Buddy Speaking to the Barcelona "Easy Does It, But Do It" meeting on October 6, 2023
The Daily Reprieve
Barcelona Meeting - Buddy
[Music] Hello and welcome to the Daily Reprieve, where we provide essays, speaker meetings, workshops, and conferences in podcast format. We are an ad-free podcast. If you enjoy listening, please help us be self-supporting by going to donate.thewreprieve.com and drop a dollar or two into the virtual basket. Please consider donating monthly by clicking the "Donate Monthly" button. However, one-time donations are always welcome. Just click the "Donate Now" button. Now, without further ado, this episode of the Daily Reprieve. [Music] Hey, the 4th of October, 2023. We are very happy to have with us Buddy from the Philadelphia P.A. in the U.S. in recovery since the 2nd of December, 1997. He will be sharing on the topic of making use of outside help. You are now on, Buddy, and you have 25 minutes to share. Daniel is volunteered to be the timer. Okay, Daniel, you'll give me a five-minute warning. Okay, on, Buddy, I'm a recovery sexaholic, and I do not normally get nervous before I speak, but today it's like, "Yes, I am." So I would just want to put that right out there. Yeah, I came to S.A. from A.A. So I'm going to talk a little bit about how I got the A.A. first. The very first good feeling in my life that I can recall was when I was five years old, and my father had given me a bottle of rolling rock beer. They called it a pony bottle. It was only seven-ounce bottles. It was green, and as I drank it, I could feel the effect of the alcohol. I was sitting in a corner drinking this beer and looking across the room at my father, and I was just filled with love for him. It was a wonderful feeling. The next good feeling I had in my life was my girlfriend Nancy, who was also five years of age. And on a warm summer day, I had picked Nancy up in my arms, and I carried her home to my mother, and I told my mother that Nancy and I are going to get married, and I could feel inside of myself happiness and joy. I would not feel that feeling again for another almost 60 years. When I was eight years old, my 14-year-old sister had taken my 10-year-old brother and I to a river where there was a real shallow area. She was going to teach us to swim, and in the process my 10-year-old brother drowned, and I nearly drowned. And I regretted being rescued. I was pulled out by my hair, and I thought my brother got the better deal. Of course, he got to die and go be with God, and I had to go home to my family. My dad was already a drinker, and his drinking took off. It got worse at that point on. And what made it even worse for me is my family reacted as if I had never had an older brother. They never talked about him. I knew what had happened. I was there, and I know I had an older brother, but they never talked about it. And when I complained about stomach pains, as a normal, natural reaction to that, they drunk me. They gave me this stuff called paragordic, which was used in children to relieve diarrhea and stomach pains. The base product in paragordic is opium. So I'm eight years old, and I'm on opium. I have no recollection from the day to drowning until four months later when the US president was assassinated. And when that happened, I came as if from a blackout, and I looked around to classroom, and everyone was crying, and I couldn't understand why are they crying. So the president has been killed. So what? And what I realized is I felt nothing. The memories got real vague from them, but I do remember when I started drinking regularly in 15 angle. Toward the end of my drinking now on 25, I've got liver damage. And again, I don't normally drink to a blackout, but I heard someone calling my name where I thought they were, and she was saying, "Cirk." And I realized that's not my name, and I looked into my bedroom, and it was a 12-year-old child sitting in my bed calling me. And she had a bottle of beer in her hand, and she was unclothed. I told her, "You need to get dressed, and you need to leave." And she asked me, "Well, can I keep the beer?" And I realized, "I'm 25. This is a crime. I got a problem." And so I went to AA because I thought I had a drinking problem. And I got sober in AA February 24th of 1980, and I got a sponsor right away, and he told me to get to work on the steps right away, set me down with the fourth step. He told me to look at the seven deadly sins, and I looked the list over of anger, greed, gluttony, slos, pride, envy. But when I got to the world lost, I thought, "That's not a sin. I need that to get out of bed in the morning, and I need that to get to sleep at night." 