Adell S. from Redondo Beach, CA speaking in Goleta, CA

Yeah,

thanks.

My name is Adele. I'm an alcoholic.

It's really good to be here with you. A pulpit

tonight.

I am just so glad to be here. I bring you greetings from Victoria who is going to be speaking tonight but had to work and I'm really, really pleased to be here in her place.

I'm an alcoholic and I'm also a compulsive overeater. And this is Alcoholics Anonymous and it's we have single myths of purpose. How many a lot of you were new tonight. Put your hands up if you have more less than a year sobriety,

you rock. Wonderful. Thank you.

Welcome. Welcome to Alcoholics Anonymous. This is just an amazing place and we often come here for something quite different than we get. Just hang on, you're on for you're here for a ride. I'm also compulsive overeater and and the singleness of purpose is extremely important in Alcoholics Anonymous because what we talk about in a A is about our drinking.

And if you're like me, the other things that used to float at the bottom of my purse. I loved dental appointments.

And but part of what I've learned in here is that I need to tell you who I am. And it's important. A couple areas #1 is that I ate to be with me and I drank to be with you. I could sit down whole story.

I had no social skills. I didn't like people. It was really hard when I got to be a grown up because I was an educator and I preferred if there were no students on campus.

I really when you told me I could be one among my fellows and I could relate to you one-on-one, it did not interest me. I preferred if you stayed away when you came to close to me. It felt like you were stabbing me.

It just hurt. And so being alone was fine with me. When you got too close to me, that's what was uncomfortable and I had to drink so that I could get even near you. I had no friends. That was fine with me. I had enough friends that just lived in my head.

I didn't need any outsiders.

The other thing about compulsive overeating is that I go to both programs. Both are equally lethal for me.

I'm just as dead from 1:00 as the other, so I've got to treat both of them and I didn't have the luxury of justice doing one. Although it's a really good idea to get sober for a while. For me, I have a lethal eating disorder. I'm a I'm a recovering bulimic,

which means as long as it's OK on the outside you can't see what's going on, I'm fine. I'm also a bigger liar.

I don't like paying for things, anything, and I'm a pig,

so that was part of it. The other part is that I have 19 years of sobriety. I just celebrated 19 years on June 28th and

it's very cool. Dog God. And the other thing was I was struck abstinent and sober at the same time. And I have 12 1/2 years of abstinence, which means I had four years in Alcoholics Anonymous when I was in relapse in that program. Now there's nothing like coming to a meeting and telling you how wonderful my sobriety is and leaving and going to drive through 17 Dr. throughs. What goes on in the head is I'm telling myself

a thief and a fake. I am in these rooms. So if you've got some compulsive behavior going on,

like you're up all night on the Internet looking at porn

or gambling or whatever it looks like, whatever it looks like, I may not have one of those things, but we know someone who does. And even more important, we know someone who doesn't have to do that anymore. But I have to go to those meetings where they talk about that behavior specifically, just like I come to Alcoholics Anonymous to listen to this behavior specifically.

The other thing is I have, I've been going for 19 years, even whatever was going on regularly. I have a sponsor in both programs, which is quite different from using a sponsor in both programs. And I do both and I sponsor women in both programs. So that's all I'll say about that.

They they say that we should say what it was like. So I'll tell you a little bit about the setup

for drinking. I really didn't start going after alcohol until I was in college. I had some early intervention or interactions with alcohol that were blackouts from the gate.

Or actually I just have brownouts.

Brown Oz. When you come in and out and remember stuff.

I'd much rather have a blackout.

So that was the I I started. I had my first real drink and went after it at 13. I don't remember anything. My step brothers were appalled and wouldn't take me with them anymore. And I grew up in a family where everyone was alcoholic. And so I had to make a place for myself in that family. And it was as good girl

exhibit, A good girl. And it didn't include drinking. It never occurred to me to drink less,

never even went by the blip. I just knew that I couldn't drink, and so I didn't for a while.

