Harvey J. from Los Angeles, CA speaking in La Jolla, CA

Harvey J from Los Angeles.

Good evening, everybody. My name is Harvey Jason and I'm a very grateful alcoholic and I am sober today by the grace of my beloved and benevolent God,

the program, the steps and the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous and the friendship and the example and the love and the inspiration of men and women like you in rooms like this. I want to thank Kurt for inviting me to speak this evening. It's always a great privilege and it's an honour to speak at a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. Never sure that it's a pleasure, but but it's certainly an honour and it's and it's A and it's a great privilege. Happy birthday, Happy birthday to Kim and to Mike and to Glenn.

That's worth the price of admission, really, is to hear the expressions of gratitude and welcome to the 17 people who felt comfortable standing up and declaring their new. And welcome to those of you who didn't feel quite so comfortable. It's a very, very big thing to be an alcoholic. I'm thrilled. I tell you, I'm thrilled to be an alcoholic. I am so grateful. If I were not an alcoholic, I'd have nothing. I'd have the kind of hopelessness that Jeff talked about. Thank you, Jeff, that was wonderful. It was a wonderful expression of gratitude.

There is no life that I could possibly imagine that is more gratifying than the life in Alcoholics Anonymous. There's none at all. I came to, I came to alcohol very late. Didn't come to alcohol until I was in my 20s.

Then I drank and I drank and I drank and I drank and I drank until the booze drank me

and I don't have to do that anymore. It's not a wonderful thing.

It's just a familiar pose. Anyway,

there is, I spoke out of town in a meeting in Arizona, and they had a, they had a glass, you know, for the, for the speaker. And it dawned on me at that time that an optimist sees a glass being half full and a pessimist sees a glass as being half empty, and an alcoholic sees the glass as being completely redundant. Absolutely.

I was a bottle drinker

at first, actually, when I first came to booze,

I thought it was highly dramatic, you know, to have a, a, a water, but a crystal glass, you know, in the ice and the clinking of the ice and the beads of, of perspiration outside the condensation. It was all highly dramatic. And then after a bit, I didn't give a damn about the, the ice and I didn't care about the twinkling and I didn't care about the condensation. I wanted to get there as quickly as possible and to me, as quickly as possible was right down the Hatch. And then they reached a point for me where I couldn't get drunk and I couldn't get sober. And that's a very awful,

awful things to be. I have no experience with astronomy or science, so I don't know when it was that the world stopped revolving around me,

but

but I believe it was when God brought me into the room as Alcoholics Anonymous. See, this is not something I would have done by myself. You know, there is no doubt in my mind that God brought me to you. And by bringing me to you and holding you in my embrace and you holding me in your embrace, my life has changed. I Live Today in a state of grace, absolute grace. And you know what? We heard a lot of people talk about gratitude tonight, and it's interesting to me that grace and gratitude come from the same Latin verb gratus.

Same thing. You know, all my life I chased happiness. You know, I wanted to be happy. I wanted to be happy. And then so belatedly, I realized that happiness is, is not an objective. It's nothing that one can pursue. It's a byproduct. It's a byproduct of a way of life. And that's what Alcoholics Anonymous does for me. It fills me with gratitude. It puts me in grace,

teaches me to care about other people. It is the most incredible thing

and I believe that the most important component of happiness is gratitude. I think it's the most important for me. It's the most important emotion there is. Because I've come to the conclusion that with gratitude there's no room for any negativity. Do you know what I mean? If I'm grateful, I, I can't be resentful. I can't be hateful, I can't be raged filled. I can only be grateful. And who am I grateful to? I'm grateful to God. I'm grateful to God

and with God all things are possible.

I never thought I could have a life like this. You know, everything was about me. It was all about. There's a story about that I'm going to share with you. Excuse me. A guy goes to a Dodger Stadium and there's 4000 people in the stadium and he starts to sit down, take his seat. All of a sudden he hears somebody yell out, Larry, Larry. He gets up and he looks around and it too many people, he can't figure out where it's coming from. He starts to sit down and again he hears Larry. Larry,

the guy that's up, and he looks, he can't figure it, starts to sit down. Larry. This goes on 678 times and he's getting very frustrated.

9th time he hears somebody yell Larry, Larry. The guy gets up. He raises his arms in frustration. He says, for God's sake, my name is not Larry.

This is,

this is an autobiographical story. This is really the story of my life.

