Meeting-Based Sobriety as the Slow Delivery of the Promises in Reverse — Matt K.

About This Speaker Tape

Matt K. opens at his bottom: living behind the Vail library, then in a loft bed surrounded by a bookshelf full of bottles and cigarette-butt-stuffed cans. He describes waking every morning with a full-body dread, praying without knowing it that he wouldn't wake up again. He weighed 120 pounds, was stealing to eat, and hitchhiking between four-day construction jobs in Beaver Creek, taking advances and disappearing.

A phone call to his dad — who told him they'd feed him in jail or in a treatment center — moved him toward Elizabethtown, Kentucky. He packed a backpack that had a busted jar of stolen garlic in it and hitchhiked to Denver. In treatment he sat through LSD flashbacks on Xerox worksheets, but the AA van took him to a birthday meeting where he saw a Native American old-timer in a cowboy hat on oxygen smoking Pall Malls, sat with the AA motorcycle group, and watched a man in a puke-stained light blue polyester suit get welcomed back after a relapse. That image kept him from ever drinking again.

For 15 years he stayed sober on meetings and fellowship alone, drifting in and out, until his 10th anniversary hockey barbecue — bathtub of beer, no AA people present — showed him he was getting the promises in reverse. He came back as a newcomer, kept his mouth shut, found Joe and Charlie tapes and speakers like Chris R., and finally got properly taken through the Big Book. He calls that his real recovery date: a 15-year chip in his book.

Today he manages billions of dollars of property for people who trust him, got the job through an AA friend who walked into a bike shop. He closes on the 10th Step as 'how is it for other people to experience me,' the discipline of not sending the text or making the call in a fever, and a dictionary definition of recovery: extracting something precious from that which appears to have no value.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:30 Two years, 14 addresses, 30 jobs — hitchhiking to Beaver Creek for four-day construction gigs and disappearing with the advance
• 3:00 Camping behind the Vail library, loft bed with a bookshelf full of bottles and butt-stuffed cans
• 5:30 Waking up every morning hopeless and demoralized, praying without knowing it that he wouldn't come to again
• 8:00 Phone call home — 'Dad, I'm hungry' — and hearing 'it doesn't have to be like this anymore'
• 11:00 Hitchhiking to Denver with a backpack full of busted stolen garlic, flight to Elizabethtown, Kentucky
• 15:00 First AA meeting — 300 people, smoke-thick high school gym, Native American old-timer on oxygen smoking Pall Malls
• 19:00 Watches the man in the puked-on light-blue suit get welcomed back — never relapses after seeing that face
• 26:00 Late-night candlelit marathon meeting: young mother with AIDS wanting only to stay sober for her baby
• 32:00 10th anniversary hockey barbecue with a bathtub of beer and no AA people — the drift made visible
• 38:00 Comes back as a newcomer with Ken C., finds Joe and Charlie and Chris R. tapes, finally gets recovered at 15 years