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Have a great day.

I'm Joe, I'm an alcoholic.

It's good to be here.

Thank you for inviting me. had a nice drive up here from Santa Monica.

My sobriety date is August 17, 1982, and I'm very grateful for that date. For a long time I was told and I had an idea that gratitude was just an emotion and that I could go home and make the right list or think about

it long enough and I would go home and I would just get angrier and then I would try to love somebody and I loved

them and I would think about it and some people would tell me I could go home and make the right list.

I'd be able to love them.

I would just get angrier. I found out gratitude is in action, not in emotion. And I express my gratitude for Alcoholics Anonymous by responding to what I'm asked to do.

I'm not a circuit speaker anymore.

I was.

And like everything else I've ever used in my life, it almost killed me.

I've never enjoyed anything in my life that I didn't take to the gates of insanity and death.

And it's a horrible thing to become somebody in an anonymous program. And I did in my own mind at least and I remember at my home group once in Santa Monica a guy came all the way from the valley or something like two hours and he asked a couple people where's Joe Hawk and they pointed me out and he came over and he said I came all the way from the valley just to meet you. I said why?

He said well I heard you're a multi-millionaire recluse who stays in his apartment and only comes down to his hall group once in a while to impair direct

revelations from Bill and Bob.

I said you're not far off, but it's a little bit of a stretch.

...