Step 7 and the Art of Chipping Away What You Don’t Want – Tom O.

About This Speaker Tape

Lake Providence, Louisiana—a dumb hick town where Tom O. started as a peculiar kid and ended as the town drunk. He describes the "courage and fortitude" required to be a professional alcoholic, detailing a life of "successful drinking" where he could puke and never miss a step.

A captain in the dental corps, Tom recalls the wreckage of his career: shaking hands, smelling like a "drunken French whore," and needing a drink just to sew a patient's gums back together. He admits to being a "dedicated, artistic liar" who fabricated war stories so vividly he couldn't tell the real from the unreal. After losing his family, money, and dignity, he hit a bottom that felt like a gray blur, eventually falling out of a filthy bed in his mother's house.

He found a solution not in a set of answers, but in a Higher Power and a willingness to chip away at the wreckage. He remains a man who had to put his life in black and white to find the truth.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Tom O. opens with a gritty take on AA not being a place for 'nice people' but for 'no-goods and bums'.
• 2:15 Laughter: The story of the two boys and the house of ill repute.
• 6:30 Tom describes the 'skill' of puking while walking and how he once applied this skill while sick with the flu.
• 11:15 Discussion on the 'desire to stop drinking' and the metaphor of attraction versus promotion in courting.
• 16:45 Tom describes his 'Sully Baby' mirror conversations and the loneliness of his drinking.
• timecode The 'drunken French whore' perfume and the struggle of working as a dentist while intoxicated.
• 23:00 Tom discusses the difference between an 'answer' and a 'solution' in recovery.
• 27:15 The bottom: hitchhiking back to Lake Providence on a poultry truck after becoming a street bum.
• 31:00 The moment of surrender: falling out of a Hollywood bed in his mother's house.
• 34:30 Step 4 and 5: The 'artistic liar' and the lifelong guilt over stealing a dollar from a collection plate.
• 39:00 The 8th and 9th Steps: The difference between an apology and a direct amend.
• 43:00 The story of Eddie, the sponsee from the garbage dump, and the power of carrying the message.