Higher Power Did Not Whisper Go Straighten Those Bastards Out Tonight Myers 🤣 – Myers R.

About This Speaker Tape

Myers R. from the Primary Purpose Group in Dallas, Texas shares his journey from seven years of untreated alcoholism in discussion-format meetings to genuine recovery through Big Book-based step work. A third-generation alcoholic and bookbinder by trade, Myers describes how his brother Chris 12-stepped him into AA, where he fell in love with the fellowship but never engaged with the program. After years of mounting fear, resentment, and suicidal despair, Chris connected him with a sponsor named Cliff who opened the Big Book for him for the first time in a 45-minute session that changed everything.

Myers draws a sharp distinction between the fellowship of AA and the program of AA, arguing that discussion meetings without step work breed spiritual malady, resentment, and relapse. He describes his old home group voting Higher Power out of a meeting, members who could not keep jobs or marriages together despite years of sobriety, and a woman named Barbara who shared the same workplace complaints for eleven years without anyone directing her to the steps. He contrasts this with the transformation he experienced through working the steps and carrying the message.

The heart of the talk is Myers's passionate case for 12-step work as the engine of recovery. He tells the story of Terry, a homeless man with a smashed face who worked the steps rapidly, started a window-cleaning business from a treatment center, and then began planting Big Book meetings across the country as a long-haul truck driver with only months of sobriety. Myers holds Terry up against the forty men he sponsors who make excuses to avoid 12-step calls, illustrating that willingness matters more than time sober.

Myers closes with the garden metaphor that captures his perceptual shift: kneeling in the same spot, picking worms off the same tomatoes, but now eager to go inside to a wife and daughters he adores instead of dreading them. Nothing external changed. The spiritual malady had simply been addressed through the work.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Introduction and thanks to conference organizers in London; describes the ornate venue
• 4:30 Myers introduces himself as a third-generation drunk; Chris 12-stepped him and later saved him a second time at seven years sober
• 10:00 Drunk-a-log highlights: bar fights, choking a man at a pizza place in front of his daughter, attacking a liquor store clerk
• 16:00 Chris gets sober first and quietly lives a changed life; Myers watches from the shadows and asks to be taken to a meeting
• 22:00 Three to seven years sober with no step work; home group votes Higher Power out of a meeting; spiritual malady intensifies
• 30:00 Cliff Bishop opens the Big Book in a 45-minute session; bedevilments on page 52; untreated alcoholism diagnosed
• 37:00 Discussion meetings vs. Big Book program; Barbara's eleven years of unchanged suffering; the cost of no accountability
• 45:00 Hostile messages from UK intergroups attacking members who start Big Book study meetings
• 50:00 Terry's story: homeless man with smashed face works the steps, starts a window-cleaning business, plants meetings across the country as a truck driver
• 58:00 The garden metaphor: same tomatoes, same wife, same daughters, but a completely different perception after the spiritual malady is addressed