If we could have gotten sober alone, we probably would have. Which means once we get sober, there are things that we still need to do to help somebody else. And that's where service comes in. Steve, how you doing?
Hey, I'm great, Matt. I'm great. Like I said, a little busy right now. We're recording this a couple of days before
Mm
Thanksgiving, and.
hmm.
Yeah, so it's it's. It's a busy time. It's a busy
Yeah,
time.
it is. For me, I think the busyness is starting to wind down, thank God,
And yeah, so.
writing reviews and doing stuff. But I was thinking about the last time we recorded. Mm You had to run to a GSR hmm. meeting, and Mm hmm. it made me think about service. I know we've probably talked about service on this show before, but it's one of those topics that is worth talking about. Whether you're in a 12 step group, whether you're finding sobriety in a different way. So I guess the first thing to do is define what do we mean by service in recovery?
Well, I mean, service is just that. It's serving. You know, It's serving, you know, a different cause or serving other people or or whatever you want to do with that. For me, it means, I think for a lot of us, and certainly in the 12 step program world, it means giving back, Right? I mean, when
Writes,
I came in today, we talk about it all the time. I came into this rooms, the first time I stepped into these rooms, I had somebody put out their hand, introduce himself as Mike. And for the next couple of years, that guy reached out to me, picked me up, took me to meetings, Really? Like, just went above and beyond anything that I could even dreamed of. And I struggled that first time through for my own reasons, but not because he didn't reach out and help me. And I was always
grateful to him. You know, he's still my sponsor today, but. So it's about doing service, about doing the service for another human being or a group. And again, in the 12 step program that we do, there's lots of opportunities to do service, right?
Absolutely.
There's all there's all kinds of levels. And I'm sure we'll touch on some of those. And just you said it, you know, one of them was GSR.
Mm hmm.
You know, people say,
Give
well, it's
the sucker
a GSR.
responsibility.
Yeah, it's the general service rep. It's what we do, right, is each group, hopefully each group has a rep and they go to a bigger group and you sit there and you you talk about, you know, things that are going on within the 12 step recovery
program for us. AA and then that group has represented the group to bigger groups and bigger and, you know, so just keeps going up and you can do lots of different service and but the biggest service that we could all do is making ourself available to a still sick and suffering alcoholic. Right. I mean, simple as good nice words. Pick up the phone, talk to somebody that's that's
Yeah,
service work to.
absolutely. And I'm of the belief that service work, as well as raising your hand and speaking up. Yeah A lot of times I speak up in our Monday meeting because there's crickets, no matter how. yeah How right populated it has been lately, right. I It's mean still some people. Crickets. I look at raising my hand in sharing a service because I can share a message whether I'm struggling with
something or not. There's something somebody else might be able to identify with, and it could just be a couple of minutes of killing the dead air. So if people feel more comfortable or planting a seed, you never know that if you open your mouth and you give of your heart what somebody else might take. I will tell you some other small service. Putting your chair away, yeah that's something small you can do yeah. and important.
Yeah. I mean it is it is amazing. But I mean, for the most part people do that. But there are some people just come in and write in and it is just a simple thing of being part of a group, right? If we're talking about the group type of service or going to a meeting or whatever it might be, Yeah, just, you know, don't be the first last one in the first one out the door. Stick around, you know, put, you know, put a chair away, pick up, you know, sometimes just tables to rearrange things
like that. There might be, you know, information, books and pamphlets and stuff to put away. So yeah, it's really simple stuff, but it, it goes a long way. It goes a long way of, of, of helping out. And, you know, it's interesting because it's become part of who I am in. Here's the side thing, right? Like, so I have a we have people coming over. One of them is my son and his wife and two grandkids two grandkids are both were when they're born, had
dairy allergies. Right. The older one who's not even two is fine. He's gotten passed on. Right. It's fine. But there's another one who's eight months now and they still have it, which means my daughter in law who's nursing, can't have dairy. Right. So we have things like lasagna and stuff like that. So and we have a dessert that my wife makes, which is called apple crisp. Sure, people know about it, but it has a butter and cinnamon and sugar and flour topping on it. Right. It's still
it's it's out of this world. so my wife made one and I was doing some cooking. And then I'm like, you know something? I could make that without the butter. I mean, I bought I bought some butter substitute for her. So it's on the package tastes just like butter. So I made a separate thing that she could use. Yeah. Go out and buy some like a cupcake as it nondairy some special sauce. You'll have something. But, you know, after cleaning up the whole kitchen,
it hit me. I'm like, Oh, no. So I whipped out everything again, made up this whole batch. I try to be service to people and help and helpful and thoughtful people regardless of the situation. so that's just part a part of who it is. I'm sure you if you listen to the podcast, you've heard me say that my goal in life for whatever time I have left on this earth is to be useful to other human beings. And I and I do that right. With that comes service.
