Sober 17 Years—Then Finally Recovered: AA Speaker – Tom P. – Mesquite, TX
AA speaker Tom P. from Mesquite, TX shares how he stayed sober 17 years without recovery, relapsed, then found the Big Book solution that changed everything.
Tom P. from Mesquite, TX stayed sober in AA for 17 years but never truly recovered—until he relapsed and found sponsors who taught him the Big Book. In this AA speaker meeting, Tom explains the difference between being dry and being recovered, walking through how meeting attendance and “thinking through the drink” kept him miserable but sober until they stopped working. His message centers on the physical allergy described in the Doctor’s Opinion and the mental obsession that makes real alcoholics powerless over that first drink.
This AA speaker meeting features Tom P. explaining how he stayed sober for 17 years without working the steps properly, leading to relapse and eventually finding recovery through Big Book study. Tom discusses the physical allergy and mental obsession described in the Doctor’s Opinion, contrasting his first 17 years of dry sobriety with his experience of actual recovery through working the twelve steps. He emphasizes how meeting attendance alone cannot provide the psychic change necessary for real alcoholics to recover permanently.
Episode Summary
Tom P.’s story challenges everything most people think they know about AA recovery. He got sober in 1987 after treatment and stayed continuously sober for 17 years—going to meetings, helping newcomers, and following all the common AA advice. But he was dying inside, held together only by fear and meeting attendance, with no understanding of what the program actually offered.
Tom’s drinking started early—daily drinking by age 12, followed by extended stays in psychiatric hospitals as a teenager. The doctors treated his depression and behavioral problems but missed the real issue: alcoholism. After getting out of treatment in Austin, he dove into AA meetings with enthusiasm, but his sponsors gave him the standard advice: go to 90 meetings in 90 days, think through the drink, and take your time with the steps.
The problem was that Tom never understood Step 1. For 17 years, his definition was simple: “I have a drinking problem and when I drink, bad stuff happens.” Since the bad stuff stopped when he stopped drinking, he figured he was fine. He had no comprehension of powerlessness or what it meant to be a real alcoholic. His recovery was built on fear—fear of consequences, fear of relapse, fear of the chaos returning.
By his 15th year, Tom found himself in a men’s meeting telling the room: “I am dying in Alcoholics Anonymous. I’m going to drink again.” The response was predictable—go to more meetings. But Tom knew that wasn’t the answer. His meeting attendance had always been high, yet the mental obsession never left him. He was white-knuckling his way through sobriety, using willpower and meeting attendance as his primary tools.
In 2004, after 17 years sober, Tom relapsed. That’s when he got lucky enough to find sponsors who actually understood the Big Book study approach and took him through the steps as written. They sat him down with the Doctor’s Opinion and explained what he’d never learned: real alcoholics have a physical allergy to alcohol that creates craving, and a mental obsession that removes their power of choice around the first drink.
This explanation changed everything. The Doctor’s Opinion describes how alcoholics react abnormally to alcohol—while normal people feel sick and stop drinking, alcoholics crave more. Tom realized he’d spent 17 years not understanding that thinking through the drink doesn’t work for real alcoholics. The book clearly states that alcoholics “are unable at certain times to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago.”
Tom’s new sponsors didn’t sugarcoat anything. They asked two questions: “Are you a real alcoholic?” and “Are you willing to do whatever it takes?” When Tom answered yes to both, they started him on the steps immediately. Within two weeks, he had worked through all twelve steps—not the year-long process he’d been taught before.
The transformation was immediate and dramatic. Tom discovered that the steps are designed to remove everything that blocks alcoholics from their Higher Power. Step 4 wasn’t about writing a 50-page autobiography but about identifying specific resentments and character defects using the simple format outlined in the Big Book. His fourth step took an hour and a half, not months of agonizing writing.
Working with others became Tom’s primary solution, just as the book promises. After 17 years of avoiding sponsorship because he didn’t know what to do with newcomers, Tom found himself easily guiding people through the steps in a matter of days or weeks. He realized that intensive work with other alcoholics, not meeting attendance, provides immunity from drinking.
