Monterey Bay Area Roundup

A continuación se muestra una transcripción en bruto en inglés de la grabación de audio de
Harry H. En 2019.(Haga clic para regresar)

I don't have a binder of things to read to you, but I'm sure you're going to miss that part, but I'm going to close the binder up, or can I? Can I just put soy? Thank you. Great. My name is Harry, and I'm an alcoholic. I'm going to see if I'm a little taller than some of these people.

I just do this. How is that better? I'm being a classic alan. Oh, good. Yeah. I guess that's a funny one.

That's it. Okay. Oh, there we go. Okay. Good. Okay.

Okay. I'll start off with some basic facts. My sobriety date is December 25, 1995, and that's what my wife, Jane, was referring to. I say that in a miraculous fashion. It was a simple miracle. My wife has been more than generous about what she described about me, and I will try to be a little more honest about what it was like.

The interesting thing, I'm also a member of the alan on program, and I respected deeply, so I'm glad you're here as well. The only problem is, is I get some kind of convoluted, should I be focused on me, or should I be focused on you? So I don't know. I kind of go both ways. It's a difficult challenge for me at times, but the one interesting thing is for sure that Jane and I have been married for 38 years, and she's a terrific member of alan on, and she focuses on me all the time. So we both like to focus on me in certain respects, so I appreciate that.

And I love her dearly, and she's been a wonder, and I'll tell you, before I get into my story, she is the one that got me into the AA program. I knew I had a problem with alcohol. There was no doubt about it. But I didn't think I needed to go to AA. I thought somehow or other I could control it. I really believed it.

I have an enormous amount of self will. At least I thought I did, and I thought for sure that would help me with the alcoholism. And day after day, month after month, once I realized the shit hole that I was in, excuse my language, I proved it to myself. I could not control it. So she was trying to get me to go to a rehab center. I didn't have the time, at least in my mind to go.

I didn't put it as a priority. I'll put it that way. But she did find that meeting for me, and that was the beginning of it. But before I get to how I got to there, let me tell you a little bit about me in my background. I was born in Canada. And when I was a little boy, I was called Old Loveable.

And I thought that was a terrific name. I was Old Loveable. And up until the age of about six and a half, I think I probably was consistent with that my behavior. We moved from Canada to the United States, and we moved to St. Louis, Missouri. My dad had a job there.

And I moved to, and I didn't want to move. I didn't like change. The whole thing kind of upset me. And I was upset about that whole notion. Why do we have to leave Canada? It's where our family was.

I moved to a new neighborhood. And I met different people, completely different cultural background, et cetera. And I was awkward, and my family was raised with this idea that education was superior, and everything else was irrelevant. And good news for my brother and my sister and my mother and father, not so good news for me. My case, I was not a great student. They were terrific students.

So I felt a little inferior in the sort of the standard of how the value system was in our family. And I remember just that uneasy feeling, so where am I going to fit in? Where's my slice of life? How is this going to work? So I got in with some friends that had a different view of what's important in life, I guess. And we started, I guess the first thing we did, which I kind of heard Jane talk about how wonderful she was as a responsible person.

Well, I was just the opposite. I was a irresponsible person. I was a young person, and I carried that for a while. I went to a bowling alley when I was in elementary school, and I thought that was pretty cool. Go to a bowling alley. And I saw what was going on in the bowling alley.

People were doing stuff, and I thought, well, what else is going on? They had pinball machines, and then I thought, well, what are they doing over there? And they learned from that, they played pinball, and you win games, and one thing or another, that seemed like a good idea. Well, it seemed like such a good idea that we jacked up the pinball machines on ashtrays, so the ball, if you know how pinball machine works, wouldn't move. And we'd rack up these games, and then we would sell the games. And it was just this whole idea of how can I get a competitive edge without any sort of brain power, but maybe with a little guile and deception.