It's all about me. I'm Perhaps I'm the only one here that felt that way.

I'm not altogether certain, you know, old habits, old habits are very hard to break. I'm sorry. I, I felt, I'm going to share this with you too. See, old habits are hard to break. There's a guy who just comes into Alcoholics Anonymous and he's driving down the freeway and he sees two obviously homeless men. And they're on their hands and knees and they're pulling up grass and they're eating the grass.

And the driver pulls over and he gets out. He says, what are you guys doing? And the one guy says, Maddie says, yeah, we're homeless, you know, and I haven't had anything to eat. I haven't had anything to drink. All we can do is, is, is eat the grass. The guy said, no, this is all you got to get in my car. I'm taking you to my house. Gets them in the car, starts to drive. And the second guy says, hey, Mr. it's really nice of you, you know, really nice to do this. The guys. Oh, don't worry about it. So it's a pleasure. You're going to love my house. Grass is about 3 feet high.

So that's old habit, you know,

old habits. And when I see your old habits coming into my life, I have to I have to banish them, you know, I don't want them anymore. I want the life you've given me here. I want to be like you guys. You know, I want to be like you. And, and I find that it's so fulfilling. You know, I'll tell you what what happened to me. Hi. I was born in London. For those of you with more perceptive hearing of accents, I'm not from La Jolla.

I'm from, I'm from London. I was born in London. I was born in the middle of World War 2.

That's another thing. I was speaking and there was a bunch of young people at this particular meeting and I said, you know, I was born in the middle of World War 2 and so forth. The bombs were falling. And at the end of the meeting, the people in the line to thank the speaker, this young kid, he says to me, wow, he says WW2. I said yes. He said, oh man, it's like a civil war, right?

I said, well, it's sort of, you know, another brilliant example of our illustrious educational system.

Anyway, So I, I'm born in, I'm born in London and, and the bombs are falling. I, I was born, you know, I realise more and more that what I have and I venture and guess what we all have is a, is a non discriminatory disease. I mean it, it crosses alcoholism, crosses the sexes, it crosses all economic stations, all social platforms or sexual preferences, everybody you know. And,

and I realised that one doesn't have to have a, a deprived or an abusive childhood. I had a childhood that was fabulous

as an only child. I grew up in an observant Jewish Home in London and I cherish my Judaism and I always have. And for me, Alcoholics Anonymous in Judaism have the same 4 words at their root and that is do the right thing, do the right thing. But I grew up in a home in which I adored my mother, I adored my father and they adored me. And my childhood was absolutely idyllic, really idyllic. And my mother instilled in me a love of the arts. Love of

poetry, all the good things, you know, a love of morality and all these wonderful things. Well, I was, the bombers were falling on London, the V2 rockets, and our house was bombed, which is not why I became an alcoholic, but the house was bombed. And actually these V2 rockets were designed by the German, the Nazi scientist Wernher von Braun. And I was recently in the airport and I saw his paperback and it's called I Aim at the Stars.

And I stood there looking at the title and I realised it needed a subtitle

and it should have been called I Aim at the Stars. But sometimes I hit London,

you know, because is he, he really, you know, he destroyed our house. And I was I was a, you know, I was in the first shipment of children to be transferred to the country because in in England when the bombs were falling there, they got the kids out of the way. Now, when I was doing my first four step, I was, you know, when all the whole thing, why did I become an alcoholic? Why did this happen to me? Why, why, why? And I realized

that my earliest memories will all revolved around love, but being loved. So when I was in this first shipment of kids to be shipped off to boarding school, the school had been an all girls school and I was among the first four or five boys. It was about three or four years old to be sent to this boarding school. And every night, every night it was bunks, you know, regular dormitories with bunk beds and so forth. And every night when the lights were out, the girls would come by

and they would lift me out of my bed and they would cuddle me and they would pass me from girl to girl to girl and they would stroke me and cuddle me. This is a fantasy I've been chasing all my life.

But but you see, you know, this was love. I, you know, love. My mother adored me. My earliest memory, I was 18 months old and in our, in our house, we had a, a rocking chair in the bathroom and my mother had given me a bath. This is a really early memory. I mean, a year and a half old, but I remember it vividly. My mother had given me a bath, and she'd wrapped me in a towel.

She had me in the rocking chair and her arms around me, and the feeling of being so protected and so loved was so secure. And the warmth in the bathroom and her arms, you know, it's a memory of being cherished, of being absolutely adored. And I think that that's the kind of thing I wanted to see when I grew up.