Tom’s message is tough but necessary: AA meetings were never meant to be group therapy sessions where people dump their daily problems. The primary purpose is carrying the message to alcoholics who still suffer, and that message is the twelve steps. When meetings become places for self-centered sharing about everyday problems, they fail the newcomer who comes looking for the solution.
His transformation from someone who spoke once in 17 years to someone confidently carrying the message illustrates what the Big Book calls an “entire psychic change.” Tom’s experience demonstrates that there’s a crucial difference between being sober and being recovered. Many people in AA today are doing what Tom did for 17 years—staying dry through willpower, fear, and meeting attendance, never accessing the spiritual solution that makes recovery effortless.
This type of honest examination of modern AA practices connects with other speakers who emphasize returning to Big Book fundamentals, like Don P.’s talk about being changed rather than just sober. Tom’s story serves as both a warning about the limitations of meeting-based sobriety and hope for those who feel like they’re dying in AA—the solution exists, but it requires actually working the program as outlined in the book.
Tom’s share isn’t comfortable listening for people attached to the meeting-centric version of AA, but it’s essential for anyone who wants to understand the difference between managing alcoholism and recovering from it. His experience proves that the Big Book’s promise of being “rocketed into the fourth dimension” isn’t metaphorical—it’s the actual result of working the steps as a spiritual program of action.
Notable Quotes
I had no idea what step one meant for 17 years in Alcoholics Anonymous. My understanding was I’ve got a drinking problem and when I drink bad stuff happens. Well, I just got out of this treatment center. I hadn’t drank in a month and guess what? The bad stuff stopped happening.
My mind can’t keep me from the first drink and my body can’t keep me from the second drink. Do you guys hear any hope in that? There’s no hope.
I am dying in Alcoholics Anonymous. I’m going to drink again. It’s not going to be today, probably not next week, probably not even this month, maybe not even this year, but I am headed in that direction.
Thinking through the drink doesn’t work. I can remember all the crazy stuff that happened to me when I was drinking. It couldn’t keep me sober. My own war story couldn’t keep me sober.
Nothing ensures immunity from drinking as much as intensive work with the drunk. That’s our solution. Why would we keep people from the solution?
Big Book Study
Sponsorship
Long-Term Sobriety
Relapse & Coming Back
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Full Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated and may contain minor errors. For the best experience, listen to the audio above.
Welcome to Sober Sunrise, a podcast bringing you AA speaker meetings with stories of experience, strength, and hope from around the world. We bring you several new speakers weekly, so be sure to subscribe. We hope to always remain an ad-free podcast, so if you'd like to help us remain self-supporting, please visit our website at sober-sunrise.com. Whether you join us in the morning or at night, there's nothing better than a sober sunrise. We hope that you enjoy today's speaker.
Everybody, my name is Tom Pic. I am a recovering alcoholic. How you guys doing? I've been sober since June 13th of 2005, been sober a little bit over a year. I'll talk a little bit about my war story, or I won't even go into a war story. Talking about that stuff just bores me to death when I talk about what happened before I got to AA because it's no different than anybody else's story. I don't have any cool stories to tell. I was never a big drug dealer. I've never been to jail, never had a DWI. There's a lot of stuff that never happened, but there's some stuff that did happen that makes me imminently qualified to be in this program.
I started drinking when I was real young. I was drinking on a daily basis by the time I was 12 years old. It got so crazy and so out of control that by the time I was almost 15 years old, I got sent to my first psychiatric hospital and I was there for 16 months. I got out and returned to the drinking. Eleven months later, I'm spending 20 months in another psychiatric hospital. So from almost 15 to 18, I'm in hospitals as a result of my drinking.
What they're trying to treat is depression and bad teenage behavior, whatever the hell I had. That's the angle they're approaching me from. They're telling me if I just talk about all this stuff that happened in my past and resolve all these issues—my parents' divorce, failing in school, my mother's alcoholism—somehow it'll get resolved and I won't drink anymore. I'm thinking, "Yeah, okay, we'll give this a try," but I don't want to stop drinking.
