Most of My Life When I Stood in Front of a Podium with a Tie on I Was Called Defendant 🤣 — Pearce M.

About This Speaker Tape

Pierce tells his story at a Monday Night Blue Chip Speakers Meeting, celebrating nine years of sobriety with a sobriety date of June 10, 2010. Born and raised in the Bronx to two poor sharecroppers, he lost his father at 11 and his mother at 17, and started drinking at 10 or 11 on a camping trip with his older brother — a warm Rheingold that, for the first time in his life, let him sleep. By eighth grade his friends were stealing a wheelchair from the VA hospital so he could get drunk at graduation with a broken leg, and by 15 he was a regular in neighborhood bars. At 17 a friend handed him cocaine, "the magic elixir," and the real acceleration began.

At 21 he saw three generations of John Fitzpatricks lined up on barstools at Manions on Fordham Road, realized that was his future, and drove west to his first geographic cure. San Diego, LA's South Central, Northern California, and finally Boulder followed, stacking up four DUIs, work release, home detention with an ankle bracelet and a breathalyzer he waited out while using drugs instead, and a sister who was both enabler and, eventually, the one who called the DeKalb County Fire Department when he told her he planned to hang himself from the pipes in his bedroom with a rope from Home Depot. The liquor store was always closer than the hardware store, which is the only reason he's alive.

Peachford Hospital, a halfway house, and a sponsor who walked him through the Big Book word by word behind the church got him started. When that sponsor moved away with Pierce mid-fourth-step, he asked another man on the spot — a man who has been his sponsor ever since, and who recently talked him out of chasing Xanax for job-loss anxiety and into a fear inventory instead, where Pierce discovered the fear had flipped: he used to be afraid of having nothing, now he is afraid of losing what he has. He sees his Higher Power in the rearview mirror — an old boss calling out of the blue with a job when a felony from 1993 wouldn't even let him drive for Uber, a bowling-alley cauldron of beer he didn't drink because a roomful of his home group was standing between him and it.

The core of Pierce's message is that shame and guilt he could not name as a kid turned into anger as an alcoholic, and that he still has the fight gene and none of the flight gene — at 57 he chased a guy who grabbed his phone on a Chamblee bench. He came in at 48 with the desperation of a dying man, and the life he has today is not perfect but it is better than anything he ever had.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Preston opens the Monday Night Blue Chip Speakers Meeting at the NAVA Club; Trey introduces Pierce with the running joke about getting fired on every trip — Jazz Fest, deep-sea fishing, Puerto Rico
• 3:30 Pierce takes the podium, nine years sober as of June 10, 2010, thanks the home group in the room, says he showed up friendless, broke, jobless
• 6:00 Bronx childhood — father dies when Pierce is 11, first drink at 10 or 11 on a camping trip with his older brother, warm Rheingold in an inflatable raft, the first time he was ever able to sleep
• 10:30 Eighth-grade graduation — friends steal a wheelchair from the VA hospital so he can drink without using crutches; shining shoes as a kid in Third Avenue bars
• 15:00 At 17, a friend introduces him to cocaine — "the magic elixir" — same year his mother dies; USS Intrepid blackout, wakes eight stories up on a closed aircraft carrier, friends hadn't noticed he was gone
• 22:00 At 21 sees three generations of John Fitzpatricks at Manions on Fordham Road, drives to California, first geographic cure; San Diego, South Central LA, first acceptance that New York was the exception not the rule
• 28:00 Boulder DUIs, probation officer Nancy Higgins tries to twelve-step him, bar-after-class routine; year of home detention with ankle bracelet and breathalyzer, cuts it off on Memorial Day weekend
• 36:00 Atlanta — girlfriend packs his things and puts him out, Holiday Inn on La Vista Road for the liquor store next door, three-year blackout run of stomping beer cans flat to make room for more
• 44:00 Fired May 2010 after resentment-fueled month of calling in sick; suicide plan with a rope from Home Depot, saved because the liquor store was closer than the hardware store; sister calls DeKalb County, Peachford Hospital
• 52:00 Halfway house, first sponsor moves away mid-fourth-step, asks current sponsor that same night; recent fear inventory instead of Xanax, old boss calling out of the blue with a job — "I see Higher Power in the rearview mirror"