From Early Alcohol Exposure to Service in Sobriety

Good evening, I'm Josh. I'm a real alcoholic. Today is the best day of my life.

Grateful to be here. Nate Dogg, thanks for asking. Appreciate you.

Nate Dogg. Want to welcome the newcomers? We don't have any newcomers tonight. If you're new,

we're in Alcoholics Anonymous. Welcome. Thank you, Christina, for coming. I wasn't able to

be here last week, but what's that? Serena now. Okay. Thanks, Abe, for kicking it off.

A lot of similarities in the story, for sure. I love the similarities in the story.

My sobriety date is June 1st, 1991. My home group is the Stags of Sobriety,

held at the Cabrito House. And my sponsor is a man named Jesus Aguilar. And let me see,

about 35, 36 minutes. Good deal. Welcome to our friends on Zoom. And there's a lot of friends

in the room that I know and people that I'm acquainted with through service work and other

things like that, which I appreciate, and other meetings, and friends on Zoom as well, as well as

some friends that I just haven't met yet. So I'm really, really glad to be here. Let me tell you

about my day. I couldn't wait to start right there. I go to another Stag at Woodland Hills

Community Church on Saturday morning. Great, great meeting. Great way to start the day on a weekend.

And I got to answer some phones. Easy, David. I was answering your telephones, man. Come on.

Got to go answer some phones at central office. I got to take my sponsor to lunch. And I get to

be here tonight. I was talking to my girlfriend about that. I'm like, "Dude, I am going to be

like, it's like the opposite of the old days. I want to be too sober. Man, wow." And it's

awesome. And when I first came in here, I initially didn't understand the concepts that were

presented. Well, I understood. Well, I didn't understand, but I balked at some of the concepts

like go to three meetings a day. Wait, what do you mean three meetings a day? Yeah, Josh,

go to the meeting before the meeting, the meeting, and the meeting after the meeting, right?

Immerse yourself in this program. Be of service. Take on commitments. And fortunately for me,

I was kind of in the yeah, but club. They'd make a suggestion and I'd say, "Yeah, but it's not

going to work for me. I get it. It works for you. Not going to work for me." They'd say, "Just shut

up and do it." Pick up the guy, take him to the meeting. He needs a ride to the meeting. "Yeah,

but I can't fit him in my car. I mean, he's in a wheelchair. Don't worry about it. The wheelchair

folds up. Well, how do I get him in?" "Don't worry about it. He can put himself in the car."

And I was so grateful to get volunteered to do things like that. Then I had no idea how

those things would help me stay sober. But giving that guy a ride to a meeting that I was

balking at six months later when they wanted to give it to another new guy, I wanted to keep it

because I was still self-centered. I'm still self-centered today. You can only imagine,

but we'll rest his soul. Yeah, absolutely. Got a lot out of riding with John to meetings,

right? What a guy. What a guy. So I'll kick it right off sort of like Abraham. You told my story,

so that saved me the 10 minutes, right? I mean, yeah. Born and raised here, third generation

Angelino. Born and raised in Hollywood. Nice what I thought was middle-class folks actually never

had a lot of money, but you would have never known it by my upbringing. I spoiled the heck out of me.

Josh got whatever he wanted and cried for and everything else, which would turn out later

through inventory and ongoing process to be kind of one of my biggest liabilities. I'm not blaming

them. I just grew up with a sense of expectation and the notion that was really all about me.

Turns out I would grow up to become the black sheep of the family behind drugs and alcohol,

and I know drugs are part of my story, but alcohol was the first thing that fixed me.

It put that piece of the puzzle together, right? Everything clicked. I had arrived, as you said,

as Bill said. And unfortunately for those nice parents, being the black sheep of the family,

I'm an only child. They had no idea what to do with me and how to handle me. By the time I was

a teenager, I was just hell on wheels doing what I want, when I wanted, with no regard for the

consequences or the people around me. And I couldn't have articulated that to you at the time,

but that's, looking back, exactly how my behavior was. By the time I'm... One of my earliest

experiences with alcohol consumption was a buddy of mine, both my parents worked, a buddy of mine

and I at 11 years old, went to my house after school. And my parents were normal drinkers,

and I'll prove it to you right now. They had a liquor cabinet that had like half full bottles

of alcohol in it, a bunch of them, a variety of stuff. They liked to entertain. Looking back,

I couldn't relate with that at all. I never had a half bottle of anything left over. If there was a

half bottle of something, it was somebody else's and I was finishing that off, right? That's what

we do. Wasting alcohol is alcohol abuse. And me and this kid, Marcus, we filled the giant tumbler

with a little bit out of each one of those bottles and put that away. It was black, this black stuff

that we were drinking. And I was feeling great and he pooped in his pants. And I should have known

then that my relationship with alcohol was different than my fellow's. But I did become

aware of that by the time I was 17. What it did for me was it was that ticket to popularity.

