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I'm an alcoholic. My name is just a member of the Mediterranean group.

We meet here in Jerusalem, Israel, which is where I'm coming to you from every Wednesday evening at 9 p.m.

That's 2 p.m. local time for you. You're more than welcome to join. We'd love to have you.

I'll put the information in the chat at the end of the meeting.

I have a sobriety date. That is the 14th of February 1980. I celebrated 41 years of continuous sobriety two weeks ago today.

Thank you. Thank you. It's not me. It's not only me. It's my will aligned with the will of a power greater than myself. That's for sure.

I certainly wasn't incapable of one day of sobriety when I got here.

So I certainly wasn't going to run a streak like 41 years without the help of a power greater than myself as experienced through the 12 steps of alcoholics anonymous and my continued participation in alcoholics anonymous.

But I'm getting ahead of myself already. That is what happens.

I want to thank Matt for the invitation to be here. Thank you. I've heard a lot about your group.

I guess I don't rank to share on the big book of alcoholics anonymous, but it's a good dog and pony show for a Sunday afternoon. I'm kidding. I'm kidding.

I'm not really kidding. I'm kind of kidding. Anyway, I'll stop. I picked up my first drink when I was nine years old. I waited.

I could have used the drink on the way to kindergarten or any other day of my entire life before I picked up a drink.

I have a friend who likes to quote me saying that I was sober when I started drinking. In fact, I started drinking because I was sober.

And that's important for me to remember. I drank as a solution. I didn't pick up my first drink as a solution because I didn't know what alcohol was.

But once I experienced alcohol, I knew that I had found a solution for my life. And my life was the causes and conditions that we talk about in the book of alcoholics anonymous.

The underlying causes and conditions that I addressed with alcohol.

And it's important to remember because by the time I came to alcoholics anonymous, alcohol had become the problem.

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