Long story short, I get out of this last one. I'm almost 19 years old. It happened to be down in Austin, Texas. Instead of moving back to Chicago where I grew up, I stayed in Austin, which was pretty much the scene of the crime for me. Things just got crazy. I had some catching up to do when I got out of that place, and if I didn't get caught up, it wasn't my fault because I tried. Things just got unbelievably nuts. You guys know how it is—writing bad checks, losing relationships, losing jobs, losing money, emergency room visits, the whole nine yards. All that stuff that happened to you guys happened to me too.
I ended up in this treatment center up in Chicago because I couldn't get sober in Austin. I called my dad and he flew me up there. I went to this place and spent about 27, 28 days in this hospital. After a couple weeks I'm pretty much detoxed and I'm feeling better. I've got some strength. My head's starting to clear up a little bit. I've gained some weight, which at that time I needed.
After a couple weeks we're having a great time in this place. There's a big place, about 100 patients, and we'd play poker every night down in the basement. It wasn't a basement, but it was a finished-out bottom floor of the hospital. We'd go down there and play cards and just have a great time.
When I left there, I went back to Austin, back to my little apartment and my little job down there, and started going to meetings. I loved the meetings. I got there feeling pretty good, full of piss and vinegar, real excited about life. You guys pretty much tell me the same stuff that I've told a lot of people: "Go to 90 meetings in 90 days, think through the drink, put the plug in the jug." All this stuff that we tell each other. That's what I heard.
So here I am, relying on meeting attendance and thinking through the drink to stay sober, which I'll explain later, pretty much works up until it doesn't work anymore. It works perfectly until it stops working.
I had no idea what step one meant for 17 years in Alcoholics Anonymous. I stayed sober 17 years and had a relapse back in 2004. My understanding of step one is I've got a drinking problem and when I drink bad stuff happens. Well, I just got out of this treatment center. I hadn't drank in a month and guess what? The bad stuff stopped happening. It was gone. I'm thinking, "Oh, this is great. Problem solved. I'm not drinking. None of this crazy stuff's happening. Things are great."
I like the meetings. I like going in and hearing about everybody's problems and all the stuff that they're talking about. At first it was kind of interesting because you never know what you're going to hear in one of these discussion meetings. But after a while I got tired of this stuff. I got tired of listening to people talking about their cats dying and their divorce and Sally Sue's pool boy putting too much chlorine in the pool. I mean, you name it. I'm dying. I just can't take this stuff anymore.
So I'm staying sober. I'm making a half-ass attempt at the steps. I was told that I had taken step one before I even came in, which wasn't true. I was told to stay on step two until I believe in God. Never happened. I had the obsession to drink and do some other stuff for 15 months in Alcoholics Anonymous. It never went away. I prayed about it. I would leave the meetings thinking that I'm just different than these people because I'm not getting it. I'm still thinking about drinking and these people are happy. What the hell? What's the matter with me?
I thought that I was really screwed up and you guys were just disco drunks who had a few scrapes with drinking, but once you quit, everything's cool. I'm staying sober and I'm getting worse.
I'm going to talk about some stuff here and I know this is tough talk. It's tough to hear. When I was sitting in AA for 17 years trying to make it from meeting to meeting, this stuff would have just made me nuts listening to it. But what I learned after I got sober and hooked up with some guys who really felt this big book and took me through the steps exactly as they're outlined in the book—I learned that there are hard drinkers and the book talks about on page 20, 21, and there's real alcoholics. I didn't understand what it meant to be an alcoholic the whole time I was here.
My flimsy definition of step one is what I'm betting my life on to keep me sober. I'm betting my life on meeting attendance and thinking through the drink. I've got no clue what it means to be powerless over alcohol. You guys told me I was. I said, "Okay, I am." And that was it.
What I learned was that when we say we're powerless over alcohol and that our lives become unmanageable, it means something way different than what I ever thought.
I owned a big book. I had a $10,000 one. That's what treatment centers cost back in '87. I had a couple. I picked up another one somewhere along the way. It was in my house. This information's been in my house for almost 20 years. I never bothered to pick it up. I read it once. Kind of interesting. I had no clue what I was reading and nobody ever sat me down and explained to me exactly what we're talking about.