I was the kid that had a little bit of hair on his face. There were certain liquor stores where I

could buy the liquor at 14, 15 years old. And I'd go around and collect all the funds and buy up all

the liquor and we'd go party. And it fed that ego. It fed that sense of community of being a part of

something. It was really gratifying. And alcohol itself felt great. I loved it. I didn't stop

drinking because I didn't like it. I just didn't like the consequences anymore. I couldn't keep up.

As my sponsor's sponsor says, we run out of time. I just ran out of time. I couldn't continue

drinking. And so by the time I'm 17, I'm a blackout drinker. I'm the guy that similarly

got very belligerent at parties. I'd go hit on your girlfriend and want to fight you because

you're pissed off about it. And somehow this is all my fault? Man, right? I'm the victim now,

right? I wasn't a very good fighter, especially in my inebriated state. I was the guy that just

started trouble. And somebody else would finish it. And they did so pretty mercifully in most

cases. I remember coming to one day, I won't go into too much stroke a lot, but probably will,

but stop me. I came to one morning, again, not remembering how I had gotten home and talked to

somebody and they were telling you, you don't remember what happened the night before. I'm like,

well, the last thing I remember was whatever. And they said, oh dude, you were hitting on this

dude's girlfriend and he was a Marine. And you kept trying to get in his face and he was just

trying to push you away. He knew how messed up you were. And finally you wouldn't stop. So he

popped you in the side of the head twice and tried to put you down. And I said, well, how come the

back of my head hurts so much? He goes, well, you kept coming at him and some other dude hit you

over the head with a beer bottle. Don't remember any of it. Those are the good old days. Those are

the good old days. The destroyed relationships, the crashed cars, et cetera, et cetera. Somehow

through my party, I met a nice girl through another mutual friend. We start dating. And

the short version of the story is her parents didn't like me and they forbade us to see each

other. And so the next time they did see us together, we were four and a half months pregnant.

And it was time to plan away. That's how it rolled. That's how it rolled. But I had managed

somehow in that period of time to at least curtail my drinking enough to get a decent job at a little

company in Burbank, work my way up in that company. A lot of us will do that. We show up and they're

like, hey, you're smart. Come on and let's, you know. And they gave me a bunch of training and

that kind of stuff. And I continue to work my way up in this little family business as it continued

to grow. And so life was going good. We were able to, you know, it was when you could afford to buy

a house, you know, back in the good old days. We were able to buy a home up in the suburbs up in

Santa Korea and set up shop and do the deal. And while my then wife was pregnant with somebody who

would soon become called Serena, when my wife was pregnant, you know, we were partying together and

everything else. And when she got pregnant, she stopped. And I wanted to be a very, very supportive

husband. So I stopped too in front of her and it continued to do my thing. You know, I worked late.

I worked long. I worked hard. And I deserved to, you know, when it was Miller time at work,

man, we'd crack it open and I'd, you know, I'd get home at 10 or 12 PM and not having worked,

you know, and put in the hours. But I got to go on a business trip back in 87 after sort of

ramping down my drinking a little bit, went on a business trip back East for a couple of weeks.

And it was just me and doing business and nothing else to do at night, but drink. And I came home

and I had, not that it was fully extinguished, but I had relit that fuse, relit that fuse.

And for the, for the next couple of years, it was, it was on and happening and was beginning to take

a toll on our marriage. We thought that the best thing to do about that, one of them was potentially

have another child that didn't happen, but we were going to buy another house, right? We're going to

move. And that, that didn't work out so hot. And finally the day came where, you know, it was one

of the most rational discussions I had ever had in my, in my drunken stupor was that would probably

be best for us to split up. And it was a sort of a mutual agreement. She didn't have any problem

with that. You know, so there I am, 27 years old, moved back into my, my former bedroom at my

mother's house that had been redecorated for a six-year-old girl. Does a lot for your self-esteem

when you're in this cute little girl's bedroom. And, and I'm still in full-blown alcoholism and

drug addiction. I'm still doing my thing, trying to, trying to hold it together at work barely.

