“It Came Out of Every Hole in My Head” – AA Speaker Rick W.

Rick W.’s story cuts straight to one of the hardest truths about alcoholism: the disease doesn’t care about your dignity, and neither does the person drinking. He doesn’t begin with “I was a successful guy” or build sympathy through background. He jumps directly into a scene that most people would call a breaking point—driving down the street while drinking whiskey, his body rejecting the poison violently, and the moment spiraling into complete physical chaos.

The setup matters. Rick W. explains how alcohol affected his body differently at different times—sometimes loosening his bowels, always making him want to throw up until he got enough in him. He was driving, trying to drink whiskey at the same time, and he knew he was going to get sick. He managed to pull off to the side of the road, but not far enough. The door didn’t open in time.

What came next was as humiliating as moments get: vomit came out of his nose, his ears, all over his face and hands. His fingers went up on the windshield. The mess was everywhere. And at the same time, he filled his pants with Boone Farm Apple Wine. By any normal measure, this should have been the moment—the moment when someone looks at themselves and says “I can’t do this anymore.”

But this AA speaker’s honesty about what happened next is where the real story lives. He wasn’t mortified. He wasn’t humiliated. He was inconvenienced. That’s the word he uses, and he means it. The problem wasn’t that he was covered in his own vomit. The problem was that it meant he had to go home, clean up, and then get back to what he was actually doing—getting what he needed from alcohol.

This is the cunning part of the disease. The alcoholic brain doesn’t process a moment like that as “I need help.” It processes it as “This is annoying, now let me continue.” Rick W. wasn’t going to stop. He was going to shower, change clothes, and keep drinking because stopping wasn’t an option he could see. The addiction was that complete.

What makes this AA speaker tape valuable is that Rick W. doesn’t soften this story or wrap it in redemption before he tells it. He’s not saying, “I was so sick and tired.” He’s saying, “I was soaked in my own waste and the only thing I felt was inconvenience.” That level of clarity about what denial actually looks like—not as weakness or weakness of character, but as the specific pathology of alcoholism—is rare. It’s the kind of honesty that lands hard for people who’ve been there.