Humility Is Something You Voluntarily Reach For — That’s When Step 7 Actually Opens Up – Steve R.

About This Speaker Tape

Steve R. speaks at the Monday night Blue Chip speaker meeting at the NAVA Club, opening with a prayer for peace and truth before walking through a life shaped by an alcoholic father, a sheltering mother, and the sudden loss of that mother at 15. He grew up outside Atlanta between Doraville and Chamblee with a jovial, womanizing dad in the restaurant equipment business who kept bottles in the kitchen cabinet, briefcase, glove box, and desk. His mother drew him to choir at Sandy Springs First Baptist, where he sang with Billy Graham two summers in a row, until the morning at Gulf Shores on August 10, 1969, when she had a cerebral hemorrhage while they were crabbing at Fort Ward.

What followed was classic alcoholic groundwork: Dad remarried, the arrangement failed, and at 15 Steve was handed $100 a week, a new car, and a room at the Howard Johnson on Roswell Road. He drank from his grandfather's flask, turned entrepreneur with a bad crowd, and was rescued by an older brother who forced him into the Air Force at Lackland, then Minot, after a recruiter in Opelika signed him without checking his record. A first marriage, a Dallas geographic cure, thirty-two arrests in seven years, and Judge Woodrow Tucker in Fulton County finally pushed him into AA — though he did the "one-two-three waltz" for five years without a real Fourth Step and went back out for three years, losing a marriage, a home, and supervised-visitation-only access to his son.

His real sobriety date is May 31, 1998. He describes walking into the Gwinnett room whipped, finding a sponsor the first night, doing three meetings a day for a year and two a day for the second, wearing out Big Books with a dictionary, stumbling into GSR and treasurer, and learning financial discipline by watching the group's money. He met his current wife at the coffee pot — attracted by how she lit up talking about her Higher Power — and courted her slowly through bluegrass shows and barbershop quartets instead of rock and roll.

The tape lands on page 75 of the 12 and 12, which he reads in full: humility as something voluntarily reached for rather than bludgeoned into, and the Higher Power as more than an emergency pinch-hitter. His closing teaching is plain — keep expectations beneath gratitude, the rules are there to protect him, and he is the sum total of his efforts because his disease is still busy.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Gary opens the Monday night Blue Chip speaker meeting at the NAVA Club and reads from page 29 of the Big Book
• 2:30 Steve R. introduces himself, prays for peace and direction, jokes about Maggie Harrison first sending him to stand by the garbage can at a NAVA dance
• 6:00 Growing up between Doraville and Chamblee — brother calls their household 'classic textbook child abuse'; father jovial, womanizing, drinking stopped working for him in his mid-thirties
• 12:00 Sandy Springs First Baptist choir, two summers singing with Billy Graham, then August 10, 1969 — mother's cerebral hemorrhage while crabbing at Fort Ward in Gulf Shores
• 18:00 Age 15 — Dad checks him into the Howard Johnson on Roswell Road with $100 a week, brand new car, no license; carries grandfather's flask to school
• 24:00 Falstaff and Playboys in a haversack at Burt Adams, martinis with the church choir at Lake Burton; brother takes guardianship at 17 after Vietnam
• 30:00 Opelika, Alabama Air Force recruiter signs him without checking the Army rejection; basic training at Lackland, motivation flight, 'mashed potatoes, sir'
• 38:00 Thirty-second arrest in seven years — Judge Woodrow Tucker sends him to three meetings a week for three years; first AA run with a weak Fourth Step
• 46:00 Five years sober, conscious choice to go back out — three years of relapse costs him his wife, his house, and supervised visits with his son; May 31, 1998 sobriety date begins in the Gwinnett room
• 56:00 Reads page 75 of the 12 and 12 on Step 7 — humility as something voluntarily reached for rather than bludgeoned into, Higher Power no longer a pinch-hitter