The Men Among Men Group's first conference in Copenhagen, Denmark

Hello everybody, my name is Alvin. I'm an alcoholic and not only this, I'm also a German alcoholic. And

make things worse, I'm also mathematician. So we get to a lot about, you know, I will paint some form it doesn't numbers tonight. And after the show has finished, Mickey and I will actually ask you whether you understood what he was talking about in the first spot. And please be reminded there's only one exit and we are two strong guys. So if you didn't listen tonight, if you don't learn, you know, you think I'm kidding. No, you probably know Rowan Atkinson, Mr. Bean. I mean, everybody knows he needs that kind of physical comedian.

So you don't have to talk much. You just see him and you will laugh. Even if you're not high, you will laugh about him because he's a great physical comedian. In many movies he has proven this one. He's what he's doing is comedy. You may know Jerry Seinfeld who happens to be in US comedian. There is nothing physical about him. If you see him somewhere in this and if you see Mr. Bean somewhere in the city, you will laugh. If you see sign that you won't laugh. He's going on stage, he's talking. He's a master of talking. I mean, he's throwing out sentences,

put in exaggeration on it, and another one and another one and another one. He's also a comedian. So both are comedians. Both make you laugh, but they have nothing in common. One is a physical comedian, one is the talking comedians. What is comedy about? You know, people would normally say comedy is it makes people laugh, but that's not what comedy is. That what the result of comedy is. You feel better when they make you know. But I mean, that's what comedy is. Food makes me feel better, but food is not comedy

and I'm feed it off enough. How uncommitted food can be very too much of it. So people then might wanna ask what is it then what comedy is? I mean, I don't want, don't worry, I don't wanna go into, it's not a comedy presentation tonight

we will get back to alcohol. But it's part of my story. Why I talk about it in a comedy is basically you put people in situations that they are not used to, where they don't have the tools to deal with it.

Like Mr. Bean, he's an abnormal person. You bring in normal situations, he doesn't have the tools to deal with it. So it's drama, which we all like, of course, and you let this purpose, this person, run in a situation where he doesn't know how to deal with it. And that's creating the comedy. He does it a physical way by trying to buy something in a supermarket. Seinfeld does it by explaining how he walks along an airport trying to end an airplane and how he's creating havoc in the whole airport. So let's assume that you want to learn about comedy. You would go somewhere, look around, where are there clubs? Where do they meet?

Where can you find these people to understand about comedy? You may attend the class and so on and on. You would want to meet people

because he didn't know anything about the committee and you want to be a comedian. So would find out places where these people meet. And you get to ask people what is comedy and they will tell you, well, you have to slip on a banana and somebody else will tell you, well, they have to run against the wall. If you do this often enough, sleeping on a banana, running against the wall, your life will end before you become a successful comedian. So that's not going to work. So at different places, people will tell you different stories about the same subject. And you know, eventually,

you know, you ask 10 people, they will give you at least 11 different answers, definitely. So you know nothing about comedy eventually. But then you start looking around and you may find a place where there are a few people who don't tell you what comedy is by explaining what happens if you are humorous, if you know how to make people laugh, but they explain to you what comedy is, what the basics are, what the algebra of it is, and actually how to do it. So you may actually pick one of these guys and say, OK, teach me.

You are a successful comedian. I want to be like you. I want what you happen. I'm willing to go to a length to get it. And you ask this guy

and eventually by meeting those people on a regular basis, sharing your experience with them, they shared their experience with you, you will become a successful comedian and make money with it. Be happy. Find a lot of girls, which all comedians wanna have eventually. I mean, the big book is saying we all have sex problems. He would not be human if we wouldn't. I'm not human, so.

So there are places actually, but you can learn a lot about all this

and if you find good people have done it before you, they will teach you. Let's assume you're an alcoholic and you want to stop drinking and you don't even know what your problem is. Because as Nikki explained earlier, when I when I drank, I never knew why I was drinking. I didn't have a reason to drink because I didn't need a reason to drink. People always say I drank because of and then comes a long list of reasons, a reason you normally have when there is doubt.

