Hello and welcome to Sobercast, where we provide A.A. Speaker Meetings and workshops in podcast format.

We're an ad-free podcast, and if you enjoy listening, please help us be self-supporting by visiting Sobercast.com, look for the link, and drop a dollar or two into our virtual

basket.

We hope you enjoyed the podcast.

Have a great day.

Hi, I'm Astrid, and I'm an alcoholic.

Thank you for that introduction, Jenny.

And thank you for everyone that puts this on.

Thank you, Lee.

Thank you, Polly, and everybody in here,

it takes a lot of people to put on something like this, and I get it, you know,

it's a lot of work, and it's an honor and it's a privilege to be able to speak on step one in Atlanta.

You know, there's a lot of people that put a dollar in a basket that paid for an airplane ticket

and then a hotel room, and I don't take that for granted you know many years ago nobody would

have flown me anywhere but maybe a one-way ticket to San Quentin or something so it's an honor

and I really hope that I can say something that'll help somebody tonight. When I look at step one, I see

that I'm powerless over alcohol, and then there's that dash that my life is unmanageable.

And I had to really dig very, very deeply inside of my own self. I had to do a lot of self reflecting of when did

the unmanageability start? How did my life get unmanageable? Where does this disease center?

You know, what is unmanageability? Because if I don't have step one down as a way of life,

and I'm not armed with the facts, then for me personally, I don't feel

that there's any real point in even going into step two because it's not a homework assignment.

...