This is a separate topic, but it's something that is underneath the surface that's bothering me. And this could be a topic for another podcast, but I have some. I have things about death that I'm scared of, and I think a lot of it is what comes after, which then feeds into what do I think about a higher power? What do I think about right. God? Although a higher power in God can be two
different things. I overthink it, and I was thinking on my drive home yesterday that the point of life is to do something better for other people. And that's how you're remembered. That's how you can live a mortally if you're doing things for others without a thought for yourself. Mm. But we can't just live in this world doing our own thing.
We have to weave ourselves into whatever the social fabric is in, make an impact in a positive way that doesn't mean I'm raising $1,000,000 for the United Way. No. It could be a nice word to everybody that I meet. Leave a positive impression. Do something a little bit extra. But that's why I think we're on the planet, is to help another person beyond what we do. And it's a very fulfilling thing. I think about the service work I've learned in AA and I think about how it's carried into
other aspects of my life. I am now more willing to help out a peer or help out somebody else without thinking through what it's going to come back to me in the end. It's a good interview answer. That's not the purpose of me doing it. It's a side benefit and I have more people who are on my side now and I have a better brand than before. You can weave this into your own personal life if you do this well in the rooms of AA. What are some other things we can do for service?
Well, one of the things you just said there, just to, to, to go back to, one of the things you said is, is, you know, we, we help each other out. We do things, you know, as a species we were able to survive because we banded together and we were able to figure out how to do stuff, hunt and gather and all that kind of stuff. So it's it's ingrained in our DNA to do that. Now, what's happened in the modern world is that we don't need to do that, right? All of
our food is done. Like we just we need a job and we need money and then we could take care. So you can live alone. You can be a hermit and survive. Not well, because I think socially and emotionally, I think we all need
You
human
can exist.
contact. You can exist.
I don't
Absolutely.
call that living.
You're right. You can exist. So all I can tell you is that when I do that type of work, I just feel so good. Like when I. When I'm able to help somebody out, just like you said, a simple conversation. And I've been in grocery stores shopping and I've had a couple of conversations with people who go through grocery stores and that's all they were. They were just conversations, right? It was somebody looking through some frozen, you know, turkey breast. And she's trying to find
different pounds. And I had been searching for something for about 5 minutes in that thing. So I was able to look at her and go, they're all about £7, right? That's what are £6, whatever it is. But then another woman like just is do simple interactions that are nice and pleasant instead of me being so focused and not paying attention. Anybody else like it just it just makes my day when I'm able to do that. No other reason. So
lots of way to be service. Mike said simple things and it doesn't have to be within your program. But if you're out there and you're not in the 12 step program, then the question is what can you do to do a service, right? I mean, hopefully you're not trying to get sober on your own, right? Hopefully you have some type of community, whether it's online. So, you know, if you're if you're in one of those communities you got to participate and and even in this little podcast that you and I do.
Right. So you want to be of service right as review. I mean it like
Yeah,
it's as simple as that. Leave a comment, leave a suggestion. You know, shoot us a topic that you want us to talk about. That's service work. You're you're offering to help out not only us, but maybe other people who listen to that. Like there's lots of ways that you might not think is really a service, but it is
that's so true. When you're podcasting. I can't hear the audience. I don't know if anybody's actually listening to this. You and Steve, Steve and I are having a conversation. That's all well and good. But because we're just recording this, putting it on tape and uploading it somewhere, I have no idea if this makes an impact and it's sort of like I'm doing something blind.
right.