We need to explain something to yourself or to other people. I never explained anything. Nowhere. So let's assume you have a problem and you want to stop. And let's assume there is a place where you can go to

and talk about your problem and you get solutions, not other problems. I have this, I have this one dream and that's actually part of my story. I won't go so much into the details of my drinking, but little bit more afterwards. I have this one dream and this is that we all work the same program the same way because if we don't, we have nothing to share with each other. I was born about 50 years ago. I know I look look much younger. There are many things that kept me young. One was

life and women, of course, they don't want to go into that detail right now. When I was about 18 months or that was brought to hospital for six months, there was an autopsy. My parents who had a childhood trauma, probably some other people had it as well. And I lived a relatively normal childhood, which means I was growing up in a terrible place. I was growing up in the most terrible place a human being can grow up. I was growing up in my own mind, in my own head. I didn't know how to deal with people. I had been removed from my parents. I didn't believe

myself. I was convinced my parents are bad because they had thrown me away after just 1 1/2 years. When I came back home after six months, my young brother was born. So not only had my parents thrown me away, they even had replaced me in the meantime. They didn't want me back. They had gotten something better and they didn't want me. I mean when you are 18 months old, I didn't come home saying OK. My parents psychology, they didn't know what to do back then. The nurses and the whole system wouldn't work like this. I was convinced I'm a piece of shit

for otherwise my parents wouldn't have thrown me away

and my parents must be evil because parents don't do that. So my whole life, like for many Alcoholics, was based upon trying to please people and that's all I had to do. I was afraid of being thrown away again, so I did whatever I had to do in order to convince you I'm a good guy. I didn't develop myself, no self esteem, no nothing like this. So I pretty much lived the night, the life of a very normal alcoholic people pleasing,

trying to get the love of you, trying to get your attention

and doing whatever I had to do. So I had to develop survival skills at a very young age. Nobody ever taught me to find myself, to know what is it that I'm supposed to be on this planet, What's the roles that I'm playing in a society, just pleasing people. And eventually I became disloyal because I didn't have the tools to deal with all this, with what we call life. And

so I had to find a way how to get things done. So I was stealing, I was lying. I did everything wrong that I possibly could the wrong. But I was also gifted, like many Alcoholics,

with a certain amount of intelligence and tools that I had, so I studied. Eventually I became very successful, but it was this insecure man my whole life. And whatever I did

went pretty much good on one side. But on the other side, I didn't live my own life. I always lived the life of what I thought I have to be so you would love me. And the more I lived in this shell, you know, I was very, very expensive suits. But my whole life I felt like this empty suit. There's nothing in this suit.

I always had to present something that I wasn't while at the same time having to perform my duties. So the discrepancy between what I should have been and what I was and what I had to play became so big that eventually I had to drink alcohol because it was the only way to keep myself halfway sane. I couldn't stand, you know, this whole living, this whole discrepancy with my feelings. You know, I didn't, I didn't know any of this. You know, when we talk about feelings and how things, what the impact of life on me was, I didn't know any of this. None of what we usually hear in a A.

I know. I didn't know anything about why I drank. I didn't even know that alcohol isn't a truck. I didn't know that alcohol makes addictive. I learned this only in AAI mean. Actually I'm one of those guys. I never took any truck other than alcohol. If you don't count cigarettes. Everything I know about drugs today are learned in a A and nowhere else. So I started drinking when I was around 25 years old. Before that I never had a problem with alcohol. I could go to a party, get wasted, could get wasted several days and there was no craving,

no longing for alcohol, no obsession, no nothing. I could drink pretty much like anyone else could and afterwards it was OK. When I was around 25 I started drinking on a regular basis and I remember one night I was laying in bed drinking 2 beers and I was saying Jesus, you drink 2 bottles of beer every day. There have been years in my life where I would have been happy if I would have been able to stop after just two bottles of beer, but I was already some somehow knowing back then that it would become

worse. I then continued my drinking. I became international. I was living on a variety of continents. Pretty much everything except Africa became very successful, making lots of money, living in a in big cities, being driven around and drinking got worse and worse and worse and I don't want to go through details right now. Eventually I stopped drinking

in Miami about 8 1/2 years ago. I had reached a point

where normally would drink about 15/20/25 cans of beer every night. I was a beer drinker so I had reached a point where I had to drink in the morning already to just calm down so I could make it through the day. In order to go to 711 was a shot which was just across the street and needed one hour preparation every time to just walk there for otherwise I would have had a nervous breakdown. I needed to drink to just make it to the shop to get more beer

and then something happened

which many of us have experienced. I would normally drink like 3 cans of beer and everything was fine. You know, the world was OK, I was OK, future looked bright, the past didn't haunt me anymore and then I just would continue drinking. 1520 more cancer because I started already. I remember one day I was sitting in an apartment in Miami Beach

and I drank these three cans of beer and nothing happened. The pain was still there.