17 years later, still sober in AA, I've been sponsoring people. I'm taking prison commitments. I've got a sponsor. I'm very active in the fellowship, but I'm lusting like crazy for my sister-in-law. One day she had stopped past our home with her husband. They were dressed. They were going to a wedding, and at the time was very much into photography. And I got this idea. I'm going to ask my sister-in-law if I can photograph her in her very nice outfit. But not with her husband. I just wanted pictures of her. And as I stood up and was about to ask her, something asked me, "What's wrong with this picture?" And I realized there's a whole lot wrong with this picture. And I sat back down and did not say anything to her. And my wife and my sister-in-law and her husband all looked at me like, "You were going to say something? What was it?" And I tried to disappear. I tried to shrink into the sofa. And that's when it occurred to me. I got a lust problem. And it's about to wreck my life. Up to that point, I was real heavily into pornography. Fortunately, I did not know about the internet yet. I had girlfriends. I'd feel on the phone late at night. I was just doing a whole lot of stuff that was not good for my marriage. Someone had told me about, let's say, sex, hallics, anonymous, and that they have what they call this white book. And they told me where a meeting was. And I went to the meeting. And I felt like at home, like, yeah. When we said, we feel inadequate, unworthy, alone, and afraid, that was me. There was a fellow there who, at the time, was 10 months over. And I said to him, "You're going to be my sponsor." And he looked at me. And I said, "Because you got 10 months of variety, a free gift from God to you. So if you don't say yes to sponsor me, God will probably take that gift away from you." See, at this point, I was a real wise guy. I knew this program inside and out. I knew the 12 steps. It was 10 months over in S.A. He had never been in A.A. He was not like... So, of course, he said, "Yes." And we got busy working the steps. And I really started to see the character defects within me. When I would have relations with my wife, I would be fantasizing about this woman or that woman or somebody I saw on a magazine or someone I saw on the mall. And my wife was convinced that I was having an affair because she knew I was not spiritually and emotionally present with her. She was right. I was often to fantasly land while having relations. My sponsor suggested a period of abstinence. Back then, it was 90 days. And so I went into 90 days of abstinence and I really got to see the addiction to lust. I really found a lot of disturbing stuff about myself, but I got to work with it. And I did a real thorough working on stuff forward was lost. And got busy working to develop my spirituality in S.A. and started to apply in S.A. what I learned in A.A. which was to get involved, start taking commitments. And my sponsor and I, we started S.A. meeting on a weekly basis in a local prison. And we had that meeting going for about four years. We would grab guys from the meeting who had 90 days and we would just drag them into the prison with us and tell them, you got to speak. Again, as a real wise guy, but hey, we were having fun. Somewhere along there though, I recognized, you know, I'm having a lot of fun, but it all seems to be like up in my head. I'm not really feeling this joy in my body. And I didn't quite understand, but I figured so I just worked the steps harder than and take more commitments than then I will get this. Because all those around me, both in A.A. and S.A. are using the expression happy, joyous and free. And I'm feeling like, what's wrong with me? And as I started to examine my beliefs, I started to recognize what was wrong with me was that I was somehow broken, that there was something wrong with me from birth. I had the idea that I was born in alcoholic, and then I started the idea. I was born as a sexaholic, but there was something even deeper going on inside of me, this idea that I'm broken. And I'm looking at that. We felt inadequate, unworthy, alone, and afraid. And I thought, well, you know, I started reading Bill Wilson's history in A.A. And there's a small mention about using psychiatrist or psychologist. So I pursued that. And the fellow that I, the psychologist, I went to say, we talked about stuff, but I never seemed to really be getting down to the root of the problem. And he was also sober in A.A. But I just didn't seem to be getting anywhere with it. And what it finally came down to was, I was talking with my sponsor and another fellow in A.A. And they had said, you know, maybe you need to talk to your doctor about this stuff. And I did, I talked to my family doctor, he said, you're sound like you're depressed. And I want to put you on some medication. So I prayed on that for quite a while. And then in, in America, we refer to it as 9/11. It was the attack on the World Trade Center in New York City. And I'm a fellow from firefight, 9/300 firemen died in that attack