And that seemed to be the start of how some of my learnings began. Then we moved again from St. Louis to Colorado, to Denver, Colorado. And this was another interesting thing. Didn't want to leave St. Louis.

You know, nothing against St. Louis, but it's hot and humid. And the summer, and it's kind of cold in the winter. So, but I didn't want to go, again, resistant to change. And we moved, and same thing, trying to get in with a new group of people. I thought I was going to live in a ranch.

No, I was living in a neighborhood, and with other people that, you know, we were new, and it was a little awkward and that sort of thing. But again, I found my common element, the guys that were getting into mischief, if you will. So, I was in junior high in high school in Colorado at that point. And we got into a lot more mischief. I got into drugs and alcohol. And I think it was, I was 14 when I went out with a friend and his brother, and went to a drive-in.

And we drank a bunch of beer. And I got sick, and he said, well, it's not great, and I'm kind of going, yeah, that was really great. You know, it was horrible, horrible experience for me. But I was going along with it because that was kind of cool. Anyway, the progression of that into the combination of drugs and alcohol in high school managed to get me horrible grades in high school. My grades were unbelievably poor, and I was suspended right close to the top in terms of suspensions.

I was out a lot in my first couple of years of high school. But yet my parents, because they valued education so much, expected me to go to university. And once a counselor came up to me and said, gosh, what are you going to do if you get out of this school? And I said, I'm going to go to college. And they looked at me and said, are you serious? And I said, yes, I'm very serious.

But then I thought about it. Well, these grades, like a D average, may be a low D average. And I don't know why I was even in there anymore. And they kind of got my attention about maybe I should study a little bit. So I did start studying towards the end of high school, but I was doing, again, drugs and alcohol. We were throwing parties every weekend.

And it was a game on. But I managed to get some decent grades and do well enough, frankly, on the standardized test that allowed me to go to university. The good news was, is the craziness that I was going on in high school for me, I was able to stop continuing that. And I went to the University of Colorado in Boulder. And this was in the late 60s, early 70s. And that was a pretty wild period of time in Boulder, Colorado.

So I might as, maybe I'm just, here we go. All right. At any event, my experience up there, I realized now, once I was in university, that I needed to, I guess, focus on the education. Because I needed a job. For sure, I needed a job. And when I was in university for the first couple of years, my father was working.

And then he lost his job. And then all of a sudden, I had to go on school loan. So again, it was felt like the rug, whether it was moving from location to location, or now the financial insecurity came into play. So I had developed this sort of fear-based decision-making. Everything that, all my decisions were focused on fear. And it was all self-centered because I didn't feel like anything was predictable or reliable.

My father was an alcoholic closet. Excuse me, closet alcoholic, I guess, functional in certain ways. But he, like, like, James' father, he could get violent as well. Nevertheless, back then, what they called alcoholism was skeletons in the closet. We wouldn't talk about it. It was like, and I would find his alcohol in the closet.

And it was like, yeah, what's up with this? And I remember realizing, oh, don't worry about it. Your dad's fine. And it's that, et cetera, et cetera. Just sort of skipping over everything. And then I found out that my aunt had the disease of alcoholism.

She died of the disease of alcoholism. And we never talked about it. It just was like she'd passed away. But I never knew why. I didn't know anything about it. Which, you know, maybe was good, maybe wasn't at any event.

So that disease, and my uncle was an alcoholic. My brother is an alcoholic. So I've come to this recognition that it was in my family. But I wasn't going to be the alcoholic. I'm not going to be the alcoholic. I knew it was a, you know, what I saw, the behavior.

And it wasn't appealing to me. So I thought, no, no, no, I've got that out of my system in high school. I'm going to be fine now. I've seen how it works. And it's not good. So I began doing other sorts of other activities.

I drank some, but not alcoholically in college. I needed a job, really, really bad, when I got out of university. So before I did, I went to the place called the Placement Center. I'd never been there. I'd never been to college counseling. I was just measuring in general education credits.

