The Northern Plains Group in Fargo, ND

Yeah, All right. My name is Mike Hyatt. I'm alcoholic.

Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Sobers in September 18th, 1996

I

I I want to thank Aaron for asking me to speak. I want to thank John for the lengthy introduction

and

wow. So I, I'm not a big fan of Speaking of, I've never, I've never considered it my, my strong point. And I'm usually funny for about the 1st 30 seconds and then it's all downhill from there. So if, if you, if you, I don't know what's that? If you get a chance to take a nap tonight,

yeah, that's it. It's over. So we'll start with I am an alcoholic. I've been sober for eight years. I, I'm an active member of the Northern Plains group, or at least I'd like to believe that my sponsor tells me that sometimes I should be doing more.

I have, I have found many fast friendships here in Alcoholics Anonymous and I have many friendships here in the Northern Plains group. People that I have, people that I have come to know and love like brothers. And it always makes me somewhat nervous and a little apprehensive when I get a chance to speak in front of people I know much, much greater than when I just speak in front of any other person. But I think it's 'cause, you know, I think deep down inside they know who I really am, you know, And it's like, he can't, you just can't pass BS from up here. So I I'm going to start by

telling you, telling you a little bit about my childhood, which doesn't have a whole lot to do with my alcoholism. As some of some people come up here and share that they were beaten and that they grew up in a trailer park and their parents were terrible Alcoholics. And, and that unfortunately, sometimes unfortunately is not my case. My parents were good, good, hard working farm folk.

That's it.

My dad is my dad's full blooded Irish.

My mom is. She's Heinz 57. And they took good care of Maine. They they gave me, they gave me clothes on my back, fed me, bought me a Commodore Vic 20. Yeah,

I heard the nerds in the room respond. So they took good care of me. Me and my little brother, we grew up on a farm. We spent our first, my first nine years there. And you know, when you're growing up on a farm, you don't have a lot of interaction with the, with the town kids with exception to school and maybe church.

So I didn't, I didn't really get a lot of interaction with other kids. My brother was kind of like my best friend. And you know, I was a mama's boy. I wasn't, I wasn't a tough kid growing up. Not, I was never tough until after the 9th, after age 9. I wasn't even tough then. Well, let's be truthful. So however, I, I just didn't, I didn't have an opportunity to really interact with other kids and I never had any, I never had any large classrooms. My school was a, was a conglomerate of schools or of districts put together one.

So my classroom, I think the greatest classroom I had of the largest classroom I had was in 3rd grade and there was like 15 kids and that was big. I mean, my first grade class was, geez, it was like a handful of us off in a corner of the building. So I didn't, I didn't really learn how to interact with other kids. And I don't know that that's why I'm alcoholic. I don't really, I can't really put any of that to the acid test. But I, I know that from my earliest recollection, I felt uncomfortable around other people. I was always accustomed to sizing them up

and gauging that against how I felt on the inside. I would look out of the people and I'd look at Bobby. Bobby was this kid in, in Ackley, Iowa, Metropolitan,

yeah, 1000 people. Bobby was in like Taekwondo or some other martial art. I doubt it was really Taekwondo. He probably lied about it. But I thought, man, that, that Bobby's tough, you know, and he looks tough and, and, and I, I was intimidated by Bobby. I never saw Bobby fight. I don't think he could fight, now that I think about it. Now there was nothing to make me believe he could fight. But I was intimidated by Bobby because he because he was in Taekwondo and.

And there was this girl, there's this girl, her name was Michelle, not my wife, but her name was Michelle. And I thought she was just the most adorable thing, but I couldn't talk to her. I, I just, I couldn't speak to other people. I couldn't communicate what was on my mind. And I was absolutely terrified that if I, I let loose and I, I talked about what was in my head, I people wouldn't like me. And I don't think that that's, you know, the, the level of intellect I had back then wasn't, I didn't, you know, I didn't consciously thank God. I wish I could talk openly with these other people. I just know that I felt really wormy and I felt really

comfortable and I was very shy and my mouth got really, you know, you just get really swelled up and you can't talk to people and you look down at your shoes and your hands sweating. You, you know, you feel that icky feeling in your stomach and

