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Sober Talk SA - Duncan · Sober Talk SA

• 1:00
  But I can't hear all Yeah, that poetic.
• 1:06
  The long spy of the campfire was glad.
• 1:10
  Yeah. It was a boy who wrote a song
• 1:12
  about me. Oh man.
• 1:17
  With that I did get out to me and our colleagues know that
• 1:20
  would hurt. And yeah, my name is Duncan and
• 1:24
  anonymous cyber member of Alcoholics anonymously studies
• 1:26
  and that than a miracle for money because so I never knew I
• 1:31
  had a problem with a drink. You know it always made me feel
• 1:34
  good. And I always, yeah, I always
• 1:38
  liked the after effect. And the next morning I had my
• 1:42
  first drink at 79 as a young Nasho kid in the army at at the
• 1:47
  Wagga Wagga army barracks at Copaca.
• 1:49
  And one of the blinds she took me up to the what they call the
• 1:53
  wet canteen And I'd never been in one and I didn't know how I
• 1:56
  drink affected A bloke or if it was kill him or not or send him
• 2:01
  nuts or it just made him happy. I had no idea.
• 2:04
  So I followed this bloke in his Angus George and he's me at 34
• 2:08
  and a teacher got called up for for Nash show as well.
• 2:11
  And anyway I would just sit and watch them at the bar and the
• 2:14
  woman came over and she said, yeah, G day, what would you
• 2:17
  like? And he said I'll get a love
• 2:19
  light Skinner and you please. And he put 2 Bob on the counter
• 2:22
  and while she's pouring you me drink.
• 2:24
  She looked at me And how about you young?
• 2:26
  I said, oh good day. You laugh.
• 2:27
  I'll have a skin on you too And I'll put me to Bob on the
• 2:30
  counter And she said, don't call me love you too.
• 2:33
  You're too young you know. And I sort of shrunk band of my
• 2:36
  normal size And anyway I'm still pondering the honorables of what
• 2:41
  this thing called boots would do to a fella.
• 2:44
  And anyway, Jewish picks it up and looked at it and had a nice
• 2:48
  little white, you know, pad rage collar on it.
• 2:51
  And he took a sniffer word and went.
• 2:54
  And then he took down a big twallow, about half a half a
• 2:58
  schooner, went down his throat and he put it on the bar and he
• 3:00
  turned around and went well and you can see him visibly relax, I
• 3:05
  know. Well, it didn't kill him, makes
• 3:07
  him feel good, apparently. So I ended up, you know, I
• 3:09
  grabbed mine from the lady, put it over the bar to me and I'd
• 3:13
  pick mine up. I copycat it in, you know,
• 3:15
  monkey see, monkey do. And I looked at him up at the
• 3:18
  light and sniffed it, my half. Half of blast skirting, swagging
• 3:24
  down. It went on, wow, It's like a
• 3:29
  double atomic explosion in one. One in the guts and one in the
• 3:32
  heat. And the after effect, the
• 3:34
  shockwave up and down the body was like the tidal wave coming
• 3:37
  in and out, coming in and out, waving up and down.
• 3:40
  All of a sudden it settled and oh, did I feel good.
• 3:43
  Oh, I felt good right in the middle of me guts.
• 3:46
  So I felt good. I've never felt so good.
• 3:48
  You know, I found out in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous a
• 3:52
  bit later on. But it doesn't matter who you
• 3:56
  are, what type of family life you had growing up.
• 3:58
  I mean, I've known people in AI. You've come from good family,
• 4:03
  Christian aims, and they turned over the only alcoholic.
• 4:05
  And, well, my parents were good people, but my older brothers or
• 4:09
  sisters were. They were the Alcoholics, and I
• 4:12
  had two younger sisters. And, you know, as it turns out,
• 4:15
  six of us were actually Alcoholics.
• 4:18
  And my two youngest sisters, No, I mean, what parents really
• 4:21
  wouldn't want to have any child as an alcoholic, but only six of
• 4:24
  them out of eight. And anyway, that was, it was not
• 4:28
  a nice time a lot of the time. So especially if mom and dad
• 4:30
  went in the house, it was not pretty.
