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Sober-Talk -SA- Ross · Sober Talk SA

• 0:00
  Welcome to Sober Talk. I'm Dennis and I'm an alcoholic.
• 0:04
  Soap to dear thanks to Alcoholics Anonymous.
• 0:07
  If you or anyone you know is struggling with alcohol, please
• 0:11
  call Alcoholics Anonymous on 1300 double 22222.
• 0:17
  I'll visit their website ata.org dot AU.
• 0:24
  I'll just run through the preamble of Alcoholics
• 0:27
  Anonymous. Alcoholics Anonymous is a
• 0:29
  fellowship of people who share the experience, strengthen hope
• 0:33
  with each other that they may solve their common problems, and
• 0:37
  help with us to recover from alcoholism.
• 0:40
  The only requirement for membership is the desire to stop
• 0:43
  drinking and no dues of fees. Fair membership.
• 0:46
  We are self supporting through our own contributions.
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  He is not allied with any sect, denomination, politics,
• 0:54
  organization or institution, does not wish to engage in any
• 0:58
  controversy, either endorses or oppose any causes.
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  Our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other Alcoholics
• 1:07
  are chief sobriety. Thanks, wife.
• 1:09
  Thank you, everybody. My name is Ross and I'm an
• 1:11
  alcoholic. Look, I thought, I thought today
• 1:15
  what I'd do is just the sort of the standard, what it was like,
• 1:20
  what happened and what it's like now and just just go through
• 1:23
  the, the basic principles. So I'm going to take you back to
• 1:26
  late October 2008. I was in Melbourne and I just
• 1:32
  come back from a month in Brisbane.
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  When my boss had sent me, he'd decided that he wanted to open
• 1:38
  an office of our business in Adelaide.
• 1:41
  And he'd said that he'd like me to come across to Adelaide and
• 1:44
  open an office and run it for him.
• 1:45
  And he's going to send me to Brisbane for a month to learn
• 1:50
  how to run an office in that particular industry from the guy
• 1:54
  who was running, running in Brisbane very successfully.
• 1:56
  So I've been in Brisbane for a month.
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  I'd worked very, very hard and I'd finally got exactly where I
• 2:01
  wanted to be in this particular industry where I where where I
• 2:04
  was wanted to be at, which was to move Interstate, running an
• 2:08
  office that I manage. I'd achieved it and I was back
• 2:12
  in Melbourne and my boss took me out for dinner and he said, look
• 2:15
  Ross, we're very happy with the success that you've made.
• 2:17
  We're happy with the direction you've taken.
• 2:19
  We're happy that with the work you've performed, all of
• 2:22
  everything you've ticked the boxes of.
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  What we'd like you to do now is sort of have three or four days,
• 2:27
  five days in Melbourne over the Melbourne Cup weekend.
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  Then we're going to send you to Adelaide over Christmas, just
• 2:33
  sort of scope the territory, find a place for an office, find
• 2:37
  a place that you can rent and then the plan is you'll go there
• 2:40
  in the New year. In 2009 that was the plan and
• 2:43
  I've gone out with my boss on the Thursday night after a
• 2:45
  comeback from Brisbane and I was all fired up.
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  Everything I was wanting I achieved.
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  It's the Thursday night, we're heading to the long weekend of
• 2:55
  the Melbourne Cup and on the Friday morning I wasn't going to
• 2:57
  go to work and the Friday morning at 9:00 I went down to
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  the bottle shop. I bought a couple of bottles of
• 3:04
  champagne and a couple of bottles of wine and a couple of
• 3:07
  bags of goon and away I went. I'm an alcoholic and this is how
• 3:13
  I was going to celebrate. It was nothing different for me
• 3:15
  to do that. I was just going to have a huge
• 3:17
  drink for the weekend. It was a long weekend.
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  I didn't have to be back in the office till Wednesday.
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  I was just going to have a massive big drink, be back in
• 3:23
  the office on Wednesday and it would all be fine.
