Old Town speaker meeting in San Diego, CA

And now I would like to introduce our main speaker for the evening, Harvey J from West Hollywood.

Good evening everybody. My name is Harvey Jason and I'm a very, very grateful alcoholic.

I want to thank Melody at anywhere she is. There's Melody for asking me to come and speak this evening. It's a it's a great privilege to speak at a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and and I find it a great honour. I'm not so sure about being a pleasure but but it certainly is in honour and it's a great privilege. I want to welcome the outer towners and also congratulations to the CHIP people

and congratulations and happy birthday to Dave and to Eric. One year is a a tremendous accomplishment, yet another one of God's miracles. And, and welcome a heartfelt welcome to the 25 new friends who felt who felt comfortable standing up and identifying as Alcoholics and and also to those who who didn't feel quite so comfortable.

You're all welcome. We're all welcome. This is a this is such a,

a room filled with love. I mean, already it's so contagious. I love Alcoholics Anonymous. I love it with all my heart. It's, it's saved my life. It's given me a life. It's given me a life beyond anything I possibly could have dreamed or hoped or prayed for myself. It has changed my life absolutely, in in all ways. In every way.

I've always found it remarkable really, you know, that I spend decades

being obsessed with myself in every way, you know, every waking moment concerned with me. And then I'm brought into Alcoholics Anonymous. God brings me into these rooms and, and I'm told just forget me. And then I'm asked to come and talk about me for 45 minutes at a million hours. It's a fantastic thing. Which in fact, there is a story actually about a guy who true story about a fellow who goes to who Dodger Stadium

and it's full, it's 40,000 people at Dodger Stadium. And this guy goes in and he finds his seat and he's just about to sit down and he hears this enormously loud voice yelling out Larry, Larry, Larry. And he looks, he gets up, he looks around and it's too many people. He starts to sit down again and again he is Larry. Larry gets up and he can't figure it out. He sits down again and there's another laugh. This goes on 10/11/12 times and he's getting very angry and on the

time he's about to sit down and he hears Larry. Larry. He gets up, he raises his arms to the heavens. He says, for Christ sake, my name is not Larry,

and

that that is the story of my life.

That is an autobiographical story. I don't know when it was really that the world stopped revolving around Harvey, but I, I suspect very seriously that it was when God brought me into these rooms. And so today I thank God for another sober day and for a chance to live in a decent way,

to experience again the joy of living and the happiness

that comes from giving.

What a concept. What a concept that is for somebody like me to live a decent life, to be kind, to care about other people. I've been a taker all my life, and now I find such immense joy in the ability to give. It is such a remarkable thing. It's an amazing, amazing thing. And I have never met people

like the people

I meet in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, the people who genuinely care about life. Jenny, thank you for your share. That was a was a really inspirational share. Jenny and her share, as we all heard, talked about death and the passage of time. And it is so crucial. For those of you who are young, the passage of time, the immense speed with which our days go by,

doesn't seem quite tangible. But for those of us who are older begin to see that, you know, the days get shorter,

the days get shorter. And I know I have lived a hell of a lot longer than I'm going to live. And so for me to waste time to cheat myself, to cheat anybody else is cheating God. It's cheating God because God has given me this time. And for those of you who who are new and those of you who are struggling

with sobriety or with trying to get sobriety, I will say to you

that God doesn't want you to suffer.

God certainly didn't bring me into these rooms to increase my agony,

me into these rooms to have a life of freedom, a life of true joy. Amen. Indeed.

Amen. Doubled and tripled and quadrupled. And so, you know, I think to myself, I sponsor a bunch of guys and, and some of them still have trouble. And I think, you know, the prospect of my going out again is so far removed from me because what I've been given

is so enormous. It is so huge. It's so monumental that for me to throw it away for the sake of a drink, which would turn into years of drinking, is spitting in the face of God. It's spitting in God's face. And I wasn't aware of that. You see that every time I picked up a bottle and every time I put that bottle to my lips, I was spitting in God's face. I was saying to God, essentially,

I don't want what you've given me. I want more.

I want much more than that. So I don't care what you've given me, I will take more. And I didn't realize that every time I drank, every single time, there was nothing in that bottle but absolute negativity and absolute destruction. And So what happened to me and what would have continued to happen to me if I continue drinking is not only the destruction of my mind and the destruction of my body,

but the destruction of my soul.

There'd be nothing left.

