Step 11 Prayer and the Peace That Comes From It – Burns B.

About This Speaker Tape

1977 in Louisville, Kentucky, where the fellowship was so tight they hooked together like pygmy elephants. Burns B. is a "drunk doctor" who spent years as a lethal weapon for a Higher Power, though he admits he was just a "blithering idiot" with sawdust for brains.

He lived in the gutter, practiced medicine with little arrows drawn on a chart to remember where the appendix was, and lost his car in eleven-space parking lots. He describes the "peculiar mental twist" of the alcoholic—the meanest six inches in the world between the ears. After a decade of "three-and-a-third step" sobriety, he hit his knees, tangled in a mess of two women and a dishonest heart.

He found the narrow road through Big Book studies, moving from the bizarre insanity of a quart of whiskey a night to a place where he can pray for the miserable son of a bitch honking his horn at a red light.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Burns B. opens with a joke about microphones and his status as the 'number one drunk doctor in Kentucky.'
• 10:15 Discussion of his granddaughter, Lee, and the cycle of six generations of alcoholism.
• 16:40 Recounts his history of amphetamine use in medical school and his eventual descent into heavy drinking.
• 22:10 Describes the 'best and worst of times' in Louisville AA, noting the lack of Big Book focus in 1977.
• 31:00 Laughter: Stories about 'post-acute recovery syndrome' and losing his car in a tiny parking lot.
• 42:30 Explains the 'three-and-a-third step program' and the realization that he wasn't actually sane.
• 52:15 Details the 'King Baby' complex and his distorted relationships with women.
• 1:02:00 The crisis of the double relationship and the failure of his first sponsor to maintain anonymity.
• 1:15:00 The shift toward Big Book studies and the 'renaissance' of fundamental AA in Louisville.
• 1:28:00 Breakdown of the 'peculiar mental twist': being bigger than the rules, victimization, and the 'bigger hammer' syndrome.
• 1:45:00 The 'triangle' of recovery: Sponsor, Meetings, and Big Book, resting on a base of honesty.
• 1:58:00 The final story of his father's dementia and a brief, miraculous moment of connection.