A Trial Lawyer Cross-Examines the Twelve Steps and Finds Them Airtight – Jerry J.

About This Speaker Tape

Jerry J. from Dallas speaks at the Space Coast Roundup in Melbourne Beach, Florida in 2005. This is a steps-focused teaching talk rather than his usual story share. He opens with jokes — including the condom-on-the-piano story — then immediately grounds the talk in the idea that a miracle is the replacement of an erroneous thought with the truth.

He uses his signature Patches the bulldog story as the spine of the talk: his English bulldog who fought a badger, then attacked a boar hog, got slashed by a tusk, was chained up, counseled by young Jerry, appeared cured — and then went two miles to find the hog again. Jerry identifies himself as the first hog-anon in West Texas. The parallel to alcoholism is unmistakable: the phenomenon of craving, the inability to stay stopped no matter what interventions are applied.

He walks through self-centeredness as the root of the alcoholic condition — the internal conflict of feeling one way inside and acting another way outside. The alcoholic focuses on everything that affects self, reacting with knee-jerk responses to stimuli, trying to control life through willpower. He explains that our will should be devoted to Higher Power's will, that our lives are what is going on around us that we cannot control, and that the early AAs had the four absolutes — unselfishness, honesty, purity, and love — which Bill left out of the Big Book because he thought drunks would go crazy trying to be absolute anything.

Topics

Timestamps

• 00:00 Opening jokes and miracles as the replacement of erroneous thought with truth
• 08:00 Patches the bulldog fights the badger and then goes after the boar hog
• 16:00 The parallel to alcoholism — the phenomenon of craving and inability to stay stopped
• 24:00 Self-centeredness as the root of the alcoholic condition
• 32:00 Feeling one way inside and acting another way outside
• 40:00 Our will devoted to Gods will and the four absolutes
• 48:00 Bill left the absolutes out because drunks would go crazy trying
• 56:00 Willpower versus another kind of power entirely