And I was on that way. I was on that route and I didn't realize it. And I had a spiritual awakening. And I'll go into that and thank God in a literal sense. Thank God that I did. You know, I, I look at a glass of water and then they say the optimist sees the glass as being half full and the pessimist sees the glass as being half empty. And I think the alcoholic sees the glass as being absolutely useless.

I never liked the glass. You know, when I, when I see, when I, when I first started, when I first started drinking, I thought it was terribly dramatic and terribly romantic. You know, the really good sort of Waterford crystal glass and the clinking of the ice and the beads of condensation on the glass.

And then after a while, I didn't really care about the condensation,

didn't care about the clinking of the eyes. I didn't care about the glass. You know, I just cared about getting there, getting there and more, more, more. My wife and I and our sons recently went on a cruise, Joe, I still had this alcoholic disposition and sensibility. The first night we were on the cruise, the Major D came to our table and said, Mr. Jason, what is your favorite food? And I heard myself say more

and I just, it just came out. I mean, it's, that's it. More, more, more and my whole life

was like that. It was all in bold faced type with exclamation points and it was huge highs and lows and everything was high drama. Today my life is is so even it's on on such a wonderful calm and and even level and I like it that way more than that. I love it that way. I,

as you, you might have heard, if you're listening, I'm not from San Diego

and I live in Los Angeles, but I'm, I'm from England actually. And, and I was born during World War Two. Somebody recently asked whether World War Two was before or after the Civil War. You know, it's really, that's amazing, isn't it? It's wonderful geography, wonderful, wonderful history lessons we teach. But it was slightly, slightly after the Civil War and,

and, and I, I, you know,

I know that we all know that the disease of alcoholism crosses all, all boundaries, all social economic boundaries, all colors or religions or ethnicities or sexes. And, and I'm an example of the fact that one does not have to have a horrendous childhood, an abused childhood to become an alcoholic. I had an absolutely wonderful childhood. I was an only child.

My mother and father adored me and I adore them. And my childhood was, I'd say, totally idyllic.

It was idyllic and I don't know why I became an alcoholic. I, I suspect I have an insight now. It's been given to me now, but it's not important. It's not, it's not where the focus of my attention is at this point in my, in my life and in my sobriety, But I, I can trace it and, and through the first of my four steps, I, I worked out that I had three really early memories and they have great relevance to me. And to

story my very, very first memory, my very first, I was about 18 months old and it took place in the bathroom of our house in England, in London. My mother, it was during the war, my mother had given me a bath. There's a rocking chair in the bathroom and I was on her lap and she'd covered me in a warm and fluffy towel. She was drying me. She was rocking me in that chair

and I felt so loved and so protected and so secure.

And I, I can feel that feeling today that the heat in the bathroom and my mother's tender arms around me. That's my very first memory of absolute unqualified love. The second of these memories took place. I, I was still a kid and it was a birthday party and all the little boys and girls

came to our house and they were all dressed up and they're giving me presents and I felt very important

now. I was a guest of all and I felt really important. And again I felt loved. Then in London during the war, the, the government sent all of the children out. We were all evacuated to the country because of the heavy bombing. And before it all happened, my my parents knew somebody and I got, I got taken to a boarding school out in the country that had previously been an all girls school.

And I was one of the first four or five or six

little boys there. And at night, you know, there's always a dormitories in the banks. And at night, all these girls used to come out and they would get me and they would pass me from girl to girl, and they'd cuddle me and hug me and hold me. And I tell you what, this is a fantasy I've been chasing ever since.

But, but,

but these, these memories contribute to a sense of well-being and a sense of, you know, whether it's right or wrong, a sense of self importance. And so I grew up, I believe, feeling entitled to be loved. You know, I had a sense of entitlement there. And when I, I grow older, I realized, you know, I wasn't, I wasn't handsome and I wasn't athletic and I wasn't tall and I,

and I needed, I needed that love. I needed to feel important. And while I had that from my mother, whom who died 28 years ago and, and it's with me everyday, my primary inspiration and I adore her,

but I'll never have love like that again, you see, not in that way. And so I needed to be loved. And So what did I do? This is all obviously very unconscious. I had to be whatever you wanted me to be

in order to get you to respond to me. And so I never really had a specific identity as Harvey. I was like a chameleon. And it was all fake. I'd put on masks, you know, I would pretend to be. You wanted me to be, you know, to get a girl in bed. I pretend to be one way and then I pretend to be another way. And it was very confusing to say the least, 'cause I really didn't have an identity.

