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Hi, everyone. My name is Vanessa and I'm an alcoholic. Thank you for having me. It is today

over here in LA. It's 1 p.m. over here. But yeah, I'm a real one and I'm so grateful for the

process of the 12 steps and for getting me connected to a god and solve all my problems.

Yeah, my sobriety data September 9th of 2015 and this was my first real attempt at sobriety

and I have not relapsed. And relapse does not have to be a part of your story. I know it's common

for a lot of people, but when I got here, which I'll get into in a second, I was beaten into

such a state of reasonfulness and I tried every imaginable remedy known that when they said,

get a sponsor, work the steps, trust god, clean house, help others, I said okay and I've been

able to stay here for the last almost seven years because of that and I'm eternally grateful

for this program for giving me this amazing life. So funny because people always say like,

oh, I have a life beyond my wildest dreams and like my wildest dreams was like endless amounts

of money and cocaine so that never makes any sense to me because the thought of being

useful, happy and whole was just so far and I was not a dream for me at all.

But yeah, so I grew up in a religious household and my dad is a pastor and I grew up reciting

Bible verses and going to church camp every year, youth group ministry, I'm in the whole thing

and we got little awards for saying Bible verses every week. It was this whole

display and like I said, my dad was a pastor so public image was really big and

...