Nightly Tenth Step Since Treatment — Where the Arrogance and Judgment Finally Surfaced – John A.

About This Speaker Tape

John A. from the Friendship Group at the Halt Club in Gainesville, Georgia ("poultry capital of the world") speaks at the Monday night Blue Chip Speakers Meeting at the NAVA Club, approaching five years of sobriety with a date of September 19, 2011. He describes a normal upbringing with an absentee, business-building father, his first drinks at 13 pilfered from a jackknifed truckload of low-and-brow beer his dad bought cheap, boarding school in Tennessee, and four years of fraternity drinking at the University of Georgia that produced a 3.0 accounting degree while he drank every night.

The middle of the tape is medical. By age 30 his liver enzymes were already off the chart, so instead of stopping he trained for the Chicago Marathon and ran 35 miles a week for ten years as an alcoholic counterbalance — even calculating that if a liver stores twenty miles of glycogen, ten miles meant his gauge was only half empty. He piled up 16 broken bones, rolled a 6,000-pound tractor with the bush hog running wide open while blowing a 2.5, emptied a 9mm at trespassers on motorcycles, broke three ribs trying to teach his daughter to jump rope after a magnum of Chardonnay, and drove drunk more than a thousand times without a DUI — the classic "yet guy."

At 40 a routine hernia surgery went catastrophically wrong — his friend the surgeon hit a vein and lost three pints of blood in thirty seconds — which led to a hepatologist at Piedmont who delivered advanced cirrhosis, a double-mutated hemochromatosis gene inherited from his mother that amplifies alcohol's effect on the organs, and a take-it-or-leave-it ultimatum: $40,000 at Talbot, AA, random drug tests within six hours of a phone call. John agreed while quietly plotting to resume drinking at age 70 based on actuarial tables.

Talbot kept him dry but AA gave him the tools — especially a nightly 10th step he has worked every night since treatment, listing character assets, defects, and amends owed. Through that practice he saw the arrogance, judgment, and mean-spiritedness the alcohol had hidden, and found a Higher Power walking with him. He closes with a Step 12 story: a year after he handed a newcomer named Chris a Big Book at the Halt Club, Chris tracked him down to say that three-and-a-half-dollar paperback was what kept him off the run. John credits AA with his 22-year marriage, four teenagers who he hopes don't remember his drinking, and the discovery that he can have just as much fun with a cup of coffee or ginger ale as he ever did loaded.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Meeting opens — Julie, then Tyler reads from page 29 of the Big Book and introduces his sponsor of nine and a half months
• 2:30 John A. takes the podium — sobriety date September 19, 2011, Friendship Group at the Halt Club in Gainesville
• 5:00 Childhood with an absentee father building a business, Sergeant Carter–Private Powell relationship at home
• 7:30 First drink at 13 — a jackknifed truckload of low-and-brow beer his dad bought cheap, kids carting empties into the woods
• 11:00 University of Georgia fraternity years — 3.0 in accounting while drinking every night
• 15:30 Age 30 liver-enzyme warning — John's answer is to train for the Chicago Marathon and run 35 miles a week for ten years
• 21:00 Bush hog rollover on the Dawson County farm, shooting at trespassers with a 9mm, 16 broken bones — the razor's-edge near-felonies
• 27:00 Hernia surgery goes wrong — three pints lost in thirty seconds, friend-surgeon sends him to Piedmont
• 31:00 Hepatologist delivers cirrhosis plus hemochromatosis diagnosis and the Talbot ultimatum — John silently plans to start drinking again at 70
• 40:00 Daily 10th step since Talbot — the practice that showed him his arrogance and brought a Higher Power into the picture
• 46:00 12th-step story — Chris returns a year later to thank John for a three-and-a-half-dollar Big Book handed off at the Halt Club