I, I decided at an early age

what I wanted to do with my life in terms of my career. And again, that was really based upon having the adoration of strangers, of strangers. I was always very creative and so that helped in terms of a degree of popularity, but but I had terrible, terrible insecurities. I, I was riddled with fear. I was always riddled with fear. In retrospect, I realised it was probably because you'd find out that I,

who I represented myself to be. And so when, when one is riddled with these insecurities and this terrible sense of inferiority, you know, I, I suppose it's a classic thing for an alcoholic. It's that combination of complete insecurity and grandiosity

and it's a hell of a it's a hell of a combination. It's a very potent mixture and it's a certainly a very unhealthy mix. But that was me. And when I, when I go through life feeling so fearful, then I am going to misinterpret everything. You know, if you look at me funny, I immediately know you don't like me. If the waiter brings me coffee and the coffee is not quite hot, I wonder why he hates me.

You know, it's all about me and it's all about I'm not, I'm not living up to what I'm supposed to be. And because I'm, I'm so fearful and I'm so insecure and I feel so inferior. My perceptions are so skewed. They're so wrong. And because my perceptions are so off,

my reactions are equally irrational. I'm not responding properly. I'm not acting properly. And because I'm not acting properly, the results are going to be horrendous. The results are going to be bad. Because what I'm doing is I'm not living in the real world. I'm not. I'm fighting reality. And that's why I drank. I know today, to a very large degree, that is why I picked up that bottle,

because I didn't like reality the way it was and I had to change it. It had to be what

I wanted it to be. Now, I didn't come to booze until very late. I mean, I I drank. I didn't drank drink to excess. I didn't drink alcoholically until I was in my 20s and then I drank

and then I drank and I drank until the booze drank me.

I at age 19, I was in New York, come to New York and I was living with a a girl that was a bit older than me and

my life was ahead of me. I had a tremendous success in New York

in the career move, but I'll give you an example of how my alcoholic behavior came into play well before I drank.

When I was 19 in New York, Fidel Castro was coming into power in Cuba. Now I had it in my head

that he needed my help.

This is this is absolute truth. You know, he needed my help. Now I believe this. He was he was with Che Guevara and his brother Rael Castro. And they were an Oriente province. And I knew and I said to my girlfriend, we have to get down to Key West and get a boat over there. And I had to get to Oriente province. And I had grandiose visions of Fidel and Che and Rel and Harvey

coming down on horseback, you know, from the hills, riding through the streets of Havana, people throwing flowers. Now, number one, I know absolutely nothing about Cuban history. I don't speak Spanish. I never did. And I was not particularly fond of Cuban food. But I knew I had to do this. So I got my girlfriend and she, you know, went along with me and we, we hitchhiked down to Key West. And

perhaps, sadly, perhaps not for me, They had closed it all off. There were no banana boats. There was nothing going over there.

So we were broke. I had no money. I did the only sensible thing. I helped my girlfriend get a job

and I and I and I looked around. I looked around the town.

I got back to New York and, and

while things were going well, I really, you know, I had no reason to seek refuge in, in any substance. I, we split up the, the, the girl and I split up and ultimately I got married to an English girl that I met in New York. I thought it was, it was love at first sight. I've come to realize that love at first sight is really, for me, a side effect of serious drinking.

I don't think there's any such thing.

But she was, she was, she was perfect for me. You know, she was absolutely gorgeous. She was socially well connected. She was sexy. And at that point I thought she didn't have a brain in her head and she was just right for me. It was me that had no brain in my head. In fact, I must tell you when when I was making amends, the last image my ex-wife had of me, the very last time she saw me, I had collapsed in a drunken state.

Between the luggage at JFK in New York

and I can still see her looking down at me on the floor with that look of of absolute disgust. And that was a look with which I became very familiar as the time went on. But you know, she was, she was very, very cold until one got to know her. She was terribly intimidating and she looked like a woman of steel.

When I got to, you know, we got together, I realized it was all insecurity. She was really like a baby and she was warm. But as soon as

that drunken thing and she left me and went down and got a divorce, she reverted back to that ice cold personality. Well, I tried to make amends and I didn't know where she was. I couldn't find find her at all. My younger son managed to track her down. She was teaching ballet in England and and I had to call her. And so I, I, I got the number and I dialed. I was terribly, my heart was just was pounding and I got the number

and she wasn't there. So I waited. I called again. It rang and it rang and she picked it up and it was that same voice from almost 30 years before, but older. But Colder's eyes. Hello. I said, all right, this. I said, hello, Helen. Yes, who is that? I said, Well, actually I said, you know what? This is a real voice from the past, I said.