I wasn't handsome, and I wasn't tall and I wasn't athletic. And so subconsciously, I believe, you know, I still needed to be loved. I needed to be really adored.

And so all these, by the way, insights are retro retrospective. I believe that what I did was I, I was whoever you wanted me to be, you know, I just masqueraded as different people. Your love was crucial to me. And so I just pretended. I pretended, you know, I, I, and after a while in my adult life, I really had no, no identity of my own. I was just different people. You know, it was just masks. I just wore masks, but I still didn't feel the need to drink. I had. And yet my alcohol,

I know was with me constantly from, from, you know, as I was growing. I'll give you a perfect example of my alcoholism. I was 19 years old. I'd made my way to New York. I was living with a woman who was a couple of years older than me and Castro was beginning to come to power in Cuba.

And I got it into my head, this is gospel. I got it into my head that he needed my services. Absolutely true. Now, I had no money. My girlfriend had no money. So I said what we have to do is we have to hitchhike down to Key West, FL and then we have to get a banana boat or a boat to get over to Havana. And then I will go up and see, you know, I'll see Fidel and Chip. And we were on first name basis

and and we'll get it. So we hitchhike down to Florida, which was an adventure in itself.

We get down to Key West. There was number, they closed the hub, there was number boats going, nothing. Everything was closed and we were stuck there and out here. I mean, I had visions of Fidel and Che and Raoul and Harvey, the four of us riding down on horseback, you know, from Oriente Province into Havana, people throwing Hosanna as a flowers. I believe this absolutely. So we're stuck there with nothing.

I did actually the only sensible thing I could do. I helped my girlfriend get a job

and what else? Alcoholic.

I had important thinking to do.

Anyway, here's what happened to me. I, I'm diverted too much. I, I, I had picked a career for myself in which public adulation was crucial. That was it. Yeah, that's all I wanted to do. I mean, while I had met somebody in New York, another woman, and. And I married her for all the wrong reasons. All the wrong reasons. She was absolutely gorgeous and she was sexy and she was wealthy and she was socially prominent and, you know, all the wrong, wrong reasons. And I was a wretched husband

since come to believe that love at first sight is simply a side effect of serious drinking.

So I married this woman, and I was a really loathsome, loathsome husband. In fact, the last image that she ever had of me was lying in a drunken heap between the luggage between the cases at JFK, at the airport in New York. And that look, you know, of bewilderment and disgust and horror and disbelief,

that was a look that I'll never forget. And that was a look with which I became very, very familiar over the years. In fact, when I was wanted to make amends to this woman, I couldn't find her. She'd, she'd gone back to England or something. But my younger son managed to track her down. And I called her and I was terribly, terribly nervous. It had been like 30 years and more since I'd seen her, terribly nervous. And she was one of these women that was very cold from the outside till you got to know her and very intimidating. And I,

she got her and she picked up the phone and that voice was older, but the same voice. I was petrifying. My heart was banging, you know, hello. And I said, hello, Helen. And she said, who is that? And I said, well, I, you know, I said, this is really Helen, this is really a voice from the past. She said, who is it? I said, well, I mean, I haven't seen you for like over 30 years. We've had no contact. She said look, if you don't say who it is, I'm putting down the phone.

So I said actually it's Harvey. And there was a long pause and she said 3 words. She said, how utterly bizarre.

I said, you know, Rina, I'm calling. I said I'm going through a stage of my life where I mean, I, I really need to give you I, I was a dreadful, dreadful husband. And she said, no, no, I said no, no, I was, I was a, a horrendous, I was a terrible faithless husband.

There was another long pause. And she said, what do you mean? Faithless

honesty, you know, and I, but she was very generous and she stopped me from it, you know. And she said, look, it's OK, you don't have to go into detail. And she was very, very generous with me. And that was the beginning of my immense. And it was a great way for me to start off the amendment process.

Since then, I I married somebody else who is the I just absolutely adore. And this coming November, God willing, we will celebrate 39 years of marriage

and

very little credit to me. The credit is to you guys. The credit is to you. And she is a black belt Al Anon. I love Al Anon and I do I love Al Anon. I tell you what I think, to be married to a woman Al Anon is fantastic. I will never ever again have to take my own inventory.