And my mom married an alcoholic when I was

well, she got with him when I was 7 1/2, almost eight. They got married when I was around 11. He had seven children and a wife in in what they called the insane asylum. Then she was alcoholic, but they didn't know what to do with Alcoholics and that at that point.

And my mom married this man and I was

a very strange child. I know that would I mean, that's really strange kid in my room. If you came in my room when I was a kid, all my books were perfectly clean. They were in Little Rose alphabetically. So were my dolls were according to size. I preferred if my mother stayed out of the room. In fact, I used to drive her crazy. She was

a Ranger when I was a kid and I would just smile and say, you know, I prefer to stay in my room. Thank you.

And ask her to close the door. So I had this very ordered life in which I had everything that that I needed to feel safe in order. And she marries this guy who raised Rottweilers in English mastiffs. There was a three bedroom house and there were nine of us there and the dogs lived inside.

So I was absolutely shell shocked. I grew up absolutely shell shocked in a way I can't even describe. I resorted to books and fantasy. That was my first addiction.

I would just go away.

I could go away anytime I wanted to. I had to go away. It was just unthinkable in that house. Oh, we all said Peacocks in the basement. Have you ever heard Peacocks? They shriek.

Enough said.

So I'm growing up here and and it's a completely delusional setting that, you know, in, in I hear people saying that we're in denial all the time. In the big book, there is no denial. The word is not in the big book. It's in the 12:00 and 12:00. It's delusional.

Denial means that I know something,

and based on a set of circumstances the outcome of which repeats I

I should I really know that something leads up to this outcome and I'm pretending it doesn't, right? Delusion means, I believe the lie.

And so I was really, I had to set up for delusion. We were not allowed to say anything about what was going on in that family. And if you, if you did, you got hit

or outcast. And so there was, you couldn't say what it was. You know, the walls are pink, Bam, they're blue. The walls are pink. No, I see they're pink, Bam, they're blue. And eventually I stopped saying the walls are pink and then I stopped bleeding. They're pink

and I have a setup for the delusion of alcoholism before I even touch alcohol,

and that serves me very well in alcoholism. It doesn't serve me well in life,

but it serves me well on alcoholism

so that that's what happens. You know, I grow up, I decide I'm not going to drink and I go away to college. Now I am a lockdown kid, really locked down.

I I know you can't believe this, but my arms are too long for my body when I'm a kid. They're about the same. They still are. They're about the same size as they are now. I was a real skinny, awkward kid, did not interact with people, read, was probably too smart

and I didn't understand how that separated me.

And I decided when I went to college I wouldn't have any fun.

And so I remember sitting in my dorm bed

on the first day and I thought this must stop. And so I went down in the lobby and there was a girl down there shooting a Foster lager. I don't know if you know it's shooting a beer is I know people who are my age know what shooting beers. You open the top and the bottom at the same time. You turn it over, you open the bottom and then you open the top, which means it goes into your throat now, right? And I grew up, we had a

great family of compulsive overeaters and Alcoholics. We had Dr. Throughs and you drove through and got your alcohol with pizza shops in them. And so I had learned at at a really young age to to chug soda pop. And so I was off and running. I was just off and I had a great time. I needed alcohol to allow me to get close to you. And I don't mean close as an intimate,

by the way.

Intimacy is not sex. It's nice if they go together, but not necessary.

Intimacy means I'm real, and I allow you to be real back at me without intervention. That's it,

Yes. So I have no intimacy. I go right from drink, I take off my clothes and sleep with you

if you're a man. Although I I think doing the other would be more more interesting. Probably I just didn't do that one yet.

If Jay goes, God only knows. This is my husband down here. I'm not doing another one of them,

not him, but any husband. You know, I love my husband so much. I met him in Alcoholics Anonymous. I had four years of sobriety when we first started glancing at each other and you know, I was allowed to heal before I got into relationships. My opinion, this is the opinion section is, is that I was not even

I, when I was a year or two years, I was so raw.

