days? You know? Because we do, boy. We you know, you get some time and you and they are. The traditions I can give you a tradition talk.

I can tell you what's threatening AA today. The threat to AA today as Steve ordered season. Oh, I bet. How do you get 30 days? How do you get well, we gotta get one day first, Steve.

Okay. One day. Alright? And that that 30 days happened, and then I got that coin. And where I got the coin, it was a metal coin.

All the rest of them were plastic. That 30 day was a metal coin, and they told you that if you took that coin, you had to agree to a couple of things. One is you had to agree to break the chip before you take a drink if you didn't call somebody, and they suggested one of 3 ways of breaking it. Put it on your head and hit it with a hammer, or put it one of 2 places and let it dissolve until it you take a drink. Right?

And I'm like, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. I believe that. See, I was stupid enough to believe anything. I was believing people who were drinking. I found out later, some guy told me something, saved my life.

Oh, he'd been drunk the whole time. It didn't matter. See? Didn't matter because it was still the truth. I ran into a guy one time.

I was, 1st 2 years I was sober, I was I was staying with my drunk cousin in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina because I was working there. That's not a smart thing to do. And so, he'd get he'd have come home from work. He'd have a couple of drinks. He'd go off to the bar and go to the AA meeting.

And I met a guy, and and and he was sitting in a bar one day, and he went, I gotta do something about my drinking. And the guy on the stool next to him turned to him and said, you really wanna do something about your drinking? Said, yeah, man. I really do. He said, go to AA.

And he did, and he got sober. And and because he's such a wonderful guy, he went back to the bar. And that guy's still sitting on the same stool, and he said, it works. Why don't you go? Guy said, I'm not ready.