9th Annual Southwest Unity Confrence at the Quartz Mountain Lodge in Lone Wolf, OK

Sure is quiet in here.

I came to lunch and I saw what was going on and I heard the speaker and I was all nervous because the room was so big and so many people. And so my power had a plan for me and I'm feeling very much more comfortable now.

My name is Ian Rab and I'm alcoholic

and I'm from Winnipeg, MB, Canada. I go to the university group and I have a sponsor. His name's Tom G and

I'm sometimes wondering how I got here. Not into AA, but to Buffalo. I was,

I was introduced to Mark and and Allison a few years ago. I came to to Buffalo to do a retreat for lawyers in a a because my sponsors a lawyer and I was uncomfortable there because I was, I was an ex doctor. I'm not a I'm not practicing anymore. As you'll see as I get on into my talk. I, I, I have a little bit of ADD like the woman this morning and I was an optometrist. So sitting in a dark room all day saying what looks better, one or two,

three or four, was just not my thing. So I've gone on to bigger and better things. I tell my dad all the time. I said it was just a 300,000 mistake, that's all.

I did it for them anyway. So, so I came here for the, for this retreat that we, we spoke to a bunch of lawyers and I was, you know, my sponsors a lawyer. And that's unfortunate.

I had to listen a lot. He talks a lot and I listened a lot. But I learned a few things in in the time that I've been listening to him. And that's kind of what I was asked to come and share about.

He's he's 50 years sober. He's 93 years old. He's still active in Alcoholics Anonymous and and he spent a lot of time

of clearly working with Alcoholics and addicts. I, I said yesterday when I introduced myself at dinner that I was a meth addict that suffered from alcoholism.

One of the biggest frustrations that I've felt in my, my, I've been sober since July the 7th, 2001 in my years in, in, in a, in coming in AA is that, and one thing that's been drilled into my head is that I have one problem that includes all problems. And, and once I had to, under, I had to understand and identify as an alcoholic. And then once I did that, it didn't matter what my problem was. It didn't matter if it was alcohol or meth or whatever I did. Meth brought me here. I behaved like an alcoholic since I was a very young age. I had a very hard time

coming to the to the understanding of what alcoholism was. It was I was that defiant kid that got into a that would come and say I'm an alcoholic addict just to piss off the old timers in the room because I was an addict too, you know, and,

but it took a lot of work and a lot of understanding and through my clearly, through my sponsors, a number of years in working really closely in the fellowship, I've come to understand what alcoholism is. And, and the most important thing that I learned is that it's nothing has nothing to do with alcohol at all. He used to say, and I and I I've stolen it from him, is that if you take, you know, the big book says alcohol cunning, baffling and powerful. But if you took a bottle of alcohol to the National Research Council of Canada or whatever Research Council, United States and he said, can you analyze what

in this bottle? You wouldn't get a letter back saying inside this bottle is something that's cutting, baffling and powerful. You'd it would say there's alcohol and there's water and they would tell us what the ingredients were. So why, what was the impact of alcohol in my life? And it wasn't alcohol. And that's what I had to learn that the substance had no bearing on what my problem was. Booze was not was not my problem. So the question I was asked a question a long time ago and, and

by this, this, this idea of conscious separation and conscious unity, which I'll get into and get into the background and the understanding of it.

The question I was asked is what do we recover? We call this recovery. And I've asked that question numerous times and so many people can't answer what it is that we recover. So I'm going to get into my talk and I'll ask the question again and hopefully it'll be answered.

A is so simple. Alcoholism is so simple.

I we complicate everything my sponsor said and he says over and over and I'm, I see him on a regularly a regular basis, weekly, a few times a week. And every time we get together, at some point in our conversation, he breaks into this, this monologue of you have one problem that includes all problems.

And then he says there's one answer that includes all answers. So clearly in my talk, conscious separation is the problem and the answer is conscious unity. But obviously it's really hard to get from point A to point B without some understanding.

I remember going to him early in recovery and I continually went to him and, and he got it from his sponsor. But I go to him and I'd say, you know, I really need to talk to you about a problem I'm having.

And he looked to me and said you have no problems. You are the goddamn problem. Problem. He'd say that over and over. You don't have a problem, you are the problem. And I never understood that for a very long time. And so I think it's really clear, important to understand that I was the problem. And what does that mean? It was really difficult to understand for a long time.

