Everywhere I Go There I Am and I Take Me With Me — An Old-Timer’s Whole Program in One Line – Brian J.

About This Speaker Tape

Brian J. tells his story at sixty-four, half his life after a January 8, 1983 sobriety date. He opens with a childhood of near-death — run over by a water softener truck at age two (he was only the second successful bladder repair in the country), a queen bee to the face, plaster fights with his brother that nearly cost him an eye, and eighteen months on crutches in junior high for osteochondritis dissecans. His drug use starts at eleven after a Cub Scout seminar on narcotics leaves a pill within reach.

The middle of the tape roams through a teenage summer in Boston where he eats heroin, drinks a gallon of Valley High with two girlfriends, swims naked in Boston Commons, and gets detoxed for three days at the home of the local Hell's Angels president. Five senior-year suspensions in Madison, a ride to California with Jefferson Airplane's roadies, dishwashing on Cannery Row, and a shanty town outside Fort Myers called Fort Misery where a drunken outhouse relocation drops a friend into the old hole.

The wreckage accelerates. A seven-year marriage ends when another woman has his child. A Jeep rollover in Austin puts him in a coma for two months and then a Texas nursing home as a ward of the state, strapped into a giant crib. He wakes twisting nurses, tries to wheelchair down the sidewalk to freedom, and stops fighting when they catch him — something comes over him he can't name. Back in Atlanta he rents rooms to drug dealers counting eighty thousand dollars on his kitchen table. His Texas cowboy hat saves him from a cop's punch during arrest near the GM plant.

He jumps bail, runs to Minnesota, drinks his first McDonald's paycheck, and finally buses back to Atlanta and walks into Chamblee Jail to turn himself in. Ten years probation under Mr. King becomes three months of reporting and a quiet release. He arrives in the rooms in 1982, puts down alcohol January 8, 1983, puts down pot in 1985 — thirty-two years clean at the mic, half his life on the program.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Brian opens at 64, born April 9, 1953 — jokes that the Civil War ended on his birthday and Shakespeare may have too
• 2:30 Age two: run over by a water softener truck after brothers played with the gears; second successful bladder repair in US medicine
• 9:00 Third grade: steals mother's wedding ring for his Scottish girlfriend who teaches him to French kiss in the bushes
• 14:00 Age 11, Cub Scouts kick him out; drug use begins after a medical-examiner seminar on narcotics at the YMCA
• 19:00 Boston at 14: eats heroin from a bag of white powder, drinks Valley High with two girlfriends, detoxes three days at the Hell's Angels president's house
• 28:00 Fort Misery shanty town in Harlem Heights — $5/week, outhouses, and a drunken move that drops a friend into the old hole
• 37:00 Meets first wife at Alex Cooley's Electric Ballroom in Atlanta; marriage ends seven years later when another woman has his child
• 41:00 Austin Jeep rollover: telephone pole tears the top off, five flips, two-month coma; wakes strapped into a giant crib in a Texas nursing home
• 46:00 Wheelchair escape down the sidewalk; when nurses catch him he simply stops fighting and something comes over him
• 54:00 Walks into Chamblee Jail and turns himself in; comes to AA in 1982, sober January 8, 1983; half his life clean at 64