Could we open this discussion with a moment of silence, please? Thank you. My name is Laverne. I’m an alcoholic, and this is Group Forty-three. And, uh, Group Forty-three this afternoon is going to discuss the Twelve Steps. What Group Forty-three has did is take the Twelve Steps and divide them into four parts. And the four parts are the admission, the spiritual, the restitution or inventory, and the carrying the message. Now, uh, the first most important thing is the admission part of the program because actually it is very hard for anyone to just come right out and admit that they do have a problem. This in itself, to me, when you do this, you have did the most– about the most difficult thing that there is to do because very few people can honestly and truly admit right off the bat that they do have a drinking problem and are willing to want to do something about it, uh, very soon until it gets to the point where they no longer have a choice.

And so, without further delay, I am going to, uh, introduce our speakers first, and then we’ll start. Um, this is Alice, and she will be de-be discussing the admission part. And, um, Doreen, she will be discussing the spiritual aspect. And Olivia will be discussing the restitution. And Jim will be discussing the carrying of the message. And so now I bring you, without further delay, Alice discussing the admission aspect. As you’ve already, as you’ve already heard, my name is Alice, and I’m an alcoho-alcoholic. The first step is we admit we were powerless over alcohol and that our lives had become unmanageable. Well, as you heard, uh, Laverne say, this to me, if you admit this step and get through this first, this step, half your battle is won. I can only speak for myself, and I know for me, it took me a long time and, uh, quite a hard road to reach this point. For me, this was very hard. I had tore down everything that I had.

I had lost respect, not only of people in the street, but also of my children. And I wound up in a mental institution before I could admit this step. Af-after having committed myself there for the reason that I would rather have admitted that I was insane than to admit that I couldn’t control alcohol. But after being in this hospital, I began to think for the first time, did I want to go forward, or did I want to go backwards, back into the hell that I had come out of? And I decided that I didn’t want to come back out here and live the same way, that I wanted to try to make something of myself, gain some of my self-respect back and the respect of my children. On being released from the hospital, I was afraid to come back out into the world because I had stopped drinking on my own for over a year’s period of time, and I hadn’t been able to because I hadn’t joined AA. I hadn’t– I didn’t know too much about AA at the time. But this time I was fortunate.