Selfishness and Self-Centeredness as the Dead-End Meditation Requiring Constant Interruption – Terry R.

About This Speaker Tape

Father Terry R. shares his story at what appears to be a sober vacation event in Ixtapa, Mexico in 1993. A priest from Los Angeles, Terry grew up in Hawthorne, California surrounded by alcoholism — his father died in withdrawal in 1945, and his mother had three alcoholic brothers. He studied the disease obsessively as a child, read the Big Book two years before his first drink, and made a pledge not to drink until 21. When he finally drank, the obsession was instant and total. He describes wanting not just a drink but transcendence — to break through the clouds and see the face of the living Higher Power — and the depressing knowledge that every drunk had to end.

Ordained as a priest, Terry was assigned to South Central Los Angeles during the Watts Riots and was drinking a fifth of scotch a day by early 1967. He was fired and sent to aversion treatment, where warm salt water and nausea drugs were supposed to cure him. He went through that hospital five times before they asked him never to call back, then a sixth detox at Queen of Angels Hospital. During that sixth stay, something broke open — he realized he was the type who gets drunk no matter what, and no book, prayer, or resolution would change that. It was the First Step, though it did not feel like anything nice at the time.

Sent to a recovery house for priest alcoholics in Sterling, New Jersey, Terry began attending AA meetings daily with no expectation they would work. His first sponsor was Father Ralph Monk, a bald man with a red toupee from North Carolina who had gotten sober meeting Bill Wilson in New York in the late 1940s. The program surprised Terry — instead of pep talks about trying harder, people told him to relax into being exactly the far-gone, immature, self-obsessed alcoholic he was, and just show up. He describes his ongoing interior life as a profoundly self-centered meditation on how Terry is doing and how Terry rates, constantly requiring interruption by Higher Power, the program, and other alcoholics to pull him out of that dead-end street. With 20-plus years of sobriety, he remains deeply grateful for those interruptions.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Mary Lee reads How It Works from Chapter 5
• 4:30 Doc qualifies — Born to Lose tattoo changed to Born to Love after one year sober
• 7:00 Doc shares his story: veterinarian, five marriages, Skid Row, 40-year prison sentence, working as corrections counselor
• 13:00 Doc describes terrible year of health crises and broken relationship, finding acceptance through the program
• 16:00 Father Terry R. introduced; opens with the fruit basket story about entitlement vs gratitude
• 20:00 Terry's childhood in Hawthorne — father's death in withdrawal, alcoholic uncles, mother's explanation of the disease
• 28:00 First drink at 21: Manhattan made from a Southern Comfort ad recipe, instant obsession
• 36:00 Uncle Bill as the model alcoholic — Terry realizes he became the same kind of bore
• 45:00 Drinking a fifth a day as a young priest in South Central LA, fired and sent to aversion treatment
• 52:00 Sixth detox at Queen of Angels — the First Step arrives as total defeat, not insight
• 58:00 Recovery house in New Jersey, sponsor Father Ralph Monk, discovering the program works by interrupting self-obsession