Seven Years Sober Without a Program Made Me Sicker Than Drinking Ever Did – Stevie B.

About This Speaker Tape

Stevie B. opens this Step 1-2 session at a nighttime meeting in Fort Lauderdale by reflecting on the anxiety that gripped him long before he ever picked up a drink. He describes a loving Northeast upbringing with Catholic and Jewish family traditions, yet an inexplicable tightness in his chest that set him apart from other kids. School was a struggle — not from lack of intelligence but from disinterest — and he developed elaborate cheating schemes (including a cassette-tape system for Italian class) that only deepened his anxiety. Without big brothers to give him standing in the neighborhood, he built an identity on lies, including claiming a Pittsburgh Panthers football player as his brother, a fiction he maintained for decades.

At 12, Stevie lost his eye after inventing a game called "shoot at me" with a neighborhood kid's gun — his own gun, his own idea. He carried a burning resentment toward the boy who pulled the trigger for over a decade before the Fourth Step revealed that Stevie himself was entirely at fault. That insight, he says, is the miracle of the steps: the ability to release things you would otherwise carry to the grave. He now wants to make amends to that boy.

Stevie got sober at 24, accumulated seven years, then convinced himself at 31 that he could drink wine like a gentleman as long as he avoided drugs. The relapse was catastrophic — steroids, delusion, a destroyed house with bottles hidden inside punched-out walls, six felonies in one night, and ultimately a psychiatric hold on suicide watch at a hospital on Las Olas Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale on October 11, 2001. He describes the incomprehensible demoralization of walking down that glamorous street in a hospital gown, penniless, asking a visiting AA member named Tom for a dollar for the soda machine.

The lowest point came at a nearby 7-Eleven where he planned to throw himself into traffic. A man named Randy from his home group happened to be there, put a hand on his shoulder, and said "Stevie B., you'll get back." Twenty-three years later, Stevie drove his mother's car up that same Las Olas Boulevard to share his story. He grounds the talk in the bedevilments from page 52 of the Big Book, showing how each one — trouble with relationships, uncontrolled emotions, inability to make a living, fear, uselessness — described his life exactly, and how the Promises in Step Nine answer every one of them.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Opens with gratitude, introduces childhood anxiety — the rubber band tightening around his chest despite a loving home
• 5:00 School struggles and elaborate cheating systems including a cassette-tape scheme for Italian tests
• 9:00 No big brothers on the block — early resentments and the belief that outsides never matched insides
• 12:00 The lying begins — claiming Jerry Boyarsky of the Pittsburgh Panthers as his brother, a lie he nearly repeated ten years sober
• 16:00 First drink of Manischewitz wine — the rubber band loosens, the alcoholic body recognizes the magic elixir
• 21:00 Dad as amateur apothecary — blackberry brandy for stomachaches, hot toddies for sore throats, alcohol always a friend in the house
• 27:00 Relapse at 31 after seven years sober — triple black Mustang Cobra, steroids, hair gel, parking in the handicap spot at meetings
• 33:00 Page 52 bedevilments — walks through each one as autobiography, shows how alcoholism thrives without alcohol when there is no program
• 39:00 Las Olas psychiatric hospital, suicide watch, walking the boulevard in a gown — asks Tall Tom for a dollar for the soda machine
• 44:00 The 7-Eleven moment — planning to throw himself into traffic, Randy puts a hand on his shoulder and says you will get back