Sober Sunrise - AA Speaker Podcast

Steve attended meetings almost every morning for 100 days, but without a sponsor or the Steps, he was stone cold sober and slowly losing his mind.
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Steve, sober since July 27, 1996, shares in Reykjavik about arriving in AA under court order, sitting beneath the coffee machine at his first meeting, and planning never to return. Instead, he attended that same meeting for nearly three years, initially hearing only that he should avoid drinking and keep coming back. At 100 days sober, alone on a business trip and mentally unraveling, Steve stood over a hotel minibar before returning home and making an elaborate plan to disappear using 13 old passports. One expired tourist passport and one more meeting placed him in front of a sponsor who immediately began taking him through the Steps. Inventory exposed the fear and resentment separating Steve from his father, while amends taught him to listen, become present for his dying mother, and finally love his disabled daughter without resentment. Steve connects those experiences to sponsorship, complete honesty, prayer, service, and the moment another recovering father was restored to his own son. His message is direct: meetings help us find one another, but the program of action is in the Steps, and desperation can become the gateway through which grace finally reaches us.
Steve L. from Redondo Beach, CA speaking at the Road to Recovery conference in Reykjavik, Iceland - September 17th 2010Music: Deep by KaizanBlu
 

In Parts 6 and 7 of the Joe & Charlie Founders' Day series, willingness becomes action as We Agnostics leads directly into How It Works and the Twelve Steps.
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In this combined session, Joe and Charlie begin with We Agnostics and explain why the Big Book does not demand a particular religion, a polished understanding of God, or perfect belief. Instead, it asks whether the alcoholic can become willing to seek a power greater than human power. From there, they move into How It Works, the wording and development of the Twelve Steps, and the difference between reaching conclusions in Steps One and Two and making a decision in Step Three. They break down will as thinking and life as action, explain why self-will cannot solve a problem rooted in self, and show why the Third Step decision must immediately be carried into inventory. Parts 6 and 7 form the bridge between understanding the problem and beginning the practical program of action.
Joe & Charlie speaking in Laughlin, Nevada, circa 1998 - "The Big Book Comes Alive" workshop tapes - Parts 6 & 7: "We Agnostics" and "How It Works"
Music: Deep by KaizanBlu

John spent years believing he was unwanted because he was Indigenous, uneducated, poor, and unable to speak the way other people did. AA taught him that none of those things had robbed him of life nearly as much as refusing to accept himself.
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John shares how he arrived at his first AA meeting at 28 after seven years on Skid Row, unable to read or write, living in a mission, and interested mainly in the free coffee and donuts. A lawyer greeted him at the door, introduced him to people who treated him with care, and gave John his first experience of belonging sober. Although the desire to drink disappeared, loneliness, fear, and isolation returned after several years because he still had no program for living. A Step meeting and an unlikely friendship with a priest challenged John to become teachable, stop blaming his identity and circumstances, and begin where he was with what he had. From one underpriced house-painting job came a room of his own, a ladder, a business, a driver’s license, an 11-passenger station wagon, a wife, six children, and a life spent helping others. John’s message is not that AA turned him into somebody else, but that honesty, faith, and the Steps finally taught him to stop fighting the person he had always been.
John  V. from Berlin, MA speaking at the 1st Atlantic Summer Roundup in Moncton, NB - June 23rd 1989Music: Deep by KaizanBlu
 

Karl called his father, a minister and theologian, expecting him to explain God. His father gave him a much shorter answer: God is whatever got you to those people, so do what they say.
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Karl, sober since January 21, 1987, shares a rapid-fire AA talk about growing up in Borneo, blacking out from his first drink at 11, earning ten college credits in three years, dealing drugs, living on the streets, and joining the Navy to escape people he owed. His drinking followed him into military life, where he drove through a guard shack, repeatedly drank on Antabuse, landed in jail, and was finally sent to treatment under threat of the brig and a bad-conduct discharge. At his first AA meeting, one sentence described the condition he could never explain: his mind would have killed his body, but it needed it for transportation. What followed was a weekend of meetings, a recovering alcoholic waiting for him aboard his ship, nightly Big Book study in the battery shop, inventory, difficult financial amends, an honorable discharge, and a return to college. Karl explains how meetings, the book, and service became recovery, unity, and service in action, and how loading newcomers into a broken Volkswagen taught him that helping someone else could improve his life before the car even left the parking lot.
Karl M. from Covina, CA speaking somewhere in Texas, sometime in 1994Music: Deep by KaizanBlu
 

Paul went to AA for seven months with no intention of becoming an alcoholic. Then he attended one meeting too many, caught himself laughing with everyone else, and never drank again
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Paul, sober since July 31, 1967, shares a wonderfully funny AA talk about being a doctor who could diagnose everyone except himself. After weight loss, convulsions, headaches, and a growing sense of insanity convinced him that he had a brain tumor, alcoholism landed him in the psychiatric ward of the hospital where he practiced medicine. He first attended AA to satisfy his psychiatrist, kept returning because his wife enjoyed the meetings, and finally discovered that the laughter, Steps, meetings, and fellowship were reaching him despite everything he thought he knew. Paul talks about the noisy committee in his head, giving God a 51 percent controlling interest in his life, assigning God the worry while he handles the work, redoing the Steps, carrying the message, and learning that sobriety requires both meetings and action. At the heart of the talk is the point of the V: accepting that he was alcoholic changed the entire direction of his life, because acceptance did not mean approval. It meant facing reality and finally having a choice.
Paul O. from Laguna Beach, CA at 19th Everett Conference - November 28th 1997Music: Deep by KaizanBlu
 

