I Was Brought Up in an Alcoholic Home with No Alcohol in It – George M.

About This Speaker Tape

George M., a touring keyboardist with a December 15, 2006 sobriety date and around 17 years sober, speaks at the Monday Night Blue Chip Speakers meeting at the NAVA Club. He frames himself as a real alcoholic who has had multiple stretches of sobriety, including a first run of fourteen years, and credits an Akron sponsor with the line that it is simpler to just be an alcoholic. He grew up in what he calls an alcoholic home with no alcohol in it: his father, a top Georgia Tech aeronautics graduate from the streets of New Jersey, never drank but had a violent temper that broke furniture, while both grandfathers were alcoholic. Born in Fort Worth, raised in Orlando and Atlanta, he was a piano prodigy by age five.

By junior high, integration-era school chaos and a Roswell party where he smoked his first joint laced with powdered THC opened the door. He drank his way through Georgia State's piano performance program, never graduated, and worked at Rhythm City music store before touring as keyboardist for Peebo Bryson, getting a personal compliment from Miles Davis, and playing for the Prince of Brunei during the 96 Olympics. A long relationship with a woman he calls Alice, a cocaine addict he repeatedly drove to GMHI, ended years before she ran cocaine, climbed into a car in heavy rain, and killed a Marietta police officer and her husband while their 18-month-old sat in the back seat. She received 35 years; even that horror did not stop his drinking.

In his thirties he moved from beer to liquor and settled into Cafe 290 in Sandy Springs, playing five nights a week and partying until 7 a.m. He met his future wife there. She had been arrested 18 times and spent the first six months of their relationship in jail; her son with Asperger's once announced at a restaurant that she was not supposed to be drinking. They married, and after she relapsed 15 times in three years he got divorced and almost drank again, recognizing he had made her his Higher Power. Five years into sobriety a colonoscopy doctor asked if he drank heavily because anesthesia would not keep him under, and he was diagnosed with diabetes from the sugary mocktails he had been pounding nightly.

Today he treats sobriety as a lease from his Higher Power that can be revoked if he stops working the steps, sponsoring others, and showing up. He distinguishes needing AA from wanting it, and says it took him many years and several relapses to want it. He closes grateful that, by the grace of his Higher Power and the program of AA, he is still sober and still able to walk into rooms where alcohol is served and do his job.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Misty opens the Monday Night Blue Chip Speakers meeting at the NAVA Club and reads the page 29 preamble before introducing George M. from the Easy 1-2-3 group
• 2:30 George names his December 15, 2006 sobriety date, mentions a previous 14-year run, and credits an Akron sponsor for the rule that it is easier to just be an alcoholic
• 6:00 He admits he earned a seat in Al-Anon by chasing damsels in distress and confesses that where most people see red flags he sees a green light
• 9:30 Family of origin: father a top Georgia Tech aeronautics grad with a violent temper who never drank, mother from Anniston whose town-drunk father embarrassed the family downtown
• 14:00 At age five a Juilliard-retired teacher gives him flash cards as a brushoff and he masters them in two weeks, launching the piano prodigy track
• 20:00 End-of-eighth-grade party where every freak in the school showed up and he smoked his first joint laced with powdered THC
• 28:00 Meeting Alice at a Northside restaurant gig after a stranger lays a rail of cocaine on the piano; George tells her his name is George Martin and she thinks he is the Beatles producer
• 33:00 Alice runs cocaine, drives in heavy rain, kills a Marietta police officer and her husband, leaves an 18-month-old in the back seat, and gets 35 years
• 42:00 Meeting his future wife at Cafe 290 in Sandy Springs while playing five nights a week until 7 a.m.; her special-needs son announces at a restaurant that she is not supposed to be drinking
• 50:00 Five years sober a doctor wakes him from a colonoscopy and asks if he drinks because anesthesia would not keep him under, leading to his diabetes diagnosis from sugary mocktails