Want a really important and really important part of my recovery and early recovery and the first time and my first sponsor who happens to live in Niagara Falls is here tonight, Kevin. So I can't lie about anything. He knows my early recovery. Thanks for coming

his identification and the clue. The most important thing for a newly recovering alcoholic erratic is to identify my sponsor at the time when I first got sober. When I first met Tom, my current sponsor, I went to a meeting that he had and, and we were talking and he would talk. He was talking about his life and he was, you know, at the time he was 84.

He was a specialist. He'd never tried drugs. He was a pure alcoholic. I'd come in as a unique crystal meth addict. I was very different than everybody, much better than Alcoholics. Like, you know, I just thought I was so much. My ego was so huge

that I thought I was better than Alcoholics. Didn't want to be one. But he started talking about his his life as a child, growing up in a family of four kids. He's an 85 year old. Very different times. You know, my dad used to take me in the car to dress for hockey. He went in horses and buggies to hockey games. Like that was it was a real different time. But he talked about how he felt as a kid, and he talked about being,

you know, born into a privileged family, a great mother and father, great siblings,

and never feeling a part of that family and always feeling adopted and never feeling like he was in the right place. And wherever he went, he felt what we call consciously separated. He felt disconnected from life, from everything good in life, from God, from love, from life, from family, from everything in life.

So it was really interesting because here I was, you know, a little bit about myself. I, you know, I, I, I grew up in this upper middle class family. I grew up privileged. I grew up, I have an older brother and sister. I'm much younger. I like to blame all my problems while my mother or my brother, depending on my mood. But I, I grew up in this family and I, I, I felt this, I'm cut this, this separation from them. I was about 8:00 and 8:00 and 10 years younger than my brother and sister. So I was much younger. So I was a little bit a little bit isolated,

but I didn't know what my problem was. But I did know one thing that for the time I was a little boy, I was searching for something. I remember as early as kindergarten

and in kindergarten, I remembers watching the kids play and looking at them going, something's wrong here. I don't fit in here. Like something's up there playing so good together and like I just felt completely dissociated from everything in my life. Not to say that I didn't have a mask on my whole life. That's that went on forever. I was a very, I wasn't a kid that got in trouble when I was young. I was a good kid. My alcoholism showed itself in achievement and being part of every club, every sports team, everything in school, everything.

And what I've come to realize later in my life, all that stuff was for the attention and the need of my ego, my obsession with self to feel good about myself. And it wasn't real. And it started feeling worse and worse as the time went on because I couldn't get that ego satisfaction. So I've come to understand and I've come to understand clearly that my problem is that feeling of conscious separation, that somehow my spirit, and I'll speak about Carl Jung in a little bit, is cut off from the spirit, disconnected from life, completely

separate from life. And until I got to and got to this program and got busy with these steps, with all the three legacies in AI, didn't understand what I needed to do to get well through all those years of growing up. I, and later in life, in high school, I started understanding and, and feeling that there was a problem. And I, I went to psychiatrists and I, I went to doctors and I, I, I was looking for an answer. I I moved to,

when I graduated high school, I moved to Israel and I joined the army and I thought that's where I'd find the connection.

And I was searching for some kind of power or some kind of fulfillment at that point, and it was never coming.

So that's the common thing. I think that's very common amongst most of us.

So I've come to believe, you know from the help of my sponsor and Alcoholics Anonymous and his 50 years experience, that there's only one problem and that's conscious separation.

We talk a lot in our group about something called the alcoholic obsessed Ego

S an eagle that's obsessed with itself.

I don't know how many times I've in my life and continue go into a room and wonder what everybody's thinking about me. I once asked my dad recently asked my dad recently in the last couple years, I said, when you go to a party, do you walk into the room and start wondering if people think you're dressed OK? Do you walk into a room and wonder if people are looking at you or talking about you? And he said, no, he's an army. He says he walks up to the first person, says hello, go, gets a drink, mingles with people and does not for one second think about himself.

And my whole life was all about that. I was constantly worried about how I felt, what people were thinking. And I was always in my head. It was that that little voice constantly talking to me. Is everything OK here? Are you looking? Are you walking all right? Are you standing all right? Are the clothes you're wearing all right? And I was my power was what everybody else thought of me.

So

I came to understand that with the help of Bill Wilson and many doctors that helped Bill over the years and early in the early years, that the nature of our disease

is not the alcohol, it's not the substance, it's not the gambling, it's not the sex. I always tell this story when I'm telling my story, and this is a little different today. I'm looking at notes because I usually tell my story. I speak a lot, but I don't speak on topics very often.

