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

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basket we hope you enjoyed the podcast have a great day i went i went as a guest for you at one time

and someone gave me a very flowery introduction and they said would you please stand up don i said

i am standing up.

Well, thanks very much for having us here. My name's Don, and it's lovely to see so many people.

I'm a little bit rusty. I haven't done much of this sort of thing for quite some time,

because I've retired about seven years ago, but it's just wonderful to be here amongst my friends in Alcoholics Anonymous. It's just marvellous to be here.

I was saying in the car coming along today just to sort of quote somebody else I once heard speak,

you know, it's been so long since I've talked to the group like this. But I remember a fellow

who introduced himself one night and he said, I feel like Elizabeth Taylor's

fifth husband. I know what to do, but I'm not sure how to make it interesting.

I'm here for one reason only, and that's that I'm an alcoholic. And I can remember days gone

by where we were up Elizabeth Street there a few weeks ago, my wife

and I were in Melbourne and there was a little place called the Excel Cafe.

Used to be just down the road here in Elizabeth Street.

I noticed it's not there anymore, but I used to come in.

I was living at St Kilda at the time and I was at the height of my bad drinking period, and I still don't remember where I lived in St Kilda. I know it was just off Punt Road somewhere, and honestly God I don't know where I'd been living or what the name of the street was. But I used to come in all the way in here, and I'd drink at the hotel in town here in Elizabeth Street, and I used to have a feed if everybody did have a feed at this little cafe down there. I remember the Greek people trying to talk to me and sort of tell me that there was a better way I live than doing what I was doing. I don't know why they said that because I wore a collar and a tie and a suit and, you know, all this sort of stuff and I had a a job and all that, you know, I didn't know what they were getting at. But anyway, that was later on the, down the track. But I started my drinking at around about 14 or nearly 15 years of age. And it was after bike race in a little town called Lockhart, some 40 mile away from the town of Wogga Wogga.

And as we sprinted down the main street, there was a wheel separating first, second and third,

and I'd run third in this pretty big bike race and won a few dollars or a few pounds in those days.

And I took the boys down to the pub for a drink because they all drank, they're older

than me and I liked older company.

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