Michael knew he was alcoholic for twelve years before AA, but the part that changed his life was learning what came after putting the drink down.
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Michael, from Montana, shares a direct and thoughtful AA talk centered on Step One, especially the unmanageability that remained after alcohol was removed. He talks about years of drinking Granddad in private, blackouts, hiding car keys from himself, waking up afraid of what he might have done, time behind bars, wrecked cars, hospitalizations, and the slow degradation that made him believe he did not deserve to sober up. After court, treatment, relapses, early sponsorship choices, and the death of a friend, Michael describes the moment he got on his knees with other sober men and finally asked for the compulsion to be removed. From there, he walks through why every Step after Step One deals with the same deeper problem: resentments, fear, selfishness, sexual behavior, sponsorship, amends, and becoming a builder instead of a destroyer. This is a strong tape for anyone who has heard “I’m powerless” but still wonders what AA means by “my life had become unmanageable.”
Michael McK. from Whitefish, MT at Kalispell, MT May 17th 1998
Music: Deep by KaizanBlu
 

In Part 5 of the Joe & Charlie Founders' Day series, Joe and Charlie dig into the strange mental blank spot that makes the first drink possible again.
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In this session, Joe and Charlie walk through More About Alcoholism and the Big Book's deeper explanation of the mental side of the disease. They break down the obsession that says someday we will control and enjoy drinking, the illusion and delusion that return after consequences, and why knowledge alone does not protect the alcoholic from another first drink. Using the Big Book examples of the man of thirty, the jaywalker, and Fred, they show how the alcoholic can be sane in every other area and still have no effective mental defense when the thought of a drink returns. Part 5 sharpens Step One by showing that the problem is not only what happens after drinking starts, but the mind that keeps taking us back to the first drinkJoe & Charlie speaking in Laughlin, Nevada, circa 1998 - "The Big Book Comes Alive" workshop tapes - Part 5: "More About Alcoholism"Music: Deep by KaizanBlu

Daniel says he spent his drinking years chasing the perfect level, but every time he found it, he flew right past it.
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Daniel, from Benton, Arkansas, shares a funny, raw, and deeply alive AA talk about getting sober young after alcohol and drugs took him from anxiety and feeling different into blackouts, jail, withdrawal, rage, and wanting out. He talks about his first drink removing the knot in his gut, the daily chase for the “perfect level,” and the morning of August 8, 1998, when he asked God to let him die or give him help. What came next was detox, treatment, and three AA members who shook his hand, told him they were glad he was there, and carried a message real enough to give him hope. From there, Daniel walks through the Steps, sponsorship, inventory, amends, young people’s AA, service commitments, the recovery-unity-service triangle, and the joy of watching other alcoholics come alive. By the end, his message is simple: there is no advanced AA, service keeps the structure standing, and if God has a plan for your life, make it count
Daniel E. from Benton, AR speaking at Arkansas Conference of Young People in Alcoholics Anonymous in Morrilton, AR - October 7th 2005
Music: Deep by KaizanBlu
 

In Part 4 of the Joe & Charlie Founders' Day series, Joe and Charlie explain the two powers in There Is A Solution: the fellowship that holds us and the spiritual experience that changes us.
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In this session, Joe and Charlie walk through There Is A Solution as the Big Book's answer to the problem laid out in The Doctor's Opinion and Bill's Story. They focus on the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous, the phrase "we of Alcoholics Anonymous," and the strange but beautiful fact that people who normally would not mix can find a common solution together. They also make the larger point that fellowship alone is not enough for the real alcoholic. The chapter points toward the vital spiritual experience, the difference between the hard drinker and the real alcoholic, and the need for both support and a program of action. Part 4 is where the series starts to move from identification into the actual answer: not many solutions, but one common solution that can be lived.Joe & Charlie speaking in Laughlin, Nevada, circa 1998 - "The Big Book Comes Alive" workshop tapes - Part 4: "There Is A Solution"Music: Deep by KaizanBlu

Jerome says he was not a has-been, but a never-was, until AA gave him a design for living that took him from Skid Row and institutions to sobriety, family, education, and useful work.
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Jerome shares a vivid AA talk about growing up in South Central L.A., taking his first drink before a high school record hop in the summer of 1962, and discovering that alcohol seemed to make him able to act, perform, and stop caring what anyone thought. That first drink became a long collapse through homelessness, hospitals, arrests, mental health treatment, Camarillo State Hospital, and repeated attempts to explain away what alcohol kept doing to his life. On June 6, 1973, after one more jail cell and one more broken return home, Jerome walked into an AA clubhouse at 9604 South Figueroa and finally listened like only the dying can hear. In this talk, he tells how no-nonsense AA people, sponsorship, faith in action, work, school, fatherhood, forgiveness, and the simple design for living in Alcoholics Anonymous helped him become the man a psychiatrist once said he could never be.
Jerome S. from Corona, California Speaking at the Santa Barbara AA Convention, September 23, 2000Music: Deep by KaizanBlu