I was a few years sober and I developed a problem with strawberries and an obsession with strawberries, fresh strawberries. And every night I before I went to bed, I had to go to the grocery store and make sure I had fresh strawberries before bed every night. And this lasted for a long period of time. And you're all looking at me like I'm crazy. And I am, because I understand that the obsession, it doesn't matter how it comes around, but that obsession to make sure I had those strawberries every night was as strong as the obsession for crystal meth or alcohol,

sex or anything else in my life. The obsession is in our life at all times. The obsession with self, that's the major, that's the problem that I suffer from. So what I've come to understand is that it's the obsessed ego. It's that obsession with self that blocks me from any ability to have connection to any power. It blocks me from people, places, things. It blocks me from life. It blocks me from my family. It blocks me from my career. It blocks me from everything

and somehow I had to get rid of that obsession with self. I

Without the power, there's no recovery.

And until the ego is reduced, I'll never be powerless

because it's that ego that, that alcoholic obsession with itself that has blocked me from that stuff. So you have to be at a place I've learned that you've had to be at. You have to be at a place in recovery where you feel powerless enough to accept the the the principles and the understanding of what Alcoholics Anonymous is.

So now I understand that it was my human ego that kept me separate from everything,

everything in life. I walked around my whole life with a huge ego and no self esteem. I pretend that I had millions of masks. I was comfortable everywhere. No one in the world would have thought I had a problem, of course, until the end. But no one in the world for that matter, would have thought I had a problem. I played hockey in college. I had everything going for me. The guys. I went to the International Conference in Toronto and I met one of my childhood friends who had explained to what had happened in my life and where I'd gone. And

I told him how I felt as a kid in all of our relationships, and

he couldn't get it. He thought everybody looked up to you, everybody wanted to be like you. And I was thinking, really, because I didn't want to be like me.

So I've learned that, yeah, huge ego, no self esteem. I walked around looking like I own the world, Chest out, you know, head up. But on the inside I was dying. No self esteem.

So I need to switch directions for a section second here to to really have a look at the problem

that we have a disease that is physical, emotional, mental and spiritual

with only a spiritual answer.

Hard to grasp, especially if you're a physician or a doctor. How does that work? The best example of a doctor that understood this from day one was Doctor Silkworth who wrote the doctor's opinion in the book and he said, this is beyond my synthetic knowledge. This disease is beyond that. But I know something, whatever's happening here, these people, you can absolutely rely on what they're saying and let them his assessment. Everybody thinks the doctor's opinion in the book Big Book of Alcohol is Anonymous was his opinion of alcoholism,

but it was his opinion of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous.

So to understand the problem, we have to look at some of these doctors that Bill came in contact with. Most of you probably know the the story of you probably know the story about Roland Hazard. Or maybe you don't

and Roland Hazard came from a rich family and and ended up going to study or get treated under Carl Jung and was treated under Carl Young for one year for personality disorders. Got on the boat on the way home, got drunk, parents sent him right back to Switzerland for another year of treatment.

What did Carl Young have to do with Alcoholics Anonymous? Well, there's there's Grapevine articles that were written in 1961, correspondence between Bill and Carl Young about the essence of our program and what Carl knew when he treated Roland Hazard and about alcoholism. Carl Young in that article talked about how he was too fearful to talk about what he thought about alcoholism and addiction. The same thing

he said, Something like

alcoholism or addiction is a total spiritual disease symbolic of a deep spiritual problem,

and it demanded some sort of vital spiritual experience, a depth. And he talked about union with God, like actual union with God.

And Carl Jung said that the thirst of an alcoholic or the thirst of an addict or a thirst of a gambler or a thirst of a whatever you want to call us is a thirst for wholeness. And I don't know how many times I've gone to meetings over and over and over over the years where people have said something's missing in my life. I feel empty in my gut. I have had a hole in my gut. I feel disconnected, uncomfortable, consciously separated. And that is the nature of what I believe the problem is. And we have to understand that. So the first of the

thirst for wholeness.

How do we get complete?

You see, somehow in Carlene talks about this, my spirit or our spirits get disconnected from the spirit. Not disconnected necessarily from God, but disconnected from life.

So our thirst is not a thirst through math or food or gambling or shopping.

