Michael S. AA Male

**Michael** (0:02)
Welcome to the meeting, a live with service meeting at Europa 2012 My name is Michael, and I'm an alcoholic from Denmark. Hello. This is the AA preamble. Alcoholic Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who shares their experience, strengths and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism. This only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. There are no dues or fees for AA membership. We are all self-supporting. Third, our own contributions. AA is not allowed with any sects, denominations, politics, organizations, or institutions. It does not wish to engage in any controversy, neither in doses nor in any courses. Our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety.
About anonymity.
Our public relations policy is based on attractions rather than promotions. We need to always maintain personal anonymity in the level of press, radio, and film. Thus we respectfully ask the AA speakers and AA members not be photographed, videotaped, or identified by full name, on audio tapes, and in published or broadcast reports of our meetings, includes that reports on a new media technology such as the Internet. The assurance of anonymity is essential in our effort to help other problem drinkers who may wish to share our recovery program with us. And our traditions of anonymity reminds us that AA principles come before personalities. This meeting is recorded. When sharing, please only identify with your first name and the city you're from.
This is a panel presentation. We begin with a speaker sharing on the topic for about 40 minutes, following by opening sharings, while the meeting are open for anyone to attend. Particular patience is limited. Those who have the desire to stop drinking, please welcome to our speakers, from Czech Republic. Thank you.

**Michael** (2:59)
Hi, my name is Michael, and I'm from Czech Republic.
For start, I would like to ask you if you please help me and start this meeting with a moment of silence for still suffering alcoholic.
Thank you. I would like to ask you for one more thing, to be patient and excuse my English, my grammar. I try to my best. And funny thing is that I start to learning English because of service and because of sobriety in AA. So yeah, that's how it was with me.
The topic is life with service. And it's really something which touched me deeply. And I have to start with my childhood. I don't like it usually at speakers' meetings, but I will be really short about it. And it's because I, from the kid, like from six or seven years old, we lived at the countryside. We have something like farm, a lot of animals and a lot of work had to be done there. And my stepfather was a drunkard, so I had to do these things almost every day. So it was like feeding this animal and clean up for them, set up for them. And it was really a lot of work and hard work. And I do it from this early age. And what is important for me on it, I am glad for it. I am grateful for this period of my life. It's take me, it's give me a lot of experience and feelings. But as alcoholic and as sick person with spiritual disease, it always went to extremes. So as kid, I felt this hard and heavy responsibility and sense for duty, and that I have to be there for help to my parents and mainly my mother and little brother. So it was really bounding me in this sort of life. So I remember this feeling when I was at the holiday at my grandmother's, and it was season of harvest. And I realized that my mother is back home, and she has to do all these things. And she was busy with her two jobs. And I wasn't able to enjoy any playing with other kids, or just do it what I want. I was like, oh my god, I have to help her, and I'm here, and I should enjoy something. It's not possible. And it was really crazy. I was like nine year old, and I just felt that way. And why I am saying that is because I start to drink in, I skipped to write to that, I start drinking when I was 11 years old. The change, the things changed in the time. We left my stepfather, and live in different city or village. But that was also hard life, because our mother was alone for two of us, and we don't have any money. And I still felt this responsibility for helping her. And I have jobs for making some money and helping and everything. But my mother gives me more free time. And it came absolutely natural for me to start drinking at my free time. And I was 11 years old. So I bought this, my first beer. And I drank it in an elevator at the train station. So there is only one level, only one floor. So that was like 15 seconds when the door closed, and the elevator was going up. And I drank faster. And after that, I hid it behind my back. And I still go up and down and drinking this beer. And suddenly, I felt different. It was gone. All these feelings, all these responsibilities and sense for duties just disappeared. And it was great. It was great. But like I said before, everything came, everything with me came to the extremes. So that was my first and last one beer. And after that, I always wanted more. I always wanted more of this. And that feeling from the elevator, when I was going up and down, I think I never experience it again with this really amazing sort of way. Because after that, I always get it worse and do it worse. So I still try to help my mother, and I still have these jobs and everything. I save every cent, every penny, every money I save. I wasn't like other kids that I buy some toys or chips or lollipops and everything. I just save this money because I had to help my mother. So I should buy the pens for myself or books to school for myself. And later, from these 11 years, I had to buy drinks for me because the one beer wasn't enough. And in this case, my mind functioned differently. I don't look at the prices. I don't look that I need to do something else with this money. I just wanted to buy that. And I always have enough money because I was the hard worker, so I always had like two jobs at the same time. And I did that, and after that, I just drank. And that was my puberty. That was my growing up from 11 years old.