It's wonderful. But, and we have, we have two grown sons who who are the apples of my eye. They're adults and they're the apples of my eye. But I have a marriage today which is absolutely

blissful. I mean, it's a marriage literally. It's made in heaven. And it wasn't always that way. It wasn't always that way. What happened to me was that I was in New York and I'll tell you how the drinking started. I came, I came out to California to do a job and I went to, was asked to go to a very important dinner party and involving my work. They say it was supposed to be a social thing, but I knew it was not. It was a professional thing. And there was a sit down dinner for 12 people and I went there and there were a lot of famous people there.

And I suffer, have always suffered from terrible inferiority, from really, really feeling less than all of you being really insecure as to who I really AM.

And I'm asked that with a sense of grandiosity. Well, I'm sure I don't have to tell you that the mixture of insecurity and grandiosity is an atrocious mix. It's an atrocious mix. I sat there at this dinner party feeling about an inch high. And I wanted to get out. And I love telling jokes. And the host, who was my agent was like gesturing to me, you know, like, you know, live in and out there. And I started and I couldn't speak.

I mean, I was literally mute. I couldn't, I couldn't get a word out. I was completely wordless. And I, I just wanted to run away from there, just run away from there. And I got out at the earliest opportunity and I went back to the hotel where I was staying. And some friends of my parents owned a company called Bola Wine. And the man had sent me a case of Bola wine, got back there and I opened a bottle of wine and I drank the whole. I drank the bottle of wine immediately,

and after a couple of minutes I felt a little bit better

and I drank another bottle of wine.

And then I realized these people at this dinner party were lucky to have me there in the first place.

And I had a real awakening that I had my elixir here, you know? But if it was good with wine, it would be better with booze.

And then I had it. Then I had the magic formula. And then I began to drink. And then vodka was my drink of choice. Scotch was next. Anything after that was fine too. But I drank and I drank and I drank and I didn't drink everyday. But what I would do, I have a Bible in my study at home. And I would go into the study I'd, I'd come to in the morning, whether it was in jail or on the streets or at home on the floor of my study or in the car.

And of course, my,

my mouth would be that terrible dry, dry feeling the carpet, you know, shaking was to shake, shake like crazy. My head was throbbing. And so I'd come through that morning and I'd put my hand on that Bible and I'd swear to God that I was not going to drink that day and I wouldn't drink that day. The next day, come in, go into the study and start to take that pledge on that Bible. And then I'd think to myself, no, you know what?

I know I'm not going to drink today. I don't have to take that place today.

And there we are, you know, and the the worst thing in the world really for me certainly is when one lives with someone else and they don't know the amount 1 drinks. It is very difficult to get rid of the empty bottles. I have in my study. I have floor to ceiling bookcases. I've always been a book collectors, tons and tons of books. And I would come home, all the books were in disarray. My wife would always be looking behind the books for the empty bottles.

They reached a point where I was buying gift wrap paper and I was wrapping up my empties in gift wrap. This is in salmon. And I was throwing them on the neighbor's lawns, gift packages,

empty buffaloes. Got to put him in male chutes at anything to get to get rid of these bottles. And I, and I would, I would, what happened? I would have a shoulder bag. I always had a shoulder bag. And I would go to three different liquor stores because God forbid, you know, the people would think I had a problem with booze. So one of them was a Thai market. And I would go in there and that the beer was always in the cooler on one side and the liquor was behind the woman. And I would go in there and I would say that I always wanted to have two,

two Heineken's. And I'd go home. I'd always put the bottle of booze, the 5th of the quart whenever in my shoulder bag. Then I'd come home, the brown paper bag with two beers. So I could say to my wife, 2 beers, there's two. That's all I'm having. So I would go to this Thai market. I get the two beers out and then I'd look at the behind her at all the bottles and I would say

what did she want?

Oh, that's it. Yeah. That what the the clear vodka that Yeah, that's what she wants. That's what she

put that in here, that I would go home and I would go into the study and I would come out reeling and my wife would look at me invariably and say 2 beers, 2 beers. And I would say that I have no control of alcohol. You know, I know I can't take it, you know, 2 beers. Now this, you know, in retrospect, some of this stuff can sound amusing. And I can guarantee you, as everybody here knows, it's not amusing

because my sons who were growing up at the time, didn't know who was going to come out of that study. And while I was never physically abusive with my sons, I was verbally abusive and I was wretched to my wife. I gave her a terrible, terrible, unforgivably terrible time.

