with you know. Good evening everyone. My name is Dan and I am an alcoholic. I'd like to thank
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Elizabeth here and I'd like to thank Scott over here who I met at the Pacoima alcathon a couple
weeks back and he asked me to speak here at this meeting tonight and I said yeah I'd love
to participate in my own sobriety so thank you for that. My sobriety date is May 23rd 2005.
That's the day when my battle with alcohol came to an end and the real fight began.
The fight to learn how to live. I was born and raised in LA.
Brought up in a normal house you know. Didn't have any kind my dad always had alcohol but he wasn't
an alcoholic. Didn't really see any alcoholics but now that I think back I know that one of my
grandfather's friends Jose was an alcoholic. Guy always smelled of liquor and he was always drinking
so you know we moved through life and about the age of 13 I had a friend we would go to the we'd
go home to my house after school and so we just decided at that age to start experimenting with
things so we started finding stuff. Dad's liquor cabinet was right in the kitchen so that was easy
to find so we started getting into the JD and we started doing shots of JD and I didn't think we
were drinking that much of it but one day my grandfather comes to me he says hey are you
drinking your dad's liquor? I said not a lot. He goes well he blamed me for drinking all his JD
and he blamed Jose for it too and he tore into us and I took the fall figured it was you. I said
yeah okay it was me he says I know the next time just ask me I'll get you the bottle. So I had
people enabling me at an early age for the drinking and I was marking the bottles. At the age of 16 I
had a friend who was of age 21 and they lent me their ID and I went to the DMV back in the day
and I walked in and I walked out as Robert White 21 years old. At the age of 16 I had a legitimate
21 year old ID from the DMV so we'd start going to bars and to clubs and all the rest. So we even
got on Friday before I got the ID when we'd go out on Friday you always hit the local liquor store
right in our neighborhood because I looked older I started shaving at 15. I just looked like an
older person so I never questioned me. Then when I got the fake ID it was really easy to go into
anywhere and buy the stuff legally because I'm of age and that just started me off right there.
I would go and I would just start drinking my senior year. Bartles and James were really big
back in the day wine coolers and they had the four pack of those Bartles and Jane and I would buy a
four pack of that and I would drink it and I would get a really really good buzz. Good enough to get
you through the night beautiful. By the time I graduated in June I was up to buying a 12 pack
of beer and drinking at least six of them most times it had to be eight of them. I could give
away four if I give away that fifth one I may not get the buzz I want. So my progression was
very very quick when it came with alcohol. I'm in college we're drinking still at that time I would
go home and visit and dad would always buy beer in bulk was his way of buying alcohol and everything
else in life in bulk. So in the garage I'd go out to the garage and there was a whole um cabinet
that was full of cases of beer and he liked to drink hams back in the day uh so hams it was
hams it was and then years later he switched off the hams they stopped producing it or something
went up with them and uh it was Miller genuine draft in cans always in cans by the way and I
started taking those and I'd take bottles that he had he had all sorts of great liquor in another
cabin in the garage and I would take a bottle here and there from that never thinking anything of it
never thinking I have a problem never thinking this is not normal behavior for a young person
to be doing um I just figured you're young and you have fun and you're gonna party and you're
gonna do whatever you want. So off to college I go age of 18 living and living in the dorms the the
first year we partied quite a bit and the fake id we'd go up to the local liquor store and it is
college so you could find alcohol and everything else very easily. Second year I'm in college I
decided to join a fraternity uh we're in the fraternity we're doing pledging um and you know
you have parties and whatnot in between whenever we'd have a party I was always always the very
first one to arrive and I was always the last one to leave the house every single time um as the
parties are over I'm walking around looking for what alcohol is still left over because I still
needed to drink um but they took me aside one time at one of our pledgeings on a Sunday and they said
we have some concerns about you I'm like oh okay well what are your concerns gentlemen they said we
think you drink too much and I thought to myself a fraternity where all you guys do is party and
everything we plan is all sorts of alcohol and get everybody ripping drunk and you're telling me I
drink too much this may not be the right house for me then you know um but I stuck with them and