I, I never found a solution for that. I'd never found a solution that I at age 11, we had moved back to Minot and there was a, it was AI mean. It was a night and day difference between Ackley, Iowa and mine at North Dakota and mine, it's not a big city. However, the town's considerably larger than 1000 people and the kids there do things different than kids do in Ackley, Iowa. I mean, we had pinball and we had a pole position and you get to Minutin and we start talking about Colecovision and,

and all these other cool game systems and things that I, I really didn't have any experience with and I didn't know what they're talking about. And I,

it just, it just aided to the fact of me feeling apart from and separate from and different than. And it was a, it was a very awkward time in, in 4th grade. I, they did some, they thought it was mental or something. I don't know what, what the deal was. They thought I had some problems. So they went and did some tests on me and they, they come back and they're like, oh, well, his problem isn't that he's mental. His problem is that he's very intelligent. And they fed me this line of crap long enough for me to start believing that, man, I have got it. I am on top of the mountain.

So you got this kid that's already got this terrible low self worth problem, then you inject this ego on top of them. And God, I was so screwed up. You know, 5th grade, 5th grade, this kid named Adrian Wilson, he, he said something, my little brother in the playground. And I was angry, I guess. And I went back in the classroom and, and Adrian was sitting in the back of the room and I remember I, I was going to beat him up or something. The kid would have whooped me, but I, I was going to beat him up. So I walked in the back of the classroom, went right by him,

grab the baseball bat out of there, walked back past Adrian and went after the teacher.

No sense. I don't even know. I have a real problem with focusing my anger apparently too. So,

so that, you know, they didn't, they didn't expel people at that time in fourth grade, but they did make me do some, some counseling and stuff in order for me to return back to school. And things got worse by the time I was in 6th grade, me and my brother were, well, me and my brother have always fought. We're just, you know, we're not the kind of brothers that are chummy. We're the kind of brothers that, you know, punch each other in the teeth. And

me and my brother got in a lot of fights. And this one time I, I got in a fight and when I get when I get in a fight, sanity leaves me. I just, I am like, I see red that the light switch goes off and things get broken and people get hurt. You know, it's just, it's insane. I, I look like a psycho.

So I went psycho on my brother and I grabbed these butcher knives and I'm swinging them around at him. And, and he had, he had already hidden in my mom's bedroom for a while and I was waiting for him and he called my aunt. She comes over, comes in the door just after I Chuck this knife at him, pins me to the ground. You know, I'm like not even conscious. I'm spitting at her. And I got it. I'm a freaking nightmare. And so they, they sent me to, they sent me to the Jamestown psychiatric hospital. And this, this was my first trip to the psych ward and I was 11 years old.

I, I went through treatment and I learned that if you tell them what they want to hear, they'll let you out. So that's what I did. I played the part of the same kid and inquisitive and the intelligent and the kind and the, you know, I just played the part, you know, I'm apparently I'm a really good actor. And they let me out of the psych ward when I returned back to school, you know, in 6th grade kids, the rumor meal goes and, you know, everyone's talking and I came back and they're like, oh man, so are you crazy? I'm like,

yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm crazy. And they

I fed into it. And what didn't have happening is they ended up giving me the nickname Mike the Psych. Now.

Yeah, it's it's not even really cool. I mean, honestly, Mike the Psych, how lame is that? That's 6th grade intellect. I mean, I could have come up with a lot better nowadays. Someone went to the psych ward, but Mike the Psych stuck with me. I mean, I'm still getting called Mike the Psych in 8th grade at a different school.

So I, you know, I went to my first psych ward in 8th grade. I got kicked out or in 6th grade, 7th grade and I kicked out of school. I had to go home by the end of the year. They let me come back in 8th grade. 8th grade was even worse. I was suspended constantly. I didn't, I mean, I just looked for fights. I looked for reasons to be mad at other people. I look for reasons to to let out this aggression and I was so I hated myself. My God did I hate myself. I would look at my mind you because I'm I'm so buff right now. You probably wouldn't guess, but I was a really fat chubby

and so I'm this I'm this red headed overweight. I got braces and I man, I looked homely. So I'm this really homely kid and I was just begging for people to pick on me. I got a third tire, maybe a 4th or 5th, and

so people picked on me all the time and I would get into fights all the time. Anyway, I got I got kicked out of 8th grade again and that's when I started my my round of psychiatric hospitals. I went to three more psych wards

and then I ended up in Dakota Boys Ranch.

