# Sober Sunrise Transcript

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Wow. Hi everybody. I have no idea how to speak in front of a non-podcast, so this is going to be a first. My name is Dave Phillips. I'm a recovered alcoholic.

>> Welcome.

Some things that I've learned—I just think it's out of this world that this group asked how many people have been through the steps, have a working knowledge of the 12 steps and are available for sponsorship. Because if you're new and sick, you're scared to death. If you had looked up at that one second, that one instant, there's somebody in front of you with their hand up that could save your life, avert misery and death. Which, if you're an alcoholic of my type—which I'll get into, and hopefully it won't be a whole long time of getting into what it was like—that's where alcohol took me. And by the way, I never signed up to that. I don't remember that being on any job description in high school of what you want to be when you grow up: a drunken junky drug addict alcoholic. But that's what I became, very early on.

Oh, cool. There's a watch up there. Let me read one thing in the book. I was tickled to death that they got first edition Big Books here. I was just up speaking in Massachusetts two weeks ago on Tuesday, and they asked me if I would go up to New Hampshire and speak there, too, the very next day. So me and my wife treated it like a vacation. And they made me aware. They said, "Hey, you're only 80 miles from the Wilson house." And I was like, "What's that?" They said Bill Wilson's home—you know, the house that he grew up in as a kid, from the time he was 11 when his mom divorced. He came back, and there's a library there. It's only 80 miles from where you're going to be speaking. Why don't you go spend the night up there? And I was like, they turned it into a bed and breakfast. So I talked my wife into it. We spent another day. God, what a wonderful time. But that exact edition Big Book was sitting up there. Not a copy, not a facsimile—an actual 1939 copyright first edition Big Book. And in there, for those that may not know it, it says things differently. It says "ex-problem drinker." It says "ex-alcoholic," you know. And I just was tickled to death when I found that out. I just read the other day, and if you're interested about the definition of that term, it's in our actual service manual in the bylaws. Bill Wilson wrote a definition of what an ex-alcoholic is. He got that term from Dr. Silkworth and Dr. Tiebout. They listed it in AA Comes of Age. I was reading, I was like, "Ex-alcoholic, what the hell are they talking about?" And when I read that in the Big Book, I was like, wow. Somebody who no longer imbibes alcohol and who lives the 12 steps that are outlined in this book. Which may be a problem for some because I know modern AA—my favorite AA is the Burger King. You can have it your way. Good luck with that if you're a real alcoholic.

You can use me as an example of what not to do for many, many years in AA. It says, "Unlike the feelings of a ship's passenger, however, our joy and escape from disaster does not subside as we go our individual ways. The feeling of having shared in a common peril—alcoholism—is one element in the powerful cement which binds us. But that in itself would never have held us together as we are now joined. The tremendous fact for every one of us—that means all of us guys, not me, not you, all of us—is that we have discovered a common solution. We have a way out on which we can absolutely agree."

Which means I'm not supposed to be arguing about the terms and stuff in this book. That'll kill you, by the way, if you're doing it. I did that, and I nearly died the last time. And "upon which we can join in brotherly and harmonious action. This is the great news this book carries to those who suffer from alcoholism."

And I can tell you from my own experience, my sober date is July 22nd of 2001. That's so you know I have one. That was my last one. Hopefully that's the last one I'll ever have. But this is my fourth time—fourth time—in Alcoholics Anonymous.

I sat in a meeting not too long ago in my local clubhouse where somebody had the audacity to just say, two seats down from me. Of course, it kind of upset me that we have newcomers in here, and he would say this nonsense. But he didn't say in his experience; he said he didn't think there was any wrong way to do this. And I was like, "Wow." Okay. And then I shared. I said, you know, I kind of find fault with that. If there's no wrong way to do this, then how come in 1992, 1995—sober two and a half years—I got drunk? Is the end result of AA to end up drunk again? Do I see any heads going this? No. No, the answer is no.

1995 to 2000, four and a half years sober. I actually had people that were trying to do what was outlined in the book. They were trying to give me what was outlined in the book. But I wasn't willing to go to any lengths. I had bulky ideas, which means I do what I want and I take what I want and I leave the rest. And I end up drunk again a second time.