nothing out nothing comes out of that um you know a couple issues with people but nothing ever
serious I never really had any problems so I considered myself a functioning alcoholic and
during that time then I thought I had a what I call the career in drinking it was my drinking
career and I used to refer with that and I thought of that this morning because I was what I might
say I haven't referred to my drinking as a career in years in years but when I first came in I
always said it was a career why because I took it that seriously Sunday morning the paper would come
to the house this paper has all the ads of this for the week immediately pull out the Rite Aid and
the Thrifty ad and see what beer and alcohol is on sale that week at Thrifty's or Rite Aid so I
could go buy that on Sunday and that's what we're drinking that week some makes its Moosehead other
weeks it's Heineken whatever this deal was but it was always based on sale price you see I'm an
alcoholic but I'm a cheap alcoholic I don't like to spend a lot of money when I drink so I'd rather
drink a lot at home and then go to the bar and spend 20 bucks maybe and then go back to the house
and drink some more because to me I'm saving money so much so that when we're in the fraternity we go
on spring break when we go down to San Felipe Mexico because in Mexico you know everything's
allowed and we're drinking and we're drinking and drinking and we go to a club and again I'm a
cheap drunk so I taught the guys something new and it's something that I came up with and I was
famous for it I call the Mavericks well Mavericks were when you go to a club and it's really crowded
people are always buying drinks sending them on a table and going out to the dance floor and
dancing my mission was go around the bar and pick up all the most full ones that I could all the
Mavericks I could find and drink all the Mavericks that's the kind of drinking that I would do and I
would drink someone else's drink not knowing what was in it or it didn't matter to me what it was
it was alcohol right that had to go in so I had many episodes like that and I never ran into any
kind of problems until of course October 1990 October 1990 we were drinking again a random
weekday night about three in the morning a buddy of mine lived in the dorm in some apartments that
were close to campus and he's like just crash at my house tonight I was living in LA I'm like sure
let's just go to your house so follow him up he goes through a signal it was yellow starts turning
on me I go through it immediately lights behind me see sun cop has me pulled over because I ran
a red light instantly smells the alcohol on me leaves the car right there it takes me to the
station they take me over they booked me and that was a DUI I sat in that jail and I felt like
complete um completely low uh and how am I how did I get here what what did I do to get here and
I started thinking you may have you may have a problem with alcohol I may have an issue with
alcohol at that point but again it wasn't deep enough of a cut I guess so I just continued to
do what I knew how to do best which was continue drinking and so I continued to drink and they sent
me to the alcohol classes and I remember that first alcohol class I had to go to um and they
sit in a group and they're like well what are you going to do different next time and everybody's
like well I'm not going to drink I'm going to go to AA meetings mine was I'm going to knock a cut
and the counselor's just laughing at me he's like okay we'll see you again and I'm like the hell you
will less than eight months later I caught my second DUI April of 91 uh and now I've got two
court cases going so I'm still dealing with all the alcohol classes from the first one I got the
second one the judge says something like looks like you may be a habitual problem drinker problem
driver something like that it was in the court you remember him saying that habitual and habitual
stuck with me because this hat whoa really you're saying I do this all the time you don't even know
me because I don't have to know you look at your record um says it all I need to say see right here
so I caught that second DUI and that one kind of scared me a little more because now we've got the
two cases and it's like okay but internally I never even internalized it just yet I know
I got to fight the law we got to fight the court case but as soon as we're done with this if this
were a beer bottle you know what we'd be doing we'd be opening that thing up taking a nice little
swig from it because again I've never internalized it so I did all those DUI classes did everything
we did all the court stuff I turned 21 in July uh it was uh July of 90 in October of 90 I got my
third DUI you didn't do the math on that that's three DUIs in 19 months and I didn't think I had
a problem yet for the third one it's 1990 in Los Angeles the last place I wanted to be was in LA
County Jail there was a lot of tension going on so I'm like I ain't going up to wayside there's no
way we got a good attorney the guy helped me with my second DUI I said is there anything that could
be done for me he says well there's one option you could try treatment my treatment he's like