I did not calm down. There was no ease, no lightheartedness, no nothing. So I blamed it on the bad food and maybe I had a flu or something like that. I continued drinking and basically wrote the day off. Went to bed that night. And this next day the same thing happened again. I couldn't drink anymore, but I had to drink. And I mean, it created a lot of fear. Didn't know what to do, I called a friend. He brought me in contact with a doctor in Miami who happened to be a sober alcoholic. When I spoke to him at the phone, he knew right away what's wrong with me. And I told him,

please, I need to go to a hospital, put me on ice for like 48 hours so I can straighten out my nerves and afterwards continue my life. I didn't know that I had an alcohol problem. And he brought me to hospital and, you know, was I got heavy sedatives. The next morning I was brought into a room where a lady asked me to tell my story. So I briefly told my story and eventually I was saying, you know,

I drink because I have problems. That was more or less the whole

agenda of my story. And she looked at me and she was a tiny lady, blonde, strong, you know, like this Russian kind of nurse that we've seen all those bad movies. I mean, she could actually fight a tank just by the sheer look in her eyes easily. And she looked in my eyes and was saying, Ralph, you don't drink because you have problems. You have problems because you drink. You an alcoholic. You know, she didn't give me any pretext, no preparation. She wasn't saying like Ralph, wouldn't you consider but you know, diseases and

and you know disease, allergy of the body and no pretext. Because if she would have start to prepare me for telling me that I'm an alcoholic, I didn't listen back then. I was just hearing physically. But if somebody told me something, I would try to find out what are the next two sentences that are likely to come so I could prepare even two more sentences. And the moment you start breathing, I would jump in right away to let you know what you are going to say and what my answer will be on what you are then will be going to say.

And there was no pretext at all. She put it straight into my face. You're an alcoholic. I didn't know what an alcoholic was back then, but I knew

that there was an explanation as to why I'm doing the things I was doing. And she told me. I asked what can I do and she was saying after you are released from the hospital, go to Alcoholics Anonymous and things will get better. And even the doctor suggested to me that I would go to meetings. He took me to meetings in the hospital and so I did. I left the hospital detox after a week and went to a A.

The reason why I came to my second, third, 4th and so on meeting was because I like the crowd in there, like the people in there like them very much. So I came back and looked this whole socially, I mean meetings in Miami are different than they are in Germany, at least for the weather and for the people to over there. And what happened to me was the obsession to drink had been removed in the first night already. The next day I woke up. I mean, I was still on sedatives, of course, for about a week. But since then there has been no obsession.

I never wanted to drink again. There was no urge, no longing for a drink.

And what happened then on the outside, everything just got better. I went to a a meetings, I worked the steps, I had a sponsor, I got my business back. And you probably already recognized one particular word, the eye, the eye, the eye, the eye on the outside, everything was just going fine. So I thought wonderful and everything control because I go to meetings, I make service, I do this that and the other and everything was going fine.

I'll later on move to Los Angeles then because my previous partner that I had, my company had kicked out, replaced him by a new partner, an alcoholic. Of course, it was for half years. So, but not working the steps. I mean, what else should have happened? And this I mean God has a strange sense of humor. Business failed and I came into into the fellowship in sobriety with quite a lot of money, which lasted about 1 1/2 years or so. Then I had no more money left. So eventually I had to return to Germany.