When you give feedback back, you're telling me that, Hey, this is something that's important to me. It does make an impact. At the end of the show, we do have a review. We have a really good review that I want to share and it helps guide the show. I do this show as a service. This is a way that I can help reach out to somebody else in a different way. Between meetings, between whatever you're doing, or if you're just sober. Curious that there's some flavor of recovery that you can
hear at any time. You just press a button. You don't have to do any work, and maybe that will lead you to another action. Mhm. But it's incredibly helpful to have recovery podcasts and literature out there. When I first got into recovery, first service job I had was the door greeter.I don't know how many meetings have door greeters anymore. This is the only one that I knew of
that has it? It's a Tuesday night meeting and they took the service work pretty seriously that you had to sign into the book and you had to have a certain amount of sobriety and you had to be a member of the group for a certain amount of time, which means that at that level you had certain opportunities open for you. Like coffee was at a certain amount of months chairing the meeting, at a certain amount of months, being an officer of the meeting a certain amount. But right away
you got a month in. I can be the door greeter. And the reason I pick that is our our friend Jim mentioned at the Friday night meeting once that he was shy and he became a he became a door greeter to get to know people. And I'm like, I'm introverted, I'm shy, I am afraid of everyone. And if I can do a month as a door greeter, I'm going to meet a lot of people. Everybody goes to that meeting, which turned out to be a55 week commitment that was very, very long, very hot, third Yeah.
floor of like a hundred degree month. Everybody came through and gave me a hug of this very large meeting,
It
and I got to meet people very quickly.
and that is the way that works, right. You talk about if you, if you're around this program, people have been around this program for 20 or 30 years, they talk about, y know,
cleaning ashtrays. Right. Like when, when the meetings were smoker meetings and you know, empty trash is one of the things right now our big Friday night meeting like we had somebody who's responsible for taking out the trash, like we would bundle up all our trash and they had a dumpster and we'd get rid of it, you know, And we had a coffee maker and we had a greeters at that meeting. We had greeters.
And and it's funny because I've been to that Tuesday night meeting that lots and I better and I went to that Tuesday night meeting one week while you were greeting I remember it,
It's probably a sweaty mess.
know it was
It
a mess
was hot.
and I remember I remember how hard it was too. But I remember you greeting. I knew you were new because, you know, you had been coming to some of the meetings I went to. So but I do remember that. But yeah, there's lots of those really entry level things. And so. So why do you do it? What do you what do you get out of greeting people, not just besides you saying, okay, I'm going to try to overcome this little shyness. I have this little uncomfortability I have with
people. What else do you get out of it? Well, you get number one, you get to meet a lot of people, right? You walk into a room, especially some of these meetings were big, 30, 40 people maybe. So you might not know everybody. You know, Then when you walk in and you say, hey, I'm Matt and I'm an alcoholic, welcome to this meeting, they're going to say, hey, they're going to tell you their name. And you might, you know, you have a better connection. You have a better understanding of who this
person might be. Maybe you have a conversation. I just know that if I walk into a door greeter, mostly mostly I'm going to have a little conversation with that person, especially if I don't know them. Right. Especially if I don't know them. Just to just to say, Hey, you know how you
don't. It's just, you know, it's just one of those little it's a little building block of trying to get you comfortable in this group of people because let's, you know, we talk about it, most of us, not all of us, most of us are some type of loner. But when we walked into this room, we you know, we did a lot of drinking.
And even if we drank in public with other people, there was there's still a lot of loneliness when you drink the way we drink, you know, I mean, I think most of us felt like we knew something bad was going on. We just couldn't fix it. And that's a lonely feeling. You're not alone. Nobody's out there saying, Listen, I'm an alcoholic and I really need help. But I don't feel like, you know, we're not having those conversations right now.
Righ?
You're just out there drinking. You're doing it until whatever happens that brings you into recovery. So even if you're out in public, there's still a lot of loneliness because we we suffer alone.
