The Paramount Group in Paramount, CA

Introduce our special guest, Diane G from Huntington Beach.

Hi. Hi, Diane. I'm an alcoholic. You can all hear me, right?

Cool. I wanna thank my

for inviting me. It was short notice, so I didn't have a lot of time to overthink,

which is really good for me. And I don't know there there are probably some of you here who haven't heard parts of my story. So I'm going to tell you a little bit about what it was like for me because these steps took me a long time. I didn't get to 10 and 11 for probably 10 years. I did the other. I had a hard time,

umm, so I started drinking when I was 14. And when I started drinking, I drank too much right away. So people would give me things to help me last longer. You know, that stuff. So I lasted a really long time and then they would get tired of having me around, so they would give me other things. And I ended up being like, chemically balanced, you know, for a long time.

And I got in a lot of trouble. I ran away from home. I hitchhiked up and down the coast of California. I got to go to see

Oh God, now I'm not going to be able to remember.

Please bear with me. I'm going to be 70 in a few weeks and my memory is not as clear as it used to. Monterey Pop Festival, remember those? And so I hitchhiked when I was young. I got to go to those. It wasn't as deadly to hitchhike then as it is now.

So I got back and forth and I made a lot of friends on the way. And I always found people who drank and who used the things I did a little, you know, a little psychedelic experience so that you can connect spiritually. It was was just like that for me. And the first time I came to AAI came at the suggestion of some people I was hanging out with and they thought I I was

probably going to die soon if I didn't get some help. And so they sent me to a A and I was 18

and you are not, you are old. I mean seriously old, like 30. And so I see people who are young in AA today and I think, oh, I totally understand. I hope you can get past that and stay and not have to go out and do the experimenting I had to do and end up in jail and beaten up and and places that you don't need to go if you can stay here.

They ended up sending me. I got arrested one too many times. They sent me to this program they had

at Norwalk State Mental Hospital.

Yeah,

called the family. It was a, a drug and alcohol program and I would love to tell you what it was about, but I,

I can't remember one thing that they said. Not one thing. I know we got into groups and we talked in groups and they had therapists and they had people who were well versed in recovery and I know that they meant to help me, but

I didn't want to be there. So I I remembered nothing and I got out eleven months after I got in there and

I drank immediately. It never occurred to me, not to it, Nevada. It just never occurred to me. I got out. I felt the feelings I always felt when I didn't drink, which is inadequate, insecure,

afraid, lonely. All those feelings. I would never be enough, ever. Ever. Ever.

So I drank, and then I was enough. Except for I wasn't. When I drank after I got out of Norwalk State Mental Hospital, it didn't change one thing except for I was drunk

and I had never gotten it. I never really learned to work wasn't my thing. I, I was more, you know, like take yours. I was more a thief and a liar. I, I had things that I became so that I could be enough. One of them was an American Indian. And I was so excited today I saw 50 things about American Indians that you might not know.

One of them is, I'm Czechoslovakian, not American Indian,

but I was American Indian for 10 years and I just loved it. I, I loved the way it made me feel and I loved their spiritual connection with the universe. I mean, they have such an amazing connection. And you know, I, I tried to be a surfer, got a surfboard, couldn't go in the ocean cause of the sharks. So I just carry the surfboard. I mean, that's pretty much what I did. And then I stole things from you so that

I could support myself because working was not appealing to me. So when I drank again after I got out of Norwalk, I ended up coming back to Alcoholics Anonymous. And you want to know why I came back? It wasn't because I wanted what you had, particularly because I didn't know. I didn't listen. I just thought you were old. But the other thing you were to me when I was 18, you were kind.

You are incredibly kind to me and you made me feel

that even though I wasn't like you,

I was. I was welcome here that

you never made me feel like I had to prove anything or do anything. You just let me be here. So I came back when I was 25. Now I had a little bit of a problem because honestly, I don't like people telling me what to do. I've gotten over that a bit now I can handle it. But when I was new, I just did not like it. And I really didn't like it when they told me I couldn't do something.

