Sober Sunrise - AA Speaker Podcast

Peter went through seven treatment centers, lived on the streets of Lower Manhattan, and cursed God with everything he had - then begged Him for help from the same hallway a few weeks later.
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Peter grew up in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, lost his mother to the disease as a kid, and chased alcohol from age 14 through seven rehabs, the Brooklyn waterfront, and the streets of Lower Manhattan. His dad kept showing up - locking the door one day, coming back to rescue him the next - until the night he drove back from South Jersey on a gut feeling and found his son running the streets. Peter got sober in Minnesota in 1988 and built a life on continuous step work, prayer, and meditation that goes far deeper than just not drinking.
Peter M. from Union, NJ speaking at the Gopher State Roundup in Minneapolis, MN - May 29th 2005Music: Deep by KaizanBlu
 

Frank is a recovered attorney with 30-plus years sober who still writes a full Fourth Step inventory every single year - and he brought his latest one to the podium to read it out loud.
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Frank is a Colorado lawyer who stole from clients, blacked out through court appearances, and played bar games that made him sick to his stomach once the fog cleared. Decades sober, he still does the steps annually and walked the room through his latest written inventory column by column - resentments, ego, and the amends that came out of it. This is a nuts-and-bolts Big Book talk from a guy who treats the steps like power tools, not theory.
"Big" Frank M. from Denver, CO speaking at Top O' Top Roundup - October 10th 1996Music: Deep by KaizanBlu
 
 

Chris walked out of a 28-day rehab with every reason in the world not to drink and didn't make it five minutes off the train before he was in a bar.
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Chris  spent 17 years drinking a fifth of vodka a day while climbing the corporate ladder in management consulting. After a blackout car accident that killed another person, he cycled through mental wards, detoxes, and rehabs - still unable to stop. It took getting dragged out of a hotel by fellow AA members, doing his steps in the back of a parking lot, and eventually working his program from inside a prison cell to finally build the spiritual foundation that keeps him sober today.
Robert "Chris" P. from Newark, NJ speaking at the Spiritual Awakenings Group in Bernardsville, NJ - January 22nd 2008Music: Deep by KaizanBlu
 

Jay P. spent a year and a half making coffee, cleaning ashtrays, and giving speeches he stole from other people's meetings - until someone told him he was a phony and about to get drunk.
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Jay grew up in Cleveland, bouncing between reformatories before his first drink at 13 changed everything. He burned through the Navy, the Merchant Marine, and a marriage before landing on a stranger's doorstep 1,200 miles from home. In AA he did all the right things for a year and a half - then a fellow member called him out, he cracked open the Big Book, and four days later his life was different.
Jay P. from Myrtle Beach, SC at Northern Illinois Area Spring Conference - March 22nd 1997Music: Deep by KaizanBlu
 

Don went to 18 asylums and spent two years believing AA couldn't work because he was simultaneously too magnificent and too terrible — until they told him the Big Book isn't a philosophy, it's an instruction manual.
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Don grew up on a tobacco farm in Kentucky, fell in love with the honky-tonk heroes in the beer joints at age seven, and chased that image for 25 years through law school, a destroyed practice, and a car wreck at 130 that broke both legs and separated his pelvis. His brain would tell him AA couldn't work because he was too complex — and in the very next heartbeat tell him it couldn't work because he was too broken. He believed both every time. When he stumbled back to the door they said he'd been criticizing the literary style and quoting the book while he was dying — and that sobriety is a doing process, not a learning process. He did the steps like taking penicillin: didn't understand it, didn't believe it, did it anyway. Nine years sober he was still miserable until he realized he'd been trying to put out a fire with gasoline — treating a self-centered illness with more obsession on self. Today every crazy idea he's ever had introduces itself as common sense, and the only therapy for not wanting to do the right thing is doing it anyway.
Don M. from Louisville, KY speaking at the North Dakota Northern Spring Roundup in Grand Forks, ND - 2001Music: Deep by KaizanBlu
 

Ken spent 18 months going to AA meetings without believing he was an alcoholic — until a sponsor showed him that one drink meant he couldn't keep a promise to himself, and everything clicked.
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Ken started drinking in a park on the south side of Cleveland at 15 and loved bars so much he bought one. He danced through seven DWIs and a vehicular homicide charge without anyone ever addressing his drinking, called home every day at 3 saying he'd be there at 3:30, and never once made it — because one drink turned into the whole night every single time. He went to AA on a court order, led meetings before he even thought he was an alcoholic, and spent 18 months faking it until a sponsor in the back of the room stood up and said "keep doing what you're doing and you'll be drunk in two weeks." That man became his sponsor, handed him a card with a dime taped to it, and told him to find three people to learn from — one for the program, one for God, and one for fatherhood. Today Kevin's been married 48 years, raised two sons who show up for their mother every day, and says AA won't make you wealthy but it gives you riches nobody can take away.
Ken B. from Parma, OH speaking at the C.A.H. group in Euclid, OH - December 28th 2008Music: Deep by KaizanBlu
 

