I Didn’t Know How to Not Drink: AA Speaker – Noel S. – Nashua, NH
AA speaker Noel S. from Nashua shares his story of drinking from age 12 to 24, hitting bottom on New Year’s Eve, and learning how to stay sober through sponsorship and the steps.
Noel S. from Nashua, NH spent twelve years drinking daily, convinced he wasn’t an alcoholic because he was in graduate school and had never tried cocaine. In this AA speaker tape, he describes the exact moment—drunk in his apartment after a brutal New Year’s Eve—when he realized he couldn’t drink anymore, called AA the next morning, and discovered that sobriety wasn’t about understanding why he drank; it was about learning how to not drink through the steps and a sponsor who refused to let him die.
Noel S. shares how he drank continuously from age 12 to 24, using alcohol to numb the anxiety and shame that plagued him since childhood, then hit his bottom on New Year’s Eve in Bangor, Maine. In this AA speaker meeting, he describes his first days in recovery, his resistance to working the steps, and how his sponsor Eric forced him to face the truth: he had no control over alcohol and couldn’t recover on his own. Over eight years sober, Noel learned that recovery isn’t about self-understanding or willpower—it’s about doing what he’s told through sponsorship, step work, and the daily inventory that keeps him honest and connected to God.
Episode Summary
Noel S. walks into the room with dry humor and brutal honesty about his drinking life. For twelve years—from age 12 until he was 24—he never went more than a day without drinking. He didn’t think he was an alcoholic. He had reasons: he was in graduate school, he had a decent apartment, he’d never used cocaine, and he was still in touch with his girlfriend Beth, even if he spent six nights a week at bars and one night at her house to feel “normal.” What he didn’t see was the unraveling—the paranoia about his graduate school classmates, the tenant upstairs stealing his things, the stolen watch that belonged to his grandfather, the moment he screamed at his girlfriend’s mother in her own living room, the time a girl stuck her tongue down his throat at a bar and he pushed her away to prove he didn’t cheat.
The core of Noel’s story is isolation. He was alone in graduate school studying economics, convinced everyone hated him. He was alone at bars every night, getting drunk and obsessing over whether girls thought he was gay. He was alone in his apartment, picking up a 12-pack at the store after class and calling it dinner. Even when he was with people—his girlfriend, her family, his classmates—he felt like a freak who didn’t belong.
Then came New Year’s Eve in Boston. He blacked out on the T, woke up being kicked by strangers, and his ex-girlfriend’s mother drove him to her daughter’s house instead of solving his problems. He drove back to Maine and spent four more days drunk, making tapes in his apartment, standing at the bar smoking cigarettes with a stranger, staring at two girls he convinced himself he could “pick up” while simultaneously believing everyone in the room hated him. At 1:15 a.m., at the gas station, he grabbed a six-pack of pounders because they were out of 12-packs. He went home, drank it, and for the first time in his life, a thought occurred to him: *I can’t drink anymore.*
Noel didn’t know where the thought came from. He knows now it was God. What matters is that he called Beth at 2:30 a.m., she told him to call AA in the morning, and he did.
What unfolds next is classic AA: a man who doesn’t want help gets paired with a sponsor named Eric who doesn’t bullshit. Eric didn’t let Noel hide behind his rationalizations. They read the Big Book—specifically the Doctor’s Opinion and the description of the alcoholic. Eric asked him one question: “When you start drinking, can you control the amount?” The answer was no. Noel had countless examples: falling out of trees, ending up on Route 290 hitchhiking home, blackouts. Eric’s response wasn’t gentle. He said, “Good. Don’t ever drink again.”
Then came the hard part: Step Two. Noel was terrified. He didn’t believe in God. Eric told him he wasn’t expected to believe—not yet. Three weeks ago, he was throwing up blood in Chinese restaurants. All that was expected was willingness to try something different. So they got on their knees and said the Third Step prayer.
What followed was the work: four months of writing down resentments. Noel had roughly 100 names of people who pissed him off. He remembered everything—a toy thrown down school steps when he was four, his father choosing other kids over him when he was recovering from brain surgery, every slight, every betrayal. He wrote it all down. Then he read it to his new sponsor, a man named Brian. Brian drove three and a half hours from Maine to sit on Noel’s couch for seven hours and listen. Then he bought him dinner and drove back.
The turning point in Noel’s story isn’t the moment he quit drinking—it’s the moment he learned to do what he’s told. Not because he understood it. Not because he believed it would work. But because the alternative was the beam in his kitchen and the rope in his head.