in New York. And I went into the spiraling downward blindness. And I hung in as long as I could. And that really convinced me to go talk to my doctor again. And maybe I do need medication. And I started taking an antidepressant and didn't get high on it or anything. And I was taking it for well over a month or so. And something started to lift like my head started to feel clearer. But below the neck, I'm still feeling this depression as they're calling it. And so I just figured I'm going to do what I know how to do, which is to redouble my efforts. And this would go on each day. I would get out of bed. I'd feel like I got a lead seat on. But I would work as hard as I could with new guys and with my program. And I would, I would get the meetings. And it just wasn't lifting. I had gone over to Spain in 2019 for the 25th anniversary convention of SA in Madrid. And I was isolating amongst 300 recovering brothers and sisters. And I'm isolating. And for whatever reason, I could not even bring myself to ask another member to go tour the city with me. That feeling that feeling of unwreadiness was was so deep still. And at that point there, I was 20 something years over in SA. I had been reading a lot about this stuff called PTSD. I didn't really understand it. But I could see there is something I'm not addressing. Later on, I would learn what I was trying to do as a spiritual bypass. It says right in our solution, we have to get sober in all three, spiritual, mentally, physically. And I was bypassing the physical. What I've come to learn is I was neither broken nor injured. I mean, I neither broken nor that there was something wrong with me. What I learned was I was injured. And I found a therapist who was supposed to be a PTSD specialist. And she really helped me to see a lot of shit in my childhood that I was carrying physically in my body. And I didn't understand that then. Today, what I recognized is I had never grieved the loss of my brother. And I had developed a mental attitude that I will never let myself love anyone. Because if I let myself love you, you will die on me. You will find some kind of way either die or abandonment in some kind of way. And I realized I was not close to anybody. I'm not even too sure if I was close to my life. So I really started to have to peel the onion. And the more I peeled, the worse it got. I started to experience physical symptoms, shot, flushes, complete loss of appetite. I'm losing weight. Paranoia. I'm recognizing every day that I was afraid to even go out of the house. How this all ties into our 12 steps is that I recognized without essay and without an AA background. I would have been right back out there. And I would have been dead. Because I would have picked up alcohol. I would have picked up my drug of choice and started shooting a needle into my arms again. And I would have been picking up any kind of woman that I could pick up. Through all of this, I recognized that, you know, I don't want to go back to that kind of life. I want to get through this. And I was talking with my sponsor about it. And he told me, he says, better you than me. I'm glad that you got the courage because I can. And I had spoken to another fellow who told me when he started to really peel that onion going back into this childhood, it was too damn painful. Just couldn't do it. I know for me, I couldn't live this way any longer. So I got the work on it. And with that is where the tie into outside help comes in. I put this behind me here. That is from Bill Wilson's book, AA help Bill Wilson and how the AA message reached the world. What it mentions in there is it expounds on from the AA big book of page 133, the used psychiatry and psychologists. And in here, it mentions how Bill was in psycho-help analysis for years, because he was feeling the same thing, like I must not be working my own steps. If I am, why do I got this depression? Thank you, Daniel. I see that five minutes. And Bill states over, somehow, he worked through the psychoanalysis with psychiatry that was available back then. They didn't know about PTSD. I mentioned I had gotten a psycho PTSD specialist who was not. She was actually new and looking to build up her practice and lied and led me deep into a dependency relationship. When she finally threw me out of her office, when she lost it, the thought that went through my head is I am not going to drink over this. I am not going to use drugs. I am not going to use lust. And I am not going to commit suicide, because that was the dominant thought in my head. I'm just going to kill myself because I'm hopeless. But I'm not going to do that. And I just kept digging deeper. And I found another psychologist. And when I talked to him, he had said, just what I had said, he said, "So you've been in AA and you've been an essay, but it sounds like you've done a spiritual