Excellent, Articulate Speaker! – Astrid H.

About This Speaker Tape

Astrid, a 'retread,' recounts her initial attempts at sobriety where she treated the Steps like homework, failing to grasp the concept of a 'psychic change.' She details how untreated alcoholism—fueled by childhood trauma, abuse, and a deep sense of shame—manifested as self-centeredness and rage, making her feel she needed external fixes like romance or money. The turning point came from realizing the illness centers in the mind, not the body. She found that true recovery required confronting her internal pathology, moving beyond blaming parents, and accepting that the process is not a race, but a continuous, moment-by-moment surrender to a Higher Power.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Opening with the Serenity Prayer.
• 0:15 Astrid introduces herself, noting she is a 'retread' and initially treated the Steps like homework.
• 1:40 Discussion of the danger of untreated alcoholism, noting the 98% chance of relapsing if under five years.
• 3:00 Recounting her initial struggles, feeling restless, irritable, and discontent, and the difficulty of applying the Steps.
• 4:45 Describing how relationships and finance were used as temporary fixes for her untreated alcoholism.
• 11:00 The core realization: the illness centers in the mind, not the body, and the need for self-honesty.
• 13:30 Comparing the Steps to a process, not a race; it's a 'living application for my life.'
• 15:00 The final understanding that the process is about conscious contact with a Higher Power in the moment.