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I'm Jacqueline. I'm an alcoholic. Welcome to the newcomers, and congratulations on your 90

days. That's awesome. To those of you that are new, this program works miracles.

And I feel like sometimes that work can get thrown around a lot in these rooms. But for me,

this program has been miraculous. I came into the rooms on October 17th of 2005 and have stayed

sober since. I just celebrated 10 years. October of 2005 was not the

first time that I came into the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. I came in in 2002 because my

drinking and using was not serving me anymore. And I had a lot of consequences as the result of my

use. But I came into the rooms in 2002 for all the

wrong reasons, and I just wanted to find a way to be able to, like, drink and use successfully

without consequence. And I wasn't willing to go to a single length, then, let alone any length,

you know, and I didn't stay sober. I had a couple periods of time where I was dry, but I never had a

program until I came to the rooms in in 2005. And for me, my drinking and using took me to a lot of,

like, really dark and insane places. When I was asked to be the speaker at this meeting, I was taught by my sponsor

that I don't turn down AA requests, so I said yes. And a lot of times I do AA obligations for that

purpose. And I was okay with it even when I heard that there were like, you know, a couple hundred

people. I thought, okay, I can do it. Like, God will be with me. And then I read the sort of like two-page outline of what this meeting entailed that Joe had sent my way, and I saw that it was going to be recorded. And I thought, holy shit, I don't want, like, you know, like an ongoing record of, like, me and the nightmare that was, like, of my drinking because I feel like in a lot of ways,

like what I share at meetings when I'm the main speaker is some of the worst parts of my

disease. You know, it's like that whole what it was like, what happened and what it's like now.

And I just recently completed a doctorate in clinical psychology. I'm getting ready to like go into the field. I'm like, you know, minutes away from being licensed. And my fear was like, oh, my God, what if the CD gets, like, disseminates? And then, like, people that I'm going to be seeing hear this, you know, there's supposed to be, like, some anonymity. And then I just thought, I called a friend and was like I shouldn't do this

...