yeah go to a rehab center I'm like oh yeah that's it that sounds great that's not jail right he's
like no it's not jail I'm like all right cool let's do that so they I was able to get a spot
luckily at actin if anybody knows about actin rehab any of us do obviously um so I did a 90
day stint up at actin and for those 90 days I would bounce around from the AA meeting to the
NA meetings at the CA meetings now when I was out there I did coke I think maybe five times in my
life never did heroin never did meth never did any of the other drugs but I'd still go to those
meetings because their stories were fascinating because I thought wow I just drank and I'm here
these people did a lot harder stuff and they're here and I always found that kind of interesting
um the AA meetings they had there were good but again I was still questioning whether alcohol was
the actual issue three DUIs but I'm still thinking whether alcohol is my issue um because I didn't
think it was really it was other stuff it was it was the courts it was just bad luck people run into
bad luck in life right I've heard of that it's just bad luck bad street bad bad couple years you're
having just chalk it up to a bad couple years and so I get in there um I do my time in there the
three months and I don't drink I don't do anything and I come out with probably the most time I'd had
sober and since I was about 13 years old right and I'm happy and things are going well um but not
less than six months after that of course what did I start doing again started drinking again
when I got out there's one thing I never did I never read the big book I never went to an AA
meeting although they told me that's what I needed to do and I had been doing it for three months and
I knew it was a good thing to do but I didn't go to any in the neighborhood where I was at I didn't
do any of that stuff and the further I got away from it the easier it became to justify having
that drink because after all maybe maybe this time this is the one time you could start controlling
it you're older now Dan you can control it you're more mature and I thought well sure as hell I can
control it I controlled it for a bit because that was 92 didn't get another DUI but I did catch a
fourth DUI in 1999 which was the last one and even after that last DUI which had me do all sorts of
AAs and all sorts of classes I still didn't get it I would go to the meetings and I would drink before
the meetings I'd drink after the meetings I'd sit in the meetings and look at you people and say God
what a bunch of losers these folks are look at these people they reach such a horrible place oh
how can you allow yourself not realizing not even realizing that I was one um and so when I went I
didn't get that message ever and I was sent by the court so all I would do I hope there's no newcomers
out there on a court card I started signing my own court card because I had so many to do it took me
three DUIs to figure out AA is anonymous so there's never a last name attached I'm like how the hell
are they going to figure do they call me they're not going to do this and I'm like I'm just going
to sign so then again do I need to go to meetings now no because I've already done the meetings I
just signed off so again I had an opportunity and throughout my life I've had opportunities
presented to me that I never saw because I was too into my disease and into my drinking to see that
it was God calling out and God's always been with me um I was brought up in a Catholic household
my mom to this day does church regularly she's got the candle in the bathroom and all that stuff
anytime we give her anything she prays on it for for months and years and at the age of about 13
is when I divorced God uh I had done my confirmation and I had written a beautiful
letter to God because that was part of our process and I remember that I had written this great letter
and I never got anything out of it I never got anything but God never answered my letter so he
pissed me off and I'm like well screw this and I was going to a Christian school and I'm watching
adults as a kid as a teenager and I'm watching adults backstab each other dirty talk each other
all the time and I'm like and this is religion so religion turned me off and I was done and that was
it and then it was like I knew that there was a God but he was mean he wasn't taking care of me
he was taking care of other people so it took me a long time um I continued drinking I was married
we got married in 97 in 2000 we had our firstborn here with me tonight thankfully um and uh and then
things started to change a little it's like okay now you have more responsibility but what didn't
change my patterns and my behavior because I still needed to drink and my drinking at this point was
let's just call it excessive I could not start a day no matter how many times I told myself no
matter what I would say or do could not start that day without the drink my drink every morning is
coffee but back when I was drinking it was not coffee it was usually a 40 ounce beer and I'd
start every morning with a 40 ounce beer and that would continue throughout the day because I had a
