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 my name is jim i'm an alcoholic

and uh i always get a little nervous before i speak coming up here i wasn't sure if i was going to

go for the door or if i was going to end up here so i'm up here can't keep my name tag on today um i want to thank uh dustin and the committee

for asking us to come up and speak it's certainly a privilege to become and ask to to speak as a member

of alcoholics anonymous um prior to me getting sober people were not asking me uh to come and tell and tell them what I thought or to share my experience with them.

It was quite different than that.

I want to thank everybody that spoke so far today.

Both the Pats did a great job talking a little bit about what Alcoholics Anonymous does in their life.

They talked about recovery, talked about some of the ways that we can get that in our own life. And Sarah

talked about the importance of the unity inside of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I got to tell you that

what I was asked today to do today is to talk about service. And I wasn't exactly sure how to go about doing those things and um so i

thought about it a lot and i talked a little bit about it with my wife and and then i thought some

more about it and then i walked in today and i sat down the back of the room and five 10 minutes passed

by and i'm sitting in the back of the room, and this guy walks in,

and I look over, and I go, I know that guy.

And the reason that I knew that guy is I knew that guy in a different life.

I knew that guy when I was an active drunk, and he was an active drunk.

And the guy that walked in and came and sat down next to me, whom i've had a chance to talk to you today um is a different human being than the person that i knew five years ago where it was probably longer than that was probably 10 years since i've seen the guy at least to any he's a different human being something has changed in his life that is absolutely phenomenal and i sat and i talked to him and he told me that he had a home group and he told me that he was involved in service. And he told me they'd have a sponsor and that he sponsored other guys. And they'd have this brand new life that was given to him. And I've just been sitting here all the whole day going, there's no way, I know this guy. There's no way he should be sober. There's absolutely no way. He is a hopeless chronic alcoholic. There's no way that he should be sober. And to have the life that he has today. And it just made my day. It was worth for me to drive down here from Brainer, Minnesota today, just for that alone. As we were driving down here, I grew up in Buffalo, Minnesota. If you haven't picked up yet, I'd cock at a pretty fast rate. I've had about eight cups of coffee today, and if I get going too much, you see any smoke rolling or anything like that, just kind of wave your hands around or something, and I'll try to slow down a little bit. But I was driving down here today, and we were coming down from Brainerd, Minnesota, and I grew up like maybe 10 miles from

this place. And I sobered up in Osceola County, Florida through a series of bad breaks

and misunderstandings at the Osceola County Police Department. But I didn't even know this place

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