It went well. I prayed for honesty and some humility. I still love to talk about my favorite subject (me). Small crowd, but probably half the people there hadn't heard my story before. As far as the what it was like part, I focused more on my "isms" that I feel I was born with - traits I now recognize as alcoholic, before I ever took my first drink. The not fitting in part, fear of people/everything. Doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. All of these were with me from my earliest memories, I was an alcoholic waiting to happen. When I wound up at my first AA meeting, my thoughts were "All this crap wrong with me and now I'm an alcoholic too". It didn't take me very many meetings or chapters of the Big Book (More About Alcoholism) to realize all that crap was alcoholism. That means I was born one.
Not having done this for a while, all of the material seemed fresh - whether I've told it before or not and I really don't remember in every case. I don't know if it was useful to anybody else, but it was good for me. I've been having some anxiety building up, likely because I have some surgery scheduled soon, and it was good to just focus on gratitude and being where I'm supposed to be in the moment.
At the very least, time spent listening to your story is time spent not drinking. Also, no matter what the story is, you are another example of someone that made it and someone that worked the program to get 20 years sober. You cannot help but to have helped someone. What is more likely is you helped a lot of people just like you do here.
Mark
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Keep coming back. It works if you work it. So work it. You're worth it!
And now I get to do it again (different group) in a couple of weeks, likely in front of people who haven't heard any of it before. I guess I'll just wing it there too....
