First Word of the First Step Is We — Fourteen Years Before I Could Hear It – Gene R.

About This Speaker Tape

Gene Russell tells his story at the Monday Night Blue Chip Speakers meeting at the NAVA Club in Atlanta. He introduces himself as a recovered alcoholic with a sobriety date of October 21, 2006, and warns the audience that his path to that date was a long series of starts and stops — his first AA meeting was in 1992 at the 8111 Club after a judge ordered him there with a signature sheet. For years he gamed the fellowship: showed up late, got the paper signed, left early, and expected AA to hand him a girlfriend, a job, and a place to live. When it didn't, he drank at the meetings and blamed AA for not working.

He traces the drinking from a stolen fruit jar of brown liquor at age fourteen through college, bartending at The Derby in Peachtree Corners, five Georgia DUIs plus one out of state, twenty-two-plus treatment stays, and a run of evictions and broken relationships. After felony exposure in Georgia, a judge shipped him to his dead grandparents' empty house in Crystal Beach, Texas, in Galveston County, where he fished commercially, bartended, got a girl pregnant who disappeared, then met another woman who introduced him to smoking dope off tinfoil. The run ended in a planned suicide attempt with pop-off vodka and pills that left him shocking light sockets in his underwear and having a stroke. His mother, watching Dr. Phil, found La Hacienda in the Texas hill country.

The turning point was a one-eyed counselor at La Hacienda who called him out from the podium in front of two hundred people — asked him point-blank if he had ever actually done any of the twelve steps on the dry-erase board, told him he had no right to say AA didn't work because he had never worked it, and ordered him to either sit up front or leave. That confrontation broke the arrogance. Back in Atlanta he landed in the Thursday night men's meeting at NAVA, made coffee for a year, and was sponsored by Danny, who told him he'd stop being his friend and be his sponsor instead. When Hurricane Ike wiped out the Crystal Beach house and the insurance company stiffed him, Danny rerouted his murder plan into getting an insurance adjuster's license so he could go help Hurricane Sandy victims in New York and New Jersey get their money back.

The core of the talk is that the work in the Big Book — done verbatim, immediately, without the one-step-a-month stalling he got in small-town Texas — is what finally removed the obsession. He hammers on the first word of the first step: "we." He credits Rusty Jones at the Biscayne room for cracking open the book when Gene walked in planning to announce he was going to drink, and for telling him the truth instead of letting him drift. The closing message: carry it quickly to the next newcomer, because waiting two years to work steps kills people like him.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Julian opens the Monday Night Blue Chip Speakers meeting at NAVA Club and warns the room to find a seatbelt because Gene is about to blow them away
• 2:00 Gene on being given the coffee-maker job for a year at NAVA — the old-timers told him the coffee-maker never goes back out, but his case needed two years
• 5:00 First AA meeting in 1992 at the 8111 Club after a judge handed him a sheet of paper to get signed — he learned to come in late, sign out, and comply minimally
• 10:00 At 14 or 15, the fruit jar of brown liquor at his parents' dinner party — first drink, hot face, funnier, more attractive to the girl, and everyone got whoopings
• 20:00 Walking into The Derby on his Schwinn 10-speed — the smell of pine sol, urine, failure and broken dreams, the three old drunks who were still there five years into sobriety
• 30:00 The suicide attempt with pop-off vodka, pills, and dope; waking up shocked in his underwear after a stroke while the crazy people dialed 911 and left
• 38:00 The one-eyed counselor at La Hacienda orders Gene to the front row, grills him on whether he has ever actually worked any step, and tells him to leave if he hasn't
• 50:00 Danny, his sponsor for nine years next month, stops a Thursday men's meeting at NAVA confessing he punched a coworker — Gene knew instantly this was his sponsor
• 55:00 After Hurricane Ike wipes him out, Danny reroutes his murder plan into getting an insurance adjuster license so he can help Hurricane Sandy victims in New York and New Jersey
• 60:00 Rusty Jones cracks the Big Book open in the Biscayne room when Gene walks in to announce he's going to drink — tells him alcoholics don't announce, they just drink