Knowing the Words Without the Music Is the Difference Between Dry and Sober – Peggy M.

About This Speaker Tape

Peggy M. shares her experience of getting sober in 1964 and discovering that AA is a place for people like her — imperfect, self-centered, and a little weird. With her trademark humor and unflinching honesty, she describes the internal war between feeling like whale poop on the ocean floor and believing she was presidential material, and how alcohol temporarily resolved that tension. She paints a vivid picture of arriving at AA physically destroyed at 25 — yellow eyes, failing liver, esophageal varices — and being so exhausted she simply surrendered without even knowing the word for it.

She makes a powerful distinction between knowing the words and knowing the music of the program, insisting that AA is fundamentally about action — I do, you do — not thinking or reading. She tells the story of Jason, a boy in her home group community fighting spinal cancer, to illustrate that if he would trade places with any of us in a heartbeat, the least we can do is show up to meetings and shake hands. She is blunt about the fact that without meetings, sponsorship, and the steps, she would drink again because it is her nature as an alcoholic.

Peggy closes with two unforgettable images: thousands of seagulls gathered in a construction light on the shore at Myrtle Beach — banded together in the light for safety, just like AA members — and the starfish story, where one man throws beached starfish back into the ocean because it makes all the difference in the world to each one. Her voice breaks as she tells the audience they have made all the difference to this one.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Peggy introduces herself, sober since February 4, 1964, and declares she is not a wonderful person — she is a brat
• 5:00 Distinguishes between people who are sober a long time and people who are active members — do not want what the plug-in-the-jug crowd has
• 10:00 The people kept her coming back for two years before she understood there was a program or steps
• 15:00 Story of Jason, the boy with spinal cancer — if he could trade places with us, he would go to meetings in a minute
• 22:00 The human dichotomy — feeling like whale poop on the ocean floor and presidential material at the same time, and how alcohol temporarily resolved the tension
• 30:00 Surrender was not dramatic — she was just pooped, out of gas, tired of being tired
• 37:00 Knowing the words vs. knowing the music — AA is I do, you do, not I think, you think
• 42:00 Physical bottom at 25: yellow eyes, protruding liver, esophageal varices, 152 pounds — drinking straight rotgut vodka
• 50:00 The freeway dirt metaphor — same dirt rearranged, same character defects reshaped by the program, no graduation from AA
• 58:00 Seagulls banded together in the construction light at Myrtle Beach, and the starfish story — you made all the difference to this one