I was raw. I mean, alcohol was the thing that allowed me to be around you. And it felt like my skin was being torn off. And my sponsor said I did not have to date if I didn't want to, that I could heal before I dated. And for me, dating a newcomer is child abuse both ways. And I'm not kidding,

we are children when we sober up

and it hurts.

End of opinion section. I completely lost my train of thought.

So I I come to Alcoholics Anonymous. Oh, I was sitting on that bed. Anyway, I was off and running. I came home maybe six weeks. I hadn't called home in six weeks and my mother called me hysterical. It never occurred to me to call home after drinking the first time. And it was just like, Oh my God,

you know, I can go out and have a great time. I thought I don't remember much of it, but, and I also was, I had, you know, I went to college as a virgin

and I had no ability to relate to anyone and certainly not to have sex unless there was alcohol involved. And that's a big, you know, a big part of my story too. So I, I go, you know, I'm off. I come home the first time and my hair is 1/4 of an inch long. It's bright purple. It's 1976 and it's the color of the chairs in cheap Italian restaurants.

You know that purple

and I've got it, you know, shaved around my ears and I'm wearing black, which I hadn't. I was not a a black wearer at that time. And my mother opened the door and screamed, Oh, my God, she's a dyke.

And that has nothing to do with sexuality or the gay women that I love. What she was describing was she had no word. She had no language to describe what had happened to her daughter

and alcohol was was the change. She didn't understand what had happened, and that was her only framework.

So, you know, I'll tell you what happens to me when I drink. I get very warm, I flush.

There's a word allergy that's used in our big book and I love the big book. It's not the 1st 164 pages because the doctor's opinion is in the preface and that's a very important part for me. It was the key. They talk about the sense of ease and comfort that comes at once when we take the front drink. And I really, really got that. And they talk about the allergy and, and my

first sponsor made me look up all the words. I I explained to her that I was an educated woman

and that I knew what it meant and she told me to look them up anyway, so I did. An allergy is an abnormal reaction to a substance.

I flush, I turn beet red. So I take my clothes off.

Really. In public

and I wear outer inner wear as outerwear. Long before Madonna comes on the same. They Remember Me everywhere I go.

If I don't happen to be wearing underwear, Oh well.

I look for car keys

and I go home with with men whose last names I don't know. I had my own anonymous club before I got here and I wake up with that. You know, there is nothing like the feeling of an alcoholic woman

waking up in those circumstances.

When I look over and he's got that look on his face of Oh my God,

you know, it's one thing when I do, but he does. And I've got the, you know, eyeliner down here

and I've got the last night clothes on with one shoe because I used to always lose 1 shoe.

And

and I the other thing that happens is I go to jail.

Interesting. I've not been to jail since I got sober.

They might be connected, I'm not sure.

So I've got this allergy and that's what happens when I drink. And I don't know that though. I don't know that that's what happens. I don't understand that alcoholism. I don't know what's wrong. I think I'm crazy.

I think a lot of things, but I don't realize. I feel that pit in my stomach when I'm in the big room of you

and it's not you guys, but wherever I'm at, I know I should be at the next party, the next bar. That's where they're having fun. Oh my God, how do I get stuck here? The next guy that you name it, I always want to be somewhere else. And even alcohol does not take that away. Alcohol took the edge off, but that feeling in my gut, I never was able to drink away,

not even in in brownouts.

I mean, I can't tell you how many times in those bars I had that feeling inside. And no amount of alcohol I drank ever took that away. It just dulled it and I needed it to be dulled.

So this is what happened. Now I get sober,

not because I thought I would die. Dying was fine with me. I planned it. As a matter of fact, alcohol is a slow suicide.

But I didn't think I lived past 30. And when I turned 30I realized that I was going to live for a long time feeling the way I felt. And that's what got me an alcohol synonymous not dying, that was fine. But living like that inside, you know, was more than I could ever even stand.

And so when I, when I got here, I actually my, my first meeting was a closing meeting of the South, a roundup about 4000 people

that was just about as intimate as I could get.

