The topic "How to handle a wet drunk" at the EURYPAA convention in Copenhagen, Denmark

Welcome to this How to handle a Web meeting of Europa 2012.

My name is so on and I'm an alcoholic from Denmark.

Can we start the meeting with a short period of silence please?

Thank you. This is an AA preamble. Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism.

The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking.

There are no use of fees for a A membership. We are self supporting through our own contributions. A A is not allied with any sects, denomination, politics, organization or institution. Does not wish to engage in any Conservancy. Neither endorses nor opposes any causes. Our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other Alcoholics to achieve sobriety.

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This meeting is recorded. When sharing, please only identify with your first name and the city you are from.

This is a panel presentation. We will begin with the speaker sharing on the topic for about 40 minutes, followed by an open sharing. While the meeting are open for anyone to attend, participation is limited to those who have decided to stop drinking. Please welcome our speaker at New from Iceland

Alcoholic.

The, The reason I sit here today is because I,

I know a few people in the EPA thing in, in Scandinavia and they were asking for people to speak and I was helping them finding speakers and, and, and one day they asked me to speak.

I when I was asked to speak, I was I was asked to speak on the topic of working with others and I

want want to see staying Member was asked how to prepare for these things. He did a lot of weekends,

whole weekend speaking, whole weekends. And he he's answered that by well, you start first drink whiskey for 20 years. That's a good start.

What I'm about to say is, is is when I when I got here, the topic had been changed to how to handle a wet and I, and it's that that sentence is missing a noun. So my first thought was how to handle a wet bed and, and Wet, Wet, Wet ears and wet water, whatever.

Because I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm in a, because I, I and I'm still an, A member, because

I'm a past sweater. I'm a puker. I'm a, I'm a, I'm a bum. I am a, I'm a man that sacrificed his life for to, to put my life on pass for the next weekend. And that paused my dreams, that paused my hopes, that paused my everything. And

I, I get into a A and I, I don't know what the fuck is wrong with you people. I had seen the steps on the wall a few years before and I just knew that I was bullshit and I

I had nothing to. I woke up November 13th of 2000. It was one of those days.

I couldn't get out of bed, I couldn't stay in bed. I couldn't stand. I couldn't sit. I couldn't,

I could do, you know, I could smoke a cigarette, but I couldn't get anything out of it. I it was like I was in, in. Yeah, I was in, in, in.

I was thinking and

on Wednesday I go to meet our friend for a job and and she asks me are you an alcoholic and and here I am.

She sends me to an open AA meeting and there was this blonde middle-aged lady there speaking about

being arrested and doing prison time and

doing cocaine and go fleeing the country, going to America. And

I, I had no clue. I had no clue. I had no clue what A was about. I had no clue about anything. But I thought I knew.

After five months of waiting for nothing to happen,

I gave up and I walked into this just bumped into the sky at a meeting that I didn't attend to. Just went there after the meeting. I was desperation. I know what desperation is. It's a state of mind. It's it's everything was telling me go work steps. Everything, the graffiti,

throw away, chewing gum, everything.

And I walked into this meeting and this guy who had asked me how I was doing or something on a previous meeting, he, I asked him how to help me.

Yeah. Just to to show me what this, that bullshit looks like, to give you a pretty direct translation. And, and we started reading the book

and I didn't know what we were doing, really. We were reading this book and this Bill guy and this alcoholism. And there's a physical IG and there's a mental obsession and there's this,

I don't really know. And in one session, I, I, before one session I had had, I had written this, this critique for a, for a, for a magazine called Sound about the Sebastian album

called Tiger Milk. And, and the critique I, I wrote with my, with my brother-in-law and, and, and it was basically

homosexual crisis of, of some sort music. And, and, and I saw that CD in, in my sponsors

living room when he was making tea and, and, and we read something from the pic book. And then he said, now it's time to slaughter the hen. And he went down on his knees and we did the such that prayer. And, and a few weeks later we are reading from the big book and, and I would like to read that for you. And it goes something like it went something like this

practical experience shows that nothing

will so much ensure immunity from drinking as intensive work with other Alcoholics. It works when other activities fail. And then he said stop stop, stop, stop, stop.

