Clean House Trust Higher Power Work With Others — The Whole Program in Nine Words – Truck

About This Speaker Tape

Truck shares his story from a Sacramento podium, opening with road-weary humor about sandwiching this commitment between two weddings and running on coffee instead of sleep. Raised in a loving Oregon-then-Santa-Barbara home by parents who worked hard to shield him from the alcoholism that killed his grandfather in a Bakersfield gutter and his aunt by cirrhosis, he still felt something shift at the start of junior high — a day that ended with a girl named Natalie stuffing him in a trash can and rolling him down the PE hill. He says he needed a drink right then; he just didn't know it existed yet.

His first beer at twelve or thirteen, swiped from his dad's stash of Labatt Blue in the garage fridge, gave him the exact relief he'd been chasing: the simmer stopped, the fear went quiet, control disappeared. By nineteen he was in LA being snuck into bars by older coworkers, and his 21st birthday featured mat shots poured out of the bar's floor mat. Drinking accelerated into self-employment, daily weed, alcohol poisoning at a Venice Beach rum bar, and a drunk rear-ending by four construction workers who pitied him enough to let him drive home. That morning he first called AA — a woman with face tattoos sent a skeezy guy in a unicorn-airbrushed fantasy van to take him to the Log Cabin in West LA. He matrixed past the handshakes, hid behind a pole, and didn't come back for a year.

The intervening years were incomprehensible demoralization: lying to everyone, burning money, inventing fake problems like debtors anonymous to cover the real one, getting intervention after intervention from the dad who had buried his own father and sister to the disease. The bottom came on his 26th birthday in Sacramento when his parents ambushed him with a two-week detox. The last night before checkin, he asked his father to bring him his bag so he could use; his dad went white, did it anyway, and left the room. At a Fourth of July Alcathon at Group 3, a girl named Corey from his Santa Barbara high school walked in with 90 days, made sobriety look cool, and handed him off to a weasly skateboarder sponsor with 11 months who took him page by page through the Big Book.

Truck credits that 11-month sponsor, Sacramento AA, and the simple discipline of setting up chairs early and staying late for everything he has now. He talks about living amends — sitting with his mother through chemo even though he hated every minute, being a son in a way he never was before — and about his sister calling him one night needing a meeting, walking into Freedom Group, and finding his own first sponsor there by pure chance. Clean house, trust Higher Power, work with others. The least you can do is show up, and it's your job.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Truck introduces himself, sobriety date June 27 2005, home group Monday night Pasadena speaker meeting
• 3:00 Childhood in Oregon and Santa Barbara; family shielded him from alcoholic grandfather and aunt
• 6:00 First day of junior high — Natalie rolls him down the PE hill in a trash can; he says he needed a drink that day
• 10:00 First beer swiped from dad's Labatt Blue in the garage fridge around age 12-13
• 15:00 Moves to LA at 19, sneaks into bars with older coworkers, mat shots on 21st birthday
• 19:00 Alcohol poisoning at a Venice Beach rum bar; rear-ends four construction workers the next morning
• 24:00 First AA call — friend with face tattoos sends a guy in a unicorn fantasy van to the Log Cabin in West LA
• 32:00 Tells dad Hillhurst Liquor is 'a grocery store'; invents debtors anonymous to cover booze spending
• 40:00 26th birthday intervention in Sacramento; asks dad to bring his bag of drugs on the last night before detox
• 48:00 Group 3 Alcathon — runs into Corey from high school with 90 days; gets a skateboarder sponsor with 11 months who walks him through the Big Book