The rest of the talk moves through the miracles: reconciliation with his father, a wife who stuck with him, a brother-in-law dying of cancer while Noel stayed sober through daily inventory. Most remarkably, his 10th Step—the daily practice of writing out what bothers him, what he’s afraid of, what’s actually true—led him to a neurosurgeon in a meeting. That conversation, overheard during a Fifth Step read, gave him the information he needed to pursue brain surgery a year before a shunt in his brain nearly killed him. Without the inventory, without the willingness to look at what was actually true instead of what he felt, he would have stayed stuck, blaming a doctor, refusing help, dead.
Noel’s message is simple: he didn’t know how to not drink. He still doesn’t. What he learned was how to do what he’s told. That process—sponsorship, steps, daily inventory—keeps him alive.
Notable Quotes
I don’t have any idea how to not drink. What I learned how to do over the next eight years is I learned how to do what I’m told.
The description of the alcoholic is from the doctor’s opinion up to page 43 in the big book. That is the description of the alcoholic. At the time when they wrote it, it was the only description of an alcoholic.
There’s this other part of alcoholism that I think we don’t really like to talk about very much, which is that I have a mental obsession. My mind is going to tell me to drink again unless something seriously changes inside of me.
For somebody to just tell me that I’m going to die drunk would be mean. That’s like taunting a guy with no legs, saying, ‘Come here.’ But he had an answer. He could tell me the truth because he had a solution.
If I didn’t do a 10th step, if I didn’t write things out and deal with it, I would have never known any of that. I would have just hated the doctor in New Hampshire and I wouldn’t have another solution. I’d be dead.
Step 5 – Admission
Sponsorship
Hitting Bottom
Step 3 – Surrender
Topics Covered in This Transcript
- Step 4 – Resentments & Inventory
- Step 5 – Admission
- Sponsorship
- Hitting Bottom
- Step 3 – Surrender
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Full AA Speaker Transcript
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We hope that you enjoy today's speaker. >> My name's No. >> No.
>> I'm an alcoholic. >> And uh kind of sad when you're the guy speaker and you got to pull the microphone down. It's kind of I um I wasn't being chivalous when I asked her if she wanted to go first.
I had to pee. And then I got back and I started drinking the water and now I got to pee again. So, what do we got?
A half an hour. >> All right. So, that'll be good cuz that'll be about my limit.
Um, >> it's kind of neat. There's a lot of people here in Maine. I got sober in Maine.
Um, and uh, a lot of times when I Is there anybody here that's like only been sober for like a month or something like that? Anybody in the room? I mean, I figured probably most of the people Yeah.
Good. Good. Congratulations, man.
Um, I just like to know like basically where people are at cuz I, you know, um, when I get sober, I come in to meetings and people would start talking about, you know, freaking divorce and crisis and all kinds, you know. I'm like, well, how do I not drink? You know, I that's what I wanted to know.
So, um, usually when I I go to like, u rehabs and stuff like that, um, I usually ask people, you know, is there anybody here who doesn't know how to drink? I mean, cuz cuz I mean, truthfully, I I know how to drink. I'm I'm pretty good at it.
I could out drink guys who are like three times my size. I I remember when I was 16 years old, um I was playing Anchor Man with a bunch of guys from a wrestling team and I was the anchor man and they quit. And um you know, so like I don't have any problem with drinking.
Um the problem that I realize is is is not drinking. And I imagine that there's people in the room that um have a little bit of problem with that, too. Um I I when I get to AA, I I didn't and I still don't know.
Um I don't have any idea on my own. And I have absolutely no idea how to not drink. Um when I was 12 years old, I I picked up alcohol and um and and I didn't put it down until I was 24.
And um I lived that entire period of my life pretty much drunk. Um gradually the you know number of days in between how how long I went um got fewer and fewer and fewer and by the time I was I was ready to stop drinking um it was pretty much if I went a day that was a big deal. Um and so I was 24 years old.
I was living in Bangor, Maine. Um it's a really great place to drink. There's not really a lot else to do in Bangor Maine.
Um, so I I had gone up to uh graduate school and I was going to graduate school, which is my first reason why I wasn't an alcoholic because I was in graduate school and you can't possibly be an alcoholic if you're in graduate school. And my other reason was cuz I had never done cocaine. And um you put those two reasons together and you've got a perfectly sound argument as to why you you are not alcoholic.
And um so I was in graduate school and they were paying for me to go to school and um I was I was a teaching assistant and I used to like go study economics during the day and about 3:00 in the afternoon I' I'd go out and and I'd look into the teaching assistants room and all the kids would turn around and look at me and they were thinking these things about me and um they all thought that you know I was an idiot and I was a freak and I didn't belong there and uh they have them thought I was gay and then you they, you know, the the girls didn't really like me, but they should. And and um you know, they all think they're smarter than me. So, I couldn't stand what they were thinking.