Long story short, I spent some time away from home a Goodyear and a half and the boys ranch in another half a year to a year with throughout the different psych wards and waiting facilities. And I tell you what, I was in Dakota boys ranch and there may be some kids here that are in the DBRI was in the Kota boys ranch up in your Minot. And when I went to the boys ranch, I I actually liked it, you know, because for the for the first time, I was around kids that were just as screwed up as me and I fit in, you know, I it was cool if you got in a fight, you know, it was it was cool if you had war stories. I found other people that were that were

similar to myself, all of us lacking a solution, but very similar to myself. And so I'm, I'm in Dakota Boys Ranch now, mind you, I'm 16 years old and it's age 16. This is 1991. I had the opportunity to go to Alcoholics Anonymous for the first time. And the meeting I went to, the first meeting that I went to is the clubhouse of mine. It's the 5:15 and I went in this clubhouse and my aunt's an alcoholic. She'd been sober. I don't know, she got drunk once or something and, and it got really bad. And then she just,

I guess the big book talks a lot about women just going downhill quickly. And within a year, she was just on the bottom and she got sober and she was at the clubhouse there. And

it was my first experience in the clubhouse. And I remember that there was a lot of old people, You know, I'm 16, so everyone looked old. I would have looked old, but there's a lot of old people there and they're smoking cigarettes and everyone's talking about the things they lost and the troubles that they had. And the clubhouse, I think at the time didn't seem very healthy or what from what I remember now, it didn't seem very healthy there. And I guess what I got out of Alcoholics Anonymous at the time was that if if you go to a meetings, you can smoke. So, so I went to a, a meetings to smoke. I didn't care what anyone had to say. I would, I would, you know, I had, I'd only had a few drinking opportunities to drink at this time.

So my drink, my drunk a log was like the same three stories over and over again. You know, I'm sure these people were just like kitten, shut the hell up. But I had this weak drunk log and I ended up getting discharged removed from from the Dakota boys ranch and my life turned upside down when I got out of Dakota Boys ranch because I had some structure in my life. I had the opportunity to take my grades from failing, which they failed all the way from like fifth grade on from fact. I think the only reason they got me through school is because they could not handle me,

so they just escalated me to the next grade with hopes that I would eventually be out of the system.

I had some structure and my life was going rather well. I had I had B's and A's from going to I had half days at the at the Dakota boys ranch school and half days in town. I had B's. And as I was talking appropriately with other people, I was behaving well around my mom and dad. I wasn't punching holes in the wall. I was, I was actually acting like a pretty good kid, not the perfect model citizen, but you know as well as you can be for someone as nuts as I was. And

everything fell apart. God, I met up with a couple of kids that were just as screwed up as I wasn't Dakota Boys Ranch, and I started drinking. I had my first opportunity to drink. I tell you this funny story.

This girl, her name's Charity. I can't remember the last name because I didn't really care anything about her name, but she, she, she was really sexy and I was really lonely and I lusted after her as as effectively as I could. And there was that whole unrequited love poem thing and the whole, you know, the whole feeling sorry for my, it's pretty sad story, feeling sorry for myself. And but she felt sorry for me too, which was really cool 'cause I dig it when chicks feel sorry for me.

So

this is this is how lame I am. So I I asked her what she's doing and she says well I'm going out with my boyfriend am I cool? Can I come along

her boyfriends like this, you know, 2223 old guy that this what we call mine at Wing Nuts. He worked on the Air Force Base. And, you know, she's like 17 by this time. 18. And so I get a chance to go out and I walk into the liquor store with him. And I picked up Smirnoff Vodka. Smirnoff was the first hard drunk I think I ever had. And I bought it because it was, It looked cool. You know, glass bottle, big bottle, cooled stickers and stuff all over it. It's like, yeah,

so, so we went to this crappy little hotel, Stardust or something like that on the edge of town and I managed to get myself liquored up in about 3 minutes.