I had been exposed to AA to probably, I don't know, 1200 meetings within 2 1/2 years. So I did all the 90 meetings in 90 days. I mean, I wanted to be a good alcoholic. I did 172 in 90 days. I had a, I had a sponsor, but pretty much for formal reasons because everybody had a sponsor. So I have to have one. It was like a little toy for me, like property. I didn't want to walk around. Say I have no sponsor. People would have asked me. I worked the steps within, which for me meant every couple of weeks I would invite him for sushi and

to him down there in Miami, in Lai didn't have a sponsor. After 2 1/2 years, I moved back to Germany and what happened then was I pretty much received a cultural shock. I went to meetings in Germany and

the difference between what I was exposed to in the States and later on found in Germany was no snaps, no big book, no sponsor. And I asked once a person, what do you do here? And they are saying, well, we are working the steps, sorry, we are working the program with Alcoholics Anonymous. And I asked, OK, then let's work the steps. And he was saying we don't do the steps here. So I asked him, what do you do here in order to stay so open? What I mean, what's the program you are working? And what I was told is

we go to meetings and throw our problems on the table and that's it.

So eventually that's what people did. And that has been the first time where I started doubting that a A was good. I mean, I confused a, A and the people in AAI confused the program with the people working are not working the program. So what then happened was I mean it, I always called it a decision that I went back to Germany. But I mean, a decision means you have at least two alternatives to choose from. I had no alternative to choose from. I had, I had to go back,

but I always like to call the decision. It makes me sound that I have everything under control, which I had very often in my drinking days. I mean, there are several stories that came to my mind how how I thought I had things under control. So I was not back in Germany and not having a program, not having people around me who would work the program the same way I wanted to work it. I didn't have the real good solid foundation because I had stopped somewhere around

five. I had not done a proper 4th step. Eventually my fifth step could not have been solid. And I didn't know anything like Mickey explained it earlier about powerless, about fully conceding to my innermost self that I'm an alcoholic. I didn't know what an alcoholic was.

And now I was in a situation where I would go to meetings. I was looking for response and I found a sponsor actually. And he told me I only can work with you if you work the steps. I'm a step sponsor and I wanted to go down to my knees and say thank God that I found a sponsor in Germany, works the steps with me because I was already so out, knocked out for about a year or so. I had seen a psychologist already who couldn't help me because he didn't know what the disease was,

a good, well meaning man who really helped me a lot because at least I didn't commit suicide during that time. And I mean, you know, if you want to stay sober, staying alive, it's actually a mandatory prerequisite for it. You won't be able to have much happiness, joy and freedom if you don't stay alive. So I tried to work with this man. So we took a walk. The following we're going to ask him about step one and he was talking about something else. He was evading the issue. So I I thought I did something wrong and I waited,

asked him again and eventually I found out he never worked the steps because no one taught him to work the steps. So I was again at this situation, at this point where I wanted to do something. I was already willing to start from the scratch again right from the start. But again, I was left with people, big meetings, like 7080 people in one room, everybody talking about many, many different things like a cat peeing on the couch. And then people explained what happens to them as a result of it.

I mean, I felt more sorry for the cat than for the people sitting in the meeting playing, complaining about the cat. Who would read the cat? And, you know, I was sitting there. I remember one particular time one day

in the office when for the first time I felt something is happening and it came right out of the stomach and just lasted a few seconds. It was fear. Feel like I had never known it before. And it started to come back and to come back and to come back. And one day I was sitting in a meeting where everybody was talking about problems. And you know, I call this BMW meetings, the bitching, moaning and whining meetings because, you know, there is no sense in going to a meeting talking about problems if I want to listen.

Problems. All I have to do is go to my apartment, close the windows, sit on the couch, listen to myself,

and if I run out of problems, I invent problems. I have no problem, no problem, of course, no problem in inventing new problems. I was sitting in this meeting and I had this feeling, it's only seconds. It's only seconds and I will stand up in this a, a meeting, go to a bar and drink. I had no decided drink, no longing, no nothing. But I simply had this fear something very, very bad is going to happen.

How was my life back then? The outside circumstances were great. You know, I told you when I came to sobriety, I had money, lost everything. I did get the car away, apartment away, sleeping on a friend's couch for a few weeks, which turned out to be six months. And then moving back to Germany, starting as a regular employee again, setting up my own company again, making very good money, living in a good area, bearing the expensive suits. But every morning I would wake up,

go into the shower and within 60 seconds I wanted to bang my head against the tile,

make that pain go away. These voices which are there before I even wake up, you probably know this. You are in bed, you want to sleep, you still want to rest a few more minutes. And these voices already keep telling you you need to get up, you need to get up. And another voice would say stay in bed, it's okay to stay in bed. So would go to work later during the day. These permanent voices keeping talking to me and this pain that no matter what item, it was tearing me apart. I didn't know what to do. I had to perform every day. I had to go to the office, you know,

funny guy, of course, because I always want to be funny, make people laugh, be the clown. I had to make presentation standing there. No, my legs were shaking and I was standing there with a smile on her face. I mean almost like bearing a mask, which is later what the 4th step is to, to take this mask off to see who I really AM. And I was standing there, I was shit faced, I was afraid. I wanted to cry. I wanted my mom back. I wanted to just my mom to hold myself because I wanted to cry like never before.