So, I'd go home. And on my way home, um I'd stop off in the right aid. The Wraid I loved Maine because I grew up in Massachusetts where you can't do anything.
And um in in Maine they sell beer at like gas stations and and and at like Wraids, which I didn't know what Wraid was until I moved to Maine either, but they they sell beer at Wraid and and you walk into the Wraid and and I'm thinking I got to eat dinner. I haven't eaten anything all day long. And I and I walk through the aisle and and uh I I go over to the beer aisle and I pick up a 12-pack and that's dinner.
And then um I bring it home and I put it down on the counter and I start making broccoli and I'm going to have broccoli and beer and um you've got hops, barley, broccoli. I mean it's like a full diet and um I threw a couple carbs in there like some pasta and I was good to go. And um and then I'd start studying economics and and I'm really freaking good at economics.
I don't understand why. It's just this weird thing that God gave me this gift. I'm really good at it.
And um so so I'm studying economics and I'm not an alcoholic because I can do statistics and I can do economics and drink a 12-pack of beer and I can call my friends up and tutor them on the phone and tell them about how smart I am and uh then I get off the phone and think that they all hate me and think I'm too stupid to you know and it was insane. And what was going on was um this kid lived upstairs for me. He was 18 years old.
And I had gone to Maine because um I I got into like four other colleges for graduate school, but I was dating Beth and Beth was going to be my wife and she was going to have kids and she was going to become a veterinarian and I was going to be a school professor and I was going to write books and I could drink and stay home with the kids and write books and she would be a veterinarian and really take care of me and I go on sbaticals and I could go sleep with my graduate students and all these things were going to happen and um it was just going to be fantastic And so I'm in graduate school and and all the kids at school, you know, they think those things about me, so I can't talk to them and I don't have any friends there. And Beth doesn't starting to really not understand me anymore. And um so I'm hanging out with the 18-year-old kid up above me.
Um, and I'm buying them beer at night and um, and then I come home from school at 3:00 cuz what everyone's thinking and I got to drink my beer and uh, do my economics and um, and somebody stole my freaking cigarettes. And I'm like, "What happened to my cigarettes? Where'd they go?" I locked the door before I left and cigarettes are gone.
And then shit's getting moved all around my Someone's breaking into my freaking house at night. And um, so then I'm like going into this panic and everything's going crazy in my head and it's like and they're trying to trick me into like flunking me out of school and things are going nuts. So then the cops start coming over to my house, but I can't tell the cops that it's the kid upstairs cuz I'm buying the kid booze and I'm 21 years old and I get a DUI and if I get another get another arrest and I have to go to jail and d So um this craziness is going on.
So, I'm trying to talk to my ex- my girlfriend about it on the phone and I'm, you know, she's in school, so she doesn't have time to hear this. And um it's going absolutely insane. You know, I come home, things are missing, stuff's going crazy.
Everyone out at school's out to get me. Um and and and they're breaking into my house. They're stealing my cigarettes.
They're moving around. Finally, somebody steals my grandfather's watch. And this is the one thing I actually cared about.
Um it was a gold watch. It was the only thing I had that was my grandfather's. And um and so the cops were coming and I I said, you know, that's it.
And I filled them in on what was going on. I was going to take my big chance that they don't tell the cops that I was buying for them. And um and and so I had to move and craziness just kept going.
What happened was I went home that that that Christmas and Beth just didn't understand how much trouble I was having and I went over to her house to try to convince her to come and live with me over Christmas break and I had to move into a new apartment. Um and uh and and Beth's mother didn't insure her on her car. She didn't have a car insurance so she couldn't drive my car cuz she didn't have insurance.
And if if she got an accident, I couldn't afford to deal with it because I had a DUI. And doesn't this woman understand she has to insure her daughter on her car so that she can come live with me because she's going to be a veterinarian and I'm going to write books and sleep with graduate students and teach classes and and she's ruining my freaking life. And um so I started screaming at this woman in the middle of her living room, her own house, screaming at her that she's ruining my life.
Um none of these people get it. They're all screwing everything up. And um and Beth just looks at me and said, "I can't deal with you anymore.
You're out of your freaking mind. You know, you you're just out of your mind." See, I used to go over to Beth's house cuz it was normal. It was like normal land.
They watched Disney movies. Sorry, I swear. I promised myself I wouldn't swear.
Now I'm swearing. But they, you know, I'd go over and we'd watch like Dumbo or something like that. And then I'd go out like the other six nights out of the week and I'd get cocked and I'd hang out at bars and I'd flirt with chicks.
I couldn't cheat on my girlfriend cuz only losers cheat on their girlfriends, but I just like flirt with. One time a girl walked all the way around the bar, came over, stood right next to me, and stuck her tongue down my throat. I told my friend Pat, I'm like, "Watch, see that girl?