I, I didn't understand you to pace yourself. You know, if you lay back on the bed and you drink out of the bottle like this, it doesn't and you have no tolerance. It does not take long before you can't even move your mouth, you know? So I'm, I'm blasted drunk. I'm laughing. All these other, all these other people from the Air Force Base showed up and I,

when I started drinking and before the effect quickly overtook me, I felt very uncomfortable. And by the time it was done, I thought these guys were my best friends. I had new friends, you know, I remember that I couldn't walk and this girl that I liked had to hold me up while I peed and

it got it was terrible. There's a lot of other embarrassing things from that night, but it got worse. It Needless to say I I woke up with a hangover for my first time. I puked all over my floor and I remember I remember waking up and this is probably the last time I drunk story, but

I remember waking up and looking on the floor and there was a there was a heart on the floor.

Well, when you're when you're coming out of a hangover, things are really fuzzy and your heads not working very right. And I thought, Oh my God, what did I eat last night? Turns out I guess I'd eaten some of those red carnival hot dogs. You know, it was bright red one so it looked like I had chicken hearts on my floor. But I remember I woke up from that hangover and I went into my brother's room. He we still we still live in the same house and I went over to my brother's room and I'm like Joe man, I was liquored up last night. He's like, I know. And I'm like,

you do. Well, you were in here screaming and blabbing and I was like, oh, crap. Really? Yeah, Mom knows. Really. Oh, dude. I mean, just, you know, you sheet whites like, I'm busted, you know? So I got ground. I don't know how long it was. I'd love to tell you it was a month, but it probably wasn't the liquor I hit outside the stair. Apparently she heard me pull up and we were making a bunch of noise and she basically watched me try to stash this bottle. Drunken.

I was a dork. So I got better. I'll tell you that. Anyway,

that was my first fun night drinking and I had several more, many more. And then at some point, by the age 20, I was by the age 20 I had, I'd found myself, I was homeless. I was couch surfing, as we call it now in a a only it wasn't. It wasn't because people had compassion for me. It was because I had drugs. So you know, if you if you score some drugs, height link can crash on our couch just as long as he doesn't pee in the corner when he wakes up.

So I was couch surfing, had a motorcycle. I had one of the I had a rare addition. It was a Kawai Yama Harley,

Kawasaki frame, Yamaha front end and a Harley-Davidson tank and tail Simmons. You remember that bike wasn't that sweet? Come on. So I had my kawai yama Harley and a backpack full of clothes and some changes of underwear, lots of changes of underwear. So you guys know,

and,

and I had, I was, I was morally, you know, I came to Alcoholics Anonymous when I, when I showed up on the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous, cuz I'm gonna get sober here. When I showed up in the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous, I had sold everything I could possibly sell. I had cheated everyone I could possibly cheat. I had lied. I, I was a thief.

I had sold and given up on every moral that I'd ever been taught. I was the most indecent human being that I can imagine. I've met guys sicker than me, but there's not a lot. Kelvin remembers when I came in. He thinks I was pretty sick. He was sicker, but I, I was, I was a waste of space on Earth. I really was. I had nothing to offer anyone. And I couldn't understand when I, I went to treatment. I, you know, these guys have these great stories. You know, she's on it. She this Jag on an airplane?

Awesome. This guy's going to jail for 55 years. Sweet. I woke up in a closet. That's it.

I woke up in a closet and I was all messed up and I didn't it wasn't, I don't think I didn't, you know, I don't urinated myself or anything, but I was messed up and I wandered myself down the road and I I wasn't sure if I was a minor Bismarck or where I was at. And I found this facility that I recognized. And so I was in mind and I called my little brother and I said, Joe come pick me up. When he did, he said, well, dude, that's treatment. So in my delusional state, it appeared to me that, you know, clouds broke and heaven Shinedown and told me that this was the way to go.

It's time to go to treatment. Now, mind you, my intent was not to stop drinking or stop smoking dope. It was, it was really the, you know, it was the treatment vacation because those are sweet because psych ward vacations are just as sweet too. You don't have to do school work, none of that.

