Hello, and welcome to Sobercast. We provide AA speaker meetings and workshops in a podcast format.

We are 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 to into the virtual basket.

Also, if you're a member of NA or have friends that are, please tell them about our other podcast, NAPOD.

NAPOD features NA speakers and workshops in the same format as sobercast.

We upload a new speaker every day, and it's easy to subscribe by searching for NAPOD,

NAPOD, a one word, on any podcast player app, or go to napod.xyz if you'd like to listen online.

Hope you enjoyed the podcast and have a great day.

About any further ado, it gives me great pleasure to introduce our main speaker for this morning's meeting from Thousand Oaks, Gary C.

Hi, good morning, I'm Gary, I'm an alcoholic addict, and it's a pleasure to be here.

Thank you all for asking me, give me a chance to get up here and work my program.

I have two what it was like, two what happened, and one what it's like now.

That's not because I slip, that's because I am a monument to Irish, Welsh, arrogance, stupidity, pride, and self will run riot.

In that, I quit drinking some 27 years ago for the wrong reasons.

I quit because my wife and my son wanted me to, but I didn't need any program.

You know, I was tough guy, I was going to do it on my own.

So I went on a white Michael dry drunk for the next 19 years, and that takes a lot of stupidity to do that folks.

Let me tell you, and it's, I'm here to tell you today that the disease is called alcoholism, and the ism part of the disease kicked my butt for 19 years after I had stopped all the alcohol.

So this isn't just about stopping drinking.

You stop drinking and then you have to face your real problem, which is you, and living with you.

I identify as an alcoholic for two reasons. Number one, my mother was an alcoholic, and as we know this disease is hereditary.

And number two, because as far back as I've been able to go in my mind and uncover and discover and discard, I can't recall a time no matter how small I was when the four horsemen of the alcoholic weren't riding my shoulders.

...