What was that? Read those again. Practical experience shows that nothing will so much ensure immunity from drinking as intensive work with other Alcoholics. It works when other activities.

What do you think that means?

Because I didn't know how I I knew that. I knew that there were guys in AA that raised their hand.

They raised their hand at the end of the meeting and I thought, who the fuck do they think they are?

And my thought when I came to a A was people were asking me if I had a sponsor, if I had, if I had, you know, I bought the big book, if I how I was doing, you know, really tough questions. And, and, and, and, and who do they think they are?

And I, I remember thinking one of two things in meetings or something that was a mix of that guy's, that guy is gay. Back then I thought that was a really bad thing. And, and, and that guy is full of shit.

That guy is, is faking spiritual experience.

That guy's blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I was judging people and I thought because I'm I'm so judgmental, I'm so I'm so I'm such an asshole, right? Really, I'm such an asshole. I, I know how everything should be, how everybody should be, how everyone should think. However, everything and, and

I, I, you know, he, he, he had me read this and he said after we read working with others, he, he, my sponsor said, now it's your time. And I didn't know how.

And it wasn't humility, you know,

don't do the false humility, kids.

And especially with wet drugs.

I, I,

I, I went out and I, I started raising my hand really at meetings, people are asking for sponsors and it's not that tough. Let me see if can you raise your hand. It it doesn't really, you know, it's, it's, it's easy.

It's, it's most people can do it. I know one name member that doesn't have any hands and and he still sponsors.

You know,

you don't really have to raise your hand to sponsor people

and and I I nobody was taking, you know, this doesn't do anything really.

This is and this isn't, this isn't Herbalife. This isn't this isn't multi level marketing.

It's not a it's not a chain system where everybody's waiting to get into your level in the line or or or some bullshit like that. It it's

people. I didn't go to that guy

because, you know, he had, you know, he just showed me some attention at a meeting and that's the truth. That's the only reason I, I asked him,

I wasn't able to make adjustment call about his level quality of sobriety or I got lucky. I can tell you that that guy has, has, you know, I've after 17 months over I, I was, you know, really dishonest relationship. And, and I, I was,

I called him crying,

just crying. And, you know, knowing that I was going to a bar in Reykjavik,

I just knew. And I was not crying because of the girl and the relationship. Not only I was also crying because I was going to that bar and I couldn't stop it. And I called him and, and, and he, he directed me another way to the West of Reykjavik and, and, and I, I was lucky with a sponsor. But

he, he's of the opinion that, and this is not my opinion. My opinion is really complex. And the most dangerous thing in a, a, he says is or said was, was that we have something other to work with on the pic book That when we're working with newcomers or we're, we are, we are doing a a, that we have some other sponsor manual than the big book. There is a lot of other helpful stuff.

Physiotherapy has saved my back,

you know, I've been assaulted three times by a members,

you know, getting so stiff in my in my neck I couldn't turn my head right as I'm doing now. But I still have pain.

There's a lot of good stuff out there,

but I'm raised in a believing that we use the book and there's good stuff in the book.

What are we supposed to do? And if I if I read here from from it's in the second chapter, it's it's it's really early in the book. It says highly competent psychiatrists who have dust with us have found it sometimes impossible, impossible to persuade an alcoholic to discuss the situation without reserve. Strangely enough, wives, parents or and intimate friends usually find us even more unapproachable than do the psychiatrist and the doctor. And then we have

italicized, which means important in the book, just for your reference. But the X problem drinker who has found this solution, who is properly armed with the facts about himself, can generally win the entire confidence of another alcoholic in a few hours. Until such an understanding is reached, little or nothing can be accomplished.

That's my job description.

