All-American at Notre Dame and Still an Eleventh-String Alcoholic Inside My Own Head – Wes P.

About This Speaker Tape

Wes introduces himself as a real alcoholic and walks back through a life that looked enviable from the outside and felt empty from the inside. He grew up in Atlanta as the son of an intense, loving, alcoholic Korean War vet who coached him in Pop Warner and instilled a work ethic that carried him to an 11th-string walk-on slot and eventually an All-American season at Notre Dame, a national championship, and a trip to the Rose Garden with Ronald Reagan holding the Gipper sweater. His father had a stroke and slipped into a coma during Wes's championship season, and that unresolved grief, paired with a sixth-round draft into the NFL blown on a six-week bender before the combine, set the template for the rest of his drinking.

After football Wes landed on Wall Street selling bonds, where unlimited expense accounts and ego on steroids rewarded exactly the behavior that was killing him. He married, had three kids, ordered his pregnant wife's dinner one night and came home four days later from a strip club. He tells how he finally made it into the rooms only to get his ex-wife off his back, strung together almost five years as a dry drunk, and then in 2008 — with his marriage collapsing, four lawsuits pending, a custody battle underway, and a real estate portfolio imploding — used the wreckage as a license to drink again. The relapse terrified him: cravings, shakes, drinking through the night, blacking out on a quail shoot, drinking on the boat with his kids.

The turn came when he finally surrendered and stopped trying to manipulate the steps. A sponsor he calls the Step Nazi walked him through an honest Fourth and Fifth on roughly 150 people, and Wes sat alone in the bottom of the Triangle club for an hour on a Sixth and Seventh Step prayer — the closest thing to a white-light experience he has ever had. He describes revitalizing the dying 5:45 meeting at Triangle by just showing up as chair and speaker until others came, and rebuilding relationships with his kids by letting go of the urge to control his ex-wife.

His core message is that he has to practice this in all his affairs — the zen in the room and the guy cussing somebody out on the drive home are the same man — and that peace comes from getting smaller in his own world. He says bluntly that he did not like himself, thought he was a total scumbag, and is only now starting to feel like a human being worth being.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Troy opens the Blue Chip Speaker Meeting and introduces Wes, recalling how Wes struggled early then made a personal decision and rebuilt the 5:30 Triangle meeting from three drifters to forty or fifty regulars
• 3:30 Wes remembers his first few meetings sitting in this same room thinking these people are weird and I have nothing in common with them
• 5:00 Walks into Pearson's liquor store at West Paces Ferry and Peachtree at fourteen or fifteen, walks out with a bottle of Bacardi, wakes the next morning with strawberries in his hair and throw-up on the side of the house
• 9:00 Eleventh string at Notre Dame — his mother begs him to come home from the Yankees, his father tells him you made a decision and by Higher Power you're going to make it work, then hangs up
• 12:00 Holds the Gipper sweater with Ronald Reagan, Dan Quayle, George Bush Sr., Lou Holtz and the president of Notre Dame in the Rose Garden after the national championship
• 14:30 Father lies in an Atlanta hospital bed in a coma through his entire undefeated championship senior year and never recovers
• 20:00 Orders his pregnant wife's dinner at the country club, detours to a strip club to meet a buddy, comes home four days later
• 28:00 2008 — divorce, three small kids, collapsing real estate deals, four lawsuits, consultant and three attorneys, and Wes uses it as an excuse to drink after nearly five years sober
• 38:00 Works an honest Fourth and Fifth Step on roughly a hundred and fifty people with the sponsor he calls the Step Nazi, then sits alone for an hour in the bottom of the Triangle club on a Sixth and Seventh Step prayer — his one white-light moment
• 46:00 Revives the 5:45 Triangle meeting by showing up 340 times in 365 days as chair and speaker until others started coming to group conscience