• 4:32
  And yeah, I could feel the mood swings in my older brother or
• 4:36
  sisters, you know, about 10 seconds before they were having
• 4:38
  one. And yeah, it was time to duck
• 4:41
  out and hide or go somewhere. And the, you know, I found out
• 4:45
  that doesn't matter what family life you've had growing up, it's
• 4:49
  what does the effect of a drink have upon you?
• 4:52
  It doesn't matter how many drinks you have, you're going to
• 4:54
  have 10 more one. What effect does it have in AI
• 5:00
  that some people hated the taste, would love the effect,
• 5:03
  and others love the effect and not the taste, and vice versa?
• 5:07
  Well, may I like both the effect and the taste.
• 5:10
  Now? I didn't let it was a beer or
• 5:12
  wine or whiskey or a Brandy or one or a top tail or a tawny
• 5:20
  port. It didn't matter because it it
• 5:23
  all worked for me. It made me feel good, you know.
• 5:26
  And I get my first drink in the army as I said about age is 7
• 5:29
  nine and wow, amazing. You know, that makes bad night.
• 5:35
  When I had that first drink it was as if the journey had come
• 5:39
  out of a bottle. You know I was my feet were
• 5:42
  firmly planted in that room. But my my legs, my hips and my
• 5:45
  body, my head were about 50 feet above that building and I could
• 5:49
  look down in there and I I knew I had the power to create
• 5:53
  everybody. 3 wishes. That's how good it made me feel.
• 5:56
  I've never felt that strong before, that good.
• 6:00
  It's amazing effect. And every time I had a drink, I
• 6:03
  had that effect and it always made me feel good.
• 6:06
  The unfortunate thing about that is, and now that I'm in AI, was
• 6:10
  that that only happens to a person if you're an alcoholic
• 6:16
  and doesn't happen to the average drinker or the OR the
• 6:20
  person who has a drink one night a week with e-mail.
• 6:23
  It's like, what? Anyway, I had a lot to learn.
• 6:29
  Yeah, my drinking started, as I said, in the army and it lasted
• 6:33
  for 23 years. But along the way there was 3
• 6:38
  marriages, 3 divorces, three times suicide, three times dead.
• 6:44
  Three times the hospital doctors and nurses called me back to
• 6:48
  life when I when I didn't want to be alive and three times in
• 6:53
  prison. Now how do I get into the rooms
• 6:56
  of AA? Well, I ended up in prison,
• 6:59
  didn't I? The third time around that was
• 7:01
  in September 9231 years I've been now and one of the bikes he
• 7:08
  had the creams inside said, what are you doing tonight?
• 7:10
  I said getting locked down as usual.
• 7:14
  He said, well, I bet someone in the recreation book got a few of
• 7:18
  us are going to be out on the recreation room and we're going
• 7:20
  to have a chat and you know, plenty of tea and coffee and
• 7:23
  biscuits to be had. And I went, oh, you ain't great
• 7:26
  company, you know, no worries, I'll be there.
• 7:29
  Anyway, I walked up to the guard house at the end of the yard and
• 7:33
  spoke to the bloke in in the in the office and I said, look, can
• 7:36
  you. I want to sign the recreation
• 7:39
  book for the night. He goes, why said, oh, just want
• 7:43
  to see what's happening. He goes, well, you don't have a
• 7:46
  drinking problem, do you? I went, no, he said, well don't
• 7:48
  worry about it, He said, you know, I'm an alcoholic guy and I
• 7:52
  said no, didn't know what one was anyway, But I said no.
• 7:57
  He said, well don't worry about it, you'll be right.
• 7:59
  And I thought, why is he trying to put me off?
• 8:02
  That's it. I said, look, I want to go.
• 8:06
  You might be able to lose something that might help me
• 8:08
  anyway. You'd like me signing, walking
• 8:11
  that night about 7:00-ish, you know?
• 8:14
  He came around and opened up me cell door and walked me up to
• 8:19
  the recreation room. And there was this bunch of
• 8:21
  about plenty 25 blokes there while hanging around and, you
• 8:27
  know, chairs and stuff. And then at the end of the room
• 8:29
  there was this like sitting in the chair behind the desk and on
• 8:33
  the wall was a couple of banners.
