The 60th Gopher State Roundup in Bloomington, MN

Thank you, Mary. My name is Andrew Ware. I'm an alcoholic.

I love the bright lights. That's the first time I've spoken with the lights on. That's

it's a good feeling.

I am from Missoula, Mt. I am the service speaker. I'm a replacement as well. So I got two strikes against me. So I'm trying to lower your expectations.

The original speaker was from New York, Phyllis H Phyllis is a very elegant woman from New York. She's very involved at GST, works at GSO. She couldn't be here because she's actually had a trip to got scheduled to the Ukraine to help them out. Share some of Gsos experience with Ukraine.

It's pretty amazing. And instead you got a nerd from Montana.

So one of the things I have to do through this talk is not only tell you a little bit about what I was like, what happened and and what I'm like now, but also try to tell you about why am I the service speaker? Why is a guy from Montana involved in service? And how does that work? What the heck is a West Central Regional trustee?

I do want to thank though, before a lot of people, before I get going and forget to thank anybody.

One of the thing I want to thank is my Montana friends. There's at least 5 Montanans in the audience. Yeah, you may not think this is a big thing, but that's about 1/4 of the population of Montana.

So thank you all.

I want to thank the the signer over there, the signers plural, excuse me. Thank you very much. I.

I think that's a much harder job, actually, than talking is trying to figure out what the heck we're saying.

I want to thank the speakers that went before me. I want to thank Teresa, who did an awesome job kicking us off, and Scott and yeah,

and Kerry getting us going this morning. That was awesome. And, you know, identify a lot with all these.

I want to thank Connie, and I want to thank my host, Terry, who gave me the invitation, actually. And he's been a great host here. Thank you very much, Terry. Yeah. I'll clap for you, Terry.

Now, Terry's her friend. And he was, it was willing to indulge me yesterday. You know, you asked me what I wanted to do yesterday, come into the big city of Minneapolis, and I took him to a place where I could try and wet suits. That's what I did. I don't laugh. Wet suits are slimming, you know, You get all in black. It looks nice now.

Maybe I'll tell a little bit more about that later on. What I'm like now I,

but that's what I asked him to do and he was well enough to drive me over there kind of 40 minutes away and, and, and just wait while I tried on wet suits and, and I got one.

So first a little bit out, you know what, what I was like, and this is wonderful. The, the, one of the first conventions I ever went to was, was the Texas State, a convention in Austin, TX. I just happened to randomly go to it. I was 18. I was in cut off shorts and flip flops

and I was at the back of the room because I showed up late, of course. And so that's who I was and that's who I was in early sobriety and, and we'll, we'll get there. Don't worry. I'll drink before this happens,

but I look out across this room and that's my comparison point is, is to come from there and, and and to be up here, it's just amazing. I don't know how that happens and I don't know how it happens for me.

So for me kind of growing up, I am a, a first generation American. My, my family, all the rest of my family was born in England. They, they came over

before I was born, obviously, and they settled in California for a brief bit before moving to Texas. And I was born in California, but I grew up in Austin, TX and I was different from the rest of my family because I was born here and they weren't. And, and it was different from all of you and everybody, the one you know, I had a had a good mind. I thought it was really smart and I like you to think I was really smart.

But my real problem was that it couldn't get, I couldn't figure out how to interact with other people

to baffle me. And it was, you know, I was going through the motions. I was really uncomfortable with my own skin. I always felt like I was less than different than you name it.

The other two speakers last night, they were always talking about alcoholism in their family. Well, my family was a little bit different. My family suddenly had an alcoholic bomb dropped in the middle of it. There is some, if you go back in our history, if you go back in my family history, is there a couple generations back, but it's in, in this generation, it's my brother and I Boom.