You know how that becomes the only thing you think about? And that that's what happened to me. I got in. I got sober

April 4th, 1973.

Didn't know for 10 years if that was going to be my date because I I really had a hard time and I did start some of the steps and I did get a sponsor. Her name was Irish Annie. They called her Crazy Annie when I was new and I really liked her. She was profane, kind of like I was, and she stole things.

She even stole things sober, which made it really easy for me. When

I stole the money from my Home group, I knew where I could go. You know, it was,

I don't know about you, but I just had a hard time learning to live by spiritual principles.

I know that that's what it takes to affect the change in your life. You've got to learn to live by spiritual principles. But I had a hard time. I was just a major liar. And then I married somebody else's husband sober. Yeah, I deserve that one. And then I stole the money from my Home group. And with all the lies I'd been telling, it was really hard for me to get

into the steps. I didn't want to take a fourth because I would have to confess to all this stuff, and then I would have to give up being American Indian, And I didn't. I mean, that's sounds funny to you, but seriously, it was a great part of my identity.

And it was hard for me to get there, but I did. I got through the steps. And the thing, the thing I love so much about the book and about Bill and about the way they came together and gave us this gift of Alcoholics Anonymous is they let us choose. We get to choose. Choose the way you that it works for you. And if it, if it's not working, if you end up in pain, there are other choices.

You don't. You're not stuck, and nobody's telling you what to do. These are suggested steps, by the way,

strongly suggested, and you'll see why if you don't do them, but suggested nonetheless, because they're not the only way to recover. So continue to take personal inventory. And when we were wrong, promptly admitted it. And it says that, you know, you get through the first nine steps and you've already made amends. You've already taken an inventory of your greater defects of character.

Now, what's important is you continue. What that told me was

I was not going to be perfect ever. I was going to keep making mistakes, and in order to take care of the way that felt to me, I was going to have to continue to make amends. Whenever I was wrong, I needed to promptly admit it. And I don't know about you, but promptly has different lengths of time for me. It's like if somebody really upsets me,

I mean really, and and I'm sure

they're wrong. It takes me a while before I can see my part without correcting them. There's some really interesting things.

What?

We constructively criticize someone who needed it? Have you ever done that? Yeah. I mean, seriously, you you get sober, you're here a while, you know stuff. So you constructively criticize people,

but our real motive was to win a useless argument.

God, I wish I didn't understand that so well, but I do it. I have gotten in arguments with people in a A and I've had to go back and say, you know what? Ultimately, it doesn't really matter. I the way I have learned how to deal with this step sober

is because I've worked the other the other ones that follow Step 11 is really important in that because it's as spiritual

prayer and meditation gives me a spiritual foundation. So I have a

place to go back to when I get off course. One of the things, something happened the other night that was so interesting to me and I found it interesting that I was going to do these steps because it has become begun to be so natural to me to take care of the problem right away. I was at a meeting with a bunch of people and there was a guy there I hadn't seen before and I was trying to find seats,

four of us. And so I see these seats, but one, he has a coke on one. So I said, could, could you, would you mind moving that coke? And he did mind. He really minded and he grabbed his coke and he ran across the room and he was mad. And so I thought, oh, so then we ended up not even sitting in those seats. They found seats somewhere else. OK, so I, I was OK with him. And then all of a sudden, I hear this

yelling and screaming and two guys got in a fight

and one of them was him.

And so I wanted. I remember always what you did for me. And I went over to him after he had calmed down a little bit. And I said, I said, are you OK? And he said yeah. And I said, do you do hugs? And he said yeah. And so he hugged me and

I didn't have to. He, he had yelled at me before and got all cranky and stuff. He just hugged me. That's how I do. That's how I spread what you gave me. I just see where there's a need and I don't try to figure out what their part is anymore. It doesn't matter to me what his part is. If he's going to get better he'll have to figure it out,

not me. At the end of the meeting, after, after I got done talking,

I walked by him and he put his hand up like that. And we did a high 5.