I'm going to pick her up." And cuz she didn't believe me that it was easy to pick girls up at the bar, you know. And so she comes walking all the way around the bar, sticks her tongue down my throat. I pushed her away.
I was just trying to prove a point. I have a girlfriend. You know, I had absolutely no sense.
And then she smacked me and I didn't get it. Like, why are you smacking me? You know, I'm trying to tell you I'm a nice guy.
I don't cheat on my girlfriend. So, you know, I never really did anything unfaithful. Um, but I used to go and I'd live at bars and then one night a week I'd have to go over to Beth's house to go watch Dumbo and feel normal.
And uh, and the whole time I'd be like, I hate it here. And I couldn't wait to get out of there. And finally, she freed me.
You know, you're done. I mean, this is the girl that three and a half years earlier, I met her at my house. I was living on a farm in Sunderland, Massachusetts.
So I was going to m UMass. We used to have raging parties with like 200 people. They get off the bus.
They called it the farmhouse. It was my house. And um they get off the which I loved.
I mean I loved it that my house had like a nickname. And um it when I was important, you know, and um they um they'd get off the bus and they'd come to the farmhouse and they'd get drunk and and and uh you know, kids would play freaking sitars out by the fire and like all kinds of weird go on and and uh and and and and I moved there with Allison cuz I was in love with Allison and she was going to realize she was in love with me only she was dating my roommate from my previous house, Jeff, who owed me money, who didn't pay his bills and she started dating Jeff right be right right after we signed a lease together. Well, what was supposed to happen was Allison was supposed to realize that Jeff was a real jerk when we moved in together.
She was going to fall in love with me, start sleeping with me, and dump Jeff. Well, it didn't happen. And so, I had to go find somebody different.
So, I'm at a party at my house and and this girl shows up and I don't even like her, but I got to pick somebody up. you know, and now it's three and a half years later and I'm going to kill myself over this girl that I never liked. I never liked her the day I picked her up.
She was a really nice girl. I took her hostage for 3 and 1/2 years so I could make Allison jealous who I don't even talk to anymore. I don't even know her anymore, you know.
And yet, you know, here it is 3 and 1/2 years later and I'm living in Maine and Beth can't deal with me anymore. So, she breaks up with me and um and I don't know what to do. So, I drink, you know, I keep drinking.
And um what happened was I I um I spent the next four days drunk, which really wasn't any different than the previous, you know, four days, but I spent the next four days drunk and um went to um New Year's Eve night, I went out to Mama Kins in Boston and um and I remember it was midnight and I looked up, my friend Pat was making out with a chick and I thought, "How dare you? I just broke up with my girlfriend. You're not supposed to be with anybody tonight because you're my buddy and I'm sensitive and so you're not supposed to like I'm the only one allowed to score tonight if anything happens and I was afraid to talk to anybody.
So, um you know, so I walked out of Mama. It was 20 below zero. I was wearing a flannel shirt and the next thing I knew I was on the tea.
I don't know how I got to the tea. I don't know where I was on the tea. All I knew was that there were four kids.
They were like of a different ethnic origin and they were kicking at me, kind of trying to wake me up a little bit. And um and I remember looking up and just being like, "Oh, you know, like where am I?" And they stood me up and they brushed they were laughing at me, you know, and and they were like kind of, "Dude, you got to you got to get together." And um and so they said I tried to figure out where I was. cuz I had no idea where I was.
They put me back on the train going the other way. They told me where to get off. I called Beth's mother and Beth's mother was going to fix it.
She was going to drive me back to Beth's house and I was going to we're going to make it all different and everything was going to Well, Beth's mother was from Alenon. So, she drove me to Worester and we had to go home and I had to go to my mother's house and I was humiliated. So, I drove back up to Maine and I spent the next four days drunk in Maine.
And um the last night I drank. I woke up at uh 10:00 in the morning that day and um went down to the Yving station, got my 12-pack, came back, and I started making tapes. I'm going to make tapes.
I'm going to start showing chicks in Bangor how how cool of a music select. I'm going to make a Miles Davis tape. I'm gonna make a tape that has all kinds of like bluegrass music on it.
I'm And then we're gonna have this raging potty. No, I don't know anybody. And um we're gonna make this raging potty and I'm going to play tapes all day long and everybody's going to see and I'm making these tapes and and and then my day my time comes and I go down to the bar.
I've been scoping out like Fitz Willies or something like that. And I go down there. I've never been in it.
And um and I go down there and I stand at the bar all night long drinking gin and tonics, smoking butts with my new best friend, this kid that I met. And um he gave me his lighter. And um we we were smoking butts and talking and staring at these two girls dancing together all night long.
