Step 4: Only Resentments Could Break Through the Fear – Father T.

About This Speaker Tape

Father T. came into AA convinced that Kafka had it right: there is infinite hope, but not for us. He was a seminary-trained, Camus-reading depressive who preferred a brain tumor diagnosis to alcoholism — at least with a brain tumor, he could still drink.

He grew up in a family where Swedish relatives were hospitalized for "nerves" and Irish relatives were called "characters" — nobody said the word alcoholic out loud. His own drinking started young, moved fast, and included years of blackout driving he still considers the scariest thing he ever did. When he finally got sober at 29 in Berkeley, he didn't glow. He was jagged, raw, and couldn't write a paragraph for four months. His Step 4 took 18 months because fear didn't motivate him — only fury did. He could only write resentments when he was angry enough, starting with a man at a meeting whose laugh he despised. He also pulls out a rarely-cited passage from page 292 of the Big Book where Dr. Bob's list of character defects — selfishness, conceit, jealousy, sarcasm, ill temper — hit closer to home than Bill's standard inventory categories ever had.

The AA content here is practical and specific: the difference between identifying at meetings and being in fit spiritual condition, why drinking dreams mean you're not going to drink, how each year of sobriety buys you one extra second of response time before you say something you'll regret, and why Steps 6 and 7 are the slow, ongoing work — not a one-time event.

For the person who's been sober long enough to know the steps by name but still runs on sarcasm and resentment at work, at home, in traffic — Father T. is 25 years ahead of you on that exact road, and he's still walking it.

Topics

Timestamps

• 5:00 Father T. explains AA's anonymity to newcomers by describing baffled journalists who couldn't understand why the fellowship keeps no membership records and no list of famous members.
• 13:00 The rhinoceros in the living room — Father T. describes a family where Swedish cousins dried out from 'nervous spells' and Irish uncles were called 'characters,' and nobody ever said the word alcoholic.
• 22:00 A crusty old-timer at the El Cerrito Fellowship tells the newly sober Father T. he can't guarantee his behavior after his first drink — and that single sentence becomes his working definition of alcoholism.
• 31:00 Father T. reads aloud from page 156 of the Big Book — AA's third member, strapped to a hospital bed, tells Bill and Bob 'nothing would fix me' — and proposes it as the first recorded instance of inappropriate AA humor.
• 39:00 Step 4 begins in a white rage: Father T. leaves a meeting despising a man whose laugh he couldn't stand, goes home furious, and writes RESENTMENTS at the top of the page — that stranger is number one on the list.
• 47:00 Father T. discovers Dr. Bob's character defect list on page 292 — selfishness, conceit, jealousy, sarcasm, ill temper — and realizes after 20 years that this list describes his ongoing craziness far better than Bill's standard inventory categories.
• 54:00 Driving across the Bay Bridge, a Chevy's sign for cranberry margaritas nearly causes a swerve into oncoming traffic — and the craving gnaws at him for six weeks until he orders a virgin version and the obsession finally quiets.