You know, you haven't haven't heard from me for all many, many years now

said, look, who is it?

I said, you don't have any idea who this might be general if you don't say who it is. I'm putting the phone down. I said hold on, wait a minute. I said actually it's it's Harvey.

And there was a long pause and she said 3 words. She said. How utterly bizarre.

Utterly bizarre.

And

and I said, listen, I said, I'm at the point in my life where where I have to straighten up things. And I said I, I just treated you abominably and I and she's no, no, you didn't. She said, you know, you, we were young and you, you didn't read. I said, no, no, I was a horrible, horrible husband. She's no you. I said, no, I was, I was a wretched, faithless husband. And there was another pause. And she said, what do you mean, faithless?

Is that that rigorous honesty? You know

so. But she was generous of spirit. She was generous enough to save me going on. And she said, you know what? I don't, It's not important. And it was wonderful. And, you know, it taught me that the making of amends can quite often be not only a cleansing thing, but nowhere near as awful as we, we sometimes think it is. I, I got married much, much later

to a wonderful, wonderful woman. And it's my Pamela, and she's here now and she's drove me up here

and she has been my companion for over 35 years and.

You know what, I, I love her with all my heart and soul. And you can only imagine what I've had to put up with over 35 years.

And as a matter of fact, Pamela, Pamela and my, we have two sons, adult sons and they were in Al Anon. What before I was an alcoholic anonymous. And in fact, I knew nothing about Al Anon. And when she was telling me these things, I finally one day I came back, I said, guess what? I said I found out what Al Anon is.

I said, you know, you've been fooled. I said al Anon. Al Anon is for people who have an alcoholic in their family.

I said we we don't have an outlook. I mean, we don't have any Alcoholics in our family. It's just smile, that black belt Aladdin smile.

I love Alanon. I love Alanon.

So what happened was I began to, I began to drink.

I began to drink and I was in many instances a secret drinker. So if we were going out, I would get and I was not a daily drinker. I drank like every other day, but I wasn't a daily drinker. But the fact was that I was obsessed with drinking. I was obsessed with booze. I had to drink, I had to drink. And in the end,

I didn't want to drink anymore, but I had to drink. You know, that terrible, terrible feeling where I did not want to, I didn't want to. My car would pull into the liquor shop. I didn't want to drink, but I had to. I had to. And you know, I would lock my have a study in in in the back of my house and I would go into the study and I would lock myself in there. And I would get into this morose,

self pitying depressive state where nothing was working and what's the use and all the negativity? And I would drink and drink and drink

and drink, and I would end up either on the floor or somewhere else.

And I was, excuse me,

I was in a business where I had the opportunity to travel all over the world.

And

what, what dawned on me one day was when I'd get an opportunity to go somewhere to Asia or to Europe or wherever it was, the first thing that would come into my mind was not, wow, I get a chance to see this country or that country first. It was I get a chance to drink the way I need to drink without Pamela looking over my shoulder. And I've always been a book collector. And in my study, there's floor to ceiling bookshelves, books. Pamela was always coming in. I'd come in, all the books were being pulled out, you know, looking for the booze, looking for the booze.

And when 11 lives with someone, I mean, she knew of course I was drunk all the time, but she didn't know the extent that I drank. And when one lives with someone, the idea of the hiding of the bottles becomes such an enormous thing. I was, God, I was gift wrapping bottles and throwing them on neighbors lawns, you know, but I was posting them in FedEx but throwing them out everywhere, you know. And then one day

my study used to be a maid's room and bath. And one day I was in there

and I looked at the bathtub and I realized, you know, I don't need this bathtub. So I got this woodworker in and he and he covered the whole thing, you know, in oak. And so one day I'm in there and I'm looking at the tub and I'm thinking to myself, hey, wait a minute. If I could pry this oak top up, I would have. The bathtub would be perfect for my bottles. So I waited till they were all out of the house

and I got out my toolbox and it took me a very long time. I'm not that strong.

And I finally pried up that big, huge oak tub and it was like I was entitled to the Nobel Prize. I was. So I was. There was a virgin tub in front of me. Well, about a year or so later, I was coming in the house one day and I put my key in the front door and the door opened. And my wife Pamela was standing there with my father, both looking very serious.

And I thought both of our sons have medical problems.

And I thought something had happened to Joshua or to Louis. And I said, what's the matter? And they both just said, And we start walking through the house. I had no idea, you know, walking through the house. And as we get towards the back, I thought, oh, it couldn't be.

And we get into the study and the top is up.