That is my job description. You know, I, and to give you, to give you one opinion, I, I believe that the most important thing we have and the most important if there's a requirement for working with others, the I think, I think we have three requirements. We need time. If we don't have time,

it doesn't matter

how great our story is, how great our recovery is. We are not able to be of help. Time is the most important thing. And these guys will call you in the middle of the night and they will call you crying. They will call you drunk. They will call you about to drink. They will SMS you about things and you will have you know, I've you know, I've gotten SMSS about when you read this, SMSI will be have begun drinking my first beer and and and you know, shit like that.

They are drama creatures. The God damn they they are traumatic

just like the rest of us. Yeah, just like the rest of us. Absolutely. The second most important thing is to have fucked up your life. I qualify

because I I, I believe strongly in in not being like Moses of the Bible,

walking down the mountain with the stone tablets and telling the people how to live. I believe strongly that this is not the way a is supposed to be done. We are not here to tell people how to live. We are showing them a way to live

and I am not doing this because I am better than or I the only reason that I am at a meetings is that I believe I lost the power of choice and drink and it has never come back. I have, you know, I can go into philosophy for a long time about choice and not no choice and and and and real choice and whatever. But

I think I need to be an A, A member to have sobriety.

And

the third most important thing is to have done something about it. If you have done something about it, you have something to share.

If you have written inventory, you can tell an alcoholic how to write inventory,

even if you're doing it wrong.

A wrong, badly written inventory is better than no inventory at all, just like having time is better than not having time.

I, my first 12 step call was, was we're at the Eleanor Club and, and, and my, my, my stepbrother and I, we are dragged into, yeah, we are asked if we can go on a 12 step call and we're seeing a lady. She's been shooting speed for 25 years. At that time, to the best of my knowledge, she's still alive and she's still shooting speed

and

it's just next door to the club, literally just across the street.

And

I didn't really realize what I was doing there. I was just being an A member going in a 12 step call, didn't know what I was doing. I fell asleep on the sofa and the sofa was full of needles and, and shit and, and wasn't pretty. But

I started trying, raising my hand at meetings and nobody would take, nobody would, you know, come up to me because I, I look like a serial killer basically. I, I, I, I, I wasn't, you know, I didn't look sober. I, I had no money. I had no,

you know, sense of how to dress. I I, I, I still thought that that going to get a tan was, was some, that something that other people did And, and I was, yeah, I was still a bit crazy. And, and I

and I went to my sponsor and he said, why are you asking them?

Why are you waiting for them? They're sick.

Just back to up to the next kind and tell them I'm your sponsor. And I did, and

yeah, and that worked with some and it didn't with other some. Some guys got really paranoid

and, and, and who can blame them really?

I, I got a correspondency and I showed her how to read inventory, write inventory. I didn't know how to write inventory myself. I just did something and and he didn't and, and, and in his sister. I fell asleep and and and woke up and and and we I just did something but.

Is that that Lady that was shooting up on speed?

I had a few, few ideas about alcoholism and that lately helped me

at a point in time, some maybe two years over maybe three years, I don't know.

I, I'm in a meeting and I've, I had this thing that I in the beginning, I didn't know if I was an alcoholic because I'd never really wanted to stop really. I just didn't remember.

I'm standing at the podium and I'm saying who really wanted to stop?

Who really wanted to stop it still

picked up.

She raised her hand.

There's a description in the chapter to the wives that about

the first husband and the second husband and 3rd husband and the 4th husband and levels of alcoholism.

And you know, I'm score a full house

for one husband one and two, a lot of the three and all of those thinking about that stuff, you know, because I've never had anything to lose really. You know, it's just a

punk. I was, I was a, I was a useless piece of shit, really.

I never had anyone, any friends to betray or, or nothing really. You know, not as much as a lot of other people, but but I flipped that around. What do I need to do to stay sober?

And I, I find that in description of each individual husband and and husband #1 is not an alcoholic, by the way,

that I need to to work a do a, a

as seriously as someone who has really, you know,

to give you an example

of a friend of mine who has betrayed his friend, lied to the to the yeah, whatever that he not him, but his friend had stolen money and proven the point by using the key that his friend gave him to the to his apartment is sneaking into his apartment in the middle of the night and shooting his knees off with a shotgun.

