Honesty Is the Most Spiritual Thing an Alcoholic Can Do — Step 5 With Jim C. – Mary Jo B.

About This Speaker Tape

Mary Jo B. celebrates a sobriety date of March 4, 1974 and walks the Blue Chip Speakers Meeting at NABBA through nearly 45 years of recovery. She came in at 23 after her roommate's sister — a Vogue model with gorgeous hair and hands that didn't shake — stayed at her Bordeaux apartment directly across the street from NABBA. Mary Jo contrasts that model's groomed hands with her own: cigarette burns from blackouts, permanent tremors from never fully leaving withdrawal, and breakfast in a sorority house of 65 girls with no memory of the night before.

She describes garden-variety alcoholism without apology — Michigan State fraternity parties where she drained leftover cups with cigarette butts floating in them, crowd-surfing at Detroit ball games and waking bruised with no memory, one night hunkering down over vanilla extract after the liquor ran out. Moving to Atlanta stripped her of caretakers and set up the reality check that sent her to her first meeting at NABBA, where a beginner's pamphlet on the steps with the word Higher Power in them almost shut her down until a single moment of clarity told her to just listen.

She insists on a sobriety date, a sponsor, and a home group as the three load-bearing supports, admitting her first sponsor disappeared two days after she was asked — she'd picked someone easy who promptly got a boyfriend. Mary Jo originally wanted what her sponsor had mostly because it included a husband, and she had to grow up through at least one marriage under her sponsor's auspices before the steps landed at a gut level.

The back half is a step-by-step walkthrough, with step one as the hardest to get back to when ego is running, step three illustrated by Wesley Parrish's Niagara Falls wheelbarrow parable from a Monteagle retreat, and steps four and five anchored in Jim Cleveland — the Higher Power with skin she met at NABBA who taught her the most spiritual thing an alcoholic can do is be honest. She closes with the final paragraph of the Big Book and a reminder that Mary Jo without a drink is still Mary Jo.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Blue Chip Speakers Meeting opening at NABBA Club, reading from page 29 of the Big Book
• 2:30 Mary Jo opens — sobriety date March 4, 1974, and why having a date matters
• 5:00 Roommate's sister the Vogue model — gorgeous hair, hands that didn't shake, ten years sober
• 9:00 First AA meeting at NABBA — beginner's pamphlet on the steps with Higher Power in them
• 14:00 First sponsor got a boyfriend two days after being asked and disappeared — lesson about just getting another sponsor
• 19:00 Drinking history — sorority house, blackouts, cigarette burns, hand tremors
• 24:00 Fraternity party leftover cups with cigarette butts, and the night they hunkered down over vanilla extract
• 28:00 Michigan State — getting crowd-surfed at Detroit ball games and waking up covered in bruises
• 33:00 Step two as the hardest step — having to catch herself when ego runs
• 37:00 Step three illustrated by Wesley Parrish's Niagara Falls wheelbarrow parable from Monteagle, Tennessee
• 42:00 Jim Cleveland at NABBA — 'Higher Power with skin' and the teaching that the most spiritual thing an alcoholic can do is be honest
• 48:00 Walking through steps eight through twelve — daily reprieve, meditation through meetings, the we program
• 52:00 Closing with the final paragraph of the Big Book — fellowship of the spirit, trudge the road of happy destiny