That bathtub was filled with dozens and dozens and I can't quartz and fifths and half pints and pints and miniatures and gallons and half the whole thing to the top bottles. And I just looked and in a very quiet voice, my father said, what's this?

What does one say to something like that?

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

I, I, I was, I was horrified

absolutely, to say nothing of what they were absolutely horrified. But you know,

such as it is. And that didn't stop my, that didn't stop my, my drinking. It got worse and worse. And I, my father died 5 1/2 years ago. And thank God I was sober at that point. And I was kissing his head when he died. And that's a blessing. That's a blessing. It's a privilege. But you know, I grew up in a very enlightened and sophisticated and artistic Jewish household. And I have always been an observant Jew,

and my Judaism

is precious to me. And I realized when I was brought, and I am convinced that God brought me into the rooms of Alcoholics. There's no doubt in my mind about that. This is not something I would have done. God brought me into these rooms. And the bottom line to both Judaism and Alcoholics Anonymous, I believe, are four simple words. And that is do the right thing. Do the right thing for everybody else

as well As for oneself. And today, while I have always been

a religious person as well as a spiritual person, my, my bit, I've always believed in God and in Judaism, my relationship to God has become infinitely more personal, very, very personal. I used to, I used to bargain with God, as many of us do. I think you do this for me. I'll do this, you know, I'll stop if this happens. And it I don't pray for myself.

I pray that I can accept God's will

and I pray for God's will for me. And I pray every single morning and I pray every single evening and I pray many times during the course of the day. And some of my prayers are in Hebrew because I believe that God is bilingual and, and most of them are in English anyway. I I'm going to tell you how

how I came to be a grateful member of Alcoholics Anonymous. I

I had some terrible experiences drinking and not just waking up in the drunk tank and waking up in other places. That just the general sense of, of a dead morale,

of a dead spirit that although I didn't lose financially and I didn't lose materially, I did lose what I think is probably the most precious commodity a person can have. And that is that I lost my self respect.

And thou would come in and I'd be drunk and I'd look in the eyes of my sons

and I'd see bewildered, just bewilderment that they didn't know who was going to come out of that study. And the disappointment on Pamela's face,

the sense of disillusionment.

And my answer to it all was to go back inside and drink some more and collapse there and collapse sometimes in the car, in the driveway in the morning, Pamela would come out and I'd be slumped over the wheel of a car and she'd just look at me. And I, I know I'd, I'd say things like, no, I was just tired. I, I just, I just was a little tired. I was too hard to come into the house. I was comfortable, you know,

I, I had written, I had written a script,

a film in which the protagonist was a recovering alcoholic. I didn't know anything about Alcoholics Anonymous except that my best friend, who was like my brother, was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. Bobby Littman, may he rest in peace.

And I called. I had a particularly dreadful drunk one one night and I, and I woke up in the morning and it was, I believe, a moment of spiritual awareness and awakening.

And I thought, I've had it. I can't do it anymore. I've, that's the end. I've come to the end of it. And I called Bobby and I said, you know what? Since the studio, since they're paying me, these producers pay me to do a Polish on this script. I should probably go to one of your meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous so I can get an idea what the room looks like and, and things like that. And I really believe this. I believe this. And he met me. I was such a liar, such an an enormous liar,

that Bobby, who I spoke to on the phone virtually every single day for years and years and years, didn't know that I was a drunk just like him. And we met one Sunday morning on the that next day, the Sunday morning on the corner of Olympic of Pico and Robertson to go to a meeting he was taking me to. And he said to me, Harvey, you don't know how lucky you are not to be a drunk like me. And I said, Oh yeah, I can imagine Bobby.

And he took me to this room.

It's long room. I saw keys on the chairs, people

never seen anything like it. And the speaker got up to speak and she was a woman. And while the story was different, the emotions were the same.

And I heard her speak,

and before I knew it,

the tears were streaming down my face and I knew that I was home.

I was really hung

as home then and I'm home now

and God has brought me home and today

there is no self pity. I have no reason for self pity. The emotion that propels me through life is gratitude. I am so grateful. I am so. I'm so filled with gratitude. And you know what? I believe that gratitude is the only emotion that is totally incompatible with any form of negativity. It can't coexist with anything negative. If I'm grateful, I can't be jealous. I can't be unhappy. I can't be miserable.