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  I didn't get back to the office for eight weeks.
• 3:29
  I disappeared. I started drinking and I didn't
• 3:31
  stop and I don't know why. And I can remember sitting down
• 3:34
  at home where I was living, thinking to myself, I've been
• 3:39
  here before. I have done several detoxes.
• 3:43
  I have been in a condition where I can't stop drinking when I've
• 3:48
  had success. I've been in a position where I
• 3:50
  can't stop drinking when I've had failure.
• 3:52
  But why I'm doing this now, I don't know.
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  And I can't stop. And I'd wake up every morning or
• 4:00
  I'd after I'd wake up from my pass out and I'd get on the bus
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  and I'd go down to the bottle shop and I'd buy more booze and
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  I'd come home and I'd do the same thing again.
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  Every single day. And I had no intention of
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  stopping. I had no intention of doing
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  anything. It's just, it is what it was,
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  what it was. It just was what it was.
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  And there was not. There was that was it.
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  That was it. That's just what it was.
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  It was just going day after day after day.
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  I wasn't answering my phone. I'd drawn down the blinds and
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  that was that was just that, that probably four or five weeks
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  into this, one of the guys that worked with me came to my house,
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  was knocking on my window. I actually let him in and he
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  said, Ross, you're an absolute mess, what's going on?
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  I said his name was Stratus and said straight I, I don't know
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  what's going on, I've got no idea.
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  I don't know. And he said you know, you're
• 4:48
  probably going to lose your job, you've lost the opportunity to
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  go to Adelaide, you're probably going to lose your job, you're
• 4:54
  an absolute mess. And I said mate, I've, I've got
• 4:55
  no idea. And he said if he said look,
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  I'll take you to the bottle shop because I was shaking like a,
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  it's just shaking. He took me out of the bottle
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  shop. He bought me a bottle of wine.
• 5:05
  He bought a couple of beers for himself.
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  He didn't drink the beers, but he sat with me for about 3 hours
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  that morning. He sat with me and we just
• 5:11
  talked and he said, what are you going to do?
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  I said I don't know, I don't know.
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  He said look, why don't you just get out of the house, get out of
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  this environment, come to work with me tomorrow, have a shower,
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  put on your suit, come with me tomorrow just to get out of the
• 5:26
  house. Just sit in the car.
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  You don't have to go and do any work.
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  Just come and sit in the car. And I got up the next morning
• 5:30
  and I couldn't even have a shower.
• 5:32
  I looked in the mirror though, and I thought, my gosh, I, I, I
• 5:37
  don't know what's happening, but I'm, I've, I've, I'm, I'm just,
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  I'm out of control. It was, I can't explain it how,
• 5:45
  how I felt or how I was going to get through this.
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  But the next day on the way to the bottle shop, the very next
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  day on the way to the bottle shop, I got off the bus at the
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  detox center that I've been to before.
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  I walked in the door and said, I need to come and book myself in.
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  And thankfully they let me in and I said, you've got it.
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  You can come back in a couple of days time.
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  And I went back to that detox and that was on the 7th of
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  December in 2008. And this particular time I drove
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  myself to the detox. Every other time I'd been there,
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  I had drunk myself stupid the night before and the morning on
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  the way to the detox. Thinking to myself, after I come
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  out of this detox, I'm never going to drink again.
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  So I better get as much interview as I can because I'm
• 6:28
  never going to do this again. This is it, it's finished and
• 6:31
  this detox I went into in 2008, I didn't think like that.
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  I was just so I I can't live the way I am.
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  Something has to change. I don't know what I don't know
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  what to do. I'm completely lost.
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  I drove myself to detox I put myself in there and it was 7
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  days in a detox that I've been into before many times but this
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  time it had changed and I don't know why I don't know how but it
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  had my thoughts in there had changed.
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  I remember saying to anyone that was in the I I don't know what
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  to do. Doesn't matter what I try, it
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  doesn't work. It doesn't matter what I do.
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  The end result is I end up drunk.
