 I'm Brian Wenzel. I'm Senior Chief Hospital Corpsman and I'm stationed at Marine Corps Security Force Regiment in Norfolk, Virginia. My primary responsibilities are the health care and deployability of our fast Marines, which is the fleet anti-terrorism security teams. I often, you know, I've been asked to speak at a number of AA meetings and I usually start with, I think that I've been an alcoholic my whole life. Everybody has a different rock bottom, you know, and it came to a point where I found mine. And the final straw was yelling at my ex-wife and seeing my daughter put her hands over ears and begging us to stop. I told my doctor that I needed to go to treatment now. The next thing I did is I drove to my headquarters and I walked into my Sergeant Major's office and said, Sergeant Major, I got to go get help. It shocked me that my Sergeant Major got up and walked from around his desk and gave me this huge hug and said, Doc, you're gonna be okay. Don't worry about the job. You know, go get better and when you come back, you come back. One of the things I felt most important was honesty and I had told him about a specific incident that was kind of going on in my life at that time and told him, you know, I've been honest with you and that's all that I ask for me is that you be open and honest with me and that was the first time he opened up and told me about his issue with alcohol and that he was in recovery and had only been in recovery for a couple of months. June 23rd of this year I celebrated two years. So it's, if you really count it's 25 months that I've been sober and you know I'm living a new life with a lot of the pieces of my old life still in place that I really could have could have lost and most importantly is that I have a better relationship today with my kids than I ever have. We are both very big family people and we love being around our children. Time is just much more precious to me now. You know, I didn't lose family and friends out of it. We worked really hard for where we're at and why, you know, why would you risk losing it? Losing your rank means losing respect, losing a place of authority. It's always important to keep what you've earned to continue to grow and to progress and to never regress. To become a senior chief, you know, my hopes and dreams, goals to someday maybe become a master chief and if, you know, if I'm blessed to be put in that position then I think it gives you a bigger platform to talk about keeping what you've earned. Knowing that everything I do in my life today, how it revolves around my sobriety but more importantly how my sobriety lends to having a better relationship with my children, I've been given these opportunities back and I made good on them every chance that I that I can. Things are so good today. Why would I want that to be, why would I want even one little piece of that to be threatened by taking one drink? I know that I have an incredible support network. Everywhere I turn there's somebody that believes in me and somebody that supports me. Everything, everything is better to this day and I can't say that enough that how much better my life is and living it sober. I don't want to do anything else.