I'm just grateful. And God has given me this. God has given me this, this life that is so incomprehensibly marvelous. And it's the little things today, not the big things. It's the little things. It's way. I wake up in the morning with such a sense of optimism. I was such a pessimist. I was so dark, you know, I was so miserable and so morose. And my, my optimism is based upon my experience

Alcoholics Anonymous. I had an entire career change in Alcoholics Anonymous. My, my younger son was selling books and 1st edition books. And it had been for many years just a pipe dream of mine. I thought, wouldn't it be wonderful to open up a really first class, 1st edition bookshop somewhere, a great thing and sell signed Hemingway. And it's a pipe dream. You know,

a year after

God brought me into these rooms, my son and I opened that shop.

We opened that shop. And this is not false modesty. What I'm going to tell you is not at all false modesty. With very little credit

to me, certainly, or to Louis, the shop became almost instantly successful. And it became successful because of what I had learned in Alcoholics. No, no. What you people have shown me how to treat people well, how to be honest, how to be moral, how to be polite,

how to take care of people, how to give them their money's worth. An honest life. You can't get rich in the book business. I'm not in it to get rich. You see, the fact is, it's it's conducive to such serenity. I wake up. I can't wait to get to that shop. My son is there. Our relationship with both my sons are just fabulous. Another one of God's great, great gifts. Tremendous. It's a miracle. You know, I they say that miracles happen to people who believe in them.

I'm not so sure that's true. I think that miracles can, you know, everybody's definition of a, I'll tell you a story of a miracle is different.

There's a guy that goes duck shooting, duck hunting, and he's out there and he's got his gun and he shoots the darkness dogs by his side and the duck falls under the water and the duck, the dog runs over to the water. He runs on top of the water and he trots on top of the water. He gets the duck. He trots on top of the water. He comes back and he drops the duck. The guy, the guy can't believe what he what he's seen. He shoots another one. The same thing happens. The dog goes right on top of the water, comes back. The guy says to another

Honda next to me, so I want you to watch this. He shoots again. Again the dot comes down. The dog goes on top of the water, trots back on top of the water, drops the duck. The guy says, did you see? Did you see what just happened there? Did you see that dog? The guy says, you know what I did? Your dog can't swim.

See. See,

sometimes we don't see the miracle.

But

but I think that all of us, or most of us anyway, in this room are aware that every single one of us sitting here is a miracle. It's a miraculous life we're given here. And how can we even consider throwing it away? You know, you, you, we can't, we can't go and, and I can't stop my life. I can't go back and redo it, but I can certainly give it a different ending. You know, we can all give it a different ending

and my life is so different. It is so different in every way.

Every day is an adventure. Every day is filled with joy. And as I say, it is these little things. It's just the little things. I know that when I come to meetings, my Home group is the Roxbury Men's stag, the Beverly Hills Roxbury Men's Stag. We've just celebrated 60 years, 60 years we've been there. I actually have not been there for six years, but the meeting's been there for 60 years. But

I hear things, you see. I know that I can't look when I pray. I know that when I talk to God,

that's called prayer. If I hear God talk back to me, that's called schizophrenia.

So,

so I know that I, that God talks to me through you, He talks to me through you. And I'm fully prepared to listen. And you see, Alcoholics Anonymous has taught me to listen. It's taught me to hear. I don't believe I ever really listened before. You know, I pretend to, but I couldn't wait to get my two cents in. You know what I mean now.

I really listen.

I have made friendships in Alcoholics Anonymous that are more pure than any friendships I ever could have had anywhere else. I believe that we do have a bond. It says on page 17 or page 19. I think it is of our book. We are a people who normally would not mix, but there exists among us a friendliness,

a fellowship.

And what's the other word?

Yeah, here it is. I got the book right here, so you'll forgive me. Hold on. I got the book here, but I haven't got my glasses here.

Anyway, whatever it says,

says we're

and and this is, it says it is indescribably wonderful. And that is what this is to me. And I know to many of us, it is a life that is indescribably wonderful. And I never want to lose it. I never want to lose the magic, the magic that you have given me. And, and what you have given me is not necessarily what you say. It's what you do. I mean, I'm able now to watch and see and see that it's not, it's, it's the way one walks, isn't it? I mean, it's not

talk, it's walking the walk. And I know that for me, the guys at My Stag are not only my friends, they're my heroes and they're my moral guides. You know, they're my ethical teachers.

I, I see the way they respond to life and I see the way they receive God's word and I see what they do. And it's heartwarming and it's illuminating. I am truly sober today only by the grace of my loving and benevolent God,

by the program, the steps, the Alcoholics Anonymous, and the love and the support and the moral guidance and the example of all of you. Thank you so much for having.