You know, my parents were Catholic English, very involved in the Catholic Church, very religious, and suddenly they had these two,

two alcoholic bombs dropped in their family and they had no idea what was going on with that. No idea for me, this whole idea about being uncomfortable with other people,

being not be able to get along, none of that makes me an alcoholic. I've met both. I've met people like me who are uncomfortable around other people, and I've met people in a A who are so smooth. So smooth if you want to. If you want to meet one of the smoothest people in A I'm getting an early plug here at this hotel

in September. We're going to have a nice little regional forum, another a a event. Hope you come back for it. You'll meet Julio. Julio is smooth and he's an alcoholic just like I am. So there's being uncomfortable and not getting along well-being socially awkward does not make you an alcoholic. Now, none of that makes you an alcoholic. What makes me an alcoholic was that when I took that first drink at 11 and that was a little late in my family, according to my brother at least

when I took that first drink in me and, and, and,

and suddenly, you know all, it didn't make me smart. You didn't make me any smarter. It didn't make me actually get along with you anymore. What it made for me is it didn't matter that I didn't get along with you anymore. I really didn't care so much. And the first time I remember feeling that we were actually at a wedding. My cousin was getting married in England. We happened to go to the reception. We

at this wedding reception was a pub in in London

and they would they let us have the kids have shandies and then it was half beer, half ginger ale. I actually for the very first time, I don't know if you've seen this, it was just like in the last week I've seen an advertisement on the TV for a shandy beer and lemonade. But anyway, I'm just reminiscing.

I actually let us drink these. They let us, you know, and it was like my first real exposure to having a few of these and only half beer and half

a ginger ale. But if you have a few of those, you try to feel it. And then my brother, my older brother is about a year and a half older than me. I followed him up and we, we went out the window, a third floor window of this, this pub in London. And we started roof hopping across London. And my brother told me alcohol takes away your fear. And, and here we are having an adventure, taking away my fear. And, and I'm terrified of most everything. But most of all, I'm terrified of looking bad. I'm terrified of you finding out

that what's in here is really broken and how different I am than all of you. And here I am. I take away my fear. We're hopping across the rooftops. We get back to the pub. Nothing. Nothing bad happened. We get back to the pub and my mom's found out that we've done this and she's furious and, and she gets mad at my brother. And you can see the smile on my face. It was great. I mean, alcohol takes away your fear. You have an adventure and your brother gets in trouble.

You know that in in short order. That's a lot of the first part of my talk.

That's, that's what my drinking was like. You know, I, I was the lost child in a lot of ways. I would have happily dove into that bottle. Not much is going to happen too much in my drinking because I was going for oblivion and I often reached there. I always wanted to maintain that front because I wanted you to think good about me. So I kind of had this dual thing going on. You know, we went back to, went back to Texas. I started going back to, to school. I was actually going to a new school then

at turn 12.

But the problem was, even though I was at a new school, I had made a new friend. I never had more than one friend at a time, but I made a new friend and I'm doing things. I'd also discovered alcohol. And so it was slow at first, but then by the that time that year was out, I'd gotten rid of that friend because he didn't drink. I was, I was still going to school, but I was now seeking out interactions with people who would get me

drunk, get me contact with alcohol. And so

the first time I can remember being restless, irritable and discontent is when I was 13 and I was scrambling to get drunk that weekend. And you have to scramble and you develop certain skills as a 13 year old trying to get alcohol. And I was putting all those skills in there and I was, you know, trying to make phone calls somehow somebody to get me drunk that weekend. And it wasn't happening. And I got and it was first time that I remember

being associated with alcohol, that restless, irritable and discontent. And it wasn't

that a fact that I could have alcohol, It was the fact that I couldn't have alcohol that weekend. And that was just, you know, that was the end of the world. That was true of most things at 13, of course is most things are the end of the world, but

I was in high start high school and what happened was, at least for me, the IT always progressed. I always had a level where anybody who drank during the school nights had a problem and I only drank on weekends

and then I was drinking on week, weeknights as well. But it was OK. Anybody who drank during school had a problem. And I'm only doing it nights and weekends. And when I started doing it at drinking during the day, sometimes it was like, OK, anybody who did these outside issues drugs, they were the ones with the problems. And

let me tell you, the first time I had that real contact with drugs, I, I started to hang around this guy, I was 14, hang around this guy, the other guy named Andrew, because I knew that if I hung around him, his brother would buy us alcohol and we get, we get drunk. And so sure enough, I arranged to sleep over at his house.

