I mean it that and I won't get into it. We'll maybe bring it up as a topic, but I had an incident

that just told me like, I'm a real alcoholic. Not really. I'm a real alcoholic. Like this is,

this is, I'm not a past tense alcoholic. I'm a present day alcoholic. And it was very obvious to me

last night. And I was like, you know, I'm glad I know that. And that's my point. I'm glad I know that. I don't think, oh, I'm better. That's all done. No, it's still me, which means I still need to put in the work in order to keep myself safe. And that was driven home. I really felt that way last night. I'm like, you know, and it's so it's always good to be able to come here and have this

podcast and go to my meetings and do all the other things I do in order to keep that alcoholic

mind at bay.

Welcome to the sober friends podcast where, hey, if you're on the sober journey, you're in the right place, whether you're sober curious or you're a grizzled old time.

My name is Matt Jay, and on the other side of the monitor is Steve. What's up, Steve?

Hey, Matt.

We'll talk a little bit tonight about learning from our mistakes.

And I'm going to set this up because I have a bit of a eureka moment from a meeting that I went to.

And I hear this type of thought process a lot.

And it goes into where we need to give ourselves a break sometimes.

This does not mean that all the stuff we did in our drinking we don't have to atone for.

We have a process for that.

I'm talking afterwards.

So somebody mentioned, you know, I really wish I learned how to use the book the way I know how to use it now

when I first got sober. And I just don't feel comfortable all the time doing the highlighting,

so I don't have a lot of highlighting in here. And my sponsor wrote some stuff in the margins,

and I was like, ah, and I just haven't gone down that route. And it made me raise my hand immediately, try to be careful not to cross talk.

But to talk about how, hey, we got to give ourselves a little bit of a break here, because I hear this too much.

But the reason that you didn't use the book properly when you first got sober is you didn't

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