Brought a 48-Quart Cooler of Beer to a Baptist College and Offered the Dorm a Round 🤦 – Red S.

About This Speaker Tape

Red grew up in a rough, blue-collar neighborhood in Forest Park, Georgia, near the Atlanta airport. His father worked at a can plant, and drinking was woven into the fabric of the community. At twelve years old, Red drank his first beer — a Miller Pony swiped from a neighbor's outdoor fridge — and polished off the whole thing while catching crawfish in a creek. By eighth grade, he was buying beer at a store on Moreland Avenue that sold to anyone who walked in. His best friend's mother drove them around in a Delta 88 while they drank, and his own parents eventually decided to let the boys drink at home so they would not be out driving.

Red earned a basketball scholarship to Truett McConnell, a Baptist college in Cleveland, Georgia, and showed up with a 48-quart cooler full of beer in his truck. The scholarship did not last — he got hurt, gained weight, and was cut after one year. He went home, got a job at Georgia Power, married the college chaplain's daughter, and settled into a pattern of weekend drinking that eventually became daily blackout drinking when he moved into construction work and started traveling the state. He describes waking up each morning thinking only about when he could start drinking again.

The turning point came on April 24, 2014, when Red woke up in a motel on Lawrenceville Highway and found his company truck missing. A coworker had moved it during the night because a truck driver could not get past it, but Red had been so blacked out he never heard the phone ring. Terrified, he walked around the truck looking for dents, blood, and broken glass. He called his boss and entered Blue Ridge Mountain Rehab Center, expecting five days but staying five weeks. He then went through Summit Ridge's intensive outpatient program, where he watched people dragged in on gurneys and learned that ten of the fifty men in his rehab group were dead within six months.

Red relapsed on October 15, 2017, on his son's birthday, but got sober again two days later — October 17, 2017 — and has stayed sober since. He lost his Georgia Power career after blowing a .021 at a nuclear plant screening. He survived two heart attacks and a cancerous tumor. The emotional center of his story is the night his daughter called in suicidal crisis — he was sober, drove through the night to take her to a treatment facility in Tennessee, and believes his sobriety saved her life. He closes by saying that being sober the day his daughter needed him most is what this program gave him.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Introduction by friend; Red takes the stage and breaks the ice with the crowd
• 3:00 Growing up in blue-collar Forest Park, Georgia — fights at the bus stop, father at the can plant
• 6:00 First drink at 12 — a Miller Pony by the creek catching crawfish with neighbor Jimmy
• 10:00 Eighth grade — buying beer on Moreland Avenue, riding around in a Delta 88 with friend's mother
• 16:00 Parents let the boys drink at home; father's rule about never bringing bottles — only cans
• 22:00 Basketball scholarship to Truett McConnell, a dry Baptist school — shows up with a cooler of beer
• 30:00 Georgia Power career, daily blackout drinking on construction jobs, waking up planning when to start drinking
• 36:00 Driving daughter home from Carrollton blackout drunk — she prayed the whole way home
• 40:00 April 24, 2014 — wakes up in motel, truck is gone, enters Blue Ridge Mountain Rehab for five weeks
• 48:00 Daughter's suicidal crisis — Red is sober, drives all night to take her to The Ridge in Tennessee