Admitting I Was Whipped Was the Richest Resource I Had to Work With

About This Speaker Tape

M. tells the story of growing up in postwar Los Angeles as the brother of a polio survivor, shouldering caretaking duties at an age when he didn't understand why his older brother's legs didn't work. Raised largely by his mother and her parents after his parents agreed to disagree, he learned early that love was conditional on performance — good grades and finished chores bought him favor, anything else bought physical discipline. His first real drink came at twelve or thirteen, a quart of malt liquor split four ways in a vacant lot, and the transformation was instant: taller, funnier, able to talk to girls. From that night forward, drinking and getting high became his job.

He ran away to Haight-Ashbury, cycled through chemists and concerts and narcotics, did two stretches in prison, and got out the last time at thirty vowing never to return — then simply paid other people to do the illegal work so he could keep his supply. A Boy Scout master turned judge once released him to ninety meetings in ninety days in 1969, but he treated AA as a sneaky-Pete maneuver for decades. He cycled in and out of the rooms from the late eighties through 1999, never fully stopping until April 2003.

The turning point came at a men's meeting when he was four months in and spewing anger from his chair. A man named Dennis Sanfilippo said five words that finally landed — I know how you feel, I think I can help you — and became the sponsor who walked him through the book. Dennis died about a year and a half later, leaving M. with eighteen months and a string of sponsors before settling with Ray, whom he's been with six or seven years.

Eleven months before this talk M. was diagnosed with an advanced cancer and given a seven-to-eleven-month prognosis. He's still standing, still in chemo, still employing some alternative regimens, still hopeful. He closes with a John F. Kennedy line he's carried a long time — the real enemy of the truth is the myth, the small lies we tell ourselves to make the myth feel real — and thanks the room for giving him love before he acted like he deserved any of it.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Isaac introduces the speaker as his friend M.; M. excuses himself and opens with gratitude for being here at all
• 2:30 Born in Los Angeles mid-century; father a Navy engineer, mother worked in a pottery; brother born 1949
• 5:00 1952 — brother contracts polio; next two years spent in hospital waiting rooms while mother doesn't leave brother's side
• 10:30 Learned love was conditional — grades and chores bought favor, everything else bought physical discipline from mother
• 14:00 First drink at a Thanksgiving cabin — mixed the liquor cabinet, family found him in the snow
• 17:00 Age 12 or 13, a quart of malt liquor split four ways in a vacant lot — instantly taller, funnier, able to talk to girls
• 25:00 Runs away to Haight-Ashbury; leaves society on 18th birthday; gets involved with chemists in San Francisco
• 34:00 1969 — Boy Scout master turned judge releases him on his own recognizance to 90 meetings in 90 days; ignores the pink card for the next 30+ years
• 42:00 Meets Dennis Sanfilippo at a men's meeting — 'I know how you feel, I think I can help you'; final sobriety date April 2003
• 55:00 Cancer diagnosis 11 months ago, 7-to-11-month prognosis; closes with JFK line on myth being the real enemy of truth