The Difference Between a Technician and an Angel – Burns B.

About This Speaker Tape

1954, a college campus in Kentucky. A young man gets buck naked on the back of a flatbed truck, serenading women with gospel songs and a bottle of beer. Burns B. is a doctor, a "card-carrying, commode-hugging" alcoholic who spent years as a technician rather than an angel

. He speaks with a raw, backwoods cadence about the "ass whipping" required to surrender. He traces the wreckage from amphetamine rages in medical school and padded cells in psychiatric wards to a professional life fueled by a quart of whiskey a night.

He describes the paradox of being a successful physician who could diagnose pneumonia but couldn't exchange a single human feeling with a patient. For Burns, recovery isn't a cure but an evolution—a repetitive, daily grind to override the self-centered survival tools that once kept him alive but nearly left him with a 12-gauge shotgun in his mouth. He relies on his Higher Power and a sponsor to keep his ego in check.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Burns B. opens with a joke about his humility being increased by the 'enema technique'.
• 10:15 Laughter: Story about his pants not fitting and suspicions of an affair.
• 15:40 Discussion of the 'evolutionary change' of recovery and the importance of just keeping coming back.
• 22:10 Childhood in Mayfield, Kentucky, and the 'scarlet letter' of his grandfather's alcoholism.
• 32:50 The 'amphetamine rage' that led to him hitting a professor and being kicked out of medical school.
• 45:10 The 'ass whipping' metaphor: the point where one can neither live with nor without the drink.
• 58:20 The suicide attempt: 12-gauge shotgun in the mouth and the turning point of thinking about his children.
• 1:12:15 The 'New York cabbie' who waited an hour while Burns B. drank before going to treatment.
• 1:25:40 The 'muddled middle' of early sobriety in Louisville: staying sober without working the steps.
• 1:45:10 The 'peculiar mental twist' and the breakdown of narcissistic thinking.
• 2:05:30 The story of Ed D. and Bill W., and the concept of 'divine dissatisfaction'.
• 2:20:15 Final story about his father with Alzheimer's and a moment of recognition.