good break in time uh I happened uh yeah I'll get to that in a sec um I had a break in in my in my day
and I would go and I would go drink during that break and it was continuing then after school
after I was done working I'd go and I'd get my my alcohol again now that goes on and that goes on
and I'm drinking and I'm the type that would drink while I drive every time if I'm going half a mile
away I have to have a drink with so the drink is always with me fast forward to uh 2001 sorry uh to
2005 um I have a weekend away my daughter had just turned four years old you know the daughter's two
years old I take her camping for the weekend to a spot that I love to go to because it connects me
with nature the entire time I was there I was drinking Sunday morning rolls around go fishing
drinking while I'm there drinking during the day back up go home drinking on the way home
stop off in San Gabriel and I stopped at a gas station because I needed to go to the bathroom
and so did my daughter so I pour myself a drink this time it was a coke and whiskey and coke never
usually drank whiskey but you know when you're alcoholic you got to change things up a little
bit beer is not working maybe whiskey will whiskey's not working maybe the vodka will
God is not working let me try tequila for a while and so I was always kind of changing the recipe
but never really changing the actual drink right it was still going in and so I pour my drink I
parked the car I didn't realize when I parked I parked in a handicapped spot I come out of the
bathroom my daughter I'm putting her in the car and there's a San Gabriel police officer standing
and he just said something and I muttered typical Dan I muttered something under my breath like I
always do and then it's like what and I'm like and then and then of course when he says what
and what happens to me I snap and I get surly too like what I'm like what the hell I'm just putting
my daughter in the car this and that he's like sir come over here please and I walk over you must
like look inside or something I don't know he walks over he's like I don't even need to give
you a field test right now I know you've been drinking and I'm gonna just let you know if you
get in that car right now I'm gonna pull you over for a DUI and your child's gonna have to go with
us and this and that and I'm like okay well that's not gonna work what do you want me to do because I
don't care what you do sir I'm not telling you what to do I'm letting you know if you do this
this is what I'm going to do and if it's not me pulling you over it's going to be one of my
partners down the street now he's in my head like oh man this is not good how am I getting out of
this one only thing I could do I call my wife she lives over here we live in Granada Hills drives
from Granada Hills my other daughter all the way to San Gabriel it's over off Huntington drive
gets my daughter takes her puts her in the car then she takes my keys she takes the keys with her
she starts to leave at that point I absolutely lost it all and I start going crazy and I start
yelling at her profanities insulting her she drives out of the parking out of the gas station
gets to the corner Sunday afternoon I am yelling at the top of my lungs at her I jump on the hood
of her car like a madman and I'm pounding it like this I'm like give me my keys and I'm going crazy
I just wanted it losing it I remember though distinctly I looked over to the gas station
there was some poor gentleman who just on a Sunday wanted to fill up his gas his car with gas before
he goes to work on Monday and he's watching me the whole time and he's just looking like what the
hell am I witnessing here and it was me absolutely losing it I get off the car she goes she takes off
I'm like what am I going to do now what do I always do when I was in a jam mom how you guys doing
all right here's the situation so I had a little mix up and so Lisa's coming she's taking the keys
to the car and she's taking them back home so what I'm going to need is a ride from here to Granada
Hills and back here again so I could take my car and my folks are like okay because they didn't
understand alcohol as my dad when he found out that I drank and that I couldn't control it after
the second or third view I don't forget which one it was he's like just Danny just stop just stop oh
that's sweet thank you dad just stop you know like stopping was the thing I couldn't stop that was my
problem I couldn't stop for the life of me this Sunday though I go back my parents come they pick
me up all the way home grab the keys all the way back to San Diego by this time now I hadn't had
a drink in about three hours so I'm obviously sober good enough to drive home that's for sure
so I do I get the keys and I drive all the way back home I get to the house my wife's not there
my girls aren't there the dog's not there everything is just quiet and I'm pissed I'm leaving
voicemail after voicemail we I don't remember if we had cells I'm leaving message after message
and it's just nasty and what was there for me though a big bottle of rum still and so I
