Hello and welcome to Sobercast, where we provide A.A. Speaker Meetings and workshops in podcast format.

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basket. We hope you enjoyed the podcast. Have a great day. I'm Joel an alcoholic. Hi, Joel.

I want to thank Tanika for asking me to speak. Normally I wouldn't travel as far to go to an

Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. But I feel

it's important for me to go other places and hear different things. And so I first was introduced

to Alcoholics Anonymous at an early age.

My mom's been sober since I was 13, so she's just celebrated 26 years this Friday.

And I ran around and played in the Alano Club in San Jose and didn't think anything of it.

And she told me at like 15 that I was probably going to be an alcoholic.

And of course, you know, I rebelled and said no.

And I didn't drink for a long time.

I didn't drink until later in high school.

And I didn't drink that much until I got, until I was 21 years old.

And when I started drinking, it was, it was bad straight from the start.

There was no good time.

I was instantly drinking with problems.

There was no... I mean, there was some fun, obviously,

because I wouldn't have kept doing it if it wasn't fun.

But I got to Alcoholics Anonymous at the age of 30 the first time.

And I had destroyed my life.

You know, I didn't accomplish anything that I thought I was going to accomplish and end up homeless and living in a tent.

...