They never knew who to expect. And she was bewildered, and she was aghast, and she was ashamed, and she didn't know what to expect.

I can never, ever atone for all those days and weeks and months and years except by doing the things that you teach me to do. Except by being the kind of person that Alcoholics Anonymous wants me to be, the kind of person my mother inspired me to be, and the kind of person that God wants me to be.

I lived a life with hopelessness. Hopelessness. I was hopeless, you know, and I travelled all over the world with my occupation. And instead of being excited to go to different places and see different sites and meet different people, all I could think of was, now I can go away. You know, I've got a job for a couple of months and I can, I can drink the way I want to drink, you know, without somebody looking down my bag.

And I went to do a job

13 years ago

and I was working with a guy who has really argued, the most famous film director in the world. And I never let him see me drink, never let him see me drink. But I had drunk so dreadfully one day, one night, the next day was very, very important for my work, very important. And I couldn't do a thing. I couldn't do a thing. I was convinced I was going to be fired, that my career was over.

Well, it wasn't, but I didn't know my lesson because I'm stupid, you see,

and I have a terrible addiction to alcohol. I think that when I pick up that bottle, everything is going to change. What I've come to realise is that what's in that bottle, what's in that? I direct this to you 17 people who are new here. What is in that bottle is lies. That's all it is. It's lies because if I'm dissatisfied with myself or my life or any part of my life or situations, I think it'll improve if I drink

and when I drink, things that are important to me are not important anymore.

Things that bother me don't bother me anymore.

It's all lies so

I can persuade myself I've got no problems. Until the next morning when I come to shaking with my head throbbing, filled with shame and self disgust and self hatred. Then I realise that nothing changed except one thing. And that is that a little bit more of my soul got chipped away and chipped away and chipped away. That I was betraying the life my mother encouraged, the life God gave me. That I'm letting myself down. And I will tell this specifically,

17 people, if you ever now from now on, ever contemplate picking up another drink or another drug, let me tell you what you're doing. You're spitting right in the face of God. You're spitting directly in God's face. Because what you're doing is you're saying to God, I want more. I want more than you're giving me in this life. I want more.

I don't want to spit in God's face anymore.

A spat in God's face for a long, long time

come through with it. I'm not doing it anymore. Today, by the grace of my God,

have 4369 days. It's a couple of weeks shy of 12 years. They have been the most glorious 12 years. They have been a phenomenal 12 years. I have learned things from you people that make my life rich and full. And I'm not talking about the material things. My sobriety is not based on dollar bills. It's not my sobriety. My sobriety of what's inside

my Home group is the Beverly Hills Roxbury Men's Stag,

which started in 1946. It's every Wednesday night and I go there and I learn from these men who are my family, these men who I love with all my heart

and I learn and they embrace me and I embrace them. And I see how a real man deals with life, with whatever problems you see. I'm not naive enough to believe that the application of the 12 step will stop any problems from coming into my life. But what I do absolutely believe, firmly believe with everything that makes me me, I believe that there is no problem whatsoever

that can come my way. Whether it's cancer, whether it's bankruptcy, whether it's my wife lead, there is no problem

that can't be dealt with, not solved, but dealt with by the application of one or more of these steps.

How blessed we are, how incredibly blessed we are to have this design for living. This is extraordinary. Welcome to you. Who are you? Welcome, welcome. It's a small step to come into this church, but what a huge gigantic step it is to move into another life, to another sphere of existence, to really be propelled into the 4th dimension. What a magnificent life we're given here.

I wake up every single morning

with such a sense of optimism, with such enthusiasm. It is absolutely I, I, I put a lot of prayer, of faith in prayer. It takes me a long time to say my prayers. It takes me about. See, I believe that when I talk to God, that's called prayer. I hear God talk back to me. That's called schizophrenia.

