Halfway Through the Ninth Step the Promises Kicked In Exactly Like the Book Said They Would – Joe F.
About This Speaker Tape
Joe shares his story at the Central Orlando Group Saturday night speaker meeting, tracing his path from a painfully shy kid in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, to a law career derailed by alcoholism, and finally to a life transformed by the program. Skipped ahead a grade, he spent his childhood feeling behind and afraid, until alcohol erased every insecurity in an instant. That first relief launched decades of wreckage — wrecked cars at 16, a drunken Monopoly tournament that consumed a year of his life, near-expulsion from law school, and a career as a DUI prosecutor who was himself a serial drunk driver carrying a badge to flash at traffic stops.
His drinking cost him the prosecutor job after a reporter caught police trying to sweep his DUI under the rug. He stumbled through criminal defense work, got one woman pregnant while married to another, went bankrupt, lost custody of his daughter, and had his house foreclosed — all while trying to get sober in AA. He picked up five white chips in his first year while the furniture salesman who started the same month sailed to his one-year anniversary. His final drunk came in Aruba, where he woke up beaten and covered in vomit in a gutter, and finally conceded completely that he was alcoholic. His sobriety date is May 10, 1990.
Joe describes the agony of early sobriety — two years of attending meetings daily while raging about his divorce, suicidal ideation, and the grinding refusal to drink no matter what. He finally did his fourth step only because the alternative was killing himself. Halfway through his ninth step, the Promises started coming true exactly as the Big Book described. By his seventh or eighth year, every dream he had carried into sobriety had materialized: partner at a downtown Orlando law firm, a lasting marriage, two beautiful daughters. He credits the Higher Power of his own experience — not theology, not religion — and urges newcomers to bring their dreams to AA, echoing the words of the late Bill O. that he once dismissed as nonsense.
He pays tribute to the chain of people who carried the message to him: Joe R., the lawyer who took him to his first meeting and then left him alone until he was ready; his sponsor Bernie, whom he called sobbing from Aruba; his friend Mike W., who mailed him the Partnership booklet at his lowest point; and the Central Orlando Group itself, which he calls the world center of sobriety.
Discussion
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