Curiosity Got Him Sober Because Fear Couldn’t and Willpower Wouldn’t – Jerry G.

About This Speaker Tape

Jerry G. shares his story at the Into Action Thursday Speaker Meeting in Richardson, Texas, opening with a classic joke about getting to heaven and being judged on marital fidelity. Sober since March 7, 1983, Jerry traces his drinking back to teenage years in Dallas, where his first organized attempt at drinking ended with police confiscating four cases of beer and multiple fifths of liquor from a chopped Mercury with no door handles. He describes a physical allergy that made him vomit from his earliest drinks — yet unlike beets, which made him sick once and he never touched again, he kept going back to alcohol expecting different results.

Jerry's drinking career escalated through blackouts, wrecked cars, 25 arrests in three years in California, multiple marriages, and near-total absence from his son's life — attending only two ballgames in 17 years. His bottom came in December 1982 with his fourth DWI, when he was found passed out in his car on Greenville Avenue, slumped over the steering wheel with the engine running and doors locked, and nearly drove off an embankment when police woke him. The following week, he went back to the same bar and did the exact same thing.

The turning point came through curiosity rather than desperation. His coworker Mo Johnson kept saying "I'm saving you a seat," and Jerry finally attended an AA meeting where he heard Mo share from the heart. He spent two years trying to get sober by osmosis before getting willing to work the steps. His fifth step with Mo was transformative — the "go to grave" secret he whispered lost all its power the moment Mo casually said he'd done the same thing two or three times. Jerry walks through all twelve steps with vivid personal examples, including a 1999 motorcycle wreck at 95 mph in Wyoming that put him in the hospital for four months, where AA members from Cheyenne and Denver brought meetings to his room.

Jerry closes by reading the last two paragraphs of page 164 of the Big Book, as Mo used to do with him, declaring that those two paragraphs contain the entire program of Alcoholics Anonymous. He speaks with gratitude about his fourth divorce being finalized just the week before, noting that he went through it sober, without even wanting a drink — a miracle he attributes to grabbing onto AA with both hands whenever adversity hits.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Opens with joke about going to heaven and getting transportation based on marital fidelity
• 2:30 Introduction — sober since March 7, 1983; grew up in Dallas, father worked for Braniff Airlines
• 6:00 First organized drinking attempt at 16 — four cases of beer, six fifths of liquor, police confiscation from a chopped Mercury
• 10:00 Physical allergy to alcohol — the Olympic sprayer story and the beet comparison
• 15:00 Blackout driving stories — waking up on wrong side of Central Expressway, near-miss accidents
• 22:00 Fourth and final DWI — back-to-back incidents at Stewart Anderson Cattle Company on Greenville Avenue
• 30:00 Father's hospitalization for acute alcoholism; Mo Johnson starts saying 'I'm saving you a seat'
• 37:00 First AA meeting at Aquarius group — Jim Williams doing the steps; picks up a chip on second visit
• 45:00 Fifth step with Mo — the go-to-grave secret loses its power; Mo's cancer diagnosis and death with dignity
• 55:00 Reads final two paragraphs of page 164 of the Big Book — 'trudge the road of happy destiny'