And I said, I need a job when I got out of here, period. And then I said, so who gets jobs? One single question. And they said, engineers and accountants. So my brother was really, really smart. He became an engineer.

I wasn't. I became an accountant. So, but miraculously, I got a bunch of great offers out of university. I got a job that worked just like they said it was going to work. But now I was doing something that I really didn't care about. But it didn't matter because it was employable.

That's what it was, you know, behind all this stuff. So I'm now doing a job and working long, late hours, doing something I really don't care about. And somebody thinks I'm sort of good at it. And I met a friend of mine at the same firm. And he loved to drink. He loved to drink.

And so all of a sudden it was like, great. We would go out drinking all the time. And it was like, hey, we're working hard. We can drink. We can do all this stuff. And from there, then my alcohol started to grow.

I had a girlfriend in university and she dumped me. And that broke my heart. And so I put up a wall around people. I didn't want people to get close to me at all. I just couldn't take it. It was a lot of pain for a young person like me to handle.

So instead of getting close to somebody and becoming vulnerable, no. I literally remember thinking, put up a wall. And I did. And so I went on for many years, going drinking, going to the bars all the time. Back then they had discos. I'm a horrible dancer.

But I'd swing myself around the room. And what have you? And I met a lot of people. And but superfluous relationships. Wonderful people on their side, not so much on my side. In that process, I came to realize that despite the fact that I was drinking a lot, I was working a lot and doing well financially.

So that was OK. It didn't seem like my life was unmanageable by any stretch. It seemed quite manageable to me. But I was still fear driven by literally everything that I almost all my decisions. But I was tired of the bar scenes. I thought, my gosh, I've got to change this part.

I went to work for another organization. And so instead of going, I wasn't going out to the bars as much, I was drinking now at home. And so that seemed like a logical thing to do. I'm a busy guy. I like to drink. I'm working a lot.

Seems like the logical conclusion to me. And so that's what I did. I started drinking. And I might always get the big handles. 1. 75 liters of whatever was on sale.

So I have lots of them. And people said, well, what do you prefer? That's the cheapest. Well, the best booze at the best price was it. And the most of it. And so I'd have lots of it in my depth when I had a condominium in the condo.

Anyway, I left that job for a job that probably was the really beginning of the ramp up for me. I went to work for a man. Some of you may have heard of the television series, the Beverly Hillbillies. But at any event, there was a man I worked for that had made a lot of money very, very quickly. He went from a two-bedroom condominium into a mansion with a butler and all the home with a pool across from the country club. And he just unbelievable stuff.

He had an airplane. And he hired me to be what they call a controller. So that was interesting. So I am now, and he's traveling constantly. And he offers me the opportunity to babysit his house. Well, me and the butler and the wine cellar and the pool with the bubble, and I'm in my 20s.

So what's going on? We're going to have a little fun. And I did. I had people over to this house. And I lived in a crummy condo and a bad part of town. But not him.

He lived in a great part of town with a great home. So I did. I started drinking. I could drink anything I wanted. It didn't matter. He didn't carry.

He had all the booze in the world. And that was just about right for me. So my drinking is ramping up. And then my ego really gets start ramping up. Because I wasn't as much fearful now as I was egotistical. Now I was deserving of all these things that were seem to be coming my way.

And I had gotten so confident that I thought, well, I'm going to go out and form my own oil company. That's what I'm going to do. And I took courses to do that. And I started raising money and doing all these kinds of activities to fund my ever-increasing, maniacal ways. Jane and I met at this point. So she's meeting me right at the mansion house.

That's where she's kind of seeing an at a big office in a downtown high rise and all that. She sees me there. And then I say, oh, by the way, I'm going to quit this job and go start my own deal. And she's like, are you sure? And by the way, any expression on her face makes it look like I'm kind of rounding the edges a little bit here. Believe her expressions.

Don't believe me. I'm doing the best I can. But rigorous honesty is a tough measure. Well, anyway. So that all happened in my life. And I was able to do it, but unfortunately it went way up and doing really well.