Let me show you what I learned in this last year or so. In the doctor's opinion, you guys know who Dr. Silkworth was—Bill Wilson's psychiatrist or alcohol doctor back then. The only thing that they could do for people like us was to sober us up, try to make it comfortable, and then send us on our way and hope for the best. That's all they had going.
Dr. Silkworth started seeing these chronic alcoholics coming back and coming back. It was just an absolute revolving door. These guys weren't making it. So he formed an opinion which has later been proven to be medically true, scientifically true. He says that we believe, and so suggested a few years ago, that the action of alcohol on these chronic alcoholics is a manifestation of an allergy.
All an allergy is is an abnormal reaction. Is anybody here allergic to penicillin? What happens when you take penicillin? You break out. If you come to my house and I got penicillin in my medicine cabinet, do I got to lock it up around you? Most people don't react like he does to penicillin. He reacts differently than most people. It's an abnormal reaction to penicillin.
It's the same thing with alcohol. Chronic alcoholics, real alcoholics, the way we respond to alcohol when we put it in our bodies is we crave more alcohol. The book says, "The phenomenon of craving is limited to this class and never occurs in the average temperate drinker."
Normal people do not experience this craving for alcohol. What do they do when they put alcohol in their bodies? One drink, maybe two drinks, and then they start to say crazy stuff like, "I'm starting to feel this. I feel tipsy. I think I'll stop now." And we're just baffled. I cannot relate to it. I don't even know what tipsy is. For me, tipsy was like a ten-second period that I passed right through on my way to something bigger and better than tipsy.
But that's what happens to these people when they drink. Alcohol is a poison. They feel sick. They stop drinking because it doesn't feel good. For us, our bodies react differently. We crave more alcohol, which explains why I can't decide, "Okay, I'm going to go out and I'm just going to have ten drinks. I'm going to have ten drinks and I'm going to stop at number ten."
It never worked for me, even when I was young. I could never control the amount that I took because of that craving. Once I've got alcohol in my body, I'm craving more of it. I just can't stop. In fact, if I didn't pass out or fall asleep or get arrested or something interrupt that process, I'd drink myself to death. If I could stay awake long enough, I would drink myself to death because of that craving.
The book says, "These allergic types can never safely use alcohol in any form at all—Nyquil, Listerine, Sterno, you name it, rubbing alcohol. Our bodies don't know what's on the label. Our bodies react to the alcohol. That's it."
Once having lost their self-confidence, their reliance upon things human, their problems pile up on them and become astonishingly difficult to solve. I had problems pile up on me that were astonishingly difficult to solve. These were small problems. It's like I need to fill up my gas tank. I need to find a way to scrape together a buck and a half for a pack of cigarettes, which I'm dating myself. I quit smoking 15 years ago. I know they're like what, nine bucks a pack now?
That's the first part of step one. We are powerless over how much we drink. We have no power over controlling our drinking.
The other part, which really kind of shocked me when I learned this stuff and when I really thought about it, is that if it were just a physical problem, if it were just a physical allergy, the answer would be what I was doing: just don't drink. If you don't drink, you cannot crave alcohol. It can't happen. The craving that we experience is a physical craving. No booze, no craving. It's that simple.
The problem is how do I keep from that first drink? I could never do that. I could never decide I'm done drinking and then stick to it.
What they're telling us here in this book—if you guys have a book, no one does. I'll read it to you. There's some metallic writing on page 24 of the big book. If you guys don't have this underlined in your books, go home and look at this. It says, "The fact is that most alcoholics, for reasons yet obscure, have lost the power of choice in drink. Our so-called willpower becomes practically non-existent."
It says, "We are unable at certain times to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago. We are without defense against the first drink."
My experience is this is the most important paragraph in this whole book right here. This is the paragraph that saved my life this time around.
The people that I made friends with and that I was going to meetings with and that sponsored me—these people all loved me. I'm positive that I love them. They're the greatest people in the world. I'm still friends with them to this day. They met well with the help that they offered me. They thought that they were doing the right thing. But the truth is, when they were telling me to go to a bunch of meetings and to think through the drink, I was getting some pretty bad advice.