And I put walls up. I do. I did it because I was very black and white. I heard a lot of things that the old timers were saying. So I felt, Well, I have to do these things. I have to do some service work. I have to do would be a door greeter. I have to go to the meeting early. It almost felt like there was a duty that I had to pay my dues.
It was part of the initiation and I wanted to show people that I was serious about this and I think part of that was me psychologically, that everybody was looking down their nose at me and that, if I could show is a real go getter, that people would have some level of respect, which is is not the best mindset because people are just happy that you're there and you're getting sober. But it is it is great way coffee maker is sort of the same reason people do that because you get to know
everybody. You've got to get to the meeting early to make coffee. If you're making a lot of coffee, it takes a little bit of time. Depending on how big the meeting is, You're usually not making just like a little little coffee pot because that's not going to get through ten, 20, 50, 100 people. Some of these meetings, you have to make these percolator crafts that take a good half hour.
Yeah. 45 minutes easy.
So that's four. That's not 40. You're meeting starts at seven. That doesn't mean it has to be ready for seven. It has No. to be ready for maybe 630 Right, because that's when people come in Right. and they have their coffee and they start chatting. And because they're these people, they show up real early and they want Yeah, their coffee. So that's 7 p.m. meeting you, That's 545. If my math is correct and math is not my right. thing, but you got to get there early.
Yeah. And if you do that, you feel a level of ownership with your group.
Listen, when you walk into a meeting and again this over, you attend a meeting because you could even do it online. is a certain amount of work that has to take place Yes, for in order for that meeting to happen. Whether even if it's online. Right. Somebody needs to set it up. Somebody needs to manage it. So, I mean, so to have that Zoom account, if that's the way it is, that's.
whenever it is, somebody have to have a subject, somebody like does work that has to be done so if you think about an in-person meeting that you walk in and I don't you know, I shouldn't say there's a few I go to to still do it. And you walk in and there's coffee and there's some type of snack and the tables are in, chairs are arranged the way they need to be arranged, like somebody has done that work. You know,
There's you not could hired staff for that. write. It's not like
Like
a corporation.
you can you can take and take and take. But eventually, if you want these things to be around, you have to give back. And and I guess some of us are drawn to it, and I think we're drawn to it, a lot of
It's
us, some of us as our personality and others of us, like you said, like we get in there and you work with the you get to know a certain group of people in recovery, some old timers, and they'll tell you you need to do this because it is when you're connected in that way. It's just it's another guard guardrail against going out, right? I mean, it's like service work for me is the other thing I do. The other service work I do is like we have a friend we talk about Mike. Mike
doesn't drive right. I pick up Mike, usually go to two meetings. Okay. There's many nights where I'm really, really tired and I don't feel like going to a meeting. And maybe if I didn't already agreed to pick up Mike, maybe I would stay home. But because I'm picking someone else and bringing them to this meeting, I'm going to go. So it gets me
right,
to do what I need to do. You know, that's another really simple way of doing service is like, you know, we have my our buddy Edson says, L, you got four you got four seats in your car, you should have
right.
four asses in those seats is what you says. Yeah. And that's that's the way it used to be. And I used to always, Yeah. I used to love picking up two or three guys and going to a meeting with four, you know, three or four guys in the car. It's it's just a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun to do. So, yeah, you just got you got to get back. I mean, you know, our Monday night meeting, we you know, you know, we've talked about it here, our Monday night meeting. We this we're recording
this on Tuesdays. We had our meeting last night and it might have been the biggest meeting that we've had in a while,
On a holiday week.
right? 21.
I don't know if it's a big one because of a holiday week, I Yeah. usually often find less people, but Yeah.