And came the fateful day when I, I'm trying to condense my, I've usually got about 45 minutes.

I'm trying to do it in 35, right? I want to get the good parts, right? Came the fateful day when

I had yet another altercation with a subordinate employee at work. They had placed me in a position

of supervision and management. And I had become that guy who you didn't know which side of the

bed I got up on. Right. And you know, when you're managing staff, that doesn't tend to do so well

for morale among other things at work. And this woman who also worked at the same company with

me for about 11 years said, Josh, I'm not taking your anymore. And she picked up her purse and

turned on her heels and said, I quit. Needless to say the next day, I'm in the boss's conference

room. And I never want to forget what Ron said to me. He says, Josh, we think you ought to do

something about your anger. Now I was in this period in 1990, in the couple of years leading

up to 1991 where, you know, I had gotten a couple of DUIs in the past and I'd gotten sentenced to

meetings and I would go, that particular boss called me at one point, not because of this,

but for other reasons, too smart by half. I wasn't smart enough to sign my own card. I went to the

meetings and I get my card signed, but man, those meetings were uncomfortable. You know, you've got

all this smiling and laughter and people wanting to hug you and welcome you in. And man, when you're

in self-imposed exile and desperately antisocial, that is super uncomfortable, right? And then,

you know, those nice parents were nice churchgoing people. They were involved in the church. They

were part of a community. And so I was raised in the Episcopal church until I was 16 years old and

was able to debate my way out of it with them. And as I said, at that time of my life, they didn't

know what to do and just like Josh is going to do what Josh is going to do. And so there was that

other God component that really put me out on the meetings that I had attended. But we had been,

and so I had been going to, we had some company health insurance and I had been going to this

one night a week group that they had, a men's group at Kaiser when it was in Granada Hills,

one of their facilities. And there's about 20 guys in this group and we just share.

It was before they had a formalized program and did a formal intake and a structured thing,

but they were putting together this group. And I had been assigned a counselor, Dr. Joe Nobles,

heck of a guy, renowned in the treatment profession I would later learn. And he was the

leader or lead counselor of this group. And so I would bounce in and out of the Kaiser group.

I started out going pretty consistently for a couple of months, but then it became a good

night for an excuse to drink as long as I could get home on time. And that was always the challenge.

Because the problem when I drink, if I take one drink, I lose the ability to count and I can't

tell time. So I don't know if I'm going to stop at two or 20 or at two o'clock in the morning.

I don't have any control over that. I immediately lose all control. I know, not unique. But I

thought I was. I thought I'm the only guy with the problem. And I'm trying to control and enjoy

my drinking. We know how that works out. And so I'm bouncing in and out of the Kaiser group and

Dr. Joe intercepts me one night. And I know I'm jumping around a little bit, but I'll pull it back

together here. He intercepts me one night trying to go into the group and he says, "Hey, Josh,

I can't let you into the group." And I said, "Well, why not?" He says, "Well, you haven't

really demonstrated any consistent commitment to come to the group and we've restructured the

program now. And we have a more formalized thing where you would do an intake, determine where you

should come in." Because they had developed a 14-day treatment program where it was what they

call today IOP. Then you phase up after that and you go three nights a week for aftercare.

And then after whatever, for three months of that or whatever, then you go into the one night a week

kind of a thing. And he says, "I recommend you come into the 14-day program and start this thing."

And I said, "Well, I was white knuckling it at the time because I just didn't want to go to

the meetings and you people." And I said, "Well, I've been dignantly, I've got more than 14 days

now. I don't need to go to your 14-day program." He said, "Well, I'm not going to let you in the

group." And that started a kind of a weird cycle of from time to time when I would get desperate,

I'd call him, leave him a message. He wouldn't call me back and call him again and leave a

message. So back to this morning in June of 1991, part of what that incident that happened in the

workplace was I hadn't been drinking for a couple of weeks. I hadn't been medicated. I was trying

to hold on again with all of that angst that comes along with that, the dry drunkenness of a

brand new dry drunk. And he says, "Josh, we want you to do something about your anger."