And of course, I had to be the successful manager, you know, the consultant, everything, the mathematician, being around the earth, having done so many different things and nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing work. And I had no solution, absolutely no solution. And what made it really worse, you know, I knew how to recite from the big book. I'm definitely eloquent. I know how to talk. I know how to present myself in front of other people.

I knew all that. I would go to meetings and talk the talk. I would, you know, I didn't have to look at the particular page. I knew where the word swear in the English big book and in the German Big Book. I did both. And I would actually make fun of it and use that against me and other people. I would sit in meetings, presented everybody

what a good alcoholic I am, how good the steps are, how good this program is, how good this fellowship is. And I was just lying. I was just lying to everybody in the room because I was trying to convince myself if I am able to let you know how good I am working the program, eventually it would work for me. And there was nothing I could be among one million people on well meaning, all laughingly like only God can love me, and I would complete feel completely lonely. Marlon Brando is quoted of having

when he enters the room with 200 people and one doesn't like him, he has to leave the room. He cannot stand it. He's focusing, focusing on the one guy who doesn't like him, the other 199 who might love him, adore him, admire him, doesn't count at all, nothing at all. And I was sitting in this meetings, talking, crying for help on the Internet, did not know what to do when I tried to establish something

didn't work, people weren't interested in it. People simply were not interested in it. And I did not have a solution.

So eventually it came to the point where through an interesting chain of events,

I was brought back. I mean, it was, it was a really interesting, I went back to English speaking meetings because I had been at one particular German meeting. I mean, I don't want to talk bad about German meetings about a, a in general. It's just my particular experience which is basically making me doing what I'm doing today. For example, being here tonight talking about this experience. Because I do know from my experience that I'm not the only one who's suffering from this loneliness within a group of people who apparently have a solution and I cannot get attached to the people and the solution. I was sitting in a meeting,

you know, I ran away from this meeting. I knew if I stay in these meetings I will drink or commit suicide. I didn't want to commit suicide but neither did I want to live anymore. You know, there is a fine line between not wanting to live and wanting to commit suicide. I don't know whether it's just an artificial bullshit land that I'm making up, but somehow I want to live. I just did not know how. I could not stand the pain of living anymore. I had no solution at all. So I went through to some English speaking meetings which brought me in contact with International A, A

English speaking. I went to Netherlands, to Belton, and I met an American over there. And I told him, yeah, I was living in Santa Monica. Where you from? And he showed me his batch, which was saying Santa Monica. So we came from the very town where I was living back then. And I told him my situation, that it's impossible to find a sponsor in Germany. And you were saying, Oh yeah, I know a guy in Santa Monica who actually does long distance sponsoring. And I was saying, great, who's that guy? He was saying Mickey Bush. Do you know Mickey Bush? And I was saying, of course I know Mickey Bush, every halfway saying alcoholic

in LA knows Mickey Bush. And he handed me a card of Mickey and you would think I would call, would call Mickey right away after being home. No, I did not. There was still, there was still so much pride in me. I could not pick up the phone and tell someone about the desperation I was in, about the pain was in. It took another bad meeting.

No, we're not healthy stories in Germany. They usually don't let me talk that long.

