My Stepfather Hired Vito to Break My Legs — That Was My Intervention 🤣 – David R.
About This Speaker Tape
David R. shares his journey from a violent, broken home on the Brooklyn waterfront to sleeping in a cardboard box, and finally to a transformed life through the Big Book and the twelve steps. Raised by a single mother after fleeing his abusive, heavy-drinking Marine father at age four, David took his first drink at fourteen during the 1977 New York City blackout and was immediately hooked. Despite having the second-highest IQ at Brooklyn Tech, he graduated with a 64 average and eventually dropped out of college after a relapse triggered by his first taste of scotch behind a bar.
David's first attempt at AA lasted ten months but lacked any real step work. He relapsed on Christmas Eve 1992 after his girlfriend's ex was released from prison, and within six months he was living in a park, drinking mouthwash, and boosting car radios. He was found near death at 117 pounds, suffering from scurvy and cardiac arrest, and woke up handcuffed to a hospital wall. A man named Joe, who was dying of throat cancer, came to his bedside and read the Big Book with him paragraph by paragraph over fourteen days — not preaching, just sharing his own story and walking David through the steps.
The heart of David's message is the ninth step. He describes making amends to family members who hadn't spoken in a decade, reconnecting with his father's side of the family after a lifetime of separation, and delivering a thousand-dollar restitution to the widow of a former employer — money that paid for her daughter's prom. He describes the physical sensation of being freed from alcoholism through that amends work. Now working on Wall Street, a college graduate starting at Columbia, David credits the Big Book, his sponsors, and a willingness to do the hard work of the steps with every good thing in his life.
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