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My name is Kevin. I'm an alcoholic.

Hi everybody. So I wanted to start by by thanking Clay and the others for inviting me to be here tonight and do this.

It's been a while since I've told my story and it's always a good reminder to think back and consider where I came from, how I got to where I am and, you know, and where I am right now. So I came from a long line of

alcoholics in Michigan and my great-grandfather was the town drunk of a little town in Northern Michigan.

And one of the family stories is about how he and his brother sold the family home while they were out drinking one night,

took the cash and started walking through the snow north towards Canada.

And if you know Michigan, you know that you cannot walk to Canada through me.

There's a great big lake in between.

My grandmother went after them, got the money from them, and went back and bought the house back from whoever it was that they had sold it to.

Then go to the next generation that grandmother married an alcoholic and he was a raging alcoholic and

the two of them had seven children.

All seven of those children were alcoholics,

including my dad.

That grandfather died in an insane asylum at age 51 of alcohol-related reasons. I found out as an

adult when I was working for a hospital in Flint, Michigan where we all lived at that time.

That the maintenance maintenance for the hospital standing in that building and came to the realization

that my grandfather had died in that building as an alcoholic.

The, uh, if we, we get to my dad's generation. There were various levels of raging

...