And he was, he was quiet the rest of the meeting. And I found out later

that he had a little mental illness going along the side, you know, with his alcoholism. And I was so grateful that you taught me how to be kind because that was not my long suit when I got here. I didn't understand that what I was gonna end up paying the price for was my behavior.

Not what I thought, not what I felt, not what I said,

what I did. My behavior would end up,

I would end up paying for it. Because

inside I'm not unkind. Inside I can't live with a person who is rude or nasty or thoughtless. I I don't do well that way. And I don't think anymore that it's you. I wish I did. It was a lot easier then. I had a lot less work to do. Oh, just an asshole. Oh sorry,

just a jerk.

Not me, but I have come to find out that if I want to go to bed at night and lay my head on the pillow and go to sleep, I need to pay attention to what I do during the day. And you got to admit there are a lot of things that can piss you off during the day. I mean bad drivers right there. I mean, seriously, there are people who do not understand that the signal light

really is helpful to people in the next lane who don't know you're coming over. I mean, and I can get just all worked up. And what I've learned how to do is part of step 11 is I just automatically seek through prayer and meditation

to improve my conscious contact with God so that I don't try to run

the crazy people off the freeway. I mean, I just, it's seriously, sometimes people I've been with people, they were driving and somebody scared them or upset them and they just go wild. And, and I think, Oh yeah, I don't want to do that. I don't want to do that. I don't want to do that by myself. And I certainly don't want to do that when I'm driving other people. You would be nervous

if you were in a car with someone who was just like screaming

at people who can't hear them and they're probably not going to turn their signal light on anyway. So what I do is I make sure I turn mine on and I improve my conscious contact with God by seeking him whenever I am unsettled or uneasy. And that's what step 11 is thought through Prayer, meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him.

How cool is that?

Any God that works for you

as we understood him. And I will tell you, out of the people in this room, I'm sure there are almost as many interpretations of God

As for me. What works is the spiritual connectedness in the universe that works for me. There is a spiritual being and I connect. Every time I connect with God,

something changes in me.

I settle. I know I'm right. I know I am in the right place, connected to God. And the other thing that has happened in my sobriety is I, I don't know about you, but did you ever have big plans about what you were going to do and what you were going to be? What? Yeah. When you grew up, I had

big plans. I knew, you know I was capable of more and so I got I had never had a job, but you know, you know, you know things about yourself. So I get to a A and they tell me I have to find work, be self supporting. Really.

OK, so I go get out a newspaper, 'cause we didn't have computers then, not everybody did. We just had newspapers classified.

I wrote down what I could do. I went and applied for a job. It was driving a pickup and delivery for a typesetting company. Had no idea what typesetting was. Now this was not my dream job, but you know, I had gone to college, I could have done better. I just sat in my car and drank to get courage to go to class and didn't get to class that often. So they don't give you a degree for sitting in the parking lot drinking?

If they did, I'd have two. So

I went to class when I could and I didn't most of the time. So I have a lot of units, no degree. So I got this job because I was willing to drive a pickup truck with a stick shift that I didn't know how to drive.

Well, I'm telling, I'm going to tell you this series of events because if you're thinking that you're not ever going to be happy until something, this certain thing happens, you're never going to be happy.

I had to come to understand that there is a plan for my life and it's not mine. It belongs to a power greater than me. And so I took that job,

ground the hell out of the clutch and I really had a hard time. But I learned how to drive a stick shift, still know how to drive it. Had that job for a while. Their typesetter quit. I knew how to type because there's no homework and typing class.

So I was a good typist and I got that job. From that job, I got hired by a publishing company who did auto racing magazines. So for 28 years I had a career as a managing editor. I started as our typesetter and moved quickly into managing editor. It was a great job. I mean, I wouldn't have picked it. I didn't like auto racing. Well, I didn't know anything about it, but I learned a lot about it over the 28 years.