And then it went way down. And that when it went down, I went from ego into depression. It was horrible. I felt bad. I didn't know what to do. I kind of was floundering for a while.

And I was drinking more and more alcoholically with that experience. So what takes place next? I now have to humble myself. So now I've got to get into something called humility. Not that I knew what it was about because I didn't. But I had to get a job because I couldn't make it on my own anymore.

I had to go back and go to work for somebody. And I got a job. And it was far less than I'd been used to making, et cetera. But I was grateful for the job and the opportunity. And the company thought I was doing pretty well. And they started rewarding me and sending me to middle management sessions or something.

Anyway, but they weren't doing quite quickly enough for me. I thought it should go a little faster than that. My progress just wasn't quite quickly enough. So what ended up happening is I met a guy who was in the printing business. And he was selling us a lot of printing supplies. And any event, he and I got to be friends.

And I said, you know what? We buy a lot of printing stuff from you guys. And you sell it. And I think maybe we got to start our own business here. So we did. But I was still working at the company.

And somebody used the phrase, conflict of interest that I might have. And I didn't want to think about that. And I thought, no, I'm going to get in the company. Better priced with the same quality of product. We're cutting out a lot of the fat in the middle of this thing, et cetera. Well, that sounded good to my rationalizing mind.

However, what ended up happening is the internal audit group didn't agree with that. They thought that was flat out wrong. And they were right. So I now had this opportunity. My wife said, when I lost my job. Well, the reason why I lost my job was because of what I did.

I just didn't lose it somewhere. Like, where's my job? Somebody took it from me. And the problem was, as I set them up to do it. But I learned something from that. And we moved to Houston.

And I got a job there. And it was way over my head. But I had credentials. And I had an advanced degree. It doesn't matter. But an advanced degree that made me look particularly good.

So I got a particularly good job. And it was like, OK, great. Now I'm going to have to live up to what's on this paper. And that's not going to be particularly easy. So I was working a lot of hours working downtown in Houston. We lived out south or out in the north of downtown Houston.

And the pressure was building on me. My drinking now was just like I would go. I had a wonderful sports car. And I would drive home with a bottle of scotch into the seat, drinking it straight out of the bottle, just as fast as I could. Sometimes I would throw it back up into the bottle. And it was like, and you think I just throw that out?

No way. That was good scotch. I'm drinking that scotch. And I did. So I don't mean to glamorize this, because it's not a glamorous story. So I knew that those things were really kind of rolling out of control.

I went to some sporting events that the kids were involved in. I'd always show up late. And I'd for sure been to the liquor store before I went to them. So my friend alcohol was just ever present with me. And it was particularly obvious. But I managed to keep that job and go on.

And then we had an opportunity to go back to Canada. And now I was offered a ridiculously good job way over my head. And again, I couldn't handle that pressure without booze. So I worked a bunch, and I drank. Essentially, if I wasn't working, I was drinking. And I don't know how I managed to keep it going.

I was flying all over the place. And I watched there. There was a man, a man I worked for, the CEO of this organization, which is a global energy company. And we were flying around. And he drank alcoholically like I had never seen. Because he just medicated himself as fast as he got on that airplane, whether it was a commercial jet or a private jet, and drank it just.

And his whole demeanor changed. And I was watching him. And he was kind of like my mentor. And I was thinking, gosh, I'm going right down this same damn path that he is. And so that was the beginning of the observation that I had a problem with alcohol. So when it ended up happening from that, James had seen it earlier than that, as you might well imagine.

Is that right? OK. So she was talking to me about the disease of you got this drinking problem is way out of control. I'd say, yeah, I know I'm going to stop. I'm going to cool it. I'm not going to do it anymore.

