Hello and welcome to Sobercast, where we provide A.A. Speak meetings and workshops in podcast format.

We're 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 or two into our virtual basket. We hope you enjoyed the podcast. Have a great day. Hi, I'm Astrid, and I'm an alcoholic. Thank you for that introduction, Jenny. And thank you for everyone that puts this on. Thank you, Lee, thank you, Polly, and everybody in here

takes a lot of people to put on something like this, and I get it, you know, it's a lot of work. And it's an honor, and it's a privilege to be able to speak on Step 1 in Atlanta. You know, there's a lot of people that put a dollar in a basket that paid for an airplane ticket, and then a hotel room.

And I don't take that for

granted you know many years ago nobody would have flown me anywhere but maybe a one-way

ticket to San Quentin or something so it's an honor and I really hope that I can say something

that'll help somebody tonight.

When I look at step one, I see that I'm powerless over alcohol, and then there's that dash that my life is unmanageable.

And I had to really dig very, very deeply inside of my own self.

I had to do a lot of self-reflecting of when did the unmanageability start?

How did my life get unmanageable? Where does this disease center? You know, what is unmanageability?

Because if I don't have step one down as a way of life and I'm not armed with the facts,

then for me personally, I don't feel that there's any real point in even going into step two

because it's not a homework assignment.

It's an experiential program.

So for me, I look all the way back into my childhood

and like so many people here, we come from a lot of trauma.

And I believe that for most of us, untreated alcoholism

started before the bottle came into our lives.

And I know for me, there was a tremendous amount

of conflict between my parents.

There was a lot of screaming.

...