Everything Outside My Hula Hoop Is None of My Da*n Business – Jim P.

About This Speaker Tape

Jim P. shares a raw and gripping story that begins with his first drink at age 11, when he gulped champagne at his sister's wedding reception and couldn't wait to do it again. Born into a military family with alcoholic grandfathers, Jim describes himself as restless, irritable, and discontented from childhood. By his teens he was breaking into houses to fund his drinking, cycling through juvenile detention, and graduating to armed robbery. At 18 he was sentenced to 52 years in a Florida state penitentiary, only to have a judge reverse course and give him 18 months on a chain gang — an experience Jim credits to Higher Power answering his desperate prayers while clutching a Bible in an isolation cell.

After the chain gang, Jim's drinking continued for decades through a 21-year marriage, the birth of his son Forrest, and a successful commercial real estate career. He never drank during the day or with clients, so he convinced himself he wasn't an alcoholic — even as he drank himself into wetting the bed every night and signed away custody of his son in a drunken fury. His first visit to AA came only after a close friend set himself on fire and burned to death. For 27 days Jim went to noon meetings saying he couldn't stop drinking, until an old-timer named Leo told him to go drink arsenic and get it over with — and Jim got sober on the resentment.

Jim describes three and a half years of white-knuckle sobriety with relapses before meeting his sponsor Joe at a speaker meeting. In an uncanny coincidence, both men handed each other business cards and discovered they both worked for Coldwell Banker without ever having met. Jim relapsed one more time after nine months, woke up face-down on his kitchen floor with half a gallon gone, and called Joe. They worked the first three steps that afternoon. Jim's sobriety held from that point forward.

With about nine years sober at the time of this talk, Jim reflects on the deaths that surround untreated alcoholism — his grandfathers, his friend, his younger brother who died at 44 from alcohol-related cancers, and a sponsee who committed suicide because he couldn't believe in a Higher Power. Jim emphasizes that AA is an action program, not one to be analyzed, and that his daily prayer is simply to be kept from a drink and allowed to do something on Higher Power's behalf. He closes with the Responsibility Statement and his passion for carrying the message into high schools so young people know help exists.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Chairperson Bo opens the meeting; Dick introduces Jim P. and recalls praying with him years before AA
• 3:00 Jim describes his alcoholic grandfathers, restless childhood in a military family, and setting a field on fire in Japan
• 6:00 First drink at 11 years old — gulps champagne at sister's wedding, gets drunk, can't wait to do it again
• 10:00 Teenage burglary spree, cycling through juvenile detention where inmates taught him to be a better criminal
• 16:00 Arrested at 18, sentenced to 52 years, prays desperately in isolation cell, sentence reduced to 18 months on a chain gang
• 22:00 Marriage, son Forrest born after 17 years, drinking progresses to wetting the bed nightly, wife leaves
• 28:00 Friend burns himself to death; Jim walks into Central for the first time and tells the drunks to stop drinking
• 34:00 Old-timer Leo says drink arsenic; Jim gets sober on a resentment. Meets sponsor Joe — both work for Coldwell Banker
• 40:00 Younger brother's decline — five DUIs, brain cancer, dies at 44 from untreated alcoholism; Jim held his hand at the end
• 48:00 Jim reflects on the program as divinely inspired, the importance of one day at a time, and carrying the message into high schools