• 8:35
  And I'm thinking, what on earth is this?
• 8:38
  And I thought, what type of place has got banners in it?
• 8:41
  And I'm thinking Boy Scouts, you know, I don't think, oh, these
• 8:45
  guys must be all ex Boy Scouts leaders.
• 8:48
  They went astray and they're trying to reclaim their their
• 8:52
  position, you know, get a few merit badges back up again.
• 8:56
  Anyway, I I didn't pay much attention there for a while and
• 9:00
  keep on going backwards and forwards for coffee and more
• 9:02
  biscuits. And I was taking biscuits in my
• 9:04
  pockets and tearing the hand and tearing the mouth and swinging
• 9:08
  the coffee. And I wasn't really paying much
• 9:10
  attention until suddenly I heard a bloke say, you know, as much
• 9:17
  as I like to have a drink, what I really wanted is to be left
• 9:22
  alone so I can drink the way I want.
• 9:26
  And like, wow, I've thought of that before.
• 9:30
  And another bloke turned up and had us talk and he said, you
• 9:34
  know, he wanted to just get away from everyone, you know, and on
• 9:39
  a deserted island like Robinson Crusoe, whatever.
• 9:43
  And yeah, it was amazing. But I'm thinking, yes, I've had
• 9:47
  that. And another bloke wanted to be
• 9:48
  invisible so he could go into a pub and you sit quietly in the
• 9:52
  corner and drink his grog and not be bothered and don't have
• 9:54
  to pay for it. And I thought I wanted that
• 9:57
  myself. And like, I mean, these guys are
• 10:00
  totally different from me. They never had the same home
• 10:03
  life. They've never went to the same
• 10:05
  school through. I got blinked.
• 10:07
  Yeah, there was so many differences, I thought, and come
• 10:11
  along and ring with these people.
• 10:12
  And then I realized somewhere along the line that I heard
• 10:15
  enough of these stories, but some of them weren't as bad as
• 10:19
  me, and some of them were way worse than me.
• 10:23
  And I hope that we're all nuts. And then I looked up at those
• 10:25
  banners on the wall again. The left hand.
• 10:27
  One said the 12 steps of Alcoholics synonymous and the
• 10:30
  other one said the 12 traditions of Alcoholics synonymous.
• 10:33
  I thought the the problem Alcohol.
• 10:36
  Stop drinking and you only have to end up in prison all the time
• 10:39
  or my problem isn't me drinking is me thinking I'm nuts.
• 10:43
  Because in Step 2 it said what I said we admitted we were
• 10:48
  powerless over alcohol. Better our lives have become
• 10:51
  unmanageable. My life was never unmanageable.
• 10:53
  It was unbearable, that's what, Aren't you?
• 10:57
  I mean, when I looked at step two he said Came to body with a
• 11:00
  bear and graded in yourselves. Could resource to sanity.
• 11:03
  I thought, that's my I'm insane. I can't stop getting into
• 11:07
  trouble now. Out now.
• 11:10
  I mean, I've always been a good guy, so I thought good worker
• 11:14
  and we're good boss and everything else like that.
• 11:17
  But how come I'm in trouble on third marriage and three
• 11:20
  suicides and there three times in prison.
• 11:22
  It's like, how do we end up like a year anyway?
• 11:26
  At the end of the meeting, the blokes, we all rushed over to
• 11:29
  the urn and hot water urn and grabbing our coffees and our
• 11:32
  biscuits and the bloke who was running the mate with tongue, he
• 11:37
  said, what do you reckon? And before I could say anything
• 11:42
  real clear where I said mate, you got me sold.
• 11:44
  I'm one of you, whatever that is.
• 11:47
  And he said to me something absolutely miraculous.
• 11:50
  He said, I'm an alcoholic who suffered from a disease of
• 11:54
  alcoholism and now I'm free. And yet all I heard was there is
• 12:01
  an alcoholic who is suffering from a disease.
• 12:04
  And what? That's my problem.
• 12:06
  You know what? It answered all my problems.
• 12:08
  I'm a puppet to this disease. You call it alcoholism.
• 12:12
  I thought I didn't know what then to me anyway.
• 12:16
  And he said, do you like to read?