My biggest problem was mourn somewhere else. Wherever I was, I wanted to be somewhere else. The grass was always greener on the other side. It was always better to be over there. That family was better. That place was better. Wherever I went. It had to be a different place until I got there. And then I wanted to be back where I started. Couldn't understand it. And the other problem was more. Well, I just explained the strawberry story more

so Young explained that somehow we had to have this vital, this vital spiritual experience at depth, this union with God in the medieval sense, whatever that meant. Roland Hazard fell into the OGS, the Oxford Groups, and somehow had that a conversion experience and got sober. And ultimately we know the story, or we should. That later he carried the message to Debbie Thatcher, who carried the message to Bill Wilson and was a great part of the beginning of our fellowship. It's interesting that it was 35 years later that Carl Jung and Bill

with each other and they were able to explain what had happened in both instances. Bill didn't know that.

Young gave Bill in the Grapevine articles. He said There's three possible ways that you can have that vital spiritual experience. Three things that can happen sudden as we always talk about an A a about Bill's sudden white flash

educational higher learning, constant development of higher learning. And the last one he said, was honest communication with friends protected by the wall of human community. Honest communication with friends protected by the walls of human community. And if that is not one of the best definitions of a A you've ever heard in your life, I don't know. So the answers were coming to us way before we had the answer way before the steps, way before the big book. And it was all these little

pieces of of history that developed and Bill got that Bill came in contact with. It was June 30th, 1961, written in the Grapevine.

There's another doctor that's written about an AA comes of age, Harry Tebow. I don't know if anybody ever reads has read that book, but in one of the appendices there's an article written by him and it's page 311 if anybody wants to write that down.

And Harry Tebow

after working with with also with many many Alcoholics. Harry Tebow is a doctor that gave Marty Mann the transcript of the big book before the Big Book was written. Marty Mann was the first woman alcohol in Chicago. She was the first woman that got sober in Alcoholics Anonymous.

I'm going to read directly from page 311 because I think it's really prudent and important to understand what Harry Tebow said, because it was him that really nailed me to the wall,

he says. Before attempting to explain how further understanding of the significance of the religious factor developed, It's necessary to discuss the characteristic structure which has dissolved, He says before attempting. Despite most reports to the contrary, there is a growing recognition of common qualities with regular which which regularly present in Alcoholics, except those with frank underlying mental condition.

Here we go. Characteristic of the so-called typical alcoholic, narcissistic, egocentric core.

Narcissistic egocentric core. All the stuff we're talking about, dominated by feelings of omnipotence, bigger than God, greater than life, huge selfish, huge ego, no self esteem, intent on maintaining at all costs its inner integrity. With these characteristics are found other maladjustments. They appear in relatively pure culture.

In pure culture,

in alcoholic after alcoholic.

In a careful study of Ceres, Selman recently reported that he felt he could discern the outlines of a common characteristic structure among those problem drinkers in the best terms he could define them with. Was defiant into individuality and grandiosity.

My whole life is written in that paragraph. My entire life from the time I was a kid is written in that paragraph. Always. Feelings of grandiosity, terminal uniqueness, defiance. I was going to defy everything when anybody said I did the opposite.

Still can sometimes.

So it's really important to understand, understand what what these doctors gave us prior to understanding what the answer to our problem was. Silkworth, we talked about him a little bit earlier, hopelessness. He gave us the understanding that you had to be completely hopeless. You needed to hit that bottom before you could actually surrender. Harry Teeple also did a bunch of articles on While I'm Thinking about on surrender versus compliance.

Those people that just sit around and wonder why nothing good's happening in their life versus the ability to surrender. My spawns are always says to me you only have to surrender twice in your life.

The first day when you walked into A and every morning after that when you wake up,

surrender, surrender, surrender and again surrender, he says. All the time.

So Chris talked about something that he talked about the obsessions of the mind that caused us to drink. I talked about that alcoholic obsessed ego. And we often talk in our group about the children of the ego. What are the children of the ego

and all the guys I've worked with over the last nine years And in talking to Tom and all the guys he's worked with, it's never the drink that makes you drink. It's envy, jealousy, greed, sloth, resentment, lust. Those are the children of the ego. And if we get to figure out a way to get rid of this obsession, this, this ego,

ultimately we live free of those children of the ego. The minute I'm out of line, one of those children come back. Whenever there's fear in my life or resentment or envy or anger or jealousy or any or lust, all of a sudden I'm right into self. And when I'm thinking about me, there's no room for God because either room for Ian or there's room for God. Omnipotence, right?

So

I talk, I talk often about why I used, why did I use and couldn't stop or why did I drink and I couldn't stop.