And I'm thinking I'm going to pick them up. And then I'm thinking they don't like me. They think I'm gay.
Everyone here hates me. And I smoked butts until it was about 1:15 and I realized the Irving station is going to close soon. So I left there.
I walked up the street and I remember standing in front of the refrigerator door at the Irving station and I said, "They don't have any freaking 12-packs. I've been drinking since 10:00 in the morning." And I'm mad cuz they don't have any 12-packs. So, I grab a six-ack of pounders and I go walk back to my house and um and I drank that and I put my head down and I said, "God, what the is wrong with me?" And I picked my head up and I looked at the beer in my hand and I just thought, "I can't drink anymore." And I don't know, today I know where the thought came from.
God put that thought in my head because I had never ever in my life ever wanted to not drink again ever. When I was 12 years old, I started drinking and it took away how I felt. And while it stopped working, it was the only thing I ever knew that took that away.
And I never wanted to not drink. So when the thought occurred to me to not drink again, I it floored me. I just I can't drink anymore.
So I finished the beer and um but I called Beth on the phone at 2:30 in the morning to inform her of my my big awakening and she didn't disagree. Um she also wanted to know why the hell I was calling her at 2:30 in the morning. But um but I said, "What should I do?" And I had been to AA when I got my DUI and her whole family was in AA and they, you know, so I knew about it.
So you should probably call him in the morning. And I did. I called the next morning and and this guy John answers the phone.
See, the previous 12 years are kind of the same. I could sit I could tell you all about them. They're like the same story.
It just just keeps getting crazier and crazier and crazier until it gets to that day and then you know it's just nuts. And uh it started off it was a lot of fun but it it just wasn't fun anymore. I mean it was a mess.
It was absolute insanity. And um I didn't know that. Everything I know about what happened I know now in hindsight.
I know as of after writing about it and reading it to my sponsor and then going out and making amends about all this stuff, that's how I understand things to be the way they are today. I mean, um, what happened was I called my I called AA and this guy John answered the phone and he said, "Um, hello, this is John. Are you null?" Actually, he called me back and I said, "Yes." He says, "Um, I'm from AA." I said, "Okay, whatever." And uh he said, "Uh, I can come pick you up if you want and take you to a meet and uh we can we can get together.
I'll be at your house at exactly 9:00. Don't be early because you'll be wasting your time. And don't be late or I'll leave." And I like this guy.
I like that. He's an ass. And I like people that are like that.
So I went over to I went out at exactly 9:00. Boom. The guy was there.
I went over to his house all day long and talked to him about football. I knew nothing about football. He knew nothing about football, but I didn't know that.
He just had the football game on. And so I assumed I must have impressed this man with my knowledge of football. So I started telling him everything I know about football.
And about I don't know probably like 3:00 in the afternoon, he says, "Tom's coming over." Okay. So Tom comes over. Tom is from Worester.
Now I'm living in Bangor, Maine. It's 300 miles from Wester. Tom used to drink at the bar that I used to stand outside of when I was 14 years old and say, "Dude, you want to buy me some beer?" And like and like, you know, we weren't like even close to normal kids either, too.
Because the guy go like, "Oh, okay. What do you want? A six-pack?" I'd hand him a freaking stack of ones like this.
I need eight cases. And the guy's like, "What?" And we'd be running across Lincoln Street like this with eight cases of beer, you know, like five kids had come out of the corners and like it was insane. We were nuts, you know, and that was that were 14 15 years old.
And uh so anyways, Tom like Tom like knew I mean I probably bought dope off of him. He knew the same people I knew. He hung out with the it was just like maybe God put him there, maybe not.
I don't know. But it it was weird. Um, so that kind of hooked me for the time being, you know, 10 minutes.
And then we went, um, we went to a meeting and I remember this about the meeting. There was a guy with white hair sitting at the back and I didn't like him because he was obviously in charge. And um, and he asked if anybody wanted to make a commitment to sobriety.
And I said, so 24-hour commitment. I remember standing up to pick up my white chip. I think I had been like like informed about the white chip on my way there or something.
So I stood up and I started balling and um and I didn't know why I was crying and that was over eight years ago and I didn't know why I was crying. My whole life changed right then. I mean I had no idea what was going to happen to me over the next eight years.
you know, um, from the time I was 12 until I was 24 years old, I never didn't drink. I didn't know how to not drink. That day, that minute, I didn't know how to not drink.
I still don't know how to not drink. What I learned how to do over the next eight years is I learned how to do what I'm told. And that's what I do.
I do what I'm told. But I didn't do it right away. What I did was I was just going to these meetings.
And within like a couple of weeks, I'm looking around the room at these freaking meetings. And you know, everybody in the room hates me, you know, and and nobody nobody here knows what I know. And I don't really belong here.