• 12:19
  And I'm thinking, yes, Mad magazines and phantom comics.
• 12:22
  You know, really like literature.
• 12:25
  And he walks over to this desk where he'd been sitting and
• 12:28
  bringing this book over, which turns out to be a copy of the
• 12:31
  big book that they had me there all the time.
• 12:35
  And he said good, yeah, it's yours.
• 12:38
  Said what? He said, yeah, yours, you have
• 12:40
  it. And you know what?
• 12:40
  I've still got that same big book 31 years later on down.
• 12:45
  Yeah, I fell in love with AA and I fell in love with the answers.
• 12:49
  Yeah, Bloke came in one week and said, you know, my sponsors
• 12:53
  helped me out with this. And with that, my sponsor helped
• 12:56
  me out to understand this. And he took me through the steps
• 12:58
  and they introduced me to God and everything else.
• 13:01
  I'm thinking, ah, but I couldn't deny the fact that he was
• 13:05
  different. And I thought, OK, I mean, I
• 13:10
  didn't know what a sponsor was. I'm thinking Nike, Schlesinger,
• 13:14
  Carlton, United Breweries, World Health Organization.
• 13:18
  I thought none of those big agencies are going to sponsor me
• 13:21
  out of prison, not with my track record.
• 13:25
  And I thought, that's it, I've got to get myself one of these
• 13:29
  things. And you know what?
• 13:32
  That word hope started creeping in.
• 13:34
  And I hated it because the word hope meant I'd have to come out
• 13:38
  and try one more time. And I didn't have it in me.
• 13:40
  I really didn't. And boy, that was hard.
• 13:46
  That was hard anyway. But the week before I was due to
• 13:49
  get out at the end of those four months, I asked one of the
• 13:54
  inmates who who was on day release for time to dime, He
• 13:59
  said. I said, can you go and talk to
• 14:01
  Steve? And I want to meet him when I
• 14:03
  get out and I want him to be my sponsor.
• 14:06
  So he did. He said he wouldn't.
• 14:08
  That was on a Monday, The Friday he came back and said, yeah,
• 14:11
  Steve's going to meet you when you get out, you'll be fired.
• 14:14
  I mean, a couple of minutes later one of the other Christmas
• 14:17
  came up and said what are you going to do on the outside from
• 14:19
  there? Dunk And I went I'm going to do
• 14:22
  time on the outside from there on.
• 14:24
  I'll never do time on the inside again.
• 14:26
  Do you know what? Although it wasn't me saying it,
• 14:29
  I think believed it. That's that's just strengthen
• 14:32
  this fellowship about synonymous.
• 14:34
  It gives you the answers and you can't help fall in love with
• 14:38
  him. Believe it.
• 14:40
  It's just amazing. And it works.
• 14:42
  Absolutely works. And anyway, yeah.
• 14:48
  And I got out and Steve met me, you know, about 5 minutes up,
• 14:53
  not even 5 minutes. About a minute after I've got
• 14:55
  out. And he asked me 3 pertinent
• 14:57
  questions. I was only about 3040 feet from
• 14:59
  the prison gates. He said, I believe you got a
• 15:01
  question they've asked for me. You know what?
• 15:03
  I said I've got that you want. And I went, oh, I didn't want to
• 15:06
  answer that question. And I thought, well, he's not
• 15:09
  gay and I'm not gay. And he doesn't have a smooth
• 15:12
  girlfriend and he doesn't have much Cash Cash because he's
• 15:17
  looking out for a very sick father and he's trying to run
• 15:19
  the family business at the same time.
• 15:22
  He's got a refi routine. He's got three square meals a
• 15:24
  day and he's got a spare room for me which I can have for as
• 15:27
  long as I like I'm in the. And he got what is it that he's
• 15:30
  got though And when I told him and he goes fair enough, OK,
• 15:34
  where do you want to go from here And I thought give me a
• 15:37
  break. You know, you're really hard on
• 15:38
  it because I had a my third wife had been beaten up and raped
• 15:44
  while I was in prison, and I knew I had to go and find her up
• 15:47
  in Sydney and, you know, see if this marriage could work.
• 15:51
  I was in desperate trouble to find her and help her out.