So I, I called my mom and I went down to her house and she said, well, if you go to treatment and you stay sober, I'll pay for it. Sounds sweet to me. I didn't consider the ulterior the, the, the opposite of that, that I have to pay for it. But I went to treatment and I woke up two weeks later in the middle of a meeting. I came in and I had a high blood alcohol level 12 hours after I quit drinking. I mean, I drank every day. So my tolerance had gotten so bad that it actually reversed. I mean, after 2 drinks I'd start slurring and I'd black out immediately and I woke up

later in one of those circle groups in the counseling center or in the treatments facility. I was like, Oh my God, I'm in treatment.

I kind of knew I was here, but I'm really here. And I had a weekend pass that weekend because it was the first full weekend I was off of the medication. They can't, apparently they don't send you out when you're all high on Valium. So the first, the first weekend I was out, I went right over to my friend Sean's house and I got stoned and I came back and the amount of remorse I felt for what I did and the guilt that I felt

and the app, the shame I felt, I thought was enough to keep me sober. And I went back and I pleaded my case and I told him, hey, look,

I used and umm, and they said, well, you know, I don't know what we're going to do. And I said, well, you know, these guys, umm, these guys that came and talked to say, let me tell you that weekend before some guys came or that weekend, some guys came to treatment that Saturday night and they showed up and this guy named Gerard T came in and Gerard T, if anyone knows Gerard Gerard's, he's not, he's not like Mr. Schwab, he's not Mr. GQ. He's got these rosy cheeks, really rosy cheeks, like.

And he's, you know, bigger guy and he's just goofy. He looked really goofy to me. And I thought, well, this is a this is a nerd if I've ever seen one. You know, I'm really tough at the time. I've got the razor blade sideburns and I've got the big nasty biker goatee. And I wore a headband and

I swore all the time because that's cool. And Gerard was the last kind of person that I would want to talk to, much less relate to, much less spend anytime with. But Gerard got up for the podium and for the first time in my life, I identified absolutely with what this guy had to say about his feelings. Now, I didn't have the circumstances as Gerard. My dad wasn't didn't do this. And and I wasn't 19 when I first came to a A and blah, blah, blah. I didn't relate to those things. But Gerard talked about the feelings, his insecurities, his inadequacies, his inability to communicate with other people,

to do the right thing despite the terrible consequences. And he talked about his drinking. Gerard was a seasoned enough and Alcoholics Anonymous to know what the disease was about. And he talked about Alcoholics Anonymous and I think for the first time, someone an alcoholic synonymous. And I really believe that. My God. Well, this guy's life completely changed. So, you know, he's got, he got my phone, He got my,

I got his phone number and I started going to some meetings with him and hanging out with him. The guy drugged me off to coffee and

I'm sure I was just an embarrassment. Gerard looked like the typical college preppy guy and I looked like a, you know, Rd. worn biker and I swore all the time. I was just an embarrassment, I'm sure. But the guy spent more time with me than I see more guys in our group spending time with newcomers. I mean, I was like his sidekick, you know? It's like Tonto to his Lone Ranger. I don't know what that means, but

I was with them all the time and, and he got me introduced in Alcoholics Anonymous and he taught me what alcoholic synonyms was about. And he started going through the book with me and he started, he started,

he started teaching me the ropes, what I would call them, the things that we call our basics, you know, shaking hands with new people, shaking hands with everyone standing in, standing in line, thanking the speaker, suiting up, showing up, coming to regular meetings. And it's a hell of a deal. I, I was presented at that point with evidence. I knew that Alcoholics work, Alcoholics Anonymous worked for some people, but I think I still had some doubts that it would really work for me, that it would solve these deep emotional, psychological problems that I had.