Yeah, I've never done that.

I'm sorry, I'm not enough call. No, I've never done that. But, but I know that, you know, I know that that if overeater, he needs to go to OA and he will find the solution in OA.

I know that an Al Anon member can find a solution in Al Anon,

but a is not really the solution for me as a kind of a special. No, it's I, I found that this lady and and and and and a bunch of there was a, there was a guy that was with meetings with me. His name, his name was criminally He, he was staying at the at the halfway House of just down the street from the club and and he was at the meetings and I met him outside of outside of a shop

and and we stopped and I had nothing to tell him.

He was sober, clean, sober.

Two days later, he overdosed and died at the halfway house.

And not knowing, you know, you know, this, this, this whole thing of waiting for the, for the newcomer to sober up and come to a, a where he is in a position where you have something to tell him, something to say. If you, you know, I have to be effective. I, I can't control how effective I am, but I have to,

you know, when, when, when, when I'm, I'm another story. I'm listening to inventory. This guy is, is, is sitting in my living room and he's reading, reading his inventory and, and he's going through all the, all the things and it's mostly women.

He's been sober for a while. It's mostly women

and, and this lady in this lady in this lady. And he made it was some kind of a of a crusade or something. And and that he was on sober and, and, and I'm sitting in in the living room and I know that I, I know exactly what his what, what I'm supposed to say, but I can't say it because I'm not current on my immense because up the street it takes literally 3 minutes to walk. It's a house

with a lift up lady I had, you know.

Yeah, no, we were not together, but we met at a bar kind of a thing. And

bullshit it. And I hadn't made the approach. I couldn't say anything. Making amends is

extremely important to not feeling like a guest in a a it's extremely important in, in being effective because you know that that you know that that guy that you're sponsoring, he needs to he needs to go the whole way. He needs to, to do make every amendment. You you, you can't really tell him because you know that you would be a lying son of a bitch if you did because you're not current on your Mens

and at that time I just knew that I had to do that. We, he said, I,

I didn't know what to say, you know, and I said, OK, let's go. And we, we went, we went outside. We walked up the street and I tried my best to find that, that Lady, I didn't find her. She probably, she, she moved. She didn't live there anymore.

We went back to my living room and we finished the fifth step.

And, and, and it's the same way with, with, with, you know, if you're not, if you're not sure about what alcoholism is, you can't really, you know that Lady shooting up on speed. You don't know, you don't really know, you don't understand. If you don't know what else, if alcoholism is something, if, if the 12 step is something that you want to have neat, so neat and fixed and and and and and packed into to a package with ribbons and, and and you want, you want something that is really clean and and nice,

then then you know you,

you don't understand alcoholism. That's my opinion. Sorry, I'm an opinionated asshole. That's being an asshole. Is is a human right. Then if I don't use my human rights, they will take it away.

I, I found that I, I, you know, that guy, he, he, he died. I think that if I had, you know, been more current on my immense, I could have talked to him. I might have saved him, you know, And that's, that's, that's, that's the, the stages of sorrow thing

really, really well documented in psychology. You know, my aunt, she killed herself two weeks before that. She asked me to scan these pictures. I didn't. I automatically thought that they that, that if I had scanned the picture, she might not have killed herself.

You know, you, you have these people and, and they, and they become a part of you. They, they're, they're, they're in the in your meeting. They are, they are around you and

and and I, I have to know how I can be effective and, and and making amends and and and and and making and and being willing to to

do what it takes. Really. I've, I've, it's, it breaks my heart because thinking about what I was going to say today was most of these guys are dead.

They're just dead.

I, you know, I've, I've

and some of them aren't

when I talk to these guys, I,

there's one guy who he comes to, comes into a he's sober, goes to rehab, comes into a, he doesn't know what to, you know, what a is about and he's really confused and he's going out to see, to make a lot of money. You know, he's getting a a million and a half, two and a two and a half million per month. Icelandic. That's a lot of money and, and

he he comes back to shore and he drinks

again and again and again or start scambling and a bunch of other things.