• 15:54
  And. But then the penny dropped
• 15:55
  again. What did he ask?
• 15:57
  And I said they want to do the steps and he goes, give me a
• 16:02
  break Anyway, I said. Now he said no, we're going to
• 16:05
  have breakfast at another member's place.
• 16:08
  His name's Tom, and we'll be there in a couple of minutes.
• 16:12
  So I have breakfast with his wife and kids and you'll be OK.
• 16:16
  You'll be OK. And I tell you what you know
• 16:19
  what they did. They treated me like a normal
• 16:21
  human being and I couldn't handle it.
• 16:23
  Couldn't not handle it. It was just oh, terrible.
• 16:26
  I felt lower than the sake's belly.
• 16:28
  Then I sent to him afterwards. I said bad.
• 16:29
  You ever spring something I got only again or bloody walk,
• 16:32
  Elliott. And yeah, so after there, we, we
• 16:36
  drove over to this place, which was across the other side of
• 16:39
  town. And he sat down and said the the
• 16:42
  coffee table and the lounge. And he said, he said he took out
• 16:46
  the big book, his copy. And I took out mine.
• 16:48
  And he said, what do you think about God?
• 16:52
  Oh, I actually spewed, you know, I actually vaulted this civic
• 16:58
  base rose up and the reflux rose up in my throat.
• 17:01
  And I'm joking. It's coming out of my nose and
• 17:03
  out of my mouth. And I'm crying.
• 17:05
  I said, don't ask me that question, you know.
• 17:09
  And he opened up the big book and he had me chance to relax a
• 17:13
  bit. And he opened up this other
• 17:16
  book, they call it Gossips and 12th traditions book.
• 17:18
  And he's told me on different parts of that big book and
• 17:21
  different parts of this. He said, dots, he goes, Oh yeah,
• 17:25
  you're not talking. I don't think I've told a tie
• 17:27
  over the road where we just had breakfast.
• 17:30
  No, he said, look, dunk. You think that God can free you
• 17:34
  from a grip of its advice. And if he can, and you're
• 17:37
  willing to ask him, worry about how much pain and hurt and
• 17:41
  hatred you have towards him on that aside.
• 17:44
  And you think he has the power and the ability to free you from
• 17:48
  the drink. And if he does, you're going to
• 17:51
  ask him to help you. And you know, it took me over an
• 17:54
  hour oh, debating and then backwards and forwards and
• 17:57
  crying and half choking and it said dunk, What do you think?
• 18:03
  You think he can put all that stuff that will be emotions
• 18:06
  aside And it asks. Answer the question, does he
• 18:10
  have the power and the ability to free from a drink or does he
• 18:13
  not? If he does, so you're prepared
• 18:15
  to ask him. And eventually I said yes.
• 18:18
  And then we got straight into the rest of the steps.
• 18:20
  Step 123 all the way through to 12.
• 18:22
  And you know what? It took me 40 hours to get
• 18:26
  through all that stuff with him. And I didn't stop.
• 18:29
  I was too scared to stop because I know if I stop, I don't start
• 18:32
  again. That's just the way I'm built.
• 18:34
  If I'm full on, I'm full on. If I'm not, I'm not.
• 18:37
  And and I wanted freedom from the grip of this disease so
• 18:40
  badly I was prepared to go through whatever pain or hell I
• 18:44
  had to go through to to be free. And you know 40 hours later of
• 18:51
  talking and bakes and bit bits and coffees and sandwiches that
• 18:54
  he kept on feeding me with and whatever.
• 18:57
  And oh man, what tears, buckets and buckets.
• 19:01
  And I did crying for the most for at least five years.
• 19:04
  I was crying nearly every day in in the rooms of AII just
• 19:09
  couldn't stop crying. It was just a lot of stuff just
• 19:12
  kept coming up and it kept on choking me.
• 19:14
  I'd phone Miss Foster up and I'd go in and see him and he helped
• 19:19
  me out, you know, to get through all that stuff.
• 19:21
  And there's a lot of crying involved, guilt and shame,
• 19:24
  remorse, and he helped me to get over those things.
• 19:27
  And you know what? I didn't even know how to
• 19:28
  forgive myself. And he said don't learn
• 19:31
  anything, learn how to forgive others in AI.
