Step 7 and the Drunkest Ph.D. This Side of Hell – Ted R.

About This Speaker Tape

16th Ohio General Service Conference - 1972

Ted R. maps out the slow often painful evolution of belief moving from a youth spent in the shadow of the Depression to a long-term reliance on the bottle as his only source of comfort. He describes a period of high-functioning drinking—where he managed a plastics business and avoided the police—until the physical and mental wreckage finally caught up with him. After a brush with death in his car on June 11 1952 Ted found AA in Philadelphia. He dismantles the idea of a sudden spiritual epiphany instead describing a gradual process of 'faking it' with prayers and relying on the group until a specific moment at a business lunch in Hartford Connecticut where a rum-soaked dessert served as a stark reminder of his incapacity. He now views sanity as the avoidance of mental conflict and comfort treating sobriety as a daily loan.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Ted R. introduces the theme 'Came to Believe' and defines belief as positive assurance.
• 4:15 Ted discusses the 'peak of tolerance' and how the 'great comforter' becomes the 'great discomforter'.
• 8:30 The 'purpose-driven' sobriety trap: Ted warns his protégé about the risk of drinking once the pressure of college is gone.
• 12:45 Ted describes his 'private miseries' and the distinction between the skid row bum and the functioning alcoholic.
• 17:10 The bottom: waking up in a puddle of scotch in his car on June 11, 1952.
• 21:00 First contact with AA in Philadelphia and the explanation of the physical allergy/obsession.
• 26:30 Ted admits to 'faking' the prayers and the 'day-at-a-time' proposition in early sobriety.
• 30:15 Spiritual Awakening: The rum-soaked sundaes at the Hartford Club.
• 35:40 Discussion of Step 6 and 7: the weight of guilt and the process of removing character defects.
• 40:20 Defining sanity as the avoidance of mental conflict and the danger of 'graduating' from the program.
• 44:00 Closing thoughts on living life as a daily loan and the group's recitation of the Lord's Prayer.