Put the Man Together and the World Comes Together — That’s Steps 6 Through 9 – Peggy M.

About This Speaker Tape

Peggy Martin, an alcoholic sober since February 4, 1964, speaks at an Al-Anon convention on the theme "happiness is an inside job." She opens by describing how empty she was when she first arrived in AA — if the eyes are the windows of the soul, her occupant had moved out six months prior. She walks through vivid metaphors for her inner life: a peeled golf ball with black goo at the center, layers of an onion, a can of silly string crammed where it doesn't belong. The locks on the alcoholic, she insists, are on the inside; only the alcoholic herself holds the key.

She grew up in St. Louis, daughter of a doctor and a music teacher, with no alcoholism in the immediate family. As a skinny, mean kid at Randolph Air Force Base, she ambushed a pear-shaped classmate nicknamed Flash from behind a bush and loved the sense of power it gave her. She drank her way through high school and a year overseas in college — drunk in Paris under a Scotsman's kilt, then to Mass in Geneva with some Italian she didn't know, doing penance she didn't understand. By 23 or 24 she had cirrhosis, a heart attack, DTs that showed up as paisley patterns and a floating pear, and a quart-of-Popoff-vodka-a-day habit.

She got sober in Washington, D.C. at twenty-five, and spent her first year shaking, looking at the floor, and defending herself. Her sponsor refused to let her talk, made her pick up her own coffee cup and chair, and after a year told her she was going to be the greeter — precisely because she said she didn't like people. For ten years in AA she would not call her higher power God; she'd sneak into the bathroom and pray to "whoever is up there." She married an alcoholic AA member (the Christmas he had six dollars and a red bow), ran a business with him out of Omaha, and raised a son who went through a period as a fifteen-year-old "glue head" — she stood at the window watching, learning to let go one day at a time.

She closes with the starfish parable: a man throwing stranded starfish back into the ocean one by one, told it can't possibly matter with hundreds stranded. "It makes all the difference in the world. To this one." She thanks the fellowship for throwing her back.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Peggy Martin introduces herself, sober since February 4, 1964, speaking at her first Al-Anon convention
• 4:00 Eyes as windows of the soul — her occupant had moved out six months prior; locks on the alcoholic are on the inside
• 8:30 Silly-string and peeled-golf-ball metaphors for what was inside her — black goo at the center
• 15:00 Childhood in St. Louis — doctor father, music-teacher mother, no alcoholism in the family; ambushing Flash the pear-shaped bully
• 23:00 First drink — waist nipped in, hips flared, 'baby let the sun shine in'; ten seconds worth a thousand psychiatrists
• 30:00 Drunk in Paris under a Scotsman's kilt, then Mass in Geneva with an Italian stranger doing penance
• 36:00 Cirrhosis at 23-24, heart attack, paisley-pattern DTs; quart of Popoff vodka a day; father throws her into a drying-out place
• 43:00 First year sober in Washington D.C. — shaking, looking at the floor, sponsor forbidding her to talk and making her pick up her own chair
• 50:00 Ten years in AA before calling her higher power Higher Power — praying to 'whoever is up there' on the bathroom floor
• 58:00 Starfish parable closing — throwing one back at a time, 'it makes all the difference in the world, to this one'