Third time, I only lasted four days. Within two days from that period, I was pounding my fist on a bar down in Chestertown, Maryland. I had no money. It was payday. I had a paycheck. My coworkers had taken me in there. We worked on a roof of a building at a hospital, and it was probably 120 degrees up on that roof. The material didn't act right. And all they wanted to do was go get a couple drinks. And they knew for a fact I was trying to stop drinking. So they wanted to go have a couple of beers. And they said, "Dave, we ain't buying you no alcohol, but we will buy you a Pepsi."

Well, I'm an untreated alcoholic suffering—not from being drunk because I was, I don't know, five days sober. I was suffering from lack of power, and I had fear. I knew I planned to go to AA that night. I had been to AA four times that week. I was going to be the Little League coach the very next day at my son's Little League game. And they do say in the Big Book that like consummate actor—I don't know for you, but I would smoke crack till five in the morning and then go coach Little League Saturday morning. I was not a heavy. "Pick up the damn ball, you know?" So it's like, you know, I'm trying to be the actor. But that's kind of hard, you know? And the parents are like, "Oh God, he's coaching again," you know.

But as I stood in front of the bartender, out of my mouth didn't say, "Can I have a Pepsi?" It said, "F it. Give me a Budweiser." And he didn't look to my guys that were paying. And then once I got that one down—well, you're buying. Guess what? You're really going to buy. And that's what those guys had to do, because alcohol demanded not only from me but from everybody around me.

See, I don't know what your experience is, but I'm here to tell you what my experience is of trying to prove through every form of self-deception that I could drink normally. And fail. Well, I succeeded. If drinking normally is falling face flat in a urinal because I'm too drunk to stand up—you know, might be an alcoholic. I don't know.

If some of my experiences with not normal drinking—have you ever helped a bartender clean up after the bar closed? Because you ain't done yet. My whole object was to sit there and drink, you know. And you come across that occasional cigarette butt, you pick it up, but you still drink. I'm sure none of you ever did that, you know? But that was my experience, over and over and over again.

I do not even process alcohol scientifically. They say I don't even process it normally. And I definitely like the effect that alcohol produces in me. My problem has never been alcohol. I thought that's what it was when I came up, you know, because of all the prices I paid. But why is it that I would always return to that which enslaved me—that alcohol? They use a term in the Big Book: a "rapacious creditor." I know what that's like when alcohol is demanding me to continue drinking, you know.

And so I would just spend, you know, in and out, in and out, in and out of sober—my own sober, sober with church, sober without church, getting baptized as an adult, speaking in tongues. I don't know what all that about, but I went through that period, and it lasted maybe about three months. I tried to live by these moral and philosophical convictions galore. The book says I tried that. I ended up drunk, you know. And it just—alcohol, king alcohol, shivering despot of his mad realm, you know? I mean, it just freaking tortured me.

I remember the other week I said in a meeting that alcohol raped me and molested me, and a lady took offense to that and she made me know it afterwards. I was like, well, let me ask you a question. This is my understanding of the legal definition of rape. I'm married to a woman, and she said no to me, but I had sex with her anyway. She said no. She meant no. But I went ahead and forced myself on her. That's rape.

How many times have all of us sat in here—the real alcoholics—and said no to alcohol? But alcohol made me go like this. As easy as I'm drinking water right here, and I just can't set it down. I'm just nuts sober. How many times has that done it to you? More times. It's done it to me more times than I can count. More times than there's fingers and toes in this room.

Because at the end, alcohol—see, everybody misinterprets step one. I had an old-timer come up to me, right there, and he said, "Read step one." And I said, "We admitted we are powerless over alcohol and our lives have become unmanageable." Is there an "and" in there? He said, "Do you even see what you're reading?" And then I read it. But he goes, "What's that between?" "Do you even know what that minus sign there is? No."

See, nobody ever took the time—even good sponsors—they never took the time to explain this thing to me. I've heard the rehab definition of unmanageability. To me, unmanageable is like I can't, I'm not showing up to work on time, or I'm not paying my bills on time, or I'm not. I think it's a life thing, that the unmanageability that our founders were trying to—they don't talk about any of that crap in there. And there's a solution and more about alcoholism. There's in the Doctor's Opinion, which is all about step one and getting drunk. They don't mention any of that stuff.

