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I'm an alcoholist. My name is Craig. First things first. Thank you, Mel, and Samarro

for your hospitality, and your warm welcome and invite for the meeting today. And I

apologize to everybody I wasn't able to get here a little earlier in fellowship, and yep,

let me just change that together with you. Get, um, and stay. I got a work meeting on

the front end, and I got a working meeting on the back end, so I'm going to have to jump

off as soon as we end here, too, but thank you all for being here. My sobriety date is

November 28, 1998. My home group, as was stated, is the Mighty Purpose and Rhythm Group.

I have a sponsor and a service sponsor. For those who are unfamiliar with service sponsorship,

my experience with the service sponsors. Someone who guides you through the 12 traditions

and the 12 concepts, um, and, you know, being a bottom service inside and outside of the

group. And I have the honor and privilege to sponsor and service sponsor. As you can

see from the, uh, flyer, the topic tonight is steps four and five. Um, you know, before

I can get anywhere near, communicating about my experience of step four and five, I do need

to illustrate what got me here and, and my alcoholism and the understanding that I suffer

from a mental obsession and the physical craving and a spiritual hole in the soul or spiritual

malady as some of us call it. I came into the rooms of eight, nineteen. I was, I was in

probably 17 or 18 institutions. I was incarcerated. I was homeless, kicked out of multiple schools.

Uh, in one case, I was thrown out of three treatment centers in one day wrapped in a spider

...