Hello and welcome to Soebecast, where we provide AA 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 donate link

and drop a dollar or two into our virtual basket.

We hope you enjoy the podcast.

Have a great day.

Hi, my name is Mike, yes, I'm an alcoholic.

It's good to be here tonight and it's good to be sober.

It's nice to be here tonight and it's good to be sober. It's nice to be back at your group

And Barry, thank you for inviting me to come here tonight. Let me get some preliminary things out of the way

This is a sad note. I woke up with the cold this morning.

Thank you. I wanted a little sympathy and I've been choking the rest of the day and so I would like to well just understand that if I don't give a good talk it is not my fault at all

It has nothing to do with it. I have had a good day so far today, not that anybody cares too much, but I have. It was an easy flight up here and then I got to go to dinner with some

of the guys from your group and met a person

who was brand new to Alcoholics Anonymous.

I mean a lot of times I meet newcomers in AA, but it's rare to meet somebody who's had no familiarity with

alcoholics anonymous. And I'll tell you, it brought back a lot of memories

for me because as I will tell you in a few minutes, I guess I'm going to tell you now, huh?

I didn't like Alcoholics Anonymous and I didn't fit in well here and I didn't feel comfortable here.

And then I ran into somebody else who was new to this group tonight

...