Steps 10 Through 12 Are Not Maintenance — Every Sober Year Needs New Brakes – Jeremy M.

About This Speaker Tape

Jeremy M., a Monday-night speaker at the Blue Chip meeting at the NAVA club, opens on his ten-year anniversary and immediately puts the room on notice that this will not be a laugh-heavy tape. He reads Bill Wilson's "faith without works is dead" passage from page 14, honors the 46 friends he lists every Awareness Month who did not make it, and mentions a sponsee whose brother is dying of alcohol use disorder at Emory that same night. His mother is in the audience for the first time ever.

He names the wreckage piece by piece: a genetically loaded alcoholic father, a first memory of family violence at eighteen months, molestation at three, knowing he was gay at five, and a fabricated molestation story told at eleven to get out of doing the dishes that pulled the family into DFCS custody, a mother-led kidnapping, and an FBI manhunt across rainbow gatherings with his Mormon-hippie parents. First chemical at thirteen was instantaneous — the disease had already been built before the substance arrived. A brief sober stretch at eighteen collapsed over pot with co-workers. Eleven more years of setbacks followed his first 28-day program at Miles Street in Athens: jails on Chamblee Tucker Road, repeat psychiatric admissions, a mugshot with dead eyes. Every sponsor stopped him at the same wall — Step 4 and Step 5.

The turn comes at ten months sober in a Florida halfway house. Sitting on his bed with his dog Maya, listening to Jesus music and planning a relapse, every escape route closed in his head. He commits to work the steps for real. The next Sunday a 6'5" ex-Marine named Tim walks into his men's meeting with a leather-bound Big Book whose pages fall out on the floor, and Jeremy asks him to sponsor him the same day. They start at page one of the Big Book at a picnic table. Tim has him write his whole using history, titles it "The Jeremy Show," and refuses to read it — that is his proof that self-will cannot run the show.

Step 4 and 5 get broken into weekly sections — resentments, fears, sex — and the fifth-step promises come true later, not in the moment. His ninth-step amends to his mother about the childhood lie meets a response he did not expect: she tells him she would not take it back because of the people they met on the run. Four years into a job with the Georgia Council for Recovery, he refuses the "where do you see yourself in five years" question — that is a Higher Power's call now. He closes on page 164 and the keystone idea that surrender, not maintenance, is what every year of sobriety demands.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Misty opens the Monday Blue Chip speakers meeting at the NAVA club and introduces Jeremy M., best-dressed man in Atlanta, sober since 2013
• 2:30 Jeremy reads Bill Wilson's "faith without works is dead" passage from page 14 and names his 46-friend Awareness Month list
• 6:00 Genetic predisposition, a first memory of family violence at eighteen months, molestation at three, knowing he was gay at five
• 9:00 The dishes, the tree the fire department kept rescuing him from, and the age-11 molestation lie that triggered the DFCS case and cross-country FBI flight with his Mormon-hippie parents
• 13:30 First chemical at 13 was instantaneous; brief sober run at 18 with a GED collapsed over pot with co-workers
• 16:00 Sister bribes him into Miles Street in Athens at 25; Vida Farr's intake paperwork and his first meeting at the Biscayne Room
• 22:00 Eleven years of chronic setbacks, jails on Chamblee Tucker Road in 2006, psychiatric admissions, the dead-eyed mugshot — and every sponsor stopping at Step 4 and 5
• 28:00 Ten months sober in a Florida halfway house with his dog Maya, every relapse plan closes off, and he commits to work the steps
• 31:00 Sunday morning men's meeting: a 6'5" ex-Marine named Tim walks in with a leather Big Book whose pages fall out on the floor — Jeremy asks him to sponsor that day
• 35:30 Tim has him write his whole using history, titles it "The Jeremy Show" and refuses to read it — proof that self-will cannot run the show; Step 4/5 broken into weekly sections; mother's response to the ninth-step amends; closes on page 164