My first regular meeting was about a 300 person speaker meeting.

And the rest of the time I went to lots of different meetings. I'd go to a place three or four times. If you can get a small Home group, God bless you. That's that is where I found real recovery inside. But I was not able to do that.

I I could not get too close to you. It was too frightening. So there's lots of meetings in Southern California, have had it cool everywhere. I went all over the place. It's great. We're very fortunate here.

So when I, when I came finally to Alcoholics Anonymous, I

went to that speaker, me, my regular speaker meeting,

and I sat by the door because there was far too much truth being told. And I knew what happened when truth got told because violence broke out my house and I was ready to get out when something started flying. I didn't trust you. I didn't trust you because I didn't trust me, you know,

And I sat by the door

and it was three months before anyone said hello to me. You were awful.

Now I'm 6 feet tall and I wore heels. I made sure I always wore heels to those meetings.

Maybe I was 63

and I gave you the do not talk to me under any circumstances. Look.

And you obeyed.

Well, of course, what I really want and was you to talk to me, right? That's what I wanted most of all. I felt so angry that you weren't saying hello to me yet. I was sending out the signal. Stay away. And the old timers stayed away from me because they didn't want me to leave. They could see it looked like a doe in the headlights.

And the new people are probably just scared by.

But nobody talked to me. And that was probably what I needed at the time. You know, if you would have gotten too close to me hugging, forget it. You know, first of all, you held hands and said that Christian prayer. It's not a Christian prayer. Any other Jewish recovering people in here? No,

OK, one admitted one. I knew that

Jews, you know, don't come to a A. It's in churches for God sake. I knew it was a cult. We don't get on our knees.

You guys were getting on your knees. I told my sponsor I couldn't get on my knees. I was a Jew. And she said get on your knees anyway, Where your body goes, your spirit and mind will follow just like a A when you come in here, doesn't matter if you want, don't want to be in here if you don't hear anything where you put your panty in the seat and the mind and spirit follows. So I'm, I'm so glad you came here tonight, especially if you didn't want to.

I went to, I went to meetings

for 16 years. My first waking thought every single morning was why? How it could get out of going to the meeting that day. 16 years and I went to meetings at least five times a week. Now, that's contrary action, and that's a great, a contrary action is a great definition for surrender.

It's a working definition. Where I grew up, if you surrendered, you were dead.

And surrender, taking contrary action is a great definition for that. And I took lots of contrary action, lots and lots of it. When I came here, I was working 1214 hours a day. I lived in North Hollywood, I went to school in Irvine, and I worked in in near Long Beach. If you know that geography, there's about an hour between each one of those ways,

and I went to about nine meetings a week. I was busy.

My head never shut up.

Never. I had two operas, you know, television commercial conversation about someone who wasn't there about something that wasn't happening going on at all times.

And, you know, I needed some relief. There was number alcohol in meetings provided a great deal of relief for me at least I could well.

Any other counters in here?

Counters. People who counts obsessively? No. OK, let me tell you what that looks like. I go to meetings for the first probably, I don't know, 13 years or so. I count you and then someone gets up and goes for coffee and I have to count you again. And then someone else comes in and I've got to catch you again. Then I'm not sure if I made the right number, so I've got to count you again. I'm tapping. I'm using both hands and

I was a real piece of work. And I'll tell you,

I look like someone who knows where she's going. So everyone follow me. I'm I was nine months sober and I was sponsoring 11 people.

Any other doers here?

Compulsive doing is a huge part of my story

and in some respects it served me very well. We have 12 steps. They, you know, it's not a tone that you, you put on your, your, your door. There are actually things that you actually do. And that was very helpful for me as a doer. And I jumped into service, which is great. There was a point at which I had to recover from compulsive doing, but that came later.

So I've got this counting going on and I I was just in that case.

So I went to lots of meetings and I did a lot of service.