Tim was 38, sleeping under a freeway bridge, and begging for wine money when his mom said she couldn't watch him die — today he runs the same central office where a stranger once welcomed him in without flinching.
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Tim showed up drunk at his mother's door at 38 years old and told her not to worry — she told him she couldn't watch him die and gave him twenty bucks. He spent half on wine and half on a bus ticket back to Sacramento. When a drinking buddy suggested Santa Barbara, they got separated on arrival and Tim went looking for him at AA, where a woman at central office treated him with a kindness he never forgot. Today Tim runs that same office. He takes meetings into a level-three prison yard where lifers carry the message to men who can't leave their cell block. He held a sponsee's hand as he died surrounded by an AA meeting at his bedside. And one afternoon he answered two phone calls — a sober woman who needed someone to talk to and a young woman who couldn't stop drinking — and connected line one to line two, because that's how it works the best.
Tim W. from Santa Barbara, CA speaking at the Third Tradition Speaker Meeting in Studio City, CA - May 1st 2005Music: Deep by KaizanBlu
 

Don P. has been sober since 1967, served as a world trustee of AA, and says the greatest promise of the program isn't that you'll stop drinking — it's that you'll become useful.
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In this two-part weekend talk, Don P. shares over 30 years of sobriety with the depth of someone who died on Christmas night 1967 and woke up in a body that wouldn't quit. He found a dollar in the snow on Christmas Eve, bought a nine-foot tree for a seven-foot ceiling, and his little boy wrapped everything in the house in blue paper towels because there was nothing else. His father met him at the door and said his mother couldn't stand watching him die — then snuck them into the basement anyway. He got sober in a penitentiary where smiling inmates with numbers on their chests read him the Big Book and told him to shut up and listen for five weeks. Years later on an airplane, he watched a flight attendant pour wine and his mind said "that looks good" with no thought of alcohol at all — and a prayer started in him that he didn't start. Today he reads the Big Book out loud to people because that's how it was brought to him, and he says if you want to get closer to God, get closer to His children.
Don P. from Aurora, CO doing a step workshop in Slidell, LA - December 5th-7th 1997Music: Deep by KaizanBlu
 

Jack H. has been sober since 1958, drank with a parakeet named Petey who learned poker language, and says he's still got every defect of character he was born with — he's just learned what to do with them.
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Jack started drinking Tennessee homebrew at nine, joined the Navy at 18, got court-martialed three times before he was 21, and convinced his wife he owned a $2 million tobacco plantation when he didn't have $15. He drank with a parakeet named Petey who learned every word from the poker table, got stepped on flat at 250 pounds, and was revived by a jigger of whiskey — Petey died with two years sobriety. Jack did 90 days in AA the first time, drove to his sponsor's house to announce he wasn't an alcoholic, hit a car on the way home, and spent nine months back out before the program stuck. He's been carrying drunks under both arms ever since, says he's still a proud egotistical rebel, and closes with the story of a young Indian who got kicked off the reservation and came back in a Cadillac — "How?" "Chapter Five."Jack H. from San Jose, CA speaking at the 14th Reno Spring Festival in Sparks, NV - May 10th 1985Music: Deep by KaizanBlu
 

Frank was born in a mental hospital, drank for 23 years to silence the feeling that he was an intruder in every room he walked into, and one hot day in June 1970 the words "Alcoholics Anonymous" entered his mind and he was able to act on them.
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Frank  drank to smash his five senses as fast as he could — his favorite drink was always the next one. He never measured a drink, never counted a pill, and took Ritalin at cocktail parties to postpone blackouts so he could stay conscious a little longer. He changed jobs every 24 months when the lies caught up, ran from anyone who loved him, and treated his psyche like California fault lines — ignoring the pressure until something cracked. One June day in 1970 the words "Alcoholics Anonymous" came into his consciousness and somehow he was able to act on them. He's been sober ever since, and says he needs AA more today than when he walked in — not just to stay sober, but to stay emotionally sober, because he can't stay happy on yesterday's spiritual awakening.Frank M. from New York, NY speaking at Florida Roundup in Miami Beach, FL - March 18th-21st 1993Music: Deep by KaizanBlu