I don't know what to tell that guy until one day I moved to tell him. I have, I have my story. My story is, you know, I drank in Iceland, I moved to Denmark, blah, blah, blah. Then I have something that I call an Icelandic Paris, Parisanga, a special story. I believe then that there is another level called special. Special stories that you don't say in mixed company.

It makes people freak out. They go what the fuck?

And it's, it doesn't involve other people. Usually it's just me doing something really fucked up. And I told them one of the one of those stories and, and, and he understood. He understood. I, I told him

he was crazy drunk kind of coming down from something at a meeting and I tell him, tell him a story and, and a, a story that I don't, I will absolutely not share on tape.

And,

and he understood, he understood that I wasn't really, I wasn't coming down the mountain with the stone tablets and telling him how to live his life and you should meditate and you should write inventory and you should make coffee, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm telling him my story like it really is that I am really sick

or I was. I'm coming from that same place

and he's, you know, it turned on a light. I the first thing we did in in, in staff work was going to his house that he bought with no flooring. He had bought the, bought the, bought the flooring and, and, and and and

he hadn't put anything down. It was all, yeah, it was all a mess. And we, we did, we did his floors and it took a day and, and my knees were so shot after that.

And he made his immense,

you know, this, this crazy lunatic guy who didn't know how to, how to handle sobriety for more than a few weeks at a time. He, he did something because I shared something with them. I shared something with him.

Another guy, one of the one of the homeless guys in, in, in Iceland, He I was, you know, I was attacking him along and, and he was taking along and, and I did something that I do with the guys. I take him down to the lake and Rick and I and I, I show him the world from a different angle. He died,

but I heard later that that

and that was the only meditation that he had ever done

and he was never sober enough. You know, was never a sober in meetings. He was never anything

but somebody,

somebody. And you know, it's, it's, I was there to, to show him the world, to show him meditation from a really easy angle.

And

the, some of some of these guys, you know, you, you track them, you track, you'll find the drunk guy and you, you drag him home because you, you have time. You're single, you don't have any kids. You don't, you're chronically fucking single, but

and, and he detoxes and detoxing from alcohol is, is dangerous stuff. And he's flapping, flapping on the floor and, and, and, and like a fishing and cramps and shit and, and you don't know what the fuck to do. And so you call the ambulance and the ambulance counselling. He said, Oh, it's you. Oh, we can't do anything for him. And they leave and the cramps finish and, and, and you and I talk to the to the, to the doctor for I think an hour and a half about how fucked up the system was that somebody's getting a cramp and he's dying on your floor or something. It could be dying,

you know, And that guy, you know, he never got sober.

He, he, he, you know,

and but that's not the point. The point is not that that I got a sponsor. Somebody got a sponsor.

You know you will not find in this book anything about Get a sponsor.

You will find a lot of stuff about get somebody to work with. I will not sponsor anyone today. I will not offer to be anybody's sponsor and unless they ask me, but I will offer to work with them. I will offer to go through the book. I hate that label. I'm nothing special. I'm an opinionating asshole. I'm so opinionated that people leave when I talk,

you know, I'm, I'm, I'm not trying to be perfect. I've tried perfect too. Meditating 45 minutes a morning and meditating 45 minutes a night. And, and, and being so, you know,

getting so crazy in that stuff that it, you know, I dropped it. I dropped it. I, you know, it's, it's not about being perfect, even it's, you know, like the, like we used to say, you know, before I got sober, nobody's perfect. It's it's,

it's about making an effort because my sobriety is contingent on working with others.

The paperwork steps one through 9 and and whatever.

It's just a formality. It's just a formality.

It's not something, it's not an end to itself. Making your amends is a luxury. It's a God damn luxury

to make you more effective to work with others, which is, you know, if if you wait for if you wait, if you spread out step one through 9 through your whole life.

Think about it,

I know some people are doing that properly in this room too. You know, using step 9 as a pest dispenser. You know you you do 1 amends and just to feel great and so you keep a stack of them. How about life after everything with nothing

on your back, nothing on your back and going to someone who has just as fucked up as you are or even more and and telling them

it's a luxury. I don't. There are no, there are no.

