Fear Is an Evil and Corroding Thread and I Based Every Decision on It – Chris S.

About This Speaker Tape

Chris S. leads a Step 4 workshop covering the fear inventory and sex inventory from the Big Book. He opens with a recap of Steps 1 through 3 — the obsession and allergy, the unmanageability that lives beneath the surface as depression and self-centered fear, the decision to access a power greater than yourself — then walks the room through the resentment inventory before turning to fear. He explains that fear is operative in every single resentment because you cannot be angry at someone unless you are afraid they will take something from you or block you from getting what you want.

His sponsor once asked him to trace each fear to its first memory. For fear of people, Chris lands on kindergarten: his mother drops him on a hill overlooking the schoolyard, the other kids are already playing kickball, and he is paralyzed with anxiety. He says a pint of vodka would have solved it, but they were not serving five-year-olds — so he white-knuckled the next eight years until he found alcohol. That same fear drove every major decision in his life: whether to go to college, which jobs to take, which women to ask out. He describes getting blackout drunk on Miller Malt Liquor before a date with a girl he was wild about and vomiting on her.

Chris draws a sharp line between instinctual fear and the self-centered variety that alcoholics carry. He recounts driving home Sunday mornings around 1988 in a broken-down 1976 Ford Granada — no muffler, no clutch, no registration, no emergency brake — after all-night cocaine-and-alcohol binges with his buddies Rat and Green Man, rolling down the window to yell "You losers!" at families walking to church while he himself was living with his mother. He details the sex inventory format — one sheet of paper per relationship, written sentences rather than checkmarks — and closes by noting that two of his closest friends had just been blindsided by their husbands leaving, and both threw themselves into service work because they understood that is the way through defective intimate relationships.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Opening — gratitude for finding good AA after moving; losing people who relocate; Founders Day in Akron
• 3:30 Step 1 recap — obsession of the mind, allergy of the body, internal unmanageability as depression and self-centered fear
• 8:00 Step 2 and Step 3 recap — accessing power through spiritual living, making the decision
• 11:00 Resentment inventory — column one, two, three; money, power, sex; instincts and ambitions harmed, threatened, or interfered with
• 16:00 Resentments almost killed me — driven out of two home groups; cranky old-timers sitting in their seats
• 20:00 Fear inventory begins — fear bracketed around every resentment; evil and corroding thread
• 24:00 Kindergarten on the hill — mother drops him off, paralyzed with anxiety, eight years until the first drink
• 29:00 Miller Malt Liquor date disaster — blackout drunk, vomited on her; fear driving every life decision
• 33:00 Fear should be classed with stealing — choosing self-reliance over God; Sunday school principles ignored
• 37:00 1988 Ford Granada — no muffler, no clutch, cocaine all night with Rat and Green Man, yelling at church families
• 41:00 Sex inventory — we need an overhauling, not a tune-up; one sheet per relationship, written sentences not checkmarks
• 45:00 Sex ideal and amends — shaping future conduct, meditation on specific matters, two friends whose husbands just left
• 48:00 Closing — rarely have we seen a person fail; multiple inventories changed his pathetic small world into something incredible