Um, and his brother bought us some beer, then we got into his daddy's liquor cabinet and, and I'm just walking across his, his kitchen and, and thinking that, you know, what's going on inside of me is so much more important than, than anything else out there. And it's, I'm loving it. Life is, life is good. I don't care that I'm, I'm not popular. I'm not, I'm not smooth, I'm not athletic, none of those things. Life is good because of the fact that alcohol has happened on me. And that's so much more important than anything else going on in the world. And

a little later my friend passed out and threw up and we, his brother and I cleaned it up and he took out some dope and started smoking it. He asked if I wanted any, I said no. He passed it to me and I started smoking it.

That's about as well as I said no to anything before I got to Alcoholics Anonymous,

you know, and, and I'm here, I, I oftentimes say I'm one of the luckiest people in the world. And one of the reasons why I'm, I'm, I'm so lucky, I think is because of another member of Alcoholics Anonymous at that time.

I happen to be working on my brother. Both had me working for a guy. It turns out he was from Minnesota, a guy named Tom S, He was living in Austin, TX, and we were both working for him. You have to work. If you're 13 and 14 and you want alcohol, you need monies, you need a job. And so I had a job working for this guy. We made a little glass ornaments wrapped in lead

and it turns out this guy was in AA in sober and my brother made the mistake. My brother at that time was 16. My brother made the mistake of talking to him about his drinking and that was a mistake

because this guy related to my brother and what they did with my brother at least is this guy arranged my parents to do an intervention. They didn't intervention on my brother. They they sent him off to a treatment center in Minnesota. He scared the counselors. They sent him back.

He made a deal with my parents to go to AA and and and he could stay at home. And what I learned about AA through my brother, indirectly through this whole thing, was that AA was a place where drunks got together to commiserate in between getting drunk.

That was his take on at the time. And my take on this whole thing was you don't talk to Tom about your drinking.

That was what I got of this whole thing is because I'm still keeping at that front. And it's great to have a brother like, like the one I had because he always set the bar so low that I could always, you know, it's like limbo, but opposite. He set the bar so low, I could always get over it. You know, even towards the end, you know, one of the times, the first time I tried to, to quit briefly not let's not get too serious about this, but just to prove I'm not an alcoholic when I was 16

and there's something wrong there. Even you're saying that when you're 16, you're trying to prove you're not an alcoholic. Anyway, I tried to go for for two weeks

without any alcohol or other stuff. You know, my family was going on this vacation, and what had sparked this was that I had gone to see my brother

two times in a row in jail. The first day right after he turned himself in, and he's tough. The second day, they wouldn't let me see him.

You know, I'm going back and they wouldn't let me see him. And everybody else has gone in to see their person. And I'm waiting there. And, and finally a psychiatrist gets in there and he comes talk to me and he wants to know what state I'm in. And he said, you know what? I was like, what's going on? And they let me back there. And he's in a suicide watch because he's finally coming down off everything he's done to turn himself in because he's realizing at age 18, he's going away to prison. And it's not if, it's just a matter of how long. And I'm going in there to see him. And I'm seeing that. And I'm thinking, you know, this is me. This is my path, this is my future.

Only there's still that. Part of me says, but that's him. That's that's not me. And at that time I'm drinking every day. It's summer, of course, so you can drink all day long, every day. It's wonderful. So I decided, OK, two weeks, my family's going on this trip

and I managed to make it 2 weeks with 11 beer. And during that trip, though, my mom, who had just enough Alan, on the time to be dangerous, just enough,

she confronts me and she begs me. She says, I know what you've been doing. I know the drinking and the drugs. And she says, please, please stop. And he said, I don't want to lose another son, you know, and I know about you. But of course, this is all about me. And I said I'm not like him. And I wasn't ready. And it was just like, I don't have a problem. I'm not in prison. You know, it's again, it's an easy bar to step over if you're not in prison. And so I got back. And of course, as soon as I got back, I'd, I'd shown two weeks, 1 beer. That doesn't really count

that you're not alcoholic. And so I was right back to it and I, and I started doing it even more. And,

you know, all this time I'm managing to, to keep up the front and I'm drinking every day now. I'm doing all sorts of other stuff along the way. And, and I'm going off to college now and I'm still doing the same thing. And every day I'm doing this and I'm, and I'm starting to see the cracks between what I'm trying to show people and what I'm really doing that, that, that dual life is not so dual as I would like to think it anymore.