And I had a great time. I loved my job, I enjoyed the people I worked with. I got to meet some really cool race car drivers. Was fun

2008 Publishing Tank 2012 I got my position was eliminated

and I was 64 and had creatively gotten into some serious debt. You know, You know how when they first give you a credit card and you don't understand interest, you just know that you get to spend $500 and pay 25. So cool. Except for I ended up with $65,000 worth of debt. So I had to keep working,

had to. And I didn't know what I was going to do. So I did what I always do. I, I prayed, ask God to put me where I needed to be.

I told everybody in meetings I was out of work and I needed a job. And I sent out resumes and letters and all this stuff. And I ended up taking a bunch of seminars that the One Stop Resource Center for unemployment. And they said you're not gonna get a job by your resume, not anymore, but you have to have one anyway. You'll get a job by who you know and who knows you.

I'm gonna tell you how true that is. I was in a meeting and a friend of mine said I need a receptionist

really bad now. Do you think I wanted to go from being a managing editor to a receptionist?

Not particularly, but I really wanted to work. So I said sure and I became his receptionist. 30 days later I became their HR department.

I took the appropriate classes, I got the the credential and I'm an HR department. Nobody likes HR

Nobody. I thought it was just me that didn't who didn't like HR. No, nobody likes you because

you have to tell them what to do and you have to watch out for the company and them. So it was just a really difficult thing. But I decided at that point that I would stay there forever. So I got laid off

and I'm still, I still have a bit of debt I have to pay off. I've been paying it off every year. It's gone from 65,000 down to 20 something thousand. And I,

you know, needed a job. So I did the same thing I did. I sent out the resumes. I did all this work. I told God wherever you need me, I just want to be wherever you need me. I'm in a meeting one night, a friend of mine comes up to me and she says you're in the top two.

Top to what?

I didn't even remember. I applied to the city of Huntington Beach for a job, but I did. It was one of my many applications, she said. Sadly. The other woman who applied is my boss's friend. So you're probably not going to get the job, but you're in the top two.

And I've got to tell you, for the first time in my life, being in the top two was cool. The top two out of hundreds of applications. I thought, OK, God's leading me somewhere. I just have to keep going, keep doing it, keep sending stuff out. Two weeks later, they hired both of us. I've worked for the city of Huntington Beach for 3 1/2 years. I absolutely love it there. I work part time.

Last December, I paid off my debt. OK, now

that those things would not have been my idea of my life, I wanted to get married and live happily ever after.

I married somebody else's husband. It's hard to live happily ever after when you do that. It requires amends. And and the reason that he wasn't married anymore to her was very apparent once we got married. So I, I ended up, I am, I am someone who

who probably should never be married. I just, I just suck at it. But it was something I wanted, and what I have learned how to do

is to have friends. I have so many friends, male friends, female friends. I have friends. I have people who when my mother died, nobody in my family would help me. But all my friends in a a asked what they could do. This happens because you participate fully in the program of recovery, and steps 10 and 11 are essential to me.

I never do

anything without asking God to please guide me.

Please show me where I need to be. And I also have learned not to have expectations because every time I have them, I'm disappointed.

Has that ever happened to you? I just, I have these Great Expectations and then something really cool happens to me, but not what I want, and I'm disappointed. So in the last probably 10 or 15 years, I have learned that if I'm asking God to take me where I need to be and to guide me in this life, then I need to pay attention to where I end up

and not what goes on in my head.

I I wanted

I wanted a new car, but I had $65,000 worth of debt. This is a while ago. So I drove an old car and then one day a big

huge Suburban killed it.

Been an accident, you know, just kill it. Just killed it. Totally totaled it. So I didn't have an old car even, and I wasn't sure what I was going to do. A friend of mine lent me a car for a couple weeks, but I needed a car,

so

I was in a meeting one night. This ever happened to you? You're in a meeting, somebody comes up to you, she says. Diane, my in laws wanna give you their old car. They have an old car parked in the garage. It needs some work, but they wanted to give it to their grandkids. Grandkids said that's for old people.

