Cut to the Chase: Old Ideas Are the Killers and the Fifth Step Finds Them – Clint H.
About This Speaker Tape
Clint H. leads a workshop titled Cut to the Chase, exploring what it really means to get to the point in AA. He opens by asking the audience what the phrase means to them — get to the point, get real, no mind games — then delivers exactly that for the next hour.
Clint shares the harrowing moment of sitting in a nasty bar on Sandy Boulevard in Portland, telling a woman his wife and son had been killed in a car wreck just to get sympathy drinks — then snapping money from her purse when she got up to play the jukebox. He marvels at the insanity of denying the existence of his own family for a few more drinks. He describes the baffling powerlessness of deciding not to drink and then finding a glass in his hand at the bar without any memory of how it got there.
The heart of the talk is about Higher Power cutting to the chase to fill a horrible gap in his life. On August 14, 1966, something happened that went right to the piece of him that always needed a drink. It was sudden and profound. He was nine months sober before he even noticed. Clint connects this to his work as a sponsor and lawyer, explaining that listening to a Fifth Step with an eye toward old ideas — asking what would a person have to believe to feel this way — is how he helps men find clarity out of chaos. He closes with the only prayer that works at the end of the day: thank you for this sweet day of sobriety, of finally and at long last being willing to cut to the chase.
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