i feel like that's the theme obviously touched on at length in the leslie jamieson book, the idea of a certain kind of alcoholic who is very, very special. >> yeah. >> who's preoccupied with their own specialness and aa with a really structured approach pushes -- it brings you to your own ordinariness. >> yes, and i think one of the things when i was in treatment, i got a bunch of my -- i got basically my entire medical file as part of the reporting process for writing this book, and one of the things that just kept coming up over and over again was intellectualizing. intellectualizing. and i think that's just like-- it was almost like they could have checked a box because it's so common. and so i think it is just -- i think in intellectualizing unfortunately, because i love it and i want to do it around everything, and it doesn't work for sobriety. i never saw anybody get sober, but talking themselves out of drinking. [laughter] >> so is aa a part of your life now? >> to an extent. to a much lesser extent than it was at first. i think aa is like, you know, it's like a -- it was real