Step Eleven Is Where Alcoholics Skimp — We Do the Work Then Turn Away Before the Reward — Kevin H. and Mike P.

About This Speaker Tape

A Copenhagen 2006 workshop recording where two American sponsors, Kevin and Mike, walk a Danish audience through Steps 4 through 12 in a Q&A format. The session opens mid-stream with a question from Kelly about annual fourth/fifth steps. Kevin describes being driven back to Step 4 decades in by the bedevilments on page 52 — his circumstances hadn't changed, but his attitude had become miserable again. Mike layers on hard stories from his own step work, including the thickest secret he uncovered in Step 5: telling his boss he had terminal leukemia to cover for drinking at home watching Ben-Hur, and the six-month unraveling as the lie grew legs.

The heart of the tape is practical mechanics. Kevin explains how he walks a sponsee through the four columns, how he tells men to not lie but to take a secret elsewhere if they can't tell him, and why he asks sponsees to call the day after a fifth step because the hangover of disclosure can feel suicidal. Mike tells on himself about an Eighth Step he botched — he made his list of fifty, knocked out the five hardest first (including amends to college friends he had lied to about athletic accomplishments), and then sat on the remaining forty-five for a year and a half while the promises stayed silent. He eventually did one a week for fifty-two weeks.

Steps 6 and 7 get framed as clarity and surrender. Kevin compares Step 6 to a winter tree — leaves (behaviors) knocked off in Step 5, now the defective branches visible. Both speakers insist defects cannot be willpower-ed away. Step 11 is where Kevin says alcoholics skimp: doing the work then turning away before the reward. He closes Step 11 with Francis of Assisi's prayer, Bill W.'s last written words.

The tape closes with Mike's 12th-step call on his cousin Mark — a man with liver bypass surgery, choking on his own blood three times from esophageal bleeds, mainlining glue — who they drove to detox at 3:30 AM and who walked out by 7 AM in a blackout. Mark stopped drinking only because brain damage erased that he was an alcoholic. Mike's sponsor told him it was a successful 12th-step call because Mike stayed sober.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Kelly asks about annual fourth steps; Kevin describes being driven back to the steps by the misery of page 52 bedevilments
• 5:30 Mike on trousers-on-for-a-year and why relationships in early sobriety recreate codependency
• 14:00 Kevin walks through how he takes a sponsee through Step 5 — four columns, the pre-read warning about withheld secrets, finding someone else if you can't tell your sponsor
• 22:00 Mike unburdens the leukemia-to-the-boss secret he carried into Step 5 and how it became a funny story after
• 30:00 Kevin's winter-tree metaphor for Step 6 — leaves off, dead branches visible — and his Bob Dillheimer line about not being able to control a shot of anger any more than a shot of vodka
• 40:00 Mike's botched Step 8 — the first five hardest amends in a New York office building, then a year and a half of silence while his mother died and his sister took her own life
• 52:00 Kevin's line that most people in AA fake spiritual orgasms, and the Soren Kierkegaard leap-of-faith framing of Step 9 knock-on-the-door
• 62:00 Francis of Assisi prayer read as Bill W.'s last written words, framing Step 11 discipline
• 70:00 Cousin Mark 12th-step call — detox at 3:30 AM, walked out by 7 in a blackout, brain-dead on a walker but sober
• 76:00 Closing Q&A on whether Steps 10 and 11 are functionally the same daily practice