My Sponsor Wouldn’t Let Me Touch the Fourth Step Until I’d Done a Higher Power Inventory First — Michael R.

About This Speaker Tape

Michael, a fifth-generation Irish Catholic alcoholic, opens by joking that AA is full of "the same A**holes who don't" go to meetings, then pivots to why he's stayed sober rather than how he got here. In 2019 his mother called: she could no longer care for his wheelchair-bound father alone. Michael returned to the house he grew up in, eventually placed his parents in a facility when his mother's Alzheimer's progressed, and now lives with his older brother who is currently bottoming out. Going home with sober eyes, he found his mother's journal and letters she had written to his father's mistresses — all of them his dad's secretaries — and pieces of his childhood puzzle began to fit.

He traces his alcoholism back to a shy, dyslexic boy who hid behind his mother's skirt and learned in sixth grade that if he made everyone else look better, the focus would come off him. Coming out as gay during the AIDS epidemic, he watched all but one of his friends die and chose costumes over relationships. In Charleston he became a cocaine-dealing drag queen, kept baggies in one hollow Dolly Parton boob and cash in the other, pushed a stolen Pinto over the Cooper River Bridge in stilettos, and stole groceries from Kroger with a friend who could carry a whole ham between her legs. A chance bathroom encounter with composer Giancarlo Menotti landed him a real costume design credit and a 20-year theater career.

The heart of the tape is two sponsor lessons. The first sponsor, before letting him touch a Fourth Step, made him do a Higher Power inventory — when was the youngest age he had felt a presence? He remembered being two or three at the Buckhead cathedral, hand on cool stone, organ bass reverberating through stained glass. The second sponsor, who had lived in Japan, sat him at a yellow table with a red porcelain dish of sand, dropped one grain in his palm and called it the entirety of his soul, then poured the bowl out and told him to find his grain. He couldn't. That image still stops his self-will when he wants to be angry at a bank teller or believe the world revolves around him.

Michael closes on humility, the Tenth Step, and the line he loves before "A Vision For You" — you will create the fellowship you crave. He keeps going to meetings full of newcomers because the person five days off the cuckoo train shares the most honest things in the room, and because if he isn't practicing what he preaches he hears it in his own mouth the second he tries to help someone new.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Opens with Grady O. quote u2014 'I finally found out who goes to AA meetings. The same A**holes who don't' u2014 and announces today's story is about why he's stayed sober, not how he got here
• 2:30 2019 phone call from mother; moves home to care for wheelchair-bound father and Alzheimer's mother, finds her hidden journal and the letters to his father's mistresses
• 9:00 Childhood u2014 bullied, dyslexic, sixth-grade Knights of the Round Table scheme where he learns to make others look better so the focus comes off him
• 16:00 Charleston, College of Charleston, the white-turbaned drag queen who silenced the room, and his own debut as a cocaine-dealing drag queen with hollow Dolly Parton boobs
• 22:00 Stolen Pinto rolls off the Cooper River Bridge in stilettos while three drag queens watch a nuclear sub; Kroger heists and the friend who carried hams between her legs
• 29:00 Bathroom encounter with composer Giancarlo Menotti leads to a Spoleto costume credit and the start of a 20-year theater career
• 36:00 First sponsor sends him to do a Higher Power inventory before any Fourth Step u2014 Buckhead cathedral memory at age two or three becomes his first felt sense of something out there
• 44:00 Second sponsor's grain-of-sand lesson on the yellow table u2014 pours the bowl out and tells him to find his grain; the image still checks his self-will today
• 51:00 Aurora borealis necklace tied to the Seven Deadly Sins; same bead looks different depending on the light, same with his character defects
• 57:00 Closes on Tenth Step, newcomers as the most honest voices in the room, and the line before 'A Vision For You' u2014 you will create the fellowship you crave