If You Go for Quality and Not Quantity You Really Can’t Have a Drinking Problem 😂 – John L.
About This Speaker Tape
John L. grew up in New Orleans, an only child raised very Catholic after his alcoholic father left when he was two. The Church convinced him he was born worthless, and he took that seriously — developing what he calls "an extreme lack of self-esteem coupled with this grandiose self-image" that produced spectacularly erratic behavior long before his first drink. At ten years old, he lost a seventy-five cent catechism book and rather than face the nun, he faked his own kidnapping, complete with torn clothes and a limping walk back to school. When the police said they caught someone, he nearly let an innocent man go to prison.
His drinking started at eighteen in Biloxi, Mississippi with a technicolor assortment of stolen liquor, and he never drank normally from that first night. He moved to California, built a successful acting career, discovered heroin ("like being dead but still able to dance"), and hit a point where he was selling blood in downtown Los Angeles for twelve dollars while watching himself on the television next to the bed. He checked into a hospital, read the Big Book cover to cover, and left thinking: "Now that I know what the problem is, I can drink in peace."
Seven months later, in February 1982, he got sober for good. A Jewish atheist sponsor gave him a piece of paper that read "Higher Power is how I understand Higher Power is" and told him to finish the sentence. When John brought it back folded in his hand, the sponsor tore it up and said "fine, now pray to it." The fourth step is what he calls the most important step in the program — "because without that, we are able to continually bullshit ourselves much longer than we should." Recorded in Laguna Beach, California in November 1995 with nearly fourteen years of sobriety.
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