Self-Sponsorship as the Alcoholic’s Shortcut to the Next Blackout – Dennis N.
About This Speaker Tape
Dennis N., sober since February 1, 1981, shares at The Rock (Atlanta Men's Workshop 50th anniversary) from his home group in Harrisburg, North Carolina. He opens with humor about old-timers who sat on the back row in halfway-house furniture, watched him watch them, and asked three questions that haunted him: who told you that, can you find it in the Big Book, and who's your sponsor. He credits staying sober to the grace of a loving Higher Power manifested through the program, the fellowship, and an ever-growing circle of friends.
He tells his story from a Cleveland County, North Carolina cotton farm, through a childhood marked by a wandering eye and sensitivity, his first drink of his friend's grandfather's corn liquor in a corn crib, and a disastrous homemade wine experiment involving buried mason jars and rubbing alcohol. Four classmates confronted him about his drinking in his senior year of high school, but it took ten more years to see himself as they saw him. He joined the Army, served in Vietnam, nuclear weapons, Germany, and drill sergeant duty, collecting five alcohol-related arrests that got buried in his files and later forgotten in his own distorted memory.
Back in North Carolina, working prison third shift so he could drink all day, he had hallucinations of fuzzy things crawling the baseboards until even psychotic inmates petitioned to have him fired. A Thanksgiving family intervention sent him cursing into his second blackout. His wife's uncle Dan, a sober AA member, planted the seed; a counselor named James gave him a brand-new Big Book. He sponsored himself for 81 days until he and his rearview-mirror sponsor woke up 140 miles from home drunk and naked.
On February 1, 1981 the old-timers in the back row pulled him into a meeting-after-the-meeting and asked if he had prayed the day he drank. He couldn't lie anymore. That night he accepted four truths: he can't keep himself sober, total abstinence is required, he must maintain a relationship with Higher Power through the steps, and he must get a sponsor and work the steps under guidance. 34 years married to Libra, kids grown through Alateen, grandkids Gary, Inez, and Chris in the picture, back on the deacon board of the church he once rejected — the long way from the liquor store to the deacon board.
Discussion
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