And for some reason, that filter that used to turn every good idea into crap inside my head was

working the right direction that day. And I said, "I need to go into treatment." He said, "Do what

you got to do." And all the willingness I had in me, I said, "Yeah, but I don't have any vacation

time built up or anything." He said, "Dude, don't worry about that. Take care of yourself. We got

you covered." And so I called Dr. Joe right then and there. And the nice lady, the receptionist by

the name of Florence answers the phone and she says, "I'll see if he's available." And she comes

back on the line and she says, "He can't talk with you right now." And he said, "I know we've been

down this road before. Please tell him I'm ready." And he gets on the phone and he says, "Are you

really ready?" He said, "Man, I just can't do this anymore." You know, I had gotten to the point where

I could not look myself in the eye when I shaded. I was just disgusted with the man that was looking

back at me. And he says, "Great, man." He goes, "We can start you in the 14-day program tomorrow.

We'll get you all set. We'll phase you out." I said, "Outstanding. That works." He goes, "We're

going to need to do an intake and we'll have you come down this afternoon and do the intake." And

again, with all that willingness I have in me at the time, I said, "Dr. Joe, yeah, but see, I'm at

work right now and this afternoon just doesn't work for me." And he says, "Josh, I thought you

said you were really ready." And I held down the phone and I said to my boss, "He wants me to come

in today." And he says, "Go!" I'm like, "Josh, you're right." I felt a little uncomfortable on

the moment, right? I got on the phone with Dr. Joe and I headed down there. I had no idea. That

was June 17th and I had 17 days dry at the time. I had no idea from that day to this I'd be sober.

That would start off this fantastic road that we all get to experience. It's the miracles that

have come along with it, despite my best efforts, sometimes to do the opposite. My 12,200 and

something days of sobriety have not been perfect, all of them. As I go into the Kaiser program,

I think I'm sidestepping one of those things that kept me out of here. I'm going to go get the

educational variety. We're going to go through groups and relapse prevention, and we're going to

watch some film. Hollywood Henderson was really popular back in the day. What was his name? Father

Tom with Chalk Talk. Anybody remember that one from back in the day? Yeah, that was one of the

old recovery films. It was awesome. I wish I could describe it better right now, right? And then they

hit me, "Hey, while you're here in the 14-day program, we want you to get this card sign. You

got to go to a meeting every day." There you go. I go to a meeting every day. But the good news,

somebody in the group says, "Yeah, over at the Valley Club at this Kaiser table. We don't have

to be here until 8.30 in the morning. We'll go to the seven o'clock meeting. It's only an hour.

They'll sign our card, and we can get over here by 8.30." I'm like, "Perfect." So like 20, 25-listed

Kaiser every morning from the Kaiser group every morning at the Valley Club doing the deal over

there. Little things start happening that I was completely unaware of in my life. A guy approaches

me one day, and he says, "Hey, I've seen you've been coming around. I've got a book study meeting

on Wednesday nights at my house. We'd like you to come join us." And I didn't really have anything

else on my dance card in the evenings, you know, or for that matter, any semblance of a life.

So I'm driving to this guy's house in Woodland Hills. And actually, I want to jump back and tell

you one thing. When I was in those first groups at Kaiser before going in the 14-day program,

a man came in in February of 1990. And this dude was shaking and crying and sweating and

articulating all this fear about what he had just left, you know. Some fine ladies, I'm sure,

on Sepulveda Boulevard in a little motel room who he didn't know very well. Leave it there.

With a bunch of product was dry goods that he didn't actually own that belonged to someone

else. He walked away from all that, and he couldn't do it anymore either, you know. He was

articulating all this fear about what he had left behind and what the future looked like. He was

living anywhere but in the present. I later realized he was actually still sort of coming

out of detox while he was sweating and crying and everything else. But he was also articulating all

this fear. And I remember sitting directly across from him thinking, "That guy really needs this

thing." And I had no idea. I had three fingers pointing back at myself. I tell you that to tell

you this. When I go to this guy's book study in his backyard, I'm getting there and I've got all

of this stuff rolling around in my head, man. There's gonna be a bunch of guys there and a

bunch of BS talk and bullying and all this kind of stuff which I didn't know I had issues with

at the time until I would do some work to uncover it. And I get there and there's 25, 30 guys there

open the loving arms of Alcoholics Anonymous and welcome me. But what was really profound is I

walked in and I meet a man who I had met in February of 1990 at Kaiser. And I meet a

completely different guy 16 months later. He's got this big smile on his face. He holds out his

arms and he gives me a big hug and he welcomes me to Alcoholics Anonymous. And I said, "Hey Suze, what

happened?" And he said, "Josh, it was God." And I went, "Oh, there you go, man. There's the God thing."