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  I do. I'm doing things I don't want to
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  do. I have lost everything,
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  including my job. I have nothing less and I have,
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  I'm 48 years old and I don't know what to do.
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  I'm not a clue. I'm starting from scratch.
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  So there's no I'm not projecting into the future.
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  I'm not projecting the next week what it's going to be.
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  I'm not even projecting into the afternoon.
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  I'm just here now in this detox center and I'm not having a
• 7:33
  drink at this moment. And that's it.
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  And if you tell me what to do tomorrow, then I'll do that and
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  I'll just do that and I'll do that.
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  And that's, that's all I did. I came out of that detox 7 days
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  later and the council's there said to me, when you come out,
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  the first thing you need to do is you need to go to a A and you
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  need to buy a big book and you need to get a sponsor.
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  So I did that. I went back to an, A, a meeting
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  in Preston that I used to go to, that I've been to before.
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  And again, literally I, I, I, I can't determine what changed.
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  What had changed in May was I had no more fight.
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  I'd gone to detoxes before. I'd come out thinking I don't
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  have to drink, my willpower is strong enough.
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  I don't have to drink. I haven't had a drink today.
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  I don't have a craving for it. Therefore I don't need to drink
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  today or tomorrow. My willpower is enough.
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  And yet at some stage in the future, I would drink again and
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  I get back to this position I was now in and literally I just,
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  I would just get up in the morning and I'd go to an IA
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  meeting and I'd just just go to IA meetings.
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  Thankfully I haven't lost my job, but my boss just said to
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  me, Ross, this, you know you're not going to go to Adelaide.
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  That's I can't trust you. I don't know what you're going
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  to do. I know you've got a drinking
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  problem. You're telling me you're an
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  alcoholic. That's great.
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  I'm glad you accepted that for yourself.
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  However, I can't trust you to run an office because I don't
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  know what you're going to do. You might run away again and
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  just disappear. And I accepted that.
• 9:00
  So I just, I'd get up in the morning, I would have my shower,
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  I would go and do my work for the day, I'd go to an IO meeting
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  at night. And I did that every single day
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  because I had nothing else to do.
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  I had no plans, I had no direction and I didn't want it
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  to change. I, I, I liken it, I suppose to
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  some years ago, I decided that I wanted to get fit again.
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  And I knew how gyms work. I know how to, I knew how to get
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  fit, but my, my plan at the gym was just to go there for half an
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  hour a day every day. Don't miss a day, just go for
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  half an hour every day. Doesn't matter what you do, just
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  go to the gym, turn up, make a, make a decision to go to the gym
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  for half an hour every day. And that's what I did.
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  Now I did the same with AI, just made a decision just to come to
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  an AI meeting every day and I did, I went every day.
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  And I remember I got three months sober and my boss pulled
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  me into his office and he said, look, you're doing well.
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  If you want to go to Adelaide, it's still on.
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  But I remember my sponsor said to me don't do anything drastic
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  in the 1st 12 months. So I sat down with him at the
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  Preston meeting and said what do you think I should do?
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  And he said well look seriously Ross, get on your knees and pray
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  the right answer will come. And I did and I came to
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  Adelaide. But what what Lindsay in
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  Melbourne said to me is as soon as you get to Adelaide you need
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  to brand yourself. Don't let yourself drift.
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  Just as soon as you arrive in Adelaide, get to a meeting, hook
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  into something and get to a meeting.
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  And I did, I arrived here in March 2009.
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  I went to a meeting at Glenelg. I met a member there, a guy
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  called Darwin Paul and he suggests I go to a couple of
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  meetings around the place, which I did.
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  I just, I did what I was told. It was something, I just go to
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  work in the morning. I'd go to a meeting in the
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  afternoon, I'd go to work in the morning, I'd go to a meeting in
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  the afternoon. And that's all I did.
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  I didn't do anything else. I didn't want to do anything
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  else. There was nothing else I could
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  do. It was enough.
