I Didn’t Carry the Message, I Carried the Disease – Bobby C.

About This Speaker Tape

Bobby C. got sober June 2, 1988 and home-groups at McKean Street in South Philadelphia. Raised in a blue-collar Philly house with seven siblings, a non-drinking father and a mother battling mental illness and prescription-medication abuse, he took his first drink at 12 in his grandparents' basement bar and chased belonging from that moment on. A Jesuit prep school put him among affluent kids he resented, the service put him 13 months overseas where friends were killed, and the Philadelphia Police Department in the Rizzo era handed him a badge he treated as a drinking license.

His active drinking piled up wreckage most people never face. At 15 he came home to find his mother had slit her wrists, told her "good for you," and walked out to buy wine — a resentment at Higher Power that lasted twelve years. At 24 he shot and killed a 15-year-old boy in the line of duty, then crawled into a bottle for three years. He played chicken with a kid on a bicycle from a city vehicle and threw the boy and the mangled bike to the curb like trash. A hotel-room suicide attempt failed because the blow-dryer cord was a foot and a half too short to reach the bathtub.

The last drunk ended on the East River Drive when he pulled over at Boathouse Row, pulled a six-week-old newspaper clipping from his wallet, and called the hotline from a glass phone booth. Hahnemann to the VA West Philly to Coatesville got him stabilized; an Al-Anon nurse told him he'd only make it if he went to AA. He resisted for twenty-five months — rearranging chairs to annoy old-timers, beating a man with a baseball bat at 23 months, punching a guy in a bar with a rock glass — until he asked a neighborhood tough guy named Troubles to sponsor him and actually worked the steps.

Lung cancer in 1993 (he never smoked a cigarette), remission, relapse of the cancer, a lower-left-lobe removal, and a long recovery taught him that AA carries itself to you when you can't get out of the house. He tells two ninth-step stories — one where the man he publicly humiliated walked into a meeting across town, one where Freddie Wheels died before the amends was ever made — and closes with the Twelve Steppers, a brigade of sober mummers he has marched with up Broad Street every New Year's Day for twelve years.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Bobby introduces himself, June 2 1988, McKean Street miracle group in South Philly
• 3:30 First drink polishing off half-empties in grandparents' basement bar, uncles pointing and laughing
• 9:00 Enlists in the service, 13 months overseas, friends killed and he can't talk about it so booze numbs the pain
• 15:00 Runs onto the Veterans Stadium field drunk, shakes Dave Winfield's hand, gets a thumbs-up from Tug McGraw
• 22:30 At 24 shoots and kills a 15-year-old boy on duty, uses it as excuse to crawl into a bottle for three years
• 28:00 Plays chicken in a city car, runs over a kid on a bicycle, throws him to the curb and goes back to the bar
• 33:00 Hotel suicide attempt fails — too scared to jump, blow-dryer cord too short for the bathtub
• 38:00 Pulls over at Boathouse Row, finds six-week-old newspaper ad in his wallet, calls from a glass phone booth
• 52:00 Asks Troubles to sponsor him at 25 months, takes the first three steps after almost eating his gun
• 66:00 Ninth step amends to the man he publicly humiliated in a bar who walked into a cross-town meeting he'd never been to