An old-timer told me, he said, "Son, that's a hyphen, and it means continuation of thought. And what the founders, when they wrote it in their experience—what they thought they meant—and it matches up with what's actually in the definition of that—is continuation of thought. My life is unmanageable because alcohol, at the end, is managing my life for me."

Now, how does it do that? My sponsor asked me two yes or no questions when I got here. He said, "Dave, when you start to drink, can you predict with any certainty, once started, when you're going to stop? Yes or no? And running out and passing out doesn't count." "No." "Okay. Have you ever stopped before?" "Yeah." "Has it been more than once?" "Yeah."

And I thought it was kind of rude when he said that because he knew me—my second time sober. Like, what do you ask me? You know, this ain't my first time. He goes, "From a point of being stopped, can you predict with any certainty—any certainty at all—when you're going to get started again?" And I thought about it. I was like, no. He said, "But you have every intention to, when you stop, to quit—that's it. You're not going to do it anymore."

He said, "Dave, if you answer no to both those questions, what the Big Book says is that your power over alcohol—when you're drinking it, you got the allergy. But you're also powerless over alcohol when you're not drinking it. The unmanageability in step one's got nothing to do with you paying your bills, being a good father, being a good husband, being a good employee. None of that stuff. It's got to do with when alcohol is managing your life for you. And at the end, alcohol is now your god because it will demand stuff from you. And you willingly give that because you ain't got a choice in that matter, you know. And at the end, that's what my experience was.

I remember some old-timers tried to tell me once that I chose to go drink. You know, if you're telling newcomers that—stop. If they're alcoholic, they've lost the power of choice. That means you're not going to be able to bring into consciousness the forefront of your mind the memory and suffering of even a week or a month ago. You're without defense against the first drink. I don't know why on earth we use carnival tactics in AA in a life-or-death situation. Why on earth any of us, including me, would tell somebody to think the drink through.

You know, this Big Book—the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous—doesn't give me any way to stop drinking. Doesn't give me any cheap carnival rehab tactics that, you know, oh, keep everybody all this other stuff that I heard from rehabs. It doesn't work. Not for the real alcoholic. Not for me. It didn't work for me. I tried it. It worked maybe for a day or two, and then I'm off to the races again because I'm one of the real ones that they talked about. You know, once I had arrived at that point where I've gone beyond the power of choice, I don't get it back. And now once I've reached that point, now I've got to—I got two choices. The Big Book says one: to accept spiritual help—whatever that help is, I don't get to dictate it. Or two: continue drinking to blot out my miserable existence. You know, and I tried that more times than I can count.

You know, I showed up in Alcoholics Anonymous's doorstep as a result of going to a DUI program again. No wonder you drink and drive, you know. God, and they got repetitive, you know? It's like you fail the first one because they got that stupid thing—you got to go to AA. And I'm not going to go to AA because I've been to AA. In the 1970s I went to AA. You know, they had a bunch of old people in there. They were like 30. You know, I didn't know any better. I'm like 15, 16 years old. Buddy, that's old. 30 years old is old. You got a gray hair, you know?

[laughter]

You know, no offense, but the women didn't even have teeth back then. If you were like a woman and you had two teeth in your mouth, you were doing real good. Some of you guys know that, too. You had none. You know, there were all these people I didn't like. How am I going to identify with these people? You know? And plus I'm tuned up at the time, you know.

[sighs]

Christ. I mean, the State of Delaware—because I drank alcoholically back in the 1970s—decided the kind thing was that because I was self-employed. Self-employed. My sponsor tells me I have to tell the truth. I stole for a living. That's self-employed, you know. They put me in a mental institution in Delaware City called Governor Bacon. And so here I am. I'm locked up, and it's a coed mental institution. And I got my nut girlfriend, you know. And when you act up in there, they give you drugs that are like way beyond heroin, you know. Thorazine, you know. And so when you act up, they have rules. And like, it's like I don't know about you all, but being strapped down to a bed and peeing yourself because they ain't letting you up—because they've shot you up with thorazine again or Haldol—is not appealing. And so I escaped.