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  It was enough. Now I've I've shared this part
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  before in, in in meetings and I'll share it again because it
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  was really important to me. I was probably 6 months sober.
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  I was in O'Connell St. on a very hot Friday afternoon and my
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  brother rang in and he said how are you flying Adelaide?
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  I said it's terrible, I hate it. I don't have any friends, I
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  don't do anything. I get up and I go to work in the
• 11:13
  morning, I go to an AA meeting at night time, I don't do
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  anything. I do AA seven days a week and I
• 11:17
  work basically 5 or 6 days a week.
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  I've got no friends, I've got no family.
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  It stinks. I hate it.
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  And he said, Ross, are you drinking?
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  And I said, no, I'm not. He said, isn't that enough?
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  And I went, yeah, it is because if I drink, I've got nothing.
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  It's all gone. What?
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  What little bit I've got, what little bit I've got, which is my
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  job and my A, A if I start drinking, I won't go to work and
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  I won't go to A meetings. And I said, yeah, you're right,
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  Michael, you're right. You're dead right.
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  And slowly time heals and time makes things better.
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  And time tends to put a distance between the pain and the hurt
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  that I'd felt. And even though new direction,
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  but it just puts distance. And it did.
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  It put distance. And I remember, look, I, I went
• 12:00
  to a meeting in the early days. I went to a meeting up in
• 12:03
  Salisbury on Saturday night and I walked in the door and a guy
• 12:06
  was standing there to his name with Zion.
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  He said, hi, my name's Zion, nice to meet you.
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  Welcome to the meeting. And that hi, my name's Zion,
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  welcome to the meeting. Got me going back to that
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  meeting every Saturday night, every Saturday night.
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  That became one of my regular meetings.
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  When I walked into this meeting 17 years ago, 17 years ago, this
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  was my first Wednesday or my second Wednesday meeting.
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  When I first moved to Adelaide, I got the same thing.
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  I was welcomed at the door and this became my Home group.
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  This became my regular meeting and I was doing a, a beginners
• 12:35
  meeting in in North Adelaide and I was doing meetings all over
• 12:38
  the place. And someone suggested to me when
• 12:40
  I was in in Adelaide, one of the members, I'd said to him one
• 12:43
  day, you know, I have accepted the fact that I'm an alcoholic.
• 12:47
  I've accepted the fact that this is going to be part of my life
• 12:49
  for the rest of my life. But I don't really know the big
• 12:52
  book that well. And I said, you should do a big
• 12:53
  book study. There's a big book study Mondays
• 12:55
  in the city. So I started doing that and we
• 12:58
  went through the big book cover to cover.
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  I was suggested to me that I do a steps meeting.
• 13:03
  So I went to do a steps meeting and learned a little bit more
• 13:04
  about it. So along the way, members of a a
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  have suggested the things that would be good for me to do to
• 13:10
  help me in my journey. And that's, that's, that's
• 13:13
  really all it was. And at some point along that
• 13:16
  journey, the thought of drinking stopped, the desire to have a
• 13:20
  drink disappeared. And I, I wouldn't even say it
• 13:24
  was a, a belief that I can beat this because I know I can't.
• 13:27
  It was just an understanding that if I do the things that I'm
• 13:30
  told to do, if I do the suggested things and the
• 13:33
  suggested things of a A, then the chances are I won't have to
• 13:38
  drink again. It's as simple as that.
• 13:40
  But for me it wasn't that easy because I always come back to
• 13:43
  the belief that to ask me as a human being to do something 100%
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  of the time 100% correct is for me impossible.
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  My history says I can't do it. I will fail, I will fold, I will
• 13:57
  break and I will drink again. I will swear off chocolate and
• 14:01
  then I'll have a chocolate again.
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  I will go to the gym and I'll work like a Trojan horse and
• 14:05
  change the way my body shape is and drop a whole bunch of weight
• 14:08
  and that will last for a period of time and it will stop and
• 14:09
  I'll go back to being a fatty again.
