Steps 4, 5, 8 and 9 – Don’t Sweat the Summer Big Book Workshop – Part 2 of 6 – 2025 – Shannon B.

About This Speaker Tape

Don’t Sweat the Summer Big Book Workshop - 2025

A Brooklyn apartment on St. Patrick's Day 2012 serves as the backdrop for a six-hour spiritual surgery. Shannon B. describes the wreckage of a life lived as a 'shell of a human being,' where the 'Higher Power of reason' led him to treat his family like strangers. He details the grueling process of the fifth step and the terrifying leap into the eighth and ninth specifically the moment he looked at his mother and saw her not as a role but as one of Higher Power's kids. From the absurdity of owing a lawyer thousands of dollars he'd inflated in his own head to the heartbreak of his mother praying for 30 years that every emergency call wasn't for her son Shannon maps the shift from being an 'animal' to a man who can finally sit in two minutes of silence without wanting to scream. The narrative centers on the tangible evidence of repair: a pair of Buffalo Bills slippers and a cleaned slate.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:45 Laughter: Discussion of 'real alcoholics' vs 'number twos'.
• 3:15 The fifth step as 'spiritual surgery' and the snapshot of a life without a Higher Power.
• 6:20 The 'hinge' of recovery: Discussion of Steps 6 and 7.
• 10:15 The first amends: Calling his mother and the 'calm, frank, and open' approach.
• 14:30 The emotional peak: His mother's 30-year fear of finding him at emergency scenes.
• 18:10 The 'obsession' voice and the relapse at the grandmother's wake.
• 22:45 The Buffalo Bills slippers as a tangible act of being a son.
• 26:10 Making amends to Steven S., the lawyer, and the risk of drinking if the debt wasn't paid.
• 30:00 The struggle with 'quiet time' and the ability to finally sit in peace.