[laughter]

Three days later they caught me because I had been stealing buns outside of McDonald's at like four o'clock in the morning. That's what I was eating, you know.

So I had a sponsor, you know. He was an older guy. He gave me my first tattoo. He said, "Here, I'll tell you how to get out of here." He said, "Go to rehab, and you can escape from there, and they won't even chase you." I was like, "Well, how do you do that?" He said, "Tell them you're a heroin addict." I didn't know what that was. I became one immediately. Sure enough, two weeks later or so, I'm in a rehab in downtown Wilmington, Delaware. They're talking about scrubbing toilets with toothbrushes and hollering at me. Very, very rude, you know. And three days later I walked away from the place, and guess what? They didn't chase me, and I got away, you know.

And so, you know, I've been there. You know, I went to rehab. I went to AA in the 1970s. You know, I think I know. And that can be a problem for a real alcoholic, you know.

Make a long story short: I lost—I didn't lose, I gave away—a military career. Let me see. I'm trying to tell the truth. I gave away a military career for the price of what alcohol did for me. I gave away a career in the Delaware State Police, which I got accepted to because of what alcohol could do for me. Yeah, I was going to be a cop. Can you imagine me being a cop?

"Miss your license. Get drugs."

[laughter]

Well, I got to ask that question, you know. I sent off the application and they accepted it. 1983. I'm like, I just got honorably discharged out of the military. I can do push-ups until the cows come home. I'm in the best shape I've ever been. I can run two miles in under 12 minutes. And I smoked over a pack of cigarettes, and I can still do that. I can do as many sit-ups as need be. I can shoot fairly accurate because I'm an ex-infantryman. I applied for the Delaware State Police, and they accepted.

And then my buddy asked me, he goes, "How you going to arrest people for what you like to do?" I did the alchemist. No.

I had taken a flight aptitude test in the Air National Guard. I got offered a chance. I passed. They offered me a chance to go fly helicopters down in Fort Rucker, Alabama, become a warrant officer. And what that said—my ego filled my—I can you believe this? I was full ego back then. I remember the first sergeant that slighted me numerous times when I was stationed in Hawaii. And if I was a warrant officer, he would have to salute me. So my plan—I didn't care about flying helicopters. I wanted the respect, and I was going to go all the way back there to make his butt salute me. I think they call that a resentment.

I became self-employed again, and the federal government had a problem with that, and they sent me off to federal prison for seven years. 1985. I got out in 1989.

I should be safe in federal prison, right? Should be. Alcohol shouldn't be really effective. Guess what? They make booze. I was in a coed federal prison. I was let out on overnight furlough. You know, they had rules. Don't drink, don't do drugs, and stay in town. Well, shoot. I can do the—you ever do the alchemist? 32 hours. I can get drunk. Give a clean breathalyzer. So I did. I gave a clean breath the next day. My buddy bought some of that unlicensed pharmaceutical agricultural product, and we debated drunk how much I could actually inhale and give a clean urine the next day. Tens, five, seven. I said four. Okay, let's do it. Two weeks later—uh-uh. Here they come. I was in a coed. There's women there. No offense, you know. And now I'm shackled on the way to upstate New York, and my cellmate is now godfather of Rochester, New York. True story. You know, I'm with guys that, you know, that are mobsters and stuff like that. Real criminals. I'm not like them. I'm like, "Oh my god," you know. And it's like a different atmosphere because the guards were coming in there and bringing him food, saying, "Mr. Indeino," because they respected this guy. That's my cellmate. I'm like, "Oh my god, what have I done?"

Now, not once in there does it occur to me that alcohol might be a problem, you know. I get out on parole, and you know, I get out of the halfway house, and the first time I'm out on overnight furlough, I just want to hook up with her. I don't know who her is. I didn't. But I was looking. Somebody handed me a beer, and I don't make it back for the curfew call. Bam. Automatically two o'clock in the morning, getting roused by the halfway house guards, going back to prison. All for the price of what alcohol is demanding from me.

See, I don't know about you, but alcohol is not supposed to do that to me, you know. Doesn't it say somewhere in the book, "Being free from alcohol for a period of time, he believes he can drink"? Isn't that something like that in the book?