So there I was and I had this old car. It was so cool. I mean, so cool. And I, I'm telling you this because there's also a thread

of spirituality that runs through this. There's a, a place that God takes me if I'm paying attention. So I have this old car and it's great. I love it. I keep it for 3 1/2 years and all of a sudden it's starting to cost me more money than a new car. So I think, well,

maybe I'll just

see what I can do with a used car.

So I go to Toyota of Huntington Beach and they have US Labor Day sale and I get a little 2008 Toyota Corolla. Very cute. Payments are totally doable. And I've had it since 2015. And because I bought it in Huntington Beach and I work for the city, I got a free beach pass.

And yeah,

it was so cool. I got a free beach pass and I went up and I got the beach pass and I went down to put it on my car and the number on the beach pass was 1973. Wow. The year I got sober. I don't know how you connect everything in your life with God's will for you or

a spiritual connectedness, but that's I look at what happens and everything speaks to me about where I'm supposed to be and

what I need to do. If I, if I am,

if I am questioning anything, I don't do anything. I wait until I have a clear idea of what my next step should be. And even if it's wrong, I will know that. From there, I will know where to go. It's just been such an amazing life. They thought I was going to die when I was 18. I'm going to be 70.

Who the hell lives that long? I mean

70 and, and I like it. I don't mind. I actually would rather be 70 than 69 because I like the even numbers. So I'm just OK with where I am. And that's what working these steps has done for me. All of them were necessary to get to step 10. Step 10 is essential in my life today to stay even

because I am still not perfect.

Does that surprise you?

Not perfect. I still have good ideas and just a tiny bit of a temper.

If I remember

that what I do is what I pay for, I am always able to say, you know what? I shouldn't have said that. Or you know what, let's just start over. We don't need, we don't need to go. We don't need to fight about that. It's not important. You're important.

I love Alcoholics Anonymous. I mean, absolutely love Alcoholics Anonymous. I owe a, a, my life and I, there isn't anything that I'm capable of doing that I wouldn't do for Alcoholics Anonymous. And I think that

I think that

that changed for me

that idea of being of service and loving a A and understanding that my job was to be of service. That changed for me when I was the delegate of the area and I went to New York and I heard I am responsible when anyone anywhere reaches out. I want the hand of a A always to be there. And for that I am responsible.

It changed me. It changed me into someone who pays attention to the steps and someone who pays attention to how you feel,

what you need,

what I can do for you.

I actually have nothing else to say.

Thank you so much.

Is that OK? Great.

As a reminder, please refrain from talking and moving around during the questions and the answers At this time, I will open up the meeting to questions from the Basket. Thank you.

Oh my goodness.

OK, well I'll just start with a really hard one.

Can you apply steps 10 and 11 in your life before you complete step 9?

That's why I said earlier that

the way Bill and Bob and the early members of Alcoholics Anonymous put this program together allows you some freedom. If you pay attention to what Bob did, he worked the steps kind of intertwined. He did steps early, early on, before they were even, you know, before he even got through. And I think that what I know,

10:00 and 11:00, if you, if you've made amends in Step 9,

10 and 11/10/10, you can work 10

early on. If there's something that's just killing you and you're not able to do all of step 9 and you just wanna make amends for that one thing because it's killing you. Yeah. I, I don't know anybody who will tell. Well, that's not true. I know a couple of people but who might tell you not to do that. But I will say in my life, I know the 12 steps and when one of them is necessary, I do it.

That's as opposed to doing nothing or

behaving badly. I would prefer so if you want. I mean, Step 11 is kind of woven all the way through Alcoholics Anonymous. It is a spiritual program. We live by spiritual principles. The traditions and the steps are all spiritual principles. They're not

personal control,

their spiritual principles, their giving it up.

And so I think that, yeah, I, I'm sure that step 11 found its way into my behavior before I finished all the other ones, because it took me a long time to do four and five. I had, I had bad behavior and I didn't, I wasn't sure I wanted everybody to know some of the stuff I'd done because I could still get in trouble for it. So, yeah, I think, I,

I think that it is

advisable to do all the steps.

