Step 12 and the Short-Term Pain for Long-Term Gain – Mike

About This Speaker Tape

A briefcase in a third-floor library, a suit soaked in sweat, and a bottle of liquor hidden in the bag. Mike describes the ruins of a life where the desperation was massive and the remaining pieces were small. Born into "dirt floor poor" circumstances in the Arkansas Delta, he spent years trying to overshoot zero to feel even, chasing a version of himself around every corner. From three DUIs and a pharma career fueled by a prescription cocktail to the "hostage" marriage where he sold his wife a dream of Kentucky Lake just to escape his own wreckage, he lived as a shopper of solutions, never a buyer.

He describes a "peculiar mental twist" that triggered the first drink, despite a body that couldn't handle it. Only after a surrender in a treatment center did he find a seat for himself in AA. He warns against the ego's desire to "run the show" and the trap of short-term gain. Today, he relies on a Higher Power to fill the hole in his soul.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:45 Mike M. discusses the irony of the 'college strip' bars and the Methodist church.
• 2:15 Childhood in Earl, Arkansas, and the generational alcoholism of his mother.
• 4:30 The first drink: mixing cherry vodka into a 10oz Coke in the back of a Lincoln Continental.
• 7:10 College years at UCA and the descent from a 3.85 to a 1.65 GPA.
• 10:20 The 'triple cocktail' of prescription drugs in the pharmaceutical sample closet.
• 14:45 The blackout trip to St. Louis and Bush Stadium.
• 18:30 The desperation of drinking in a university library while wearing a suit.
• 21:15 Divine intervention: the administrator who pushed him into inpatient treatment.
• 25:40 First AA meeting on Thanksgiving Day, 1987.
• 28:10 Discussion of Step 1, the allergy, and the obsession (The Doctor's Opinion).
• 31:00 The importance of a sponsor and the 12 and 12 principles.
• 35:15 The struggle with honesty during a job interview in Philadelphia.