There's nothing hidden.

I-11 guy. I, I one other guy, he called me from the psych ward. He probably called a bunch of other guys that didn't answer the phone. I answered the phone. He's in the psych court. I had gone to his house a few days before and, and where he was watching TV on mute doing ketamine and smoking cigarettes. And he's just staring at the wall and, and, and, and when I said something, he just looked at me.

He calls me a few days later from the hospital and, and, and he's off the ketamine and, and, and you know, his girlfriend threw him out and, and and

and he stayed on my sofa

and for the next few weeks he slept in my little disgusting room where I lived.

And he did his immense, he did established and I'm driving him around the city because they took away his driver's license and he's making his amends. And I'm on on one of my amends, one of his immense. I'm I'm saying I'm sitting in the car next to a house I set on fire.

Working with others will get you through the program. And then you have the bright boy of wonders to somebody that comes in and he gets it and he, he raises it to through his immense and, and, and he's getting ahead of you. And then pride will come in and tell you, Hey, hey, he's going further than you have. You know, it all works together. I think that working with others and and

and and as you know,

one guy, it helps you do, you know, helps you make your amends and working with Yeah. And doing your immense shows you how you can be more effective working with others. I think that's it's, it's a yeah, it's, it's a there are two spokes on a wheel.

One guy. He he, he. He's dead too.

His name was Danny.

Danny Tyler. He was, he was, he was shooting up on on on Dramamine. It's not a pretty, pretty sight.

And we kind of, we kind of trick him to come home and he's there and he doesn't, you know, it's not a prejudice. You know, it's, it's fucking disgusting. You know, Dramamine is not made for injection at all. And he has this big brown marks all over his body. And we're just counting the seconds until he has to be amputated. And the day after, he comes there holding a subway outside our door and he's crying.

He's just crying, crying, crying, crying. And, and we take him in. He, he, the subway goes all over the place and, and he's just hitting there and crying, crying, crying. And then when he stops crying, he starts to talk to people that are not in the room.

And you don't know what to do about that. You don't know. I've learned not to play doctor. It's not, it's not good for me to play doctor. I have an opinion about a lot of things about drugs given to people and kids and, and shit. I tried to keep that out of the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, you know, sitting, you know, meeting a guy outside the psychwork And he's he's, you know, he was in a A10 years ago, but he was told that he wasn't sober because he was doing doing drugs

to doing talk to prescribe drugs, pro SAC or whatever.

And who the fuck do we think we are that to throw these people out? You know,

if he has an honest desire to stop drinking, why don't what? What the hell? You know, it makes me angry because, and it makes me sad too, because I was just judgmental about that as, as those people were ten years ago.

This one, this is one guy that

pull my hands up and I,

I, I'm out in the country where he lived. And, and I'm, I'm there's a conference and I'm speaking and, and, and I, I go on a long walk through town with him and we're talking and he's asking questions and he's asking questions and what about this and what, how does this work? This work? And

and

he he comes to Reykjavik and, and he starts doing his immense and he drinks again and and comes back in and, and working on his immense and.

And he did a lot of the immense, a lot of the school stuff, a lot of the money stuff, a lot of the stuff. But he never did his family. One night he's he calls me in the middle of the night, 5:00 or something. He's sitting outside outside a house.

His wife and kids at home

is drinking

and he was thinking about going back to that guy again who will fuck him in the ass

just to feel something.

Some K2 that really likes, you know, him

and that that this friend of mine, he's not gay, but he will do. He would do that

and, you know, going to see him the day after and he's,

you know,

and watching someone like that

finish his immense

and difficult family events

and start to grow, he started to understand things that he could never understand before. He thought it was really dumb. He wasn't. He was just, you know, he just had a story that that was just in the way of,

of, you know, intelligence really.

And those guys, they are heartwarming. It's good to know that he's doing great. He's doing great. He's a, he's a, he's a husband and a father and he's doing great.