I, I don't think that it, at least in my experience, I wouldn't recommend just doing 10:00 and 11:00 or 10:00 and 11:00 and 12:00. I wouldn't recommend that at all. But I think it, it isn't as crucial when as long as you do it. Do you have a daily routine for 10:00 and 11:00? What is it? Well, I kind of talked a little bit about it

when I was talking about driving.

Is it

whenever whenever I have that? I don't know. Do you guys have that little thing that comes up inside that little like an arrow that just twists in there and you know that you're irritated at something. You know you are. And you may know exactly what it is,

but I hardly ever know my part right away. So I have taken to restraint of tongue and pen until I know my part. And then once I know my part, I can take care of 10 and 11 or 10 on a daily basis. And I do 11 every morning I get up and I take a shower. And while I'm in the shower, I say this third step prayer,

and then I say the thank you prayer.

Thank you, God for everything you've given me, everything you've taken away, and for everything you've left me with. Thank you. And that's how I start in the morning. And I will tell you it's at least 10 or 12 times a day. I stop myself and say, God help me here. Help me here. I have a conscious contact

all day long and the last thing I do before I go to bed is say thank you.

If I'm not answering this correctly or or if it's not enough of an answer, or if you're if you would like something a little more, you can just ask me. But I'm gonna do the best I can, OK? Has there ever been

the time that you didn't apologize to someone you got mad at?

When I was newer, yes,

it took me years to start being aware of what that feeling was and that I had to find my part. I had to look for my part. And it took me even longer than that to understand that your behavior has nothing to do with me. Nothing. Your behavior will be your price. Your behavior is yours to change or not, however you choose.

My behavior is what I have to change. And so there isn't any time these days that I, I mean, I don't usually get in people's faces or anything. Right now it, it's just the driving thing kind of right now it's just kind of gone down to the driving thing. I people just irritate me when they scare me

when they're driving poorly. So I have I have to talk to God a lot when I drive.

Actually, tonight I had to because somebody was in a big hurry to get to the next stop,

and so they zoomed through there and scared me to death. And I started to want to call him a bad name. And all of a sudden I saw that he was at a stoplight and he really didn't get very far at all. So God. And I had a big laugh about that. Cool. And I didn't have to get upset

and I could see how someone else's behavior belongs to them, not to me. OK, let's see. Do you encourage the use of a written tense step for people who have troublesome defects and or resentments crop up frequently?

I encourage the use of writing. I I think that writing is essential to be able to see. I don't know about you, but I really couldn't see clearly my behavior until I wrote it down. And then in black and white, it's like, oh, shoot,

yeah, that was all mine. That was mine. But

in my head, it's colored, it has colors, you know, and a lot of the big colorful ones belong to you. So I can cover up my part by just having it rest in my head. So I do encourage writing, not just a written tense step, but anytime somebody I sponsor is deeply disturbed, I encourage them to write about it so they can find their part. So I guess it has to do with Step 10.

Is any attempt at prayer and meditation better than nothing? Yes,

yes. And I don't know,

I, I guess I'm not clear on what you mean by attempt, because if I'm talking to God, if I'm

saying, you know, OK, put me where you need me.

Help me get through this,

lead me where I need to be. If I'm if I'm asking those things in my meditation,

I end up getting the answers. So I don't know.

I don't know if I could do it better. I mean, I read meditation books and I spend quiet time. I'm sure that as I stay sober, maybe when I'm 45, I'll have it handled. I don't know,

just kidding, I think. I think that any attempt,

ah, because see, if you're praying and meditating, it's not an attempt. If it doesn't meet your qualifications, I'm sorry, but it's not an attempt. It's an action. If you're asking whatever and you're listening, however long it's action. So I would say yeah, it's way better than nothing.

Nothing didn't get me very far.

How long did it take to get

mentally stable

and were you paranoid and were you paranoid?

Thank you for your time.

It took a while to get mentally stable and some would question it now but I I think I'm pretty stable. I'm not paranoid. They really did don't.