I mean, I haven't done cocaine. I'm in graduate school. I have 80% of my teeth.
Um there's there's a whole string of really important reasons why I've never prostituted myself, which is important to me. Um you know, so therefore, I can't possibly belong here. You know, I don't live under a bridge.
I didn't drink out of a paper bag. you know, um, all of the real important reasons for not being an alcoholic were floating around my head all the time. And I remember being at this meeting at Husten College and, um, staring at the back at Katie's head and, um, Katie, if you ever hear this tape, you know, I'm sorry, but this is what I was thinking about.
I was thinking about having sex with Katie. That's it. You know, and like most people who have like no sobriety and and are sitting around in meetings and haven't done anything to get better, I'm suffering from untreated alcoholism.
I'm sitting in this meeting. I'm staring at the back of Katie's head. I'm thinking about having sex with her.
And then I'm looking at all the guys in the room with the three times my size thinking they're going to kick my ass if I even talk to her. Um Katie probably thinks I'm gay. And uh so I raised my hand and I started talking about all the things that I understand because I read two chapters out of a Deepo choper book.
And this guy Eric comes over to me after the meeting and he says, "You know, you can do something about the way you feel if you want and um and I can help you." And uh you know f you you prick comes to mind like that you know like who do you think you are you know but at the same time what was going on was I was going to these meetings for a month and I go home and everybody's saying oh it gets better just keep coming and you know and they're all very nice and they're trying to help me and I go home and I'd stare at the beam in my kitchen and think about hanging myself every night and I was wondering ing when it was going to get better. I I kept coming and when's it going to stop? And what was happening was the craziness was just going nonstop in my brain.
All the stuff that I just told you about, that was all still going on in my head. Only I didn't have the only thing that ever took it away. You know, it wasn't there anymore.
It was gone. So, it was just going 9,000 miles an hour inside my head and it wouldn't stop. And I just wanted it to stop.
That's all I ever wanted. You know, I wanted that when I was 12. I wanted to understand why the kids acted like they did when I was a kid.
I wanted to understand why I had problems. I wanted to understand all these things. I wanted it to go away.
I thought understanding it was going to make it go away. And um so I went to these meetings and um I kept coming and and I met this guy Eric and he offers to help me and um I didn't know what else to do. So like that second when I thought I need to not drink anymore.
For some strange reason I thought I need to let this kid help me. Um I didn't know what to do. Um I was 19 years old.
I was going to college and I couldn't read and I didn't tell anybody. I never let anybody help me with anything. Help.
Letting people help me does not is not come to me. I don't let that happen. But I didn't know what else to do.
I mean, I was really tired of thinking about killing myself. Um, and so I did and and we got together and he we started going over what what do we got? >> Couple minutes.
>> Yeah. Yeah. A couple minutes.
>> All right. So, um we started getting together and we started going over the big book and he said, um you need to understand whether or not you're an alcoholic. Um because this whole recovery deal is about a relationship with God.
And you can't base a relationship with God on a lie. And you know, he didn't this guy never never bullshitted me ever. you know, he just told me straight, boom, this is the way it is.
And um I like that. And what happened was we got together and we started reading through the description of the alcoholic. We read it all the time in meetings and how it works.
I didn't know what the hell it was. The description of the alcoholic is from the doctor's opinion up to page 43 in the big book. That is the description of the alcoholic.
At the time when they wrote it, it was the only description of an alcoholic. No one had ever written one before. No one knew what the hell an alcoholic was.
I didn't know what an alcoholic was. I was sitting around AA meetings and it come to me and said, "I'm know I'm an alcoholic because he said it and he's going to say it." But I didn't know what it was. You know, and so we went over it.
It's very, very, very, very clear. He made it very clear to me. He says, "There's two things you need to be concerned with.
When you start drinking, can can you control the amount of alcohol you drink?" No, can't. can't do it. You know, I have countless examples of, you know, like I start out drinking and I fall out of trees, you know, um I end up on 290 hitchhiking home, you know.
And he looked at me, he said, "Good. Don't ever drink again." Which is something that's almost kind of taboo to say in AA, but the reality is is that's the truth. And he could tell me the truth because he had a solution.
See, for somebody to just tell me that would be mean. That's like taunting a guy with no legs, saying, "Come here." You know, but it's it's not, you know, but he uh he actually had an answer. You could tell a guy with no legs come here if you gave him like a wheelchair or a pair of crutches or something.
But, you know, he did, you know, he had an answer. He said, "You're going to die drunk." Cuz the reality is, I don't know how to not drink. I can't not drink.
There's this other part of alcoholism that I think we don't really like to talk about very much, which is that I have a mental obsession. And the mental obsession occurs when I have no alcohol in my body. It could occur today.