proceeded to have a few more drinks that evening of rum I'm not thinking that I was going to stop
but the next morning Monday morning something miraculous happened that Monday morning
I did not and I wanted to because I had the bottle sitting right in the garage ready to roll wanted
to have a drink and I decided no today you're not going to have not after last night that was uh that
was ugly you're not going to happen this morning and I remember I sat on the computer and I typed
up a letter like I'd done many times before to my wife saying this is it I'm not drinking anything
I'm done with alcohol but like many times I had said that and promised it and it was an empty
promise and it was it was it was not true because I never followed through that morning a miracle
happened by God's grace that morning I didn't have a drink that day at lunch time I had a break I'm a
school teacher I teach high school so I had a conference period so I had time and there was
literally the San Fernando group was just down the street from where I was working I was working
over at Sylmar high school and it's literally right down the street less than half a mile away
and I'm like perfect I need to go to this AA thing and see if I can get it this time so I went and I
sat in there and I heard some messages and I was like okay okay maybe there's something there for
me didn't drink though during that conference which is big because I always drink go back to work
that evening I decided you know what let's go to a meeting tonight so I went to a meeting the people
were there were okay they were very welcoming and stuff but I didn't connect with anybody at all
so I decided all right let's try this again the next day was Tuesday that morning another miracle
I didn't drink that morning again that that lunch time I go to that meeting at lunch over in San
Fernando that afternoon that evening I'm looking for a meeting there happened to be one less than
half a mile from my house I didn't want to go to it it was too close to home I thought oh my
neighbors are going to see me going to this AA because I thought they'd have like AA alcoholics
are here losers join us and my neighbors would see that and be like oh crap our neighbor's an
alcoholic not that they didn't think I was an alcoholic when I'm watering my lawn for three
hours at a time drinking beer after beer after beer you know that's never said maybe no um but
that was I walked into that meeting it's a Tuesday night it's a Granada Hills Canal Light acceptance
group I consider that my home group I walked in there that night and something was totally
different and I remember because it was a very large group at the time we probably had about
40 members or so we have a good amount of tables and I would sit I sat at the outside the first week
and what I did though the third day is I didn't drink again and now I've got a streak going and
now this is feeling pretty good right I went to a meeting again and then someone in one of the
meetings says well when I first got sober you know you got to do 90 meetings in 90 days well hell
there was you got to do 90 people are sober this is what it is there's the there's the answer just
go to 90 meetings in 90 days and you'll be sober so I did I went to 90 meetings in 90 days I tried
all sorts of meetings why because to me a meeting is like a bar we go into different bars and some
of them have really good vibes and we're how this is it this is the this is the spot right here I'm
hanging here for a while others you walk in you're like okay let's walk out and you don't even order
a drink right same with a meeting to me I go in it's alcoholics so we would be at the bar um and
some kind of you hit you connect others you're like oh god okay this is no thank you I'm sober
you're sober that's good um so it took me a while to find the right concoction of meetings I was
going to rafters at the time and I'd go on Sunday because they have a good participation speaker
meeting in the evening and I remember I'd go to the club houses similar to this and I'd always see
this little this little piece of fabric a white flag a white flag at all these meetings and I
always wonder why do these people have a white flag scratching my head pondering this by the way
I teach social studies history is one of my favorite topics wars and stuff like that flags
in general I enjoy I love history of flags couldn't put two and two together two and two together
sitting there in a meeting on a Sunday night about 90 days in it's over I'm looking at the
white flag above the speaker don't know what the heck he's talking about but I'm just looking at
the flag white flag white flag what the heck is it and then think surrender just came to me I'm like
there it is surrender and I didn't put it together like surrender because to me always surrendering
was defeat if you surrender you you lost you're surrendering you lost I don't accept loss like
that I can't I'm a fight I gotta fight and then I realized surrender to what surrender to the the
battle that you have with this addiction called alcohol and right then it kind of started to
connect a little more because I had surrendered the fact but I was still grappling with the fact
