He Cracked Up Laughing at My Worst Amends — ‘Oh, That’s a Good One’ 🤣 – Bill S.

About This Speaker Tape

Bill S. from the Bridge Builders Group in Napa shares at the Monday Night Blue Chip Speakers Meeting with a sobriety date of September 3, 2010. He grew up in a dying Connecticut mill town in a family stacked with alcoholism — an Irish Catholic mother whose father died a bum in a Sacramento flophouse, an Italian Catholic father who found his own mother in bed with the iceman. At 12, a bottle of whiskey on a frozen pond lit him up and he remembers his first panicked thought: is there going to be enough for me. By 15 he was buying his own six-packs with an expired ID and bonding with a package-store owner over a bird in a shoebox. At 16 his first girlfriend Lucy told him flat out that if he stopped drinking she'd leave, because he was a drag when he wasn't drinking — a truth he carried for decades.

College drinking became a four-times-a-day pattern. A bad marriage, Philadelphia mornings reeking of booze on the trolley, a blackout New Year's Eve on 86th Street where a homeless man pulled him off his wife — then rehabs, psych wards, and Connecticut meetings with beer breaks at Milner's Tavern. A non-alcoholic counselor in a state hospital and a Cocaine Anonymous speaker who told his exact story finally cracked him open. He got sober in spring 1991 under a sponsor named Jim, had fifteen years, then a back injury in 2006 put Percocets in his hand and four years of hell followed: homelessness in Atlanta, eating half-eaten Chick-fil-A out of garbage cans, sleeping in cat waste.

On September 3, 2010 his brother paid for one more detox. Two weeks in, walking somewhere, a voice told him plainly: if I do what the AAs do, I'm going to be okay. Under sponsor Wes, the steps finally took. Step 6 floored him — he realized he didn't care what became of him as long as he wasn't who he used to be. Step 9 included a horrifying amend his sponsor made him repeat three times, letters to burn and letters to mail, and the ashes rising off a metal can feeling like his Higher Power saying enough, Bill, enough.

Both brothers died — one from alcoholism after relapse, the oldest by suicide while Bill was in Colombia. Wes eventually told him he didn't owe his parents anything anymore, he was done with the living amends. This past May he went to Iceland alone, hit AA meetings, and stood on a black sand beach with only his own footprints, spending time with his Higher Power and his dead brothers. He closes with the one thing he ever did right: he never turned his back on AA.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Chris Ward opens the Blue Chip Speakers Meeting at Napa Club and introduces Bill S. from Bridge Builders
• 3:30 Connecticut childhood in a dying mill town with three brothers, hand-me-downs, and a shame-soaked family
• 9:00 First drink at 12 on a frozen pond — fire and lightning, and the panicked thought 'is there going to be enough for me'
• 13:30 Buying at 15 with an expired ID and bonding with the package-store owner over a bird in a shoebox
• 16:30 Sixteen-year-old Bill tells girlfriend Lucy he wants out of drinking; she says he's a drag when he doesn't drink
• 24:00 Philadelphia mornings, swearing off at 2 a.m. and drinking by noon, church ladies giving him the evil eye on the trolley
• 32:00 First sobriety in spring 1991 under sponsor Jim, nine-month slip, and the knock on the door — 'okay, that's enough'
• 42:00 2006 back injury, Percocets from a fill-in doctor, and four years of hell and rehabs
• 48:00 Homeless in Atlanta summer 2010, eating from garbage cans, calling brother, admitted September 3
• 58:00 Step 6 realization, burning the amends letter in a metal can, and Wes naming serenity for the first time