I got my first sponsor when I was six months sober. I, I had been, I was well into my 9th step by the time I had nine months and I was sponsoring 11 people. She told me Adele, maybe some other people have the luxury of not working the steps, but you're far too I'll And so I really believed her. And so I did them

the first step over here. I love this. As a teacher, I love visuals.

Long arms or my gift from God to point to them. The

sets. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol and that our lives had become unmanageable. Notice there is an em dash in the middle. That's a long hyphen that denotes a separate thought for two things. The only thing we have to do perfectly is the first half of the first step. I have to be convinced to my uttermost self that I am powerless over beverage, alcohol, and the other things that floated at the bottom of my purse.

Any tweakers here?

And right on. Just works faster, babe.

Deanna's that her lives had become unmanageable. I didn't get that for a long time. And you don't have to get it. It will get you at some point. We just have to have the the first half of the first step

came to believe that a power greater than ourselves would restore sinity. This gives a lot of people problems. This higher power thing. Oh no, I can't do that. I can't believe in God. Well, I'll

tell you that we all have a God. In fact, we usually have a whole pack, you know, a purse full of them when we get here.

Having a God is not our problem. Alcohol was my God. It told me where I would live, who I would go out with, what kinds of jobs I would do, cocktail waitressing,

everything.

Manpower. I've had all of them. Of course they were my higher power. I really asked myself two things when I'm wanting to know what my higher power is. Number one, what am I devoted to? What do I spend my mental and and physical energy on #2 what do I turn to when I'm afraid? Bingo. When we get here, we have to be convinced to our uttermost selves that our God is not producing for us

the effect we would like.

And so we try something different. That's all we do. You can just exchange those gods that those gods that you have for one that just may work and has worked for millions of people. Good orderly direction. My first sponsor told me God, good orderly direction or group of drunks. That's great. And I believe that she believed and that was good enough.

You know, we just exchanged something that's really not working for something that might work

in the third step, made a decision to turn our will and lives over to that. We've turned our will and lives over to our really non functional God.

Might as well try something else. It sure isn't working if we've gotten here when we really get it that it hasn't.

So we make a decision. There's no action. The 4th step is where the action comes. What we do is we have some physical and and action oriented

things that we carry out that prove that we've made the decision right. I make a decision and a decision's nothing. It's a thought,

but the 4th and 5th steps are actually activities that we undergo that prove that we've made a decision. And actually, through doing that and telling them the things that we were never going to share with anyone,

then we come to believe in this power even more strongly, which is so cool.

In steps 6:00 and 7:00,

we're entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. First of all, defects of character never work for me. I felt utterly defective when I got here, and the words didn't work for me. And so I used something that stands in the way for me in the sunlight of the Spirit. That worked really good. Over time I've realized that they're more effects than defects,

and what they are is. For example, if I have something that looks like greed or sloth, that's a the defect,

right? What underlies that? What I did for many years, sober many years, was I used A10 step as a flagging tool.

I would I would be myself, which isn't what it says at all. By realizing my defects of character and then trying to make them stop. It says right there that we turn them over to God, but I somehow miss that one.

And what I had, what I came to find out, especially in recent years, was those are really effects of an underlying fear. And for me really terrified, I kept, I could,

I can muscle myself into not doing those things for a period of time. And eventually I would break out in that behavior. And I had to because I was so terrified. I was so terrified of something that preceded the behavior that looked like this defective character.

If you don't know what your defects of character are, don't worry about it. They will get in contact with you.

The A step

I have people get say they're stuck on the A step where

you can make a list or your sponsor helps you by making a list after your 5th step and there they are. I mean there's no place to get stuck on it. It just means we don't want to do the 9th step, which I completely understand. I thought it said admitted we're powerless over alcohol and pay back the money and there are actually steps in between, but I didn't hear that.

And and it says, you know, we, we, the promises are right. Halfway through that 9th step, we start getting those promises, which is just really cool. And what happens in that 9th step is so amazing. Really, really, terrifically amazing.