that I wouldn't be able to drink for the rest of my life and the rest of my life I came in at the
age of 36 that was a long time ahead of me I was lucky to have lived the 36 I thought I did a lot
of stuff that boy I should be six feet under but I was still here so I'm like okay well this is good
it gets me to go to different meetings I'm I started finding the other ones but the surrender
part when I finally did realize surrendering to alcohol was what I needed to do that's when things
really started to change and I was like on a pink cloud for that whole first year and I'm doing my
meetings regularly and I'm meeting people I'm reading the book this and that I celebrate one
year sober and I'm thinking this is great this is the way it's going to be everything's going great
god is working great things in my life a week after I celebrate that first year I'm in a meeting
at school I start getting overheated and then I realized I'm not doing well I go outside the
secretary walks by she looks at me she says you look like crap I'm calling 911 911 comes over
paramedics are there and have 30 seconds and they start putting probes all over me my colleagues are
walking out of this meeting now students are walking by waving at me and they're like sir
you're having a major heart attack I'm like what they're like yeah you're having a major heart
attack right now so what we're going to do is put these wires on you we're going to get you in the
gurney we're going to take you over to the hospital you'll see an anesthesiologist cardiologist will
be there and we'll the procedure take care of you I'm like okay like sir you're really calm for this
right now and it's I think it was that year sobriety I had I'm like okay because it's you know
I heard a lot about god's will and god's going to do what he's going to do so I was at a place where
I was like okay what do you want me to do freak out on you guys because what what good is that
going to be if I freak out on you like all right so they took me in and they did the procedure and
they put two stents in there but then I was sitting there and then I started questioning god again
and I'm like why why this why why would you give me a heart I did a year sobriety isn't that enough
of you I mean what do you want from me seriously I thought that was like man I drank all those years
I did all those years now I got a year sobriety and this is the gift that you give me on my my a
week after my birthday and I was pissed I was upset and it got me then from a good place here
I was riding on pink clouds to a darker place but the one thing I didn't do when I got to that
darker place is time was take a drink because I had met some men in this group and thank you
they're here tonight um to support and I appreciate that from everybody um they were there they were
there for me in those times and they would talk to me and they were just how you doing and we just
talked and that was huge because before that I would just isolate I would if I start isolating
then I would drink during my drinking when I started drinking it was social drinking it was
all about being social right and then towards the middle and certainly at the end of it the last
thing I wanted to do when I was drinking was be social and I would spend many hours in my man
cape called the garage drinking in the garage and that was it and my wife always told me she was
that's not like normal that's not you know people who socially drink go to bars you're just like in
the garage I'm like yeah but I'm just tired of people you know at this point I was tired of
people and uh what I had to realize when I came back into the program and got into the program
was that I needed these people actually um there have been times in the program in the 17 years
that I've been sober where I've kind of gotten away from the program a little bit it happens life
comes over and you think you're doing okay and then I started sometimes getting small little
resentments against a meeting or someone at a meeting and that would kind of blow it I've come
to realize now you can't ever allow anything like that to happen at any meeting someone may say
something that offends you or something you just gotta let that stuff go um I have changed so much
I think especially in the last few years um I go to a regular men's stag my men's us are thursday
night closed meeting uh of alcoholics um and there's a so much sobriety in that room and
when I first got started going there years ago it was like 80 men every thursday uh then covid hits
and then the numbers come down they still left it open we average about 30 men a week now in there
um but that's that's part of my program now for sure and moving forward has to be um because those
men help keep me grounded they help keep me in sobriety and anytime I have an issue with with home
or or work or personal whatever it is I can go to any one of these now and talk to them and they'll
help me out I never had that before I was one who always did things on my own I don't need your help
thank you I could figure it out I can do and I would do everything on my own can I give you a