bypass. You try to use the 12 steps and all your service work to jump over all that grief, all that pain from your childhood. How's that working out for you?" Let me say I'm like a wise guy. When it was obvious, it was not working out for me very well at all, because as I said, the knee thought in my head was suicidal. He began to work with me to get in touch with the physical process of healing. Slowly, I filled up a trusting relationship with him. I've been working with him for two years. And it's only been the past couple of months that I've actually been able to start to feel below the neck. I'm starting to experience joy through daily living. I started to experience happiness. I was at a meeting last night, and something in the reading had triggered this childhood thing from my son when he was in kindergarten. And I sang it. It's, "I'm a little teapot." Sure, and stop. This is my handle, and this is my spout. I couldn't believe, like, I just sang that song in a meeting. It was evidence that I'm finally starting to get that happy, joyous, and free. When I started looking at all three sides of the illness, the injury, spiritual, emotional, and physical, it's been a real hard journey for me. And again, I absolutely refused to give up on myself. I just will not wait. And I recognized today that I'm not broken. I do matter. I am worthy because I was and am a child of God. The biological parents were an instrument of my existence, but I was created by God, and I am not giving up on me. And that's probably my remaining five minutes. So I think I'll stop right there. When we say there, make available or make use of outside health. It's because Bill Lewitt, he was talking about, and he was doing it himself, and it was good enough for him. It's good enough for me. Thanks. That's all. Thank you, buddy. Oh, my gosh. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Kathy. Our six are holy. It's a birthday. October last year. Sorry, all night. Thank you, buddy. Well, I heard of you, sir. I walked in and you said you're afraid to leave the house. And I've been cursing myself since two o'clock this afternoon. It's name six p.m. because I was afraid to leave the house and go to the post office. And I've been telling myself from a weekly in the coward. And what I needed to hear was, you said you're a child of God, and you're not giving up on yourself. I've been suicidal for 40 years. I know they started to leave me two years into essay to the last year, and even endless at my elbow because of this addiction because I had no self-respect. And then I forgot over the acts and acts. I'm nearly a year sober, and I thank God, a day at a time. But what I do still do is cast myself the other additions that all night, all the caffeine, the sugar, all the things I'm killing myself with. Did you have problems with answer the additions? And how did you get over it? Again, I've done a lot of work with outside health and and and a lot of praying. And yeah, I still have those negative voices. What I'm recognizing today, they're not truthful. They're lying to me. They're trying to deceive me and they're trying to distract me from what I really am. And what I am is a child of God. I am worthy. I do matter. So it took a lot of now. I'm 68 years of age. So it took a lot. I've been doing outside health, sort of nearly five years now. You know, keep coming back. Thank you. Thanks, Kathy and Buddy. David. Hey, everybody, David, sex addict, great to be here. Buddy, you know, I love you. You're the best temporary sponsor I've ever had now for three and a half years. And I just couldn't, first of all, I'm just blown away by your courage and your dedication and and you're such a power example for me. The one thing I do want to say, I have a sticky up in front of me that says I am enough. And you keep telling me to remind myself of that. And I even need to remind myself for that when the feelings I'm having inside of me don't match the perfectionistic image of what sobriety should look like. And you've taught me that feeling back the onion is going to expose this stuff. And then I need to be gentle and accepting other things are going on inside me and that it's okay. Even later in sobriety to say, help me. So thank you for that. You're you're such a gift for me. So thank you. Thanks, David. Thanks for clearing out the iPhone debacle also. Thanks, David and buddy, Margie. Buddy, what an amazing share. Thank you so much for your courage, you know, to share about the past trauma. I too, when I first came into recovery also sought outside help as well actually saw a CSAT certified sex addiction therapist for the first, probably the first year of my recovery because I knew there was other there was other deep trauma within that I had never addressed. And going through that was just yes, I was working steps but going through that