And I left this meeting, went back home, and you would think I picked up the phone, called Mickey. No. I first tried to call a man, my former sponsor, where I knew exactly couldn't help me. You know, I wanted to find the easy way out again. You're having someone talk to say what? Make me feel better. And I could at least sleep one. One night. He didn't answer. Then I called another guy where I knew he wasn't really working the steps

and he didn't answer either. So I had one option left. It was the last bullet that I could use. And then I caught actually Mickey. And this was to this day the best thing that happened to me because since then I have learned a lot. I didn't know what it was to be an alcoholic. I didn't know what it was to be powerless in all those things. I still remember I was telling Mickey about my situation, about all these voices that I was hearing this, you know, this tormenting storm in my head throughout

that sometimes I couldn't even concentrate. I mean, when I went jogging, I started to chalk in the gym on this running belt because if I would Chuck outside the gym, run outside the gym, I would run into a bus, I would run into people. I mean, it's a nice way to meet people, but they don't want to see you can if you run into them too fast. And I'm running very fast because I had to get rid of all this energy. And I remember I told him that I want to continue making amends, which is step 9. And he was saying that's good, good idea. But let's talk about

step one for a second. And it took only a few seconds and I wasn't even on step one of our program anymore. I was before I was at this first step in recovery. And from there on, it took me a long time, quite a long time to do all the work. Has it been easy? No, it has not been easy.

The hardest part for me was to let someone know what I was doing through these years to tell people. I mean, it took me one year before I could sit in a meeting, whether it was German or English, and tell people that I'm working the steps without mentioning I worked them before because I always had to say yes and back at that point. But I worked in before, not really good, but I worked in before. It took me one year before I could leave away. The second part. I mean, we talked about pride being a real problem. Why? It's actually heading the

of the seven deadly sins. That was a big problem for me. And what I learned is I don't want to blame anyone. Eventually I am responsible for my own recovery. And that's the hardest part. I had to learn. I had to stop all this blaming crap like bad meetings in Germany that didn't do this, they didn't do that. They should have told me in the United States much better and so on,

you know, to come down to the point where I had to see I am responsible for my own recovery. I have to do the I mean, I don't want to go to back too much into this. I word again,

but you know, eventually I have to do the work. It doesn't come from alone. I hear, I hear people say if you don't work the steps, the steps will work you. That's crap, that's mental rubbish. The steps don't work me. My disease works me all the time. It's just waiting for me to say something like this. For example, when I say I have problems and I, you know, yesterday I was talking to a lady, she was saying yes, there is a disease, but there's also that we create drama in our life and we all love the drama. You know, if you don't have any property, if you don't have anything

at all, at least I want to have drama. At least I want to have problems. You know, even the poorest men, if you have problems, you got to do something you can talk about and share with. And that's where all the exaggeration we love so much in our life. And I spoke to her after the meeting. I was saying, yeah, you think that it's you creating the drama, but that's just the disease making you believe that you are in charge of in creating your own drama. And that's not true. I mean, I had to learn

that I need other people. The hardest part since I mean, I was working the steps and I basically took the steps, put him right here and walked away. And I was saying, OK, I have the steps now. That's my solution. All I have to do is work the steps, work the steps, work the steps

and all the rest. Basically it's 2 words where the second word is off, which I normally would say to people. I think to people I didn't need not the Germanic group anymore. In the English speaking meetings in Germany they are good unless they are German people in it.

It's again just my experience that very often English speaking meetings are being used so you don't have to talk in your own language, which is carrying the advantage. You don't have to do do anything.

You can always behind hide behind the inability of not talking this language which the meeting is run in, which I was also using for quite a while, I have to admit. So I was pissed with a a because nobody was working the broken. I wanted it to be work. So I took the steps took them to myself like my possession. I would run around, work the steps, work the steps, work the steps not to the best of my ability. As I learned very fast, my ability suck.

And

you know also your people say God doesn't give me more than I can handle and that's not true.

If God would only give me as much as I can handle, why would I then ask him to help me? If he just gives me as much as I can, I wouldn't need him. He gives me far more than I can handle. So I have to ask him. So what happened then is, I mean, I had understood

and learned not the basics about the program that I have to do something like doing the inventory, being rigorously honest, writing everything down, discussing with another human being and God. But what then happened is no matter how hard I tried, I was still in the eye program. I had the steps now, but I had no fellowship. So what happened was I felt a bit better for a while, for a few years, just, and eventually

I began going down again, sliding down again. You know, the demons came back. I had the fear attacks all of a sudden again, not so bad that I had to hide under a bed or somewhere, but bad enough to make life miserable. And I didn't know what to do. So I was trying to work the steps harder, put more effort in the inventory. We're riding the inventory.