That's what went in my head. What came out of my mouth was, "Hey Suze, I need you to take me through

the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous." And by the grace of God, we got to have lunch today, right? So that's

how that works. He hasn't been my sponsor consistently through that period of time and that's

a story for another day just because our meetings started to go different directions and eventually

it got to the point where it didn't matter if those meetings went different directions.

Here we are together on this road of recovery for, in my case, 33 plus years. I'm the only guy he works

with, and I don't let him forget it, that got to see him coming as a newcomer. I just had one more

research to do before it was time, you know. But what I got to see was a demonstration of what

this program can do. When I got to listen to somebody tell me what to do about my perceived

problems, I just had a great laugh with a guy I get to sponsor now who's got roughly 120 days. I said

one day a couple of months ago, "Man, I'm sorry to keep calling you so much about all this stuff."

I'm like, "Dude, that's my job. That's what you got me for, man. Call me about all this stuff that

comes out." And I said, "When I was new at 30, 60, 90 days, I was calling you, Suze, three times a day."

And one day last week Vince called me three times. And we had a laugh about that because it was

awesome. I'm like, "Vince, you've arrived, man. You've called me three times a day. I love it." It was great.

And we're doing some step work. We had coffee the other night, and doing some step work, and I said,

"Thank you." And he goes, "Man, I still don't understand that." I said, "Dude, one day you will.

When you're sitting here taking another guy to coffee, taking him through some steps, you'll get it."

Right? And I certainly hope he does. One of the amazing gifts of this program is getting to pass

it on to others who want and need it better. As I mentioned, this whole road for me hasn't been

perfect. My behavior and my decision-making hasn't always been great. When I came in here to get out

of my then six-year-old daughter's bedroom at my mom's house, I thought that if I had committed

enough of my disposable income into buying a condominium, that'll keep me sober. On June 1st

of 1991, I also had to close escrow on a piece of property. And I get in there, and the door

proverbially slams behind me. And I realized I got no furniture. I got nothing except my clothes,

which literally said that on our divorce agreement. Mr. Smith gets his clothes. That's how

well I negotiated that whole thing. She got the house. She got the car that I paid for. I mean,

all of that, right? It was a good resentment I had building there. And I had nothing, right?

But somehow I was able to cobble it together. And I realized in the program, as I was working

the steps and whatnot, there were some things that I had left out. I'll tell you how I found out.

By the time I'm about three and a half years sober, everybody in the rooms, they're getting

their lives together, right? And they've got a nice partner. Excuse me, a nice partner in

their lives. They're living in a nice house, driving nice cars. And they said, if you're

willing to go to any length to get it. So I maxed out my credit to get it. I did everything I got.

I'm spending all my disposable money on this house. My car broke down. So I got a new one

with a guy in the program. Hey, got a good deal there. And I later would come to realize I'm

comparing my insides to your outside. And I wasn't able to hold that house of cards together very

well. One night I'm coming back over the hill from a party with my sober girlfriend. Well,

I just talked to her. I talked to Tina the other day. It's this time she lives in North Dakota now,

poor girl. But I'm glad she's still around. We were coming back from a party. It was like

one o'clock in the morning. I'm coming back up Laurel Canyon, driving like a 28, 30-year-old guy

who's acting like an 18-year-old. And I take the car up the middle of the center divider on Laurel

Canyon Boulevard. And airbags deploy. And fortunately, nobody else was involved in the

accident. Tina wasn't hurt. I wasn't hurt. There's a whole scene. All the neighbors are coming out

because this car is sitting on this foot high tall center divider. The car looks like it's

sitting on a showroom pedestal, but it's totaled because the underneath had been completely ripped

out of the car. And I'm overcome with fear. I knew this financial house of cards that I had built is

going to come crashing down. I wasn't able to keep my auto insurance up to date. I'm so grateful no

one else was involved. It could have gone really, really badly. And it was really strange. It was

like, this may sound crazy, but it was like, and a couple of you heard my story, it was like this

little voice whispered in my ear, Josh, I know you think this is going to suck, but I'm here to help.

And from that day to this, I believe that's God revealed himself to me as I believe he truly is.

You know, he blew in my ear and I commenced to take some action to become more financially

responsible. You know, it sucks to declare bankruptcy, but I had to do what I had to do,

you know, under sponsored direction, you know, and own my stuff and be responsible and earn what I,

what I want to have as opposed to max out my debt to get it. You know, I'm grateful to tell you that

there's no, no identity themes in here. I hope, right. You know, today I've got an 828 credit

score, right? I struggled for the next five years to get it above six, you know, but anyone had to

do did what I had to do just by being responsible. But you know, I hadn't dealt with all those

character defects. I hadn't dealt with all those fears. I hadn't dealt with all that self-centeredness

and impetuous behavior and all of that kind of stuff up to that point in time, you know,

and so yeah, I lost it all. But as, as I used to go to a mixed meeting and a great old timer

by the name of Shirley used to say, don't worry, honey, it'll only hurt for a minute.