• 14:11
  That's my history. So to ask me to stop drinking
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  and to do it 100% of the time, 100% sounds nice, but it ain't
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  going to happen. I need something else.
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  I need something that's going to help me other than an IO
• 14:28
  meeting, other than my sponsor that's going to help me stay
• 14:33
  100%. I alert in these rooms that that
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  other thing is God, because He did for me what I couldn't do
• 14:40
  for myself. He's given me the opportunity to
• 14:43
  live my life without alcohol if I choose.
• 14:48
  It's not that hard now, very hard in the early days because
• 14:54
  I'd think about it all the time. My life was surrounded by
• 14:57
  alcohol. The way I lived was surrounded
• 15:00
  by alcohol. My family is surrounded by
• 15:02
  alcohol. It's just the way it was.
• 15:05
  I found it very, very difficult to listen in these rooms when I
• 15:10
  heard people say you've got to change your life and your
• 15:13
  lifestyle and your friends and acquaintances.
• 15:15
  I didn't know how you can do that, but it happens.
• 15:17
  Slowly it just did. It evolved.
• 15:21
  The more I did IA meetings, the more I didn't want to be around
• 15:23
  those old friends who got drunk all the time.
• 15:25
  I didn't want to be with them. I prefer to be around people who
• 15:28
  are in IAI, prefer to be around people who didn't drink.
• 15:32
  So I tended to go with and hang out with people who didn't
• 15:34
  drink, whether they'd be in a a or not, because I just didn't
• 15:36
  like alcohol, didn't want to be around it.
• 15:38
  I did the things that were suggested in here when I was
• 15:40
  going out, I'd make sure I had negative, I needed it.
• 15:43
  I'd take my car with me. I wouldn't ever be put in a
• 15:45
  situation where I could get stuck and feel not right.
• 15:51
  I don't like feeling like that. So day by day by day, over here
• 15:57
  in Adelaide, my life changed. It got better, my job got better
• 16:02
  and I just kept coming to AA and doing the things that were
• 16:05
  suggested to me. Life kept coming at me and life
• 16:09
  kept doing things that I thought were wonderful and I thought
• 16:13
  were the right things for me and I kept putting my will into my
• 16:17
  life because I thought that would make my life better.
• 16:20
  Some years ago I met a wonderful lady and I thought this was
• 16:25
  going to be my future. And we decided to get married at
• 16:29
  the Elvis Presley Chapel of Love, which was a wonderful
• 16:32
  experience. And we were going to travel
• 16:34
  across America doing Route 66 on a Harley, which was a fantastic
• 16:38
  experience, but it wasn't the right lady.
• 16:42
  And I can say that that chapter of my life was harrowing trying
• 16:47
  to get out of that, but it but I did I didn't have to drink over
• 16:51
  it years prior. I would have had a drink over
• 16:54
  that so easily. So easily.
• 16:57
  I, I'm, I digress a little bit, Just just here I was in a
• 17:02
  meeting yesterday and I was driving one of the members, I'm
• 17:04
  poor and he said something to me in the car and it sent shivers
• 17:07
  down my spine because it reminded me of the way I used to
• 17:10
  be when I was drinking. And the word that he said was
• 17:13
  run. And I remember, if you know, if
• 17:15
  you can picture a movie where there's some really bad stuff
• 17:19
  about to happen and someone will say to the other people in the
• 17:22
  movie, run, and they mean it, run.
• 17:26
  And I remember when I was drinking, that's exactly what I
• 17:28
  used to do. I would run.
• 17:30
  I would put myself in a situation where I would run away
• 17:33
  from a job. I would drop my keys and I'd
• 17:35
  run. I'd run away from relationship.
• 17:38
  I'd run away from my wife. I would run away from my family.
• 17:41
  I would just run. I could never face anything.
• 17:47
  I just couldn't. My coping mechanism for facing
• 17:50
  anything was drinking. I can worry about it tomorrow.
• 17:53
  I can worry about it next week. Just have a drink.