And the other problem is, is for me is that towards the end of my drinking, I'm drinking and doing other stuff just to feel close to normal again. I'm stopping, you know, before it was always, it was to get high to get that to that place where nothing else mattered. And now I'm, I'm just getting, trying to get to the place where it doesn't suck quite as much anymore. And it's a different feeling trying to get back just to normal rather than to get to that other place. And that's, that's my using now. And I can't, I'm not thinking about quitting, don't get me wrong,

but I'm doing that every day. And, and what happens was the following is that when I'm off to college, I'm, I'm going off to college and I'm a scholarship again, I had a mind that I occasionally put to good use.

I'm off to College in a scholarship, but I couldn't do it. I couldn't go to, you know, showing up to class was oftentimes too much requirement because it got in the way of my drinking. And, and I'm, I'm, I'm about to, to fail out of, of college and, and I'm, I'm thinking of suicidal thoughts all the time. And I end up,

umm, trying to drop out really late. So they have to go to the psychiatrist. And I go to psychiatrist. This is what my, you know, this is what good friends are for. One of the guys I've been drinking with told me, well, you just go up there, you talk to them about your drinking and they let you out on health withdrawal to avoid failing out. And I did that. And you know, if you ever think about that, give Terry a plug here sponsoring a professional. This is, this is a psychiatrist I went to see and he knew enough about treatment and about Alcoholics Anonymous. And he said,

he said you could have a medical withdrawal after I told him a little bit about it. I wasn't too truthful, but I told him a little bit about what I'd been doing. And he said you can have a medical withdrawal. But he said if you ever want to come back to this university, you're going to go get treatment because you need help. And I was like, wait a minute. My friend didn't tell me that was part of the deal. And I was, I just want to, you know, skate out of this. And so

we had some negotiations with my parents. I ended up going a into a My brother at the time had been let out of jail to go into an inpatient treatment program.

I ended up going, the compromise was to an outpatient treatment program. And in the meantime I had a couple weeks before then I tried to quit again. And what scared me this time is I couldn't, you know, I couldn't. And I got the first time and this is part of what I, what I really identified when I got to A because you know, I'm thinking, OK, I'm trying to prove that I'm not an alcoholic. And of course, the first time I tried to hang around the same people, that didn't work. The next time

I wasn't doing too much of that, but I ended up

being around this one guy who didn't really like so much and he calls me into a bathroom. And I know about you guys, but this was in the 80s, early 80s. In the early 80s, if another guy calls in the bathroom, there's only one thing that's going to happen. And he kind of lays out some lines and I'm not thinking. I don't do that kind of stuff. That was never my drug of choice. I like, I like alcohol and other things. I'm not thinking. I'm trying to prove that I'm not alcoholic. What goes through my mind, my best thinking at the time was you don't turn down cocaine.

That was my best thinking at the time. And so I did it. And the next thing that went through my line is you've blown it now you might as well make it a good one. Let's start drinking.

And so I did. I started drinking and, and it was, it was again. And so when I went, eventually went to this out of patient treatment program, I had just enough experience there to realize a couple things is that if something doesn't change, I'm going to drink again. And if I drink again, I'm going to get drunk.

When you took away the alcohol for me, you're taking away my solution. You know, when when I finally started reading the big book and I got to that chapter, there is a solution. I thought they were talking more about alcohol.

So there is a solution. It's called alcohol. And it had worked so well for me, and you're taking away that away and you're leaving me now with no barrier between me and you.

Know I so related to what Teresa said about not being present the only thing different was is I was seeking to not be present in my life as I was seeking that out. I wanted not to be present and you take away the alcohol and suddenly I have to be present. This is not what I had bargained for and so if if

something didn't change, I was going to drink again. I had no idea what needed to change and if I drank again I was going to get drunk and that gave me a little bit of willingness out of the whole. I blacked out on occasion. I could tell you some of my more memorable blackouts, but they would be secondhand occurrences because I wasn't there for them. I was there in body but not in mind, but people would tell me about them later. And but towards the end of my drinking, I lived in a grey out. And I don't hear too many people talk about this, but I could sometimes tell you what happened, but I couldn't really

put much of a timeline on it or who, you know, some people were there, some people not who knew.