• 19:35
  And then in time you learn here to forgive yourself.
• 19:37
  Well, that took a bit of seven years, but it worked, you know,
• 19:41
  And and I was able to make amends to my mum and dad.
• 19:44
  I was able to make amends to a couple of other old time
• 19:47
  friends. But the rest, my ex wives, my
• 19:50
  kids don't want to know me. My brothers and sisters don't
• 19:53
  want to know me while they're drunks.
• 19:55
  And you know, they don't like seeing me because I go to AA and
• 19:59
  it's working for me. You know, when they see me,
• 20:02
  they're looking in the mirror and going, well, if if he's
• 20:04
  calling himself an alcoholic, what does that make me?
• 20:09
  If that's just the way it is? Because over these years, you
• 20:12
  know, I've had to learn how to pay back all the money I owed,
• 20:15
  and that took 19 years. And finally when we dissipate
• 20:19
  off and my third marriage failed, unfortunately.
• 20:23
  And yeah, she she was just an emotional cripple after what had
• 20:28
  happened to her and nothing. She was driven away from wanting
• 20:32
  anything to do with a man or landline, that husband who's
• 20:35
  been in prison, you know, And yeah, so.
• 20:39
  But one thing I've done right is stick with a A.
• 20:41
  And I've always had a sponsor. And my first sponsor, Steve said
• 20:45
  wherever you go get a sponsor or ever you go get a group or ever
• 20:49
  you go keep on doing you the best you can to come to believe
• 20:55
  in in the paragraph of myself that you can call God, that's
• 20:59
  easy for you to handle. And you know what?
• 21:02
  That finally happened. It took about 3 1/2 years for
• 21:05
  that. Today I can call God God.
• 21:08
  And it doesn't hurt me anymore. I'm not.
• 21:10
  I don't have wreath watch problems with it anymore or my
• 21:13
  stomach churning anymore. And it's like that, that word
• 21:16
  God doesn't hurt me anymore. Now I've learned how to live
• 21:21
  again. And he said whatever you do in
• 21:23
  the next three to five years don't have anything to do with
• 21:26
  six politics and religion. And I thought, well you know,
• 21:29
  two out of three is pretty good. That one thing I didn't do is I
• 21:34
  didn't listen to him when he said don't do any work for the
• 21:38
  1st 12 months and I did go to work.
• 21:42
  The other thing he said was go to the doctors, get a check up
• 21:47
  get on your vitamin B shots and all that sort of stuff.
• 21:49
  And I stick with AI and I didn't do those things and I ended up
• 21:55
  with the electric fleas and or severe withdrawal, so in a coma.
• 22:00
  And he found me and got me in the hospital.
• 22:02
  And with his help and the help of his couple of his mates, over
• 22:06
  the next 12 months, daily, they had to retrain me, you know,
• 22:12
  from from potty training to watching me and blowing me off
• 22:16
  and clothing me and changing my bench sheets all the time, day
• 22:19
  and night. And because, you know, I had no
• 22:23
  control over my bowels. It was just the way, just the
• 22:26
  way it was for me after that gala.
• 22:30
  Yeah, the electric fleas. And that was five months, six
• 22:33
  months all up, you know, all months in prison, two months
• 22:37
  outside of prison. It hit me, you know the what do
• 22:40
  you call it, the side effects or the backlash, whatever you want
• 22:43
  to call it. And yeah, the withdrawals were
• 22:47
  severe for me and it took him and his mates 12 months to bring
• 22:51
  me, bring me back to earth and bring me to see and to hear and
• 22:57
  to feel and to touch and to smell and what are socks and
• 23:00
  what are shoes and what is hot water tap and a cold water tap.
• 23:04
  And yeah, they really had to drain me up like a 2 year old
• 23:09
  baby and man of mine do I appreciate that.
• 23:13
  And Rwanda, I said I'm going to pay you back.
• 23:18
  I'm going to pay you back. And I said no.
• 23:19
  What we do here Doug, you got to do for others.
• 23:23
  You know when anybody anywhere reaches here for help, then you
• 23:28
  what I mean to be there for them and and do what we've done for
• 23:33
  you to them and you'll be all right.
