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Good morning. Good morning. It's great to see you. You're looking pretty decent.

Best I can tell. It's a little early for that.

I'm glad to be here. This morning I'm going to sort of weighed in to work with others and I don't want to be guilty of false advertising but let me invite you to join in anytime you like.

If you have something that didn't make sense or you just want to hear more about or less about just give me a signal and I'll stop.

I'm not one that'll tease a group and draw it out so it's kind of like a runaway train. You just have to jump aboard whenever you get a chance and don't wait for me.

I would genuinely invite you to do that. I've learned since I've been in the air.

I'm not an expert on anything and as I'm tonight the day I'm not speaking as an authority on working with others.

About the best that I can do is tell you what I have seen and tell you what I have heard and tell you what I've come to believe.

And that's essentially the kind of an attack that I'd like to make on this.

Let me just sort of put one little piece of backdrop to this whole discussion.

I believe without any question that alcoholism is a killer illness. I have absolutely no question.

I've been to too many examples of the living or the dying proof that it's a killer illness.

And I believe it's an illness that's tremendously formidable. Most of us who have this illness die of this illness usually tragically at about an average age of 52.

And those of us who are able to get hold of this elusive brass ring that we call sobriety and hang on to it into a brand new way of life.

I truly believe among the luckiest people on the face of this earth.

And so it's an illness that's a tremendously difficult illness.

It is one in which the odds are great that I'll never get into a solution.

And the odds are are extremely heavy against my being able to stay if I do because it's not only a killer illness in terms of getting here, but in terms of staying here.

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