I Became an Intelligentsia Which I Can’t Even Spell but It Means a Da*n Know-It-All 🤣 – Wes P.

About This Speaker Tape

Wesley Parrish shares his journey from hopeless alcoholism to 25 years of sobriety at a convention in Ely, Minnesota. He describes the Sunday afternoon in November 1947 when his neighbor Jim, fresh on the AA pink cloud, sat in his front yard for three hours telling Wesley and his wife Rena about the program while Wesley kept sneaking upstairs for drinks. Three days later, sick and tired of being sick and tired, Wesley asked Jim to take him to a meeting. His first sponsor taught him to stop, look, and listen — advice he still considers the best thing he can tell a newcomer.

Wesley recounts how his second sponsor Chris drilled into him that sobriety must be his biggest business, ahead of family, work, and everything else. For two and a half years Wesley was a "two-stepper" — he took the First Step and jumped straight to the Twelfth, skipping the spiritual work in between. Chris bluntly told him he had nothing to give away because he had never done the inner work. This confrontation sent Wesley back to the steps in order, where he finally found the faith that replaced his constant fear.

He tells a powerful story about nearly destroying his marriage by twelve-stepping his non-alcoholic wife instead of working on himself. A doctor finally told Rena to start giving Wesley hell when she felt like it, and that prescription broke the dam of silence. Communication restored their marriage and transformed their house into a home, with their children finally joining the conversation. Wesley credits this as his introduction to understanding alcoholism as a family disease, anticipating what Al-Anon would later formalize.

In the final portion, Wesley describes how prosperity and complacency nearly took him out between his 7th and 10th year — he stopped going to meetings, became an "intelligentsia" know-it-all, and started slipping toward bondage again. His recovery came through discovering the Twelve Traditions as a personal code of living, not just group guidelines. He walks through several traditions reinterpreted at the personal level: common welfare as staying sober first, loving others whether they love you back, being a trusted servant rather than a governor, meeting financial responsibilities, and carrying the message to old-timers who suffer just as much as newcomers.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Introduction and warm greeting to the Ely, Minnesota convention crowd
• 4:30 Declares the best word to describe his pre-AA self was nil — bankrupt morally, physically, financially, and spiritually
• 7:00 The Sunday afternoon story: sitting half-drunk in the front yard when neighbor Jim introduces AA
• 13:00 Plants the seed metaphor — calls himself a zinnia seed, goes to first meeting three days later
• 17:00 Stop, look, and listen — first meeting lesson and the importance of listening to success
• 21:00 Twelve-stepping his non-alcoholic wife and the damage of not allowing her to express herself
• 27:00 Doctor tells Rena to give Wesley hell — communication restores the marriage and transforms house into home
• 33:00 Chris calls him a two-stepper who jumped from Step 1 to Step 12, skipping the spiritual work
• 40:00 Complacency and the dangerous 7th-to-10th year — prosperity nearly leads him back to bondage
• 48:00 Applying the Twelve Traditions as a personal code of living — common welfare, unity, loving your enemies