I don't, I don't wait for that, you know. So I say my prayers and I say my prayers. And at night it takes me along. It takes me double the time, about 40 minutes. And there are some nights, you know, when I'm, when I'm tired and I don't want to

always say my friends and I say my prayers in English and in Hebrew because I believe that God is at least bilingual, you know, and I, and I, I feel that if I didn't say my prayers, if I didn't say thank you and help me,

it's ingratitude. It's ingratitude. As crucial as I believe gratitude to be, that's how much I don't like ingratitude. I am grateful. I am so grateful to God. There's nothing like it. There's nothing like it. My career has changed. Totally have a new career, new career in Alcoholics Anonymous. I've always loved books. And sure enough, it has always been a pipe dream of mine that one day

I'd open a really first class, 1st edition bookshop,

you know, a really superstar that signed Hemingway and Dickens and fault no great stuff. You know, one year into this program, my younger son and I were given that opportunity and we opened a shop and we opened a shop on Sunset Strip in in Los Angeles. And this is not forced modesty. Very little credit accruing to us. The shop was successful almost immediately. Because he's an Al Anon and I'm an Alcoholics Anonymous. And you've taught me how to react. You've taught me how to act, how to respond, how to deal with people, how to be fair, how to be

honest, had to be equitable and how to be tasteful. And we treat people with the greatest respect and in return it comes back to us and it has been absolutely marvellous. It is absolutely phenomenal. And what happened to me was that after all these years of drinking,

I woke up one morning, see, I came home one day. I had discovered that in my my study, the bathtub, it used to be a maid room and bath. And in the study there was a bathtub. And so when the man built the the study for me, it's all oak and the bookshelves, he used huge heavy oak and covered the bath to bathtub. One day I was in that bathroom and I realised if I could pry up that top I would have a perfect place for my empty bottles.

So I waited till my, till my wife and my boys were out of the house,

cut out my toolbox.

And I spent a long time, I'm not a strong guy physically. Then I spent a long time in it and I got this enormous heavy oak plop, you know, and there was a virgin tub facing me, this tremendously empty bathtub. And I thought, this is fabulous. You know, I, I, I mean, I felt so gratified that I was able to do this and think of this. I felt I deserved a Nobel Prize. So I began putting the bottles in there. Well, one day a few months later,

maybe about almost a year later I think it was, I came home and I started to put my key in the lock at the front door. And the door opened without the key.

And my father was standing there with my wife, both of them looking very serious. And both my sons had medical problems. And I thought, God forbid something's happened to one of the boys. And I said, what's the matter? And very quietly, my father said yeah. And I start walking through the house behind my wife and my dad. And I didn't think about it as we start going towards the back of the house, a big house. I thought,

well, this couldn't be, this couldn't be. We walk, they leave me right into the bathroom,

into the bathroom, the study and the top is up and in that tub virtually filled to the top of the tub,

quartz, half quartz fifths, half gallons, gallons, miniatures, pints are but dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of bottles to the top. And I looked at it, my father, they were both very quiet. My father said to me in a soft voice. What's this?

How do you answer something like that?

Why would the neighbors come and do something like this to me?

I, you know, I did. I didn't know what to say.

I don't know what I said, but it didn't stop me. But one day, one day was June 27th, 1997, I came to on the floor of the study and I was just wretched. I was, you know, I was just wreaking at the same old story again and again. But something was different, something which I believe was a was a word from God.

And I knew it was over. I knew it was finished, was done, gone.

And I, I got up and I called this agent of mine who had been in our program that from all those years ago. And I said to him, listen, what had happened was I was writing, I'd written a script in the script was a film script. And the protagonist was a recovering alcoholic, strangely enough. And I called and I said to him, listen, I'm calling you Bobby. His name is Bobby Lipman. May he rest in peace. In case anybody knew him, help hundreds of people. And I said, Bobby, listen, I said, since they're paying me, the studio's paying me to do a rewrite on this script,

I, I think I should go to one of your meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. I get an idea what the room looked like and, you know, stuff like that. And he met me on the corner of Pico and Robertson on Sunday morning, the next morning.

And he, he put his arms around me and he said, Harvey, you have no idea how lucky you are not to be an alcoholic like me.

I said yeah,

and he took me to this meeting. I'd never seen anything like it. A couple of 100 shares, you know, and keys on the chair and people smoking and drinking coffee and looking so happy. And I, I sat down in a chair and the main speaker was a woman, Molly B.

And she got up to speak. And while she was a woman and I'm a man, and while her experiences were different than mine, the emotions were exactly the same. Exactly. And as I sat there listening, I became aware that I was ice cold and the tears were streaming down my face. Streaming down my face. And I knew that I was home,

that I was really, really home.

And that is the feeling I get every time

I walk into a meeting. Alcoholics Anonymous,

that this is home.

