Emotional Sobriety and the Unhealthy Dependencies That Kill You Sober – Russell S.

About This Speaker Tape

Russell S. speaks at the Saturday night WICYPAA Convention on January 27, 2012, with 31 years of sobriety and a home group at the Coral Gables Group. A 62-year-old attorney in Miami, married 31 years with four children and six grandkids, he frames the entire talk around emotional sobriety and what Bill Wilson called the next frontier — unhealthy dependencies. He warns that the real disease centers in the mind, not the bottle, and that most people with long-term sobriety are living lives of quiet desperation because they never crossed from the not-drinking club into the fourth dimension of existence.

Russell describes his drinking bottom at 31 — blacked out behind the wheel, hospitalized after a car accident — and how his first sponsor talked about himself rather than lecturing, then said the words nobody had ever told him: you don't have to drink anymore if you don't want to, and you never have to feel this way again. He followed the man into AA. But the bulk of the talk is about what happened after the drinking stopped. He tells the Camaro story — buying a gold fastback at 19, feeling invincible for exactly two blocks until a man in a Cadillac with a better car and a better girl pulled alongside, and then chasing that feeling for decades with credit cards, new suits, and things he didn't need with money he didn't have.

His three sponsors — Bob S., Joe Snyder, and John Glenn — each delivered a line that rearranged his thinking. Bob told him he knew as much about life as a dog knows about his father, then humiliated him at a table for gossiping, saying unless you have something nice to say about Mitch, why don't you just shut up. Joe told him the reason he was upset about his wife was not anything she did — he was upset because he was upset-able. Russell describes how stopping the gossip forced him to actively think good thoughts about people, and four months later he felt better than he ever had in his life. He closes with Al K., a man with two years of sobriety who spoke at a meeting radiating peace and comfort in his own skin — and was dying of cancer with three months to live and never mentioned it. That vision of what the program could produce, Russell says, is available to everybody in the room.

Topics

Timestamps

• 00:00 Introduction at WICYPAA; sobriety date of January 25, 1981; Coral Gables Group; thanks the host committee and jokes about his shoes being older than the audience
• 05:00 Frames the talk around emotional sobriety and unhealthy dependencies; says most old-timers with 18 or 25 years are living lives of quiet desperation without the fourth dimension
• 11:00 Describes his drinking bottom at 31 — blackout car accident, hospitalization, and the first sponsor who said you don't have to drink anymore if you don't want to
• 17:00 Explains the disease beneath the bottle — restless, irritable, discontented — and why alcoholism has nothing to do with alcohol after 31 years of watching people
• 23:00 The two doors in every AA room: the not-drinking club versus being rocketed into the fourth dimension; the second book inside the Big Book that is all about a relationship with God
• 30:00 The Camaro story — buying a gold fastback at 19 and feeling invincible for two blocks until a Cadillac pulled up; chasing that feeling with credit cards for decades
• 38:00 Sponsor Bob S. says rectal thermometers have degrees and you know as much about life as a dog knows about his father; the table scene where Bob tells him to shut up about Mitch
• 45:00 The spiritual mechanics of gossip — stopping the trash talk forces active good thinking; four months later he felt better than ever in his life
• 52:00 Driving to pick up Bobby for the umpteenth relapse; presents the case for turning the car around; Bob says it doesn't bother me like it bothers you
• 58:00 Nine years sober, sponsor Joe Snyder says that is not why you are upset — you are upset because you are upset-able
• 63:00 The dying man who never mentioned it — Al K. speaks at a meeting radiating peace with three months to live, comfortable in his own skin
• 67:00 The vision of where the program can take you; the two books, the two doors, and the we you must find before you can take the steps; closes with what Al K. had is available to everyone