It could happen. Just boom, get this screwed up thought that tells me to go drink. They call it relapse.
They have a whole chapter about relapse. It's called more about alcoholism. Yet we talk about relapse as though it's something that happens other than alcoholism.
But relapse is alcoholism. It means that I will drink again. It's it's like the guarantee.
My mind is going to tell me to drink again unless something seriously changes inside of me. And he helped me to understand that. And he says, you know, so what what needs to change?
Well, you need to come to believe that a power greater than yourself restores your sanity. Oh, well, I don't believe that. He says, and then I was terrified.
I thought, you know, there's one more thing I can't freaking do, you know. And uh he says, well, you're not expected to believe that at this point. You know, 3 weeks ago, you were throwing up blood and crap in your pants and pants in Chinese restaurants.
No, we don't expect you to come to AA and all of a sudden believe in God. You know, that's not reality. I know some people talk about it as though it's reality, but it's not reality.
What's expected is that you've had enough and you're willing to try something different. And that's what step two was to me was I was willing to try something different. I was willing to do what I was told.
And so we got on our knees in his living room and held hands and said the third step prayer. And the whole time I'm worried about whether or not the guy is going to rape me. And um and I'm thinking about that thing I did when I was a little kid and you know, oh my god, am I going to have to tell him that?
And you know, and uh that's it. That's all I'm thinking about. And he's having this peaceful experience.
And and uh we go home after we got done. He's he see he told me to buy a notebook and a pen before I got there. And um we get up from saying the prayer and he says, "Now I want you to go home and start writing a list of names of people that piss you off." And um I went home and I whipped furniture around the house.
I picked the chair up over my head and I threw that across the room and I punched the wall about 15 times and I baldled my eyes out cuz this guy told me to go do something, you know. I I just wanted to go to meetings, you know. But I didn't just want to go to meetings, but I just wanted to go to meetings.
you know, and it was just and uh he said uh go home and write a list of names of people that you hate. And um I had bought a shirt two years earlier that said every day of my life I'm forced to add another name to the list of people who piss me off. And I didn't know I'd be actually writing that list out, you know, and there were lots of names.
I had somewhere around X names and it took me somewhere around Y months to write them all down and they fit in Z notebooks and that's as specific as I need to get about it. Uh we wrote down all of the people. I wrote down all the things that I hated about them.
There were many. I remember extremely See, that's one of the things I didn't understand is I'm not stupid. God gave me this unbelievable mind and I remember everything.
It's awful. I got a guy who's about to start his fifth step. This guy remembers more than I do and I'm terrified.
I'm like, "Oh my god." You know, I love the people that don't remember. It's like, "Good, good. You're lucky, man." I mean, I remember what frigin Danny, who's actually in the program now, threw my teeny meeny miny mo at at the school steps at Thornike Road School when we were four years old at the Memorial Day celebration with my brother, my brother, and his sister.
They were in school singing around the flag pole. We were playing with my brand new frigin teeny meeny miny mo and Danny whipped them at the freaking school steps and he didn't care. Both of us are an AA now.
So, you know, I mean, all the way from that to my dad wanted to play with somebody else's kids and left me at home when I had just had brain surgery 3 months earlier so he could go play baseball with somebody else's kids who were better than me. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. It sucks.
But, um, he didn't know how to be any other way. And so we look at all these things, we look at what they affect in our lives and we look at our part, you know, we look at what we wanted out of things. And uh we turn things around and we look at them from a different perspective.
So we can have forgiveness for people cuz we don't have forgiveness for people. We don't have any business asking people for forgiveness. And that's what I come to understand, you know, and I spent I spent some time reading that to my sponsor.
Um, this guy Brian, Eric had moved in Brian picked up Brian as my sponsor and I I had moved to Massachusetts now and Brian lived in Camden, Maine. I lived in Worcester now or Milbury, Mass. And um, I didn't trust anybody else in the world.
Um, you know, I was a couple years sober at this point and Brian was the person I trusted. Period. That was it.
And um, and that's okay. And I tell that to the guys I sp you know I so many times people like what I realized through my writing was that there were so many people that I made myself vulnerable to that I had no business ever trusting, you know, and I and I lied to myself about what I trusted people with, you know, girlfriends, um, kids I did drugs with, kids I drank with, you know, and I wonder why they did things like pick up my girlfriend and start having sex with him or like, you know, all kinds of things that happened and I wondered why they happened. But like I put myself in the position to get hurt, you know?
I just wanted people to like me. I wanted everyone to like me. Everyone, the whole world, everybody in the planet is supposed to like me.
And so I do things because of that fear. So anyways, this guy Brian's the first guy in the world I've ever trusted. So I damn right I'm going to freaking read my inventory to him.