I want to talk about the 9th step for a second because I come from very severe sexual abuse

and you know, that was something I knew that God was not big enough. Two things. Number one, I had been very ill sober

and #2 that that sexual, it was too big for God, it was too dirty, it was too much. You couldn't fix that unfixable.

And and so there were two people on my resentment list that I was incapable of making amends to. One was dead, one was not. I couldn't. I was too frightened, but I was willing. I was willing. I just couldn't. And I and I did that ninth step.

One of the things I did in that night step was I had stolen money from an employer. I know none of you have ever done that.

It was the petty cash which I thought if they called it petty it must be mine.

And someone else had gotten fired. And I really drank over that man. I really drank over that. Where I went, I went in there and made amends. And he was not happy with me. He was really mad, the president of that company and he want to know how I did it. And he grilled me and, and

it was one of my first big amends. It doesn't matter what they do. We clean up our side of the street. So we, it's the bag of rocks we're carrying around and they're invisible, but they're heavy and we don't even know they're in the bag until we drop them, you know? And so I found out. Well, I paid him back every month for about a year and a half

and at the end of it he wrote me a letter. He was very mean to me, but he said you have restored my faith in humanity. We do not know how this is going to affect anyone. I later heard that he went to another anonymous program.

He had a little, just a little problem with a, with the drug. So you, you know, we may be the only copy of the big book than anyone ever sees. And that's really cool. But I couldn't do that with the others I went to. I've had I had 10 years of serious therapy sober and I had lots of therapy before I got sober.

Therapy in place as a treatment to alcoholism is lethal.

Self knowledge avails us nothing. If it's used for a cure for alcoholism, it's lethal because we think it's helping and then it's addressing that issue. However, in of course you we never tell those therapists what we're really doing.

They might be able to really help us,

but as a tool with sobriety, I found it to be very, very helpful. I did all kinds of stuff. I did. I went to healers in Mexico.

I did everything and um,

you know, I had when I was about 10 years sober, I had done all this work and I, I had, was having some body work done. And woman later, I don't even think she even touched me, but I felt a hand come down in my throat and I had all the memories of I was, you know, 6-6 weeks old. I had all the memories of what had happened. And I know now that I must have needed them because God will give us everything we need to heal everything we need. If you don't have the memory, if you

the memory, we get it all to heal here.

When I was 16 years sober,

I leaned down to turn on the bathtub and the thought came into my head. He would never have hurt his daughter.

It was a voice that came and I knew it was true. I knew it. And in that moment I knew he was looking for peace, just like I had looked for peace and I had hurt everyone around me and I knew it and it wasn't here. It went through me just like a jolt now. That one second it took to go through me took 16 years of hard work, but it hit me just like this, and I realized there was nothing to forgive and it was gone

clean. And I had the same experience with my stepfather, whom I wrote, and we reconciled. He was so happy to hear from me, and I had all the memories of all the wonderful things he had done. You know, it's just amazing.

The 10th step has us keep current. The 11th step is absolutely the thing that has changed my life.

3 minutes a day sitting quietly was all I could handle. First of all, the the second-half of the 11th step is not extra credit.

You know it. It occurs to me that

not praying is like wanting a best friend you never call.

You know, like really wanting your best friend and making no

effort to actually engage, right? And meditation is like having a friend you never listen to,

I think. I really think prayer is in there because we Alcoholics love to talk.

And I, you know, I've come to understand over time that I spend so much time in my head trying to think about God. I'm using the wrong tool.

There is no God inside my thoughts. It's a

when you felt the presence at any level, what does it feel? It's like,

you know, that feeling. Didn't we look for that in the bottle or the pipe or whatever your deal was?

I just wanted that. And then the thoughts start, Oh God, I hope I'll get that again. How am I going to get that again, You know? But it's the feeling. It is that sense of okayness. And in that moment, I'm completely present. I cannot be thinking and present at the same time. They are mutually exclusive

and so I'm looking for this thing, this higher power in my thoughts. It's like going to the hardware store for bananas.