And
it's
there
huge.
were and there were, there were several regulars who weren't there. It could have been huge, Mm hmm. right? It could have. It could have pushed or throw people, which would be huge for that meeting and that meeting six months ago, Okay. seven months ago, eight months ago. I can remember sitting there with three of us
Now,
wondering
you, me,
how
Lori,
many.
and
Right,
maybe
Timmy, maybe my
Tim.
mike like, yeah, I don't know if we ever had that meeting without at least six people, but we had some six people meetings, Mm hmm. you know, and it's like so it's nice. The fact that we all showed up, we we know we went there every week or mostly every week, opened up the doors, got ready to do this meeting. And whether there was six people or 30 people, we did the meeting and now that meeting is
available. And one of the guys who used to go to that meeting said, you know, I realized they didn't have a big book meeting in my in my repertoire. And so and I, I laughed. So I've been looking for ones, but I didn't like the ones. And I'm like, well, Dan, why don't you come back to this one that you just used to come to all the time? And Mm. he finally did.
Yeah,
And the fact that we're there, we're making sure this meeting goes on is a way to give back to this program.
I saw M.J. last night who I like to see Oh, because yeah? she's a woman about town who has been on town council. Mm hmm. And I like to talk about the local politics and stuff. And she was surprised. I remembered her. Of course I remember her. And Right. we had a nice conversation. And it seemed like just that level of engagement and actual joy of I haven't seen you in a while. Mm hmm. I just want to hear what's going on. I got some questions for you that she seemed really
happy. Like, Yeah, Wow, I am actually valued here.
It's really nice when you walk into a place. I listen, I can remember, and MJ has been around for a while, Mm hmm. but I can remember walking into a place and having some old timer call me by my name and go, Oh, this person knows me, like, exactly. Making me feel like I have value. Right? When I went at a time when I didn't feel like I had any value. I mean, that's the whole point, right? I came in here. I felt like I was the, you know, just
horrible, horrible person. Just just a scum of the earth type of type of person. And to have somebody pay some attention to me, to have somebody, you know, talk to me, to have somebody just let me know that things would get better, give me like it's just it's so powerful. I mean, I can't I can't even explain. If you haven't been through it, I can't explain it. It's very, very powerful.
So now we get to, like, the top level when we go to these district meetings, area meetings. I did district service, I think pretty much the first eight years of my sobriety, and it's almost been about a year, year and a half since I've been done. I will tell you I need a break from the district level. I think Yeah. doing eight years I am. I've earned a break Mm hmm. because there's a lot there's a lot there. You have the people at district in area who are pretty motivated. It's
the same people. If you're looking for service opportunities, you want to go to District two area. There is always an opening. There's never enough people, All it right, is always the same people. But there are just some challenges with some of those people All because they take it seriously right. or they go with a preconceived notion and the personalities there are definitely patience building.
Absolutely. I mean, you just hit it, you know, hit the nail on the head, because it really is. It's an opportunity. The and I. I've really worked hard on it, and I look around that room and there's a lot of people thinking about the the meeting, the district is that you always got new people coming in the door. Right so so what's happening is like you're always getting these new people. So it's like there's always seems to be two or three new people in
the room. So sometimes it's their first opportunity at service and it's always interesting to watch. So you have to have some patience with people. And it's interesting for me because I go to the GSA for anybody that knows General Service rep, right? So that's what the group level. And you go into the district meeting and I look around and I always I do always have to remember, like these are all volunteer people.
These are people who stepped up for And then not only that, they've taken on the leadership of a committee within this, you know, each meeting you're supposed to get 3 minutes to talk about whatever And. committee you're leading being someone who spoke somewhat for a living. You know, I if I'm going to speak, if I know I'm going to speak for 3 minutes, if you tell me I'm going to speak for 3 minutes, I'm going to have a 3 to 4 minute speech written out and practiced. That's what
I'm going to do. Like, I'm going to know what I'm going to say when I wake up. I'm not going to be shooting from the hip
I'll tell you, if I got a three minute speech, I'm going for two, I'm shooting for two, two
Right.
and a half.
so I watch some of these people and it's like, you know, this drags on and then I have to remind myself, listen, they don't know, they don't do this. They're not professionals. They're doing the best they can. And you know something? They raise their hand and they took on a responsibility that I haven't been willing to take on. So who am I to complain about them? So I go to these meetings. We all we all complain.They get a little bit long, they look a
little bit windy. But the truth is for me, you know, it's a couple of hours out of my night once a month. That's what it is.