And on September, September 17th, I had, I had been working at this beekeeping place and

there's another story in there I'm not even go into, but I was working this beekeeper place against my sponsors advice and I had managed to get stoned for the last two weeks. I couldn't say no. These guys had pull out this one hitter and we go in the back and I get stoned and I just couldn't say no. It was, I knew, I knew I shouldn't be doing it, but I just, I had no, I didn't have anything to stop me from doing it. And

I was, so I was. Every time I did it, I got worse and worse. I felt more and more remorseful. I was just about out the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous and we were sitting in the cab of this vehicle on a on on September 18th. It would have been, and I had a,

these guys pulled out the one hitter and they pulled out the grass and I thought, here it goes again. You know, I'm going to do this because I can't say no and I'm going to feel terrible. I'm not going to enjoy this feeling. I'm going to feel absolutely terrible. And I'm just, I was getting really suicidal at this point, you know, and I remember thinking, well, I, I put my hands together and you know, I'm working with construction quality people. These guys, they swear all the time and they drank and, and smoked constantly. They were rough people. And remember, put my hands together and just, you know, I looked out the window and I remember, I remember I prayed earnestly to God to remove the obsession and,

and he did. It was the most amazing thing. Now I don't, I'm not telling you that I felt this amazing light glow from within me or anything like that, or this amazing power wash over me. But the obsession to use was gone And I knew I didn't have to, I didn't have to take a hit. And I just, I said no. And that started my new sobriety date, my sobriety day to September 18th. I haven't found it necessary to drink or take any mild altering substances since then.

So I'm I met this turning point where it's like, well, God, I'm at this start doing something in my program. I've been, I've been, I've been given the facts. I have evidence. I've seen enough people in Alcoholics Anonymous whose lives have changed,

but there's just something that's not working for me now. Mind you, I'm, I'm meeting with newcomers. I've got these, I've got three guys I sponsor in mind up. That's a lot of people because the meetings just are small. I mean, this is, there's like 600 people in here,

but I,

I, I was reasonably active for a year of sobriety or two years of sobriety and I knew there was something missing. And I, you know, I would, had always been led to believe that there was, there was the side of a, a, and then there was the, the spiritual side. You know, what I came to understand is that there is no spiritual side and no action side or other side. This is a spiritual program. That's where the core of this program is built. It's built upon me

struggling through life, working through difficulties, character defects, resentments, fears

to eliminate those things great enough for me to have and it have and establish and maintain a relationship with the God of my understanding.

I you know, I was one of those guys that got in sobered up and turned into an instant saved Christian. I wanted to save the world. I thought that that was my solution. I didn't leave Alcoholics Anonymous over, but I very easily could have had I not had I had a strong sponsor that told me, look, Mike, you know, church is a great thing and your relationship with God and Christ is that's great. That's fine. I'm happy for you. But I know plenty priests that die drunk. I know plenty of priests that can't keep a day of sobriety

and if you want to stay sober you will do Alcoholics Anonymous. And at the time my sponsors voice was louder than my head, so I said absolutely. So I managed to stay in Alcoholics Anonymous and I managed to work through tons of resentments. Calvin, my great nemesis, he's been on every resentment list I've ever had

and in half the conversations I've ever had with a sponsor. And I know I'm not the only one here, So. So don't you judge me.

I, but I've worked through them. You know, I work through them and then they crop back up. You know, I have fears that I've worked through and then the fears come back. And that's just part of life in Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm not immune from these things. I didn't walk in the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous and God didn't come in and reach down and grab every character defect out of me and say, there you go, Mike, you're going to live this amazingly pure life. That's just not the way it worked for me. If it worked for you that way,

awesome. And I want to talk to you after the meeting because it sounds pretty interesting, but it's not my story. My story is I still battle with the same character defects over and over. Sometimes they're removed. Sometimes I feel as though they're removed and then they come right back up. You know it. I'm an alcoholic. My problem is alcoholism. My solution is Alcoholics Anonymous. The the feeling that I got from alcohol has now been replaced by the relationship with God and the fellowship that I feel in rooms like this with people like you. And I know I don't have to drink anymore. Does that

that I'm immune from my next drink? Absolutely. I've heard it said that eight years sober, I'm no further away than my next strength than when I was a day sober. And that's very true. I can start taking actions tonight when I leave this meeting that will lead me down the road in a week later. Because I'm sick. My head spins quick and if I don't watch myself, I can easily find myself in a position where I I have no power over the next drink. The book tells us that.

