If I Can Stay Out of the Results of My Life My Life Is Golden – Bill S.

About This Speaker Tape

Bill S. tells the story of an alcoholic who never felt like he belonged. At 13, riding to Las Vegas with his older brother and cousin, he took his first beer and first hit of pot in the back of a car driving past the Fremont Street casino lights, and every feeling of being different vanished. He drank until he peed himself in a twin bed at the family lake house, mortified — and already plotting the next time. By 16 his mom was finding little brown jars in his laundry, and a family friend in AA identified them. He got the choice of treatment or the Boulder City police, picked treatment, BS'd his way through with honors, and showed up at his first AA meeting thinking everyone there looked like purgatory.

His 20s and 30s were a loop of moving back to mom and dad's, getting stuck on a futon in their garage because things came up missing inside the house, building a life and burning it down faster. He met his first wife in a 1980s ASCII bulletin-board chat room, had his mother drop him off early at Pool Sharks bar so his date wouldn't see him climb out of mom's car, and put that woman through nine years of hell before she cleared out the apartment while he was on a runner. A drive toward Bullhead City to get laid ended in a high-speed chase the wrong way down the highway at 110, guns drawn, a stop at the Searchlight casino bar to manufacture an alibi, and a judge promising five years in prison if he so much as touched a hot toddy.

He tried not-drinking on willpower, made it about a year and a half, then talked himself into a couple of beers at a bar and woke up in Clark County Detention Center on a third DUI with no bail. Sixty-four days in a cell he prayed a different prayer — not to get out, just to never drink again — and the blood evidence got lost. He came back to AA in 2003 but spent eight more years trying to find his level of just-enough AA, married a woman in the program, learned she was pregnant at 39, cut meetings to work harder, and drank for thirty days until she told him on the back patio at eight months pregnant that she'd leave if he drank again.

The next day he sat on a leather couch on Ann Road and heard a man read the bedevilments from page 52, and every line described him. He sobered up August 22, 2010, got a sponsor, took the actions, sponsors men, speaks in detoxes, and now has an 11-year-old daughter, a home, a car, and a life that is finally easy to live. His sponsor told him you can't think your way into better acting but you can act your way into better thinking, and that — plus firing himself as the manager of his own life — is what kept him sober.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Bill S. introduces himself and thanks Jerry, settling in to tell his story
• 2:30 At 13, first beer and first joint in the back of a car driving past the Fremont Street casino lights
• 5:30 Wakes up in the lake house twin bed, pants wet, already waiting to do it again
• 8:00 At 16, mom finds the little brown jars; choice of treatment or Boulder City police, walks into his first AA meeting
• 15:00 Lonely on the Osborne computer in the garage, meets a woman in a chat room, mom drops him at Pool Sharks bar
• 22:00 Power shut off in the rental, drives toward Bullhead City for a girl, high-speed chase the wrong way at 110
• 27:00 Searchlight casino bar alibi attempt, arrest, judge promises five years for so much as a hot toddy
• 32:00 Year and a half dry on willpower, talks himself into a couple of beers, third DUI, 64 days in Clark County
• 38:00 Pregnant wife on the back patio at eight months tells him she'll leave if he drinks again
• 42:00 Hears the bedevilments on page 52 read at a meeting on Ann Road, runs home to show his wife the book