Yeah. So out of that fog came this realization. And I'm going off to treatment. And I'm realizing that something needs to change. And I'm scared to death. And I'm 17. And I'm, you know, I'm in my mind, I'm a failure.

And they introduced me in treatment to the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. And they started talking about what it's like to be an alcoholic. And I introduced this idea of being powerless over alcohol. And my life is unmanageable. And I was on board with the second part of that. I was ready to admit my life was unmanageable. I didn't want to be there.

None of this was was how I had scripted it out. You know that that insanity to me,

though, that did kick in when I started talking about the insanity. The insanity was that I would say I had all these ideals and goals and what I would do instead, it was go drink. You know, I said I want to do really well in school and I want to meet you to think I'm smart. But I would go drink and it didn't matter. Everything else came second. I would even think about, you know, what I wanted in life was to be as messed up as possible and still be able to function.

That was my goal I was using. That was what my mind was being used for at the time.

You know, sometimes the first goal overwhelmed, the 2nd just being messed up as possible

and you're taking away the alcohol and I'm in this treatment. And how do idea to be empowered us over alcohol? That's at least at the time as a 17 year old, it's not language I used in association with myself. I didn't think of being powerless over anything, let alone alcohol. It was the one thing I still thought I did really well is I could drink with anybody

and I would be happy to drink with anybody.

And so being powerless over alcohol. But then I realized after reading that section in the big book, he says if you have any doubt about whether you're an alcoholic or not, go out and try some controlled drinking. You know, it's right there. It's not like, are you debating? Well, go do it. And it was like, I don't need to. I know it's going to happen if you, if you put some alcohol in me, I know what's going to happen. I'm going to want more and I'm going to get drunk because that's what I do. And it was like, oh,

and it was something hit me if, if

nothing changes, I'm gonna drink again. And if I drink again, I'm gonna get drunk and I'm gonna go right back to what I had before

they used to talk a lot about to drink is to die. And I first part of you, of course, the mind, of course, is a wonderful thing. Wanted to bargain was like how long you know, is it going to be the is going to be nice beautiful flame out death. Okay, I'm on board. Let's go. Or is it going to be the next 10 years of more the same? And that's what scared me, not the dying. There's a 10 years of living that miserable life of not wanting to be. I never wanted to be in my own skin, but despising myself at the same time is not wanting to be in my own skin.

And so I had a little bit of willingness and I got through that first step of realizing that that alcohol owned me when I when I drank, I wanted more. I'm the kind of guy when I came to in the morning, I'm checking out which beer cans had a little bit in it, making sure I didn't get the one that was a spittoon and trying to find the one that was still half full so I could have a little more. And everybody else has gone to bed. I'm still doing things like trying to find a little more to smoke, a little more to drink,

you know, because I always wanted more.

So I'm, I'm in a everybody's old.

I,

at least it seemed at the time when I first been there, you know, even in treatment, I think the next youngest person was in their late 20s

and he was the one guy identified with. And of course his idea was this is all very nice for you guys, you've got a nice little program, but I'm not having any of it. And I identified with him and it was so clear to me he was going to go right back to it. And I didn't want that to happen. And, and instead I started going to a, a meetings. I went to the same meeting every day because I saw the same people there.

And, and

you know, first I start a crazy mind for a while. I try to figure out who was really in charge at that, at that meeting. I don't know if you ever done that at your Home group. You try to figure out who's really in charge, but that's one of the things I spent my time doing at that meeting. But at least I was at that meeting. I still had a crazy mind. It still would tell me I'm too young, I'm too smart, I'm too anything. So it's OK to go drink again. You know, part of me wanted that, that release, but part of me wanted a little bit more of what you guys had. I didn't know if I wanted what you guys had, but I, I knew

who I didn't want what I had. I knew I didn't want what I had. And so I kept coming back and, and it was slow because the accession of the mind was still there. You know, we kind of gotten a few months in removal of the, the physical craving, but the obsession, the mind was still there and it's still going 90 miles an hour. And I, and I started to learn though, that I could go to these meetings and I could listen and I say, wait a minute. I just had 1020 minutes where I wasn't just thinking about me and just thinking about how life is is

because my life is miserable.