Another guy he, we used to take turns, the guys turns guys to drive into rehab. He was 50s odd something and he was living with his mom who never stayed at home because he, he was drinking there all the time. And, and this my my specialty was getting him in the car to, to go to rehab without having a beer in the car. The other guys bought beers to get him into the car and, and, and we're driving to the rehab from,

from, from out of one of the suburbs and, and he's he's

there and he's telling me that he'll never get sober. He stays, gets over, he'll never get sober. He's done something really, really horrible,

something so horrible that he never, he can never get sober.

And we're just 100 meters from the rehab when I finally get him to tell me what he had done. He has done. And he looks at me drunk out of his mind and he's he says

I killed a man.

What he has had done, I learned later was that he had taken his his uncle what abused him sexually taking him out to the to the to the lava fields outside of Reykjavik and just executed him.

And I drive them in I without missing a beat, I tell them the most horrible thing I've ever done again, something that you don't see around tape. And he looked at me and he said, how could you do it?

Before I left Iceland to move to to Oslo, where I live now, I went to a bunch of meetings that I usually don't go to.

I met him there,

he's sober and I had some role in that. I'd been sponsoring him. I didn't fix him, I didn't do anything, but I played a role and I think that is what A is about. It takes a village to raise a child.

It's OK to talk to somebody who is new, even though you're not a sponsor,

you know? Talk to him

telling their story and and in private conversation. Tell them everything.

Trust them. If they if you want them to trust you, trust them.

Tell them. Tell them where you're coming from. Tell them what, what, what this is about. Tell them about stories of the guys that died. Tell them, tell them about your victories, your your losses, your everything. I I think, I think that is, yeah, that's what I have.

I've got. OK, well done.

The meeting is now open for questions and answers all comments we ask that you limit your share to three minutes brain alcoholic from Boise, ID I'm Brian just as you were as you were speaking. I know I've been around many places in the States and some there's quite an availability for detox, rehab, dropping people off at the hospital and

you know, so when you have a wet one that is that is willing, that needs help getting

being sober. And actually where I live now though, there's like one place that you can bring them and the hospitals don't like it when you just come into an emergency room and drop them off and they get stuck with the bill. So how available is is like rehab and detox here and maybe in Reykjavik as well. Rehab is free or he talks is free. So, you know,

Alcoholics need all the help they can get from anyone really

from family members, from, from, from doctors, from psychiatrists, whatever. You know, I, of course we have an opinion what they should, what they need to do. But what the hell, you know, in in Iceland, you if you go into your first rehab, you will get in there in a matter of hours or days. If you're going for the

fifth time this year, you might have to wait a few days.

Yeah, you might have to wait a couple of weeks. If you're doing. If you're going for the 100th time in your life, you might have a seat. Have a bet just for you. You know, it's all different. There are different places that that do different things, like the Cyclord Hospital will. There was a trick to get people in there.

Just tell him, go in there and tell him that you're going to kill yourself.

And, and, and, you know, some of us are, are, are labeled as crazy and then we have to go to this, this facility. And, and some of us are some, you know, there are a lot of places that will help

in Iceland at least. And, but sometimes they, I, you know, getting sober is not that hot. I'll let's talk about that after the meeting, But that's, it's not that hard not picking up again. That's a trick, you know, and, and, and they have a certain willingness, work with that willingness that they have. If they're only willing to do service and they tell you, no, I'm, I'm not working the steps, but I'll do survey just poor service on them. If they don't have hands, they don't do the cops. But you know,

you know, they can

do anything. That that guy with no hands, he was a greeter. You know, he's a car today,

he's driving this car, you know, doing fine. You know, everybody can do anything, everything.

Hello, my name is Bertram and alcoholic from Copenhagen. I would like to know I'm, I'm working with a guy working, stopped working, working, stop working. There was a guy who is really, I mean he's not capable of getting or getting sober at all. I mean, I've, I've been knowing him for a year by now and, and he still continuously lying about if he has been drinking or not, has been drinking and I just, I, you know,