• 23:36
  Let's tell you what, All these years involved without ultra
• 23:40
  anonymous, 31 years in different parts of Australia, Sydney,
• 23:45
  Melbourne, Darwin, back to Melbourne and now here in South
• 23:49
  Australia. It's amazing, really amazing. 31
• 23:53
  years. Wow.
• 23:54
  But it didn't start off easy. You know.
• 23:57
  I've heard people you know say they went through mild
• 24:00
  withdrawal rules and some said they hardly went through any
• 24:03
  sort of withdrawal rules and well, good on you because I I
• 24:08
  went I must have experienced the worst kind of withdrawals any
• 24:11
  many he could when they coming off the drink And yeah if you're
• 24:16
  if it seemed to me as bad as what I was getting to hospital
• 24:20
  man or mind. Wherever you are getting to
• 24:24
  Oscar we get into detox quick and yeah it's not pretty Don't
• 24:30
  wait for it to hit you getting me quick.
• 24:33
  The sooner the better. But, you know, with AI, with the
• 24:37
  steps and the traditions and Alcoholics are structured,
• 24:43
  honestly, if you run a drinking problem and you think you could
• 24:45
  be an alcoholic, yeah. The other thing I didn't know
• 24:48
  was that Alcoholics have an allergy to alcohol.
• 24:53
  Yeah, some people in the world have allergies to peanuts or
• 24:57
  chocolates or raspberries or whatever it might be.
• 25:00
  We're allergic to alcohol. We can't have alcohol in the
• 25:03
  system at all. Not even in cakes or what what's
• 25:09
  the other one in? In cough syrups or mouthwatches
• 25:15
  or you know, read the label. If it says brood or fermented,
• 25:21
  you know, stay away from it. Yeah, stay away from it.
• 25:25
  And really check the labels out on on any sort of medication.
• 25:30
  Really check the labels out. And because I paid a high price
• 25:33
  when I didn't one day, and you know, the Doctor Who gave me
• 25:37
  this strong medication for the influenza that I was suffering
• 25:40
  from, I was about a seven-year sober of the time, man, that
• 25:44
  five mils knocked me out like a light.
• 25:48
  And I the next day I wouldn't speak to her about it.
• 25:51
  Oh, no, no, no. I checked the Internet and I
• 25:54
  checked this. And.
• 25:55
  No, no. Are you all right?
• 25:57
  There's no alcohol in it. And I said, you're a liar.
• 26:00
  I said this is what happened to me.
• 26:02
  I said I blacked out in my own flat and I could have fell over
• 26:05
  and banged my head against the kitchen table and killed myself.
• 26:08
  Anyway, I went around the chemist and got the chemist to
• 26:12
  look through his big farmer copia dictionary, whatever it
• 26:17
  was. I said check these like one of
• 26:19
  these names and he checked them out.
• 26:21
  He listened to me, he understood where I was coming from and he
• 26:24
  checked out those names on the bottle.
• 26:26
  He said, yeah, they are all alcoholic based preservatives.
• 26:31
  There you go. So I went back to the doctors
• 26:34
  and I I scream blue Evan in the face and I really lost my
• 26:38
  temper. Plus I I still had this
• 26:40
  influenza and knocked me around. But yeah, she she apologized and
• 26:46
  after that I I read every label. I really read every label.
• 26:51
  I want people, you know don't give me something if it's been
• 26:57
  it in beer or wine, don't give me for me.
• 27:01
  I've learnt through the rooms of a A.
• 27:03
  If you're an alcoholic or even if you don't know you are get
• 27:07
  into the rooms of alcohol. Synonymous.
• 27:09
  Check it out because your life didn't depend on it.
• 27:13
  Really. And today I could say thank you
• 27:16
  to God for getting me into a A because wow, I would have been a
• 27:21
  goner for sure. But yeah, that's it for me.
• 27:25
  You know, I'm, I'm really, really grateful to be sober in
• 27:27
  the rooms of a A being free from the crypt of this disease.
• 27:31
  That is a blessing. So yeah, Dennis, thank you for
• 27:35
  asking me to share. And and I'm really privileged to
• 27:39
  do so.