All this reading more, but staying away from meetings. I had one particular meeting that I still like to go to where people didn't want to work the steps the way I would have wanted them to work the steps. So I became a ruler of the meeting. The difference between leading and governing is the one who governs makes principles. A leader follows principles, and I did both. I made the principles that later on I was following.

And you know, I wanted to, I mean, I was well meaning, but what I was not doing, I was not trying to help.

I was not trying to identify myself with the people. And you know, if you're living in a certain limited space, the way I was down there in Munich and still AM,

I eventually came again through help to the point I have to do something about it because I need two different things. I need to work the steps which basically helped me to change. But I also have to live in a community, in a fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous because it is here where I can do the work, where I can basically share with you what I have seen so far, what I used to be like. And this was no good, what happened, which was no good. And

I'm like, now, which is much better. The truth is that's my experience. It's not enough to just go to meetings and sit there. You know, when I have a problem, a physical problem, and I go to my doctor, I don't just talk to my doctor about the problem. Now, if he tells me do something about it and I come back a week later just talking about it, it doesn't solve any problem to just talking about them. I have to do something about them. And it's not I, it's not me alone. It is we we have to work it together

and that's why it is so important that we all have the same understanding and the same principles by which we live here in our society. That's why it is so important that we all know what it means to be an alcoholic, what it means to be powerless, that we also encourage each other to talk about the real problems that we have. Not bringing a shell into a meeting, you know, like this empty suit that I was, you know, bearing, looking good, just presenting to everybody how good I feel like good I'm doing a great everything is walking outside the meeting and usually takes

5 minutes until my the bus stop. And I want to kill people already. Because, you know, it happened to me often enough that I would go to meetings just to make you believe I'm doing well because I didn't have the courage to talk about the real problems that I'm having because everybody else was just talking about how great life is. I always felt like an idiot, like a dumb idiot when I went to meetings and everybody was saying how great they feel and I didn't believe a single word I was hearing. I mean people with like a few months of surprise that everything back and they felt

dancing and whatnot all and I was saying Jesus, why don't I have this? Why don't I have all this until I eventually found out they are lying as good as I was lying the whole time.

It's sad in a way. It's sad in a way. But I mean, my experience is today when I'm going to meetings and talk about those fears that I have within the fellowship, within meetings, that I can sit in meetings feeling alone, totally alone, that people identify with that,

you know, I always thought the last days of my drinking were extremely marked by fear. Feel like I never had it before my whole life. When alcohol stopped working, I thought I knew everything about fear. It took me 5 1/2 years of sobriety to learn what real fear is. I had reached such a point where suicide did not look like an option anymore. I mean I was afraid if I take my life, if I end my life, if I commit suicide, things would get worse.

And you know that's nothing, you know committing suicide and people say don't talk about it. Why not? I mean many people commit suicide, especially when they are sober. People say it's easier to stay sober than to get sober. If that would be true, we wouldn't have as many relapses as we have. I mean the success rate is so low, I would not buy a car if the car would have a success rate of 5% because 5% of us negative in the long term sobriety. I wouldn't even walk near a stream if cars would have the same success rate that

so there must be something wrong with this statement that it's easier to stay so but then to get sober. It's simply wrong. It's not easy to stay sober. It's not even a never ending pink cloud. Things are good and get bad again, get worse again. Now I always thought, yeah, eventually it's about better thinking, better living, not being our service, praying to Courtyard. And I eventually forgot about the fact that it all comes down to not drinking. Our primary purpose is to stay sober and have other Alcoholics achieve sobriety.

So

the moment I come back to this, that I know what it really is, what it is about the staying sober. And I don't stay sober just because I moved my ass into a meeting. Like people say, if you want to take a drink, move your ass into a meeting. It's not even the last thing that I would do if I want to take a drink. Call your sponsor before you drink, not after your drink. If I want to take a drink, I don't call my sponsor. Not because I know what he's going to say. That's not on my mind anymore when I take a drink. I'm an obsession. Like being said earlier is a thought. Excluding all else, including recovery, I don't

about anything. If I want to take a drink, I take that drink no matter where I am. And I mean, when I was living in Asia, I was normally drinking only the good beer, the good stuff. In Asia, I would drink beer. You open the can and you had the feeling it was taken out of the toilet. That's how it smelled. What? This stopped me from drinking it. No, I drank it no matter what. If I want to drink, I drink no matter what. And I had to learn,