This is really, in every sense of the word, home. This is what I've been seeking and searching for all my life

and God has given it to me with you people

and I. I left that meeting and I bought a big book. I was given a 12:00 and 12:00

and I began going to meetings, everyday meeting, meeting meetings, and I got into the steps and I got a sponsor

and little by little my life has changed. Little by little my life was changed

and I

I had occasion to go to Paris four months into the program and I wanted a drink. Every day I wanted a drink and I and I didn't drink, of course.

And I got on that plane and I had never flown sober in my life, never flown sober. And I got on that plane and went to Paris and it was a big reception and the waiters were going by, you know, with the trays of booze and champagne and so forth. And suddenly I looked at one of the ways that you passed me,

and I looked at the glasses on the tray and I realized I didn't want any. And not only did I not want it, I didn't need it. God had completely removed the obsession from me. He has completely taken it away. And from that day to this,

I have no it has no appeal to me at all. I am completely free from the enslavement of the bottle. God has done that

through Alcoholics Anonymous.

I take these steps very, very seriously. I try and incorporate them into my everyday life, into my everyday activity. I have a sponsor. I sponsor a lot of guys. I go to a lot of meetings. Thursday meeting, all my guys come to my house and do a book study and we do go right through the book again and then we do the 12:00 and 12:00 and then we share. It is the most exhilarating experience imaginable to me and to my guys. I love these guys and you know, as much as they say they are grateful

to me as I've told them, they give me infinitely more that I could ever give them. I mean, we've got a life here. You know, I talk to people. I'm fortunate in the sense that I'm blessed that I get to speak a lot. And I talk to people who are not in Alcoholics Anonymous and try and explain to them the kind of life that we're given, the freedom, you know, the exaltation of this, the the wonderful joy, the true joy. See, I've been given

something beyond happiness. I mean, I am joy filled, really filled with joy thanks to all of this. And it's difficult to explain this to somebody when people say, you know, you're still going to those meetings, you know, how many days you have to go to, you know, do you graduate? I mean, what's the deal? You know, and it's it's, it's the guy that is walking down the street, a guy in Alcohol is Anonymous. He's walking down the street. He suddenly hears.

He turns around and there is a ghostly apparition behind him

and it's a guy called Jim that he used to go to AA meetings with, who's dead. And he looks at this app. He says, Jim, is that you? Jim says, yeah, it's me. He says, but Jim, you're dead. Jim says I am dead. Yes, I came down from it. I'll tell you why I came down. I had to share something with you. He said the meetings that I used to go to with you on Earth, they're lousy. You're the meetings we have up in it, they're unbelievable. He said, we don't sit on these rickety little chairs like you and I used to sit on down in earth down here. He said every member, every person that comes in has his own arm

and a footstool and there's an Ebony table next to him and servants come and pour coffee and tea and cold drinks, the guy says to a gin that sounds great, so it's fantastic, he said. The the speakers are wonderful, he said. The home, my Home group, he said. Winston Churchill's our secretary, he said

it's it's fabulous. Fabulous. So the guy said, Jim, it sounds wonderful. Yeah. And the best thing is next Saturday night, you're the main speaker.

It's, you know, the laughter, Jeff alluded to it, the laughter, the music, the music of a, a, I mean, this laughter is fabulous, isn't it? It's fabulous. We don't have to deal alone with any problems that come our way. What an extraordinary thing it is in every sense of the word. A miracle, a miracle. And some people see these miracles and some people don't see the miracles. I believe that we're blessed enough to see them. There's a there's a story about a guy that goes duck hunting

and he shoots a duck and the duck falls down and the guy's dog rushes, the duck falls into the water, the dog rushes up to the water's edge. Then the dog hops on top of the water and the dog walks on the water, gets the duck, walks on the water, comes back, runs and drops it at the guy's feet. Well, and actually the guy can't believe his eyes. He can't believe it happened. So he shoots another duck. Another duck falls right in the water, again and again.

The dog rushes up to the water, jumps on the water, walks on the water, gets that walks. Kind of. The guy can't believe it. He thinks he's going crazy,

calls over another guy who's shooting. He says watch this, would you please just watch? My dog shoots again, same thing. The dog rushes up, comes back. He says to the guy, Did you notice anything unusual just now?

The guy thinks a minute. He looks at the dog. He said, you know what I did? Your dog can't swim.

Some of us see the miracle and some of us don't see it,

but I, I, I tell you true,

we are blessed, each and everyone of us. Is a miracle a miracle? And what is a miracle? You know, if you look it up at the miracle, the definition of a miracle is something I believe like an extraordinary occurrence