Yep.
and that's where I'm at now. I'm hopeful that I'll do some more of that right now. I don't think I could take which, you know, my wife would want me to go out too much if I started telling her or I need to be at four these meetings a month, she would be very happy.
And
So I got to
then
sort
a
of
whole
play
day
it by.
on a Sunday, sometimes
Right, right. So. So I'll do it cause I don't mind. I don't service. I like being around people and hopefully, like I said, if, if, if life has it in store for me and I have some, some more time available to me, then in the future I might do more
the upside of doing service at area or district level is you're going to see people that you don't normally see. You will run into old Timer's, you'll run into those people you don't normally run into.
right?
I forgot some of the other service things because it is the holidays. If you're fortunate enough to have Al Catherine's, there's an Alka thon near us Thanksgiving. There was a big New Year's walkathon and I don't know if we're doing that at Yeah. all. There's always a Christmas walkathon. Uh Those are great. The service there uh is huh, showing up. yeah. I almost raised my hand after somebody mentioned it and said, you know, because they're great, because there are a lot of people, when Yeah.
they get sober, they don't have a place to go, Mm don't hmm. have family who want them around. For whatever reason, this might be the only opportunity to have a Thanksgiving dinner. Some of these people coming in, they could be homeless. So it's a hot meal on a holiday. And if you do have someplace to be, it might still be worth showing up for an hour or two because you're giving company to somebody else
who might not have it. You don't need to be there, but you being there allows somebody else to have some companionship. That Yeah. peace is important to
Here's the thing about those archetypes, and one of the things that's so important is that we all had our first holiday holiday season say that that right, whether, you know, depending on when we got sober. So we all, we all had our first Thanksgiving. We had our first Christmas, we had our first New Year's. So just like you said, even if you have a place to go, even if you have a family function, even if you have whatever it might be, you may
need a meeting, right? You may go to a family function that has you may go to Thanksgiving dinner if you're newly sober and there may be wine and drinking going on. Right. And you may say, okay, I'm going to do this because it's important. But you may leave that me and go, boy, I need a meeting. Like I need to go find something or you go to a meeting before you go there, you know, so you can get yourself set for it. So that's what it is. I mean, those alcohols are 24 hours of meetings, right? So
you. And
it.
we mean that like the Is. the Christian, the Thanksgiving, these ones usually like 6 p.m. to 6 p.m..
Right?
So if you want to go somewhere at two Yeah. in the morning, there
will
will
be.
be a meeting for you
Yeah, absolutely. And our Friday night meeting always takes a
and.
late one to Christmas. We actually used to do it at both Christmas and New Year's. And we have the we have the midnight commitment to do a meeting from 12. So it'll be Christmas morning from 12, then they stop at 12 1550 minute meeting. So you know, we took it on as a commitment, as a service commitment for our group and we'll get eight or ten guys who show up at that meeting on Christmas night and do that
meeting. And I've been there and I've been at these I been at these alcohol inspection New Year's one at 3:00 in the morning because I don't have anything caught up. So if I'm awake, I would I would go and and it's amazing who comes in there and people who are newly sober Mm hmm. give them a place to go and just talk to another alcoholic. And that's it. That's that's your service work. Just sitting there talking to another alcoholic that night is your service work
some of these more complex ones like New Years. Alka Thon used to be like this where there was a kitchen. There's plenty of opportunities to go in there and
right?
cook and make coffee repeatedly make coffee because that is going very quickly and setting up the table, making sure things are cleaned up. There are actual physical things you can do it an alcohol to help somebody for putting your button in a is a really important one. Yeah, I stopped going to the new walkathon because legit I'm terrified of driving on New Year's Eve. Yeah, It starts at like 4 p.m. and you're out and people are driving like amateurs out there. yeah.
I am. This is I don't know if this is a realistic fear, but I just feel like there are people out there. If I'm out there late, It's if I see another car coming my way, it's likely that they are gassed I don't want to be around them. And I would rather be hunkered down here.