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  Just go numb. Just run.
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  And it made me think when I was driving home.
• 18:00
  I don't run anymore. I don't have to.
• 18:03
  The problems that I face now, I can face the problems of life,
• 18:07
  the problems I can deal with. It's, it's changed and, and
• 18:12
  where it changed, I don't know. I, I can't say that I woke up
• 18:17
  miraculously one day and I was touched by God and everything
• 18:19
  changed. I think for me it was a slow
• 18:21
  process, but it was a process that was made easier for me
• 18:26
  because I surrounded myself in those early days, the 1st
• 18:29
  5678910 years of my sobriety, I surrounded myself entirely with
• 18:34
  AAI spent a lot of my time in these rooms and it made it very
• 18:37
  easy for me. I got my involved in myself
• 18:40
  involved in service. I got myself involved in a lot
• 18:42
  of meetings and it worked for me.
• 18:45
  Now I'd suggest, I'd suggest it works for anyone who's an
• 18:48
  alcoholic like I am. I needed direction.
• 18:50
  I I didn't know what to do. I did not know what to do today
• 18:56
  to bring it all to a close. Life is still difficult.
• 19:00
  Nothing goes the way I want it to.
• 19:02
  I, my wife, my fourth wife, her son has just come over from the
• 19:09
  Philippines to live with us for three years to study now.
• 19:14
  I find that very difficult. I'm an alcoholic.
• 19:17
  I like being alone. I like having my space and I'm
• 19:20
  not going to be alone for the next three years.
• 19:22
  I find that very hard, very hard.
• 19:27
  My wife wanted to get, I had an iPhone 7 which stopped working
• 19:32
  because it was very old and my wife wanted to get a new phone.
• 19:35
  So she said, Ross, here's the deal, I'll get the brand new U
• 19:38
  Boot 16 and you can have my old 12 fine.
• 19:41
  Happy days. So I've got a 7 sitting at home
• 19:44
  in the drawer that doesn't work properly.
• 19:46
  I can't use but it's there in the drawer.
• 19:49
  Jude arrives in at like 3 days ago to say my phone doesn't work
• 19:54
  and my wife picks out my old iPhone 7 out of the drawer and
• 19:57
  says he can have this. Why are you laughing at me?
• 20:02
  I'm I'm seething. Why are you giving him my phone?
• 20:06
  That's mine. It doesn't matter whether it
• 20:09
  works or not, it's mine. And you can't give it away.
• 20:12
  I didn't approve of this. And I'm.
• 20:14
  I'm sitting there. I'm.
• 20:15
  I'm hitting myself in the head. What is wrong with you?
• 20:18
  I'd forgotten that I'm an alcoholic.
• 20:21
  What is wrong with you? This phone doesn't even work.
• 20:24
  You can't use it for anything. But you can't give it up.
• 20:27
  Holy moly. Where am I at?
• 20:30
  A A. These meetings have taught me.
• 20:34
  That's what they've taught me. Because I can look at that man
• 20:36
  and go, wow, there it is. There's my alcoholism raising
• 20:38
  the Ted again. There it is.
• 20:41
  It happens over and over and over.
• 20:44
  When someone tries to come into my space, I flare.
• 20:47
  It's not my space, it's not my life.
• 20:50
  If I want to live my life successfully, I have to hand it
• 20:54
  over to my higher power, who I choose to call God on a daily
• 20:57
  basis. And I have to say to God every
• 20:59
  morning, I have no idea what the plan for today is, offset about
• 21:03
  my plan the best I can. But if you want me to do
• 21:05
  something else, you just tell me what it is because so far you've
• 21:08
  been pretty good. I tried to direct my life.
• 21:10
  I thought I was the best director there could be.
• 21:13
  I thought in my early 30s that I had it together.
• 21:17
  I had the suit, I had the job, I had the sports car and I had it
• 21:21
  all. I had the wife and I had the
• 21:22
  affairs. I was living high.