When I was telling new people to do the exact same thing because I was told to just do what was done to me and teach people what I've been taught, I was killing alcoholics.
The truth is right here in this paragraph: thinking through the drink doesn't work. I can remember all the crazy stuff that happened to me when I was drinking. It couldn't keep me sober. My own war story couldn't keep me sober. I could remember the stuff, but I couldn't remember it with sufficient force to keep me sober.
When I learned this last year, it scared the crap out of me because I thought that if I just get clear of the booze, get detoxed, get a few weeks distance between me and the last drink, then I'd be able to think through the drink and remember how bad the relapse was and stay sober. This book, this paragraph, totally contradicts what we've been telling people in Alcoholics Anonymous for years.
The truth is the group I was going to, we didn't talk about the big book. We had three, four meetings a day, pretty much discussion meetings. We had a big book study on Sunday nights. Our big book study consisted of reading a paragraph out of the big book, closing the big book, and talking about whatever you wanted to talk about. You were asked to stick to the topic, but if you don't, that's okay because you can talk about whatever's bothering you too. It doesn't matter as long as you participate. That's what our big book study was in my group.
Our primary purpose wasn't necessarily carrying our message to the alcoholic who still suffers. Basically, we didn't have a message. Our message was go to meetings. If you have a problem, bring it here. We'll help you solve it. Our primary purpose was pretty much trying to find enough chairmen for all the damn meetings we were holding. We're sending a message by having all these meetings that the meetings are important and that you need them to stay sober, and we're going to have them all day long so that whenever you need to stay sober, there's going to be a meeting for you.
I've been studying this book for a little over a year and there's nothing in this book about AA meetings.
Back in the day, what they were doing was working the steps and carrying the message to the alcoholics. They didn't have meetings to start with. When they did have them, people had worked the steps before they got to come to the meetings. They were spending their time looking for people to work with instead of hanging out in AA clubs playing dominoes waiting for a new person to show up. That's what was going on back then. That's when they had a 75% success rate.
Today, in Dallas, Texas, based on our chip sales—the desire chips: one month, two month, three month, and all that—based on those numbers, you got about a 5% chance of making it a year. We tell people to go to 90 meetings in 90 days. You got a 15% chance of making it in 90 days.
What can anybody tell me what happens on day 90 or day 91? What's supposed to happen then? Is it just that we're used to AA or we feel comfortable?
Back in the beginning, what these guys were doing is they were taking people through the steps quickly—one day, two days. Dr. Bob was taking people through the steps in a couple of days. His second day sober, he's out looking for drunks to work with. Bill Wilson would take 7 days, 9 days, something like that. All these guys, 2 weeks tops, maybe 30 days tops, and then they had their spiritual experience, their entire psychic change, and they're out carrying the message. It was the coolest thing.
What are we doing today? I know what I did when new people came up to me. I used to stand in the meetings at the end of the meetings with 14, 15 years sober, and there'd be a new guy in the room because we had asked at the beginning of the meeting if there was a new guy. Then he puts his hand up and then we tell our war stories for an hour thinking that we're going to scare him into staying sober.
After the meeting, I'm standing there thinking, "God, please don't let this guy come up and ask me to be a sponsor," because we'd all gone around the room and given our sobriety dates. I happened to have a lot of time at that time and I was an easy target. Please don't let him ask me to be a sponsor because I don't know what to do with him.
But then there's that other voice inside me that says, "Well, never say no in AA. If someone asks you to do something, you do it."
So these people come up to me and ask me to be their sponsor. What would I tell them? Well, I'd tell them what was told to me: "Sit tight. Go to 90 and 90 and we'll take our time with this thing. There's no rush. It's not a race. It's a marathon." Blah blah blah blah blah.
The truth is, I didn't know what to do with the guy. I didn't know how to take these steps out of the book. I was just hoping that he'd make it and stay sober for that 90 days and forget about wanting to do the steps. That way I wouldn't have to admit that I didn't know what the hell I was doing.
