My Sponsor Broke the Twelve Steps Into Pairs and the Eighth Step Around My Ex-Wife Still Isn’t Done – Art S.

About This Speaker Tape

Art S. shares his story from the Robber's Roost East Group in Dunwoody, Georgia, with a sobriety date of January 20, 1998. He traces his path from a first drink at 21 in Fairbanks, Alaska — Canadian Club and 7-Up on the back courts of a renter house — through cocaine use, a church that changed its rules around him, and a sales career where he was making six figures as a high school graduate. He describes going to rehab on a 90-day program that let him out at 88 days because his worker's comp was covering 70% of his salary, and how he put a sponsor's name on a meeting sheet without the man even knowing.

At nine months sober, Art relapsed because his AA meeting in Arev, Alabama didn't have a nine-month chip — a detail he offers as proof of his own insanity. He shot dope at an AA meeting and came back to the Coleman group expecting rejection. Instead they said, "Glad you made it back, son," and hugged him like they knew him. That moment of unconditional acceptance became a turning point.

Art breaks the twelve steps into paired groups the way his sponsor taught him: Steps 1-3 prepare you for the work, 4-5 hook you up with yourself, 6-7 hook you up with Higher Power, 8-9 hook you back up with society, and 10-12 repeat the same cycle as maintenance. He describes a ninth-step amends where he returned stolen money to a business in Alabama on an installment plan, and the ongoing eighth-step work around his divorce and his relationship with his youngest daughter, who he says is a lot like her daddy.

Now retired twice and working on a third retirement, Art reads pages 86-87 of the Big Book every morning and night — 26 years running. He sponsors a man in Commerce, Georgia whom he's pushing to start sponsoring others immediately. He closes with the observation that not once during bankruptcy, divorce, or his mother's death did drinking present itself as an obsession — only as a passing thought — and credits that distinction to the daily practice his sponsors drilled into him.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Introduction from the chair reading from page 29 of the Big Book, speaker introduced from Robber's Roost East Group in Dunwoody, Georgia
• 1:30 Art gives sobriety date of January 20, 1998 — 9,744 one days at a time — and describes refusing to pick up a white chip at his first meeting in Alabama
• 5:00 First drink at 21 in Fairbanks, Alaska — wine he hated, then Canadian Club and 7-Up where the magic happened
• 8:00 Church rules about drinking, cocaine enters the picture, sponsor's question 'When you bought cocaine, were you drinking?' that rang for years
• 12:00 Sponsor makes him read 'fully concede to our innermost self' — the moment of real admission, followed by terror at the scope of Steps 4 and 5
• 16:00 Meeting Bill Rook and a woman at Central Office — two anchors of Atlanta AA — and Bill teaching him to pray on his knees for his marriage
• 22:00 Eight years sober in church but not in AA — did more damage to marriage and children during that period than while drinking
• 28:00 Relapse at nine months over a missing chip, shooting dope at an AA meeting, returning to Coleman group and being welcomed back
• 35:00 Steps broken into pairs — 1-3 prepare, 4-5 connect with self, 6-7 with Higher Power, 8-9 with society, 10-12 maintain the cycle
• 42:00 Ninth step amends to the Alabama business — sponsor insists he tell them what he did and set up a payment plan, not pay it all at once