Powerless Over Alcohol, Unmanageable Over Me — Step 1 Is Two Separate Wounds – Marty J.

About This Speaker Tape

Marty J. from Saskatoon shares at a Portland retreat hosted by Lenny, marking 23 years sober since February 8, 1976. He opens by ribbing the 48-year member and the ritual of the out-of-town speaker in a suit, then plants his flag on the line he wrote in a newcomer's book: every day you get in Alcoholics Anonymous, they can't take back. He says that single premise is what kept him sober in the beginning, and he still lives by it as a daily reprieve contingent on his spiritual condition.

The meat of the talk is powerlessness and unmanageability — the em-dash in Step One, as he calls it. He had a committee in his head from age eleven, got thrown down two flights of stairs by his father on Christmas night, and didn't grasp he was alcoholic until ninety days and countless meetings later when it hit him on a Saskatoon freeway. He recounts an educated man named Bob reducing alcoholism to 'your drinker is broke,' and Franklin Williams pointing him to the Chapter to the Agnostic definition of a real alcoholic — someone who, once started, cannot bring to mind with sufficient force the suffering of a week before.

His sponsor Dwayne is the gravitational center: a gorilla who kidnapped him rather than sponsored him, threatened to bring him his first drink and then break every bone in his body, kicked him out of AA over a Nestor Pister tape for being spiritually self-righteous, and drove him seven hours to Swift Current to hear the world's authority on humility — who turned out to be Marty himself. Through those humiliations he learned the steps in order, worked a Fourth on resentments that were cutting him off from the sunlight of the spirit, and watched a character defect he carried for thirty-five years lift on February 6, 1999.

He closes with the Hawaii story — standing at sunset feeling too small to speak, hearing his own voice say 'just tell them to believe their own miracles,' and a man with eleven years of slipping telling him afterward that a screen of every miracle in his life had scrolled across his eyes. Marty's message: the steps are the only thing that gets this noisy receiver of a mind onto one frequency long enough to hear something with clarity, and the God-shaped hole will not be filled by liquor, money, prestige, or position — only by becoming useful.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Roasting Lenny's hospitality and ribbing the 48-year member — 'I wanted the newcomers to see what they're gonna look like'
• 3:30 Sobriety date February 8, 1976; the line he wrote a four-day-sober newcomer — every day they can't take back
• 7:00 What we WERE like, not what it was like — 'it sucks, you get better, but it continues to suck'
• 12:00 The em-dash in Step One — powerless over alcohol AND our lives had become unmanageable as two separate problems
• 16:00 Educated Bob on alcoholism: hypothalamic information control center, acid aldehyde, tetrahydroxyquinone — 'your drinker is broke'
• 22:00 Franklin Williams and the real alcoholic — can't bring to mind with sufficient force the suffering of a week before
• 29:00 Dwayne the kidnapper sponsor — 'if you drink I'll bring you your first drink and break every bone in your body'
• 38:00 Dwayne kicks Marty out of AA in the car over the Nestor Pister tape and his spiritual self-righteousness
• 48:00 Jeff Charlebois on return: 'there but for the grace of Higher Power goes Higher Power'
• 58:00 Swift Current deflation — driven seven hours to hear the humility speaker, who is announced to be Marty himself
• 65:00 Hawaii sunset and the voice saying 'tell them to believe their own miracles' — the man with eleven years of slipping