I Can’t, He Can, I’ll Let Him — and the Amen Doesn’t Come Until Step 7 – Jay P.

About This Speaker Tape

Jay P. tells his story at the St. Cloud Spring Celebration, opening with the terror of the podium and the warmth of recognizing a woman he'd met years earlier who got sober after their one conversation. He sets up his childhood in Cleveland as the son of a well-known CBS radio news commentator who drank vodka from 4:30 AM to bedtime — a man Jay thought was "normal" until Jay himself got sober. Labeled exceptionally gifted in first grade by Sister Lucy, Jay stopped being teachable, became the class clown, a liar, a thief, a runaway, an inmate of an orphanage and a reforming institution, and took his first real drink of Thunderbird and screwdrivers behind some bushes on skid row at 13 — the first time in his life everything felt okay.

He chases that feeling for 17 years through a fraudulent Navy enlistment, a medical discharge for "acute alcoholism," a merchant marine career, a marriage to Von (a battered redhead in a bar he proposed to in twenty minutes), and a child, Jay Jr. On March 8, 1974, he knocks on a stranger's back door 1,200 miles from home and hears himself say "I think I have a problem drinking" — the man turns out to be his AA-member father, who hands him the Big Book inscribed "Love, Dad." His sponsor Jimmy teaches him the one-day-at-a-time prayer and the awareness of a Higher Power.

A year and a half sober and still a mess — unemployed, in trouble with the law over smuggling gemstones out of Ceylon, married to a woman he barely spoke to, with his Indian business partner Suraj sleeping in his bed while his son slept on the floor — another man named John takes him through the Steps on the stoop of a mobile home. John's formula: I can't, He can, I'll let Him. Jay walks through a resentment inventory, a fear inventory (and the lifting of the "evil and corroding thread" of impending calamity), sex inventory, and amends that rebuild his relationships with his mother, his father, and Von.

He closes with Von's slow death from 1994 to July 12, 2000 — twelve strokes, two heart attacks, breast cancer, renal failure in his arms — and the Higher Power Box he opened after she died containing one prayer signed "with all my love." A rushed second marriage after her death was a mistake now ending in divorce. He reads the unfinished birthday letter his dying father dictated to his mother: "How can we ever be grateful enough to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous... a loving Higher Power who's returned to lost son and rediscovered lost father."

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Mary Claire introduces Jay P., recalls first hearing him at Gopher State years ago
• 3:00 Jay reconnects with Susie, sober now after meeting him at eight days years earlier
• 6:00 Childhood in Cleveland — CBS commentator father drinking vodka from 4:30 AM
• 9:00 Sitting on John's mobile-home stoop a year and a half sober, taking Step One: 'I can't'
• 14:00 The resentment inventory — breaking the pencil writing 'I hate,' starting with Suraj
• 22:00 Sister Lucy labels him gifted in first grade; Jay stops being teachable
• 30:00 First drink at 13 — Thunderbird and screwdrivers behind bushes on 25th Street skid row
• 42:00 Meeting Von in a West Palm Beach bar and proposing within twenty minutes
• 52:00 March 7, 1974 — knocking on his father's back door saying 'I think I have a problem drinking'
• 62:00 Sponsor Jimmy at the back-door meeting: warm, firm, dry handshake of Alcoholics Anonymous
• 78:00 Von's death July 12, 2000; opening the Higher Power Box and reading her one prayer
• 85:00 Father's unfinished eighth-sobriety-birthday letter — 'lost son and rediscovered lost father'