And I said that night after night after night after night after night, week after week, month after month. And I'd mark my bottles to say how much I'm drinking. You think, you know what, I'm going to mark the bottles. That's how I'm going to control it because I'm going to know exactly what I had. Well, I had so many bottles stashed around the house that what I would do is first I used to dilute it. You think, you know, see, I'm not drinking that much.

But then I could tell the color is changing. So that wasn't good. So I had to then mix the other bottles that Jane didn't know about in with this. And now I'm thinking, godly, this doesn't seem normal. But I have to drink and hide all this. But that's what I was doing.

And that's when my whole, it collapsed when I realized that I couldn't stop. I realized I could not stop, not for a single day. It was no way I was going to be able to stop alcohol, despite what I thought about my determination and abilities to persevere. But, nope, wasn't happening. So Jane finds me this wonderful AA meeting in Calgary, Alberta, after the whatever number of phone calls that she had in pleadings. I went to that meeting and it was the greatest source of relief that I've ever had in an hour.

I went in and listened to these men talk about their struggles with what I was struggling with. And I couldn't believe it. I just felt like, wow, the weights off my shoulders, there's not just me, you know, with my little secrets, and my little, you know, shenanigans throughout, I cover this up. There are other people that have this problem. And they were willing to share horrendous stories that they had done with me. That were terrific.

And all they would ever say to me is, keep coming back. And I thought, why not? This is wonderful. I feel great. I was getting relief from the disease of alcoholism by simply attending those meetings. But what I wasn't getting was recovering.

I would go home every single night after that meeting, feeling good. And then start drinking that night. And I did that for months. And I remember thinking that it kept saying, keep coming back. It'll work. It'll work.

And I remember thinking, I believe it's working for you. I don't see how it's going to work for me. And then this man that Jane referred to, Rennie, he came up to me. And he said, how do you enjoy the meetings and that? And I said, you know, Rennie, it's great. I love the meetings.

They're terrific. All the guys are great and online. And then he said, are you still drinking? And I said, absolutely. Every night. And he goes, are you working the steps?

I said, no. I'm not working the steps. I said, and he said, well, maybe you need to start working the steps. And I thought, yeah. And then I looked at those steps. And then I was talked about.

I had admit I was powerless over alcohol. I thought, now I've been proving it to myself. But I had a hard time admitting that. So I struggled at the beginning with this program in every single step. All the words that they talk about coming to believe in a power greater than myself, it's like, what power? And then they talked about a higher power.

And the only higher power I knew was that. But at any event, these guys hung in there with me. And then on December, and I started working with Rennie as my sponsor. And he was a really fascinating man, because he worked with the First Nations people in Canada, which have a horrible time with this disease of alcoholism. And those were his primary sponsees. And then it was me.

And I thought, gosh, we seem to be a little different. But maybe not. And I learned later. But at any event, he worked with me. And he was so kind and patient. And then one night, that Christmas Eve that Jane said, and this is the thunder that she referred to, I was raised in an atheist agnostic family.

I didn't have any sense of God or a higher power by any stretch of the imagination. But I knew I was in a way I couldn't. There was no way I could do it on my own. So when she said I was passed out on the bed on Christmas Eve, I was crying in my pillow, praying in a way that I didn't know how to pray. But I was begging for help. And for whatever reason, I woke up that next day, which was Christmas Day in 1995.

And I didn't drink. And I couldn't believe it. And I didn't feel like drinking, which was impossible to believe. So I thought, well, here we are. I think I'm going to get a day in. And I felt really, really good about that.

And then another day, and then another day. And I kept going to the meetings. And I kept working with my sponsor. And I kept this prayer thing going, which I didn't even know how to do. But I kept that kind of effort going. And all of a sudden, I wasn't drinking booze, but I started drinking a boatload of coffee.

So I don't know. I must like fluid. Anyway, so it was a strange thing. And then my wife talks to my brother and says, he's going to AA, and he's stopping drinking. And then he goes, oh, hell, don't let him do that. He'll start smoking cigarettes.

