Do the Steps Like a Child — Earnestly and Badly — Tom W.

About This Speaker Tape

Terry, a Catholic priest from Los Angeles, tells the story of an alcoholism that began the very first day he drank — at age 21, after his confirmation pledge expired. Having already read the Big Book for a school paper, he recognized the symptoms in himself immediately but assumed he could simply quit the moment things got bad. Instead, he describes the trapped feeling of his early thinking: either drink and become a pathetic burden, or never drink and spend the rest of his life pretending he liked it, hanging from a windowsill by his fingers waiting for time to be up.

He walks through the seminary years, ordination, and the rapid deterioration once parish life gave him real opportunity to drink. He talks about the two imperatives of the functioning alky — get as much as possible, never get drunk — the sneaked Angelica wine after the 6:30 Mass, the fifth-a-day phase he mistook for moderation, blackouts at parishioner dinners where he woke up face-down in the mashed potatoes, and the showdowns with pastors that ended in five aversion treatments in ten days.

He describes praying like a man with no legs praying to grow new ones — asking Higher Power to make him feel like a non-alcoholic — and the arrogance hidden inside his meek-looking prayer. Sent to a recovery house for priest alcoholics in New Jersey, he was dragged to AA meetings he expected nothing from, and was surprised to find himself touched, drawn in, and willing to do the program like a child: earnestly and badly.

The heart of the talk is his discovery that sobriety is not something he holds but something he is being given. He found himself held up, three months past his old periodic cycle with no pressure building, hanging out with alcoholics, feeling graced. He closes on service — admitting he was embarrassed to learn that a priest of all people was not actually interested in helping anybody, and how the fellowship keeps trapping him into service anyway, which is the only thing that frees him from himself.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Introduced as Father Terry from L.A., opens with gratitude and the joke about the head table looking like the Politburo
• 3:00 The two imagined futures: drink and deteriorate into a pathetic burden, or never drink and hang from a windowsill by your fingers waiting for time to be up
• 8:00 First drink at 21 after the confirmation pledge expires, having already read the Big Book for a school paper on alcoholism
• 12:00 First-day instincts of the functioning alky click in: never let them know how bad you want it, never let them know your second or third plan
• 18:00 Seminary discipline of 5:30 wake-up, chapel at 5:50, silent meditation, and the calluses on his knees from the wooden kneelers
• 24:00 Quitting so often he had to stop walking down the street to figure out whether he was currently in a quit period before accepting an offered drink
• 30:00 The fifth-a-day phase mistaken for moderation, deep suspicion of cheerful women picking up kids after school
• 38:00 Waking up face-down in the mashed potatoes at the parishioner's dinner table three days into a wine binge after the parish fashion show
• 46:00 Praying like a man with no legs praying to grow new ones — asking Higher Power to make him feel like a non-alcoholic
• 55:00 The shift in the recovery house: discovering sobriety is not something he is holding but something he is being given, and being willing to do AA like a child — earnestly and badly