And most of the time the guys didn't make it. Shame on me for that. But that's what I was doing. That's what was done with me.
The truth is I didn't know what was in this book. I had no clue. No one ever sat me down in the beginning and explained to me exactly what my truth is.
My truth is I've got a mind that can't keep me from the first drink and I've got a body that can't keep me from the second drink.
Do you guys hear any hope in that? There's no hope. If I had learned that from the beginning, I would have had a reason to take these steps. But when I got out of that treatment center and I'm feeling good, there's no reason to take these steps. Why? Why mess things up? Why inflict any torture on myself talking about my past, stirring up my issues and all this stuff? Why even bother doing that?
There's a guy named Paul who I think he's from Arizona and he wrote this thing. If you guys want a copy, I'll be glad to email it to you after the meeting. I'm not going to read the whole thing. It's kind of long, but it's called "Reflections of Step One."
He's writing about his experience with step one. He says, "My experience and attitude with steps 2 through 12 is simply a reflection of what I experienced in step one. If I am honest with myself in step one, I cannot escape the truth. I cannot escape the reality that there is nothing I can do to keep myself sober. I will see that I am guaranteed not to drink again. There is no hope in step one. I will digest the truth that I do not have the power to choose whether I will or will not drink. Relying on my memory of suffering to keep me sober is no longer an option. My better judgment and greater intellect will not produce a mental defense against the first drink."
He goes on to say, "As a result of experiencing the first step, rather than it being an intellectual exercise—which is what it was for me when I was told that I'd already taken step one before I came in—I'm in touch with my powerlessness at a gut level. This tends to produce discomfort. This discomfort is a gift. This very gift promotes a desire to seek power which I do not possess. This discomfort is not to be confused with fear being the motivation to stay sober."
That's what I used to stay sober. I was scared of all that stuff that I thought would happen again. So I'm relying on fear, meeting attendance, and the suffering that I experienced at the end of my drinking. To rely on fear to stay sober is dangerous, because the day will come when the fear will disappear and then there will be no reason for me to stay sober.
That's some pretty tough stuff there.
I had 17 years, and I remember sitting in a meeting. I had about 15 years. I'm sitting in a meeting. It was a men's meeting, a discussion meeting, Saturday morning. Me and all my buds. There's about 40 of us. A bunch of us would always go out to breakfast afterwards. Great fellowship, great guys. Love them all.
We're sitting in the meeting. The chairman starts with a topic. I don't remember what it was. Maybe gratitude or something you did over the weekend. I don't know. He starts calling on people and the topic kind of changes every time someone else talks because they're talking about themselves. It gets around to me. I'm maybe the fifth or sixth guy, and they're calling on me and I'm thinking I don't have anything to say. I hadn't been practicing in my mind what I was going to say in case I got called on. So I'm unprepared. I got to say something.
I introduce myself. "Tom, alcoholic." "Hi Tom." We go through all that stuff. Then I tell him, "Look, you know, I don't want to scare any newcomers, but I got to tell you guys the truth. I am dying in Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm going to drink again. It's not going to be today, probably not next week, probably not even this month, maybe not even this year, but I am headed in that direction. I don't know what to do."
The rest of the meeting, they kind of share at me. You know, we don't cross talk, but we can sure share it. People reference what they're saying and make it sound like we're not cross talking. Anybody? Am I the only one that's ever done that?
So that's what these guys are doing, and they love me. They come up to me after the meeting and give me hugs and tell me, "Man, I'm glad you shared that. You know what you need?" I said, "What?" "Here it comes. You need to go to more meetings."
I'm thinking I'm screwed. I'm absolutely screwed. My meeting attendance for that whole 17 years was high. I never had a period that I wasn't going to meetings. Never happened. I was afraid that if I quit going, I'd drink again. So I'm going no matter what. No matter how much crap I have to listen to in our meetings, I'm there because I don't want to drink.
These guys are telling me I need to double up. I'm like, "If that's the answer, I can't do it. I can't double up anymore. I can't take this stuff anymore. I just can't stand it."