Yeah, it is scary. It is a scary time and even any, any, any that out now. one of the things I do like on those things that's around the holidays is I literally try to take as many back roads and in city roads as I can. I try to stay off the highways, right. Because, you know, a crash, a crash at 35 or 40 miles an hour probably won't kill you. You know, it wouldn't be fun, but it probably won't kill you. Well, if you're on a highway and you get a wrong, you know, you get a wrong way driver
Yeah, it's it's pretty scary. I still like going out to them. I
00 in the morning. I used to really had trouble sleeping. I sleep much better nowadays. I don't
00 in the morning ones for me anymore. Where I would go, I would really go there. Like I said, we would have a like a midnight or 11:00 commitment. So I'd go an hour early and then I would stay. Especially what would happen is like there'll be another group afterwards, but I would no guy, so I would stay for that one. Next thing I know,
00 And
in the morning and I'm still at the alcohol, you know, because there's people I know. And I said the other thing you said there about when you do live, you do service a district or area level is you start to meet people, especially if you've been in town. Like I grew up in a different town from where I live now. And if I would do some of that work, like I would know, I would run into all people from where I grew up who are in this program that I don't know who's in this program,
right? Like, I would start saying, Oh, you know, it's also because I have a brother who still lived in the area and I would go to meetings with him. And it's amazing who's in the rooms of people it's. I grew up with or used to work with. And because I don't live in that area anymore, I don't go to meetings down there. I don't see them, you know,
Right.
now which which really actually tells me that I probably should take some rain, especially in the wintertime.
Oh, But let me know if you want to do that yeah. sometime.
Yeah, I
I
well.
love doing those things. Yeah.
You have to do it. Get a couple of guys like I said, get
Yes.
four of us, go out like we've done it before Yeah, go out. Maybe grab a quick bite to eat, whatever. Even if we don't do that, just to go to a meeting, just to show up at a meeting. And it because if you walk in with four guys or if you get a couple Carlos the guys right away people like, oh look at this and people want to know, what are you doing here like that? We're just doing a road trip to go to a different meeting.
Well, those are the most fun
Yeah, they
that
are
you
a lot
get
of fun.
in a car with a bunch of your friends and you go to a meeting Yeah, that you normally don't go to right. and you just pick and you do that together. It's. That is such good recovery time. There's so many good things you can talk about. And then maybe you can have somebody take an ice cream afterwards, because I'm always good with that.
And it's in that service, too, because you're going to it like you said, you're going to put a button to see. You're going to talk to alcoholics in a different area and you're going to support whatever meeting you choose. You're going to support that meeting. You know,
Well, I told you that I had a review and we had a really good one. So five stars, there's just
nice.
somebody bashed his head into, I think the the keyboard to put his name there. So it's not pronounceable. So you know who you are that the headline is reignited My active recovery which I saw that I'm like wow. A little over a year and a half into my sober journey, things were getting a little stale. The podcast has helped me get back into my groove. Thanks, guys. That is such a powerful comment Yeah. to think that this podcast is getting you out of a rut and
getting you reignited. Dan I'm always amazed when I see stuff like that, so I really appreciate it. I give you your name, but there's a lot of consonants here from the upper part of the alphabet, and I think you just smashed your hand into the keyboard, which is okay.
Does those reviews mean so much to us? Those Oh, yeah. you know, they really do like Matt and I said we just sit here in our little room, Sam in his basement. I mean, me and my home office, and we just have this conversation. And then Matt does his magic and puts it out into the, you know, into the inner tubes and, and who knows? We never know where it goes. So send us those reviews. Let us know. That review just helps us to show up next week and do it again
Yeah, I this is an aside, but I was listening. One of the podcasts I like to listen to is pivot with Scott Galloway and Kara Swisher, and they went at the end of, you know, today the podcast is, you know, engineered by Ernie. So and so the producer is this the research assistants are this person this person, this person. I'm like, God damn.
right?
Yeah. No wonder you have a really successful ranked Right. podcast. You've got a crew. Yeah. Crew is me and my, my, my fingers
All right.
and editing until I bleed. So it's just the two of us. There's no crew.
Well,
You're
it's not
the crew for listening.
all right, Matt.
All right. Well, thanks a lot, Stephen. We'll see you next week. Bye, everybody.