Russell S. Discovers Emotional Sobriety While Staring at the Fourth Dimension of Existence

About This Speaker Tape

1981. The booze stopped working, but the insanity remained. Russell S. doesn't deal in Hallmark platitudes; he deals in the wreckage of a mind that runs a million miles per hour. For Russell, sobriety isn't just not drinking—it's the difference between being a "thumb-sucking crybaby" and rocking in the fourth dimension of existence. He describes the alcoholic as a "please love me-aholic," a man who views a beautiful woman as a "bottle of scotch with legs" and spends his days murdering fifty people in his head.

He recounts the grit of emotional sobriety through a series of blunt collisions: a bounced $500 check and a marriage of forty years. He recalls his sponsor cutting through his noise with a simple, lethal question: "How would you feel if it didn't bother you?" To Russell, the only way out of the jail of the self is a complete psychic change. He argues that without a Higher Power, you aren't sober—you're just on the wagon, waiting to crash.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:45 Russell S. introduces his wife and jokes about their 40-year marriage.
• 5:12 Discussion on the 'real disease' centering in the mind and the purpose of Step 2.
• 10:20 Laughter: Russell S. discusses the voice in the head that calls the alcoholic a 'worthless piece of shit'.
• 15:45 Analysis of the 'Chapter to the Agnostics' and the necessity of a Higher Power.
• 22:10 Russell S. describes his 'intellectual pride' as a former law professor and mathematician.
• 28:30 Story about a bounced $500 check and the lesson of being 'upsettable'.
• 35:15 The 'upsettable' conversation with his sponsor regarding his marriage.
• 42:00 Discussion on the Sixth Step as the 'escape velocity' from the gravitational pull of alcoholism.
• 48:10 Story about being broke and the Higher Power's 'economy' of making coffee for the group.
• 55:00 Final thoughts on the 'source material' and the value of suffering.