[sighs]

So I start paying some heavy, heavy consequences for the price of what a drink can do for me. And at the end, guys, at the end, it was so bad. I just—I wrap this up. 2000, I left Alcoholics Anonymous thinking I must have been a junkie because when I stuck a needle in my arm—when I was 15—it couldn't have been the alcohol. And I left AA four and a half years sober. Five years sober. I'm sitting across from my non-alcoholic wife. She likes to abuse alcohol. You ever been with an alcohol abuser? Come on. You ain't never drank with a normal person. They order a drink this big, and they might drink that much. And you're focused on that freaking drink the whole meal because the ice is melting. "You going to finish that? Do you know how much that costs?"

[laughter]

Took me a long time in sobriety to quit asking my wife that, you know. But I'm sitting in front of her, and I asked her. I said, you know, I had this thought—God forbid—you know, I had this thought that like I really wonder what it was like. They had Zima out. Ooh, Red Dog. Jack Daniels got wine coolers out. I sure like their whiskey. I wonder what their stuff tastes like.

And this is what's going on in my mind. No effective mental defense against the first drink. Quit telling newcomers to think the drink through. That's not a solution. It's only a solution if you're a problem or heavy drinker. Not for the real alcoholic because they can't do it. So why on earth, as a fellowship, are we telling it? Because I can't bring that. It says I'm not going to even be able to bring into consciousness what one beer will do to me because one beer guarantees that another one's coming, and another one's coming, and another one's coming.

I just, you know—Dave Perry, I love him. He says it perfect. You ever hear Dave Perry say, "Here's my law degree. Give me a shot. Here's my law degree. Give me a shot and a backer. Here's my marriage." See, I know what he's talking about because I've experienced that. That's not made-up BS. That's from his actual experience. Alcohol did the same exact thing to me.

So here I am, five years sober, and I take that sip. And I did. I only drank socially twice. I did it when I was five, and now I'm doing it at 36, 37 years of age. I took a sip. I could feel a little bit of effect. But what I said to myself in my mind—and I didn't let my wife know it because I don't know about you, but saving face is kind of important. I care about what people think of me. I said to myself, "David, that's the stupidest thing you've ever done. You just threw away five years of sobriety. Why?"

So what's Dave do? Dave starts drinking on the weekends. That works so well. How about during the week? Start pulling nüners at work. Now, just the alcohol by itself ain't enough. I don't like to get spinny drunk. There's chemicals out there that'll make those spins go away, be able to drink maybe a little bit longer, you know? And that stuff has a life of its own. You know, when your kids are begging you, "Daddy, put some food in the refrigerator this week. We want to eat," there's a line in the section to the wives. It says, "An armored car could not have brought the paychecks home safe enough." Why is that? Because my wife's got to go to bed sometime, you know.

See, I don't know about you all, but when that obsession hits me, I'm gone. And it's not because I'm picking and choosing between the love of my wife that I love and the life of my kids that I would die for. But when alcohol says go, son, you go. And I can't bat an eye. I can't say yeah, but, because my mind doesn't function that way. And every time I go back from being sober, it gets worse. And the Big Book covers that. "We continue to do terrible, terrible things."

And so I get on a ride that I never signed up for. I heard it best, and I'll steal it. Guy's name is Herby. He's one of the youngest-looking old guys down in Baltimore. Sober over 40 years. He looks like he's 50. He's lived a life beyond his wildest dreams. He said it best. He said it was like he sold his simple human dignity for the price of a drink, and he doesn't know when that happened. That's the way it was for me, you know. And so I'm dying again, you know. And it gets really, really bad, you know.

And let's get sober because it's top of the hour, you know. July 21st of 2001, I came up with a plan. It was a good plan. Y'all ever have a plan? God, I love plans, you know. If you're on a crack binge for about two or three days, you may not be thinking right, but the plan seems good, you know. And it was: I'm going to rehab. That was my plan. I got insurance. My wife is handicapped. One of the last jobs she had before her disability got too much for her to work, she got COBRA insurance, and we were paying it, you know. And so my plan was I'm going to go to a rehab. They got a chef. It's on the water. I heard they got celebs there. Oh god, they got to take me. I got insurance.