trauma and that healing of my childhood past was just more benefit not more was just as beneficial as the steps it was like, you know, when you make a cake, you add the ingredients in order to be a beautiful cake. And for me, it was the CSAT therapy. It was the 12 steps of just being able to work through to work through some of that deep trauma and then the healing, you know, as well. And now, you know, when I'm triggered or something difficult, you know, comes through, I can identify that, you know, is my, you know, the little me, the little me, the trauma, but know that, hey, I'm adult me and adult me doesn't have to, doesn't have to take it. So thank you so much for your share. And it's wonderful for me to hear other people in recovery used outside help. It just, yeah. So thank you so much for being vulnerable and sharing. I appreciate it. Thank you, Margie. Daniel. Hello, Daniel J. Sixthaholic. Start the clock here. Thanks, buddy, for your very powerful and traumatic really share. I've known your story for a while and we've talked a little bit about therapists and whatnot. I'm also a big fan of some sort of therapy. And I'm very lucky to have a therapist who's about my age, who has also worked the 12 steps. He was, he's a recovering sex addict himself. And you know, he understands and supports the 12 step program. What was your experience in searching for someone who could truly be helpful other than your first experience? Did you have to dig through a lot of therapists to finally find somebody who who matched up and was supportive? Yeah, I thank you, Daniel. Yeah, I did. I learned how to interview a psychologist doing a therapist and I found key words that if they didn't recognize the words didn't, they learned depression for me. So I, from all the damage I experienced for the first therapist, I learned how to really go after what I'm looking for. And on my face, I guess it did take a lot of courage to be able to say, "Nah, you're not what I'm looking for." If they didn't recognize key words that are 12 step kind of things. So, yeah, it took me a while and I'm very fortunate today to tell it that I'm working with his my age and he's got a lot of 12 step experience. Yeah. Thanks, buddy. Thanks, Daniel and Buddy. Rokia. Thank you, Buddy. Just inspiring for me. My question is, I have many problems with trust because of my childhood trauma. So how could you work in trusting other in your relationships? It took me a long, well, the, the psychologist I'm working with today. It was maybe 15 sessions before I decided that I could take a little risk and tell him about something that he was doing that was triggering me. So it took quite a while to build up trust. Somebody had said to me that when it comes to trust, we have to be willing to risk losing a dime or a quarter. And if we get the quarter in return, then we can risk losing a dollar. If we get a dollar in return, we can increase taking a somewhat bigger risk. And that's what I had to do. I remember the first time I cried with this psychologist and I was really on guard to see how he was going to react to that. And what he did was he gently put his hands on my shoulders and just let me cry. And I could feel the trust guilty with that, but it took quite a while. Yeah, trust is just saying, I think it's easily broken and it's very hard to repair. There's a lot of loneliness on both sides. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Rokian, buddy. Jerry. Thanks, Margarot. And thanks, buddy. I joined with others to say, you know, what a courageous sky you are. Your story comes about as close as any story I've heard over my very close years in AA and I haven't got 30 years in they say when I do them in AA, a fire department offered a beer about my parents when I was still on the stroller. And I wound up with that same kind of self-loathing lack of trust that you describe in a previous person just asked about. I don't trust people because I'm afraid they'll get hurt if I do. And your remarks about being willing to take a risk. I've done a lot of psychotherapy and I'm a big supporter of psychotherapy in recovery in life. But I've never done any PTSD where I've done a lot of reading in PTSD. But reading hasn't done for me what the feeling of the onion would do. So my question is, I wouldn't like to, if you don't mind, maybe from Nancy, get your telephone number. And if you would be kind enough to talk with me at another time, by the way, I grew up in the Bronx. So I'm a bit of a wise guy also. So I love it. I love it in you. And so if you would be willing to do that, I would really appreciate it. Thanks. Yeah. We can exchange from numbers. Sure. Nancy can give you my number. Yes. That'd be great, buddy. Okay. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Jerry. Thank you, buddy. Nancy. Yeah, Nancy, so I feel like, wow. Thank you for your courage also. I feel very blessed to have been in Madrid. It was scary. It was scary for me watching. I felt privileged to that I'm safe enough, maybe, that you felt for you at least to open up all, but it's very, very, very hard for me to trust. And I like working with a therapist. I almost see it as a life coach. I mean, I really hope that I would continue to work with a therapist. I've heard some people say like, Oh, gosh, you know, no, I really do see it as a life coach now. But trust, I mean, oh my gosh, it's probably been 10 years. I mean, I just can't. I have such our time trusting. And I've heard him trusting myself. So that's what you talked about. I mean, I get the dime quarter, but can you give us specific examples? And also what more specifically is involved in PTSD there? Thanks. Okay. Thank you, Nancy. It was great meeting you on Madrid. Yeah, the PTSD, it's starting to be recognized. It stands for that post traumatic stress disorder, but it's beginning beginning to be recognized as a post traumatic stress injury. And it's being understood now that it not only affects us spiritually and emotionally, but it affects us physically as well, and that it can actually cause physical changes within our body. And when that kind of injury gets repressed, it's going to find a way to get out one way or another. And it's going to either express itself to drugs and addiction and acting out with lust, or it's going to come out in some kind of physical illnesses. And where we're also at now is to recognize that what a lot of men were coming home from World War II and Vietnam and now Afghanistan with is PTSD. And then there's another condition even deeper, they refer to it as complex PTSD, which was those men who already had emotional physical damage before they even went to war. And now they've got that just making it even worse. But the physical part of it is the often neglected part. And now in this culture here in the US, we've got a pharmaceutical based mindset that we are enculturated into. You got a pain, take a pill. They don't want to look to see what's causing the pain. It's just you got a pain, take a pill, we got a pill for that. And quite often, we don't need a pill for that. We need to do what Bill talked about. We need to get down to causes and conditions, which are deep within us, the spiritual, the emotional, and the physical harm that was done to us. For many of us, I can't speak for everyone. Speaking for myself, that was done to me in my childhood. I was sexually a solid choice. I owe their men. I was led to believe that I caused that. That I was somehow responsible for that. As a child, I had bright blonde hair, beautiful blue eyes. It's a skinny little kid. And I was led to believe that my physical attractiveness was the cause of that sexual assault that they thought I was a girl. Well, there's no mistake in it. I'm not a girl. But I bought into that. And it seriously severely damaged my self-esteem and fed into that idea that I am somehow broken, that I am somehow unworthy, and that I am inadequate as a man. So that was the kind of damages that could be done. And that's what we're coming to understand today. There's no pill that can fix that. That needs to be gotten out physically from the body. I've done it both through crying and being held by an older man, my psychologist, in this case, my essay sponsor also would hold me when I would weep. I've gotten a lot of it out through anger just by raging. And this is where I put this thing up behind me here, because I still carry some shame when we talk about the seven deadly sins. And I'm coming to recognize that anger is not a sin. It's absolutely necessary. It's a life-defense mechanism. If someone is attacking me, I better get angry, because I got to protect myself. Where it becomes a problem is when it's misused, when it's directed toward my wife or my son. Now it's a problem. But I had this mentality where I wasn't allowed to get angry as a kid. So I wasn't allowed to get angry at the two men who sexually assaulted me, because in their religion I was raised, anger was a sin. So it got stuffed, and it came up as ulcers, physical pain in my belly. No, probably so far off topic. I'll stop right there. Thanks, Nancy. Oh, you went mute. You got muted. Oh, I got, yeah, I got to say you sound so grounded today. I really appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you, Nancy and Buddy. Juan Carlos. Yeah, thank you. Thank you very much, everybody. I appreciate a lot of your share. It resonated in me. You know, all my life, I have felt a shame of myself. My mom told me many times, you shouldn't be here, you should be died. Because of that, I felt guilty of being alive. So I was, it became my drug, my emotional drug, shame. And I had felt that that compulsivity to express my shame, acting out, because it was the