Len B. Found the Truth About Genetic Allergy in the Basic Literature

About This Speaker Tape

A childhood of choir singing and biblical prizes in Saskatchewan dissolved into a blur of bar-hopping and 'polystrip' drinking that erased everything in its path. Len B. describes a life of contradictions—working double shifts in greenhouses while drinking in the bush and a failed suicide attempt where he tripped over a concrete bolt and decided he wasn't ready to die.

After a second marriage collapsed and a mirror showed him a 65-year-old man while he was still 28 he finally surrendered. He details a rigorous adherence to the steps from a Step 5 with an Anglican archdeacon to a spiritual epiphany while watching beavers in the Canadian wilderness. He eventually traded the greenhouses for a career at Lake Louise meeting world leaders and celebrities as a gardener proving that the only way out of the hole is to take the hand of someone who has been there before.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Len B. opens with nerves and a joke about the speaker and audience finishing their jobs at the same time.
• 3:45 Describes the 'polystrip' effect of alcohol on his childhood morals.
• 8:15 The 'bar-crawl' strategy: drinking two beers at multiple bars to hide the total volume from himself and others.
• 12:30 Recounts his first encounter with AA and his denial based on the stereotype of the 'brown paper bag' alcoholic.
• 15:40 Detailed account of a failed suicide attempt on the John Diefenbaker Bridge.
• 22:10 The 'mirror' epiphany: seeing an aged version of himself in the medicine cabinet.
• 25:30 Sponsorship: Elmer H. explains Step 4 as 'fixing a car' and warns against setting impossible sobriety goals.
• 28:45 Laughter: The 'shit and syphilis' joke at his first beginner's meeting.
• 31:10 Describes the horror of DTs and seeing dinner-plate-sized spiders on the wall.
• 35:20 The 'miracle' moment: throwing the Big Book across the room and it landing open on a specific promise.
• 42:10 Step 5: Working the step with an Anglican archdeacon and redefining hell as the absence of a Higher Power.
• 51:00 Closing parable about the man who jumps into the hole to help another; ends with applause.