Fourth and Eighth Step Said the Underlying Cause of All Our Woes Is Our Inability to Form a True Partnership with Another Human Being – John K.

About This Speaker Tape

John K. from Collingswood, New Jersey shares his story at the 31st Oceanfront Conference, tracing his path from being the town drunk with ten children to over two decades of sobriety. His family staged an intervention on St. Patrick's Day 1985, led by his oldest son who had fetched a priest. His wife gave him a choice: treatment, AA, or leave. He chose AA, attended his first meeting on April Fool's Day, and was immediately struck by the fellowship — even if he initially thought the hugging and "Brother Bill" greetings meant he'd joined a cult.

His early sobriety was shaped by two sponsors, Jack and Bill, who dragged him to meetings relentlessly and taught him things he couldn't learn on his own. When his daughter wrecked his new car, it was Bill who asked, "When are you going to check on your daughter?" — a moment that cracked open John's understanding of how selfishness had warped his ability to love. He tells the devastating story of a sponsee, a gifted research chemist and woodcarver, who never strung together more than seven months of sobriety and took his own life outside a bar in Camden, saying "Nobody cares about me" — while 300 people came to his funeral.

Three years sober, his home group told him he had a problem beyond alcohol. He assumed it was his wife and dragged her to counseling, only to be told they lacked the basis for a relationship despite 20 years of marriage and ten children. He spent three years in therapy while doubling his meetings to fourteen a week, ultimately learning that he was the problem. The underlying cause, as the Big Book says, was his inability to form a true partnership with another human being.

John reflects on how sobriety transformed every dimension of his life — all ten children went to college, financial insecurity lifted, and he became the director of community development for the same town where he'd been the drunk everyone knew. Diagnosed with Parkinson's disease on the same day his first grandchild was born, he chooses to focus on the birth. He closes with the passage from Came to Believe: "I sought another alcoholic, and I found all three" — his soul, his Higher Power, and his fellow.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Introduction — sober since St. Patrick's Day 1985, large family of ten children
• 3:00 Intervention story — son fetched a priest, wife packed his bags, given the choice of treatment or AA
• 7:00 First AA meeting on April Fool's Day — thought it was a cult when they hugged and called each other 'Brother'
• 10:00 Sales meeting story — stayed in his room instead of going to the bar; the man who invited him was killed in a car crash that night
• 13:00 Cousin's murder — beaten, stabbed, set on fire; priest at funeral says 'the only way to change the world is to change yourself'
• 17:00 Finally reads Chapter 5 at Jack's direction — Preacher Fred flips 'Rarely have we seen a person fail' backwards
• 22:00 Daughter's car accident — sponsor Bill teaches him to check on his daughter before worrying about the car
• 26:00 Sponsee's suicide outside the Silver Saddle Saloon — 300 people at the funeral of a man who said nobody cared about him
• 32:00 Marriage counseling revelation — three years of therapy, fourteen meetings a week, learning he was the problem all along
• 40:00 Closes with Came to Believe passage and 'You Raise Me Up' — found his soul, his Higher Power, and his fellow alcoholic in AA