And he was in something called Toastmasters, which I guess is a wonderful program. I've never been. But he goes, what do you mean he's his Toastmasters? And anyway, and my wife had reached out to some friends and family, and nobody could know, oh, no, he's not an alcoholic. And don't worry about it. Just go shopping.

And they'll be fine. So that was the treatment for her. You don't need any of this other stuff. Go shopping. So anyway, what ended up happening after about probably nine, six, nine months of that, I listened to all the stories. I'd share some of my stuff in the meetings.

But I started getting kind of bored with the program. So it was kind of like, gosh, I've heard this stuff before. I've read this stuff before. I'm starting to memorize this stuff. So why am I still here? And I remember talking to my sponsor about it.

And he was trying to encourage me to keep coming back. But I was really, really busy. And I was out of the country a lot. And I was having a hard time sort of making the meetings. And I started losing interest in the meetings. And I thought I'd got it.

And all I wanted was to stop drinking. The only purpose of me going there was to be able to stop drinking. And I had stopped drinking. It was kind of like problem. No solution. Solution.

Done. That was what I thought the program was about. And I thought, somehow, I've just stopped. In the book, we talk about we cease fighting everything and everybody, even alcohol. Well, I wasn't fighting it. If I was fighting it, I'd be losing it.

There was no way I would be successful in fighting this thing somehow or rather the miracle of this program. And by gosh, I still don't know exactly why or how it worked in me. But it did. And all of a sudden, I'm sober. Now I'm sober. But I'm not in the program.

So now I'm a sober guy, but I'm not in recovery. So I've got this mixed thing going on. And then Jane, who's a wonderful Al Anand, says, you're a dry drunk. What? And my sponsor said, stopping drinking was really an important part. And I'm not getting much credit for it.

So that's not right. I want credit, adoration, the family afterwards. We've all read the chapter. That's where I want. Anyway, so I'll call it a hiatus from the AA program as a dry drunk. And then let's just say with the persistence of Jane and encouragement, I eased my way back into the rooms.

And then I started realizing that there's a whole lot more to this program than getting sober. And I didn't want that other part particularly. But I didn't know what it was. I didn't understand any aspect of it. So there was something called a spiritual experience. And I thought, that sounds really good.

And by the way, I had that one on December 25, 1995. That was my spiritual experience. Because I saw that white light. Now, I think I might have been pretty drunk. So I don't know if it was what exactly color it was, but my recollection was it was a white light. But the point is, I needed to understand if I'd had one, what it was, and where this could go.

So that's what the people told me. They said, if you work through this program and trust this program, you're going to experience and there's something called being rocketed into the fourth dimension. Well, that sounded pretty good. And it was. So I did. I began in earnest to work the program.

And that's what it took. And I went through, and I got another wonderful sponsor who was a physician at a rehab center. And he had a son that was an alcoholic. And he was an alcoholic. And it was perfect. And he worked with me for a while.

And I got to see what I couldn't see, that there was something beyond what I thought was important. And stopping drinking, yeah, really important. It just wasn't the solution that I needed. So I have a tendency to intellectualize just about everything that says, keep it simple in here. I don't like it simple. I like it complicated.

I played a lot of chess when I was a kid. And a lot of different moves. I was involved with complicated things. I like complexity. So I overthought everything. I parsed the words.

I look at the words, and I look for nuances. And when I, oh, well, maybe that means that, or this means that, and I could wiggle around. And I was told, stop that, basically. Just stop what you're doing. And I had to take, that's when I was learning some humility in this program. And I had to take direction.

I don't like to take direction. It just went against the grain, but I needed to. If I wanted what you had, I had to take direction. And I did. And I was grateful for the direction. For the first time in my life, I was actually listening to somebody who was telling me what they had been through, what they did, and what it's like now.

And I listened. And I listened, and I listened. And then I thought, OK, well, what about the spiritual thing? I've got to, what is it? And people had, they said, well, it's not religion, it's spirituality. And I thought, well, I'm not sure.