Another doctor we talked about is William James. William James wrote a book called Varieties of Religious Experience. Doctor William James and that bill had that book right beside him when he was when he was writing the big book.

He said two things that are really important. He said that each of us has our own personal spiritual experience that's unique to us.

I thought that was very interesting because I was so arrogant when I got into AA. I'm Jewish and my family took me to synagogue. When I first got back to Winnipeg, they brought me back there for treatment. I'd lost everything. I'd, I had needles in my arms and I was involved with organized crime and prostitution and I'd, I'd really lost everything and, and

I thought that when I got sober that it was necessary that for me to have a burning Bush experience, for me to believe I had a spiritual experience. So I went around in my first year looking for that experience. I wondered when God was going to present himself to me.

I often heard my sponsor talk about, and he talked about this a lot. We talked about him, we agnostics, where the fund says the fundamental idea of God is deep down within every man, woman and child. And it was very hard for me to get that God was not out there that for me to find this power, I had to find it deep within me.

The fundamental idea of God was within within each of us. And I started to put these pieces together and it made very clear sense to me that if I have an ego that's obsessed with itself and if Carl Young said my spirits cut off from the spirit, clearly the problems within me and not out there somewhere. I find so many people are out there looking for many people are out there looking for God and like in a little wood gold box sitting on a on a mantle somewhere. And

the greatest revolutionary thing was that, you know, the discovery of God and the discovery of self are the same thing.

And once you find that in yourself, you're able to find. And I learned that from from sponsorship. I got that idea through watching other people recover. I didn't see the fact that the fundamental idea or the power was within me, but I saw other people lives changing as I sponsored them. And I really clearly saw that the power was within people.

The other kind of experience of experience I wanted was my sponsor's spiritual experience. The problem was he was 40 years sober and doing this really hard for a long time. So I used to sit there and

I look at him and he'd say, Ian, when you're one year sober, you're just one year sober. And I'd say, yeah, so and when you're 2 years over, you're just two years sober. And when you're 3. And he kept saying that stuff to me because I was looking for his spiritual experience. I wanted with someone at 35 and 40 and 45 years sober had when I was one or two years sober. Ego or not,

the other thing that William James talked about was that the discovered the greatest discovery is that the human being can alter his life by altering his attitude.

I look at my attitude my whole life. The glass was always half empty. I had no reason to believe for one second

that my life was negative or uncomfortable or bad, and I always saw it half empty. Life had never dealt me the right hand. I didn't know what was wrong.

I clearly believe that you're born with alcoholism. I believe that something traumatic can happen when you're a young kid or something that traumatic can happen in your life, which triggers that. And when eventually you're feeling low enough and empty enough, you pick up whatever you need to pick up and you feel fine again. Alcohol was called Spiritus at one time. I wonder why. It's clear to me.

So

the answer,

one answer, one answer which includes all answers.

The big bug talks about that we have to find a power that solves all our problems. Doesn't say that we have to find

quit drinking. Most people know that quitting drinking doesn't solve our problems.

The strawberries. I'll go back to the strawberries. The obsession will drag me by the nose wherever it needs to take me to get what I want, to satisfy my ego.

And that's how, by using strawberries. Because it's so stupid. It's like the jaywalker. Why was the jaywalker story written in the big book? It was for someone like me who didn't think I was alcoholic, but I was down a jaywalker. I hadn't drank for seven or eight years. When I got here. I was shooting meth, that's all.

So 1 answer

union with God,

discover, discovery, discovering God, discovering self.

The big book tells us where and how to find. The power tells us complete directions at the start. Then it tells us what to do next. The word next is there, next do this, next do that.

So conscious separation is very real as an experience, but it's not reality.

And I know sober today is whatever, just for today, but as long as I've been sober, that I can be just as consciously separated today as I was the day that I got here. And that's not reality. Feeling scared to come into a room like this and talk is not reality. The reality is you just come and talk.

In reality, the self cannot be separated from God. God, the power, was always there. If it's deep within me, it had to have been. But somehow that obsession with self, that obsessed ego, that fractured ego, separated me from everything good in life, from God and from love. So the emptiness is not a thirst for wholeness as it's perceived

because of the separate, because of the obsession, we only experience life separate from God. So the substance doesn't matter. I love hearing I, I get so frustrated and I get listened to Alcoholics talk or and I have in a lot of the small communities where I come from, there's some a groups that are very keen on single. It's a purpose. And I'm, I'm keen on single as a purpose, but they come to me and they say

Ian, an addict, walked in our room and I don't know what to say to them. And I look at them, These are guys 20-30 years sober.