So, I drove three and a half hours up to Camden, Maine to read my inventory to him. And I did that a couple of times. And um he called me up one day and he drove three and a half hours down to Massachusetts to listen to me read inventory and sat on my couch for 7 hours and just listened.
Then he took me out to dinner and bought me a big steak and he drove back up to Maine cuz he had a prison commitment. This is a a bank felon. This is a guy who robbed banks who's a crack addict and a drunk.
Why would he do that? You know, and I learned something about what it means to sponsor people by my fifth step. You know, Brian understood that if I didn't do this, I was going to hang myself from the beam in the kitchen.
you know, if something didn't fundamentally change inside of me, I was not going to be alive much longer. And so, we did it, you know, and um I went out and I started making amends. I made amends and um those were a blessing.
Um next weekend I get to put a in a hardwood floor with my father, you know, the guy who wanted nothing to do with me. the guy who actually just didn't know how to want something to, you know, he didn't know how to do something with me is really all it was. And uh you know, it it's just a miracle.
Uh last night I didn't stay because my wife was at home and um she's my wife. I didn't understand that Beth was going to have my kids and work and take care of my stuff while I drank. you know, last year my wife got sick and um I was working two jobs to make sure that things got got done.
And um then my brother-in-law got cancer and um I didn't know what to do. So I have a tent step that I write out every night. I mean every morning.
And um I mean you want to feel powerless. You have a a guy who weighs 300 and something pounds get cancer and start having a tumor grow off the side of his face. He's got two kids at home and uh what the hell did he do, you know, and uh I don't know what to do.
So I'm writing inventory and I said you could paint their house. So I started driving up to Maine to paint their house because now things are much clearer today. I don't have the craziness, the chaos running around in my head.
What the hell do I need to do? You know, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Just constant madness in my mind, you know.
And um so I drove up and I painted the house while I was working and you know he died. I didn't drink. A year ago yesterday I got out of the hospital.
Um I had brain surgery. Um it was a year from hell. Um I have hydrophilis.
I have a shunt in my brain. It had found its way. It goes down into my gut.
It's a plastic tube and it stuck me in the liver and it was sticking me in the liver for about 6 months. And I couldn't find a doctor that understood what the hell was wrong with me. They wouldn't even look.
And I was doing my tentstep one night and I wrote it out. Why don't I go to another doctor? You know, I was on this insurance plan that I I thought I was stuck in mass in New Hampshire.
And uh I was afraid. That's what it came down to. I was afraid to go to another doctor.
I was afraid. And so I went to a meeting um down in Boston and a friend of mine I was reading the inventory to him and I happened to know that he was a neurosychologist because a year earlier I was reading my inventory to him and he started telling me about what it's like to have hydrophilis and I'm like the hell how do you know this and he's a neurossychologist it's like what he does for a living and uh he got me all this help to get so that I had all my medical records and all this other So anyways, I ended up I ended up having brain surgery a year ago yesterday because all of this stuff happened from my 10th step that allowed me to have the information I needed to go and give the information down to the doctor down in Boston. If I didn't do a 10th step, if I didn't write things out and deal with it, I would have never known any of that.
I I just I wouldn't have known it. I would have just hated the doctor in New Hampshire and I wouldn't have another solution. He's a prick.
and I'm dead, you know. And so what I have instead is I have this process that allows me to get down to the truth. Um, so that I actually know what to pray about.
You know, I used to I used to pray for, you know, uh, God bless this and that jerk and da, you know, that's nice and it's a good start, but, you know, it's a lot more effective to be able to say, God, help me because I'm afraid of failing tomorrow at work when I have to give a presentation. That's really what I'm afraid of. I have to give a presentation.
I know that I have to do it tomorrow. And this is the truth. This is what's going on tomorrow.
I wrote it out in my notebook today. I'm afraid. I'm afraid.
I've never failed at anything in my life. And yet, I'm afraid that I'm going to fail. God's not going to let me fail.
You know, won't happen. So, you know, these are the things that happen. And because of that, I get to carry this message to other people, you know, and uh it's it's really remarkable to be able to watch other people go through what I was taught how to do.
And um that's really the whole gift of of a Alcoholics Anonymous, you know. Uh I came here and it was all about me and today it ain't all about me, you know. And I hopefully I've been able to say something to somebody that, you know, meant something.
Um, and if not, just ignore everything I said because it might kill you. It might have been my opinion. Um, my opinions aren't very good.
Um, so, uh, I I really am honored to be here and thanks a lot for asking me to speak and, um, thanks for getting up on Sunday morning when you were probably up till Sunday morning. So, thank you. >> >> Thank you for listening to Sober Sunrise.
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