You know that that wonderful, one of the most wonderful things that freedom I've gotten in Alcoholics Anonymous is from the fact that realizing that my success to failure doesn't end the world,

you know, and that's, I don't know about you guys, but that is to me, such a huge thing. The only reason I'm able to get up here is because of realizing that. And if you got me when I first came in here, the fact that whether I was a good speaker or not would have been so crippling that I couldn't have said 2 words up here.

And now you guys have had a lot of good speakers, you guys, if you guys already got your money's worth. And so whether or not

I'm a good speaker is pretty irrelevant at this point. And, you know, and it's

such a gift and, and I kept on Mac and, and for me at least, I'm so grateful that, that, that wanting more works in a, a as well. I got a few days which were just OK, it didn't suck anymore and I wanted more. And then I got a little bit of, well, that was a, that was a good day. And I wanted more. And I kept on coming back and I kept on doing more this step work, you know, more of the step work.

I'm just going to like, I still got a lot of service stuff to talk about, so I want to

talk a little bit more of the steps at me. At least for me, you know, I talked about those two parents that both very Catholic, very involved in the Catholic Church and doing stuff like that. And they'd had these two Alcoholics thrown in them.

And I remember trying to make amends, to make an amends. My mom was actually easy. And I did that and, and it was a continual amends over many, many years after that. It was, you know, making that first thing talking to her. But then one of the the things that the sponsors really hammered to me is those types of amends.

Yeah. What's it like to be a good son, you know, And that's a new thing to you. It was it to me at least. What's it, you know, how do you think about that? What's how am I going to be a good son and then take those actions, you know, And that that was the immense, it was not that one little thing. It was the amends over a lifetime. But I want to talk about my dad because that one for me was a huge immense because I had a lot of resentments in my dad. It was, it was, I love it. I think somebody said this non emotive type. My dad was British. Stiff upper lip don't show anything.

I think it was his mother that that was so proud of the fact that she had never praised any of her children.

Didn't want to spoil him. You know, that was, that was, you know, and so he was doing a pretty good job with the skills that he had been given. But for me, I had a lot of resentments because he wasn't American, you know, who knows? It was, it was all sorts of different resentments. And we did not have a close relationship. But one of the things I had to learn was, was to, in order to me to make amends to him was I had to change my attitude towards him. I had to,

in my heart, forgive him just for not being who he want

want him to be, having all these expectations. This was all in me, in my head. And then I could treat him differently and not have all these expectations. Why aren't you all these things that I want you to be? And then my sponsor said, OK, now you follow through with that. How can you connect with your dad on his terms, not yours? And so we could talk science and we could talk sports. And I don't know about you, but that was a start. So I talked to my dad about science and I talked about that about sports

and

you know, we, we built a relationship on that. I'm not ever going to tell you my dad was, was, was we had a close bond that way, but I had it. I got to the time where I could love my dad and see him for the complete human being He was in good and the bad, you know, and, and, and I got that call a couple years ago. It was, it was, it was five months after losing my mom got to call him. My dad had the heart attack. This is this is, this is the style of my dad. You know, he a lot of good health

many years. He's just, he's lost his wife five months before. He's starting to feel some chest pains.

He finally goes to the doctor because he almost never went to the doctor. He has an appointment to see the cardiologist Friday morning. Then finally, because his doctor says you need to see the cardiologist. Friday morning comes, he's having a heart attack and he doesn't feel well enough to go to the doctor, but he doesn't want to call anybody to bother anybody for a while. So he waits 3 hours after he's having a heart attack, he waits 3 hours. I guess he's assuming it's going to get better. And finally he calls the ambulance and by that time they took him in but it's too late. They put try to put some stents in, but too much damage has been done in those three hours.

I get the call. I come down from Montana to back to Austin, TX. My wife is already there. It's another story.

So, so we go to the we go to the hospital and you know, and being able to say to my dad that I love him and you know, and it's OK, you know, you can let go now. And I don't know if he heard me. I think he did because he was, he was already, you know, they were had him on life support then and they were able to let him go. But that's, that's a gift from Alcoholics Anonymous

and that's a gift I can never repay because my life was going a complete different way and I wanted nothing to do with my parents, nothing to do with my dad. I resented them. And, and from that, you guys have given me that relationship with my father. And and if I get nothing else out of this, I'm so grateful to that.

