Middle-Aged, Pot-Bellied, and Bald — Baby, You Ain’t Got What They Want 🤦 – Don P.

About This Speaker Tape

Don P. shares his story at the 17th Annual Big Island Bash in Hawaii, opening with his lifelong sense of a missing piece inside himself — like a jigsaw puzzle with a hole in the center. He traces his alcoholism from his first drink of tequila as a teenager through 24 years of escalating chaos, including a harrowing drunken flight where he tried aerobatics at 500 feet and crashed his propeller into the dirt, and an extended comic saga about buying a toupee to improve his luck at honky-tonk bars, only to have it slide sideways off his sweating head on the dance floor. Beneath the hilarious surface stories, Don describes a man who adopted the credo that any means justified the end — cheating on his wife, rigging bids in his road construction business, and becoming a liar in every facet of his life.

His moment of clarity came in a Denver hotel room on February 21, 1980, when he ran out of lies and his friend Joyce — only six weeks sober herself — sat with him for two days talking about AA. Joyce physically dragged him to his first meeting. His sponsor Louie took him through the steps with no-nonsense directness, throwing a yellow legal pad on his desk and saying "write until you run out of paper or pencil." Don resisted the amends steps fiercely, even writing a letter of resignation from AA, but watching another member make amends to him at a conference broke through his resistance.

Don describes the painstaking rebuilding of his marriage, learning to do laundry and speak civilly to Susan, and the painful legal consequences of his bid-rigging — a felony conviction, two months in federal prison, and full financial restitution. He shares the devastating loss of his son Steve to an opiate overdose in 1993, and the years it took to surrender that grief. The story comes full circle when the Kansas Secretary of Transportation presents Don with an award for his contributions to highway construction — given by the very people he had stolen from 23 years earlier.

Don closes with finding the missing piece during a 4 AM hospital visit, sitting with a detoxing man named Raymond, chasing imaginary green dogs off the bed. Walking to his car afterward, he wept — not from misery but because he had never felt so good in his life. Doing something for someone else with no expectation of return filled the hole that booze, sex, money, and toupees never could.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Introduction and background — home group in Marco Island, Florida, sober since February 21, 1980
• 3:00 The missing puzzle piece metaphor — three hallmark firsts the summer before junior year: flying solo, the prom, first drink of tequila
• 8:00 Drunken airplane crash story — aerobatics at 500 feet, prop hits dirt, wife charters plane home
• 12:00 The psychiatrist visit and the toupee saga — hair transplant consultation, buying a Glen Campbell wig, double-sided tape disaster on the dance floor
• 20:00 Moral degradation — the credo that any means justifies the end, cheating in marriage and business
• 24:00 February 21, 1980 — running out of lies in the Denver hotel room, Joyce carries the message at six weeks sober
• 30:00 Working the steps with sponsor Louie — inventory on a Big Chief tablet, letter of resignation from AA, Bernie's amends at the canyon conference
• 38:00 Bid-rigging amends — felony conviction, prison sentence, restitution, and the fear of incarceration
• 48:00 Son Steve's overdose death in 1993 — their last phone call, holding him as the monitors went flat, years to surrender the grief
• 55:00 The missing piece found — 4 AM hospital visit with Raymond, chasing green dogs, weeping in the parking lot from joy, the place of refuge