• 21:24
  I was having a great time. And five years later I've got a
• 21:28
  sheriff knocking at the door of my house saying if you you
• 21:31
  haven't paid your mortgage in five months, you have two weeks.
• 21:36
  We are throwing you out. Can I suggest you try to sell
• 21:40
  your house the next two weeks because you'll get more for it
• 21:42
  than if we've sold at the sheriff's auction.
• 21:44
  How did this happen? From where I was to where I am,
• 21:49
  how did this happen? I know how it happened.
• 21:51
  I sit back now, 17 years after that, thinking how did this
• 21:56
  happen? How did this drunk get as lucky
• 22:00
  as I've got? I'm a drunk.
• 22:02
  How did I get here? I don't drink.
• 22:04
  I haven't had a drink for 17 years.
• 22:06
  How did I get here? I have a beautiful wife and a
• 22:08
  lovely marriage. I have her son coming to live
• 22:12
  with us for three years and well, I'm going to find that
• 22:14
  difficult. It's a gift.
• 22:16
  I'm giving this kid an opportunity to live in a great
• 22:18
  country that he never would have had if it wasn't for us.
• 22:21
  I wouldn't be. I wouldn't have anything.
• 22:23
  I'm going to Bali on Tuesday for a couple of weeks to have a
• 22:27
  break after a very difficult year.
• 22:29
  I wouldn't have any of this if it wasn't for AA.
• 22:32
  None of it. My, my best plan, my best
• 22:35
  production in life was to have me sitting on a park bench
• 22:39
  drinking vodka, walking into the Salvation Army every night for
• 22:43
  bed. If they'll have me, because I
• 22:45
  believe these days they won't have you if you're drunk.
• 22:47
  So I probably would end up sleeping in the garlic.
• 22:49
  That was my, that was where I was going.
• 22:51
  That was my production. That's what this head did for
• 22:53
  me. I had no plan, no chance.
• 22:57
  And these rooms have AI changed all that and I all I had to do,
• 23:00
  I just had to get that consistency.
• 23:01
  I had to just say to myself, don't plan anything, Ross, don't
• 23:06
  just get out of bed, have a shower.
• 23:10
  Get yourself fairly decent, as decent as you can and go to
• 23:14
  another meeting. What's more important in your
• 23:17
  life right now in the early days, what's more important,
• 23:20
  going to work or going to a meeting?
• 23:22
  What's more important? The fact is, I chose the right
• 23:25
  decision. The decision was the meeting.
• 23:28
  That's what it is and it's worked and it does work and it
• 23:31
  works for me on a daily basis and I just have to keep doing
• 23:34
  it. It gets harder, I think because
• 23:37
  as you get further away from those awful experiences, as I
• 23:41
  get further away from those awful sweats where I wake up at
• 23:46
  3:00 in the morning and I am drenched and shivering because
• 23:50
  I'm so sick, and yet I go to the fridge and have another drink of
• 23:53
  Goon. As the as the years go by and
• 23:56
  get further and further and further away from those, it gets
• 23:58
  easier and easier and easier not to come to a meeting.
• 24:01
  It gets easier to say the sun's shining, I could mow the lawn.
• 24:04
  It gets easier so I go down to the beach.
• 24:06
  It's easy to say I'm not very fit at the moment.
• 24:08
  I could go to the gin, I could work another hour at work.
• 24:11
  A lot of things I could do. But what I should do is come to
• 24:15
  a meeting. The problem for me is in my head
• 24:17
  is the difference between should and would I should do a meeting.
• 24:22
  Do I do it? Not as often as I should.
• 24:24
  That's the beauty also for me of a A because if you, if for me,
• 24:28
  I've surrendered myself with this.
• 24:30
  If I can make this part of my life, like putting on a pair of
• 24:32
  shoes in the morning or putting on a shirt.
• 24:34
  I also had a shower. If I can make a a part of my
• 24:37
  life, it becomes more difficult to walk away from it.
• 24:40
  It does become harder and I might not do as many meetings as
• 24:43
  I should be doing or as I want to do, but I don't give them up.