Right. We walk through stuff. That's what we learn how to do. And I'd like to tell you that my,

that my driving got perfect. About 10 years later, you know, I've got a good job with an

international company. Things are going great. I mean, I'm not making more money than I ever

thought of. Don't get me wrong, but I'm doing all right. I'm being responsible financially,

you know, and my then wife and her daughter and my daughter and her best friend, we went

up to the snow one day. We were up there sledding. We're having a great time. And you know, as we're

leaving this parking lot, we were having a little fun doing some donuts in the parking lot in my

truck, having a great old time. And I thought, Hey, if a little is good, more is better, right?

That's our mantra. Yeah. Oh, you can drink for a dollar. Give me $2 worth. You know what I'm saying?

And so I get up a little more speed. We're on this icy parking lot, spin around. And I flipped

that truck three times. First time was in the air, landed right on the roof of the truck, right on

the driver's side. Fortunately, this time, no one else in that vehicle was hurt. I later learned one

of them was furious and screaming at me, but I'm in a complete blackout and a concussion. I had no

idea because the truck landed right on top of the driver's side. I had 44 staples in my head,

tore my ear halfway off. But the one little flashback, if you will, that I remember was

getting loaded in the ambulance. And that little voice in my head said, "Maybe you didn't learn

the lesson last time, but I'm here to help you." I had to walk through some legal stuff because I

took the life of several people in my hands, including my stepdaughter. Her father wasn't

really happy about my behavior. And I'm 13 years sober. At Stags of Sobriety, I walked in and one

of Gary says, "Man, I didn't know you relapsed." I didn't, right? You can still act like an a-hole,

an idiot in behavior in this program. So we can do whatever we want as long as we're willing to

accept the consequences. But those aren't the consequences that I wanted to accept. And I had

to really take another reflective look on my behavior. And I'll wrap it up with two more

quick things. Along those similar lines, I'm driving one of my sponsors to a meeting one night,

and I had just had it out with my wife. So I'm a little bit irritable, shall we say, right? And

it's about 6.30 PM and we're going to this meeting on a weeknight, heading straight down Roscoe,

doing about 100 miles an hour. And George is tense, to say the least. And we come to a stoplight

because I'm not on a police chase or anything, right? Come to a stoplight, I come to a stop.

George says, "You doing okay?" And I went, "Yeah, I'm doing better." He says, "Good, man,

because I don't want to be part of your next spiritual experience." And that took me off

the ledge. That really was helpful. I'm grateful to tell you that I think part of it is aging and

maturity, but also reflecting on my own behavior that if someone's cutting you off in traffic,

it's easier to just let them go. If someone's cutting me off in life, it's not personal,

right? You just go with the flow and take it easy and let people do... People are going to do what

people are going to do. And so knock on wood and by the grace of God, I'm driving a nice little

Prius cruising down the road, drove my sponsor to lunch today. Life is good. And still get the

spiritual experience without having to crash my way into it. I'm grateful to tell you that.

There's so many things I could go on and on about. I've discovered on a personal level,

more of a lust for life. I love nature. I love the outdoors. I hike every week. Was that five

or one? That's the one. Got it. I'm heading right there. Thanks, everyone. And I love to hike,

discovered backpacking, love to get out there. And I wouldn't have even... Like many people,

when you're sitting there over a joint on a ball with somebody, it's like, "Yeah, we're going to do

that one day." And one day never comes. One day never comes. And I'm so grateful to get to do that.

Thank you, Chrissy, again, for being here and for sharing last week. I'm sorry I missed you,

but we've gotten to hear each other's story. And I always wrap it up with this.

I'm so grateful that because you got to hear it last week, when Christina came into these rooms

and she went up to rafters, the Loving Arms of Alcoholics Anonymous wrapped around her and

welcomed her into the program. And she went through that Indoc program that she described,

and she was on fire for this program. And about six months sober, she asked me, "Hey, dad, if you

had two weeks to live, would you drink?" Without hesitation, I said, "No." She said, "Why?" I said,

"Yeah, why?" Thank you so much for giving me a life worth living, and please, please keep coming back.