Interestingly, I have I have in my family, narcissism was rampant. Seriously rampant. Every member of my family had some form of narcissism. I got so lucky in having one that there's

a solution for My sister is paranoid. She will call me and say don't ever let tell her I told you this, OK? She will call me and say they did it again. They crushed my groceries. They did it on purpose. They put everything on top of them. I got home, everything was crushed. They don't like me.

She's changed doctors hundreds of times because she knows that they

judge her for the illness she has. And she

she she's just really paranoid. And it took me a long time to figure out how to have a relationship with my sister because like I told you, my behavior is what I pay for. And I love my sister and it's not her fault she has a mental illness that tells her that she doesn't have one and any the only help she can get is admitting she has one and going to a therapist and she can't do that because

she doesn't have it. So I love her and I want to be able to see her. She won't let me come to her house and

so and she won't let me call her. I can only text her,

so 4 * a year we get together kind of in in the middle of where we live and have breakfast and sometimes it goes amazingly well and sometimes not. But the sometimes not never stops me from continuing to meet her and she's been able to do that with me. That's because of you, because you gave me the ability to look past

what was going on on the outside,

to look past what I needed from my sister and to just give her what I have.

Do you find yourself admitting wrongs daily? No,

I it's interesting. It's an interesting question. I if I, if I behave the way I thought about when I was driving every day, I probably would, but I don't. I always, I always ask God to quiet my heart, help me get where I need to be.

Don't let me be an idiot. I've already done that a lot. And I admit when I'm wrong, when I'm wrong. But I have learned how to behave better here because of you. I have learned how to treat people kindly and how to smile and how to shake hands and how to introduce myself to people and how to hug new people. I mean, I have learned how to do those things. So it's not necessary to admit it daily,

but

whenever I catch myself in that place where I know that I have a part, yeah, I do admit it. If you're running late in the mornings, how do you connect spiritually? I'm never running too late for that. I'm just,

I learned a long time ago it took me a long time to get where it was an everyday occurrence. The connection with God first thing in the morning

was an everyday occurrence because I don't do well without it. I then, then I am like controlling my own day and I'm getting where I need at. Yeah, it just doesn't work. So I've never running too late what I do. There have been a few times I've forgotten to pray in the shower and I chose the shower because I shower every day.

Aren't you? Aren't you grateful every day? And so I chose it because

I knew I would have. I would be awake and I would be in there. And every once in a while I've been busy and in my head and haven't thought about it until I got in my car and I stopped and I say the same prayers and I connect right then. The minute I think about it. I'm never too busy

to not do the thing that makes me useful. I need a connection to God to be useful to you and to others.

Oh my goodness, we only have one more.

In your experience, has a A changed and is it different now than it was in 1973?

Yeah, little bit a A isn't different. But the there when I was new, there were a couple of hospitals that dealt with alcoholism and Care Manor was one of them. Norwalk, you know, dealt with addiction and alcoholism, but there weren't there weren't as many

recovery homes. There weren't as many hospitals. There weren't as many people who were coming from that environment to this.

When I came into Alcoholics Anonymous, I just came off the street and most of the people weren't really young. I was considered young men, and by the time I got back, I was 25. That's not young anymore. Teenagers are coming. Kids. Yeah. It's different. Has has Alcoholics Anonymous changed? No,

no it hasn't. The 12 steps, the 12 spiritual principles for living are the same.

The 12 traditions to keep the groups together so that we don't blow each other apart. Still the same. Because you know, I'll bet you if I asked everyone of you here, you would all have a different opinion about things, right?

We all have opinions. My opinion

isn't important when I'm helping someone else recover from alcoholism. What's important to me is what has worked for me, my experience, my strength and my hope. What I know can happen and and let them find their way. But it hasn't changed in that they're still the same principles that we operate by. Meetings are still essential

essential. In my experience,

meetings are essential for recovery because you are around like minded people

even if you argue. Thank you for sticking around,

huh? We love and need you. Likewise, Thank you.