only way of tempering this way. A few months ago, I changed my attitude, because you know, I was depressed, I wanted to, to quit this program, because I said, okay, I had got sobriety, but what else? I want more. I enrolled in a different program. I was trying, well, dealing with my childhood, and he worked it. But you know, for a few months, I have felt that the connection on the connection with God is not giving also only myself to him. But the, the login with him is a question of, of being of, in contact with him all the day. It worked for me, because I can, I can feel, I can feel his present along the day. So my question for you, because I am, I am married, I would like to ask you, how is your relationship with your wife, since you have found that relief in your, in your recovery? Thank you. Thank you, uncle. And thanks for the ride to the airport from the convention in the gym. When I am asked today, if I am filling out a form, and they ask, are you single? Are you married? Are you divorced? I make another block, and I write in there happily marriage. Today, I have a relationship with my wife. Anything that I shared here today, I've shared with my wife. I, my sponsor says, my wife is like one in five million. He says, he can't even talk to his wife about some of that stuff. I can. And I have, in my wife, it helps, my wife is also in a 40, 46, 45 years. So my wife's been working close to the program 45 years and so on. Our relationship today is open, honest. We share the same email out. Our phones are open. There's no secrets. And we can play with it today also. We would be out, say, at a restaurant. And my wife would see a couple coming in and she would say to me something like, is that woman a trigger for you? And I can look at her and say, no, but her husband is. So we can play in recovery. It's good. It is good. We've been married. I better get this right. 40 years. We've been married 40 years. Yeah, it's good. Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you Juan Carlos and Buddy. And I believe Daniel has a question from the chat. Yes, it's funny because it's actually Daniel that posted the question in the chat, the other Daniel. But he says, thank you for the share, Buddy. How do you balance introspection with into action? Now, I don't know if I'm putting words into his mouth, but when I see balance introspection, that seems to be the psychology part of it with into action being the 12 steps part of it. I don't know, but answer it. However, you see it, of course. Yeah, I still stumble over big words, like introspection and culture, rated and patriarchal. I try to do the best I can. I really try to prey on it and really try to get a sense of what God wants for me. And I talk to my wife because I can. And I talk to my sponsor. And there are actually a couple men that I sponsor. I'll talk to them because sometimes they have the answer for me. I've learned and let me say it this way. I've learned more about recovery from the men that I sponsor than from a lot of our literature. They actually, the guys I sponsored, they keep me moving forward. It is a tough balance. It is. I recently rotated off the General Delegate Assembly. I had served two terms as a alternate and then served one full charm as a delegate. And I just got the sense that, yeah, I think it's time for me to rotate and let someone else step up to the plate as one of our delegates. Because just something within myself said it's time to rotate, it's time to step aside. And that's a real important thing for me and for our fellowship to step aside and let others get involved. So I, this past Sunday was my last General Delegate Assembly meeting. And I had to sit through the feelings. There's a feeling of sadness and a feeling of loss. Recognizing like we have a worldwide community and every four months we would meet on Zoom for a couple of hours and try to take care of the business of the fellowship and recognizing like I have to let that part go. But I had to pray a lot on it and I also talked to my wife a lot about it. And soon enough I'll be volunteering on another committee. That probably didn't answer Daniel's question, but that's about the best I can give you at the moment. Thank you, Daniel and Daniel and Buddy. And that is all the time we have for today. And thank you so much, Buddy. This was a fantastic meeting. I think it's time to stop. I would like to thank you for listening to this episode of The Daily Reprieve, the best source for experience, strength and hope for SA members. Please subscribe to this podcast to be alerted of new episodes. Please show your support by donating to The Daily Reprieve by going to donate.thedayreprebe.com and choosing either monthly donations or a one-time donation by clicking donate now. Thank you for listening and stay tuned for the next episode of The Daily Reprieve. [Music]