And I asked them, have you read the big book? The big book says our problem is selfishness, not selfishness and self centeredness, not cocaine. You have the same problem as them. And we're so busy in life. And I, I, I watched, you know, I work with a lot of people and I watched them. They're, you know, they're all of a sudden they have, they're sober and they're clean and they're sober and they're clean and they have sex problems and they think they maybe should go to SLA. And I say, well, what are you gonna get at SLA that you can't get in a A? And I love that because when I was about five years,

I started having problems with relationships in my life with people that were either sober or not. And I said to my sponsor, I need to go to Al Anon. And he said, what's different from you than Al Anon? And then the next month, he took me to Aga meeting and I spoke at it and I spoke about this stuff. I spoke about those feelings deep within me. I spoke about constant separation. And right after that meeting, a woman came up to me and said, I understand exactly what you're talking about. I felt that way my whole life. And I realized through all these experiences,

the gambling wasn't her problem and alcohol or drugs wasn't mine.

So we have the answer. What's the answer to this problem? And I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it because we all know what it is. It's there's three legacies, the program, recovery, unity and service.

All three parts of the answer

the path, our path. Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path.

Makes it very simple.

So I've wrote my sponsors sponsor, a guy named Chuck C from California. Used to say to him all the time,

it's a divine impossibility to satisfy this human ego, that obsession with self. So how do we get rid of it?

Like I said earlier, there's no room for me. There's no room for God in my life if there's all me.

So

conscious separation to conscious unity,

um,

honest communication

between friends, protected by the walls of human community. It's the answer for all of us. That's why the 12 steps work. It brings us from a place of desperation, of powerlessness, gives us the ability to find a power, and gives that ability for us to share that power with others.

I think about the third step prayer

again. Nothing in it about alcohol. God, Ioffer myself to Thee to build with me, and do with me as Thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self. Doesn't say relieve me of alcohol, relieve me of the bondage itself. They might, that I may better do. Thy will take away my difficulties.

That victory over them would bear witness to those I would help. Of thy power, thy love, and thy way of life may I do. Thy will always take away my difficulties. What are my difficulties?

Everybody wonders that what are my difficulties?

My difficulties are that obsession. My difficulties are that conscious separation from life and disconnection

that blocks me from you and my family and my and my power. Those difficulties. And if I'm able to get down to this program and get busy with the steps and get busy with service and understand there are three legacies and do that kind of work on a daily basis, my life has taken me

in so many directions I would have never dreamed of as of most of ours. Yeah. So I'm not a doctor, not practicing a doctor, a practicing Dr. anymore.

I, I was asked to sit on the in in the province I'm from on the Addictions Foundation of Manitoba. I've started a nonprofit sober living facilities for men, the first ones and women now in in our city.

So my life has taken me in directions that I never thought I I always wanted to be of service. I knew I was on searching for something. I knew I was looking for an answer, but what was that answer to be?

So

I can't change the reality of my own being. My my sponsor always says Pop, he quotes Popeye. I'm what I am and that's what I am and that's the truth.

And the longer I'm sober, the more I know that I'm the same kid I was that when I as I was growing up. I am me and that's and being comfortable with me is where I needed to go. But what I can do is change my experience in reality, and that can only happen by the deflation of the obsessed ego. And that only can happen through being conscious of what the real problem is.

Drinking wasn't the problem.

Meth wasn't the problem. Coke. Listen, I was the kid that you know, booze bone was connected to the pot bone and the pot bone was connected to the coke bone and the coke bone was connected to the meth bone.

Meth bones connect to the strawberry bone.

I just made that up. But but that, that's the problem. So the problem is really clearly that, you know, that obsession with self and, and I know that when we came here and spoke about this to a bunch of lawyers, they got it. So a bunch of lawyers, they got it. So I'm hoping a bunch of doctors can get it too.

I really appreciate being here. I want to thank Mark and Allison for calling me to come, asking me to come. It's an eye opener to see. I've witnessed lots of conventions and I've been at lots of places and I've spoken lots of places, but I've it's really good to see a bunch of doctors all get along in one place and, and have

and relate to each other and have this place to come and be free and share with each other. So this has been a great experience. I hope it was for you also. I hope I enlightened you. You probably all knew this already, but thanks very much.