External Conscience as the Only Thing That Keeps an Addict Honest with Himself — Dave N.

About This Speaker Tape

Dave, an addict with 21 years clean, shares his experience at a Narcotics Anonymous convention on the theme of 'living it and loving it.' He opens with stories from his sixth month clean, when he and his friend Lou drove to California to meet Bob B. at the Saturday Night Live meeting in Venice Beach, chaired a meeting that swelled from ten people to 450, and saw N.A. recovery being practiced at a scale that convinced him the program was real. Meeting Bob, getting his first basic text in 1983, visiting the World Service Office, and going to a dance in Hollywood gave him a lifelong model of what committed recovery looks like.

He moves into the wreckage that got him here: a moment of clarity when his two-year-old daughter put a cold cloth on his head during a blackout and said 'Daddy's sick again'; sitting in a park and watching another man drive his truck, ride his motorcycle, and walk down the street with his wife and kids; believing no human being cared if he took another breath; moving 800 miles to finish himself off. He describes addiction as wanting to be someone else somewhere else, and recovery as finally not wanting to be anyone else anywhere else.

The core of his message is that recovery is a practice, not a hobby. He talks about his 'external conscience' — never doing anything he can't tell the guy beside him or his wife of 21 years — going to meetings until he likes them, sponsoring, traveling on 8,000-mile motorcycle trips that are built around N.A. meetings in Sacramento, Riverside, Austin, and Baja. He tells on himself about a relapse-adjacent moment in a camp-job bathroom where he cracked a beer, spit it out, and smashed the bottle into the mirror, and about breaking his back with 17 fractures and refusing morphine when the doctor told him to 'pray hard.'

He closes with the payoff: both his daughters are clean (one just took a nine-year cake, the other a six-year cake after coming back), a friend who was going to shoot himself six months ago is now walking in the park with his wife, and a twelve-year member who looked 'like Gollum' downtown is back in meetings with his head up. His prescription is simple and repeated: go to lots of meetings, do something for somebody every day without telling them, practice being nice, read the book with your heart, don't do anything you can't talk about, and put recovery first instead of treating it like a hobby.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Dave introduces himself and says he'd rather talk about recovery than tell a big horrible drunkalog
• 3:00 Road trip to Venice Beach at six months clean to meet Bob B. and chair Saturday Night Live as it swells from 10 to 450 people
• 10:00 First N.A. dance in Vancouver at the Orange Hall — 45 guys, 6 women, and a lesson that the attraction was people caring, not the party
• 15:00 Moment of clarity: his two-year-old daughter putting a cold cloth on his head saying 'Daddy's sick again,' and realizing addiction wasn't the big moments, it was every missing feeling
• 22:00 The 'external conscience' principle — don't do anything you can't tell the person beside you, don't do anything you can't tell your wife of 21 years
• 30:00 Breaking his back with 17 fractures and refusing painkillers after the doctor tells him to 'pray hard'
• 38:00 Both daughters taking cakes — one nine years, one six years after coming back from two years out following being preyed on at 15
• 50:00 Friend who was 12 years clean, seen downtown looking 'like Gollum,' now back six months and walking in the park with his wife
• 58:00 The camp-job near-relapse — cracking a beer in the bathroom, spitting it out, smashing it into the mirror
• 65:00 The freedom line: 'I do not want to be anyone else anywhere else doing anything else' — the opposite of his addiction