Hello and welcome to Sobercast, where we provide A.A. Speaker 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 good evening friends it's good to be with

you I was excited all day to to be with you and I'm saying to somebody I thought I don't know

if I'm going to be able to keep my feet

on the ground here because this is just a wonderful opportunity to be with you. And I've

really been looking forward to it for some time. You know, first of all, I want to say that

I'm a grateful alcoholic. I mean that the deepest piece of my heart.

Grateful.

Grateful because of the gifts that have been given to me in sobriety through my God.

I'm a member of the Gapé group, a meditation group in Hamilton, which I co-founded, I don't

know, eight or nine years ago now.

And because meditation is at the center of my recovery.

It is.

It allows me to be able to be more effective in helping other people.

It helps me to see the broader picture.

And meditation and prayer is something that I'm into

very often. And my name is John. So I was separated from alcohol since December 23rd,

1972. So I'm in my 50th year of sobriety. And I just can't believe, A, how old I am,

and secondly, that I would have been here all that long. I've been in these rooms for almost all

my adult life, and I've never stopped coming. And people have asked me, Johnny, why you're so involved, you're just so giving

and kind.

...