hand no I got I got can I help you no I got it I got it took me a long time in this program to
figure out that we do need help I need help and I need to reach out and I need to ask for help and I
in turn need to help others when they ask for help as well and that's been very big and key to help
keeping me sober all this time um went through the steps I believe that the steps and I've talked to
other people that I think they should teach this I guess I should we should I should teach the steps
as a lesson at school without the kids knowing just because I think it gives them that good
foundation but ironically in my daily job of teaching young people the program comes up all
the damn time I do have those who are very observant in my classroom will notice the
serenity prayer is up on the wall serenity prayer sits right above my my door right right walking
into my classroom on the inside of my class it sits in there one student has noticed it in all
these years because his dad happens to be in the program and he was in al-anon he was in teen teen
al-anon um but it's there every day I remember when I first got sober I couldn't stand the kids
in the classroom whenever they're having a fit in there because I was a yeller at the beginning when
I first started teaching I'd yell and I'm loud obviously so I was louder than them and then I
got sober and then it changed because then they would be going on I just sit there quietly just
just wait just wait it out just patience and that has helped so much whenever they would really get
to me I just turn to the whiteboard pretend I'm about to write something and say the serenity
prayer and that always helped out and then I turn right back to them and I'm back again and then
there's little things that you pick up in the program right we have one gentleman who's in the
program he's a little mentally out there but he has some nuggets of wisdom every year and then one
of them was you never have a whole bad day you could always restart your day just restart it and
when he said this at a meeting and this guy's a little loony right I just I instantly thought
of the staples red button when that red button came out a number of years ago and so in my head
it's a red button and restart your day if I am having them just hit that restart do a serenity
prayer start it right over again and now I can honestly say that's true I never have a bad day
I have bad moments of the day perhaps bad spots but I always am able to work those out and
almost every day ends up being a good day why is it a good day because today I didn't dream
and if I could do that today and then continue tomorrow then I have a chance this program has
been an amazing thing if we do have any newcomers or those who have less sobriety keep coming back
keep coming back keep coming back is all I can say I've seen this program work miracles I've seen
people who were like a revolving door in and out in and out and then they finally get it when they
finally get it it's such a good feeling because I remember when I finally got it it was such a good
feeling the welcoming I've never felt more welcome than when I go into AA meeting and I think it's
because there's similar people who think like I do and who acted like I did and who have also
changed their life or in the process thereof of changing it so it's very powerful I have to thank
again and I didn't say it but I'd like to thank God the one my higher power who I call God is by
the grace of God I am here today I shouldn't be here to tell you my story I should be dead based
on that heart attack alone and based on other things that I've done but I'm not so that means
to me that God has a mission for me and God does have something for me to do and so I'm here and
so I pray daily I'm grateful on a daily basis I have so much in life to be grateful for especially
in today's day and age with all the stuff that's going on out there I have a great house great
family got a roof over our head we got great jobs secure financially in terms of that so I can't
complain about a single thing today um but I know that if I choose to stop doing what I'm doing I
know what's going to happen I'm going to get right back into it it's not going to take long and I know
I've heard this story many times I like going to meetings on people relapse it's like oh man I
stopped for this many years and then it went so much and I just know that when it goes so much
worse and as some people have said I could have a lot of relapse in me but I don't know how much
recovery I have in me if I go out there and if I go out through those doors tonight and go dream
I'm not promised ever walking back through that door again and that scares the heck out of me
that's something I do not want to face for sure if this is working now and this is a simple program
for complicated people well I'm complicated let's keep it simple baby and let's just do the things
we have to do pray be be have gratitude for what you do work with others read the book carry the
message where you can and as long as I'm doing that I think I have a chance thank you all for
being here and allowing me to share this my share with you