After Twenty-One Years I Still Wake Up Feeling Normal — By Seven My Sponsees Remind Me I’m Not – Wayne B.

About This Speaker Tape

Wayne B. speaks at Rocky Point Roundup on October 16, 1999, with a November 8, 1977 sobriety date and nearly 22 years in Alcoholics Anonymous. He opens with gratitude for the committee and declares repeatedly that he loves AA, framing the talk around how he honors the traditions by showing up, dressing up, and doing what he says. He walks through his drinking history with heavy humor — Budweiser, Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill, Mad Dog 2020, six years of diarrhea, dentures nearly lost in the toilet — before turning to the diagnosis at age 18 by seven psychiatrists who labeled him an irreversible psychopath after he tried to kill his family during a tequila blackout.

He describes childhood years spent in the retarded class, a 17-year-old shotgun marriage in Palmyra Missouri after his first Budweiser-fueled encounter, a Navy hitch that included Vietnam and a blackout with his captain's children, and a long descent that left him sleeping in a dumpster behind Larry's Oasis. A restaurant owner named Harvey handed him a brass AA coin and sent him to 416 16th Street in Moline, where he slid into his first meeting and met Barney, the sponsor who called him 'dummy' for five years and survived a .357 round fired six inches high.

Wayne details seven years dry without a sponsor, a bipolar misdiagnosis and a bag of lithium, amitriptyline, and experimental Prozac that Barney talked him out of taking at the Made Rite diner. Six months with Clancy and the Pacific Group in California, a real Fifth Step, commitments, and the Triangle of AA — steps, traditions, service — lifted the depression permanently and moved him from 146 pounds back to 242. He became a Des Moines sheriff's reserve officer despite two attempted-murder arrests and 17 psych ward stays.

He closes with the story of signing irrevocable adoption papers giving up his 12-year-old son Zachary, then throwing up for the first time in 21 years — only to learn months later that the paperwork never reached the Rock Island courthouse in time, and the boy is still his son. The core message: internal spiritual maladjustment is the real disease, the AA fellowship is the sufficient substitute for the effect produced by alcohol, and a hand in the newcomer's hand leaves no hand free to pick up a drink.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Wayne B. opens, thanks the Rocky Point committee, surrogate mother Carol, and newcomers Eric and Sean; declares 'I love AA' as the night's thesis
• 4:30 Diagnosed irreversible psychopath at age 18 by seven psychiatrists after a tequila blackout and attempt to kill his family
• 8:00 The Budweiser, Boone's Farm, and Mad Dog riff; six years of Alcoholic Terminal Diarrhea and the dentures that flew into the toilet
• 15:00 The ism defined as internal spiritual maladjustment; Clancy's 'disease of perception' and the catalog of his finer qualities from the Big Book
• 28:00 Age 9 in the mirror deciding he is butt ugly, placement in the retarded class, and Tom handing him his first Budweiser at the senior dance
• 38:00 Palmyra Missouri shotgun marriage to Bonnie, Navy enlistment with dad coaching him to hide the retarded class, Vietnam years with no drinking
• 48:00 Winter 1972 in the dumpster behind Larry's Oasis, Harvey's brass coin, and the flickering light bulb at 416 16th Street Moline
• 58:00 Sponsor Barney, the .357 fired at a home group meeting, six-point leathers at Franciscan, and the last drink on the Moline stoop November 1977
• 70:00 Seven years dry without a sponsor, the bag of lithium, amitriptyline, and experimental Prozac Barney talked him out of at the Made Rite diner
• 82:00 Signing irrevocable adoption papers for son Zachary, the paperwork lost in the mail, and Clancy's 'put one hand in the newcomer's' closing image