• 24:47
  We moved house from just likely around here up to Smithville up
• 24:51
  near Andrews Farm three years ago.
• 24:52
  I've got a lovely house up there and I've changed.
• 24:55
  I'd do a meeting up in up there on Saturday morning at 12:00.
• 24:59
  I don't do as many meetings down around here, but I still do.
• 25:01
  I don't do as many as I'd like to, but I still do them because
• 25:04
  I think I gave myself that granting.
• 25:06
  I love the meetings. I love what it does for me.
• 25:08
  I know. I know if I'm running hard, I
• 25:11
  need to get to a meeting. I know if I'm getting scratchy,
• 25:14
  I need to do a meeting. I know that if I'm getting
• 25:16
  short, I need to do a meeting. It's not enough for me.
• 25:22
  Just in the morning when my wife and I wake up, it's not enough
• 25:26
  for me to say thank you, God for everything you've given me.
• 25:29
  What do you want me to do today? It's not enough for me.
• 25:33
  I've got to do an AI nighting. I need, I need the alcoholic
• 25:36
  part because I'm an alcoholic. That's what I need.
• 25:39
  And it works for me. It works and it's worked for 17
• 25:43
  years. As I said, look, I'll finish on
• 25:45
  this because I'll say it again. When I some years back I was in
• 25:49
  sales. I just wanted to do a bit of an
• 25:51
  analogy I used to say to people all the time, if you want to
• 25:56
  have a goal in life, in sales, it's not about IoT in sales.
• 26:00
  Get a picture of what you want. If it's a boat or a car or or
• 26:03
  whatever it is a holiday, take a picture of it and keep that
• 26:05
  picture in your phone. And every day when you're
• 26:07
  feeling strange, you're feeling, I can't make it, something's
• 26:11
  going wrong. I can't do this, it's too hard.
• 26:14
  Look at the photo. Because The thing is, we all,
• 26:17
  I'm starting at a point here. If I want to get there, that's
• 26:21
  the direction I've got to go in. If I'm 1° off, that's very easy
• 26:25
  to correct in day one. It's very easy to correct in day
• 26:28
  2. If I let that 1° go on for six
• 26:31
  months, I'm going to end up way away from my target.
• 26:35
  Way away. I'm going to end up somewhere
• 26:37
  else thinking how did I miss that target?
• 26:40
  What happened? What happened was I stopped
• 26:43
  doing meetings. What happened was I stopped
• 26:45
  doing the things that were successful for me to stay sober.
• 26:50
  So now I have to check myself regularly.
• 26:52
  It might be 3 or 4 days or five days or a week since I've done a
• 26:55
  meeting. But I can check myself and say
• 26:57
  don't drift, get back to a meeting, don't drift, get back
• 27:00
  to a meeting, make a phone call, get back in touch, keep
• 27:03
  involved. Because I don't want to end up
• 27:07
  six months or 12 months from now out by myself thinking how did I
• 27:11
  drift out here, What happened? And maybe the next best idea
• 27:15
  I've got going through my head to drink.
• 27:17
  I don't want to go there again. I just don't want to go there
• 27:20
  again. And then, as I said at the
• 27:22
  start, if I have a faith in my God and I have a regular meeting
• 27:26
  schedule, I don't have to go there again.
• 27:28
  And that's why I like it. So I'll leave it be.
• 27:30
  Thanks, Becky. A A As more than two million
• 27:34
  recovering Alcoholics throughout the world.
• 27:38
  In Australia there are about 18,000 members.
• 27:42
  They're made in over 2000 local meetings spread around the
• 27:46
  country. Meetings range in size from a
• 27:50
  handful in some areas to hundreds or more in larger
• 27:54
  communities. And once again, if anyone you
• 27:57
  know is struggling with alcohol issues, please call Alcoholics
• 28:02
  Announcing 1300 Double 00000 or visit their website on aa.org
• 28:09
  dot AU.