So I called them up eight o'clock in the morning. They said, "What's your insurance?" And I gave it to him. And they came back on the phone. He said, "Mr. Phillips, we got a problem." I was like, "What's that?" "You can't come here." I was like, "Well, how do I get to go there?" He goes, "You got to go to outpatient therapy and fail."

I don't know about you guys, but I just felt like somebody just kicked me right in the stomach, or down below south. I'm dying. And as crazy as I was, I knew I was dying. I'm dumping enough narcotics in me to kill me, you know. And I can't. I'm begging God to kill me, and he's not. And freaking—yeah. You ever get to the point where the birds are there and you're cussing the birds? Oh god, I hated that. Well, that's what's going on in my mind, you know.

And I said to the buddy, I said, "I can't fail." And then he asked me something, and I always remember that. I don't tell what rehab told me this, but it's pretty messed up. I heard Frankie Lynch—one of Clarence Snyder's sponsors—say rehabs are about money. It's a business. They like repeat business. I'm not here to put rehabs down because there is a purpose for them. But he asked me something. He goes, "You got any money?" "Oh, let me just go ask my crack dealer. I put an addition on his freaking wing on his mansion. I'm sure he'll give me a loan."

I remembered I came to AA in June of that year. I did the math. Two and a half years, four and a half years. This time I'll be here the rest of my life. I'll get at least ten years. Within two days I was pounding my fist on the bar wondering how the hell it could have happened again.

But something happened in that meeting. A guy came up, and he gave me a phone list. He said, "My name's Dicki." And he made sure I knew where his name was. He said, "If you ever want help, David, please call me. Doesn't matter what time or day or night, just call me."

See, he knew I was dying. And he's free. You people give this thing away for free and for fun. There's no cost on it. You have the ability to avert misery and death. Rehabs can't do that. Doctors can't do that. Psychiatrists can't do that. Religious people can't do that. But a recovered alcoholic armed with the facts about themselves can do that, and does it countless times throughout their lifetime until God calls them home.

And that whole scene of him coming up to me, as soon as I hung up the phone dejected from that rehab—it was like watching a made-for-TV movie. And nobody can't tell me there's not a God because I was not in my right mind. But I seen it just like I was watching a movie. And so I called him up, and I met him that night. That guy saved my life. He didn't take me through the steps, but he saved my life. He made sure that my paycheck every Friday got into the bank. And he met me to make sure that it got in the bank.

Y'all ever get to the point in your sobriety when you're new and money's a problem? You got money, you're going to go use. That guy made sure that that money got in there, you know.

I was told things that did not work. Like, read the first three steps out of 12 and 12. Folks, there's no directions in the Big Book—I mean, in the 12 and 12—for the steps. That's Bill's interpretive commentary. I read the 12 and 12. I love the 12 and 12. I love Bill's interpretations and the traditions and stuff. But if we're going to do the steps, do them out of the Big Book because I was reading the Big Book while that was going on. And I got up to A, B, and C. And then there it says, "If you're convinced"—and I was convinced—"and some old-timer, keep reading the first three steps."

[laughter]

I don't see, you know, the foolishness in that is, and he's giving me the best he's got. But can you predict with any certainty when you tell somebody to wait to do the steps—when on earth the mental obsession that will cause them to go back to drink is going to happen to them? Can anybody in here predict when your next mental session is going to happen? Because you are your god. And that's what they're fighting against. That's the rush to get through the steps.

The founders—and most of you know this—the founders didn't wait to take them through the steps. Hell, most of them, until they did that third step prayer, they weren't allowed in a meeting until they did that. They didn't wait months to do the steps. Some of them were doing the steps in a week. Read AA Comes of Age. It talks about Clarence Snyder. When that plane-dealer thing hit, all of a sudden you got people that are only a week sober. Buddy, you got to get through the steps. We got a couple hundred people to take through the steps. You don't have time because they're going to die if you don't. And that success rate from that book—before it was adulterated by our GSO and changed—had a 90% success rate. That's listed in our AA literature. And some of you are shaking heads because you know what I'm telling you is true, you know.

A month's over, I get a sponsor. I didn't pick my sponsor. I was