So how did I get involved in we'll change course here. How did I get involved in service and this whole idea? Because I came to that first, like I said, first convention, not realizing that there was all these people

and all the people with ribbons on that had done all this work to put it on. I just went because it happened to be in my town and I wanted to hear some good speakers. They told me we're going to be there.

And

I think the first, my first service position by the way, was self appointed.

I had I had done things like picked up ashtrays business back in the day, still a lot of smoking groups, but my first service position was I went back to the Health Center, the university in Austin

and I said I'm sober now. I have like nine months and, and if you need any contact for anybody else who needs good or a a, you can call me. And they said, thank you. Don't call us, we'll call you. I had no idea about if there was a service structure, there might have been treatment people going in. Are you doing this stuff? I had no idea. I was just self appointed,

but I started to get slowly involved. I had to sponsor the time said while you're in school, why don't you look for commitments like answering the phone at intergroup started doing that. Look for commitments where you could do, he says. The other stuff, the general service stuff. You'll have time for that later.

And so I said, OK,

I moved. I went off to, you know, I found that I went eventually went back to school. And the surprising thing about school is if you apply the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous in school, here's a hint, you can do pretty good if you learn to suit up, show up and do what's asked of you. Good things happened. You know, that was that was a revelation to me to actually show up. I didn't always practice that early on in sobriety in classes. We know when went back to school, I had to learn that to show up to classes. That was not my modus operandi. I was usually too cool or trying to be

cool. I was never cool, but trying to learn to go back to classes and show up and, you know, suit up and do what's asked of me and good things happen. And so I graduated, went off to Graduate School in San Diego, CA. And there I got a new sponsor. And when my Home group in San Diego had an opening for AGSR, I could not have told you what AGSR was, but he said, and he somehow knew it wasn't his Home group, but he somehow knew my Home group was having an, you know, needed a new GSR. He says, why don't you stand for that?

And I'd learned enough at that point. I'd gotten enough good things from AA that whatever my sponsor said something like that, I said, OK, you know, and then eventually I found out what, what the heck's a general service representative, the GSR from my group. And I got to go to district meetings and learn a little bit about that. And then I got to go to some quarterly area assemblies in San Diego, Imperial County area. And I got to learn about that. And I'm not saying that I jumped right in,

but what I did learn was there was a lot of people doing a lot of things in,

in AAA so that we can make sure that AA keeps going, you know, and I got to look outside of my Home group a little bit for that first time when I was a general service representative, just a little bit, because I'd always said I'd go to my Home group and, you know, I'll participate in my Home group in that service.

Well, eventually it came from me at least, that that wasn't enough, that that wasn't enough. I moved a couple more times after getting another degree and I ended up in, of all places, Missoula, Mt. And I remember going out there,

I went out there for a job interview. The guy picked me up at the airport to do the interview and he said you look awful.

And he says, you know, have you big enough sleep? And I was like, really? The answer is no, I've been working pretty hard then. And he says then he's driving me. He says I better take you to the hotel as you can take a nap before you meet everybody else. And he says,

by the way, the other guy who interviewed the other just before me, he's the front runner, not me. And then I go and I

and I'm walking to get out. He comes back after I take my nap and he comes, picks me up and takes me back to the department to meet everybody there. And I slip on the ice because this is Montana. And I slip on the ice and I scrape my knee. And then it's got a little dirt and blood on my on my pants there. And I'm meeting and now I'm going to go beat everybody. And despite all this, they hired me.

So, you know, if it was meant to be, it's meant to be. And, and, and that's one of the things I've learned to do is sometimes just get out of the way

and it's OK, you know, And I got other way and, and we moved to Montana. My wife and I moved to Montana

and in Montana

shortly after there, I got to be a general service representative for the second time because my Home group needed it. And I didn't know you weren't supposed to be a GSR for two for twice, but I did it anyway. And the next thing I knew I was the alternate DCM and the DCM. And what are these things? District committee member, Alternate district committee member. And these are just, you know, when groups have to decide something which affects the groups in the area, they get together in a district and they get to make these choices about, you know, should we print a schedule or is that done in an intergroup? Sometimes it's intergroup