Sponsored Myself for a While and Turns Out I Had an Idiot for a Sponsor 🤣 – Justin

About This Speaker Tape

Justin opens at the Monday Night Blue Chip Speakers meeting at the NABBA Club, introduced by Tim, and sets a light tone with Rule 62 before moving into his story. He describes an average middle-class childhood that he carried anger through — an angry kid, an angry teenager, an angry young adult with two middle fingers aimed at authority. His path into addiction started at 15 with a Grateful Dead concert and street drugs, not alcohol. His first real drunk at 17 in Clemson, South Carolina ended with a blackout and waking up in Athens, Georgia with no memory of the drive.

Alcohol took center stage after 21, when a clerk failed to check his ID and Justin started his legal drinking life with a resentment. He worked back-of-house restaurant jobs where drinking and the night shift went hand in hand, then doctor-shopped his way into a decade of prescription stimulants that let him drink far more. He left a good job in the mid-2000s to start a home inspection company — launched from a resentment against his own home inspector — then watched the 2007-2008 crash wipe him out. By 30 he was facing lawsuits, creditors, a foreclosure, and a fiancée at the end of her rope asking why he drank.

The turning point came on his knees. Willing to see a sign, Justin asked his Higher Power to show him the root of his disturbance and received a memory he had buried for almost thirty years: he had been violently sexually molested as a young child. He drank ten times harder trying to drown the memory, finally told his mother, then spiraled to a 0.383 BAC emergency room admission and seven days at Charter Peachford. His last drink was August 8, 2011; he counts his willingness date as August 14, when he did Steps 1, 2, and 3 in a single day.

In recovery at the Serenity House in Beaufort, Justin got a sponsor, got into the Big Book, Daily Reflections, and the 12 and 12, and found the Gainesville Classic Group as his home group. He talks plainly about resentments being the number-one offender, and names the shared resentment with another alcoholic as the single most dangerous spot in his own sobriety — dangerous enough that he had to distance himself from certain people about a year before this talk to stay sober. He ends on the promises, on painstaking work, on trusting the process, and on finding his tribe in the fellowship.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Tim opens the Monday Night Blue Chip Speakers meeting at the NABBA Club and introduces Justin from Brazelton
• 2:30 Justin names his home group as the Gainesville Classic Group and credits sponsorship — jokes about having an idiot for a sponsor when he tried to sponsor himself
• 5:00 Middle-class childhood, angry kid with two middle fingers up at authority, asking his father what an adult beverage was
• 8:00 First unsupervised drink at 17 in Clemson, South Carolina — blacks out and wakes up in Athens, Georgia with a pack of cigarettes
• 12:00 Turns 21, clerk fails to check his ID, Justin starts his legal drinking life with a resentment
• 16:00 Doctor-shops a psychiatrist for stimulant prescriptions and spends roughly ten years abusing them to drink more
• 20:00 Leaves a good job around age 28 to start a home inspection company built on a resentment, then loses it in the 2007-2008 crash
• 26:00 On his knees asking his Higher Power for the root of his disturbance — receives the memory of being violently sexually molested as a child
• 32:00 Last drink August 8, 2011 — 0.383 BAC at the emergency room, seven days in Charter Peachford, meeting within 24 hours at the Serenity House in Beaufort
• 38:00 Names the shared resentment with another alcoholic as the most dangerous spot in his recovery and the reason he had to distance himself from people a year ago