I know the distinction. But at any event, my wife's uncle was a priest in a trapez monk at a monastery, a Catholic monastery, lived as a hermit. And he was going to pass away from what we'd heard. I'd never been to a monastery or anything like that. But I thought, my gosh, I'm going to give this a shot. I'm going to go hang out with some monks.

And I thought, I'm not that we'll have a lot of in common. And I was a little concerned that I might be shunned or something. But not at all. I met some very gracious people there. And again, I approached the spirituality as an intellectual exercise, though. I spent a lot of time in their library reading, reading, reading.

And then one day, what they called the novice master said, I think you've read enough. And I thought, you know, they had a lot of books, so I kept reading. But he said, you need to have it soak into you. And that's what I started realizing. I need to go into prayer and meditation, not just reading. I'm just keeping all of this spiritual thing in my head.

It wasn't helping. I needed to get something. Because I wanted what Bill W talked about, emotional sobriety. And I needed to get into a whole other thing. And I did. And I have been working on that aspect of this program for, gosh, the last probably 11 years now in real earnest.

And I don't, you know, portent otherwise have that. But I've enjoyed this journey, this journey of, I'm a completely different person than I used to be. And you may not like exactly what you see right now, but it's better than it was. So I went back to high school reunion, my 50th, 68 years of age, by the way. And I saw a bunch of old classmates. And they recall me in a different spirit, let's just say.

And they were just shocked about how I had what I was like and what I'm like now. And I think it takes those big blocks of time, gradations over a short period of time. It's hard to notice those changes. But those people saw it. And I can see it in them too. Some that have changed and some that were no longer with us.

But that, I guess the blessing to me in this entire program has been a relationship with my higher power. And I don't call them higher power, I call them God. That's my simple word, just God. And I spend, I don't know, I've been retired since I've been 55, so a long time. So I've got a lot of idle time. And I spend a lot of that time on spiritual matters.

And I spend it with, I have a sponsor. And I'm not a very good sponsor. But I have some sponsors. And they seem to appreciate me. So somehow or rather, this program has worked with me and has allowed me to grow and continue to grow. And I come to these meetings.

Now I go to meetings very, very frequently. And I enjoy them. And I enjoy meeting newcomers. And I enjoy meeting other old timers. And I enjoy hearing all the shares that I've heard over these years. And I look at my story now.

And it seems like it's a blend in many respects of your stories. I have seen myself in many, many ways. And I have taken your stories and your words and incorporated them into my thinking. And I am really, really grateful for all those wonderful things that you have done for me, for my wife, for my family, and for each other. You are the miracles. I am the miracle.

I mean, we all know how hard it's been. Alcoholism is a cunning, baffling, powerful disease. I suffered from it. Most of us have suffered from it. And others of us have suffered one way or the other with it. And we have managed to get to this point.

So I am so proud of, I guess I'd say, who you are, your experiences that you bring, and who you are becoming. And the courage to change that thing. And the Allan on program, the courage to change. And I think that's a terrific thing. And overcoming fear that I don't have those things. The promise of the program, in large measure, have come to my life.

I still have character defects. And I'm convinced that God would remove them if I just didn't hold on to them quite so much. It's just that's the thing. I'm not quite ready to let go of some of those defects. But I keep coming. And that's why it's a program of practice.

And that's what I try to do is practice this program. The other thing I'll say is saints. It says, we are not saints. Well, I have seen and heard people do incredible saintly acts. No, I don't know whether they're saints in a religious or spiritual context. But in my context, many of you have acted like saints.

So I want to thank you. I don't know where we are in time. I guess am I getting close? Maybe I'm over. I don't know. OK, wrap it up.

OK, good. Thank you. I am so happy to see you. I'm happy to be here. I'm honored that you'd have us speak at this revered event. And I hope to see most of you over the weekend and listen to your stories.

And have a wonderful night. And God bless you all. May your sorrow believe you.