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.

I'm Crystal.

I'm an alcoholic.

Hey, Crystal.

My sobriety date is January 5, 2012.

And I, just to preface this, I have a sponsor. She has 30 years sober. She has a sponsor.

I has more time than that. And I have a home group, and I've sponsored other women, and I just kind of, this is how I live.

So what I've always been told is I'm supposed to say what it used to be like, what happened,

and what it's like now.

And kind of a synopsis would be, I am the fourth of six kids.

I was born at Martin Army Hospital in Fort Benning, Georgia. My dad was in the military. He

joined the Army to pay for medical school. So he's a doctor. My mom was a nurse. And I have two

older brothers, an older sister, and two younger brothers. And I was a very painfully, painfully shy little kid, like super painfully shy.

I remember as like maybe a three-year-old, my dad used to try and get me to go talk to the waitress at restaurants.

Like, go ask her for some more nap napkins and I would just freak out and like

no I don't want to do it I don't want to talk to her she's a stranger and like things like that for me

were just punishing they were really difficult um and I think in that sense I was an anomaly my

parents are both extroverts I think all my siblings probably are too.

...