I Thought Being Told I Was Too Intelligent for AA Was a Compliment – Don M.

About This Speaker Tape

Don M. opens this Step 3 talk at the Jersey Shore Roundup by thanking the committee and immediately establishing his central theme: without divine intervention, how he feels will always be the most important thing in the universe to him. He traces his ego disorder back to childhood in rural western Kentucky in the 1950s, describing a totally self-absorbed kid running from inner emptiness. His first drunk at 12 or 13 delivered the only relief he had ever found from that pain — and launched 25 years of destruction. He was a bright kid who leveraged looks, brains, and a good family name to hang on by his fingernails through college, law school, and a decade of practice, until a near-fatal car wreck left him on crutches with a catheter and both legs in braces.

His first encounter with AA's Third Step came in an asylum, still in that broken condition, when he stood up on his crutches, straightened his catheter bag, and loudly asked if people actually believed "such crap" — then hobbled to a pay phone to escape the religious fanatics. Eighteen institutions in two and a half years followed before he washed up homeless, toothless, and disbarred in Nashville. A treatment center counselor let him in only because he did not think Don would survive another week on the street. He landed at the 202 Club, where a man named Joe W. delivered the line that cracked him open: "We've never had anybody too dumb for this deal, and we bury you buttholes all the time."

Don credits his sponsor Cherry C. with teaching him the architecture of the steps. Cherry explained that the Third Step is not a mystical experience but a decision — made with your feet, not your brain — to begin following the "spark of the divine" in the present moment rather than trying to map out the pattern of your life. Don spends the heart of the talk unpacking the bottom paragraph of page 62 in the Big Book, where Bill W. uses four metaphors (quit playing Higher Power, Higher Power as director, Higher Power as employer, Higher Power as parent) to convey one idea: the boss has the power and I don't. He calls this paragraph the keystone of the arch to freedom and reads the Third Step promises from page 63 as the most beautiful promises in the book.

He closes with a portrait of spiritual growth as perpetual stumbling — a few steps in the right direction, a fall into self-will, then getting up and starting again. His Higher Power, he says, does not require perfection or even consistency, just perseverance. Cherry's parting warning after Don's Third Step was the book's negative promise: the decision has little permanent effect unless followed at once by a Fourth Step. Don laughs that "at once" translated to eight months later for him, and that Cherry had to repeat endlessly that you cannot start a Fourth Step without a pencil, paper, and the Big Book open to page 64.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Introduction and thanks to the Jersey Shore Roundup committee; sets up the topic of Step 3 and divine intervention
• 4:30 Describes the ego disorder — self-centeredness as the root of his alcoholism; without divine intervention, how he feels is always the most important thing in the universe
• 8:00 First drunk at 12-13 in rural Kentucky; discovers alcohol is the only thing that relieves the inner emptiness and pain of his ego disorder
• 13:00 Describes the progression: scholarship lost, 7.5 years of school and drinking, law career, then the near-fatal car wreck that broke both legs and ended his career
• 18:00 Asylum number 17 in Nashville; Harold G. admits him because he would not survive another week; a family takes him in for a year
• 22:00 Joe W. at the 202 Club delivers the line about being too intelligent for the program — the icy hand that cracked Don open; sobriety date April 9, 1981
• 28:00 Sponsor Cherry C. teaches that the Third Step is a decision made with your feet, not your brain — follow the spark of the divine in the present moment, stop trying to figure out the pattern
• 35:00 Deep dive into the bottom paragraph of page 62: four metaphors (quit playing Higher Power, director, employer, parent) all saying the same thing — the boss has the power and I don't
• 42:00 Reads the Third Step promises from top of page 63; calls them the most beautiful promises in the book; describes spiritual growth as perpetual stumbling and getting back up
• 47:00 Cherry's parting warning about the negative promise: the Third Step evaporates without an immediate Fourth Step; Don laughs that 'at once' meant eight months for him