The truth is, when we're in meetings, let me just say this—I might lose a few people here. I notice I've already lost half the room, and that's okay.
We don't have a right to say whatever we want in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. We don't have that right. Our primary purpose is to carry the group's message to the alcoholic who still suffers. If I'm going to use up precious meeting time, precious time to help that new person, talking about me, I'm being a selfish son of a bitch. If you guys are permitting me to do that, no one's cutting me off, you need to take a closer look at the traditions and think about why we're really here.
Alcoholics Anonymous is for sobering up drunks. That's it. That is what we're here for. We can't handle our everyday problems. We're not equipped to deal with that. That stuff gets taken care of on page 84 in step 10. I've tried it. It works beautifully. That's not why we're here.
Over in the book, I know you guys have heard this part a million times. It says, "Selfishness, self-centeredness—that we think is the root of our troubles. Driven by 100 forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, self-pity." That's what I'm doing when I'm dumping my crap in a meeting—self-pity. We step on the toes of our fellows, blah blah blah. "So our troubles, we think, are basically of our own making. They rise out of ourselves. The alcohol is an extreme example of self-will run riot."
It says, "Above everything, we alcoholics must be rid of the selfishness." Why? "We must, or it kills us."
If we don't get rid of the selfishness in steps 4, 5, 6, and 7—we identify it in 4, we talk about it in 5, we get ready to ask God to remove it in 6, and we pull the trigger in step 7—we die.
So what are we doing when we permit someone to come into our meeting and take up time from the newcomer who comes here looking for the solution and engage in selfishness and self-centered behavior by talking about themselves? Are we kind of permitting them to do something that can kill them? Think about it.
I did it. I sat there for years, never said a word to anybody. Never said, "Hey man, you know, quit being a bogart with this meeting. Take the steps, do something about this stuff. You're wrapped up in yourself. All you think about is yourself in this meeting. You think that we're here to fix your problems. I'm an alcoholic. I don't know how to fix these problems."
The book's real clear on this stuff. If we do the work, God will solve our problems. I've got all sorts of reasons to go to therapy based on traditional reasons—childhood issues, all this other stuff. That stuff does not haunt me anymore.
If you look in the promises and the ninth step—there are promises all over the book. What I've experienced as a result of working the steps is I don't regret the past. I don't sit here in meetings ruminating on all this crap that happened to me when I was a kid and I don't wish to shut the door on it. That's been my experience. When I do the steps and I do this work and I'm carrying the message to other alcoholics, that stuff in my past that I need therapy for—it's not bothering me. It's not holding me back from anything.
What happens is I've taken these steps and I've tapped into a power greater than me that not only doesn't let that stuff pull me back, but it pulls me forward. It motivates me to go out and carry this message.
The 17 years I was sober, I spoke one time in an AA group. That's it. One time. I was asked a million times and I always had some excuse for not doing it because I was scared that I would have to come up here and try to remember my war stories, which I couldn't remember because I've got the memory of a crack baby, or try to make you guys laugh for an hour. I didn't think I could pull it off.
One time I'm in New Orleans. My wife and I went there to hang out. This friend of mine, Danny from Austin, knew this guy named Michael from New Orleans. He says, "Give Michael a call and go to a meeting with him." I was like, "Okay."
I gave Michael a call and Michael shows up with a bunch of his buddies, takes me to a meeting. I'm the only white guy in this meeting. These people wrote me in. It was also my seventh day birthday. They pulled me in and I was just like, you know, they were glad I was there, man. They all came up to me and wanted to know how things were in the program in Austin. We're just, you know, they're just the coolest people in the world.
Then they find out it's my birthday and they ask me to speak. I'm coming up. When you're at the meeting and they're asking you to speak, you can't tell them that you got something else you got to do. It doesn't work. I rode there in their car. So I'm screwed.
Somehow I made it through that meeting. They all clapped at the end. I don't know what I said, but I do know this: Whatever I said was just a bunch of horse crap. I was regurgitating stuff that I'd been picking up in meetings, stuff I'd read off the bumper stickers, stuff I'd read off the wall, all this stuff trying to just kill an hour in front of a bunch of people I don't know. It was the scariest experience of my life.