So where am I at today? Well, I've got a pretty damn good life, I really do. I've got a lot of friends here and there's a lot of people I love, and I try to be as active as I can. I'm not the most active guy in Alcoholics Anonymous Anonymous. I'm not the most perfect role model. I don't have every solution, however,

I have a sponsor. I am sponsored and I sponsor other people. I've got a God that I pray to in the morning and a God that I pray to at the night and sometimes 15 times through the day depending on how me and Calvert are doing.

But, but,

but my life is pretty damn good. I got, I got married in Alcoholics Anonymous. The people in my wedding were in Alcoholics Anonymous. I've gotten jobs in Alcoholics Anonymous. Alcoholics Anonymous taught me, taught me how to be responsible, responsible to job because I wasn't responsible to jobs before I came here. I couldn't, I couldn't maintain a job. But I learned how to suit up, show up, shake hands, act appropriately, be of service. And these things are propelled by business, career.

My, my family life is going pretty good. I've got a wife who's an Al Anon and I

you know, when I used to sit in meetings and I go to conferences and I would just I would judge the living hell out of Al Anon. I thought they were the most whiny cry people I'd ever met. I had absolutely no concept of what Al Anon was about and I was ignorant to it really. And it's not like I invested any time to try to understand Al Anon. However, my wife got involved down on a couple years ago and Alan on has absolutely changed and transformed our marriage. It has given God it's it's a breath of fresh air and I will never talk bad about Al Anon again. As much as I may not understand what they,

I don't really understand much about what they talk about,

but it sure as hell works for her. So I'm really grateful for Al Anon and, and I defended every chance I get. I've got two beautiful children that love me and that want to spend time with me and give me some of the greatest hugs and cry if I don't get a chance to hug them before I leave at night. And man, I just absolutely love my life today. And I'm not saying it's perfect because it is far from that. I, like I said, I, you know, in fact, me and Kelvin have had,

I know I keep coming back to it, but it's been a huge issue in my life. It's probably,

it's true, Calvin won't deny it either. But I've had, I've had, I've had to do a lot of work. And I think the relationship I've had with people like Calvin and other people that have had difficult times with have forced me to do things in Alcoholics Anonymous that I did not want to do. I've had to humble myself in front of other people that I never would have wanted to humble myself in front of. I've had to take actions in Alcoholics Anonymous that I am just too lazy to want to take. I've had to do things in Alcoholics Anonymous because

it's kind of like, I think God removes enough things in me that I able to maintain my sobriety and stay reasonably, reasonably happy.

But he has not removed everything. And those things that he does not remove are those exact same things that put me on my knees in the morning and allow me to wish to surrender. And you know what? There's some days I don't want to surrender. There are some days I think

I just myself is too great for me to surrender today. And those are the days that I have to pray for God to take from me,

um, everything that I can't give him. And it's just that simple. And I, I hope that I continue to grow and I hope, I hope I continue to stay sober. I know I'm going to try to do the right thing as often as I can. And I know I'm going to keep looking for the guy that's, that's still suffering. And I know there's some new people out here in the, in the, in the audience tonight and I've seen some new faces. And I want to welcome the Alcoholics Anonymous. And I want to tell you that if you, if you're not quite sure if this thing's going to work or if it's even worth it, if you just, if you're like me, you probably think it's just a bunch of hokey crap and nonsense because I did, I really did. I didn't buy into

these guys wearing their shirts and ties and their pretty looks. I thought these guys have no, no concept of what suffering is because I'm suffering. And that's how I felt. But I stuck around long enough for some for people to share with me the truth about their alcoholism, the truth about the solution in Alcoholics Anonymous, the relationship with God. And they gave me step two. They handed it right over to me. They said, hey, look, here's your hope you're looking for. And as a result of that, I have not found it necessary to drink since September 18th. And I hope that that remains my sobriety for the rest of my life. I love all of you

Alcoholics Anonymous, if you're new, I'd love to get to know you. And if for those of you that have played such an integral part my sobriety, thank you so much for everything that you've done. I love each and everyone of you. And with that, I'm going to pass.