Hello, and welcome to Sobercast. We provide AA speaker meetings and workshops in a podcast format.

We are Nat 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 to into the virtual basket.

Also, if you're a member of NA or have friends that are, please tell them about our other podcast, NAPOD.

NAPOD features NA speakers and workshops in the same format as sobercast.

We upload a new speaker every day, and it's easy to subscribe by searching for NAPOD,

NAPOD, a one word, on any podcast player app, or go to napod.xyz if you'd like to listen online.

Hope you enjoyed the podcast and have a great day.

I'd like to now introduce our guest speaker for the month of July, and that's Bessie, speaking on Cess123.

I'm not ready for 30.

Okay. Hi, everybody. My name is Bess, and I am an alcoholic and an addict.

I want to say that I normally introduce myself like that unless it's really, really clear that that's going to bother people.

I do it more for my own benefit than anything else.

I do everything in this program for my own benefit, at least as much as anyone else.

It's a reminder to me that my problem is alcohol and so much more.

We say in the beginning of every meeting that our primary purpose is to achieve sobriety and to help other alcoholists to achieve sobriety.

That is my primary purpose, but for me sobriety is about so much more than not drinking.

For me to achieve sobriety, I found that I had to stop taking drugs.

I know that seems obvious.

Well, you know, and it's a funny thing.

I had a sponsor for nearly my first number of years who was very wise and she taught me a lot.

One of the earliest things she told me that the name of my disease is not drug addiction or alcoholism.

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