What's different today? I got lucky enough to find a sponsor and to find a group that studies this book and lives and dies by this book. My sponsor sat down with me, took me through the doctor's opinion, the first 43 pages, and explained to me exactly what my problem was: I've got a physical craving when it comes to alcohol, and I've got a mind that no matter what the reason, it doesn't matter if I'm going to die if I take a drink, there's no reason strong enough to keep me sober.
That is the absolute truth. Unless I experience an entire psychic change like it talks about in the doctor's opinion, I'm screwed.
He didn't candy coat it. He didn't say anything about, "Well, since you showed up here, you must be an alcoholic. Nothing happens by mistake." All that other stuff we tell people. He hit me right in the middle of the forehead with this stuff.
He asked me, "Are you a real alcoholic?" I said, "Yes." He said, "Are you willing to do whatever it takes?" I said, "Yes."
We started on with these steps and within less than two weeks, I have the steps done.
I've told people to take their time with the steps. Other people told me that. I hear it all the time in AA meetings: "Take your time with the steps. Wait a year till you do step 4 because you can't handle what you're going to write down. You can't deal with it. You got to let your head clear."
Here's the truth: If you're a real alcoholic, your brain can't keep you from the first drink and your body can't keep you from the second drink. Working with others and tapping into a power greater than yourself is your solution. You got a week or a month that you can rely on your own defenses, buddy. We got to get you to your solution quick or you're going to die. That's just the truth of it.
So when we're telling people to take your time with these steps, wait a year before you can sponsor anybody or two years—that's crazy. Our solution is working with other drunks. In fact, the book tells us, "Nothing ensures immunity from drinking as much as intensive work with the drunk." That means taking them through the steps. That's our solution. Why would we keep people from the solution? What's the deal there?
Because we spend our time talking about our problems. That's what we're doing in our meetings. In our group, that's all we did. Once in a while, someone would say something out of the big book. It was usually page 449, "Acceptance is the answer to all my problems."
How did these guys stay sober before they had a page 449? Acceptance is kind of a result of working the steps, but I don't have an acceptance switch. I don't have an acceptance button. When I get jammed up, there's nowhere I can go, flip the switch and all of a sudden acceptance occurs. I've been listening to this stuff for years and I'm trying to think, "Well, I'm just screwed because I can't accept things."
When in fact, on page 84, it tells me exactly what to do when I get sideways with the world. When I feel resentful or selfish or dishonest or frightened, whatever, it gives me exact instructions.
That's what I experienced this last year with the steps in Alcoholics Anonymous.
Was anybody here ever told that for step 4, you got to write a 40, 50-page autobiography, get everything out on paper and all that good stuff? I'm thinking, you know, when I was maybe 23, 24, 25, I'm thinking I probably got to do this for step 4 right now. Probably ought to get it out of the way because I've only got 25 years of stuff to write down. If I wait till I'm 30 or 40, I'm going to have 30 or 40 years worth of stuff to write down. So just for the sake of keeping it short, I'll do it now.
I did it. I wrote down all sorts of stuff. I don't know what I wrote, but I did this fifth step and it was really more like a confessional. The guy I was doing it with didn't understand that the whole purpose of this exercise is to identify the things that are blocking me from that power that's going to save my life.
In fact, the whole purpose of the steps—the steps are designed to remove all the things that block us from God. The selfishness, the dishonesty, all of our character defects. We're not doing these steps so that Tom can turn into a good boy. That's not what this stuff's about, or make up with everybody and everybody can be happy. The whole purpose of these steps is to remove all those things that are blocking me from God for my solution.
Step 4 is no different. If confessional were the solution, man, go down to the church, grab you a priest, dump your stuff, and you're done. You never have to drink again. Problem is, that's not what works for us. What works for us is identifying what it is that blocks us from God and asking him to remove it. That's it.
Step 4—we kill a lot of folks with them because we overwhelm them with the steps. They think that they can't do this stuff and so they don't do it. Who the hell wants to fail at anything? It's a