Ethanol Drip Saved My Body. Step 3 Saved the Rest. – Nick M.

About This Speaker Tape

Hawaiian Nick shares his journey from a dysfunctional upbringing in the Hawaiian Islands through decades of alcoholism, miraculous medical recoveries, and profound spiritual transformation. Raised by a periodic alcoholic father and a colorful mother, he first found AA in November 1969 when a sober member called Chinaman Charlie silently led him from a park bench on Hotel Street in Honolulu into his first meeting. After relocating to Southern California, he drifted from meetings, and a cascade of devastating events — a car wreck, his daughter's birth coinciding with his father's death, and his sister being thrown from a hospital floor — drove him back to drinking for seven and a half years of periodic, hopeless drunkenness.

His bottom came at Highland Hospital on May 23, 1982, where he suffered grand mal seizures, Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome, and true delirium tremens requiring an ethanol drip to save his life. During emergency surgery that day, he experienced a spiritual awakening that shifted him from what he calls problem consciousness to solution consciousness. Two men from Tri-Valley Fellowship drove him to meetings when he could barely walk across a room, and for the first time he could truly hear the message of hope.

Ten years sober, on Christmas Eve, Nick was diagnosed with a malignant tumor in his right kidney. The fellowship flooded his hospital room with so many visitors the nurses had to hide him in another room. In 1999, a tumor appeared in his remaining left kidney, leading to experimental radiosurgery in New York where he lay motionless for 45-minute sessions with four million volts bending around his spine. Through both cancer battles, he describes surrendering completely to Step Three.

Nick closes with a moving story about a poor sharecropper family and a mirror — the little disfigured boy asks his father why he loves him despite his ugliness, and the father answers, because you're mine. Nick draws the parallel to the Twelve Steps as his daily mirror, asking Higher Power the same question each morning and receiving the same answer. He leaves the audience with his spiritual sponsor's instruction: love everyone to the best of your ability, and if you cannot, at least do them no harm.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Introduction at Saturday Night Live birthday meeting, Westgate West, San Jose
• 3:30 Growing up in dysfunctional Hawaiian family, mother's hair obsession, periodic alcoholic father
• 8:00 November 1969: Chinaman Charlie silently leads him from a park bench on Hotel Street into his first AA meeting in Honolulu
• 14:00 Reading the Big Book on the windward side, Charlie's repeated instruction: don't drink, go to meetings, read the Big Book
• 18:00 Geographical to Southern California, drifting from meetings, the car wreck, daughter's birth and father's death on the same day
• 23:00 Sister's catastrophic injury, relapse at the bar, the voice of alcoholism saying 'just take the edge off'
• 28:00 Highland Hospital: grand mal seizures, Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome, ethanol drip saves his life, nurse slaps his hand
• 35:00 May 23, 1982 spiritual awakening during surgery — shift from problem consciousness to solution consciousness
• 42:00 Christmas Eve cancer diagnosis at ten years sober, fellowship flooding his hospital room, 1999 second kidney tumor and experimental radiosurgery in New York
• 52:00 Sharecropper mirror story: the disfigured boy asks why his father loves him — 'because you're mine' — the Twelve Steps as a daily mirror