I'm using the wrong tool. It's the awareness tool, the awareness that happens between the thoughts. Now, when I started meditating, I've told you a little bit about what my mind was like, and I'll tell you that was it was like that because I was very frightened. I was very frightened and my brain thought if I stopped thinking, I would die. I live my whole life from the nose up.

Absolutely from the nose up

and so I had the compulsive thinking was was a sign of my dis ease, my unease. And when I started meditating, 3 minutes, 3 minutes, you can be late, 3 minutes to anything,

3 minutes. It was so hard. I did that for 11 years

and it got really loud before it got quiet really loud. And if it gets really loud, that means it's working, not that it's not working. We become aware of the thinking and it's really loud. How cool is it to be aware of it? It's the you don't have to quiet your, you're going to quiet your mind with your mind. Good luck. I tried it for years. We just have to. I had to sit. If there was anything moving, I was in big trouble.

I just sit and

I began witnessing this mind of mine. It was like, whoa, look at that

cool. And overtime I started having longer periods of okayness and that, that stretch. I, I meditate a lot longer now, but it took me many, many years. Meditation has been the biggest. Oh my goodness, it's almost time. I'm going to end then about meditation. I'm going to talk about my health issues because you might be able to think, Oh yeah, but she's not like me. I've sober.

I'm going to tell you about the miracles in sobriety. It's miraculous I'm not drinking for 19 years. That's a miracle. It's miraculous. I'm alive and vertical

any day I'm vertical. It's really a good day a sober because I've had a myriad of serious health issues. I've had 15 major surgeries. I define major as there are power tools involved

and large scars. Thank God my husband fell in love with me before I had them. He rather likes them now. I'm glad about that too.

I've had

a major stroke in five subsequent strokes. I had an ABM which was an embolism on the other part of my brain. Thank goodness it didn't burst.

It was the best thing that ever happened to me.

I, I can't compulsively think like that. She didn't work anymore, thank God. You never know what your gifts are wrapped up in. Never. You can't judge him. Right now. I'm right up against the square of red. You know, if I stand back and stand back and stand as huge mosaic, but I don't see it till I'm far away from it. Now I have enough experience to know that I'm in the midst of a miracle in crisis. I just don't know what it is yet. I've had a open heart surgery. I've had just about everything taken out

that you can, you can do. Three years ago I fell, broke my hip, my entire system shut down. I was about £30 less than I weighed now,

about 100 lbs at six feet tall, if you're listening to this on tape. And they had given up. They had given up on me. They had given up on me. And I had another spiritual experience in that hospital, and I was healed.

That's remarkable. You know, I continue to have health challenges, and it's always when I'm saying no yes to something that is not OK for me, regardless of my judgment. So now I know it's a touchstone to that. It's a touchstone to that. When I got sober, I did not have the wherewithal to choose what I would do. I had to say yes to everything. The only thing I ever said yes to before was something that would get a result in a plaque or a promotion.

Don't pay me, just give me a plaque and pat me on the back. But so I had to start doing things that were really outside of my experience. That's our contrary behavior is you cannot judge if you're new what will be good for you because it's outside of your experience. And so you do the contrary action and the feeling follows. I thought I spent my whole life wedding waiting to feel different so I could do different. And it's backwards.

The whole self help industry works that way,

but that's not how it works for us.

And what, what happened to me was that I, I have had a, you know, a set of unbelievable miracles and they, they continue to happen. You know, the fact that I can even talk to you tonight is a real miracle. So don't give up. You know, during that time I had to get on medication and get off medication, get on medication, get off medication, get on medication, get off medication. It's hard to talk about in an A a meeting, but I understand how to do that.

I understand what that feels like. I was depressed for three years. I had medical help for that. If you have an opinion about that and no experience, please tell your sponsor. Don't tell someone who might kill themselves. It's hard to work the steps when you're dead,

and I no longer have to take that. But I did, and I'm really glad for it. And, you know, I'm so grateful to be here. Please keep coming back. It's an amazing place here. Don't leave. Thank you.