Steps 3 Through 11 Built a Foundation the Pandemic Could Not Break – Diego R.

About This Speaker Tape

Diego R. grew up in Venezuela as the only child of an alcoholic Colombian father whose explosive rage and eventual abandonment when Diego was five left deep marks. Told to be "the man of the house" at five years old, Diego developed coping mechanisms rooted in fear, low self-esteem, and eventually his own reactive anger. Bullied through childhood, he gravitated toward underdogs and tough kids who protected him, while martial arts and physical training gave him a way to fight back.

Alcohol entered the picture around age 15-16, when a drunken car accident during a World Cup celebration left him bloody and unconscious. By 19-20 he was deliberately training himself to drink "properly" so he could use alcohol as liquid courage with women. His career as a rotational mechanical engineer in the oil industry created the perfect storm: weeks of enforced sobriety on offshore rigs followed by month-long benders spanning Miami nightclubs, Southeast Asia, and Europe. His hiring manager was a heavy drinker, his entire team of ten were full-blown alcoholics, and the industry culture normalized it completely. Ironically, one of Diego's duties was monitoring coworkers for alcohol and drug use.

Diego first found AA in Bogota, Colombia but stayed less than a year before relapsing after a colleague pressured him into "just two glasses of wine." That seven-month relapse from September 2017 to April 2018 proved to be the wake-up call he needed. Walking into a Houston meeting feeling suicidal, a man approached him afterward and declared himself Diego's sponsor on the spot. With hardcore sponsorship and daily meetings, Diego worked the steps over two years while maintaining his rotational work schedule.

The pandemic tested his sobriety severely: stranded in Dubai paying his own expenses for four and a half months, enduring 14-day military-surveilled hotel quarantines, and working 56-day offshore hitches without access to meetings. He then went eighteen months without income for the first time in his life. Through it all, the spiritual foundation built through steps 3 through 11 held him together. He used the downtime to lead meetings for small groups in Colombia via phone. Five years sober, Diego now works his dream assignment and sponsors his first sponsee, living proof that the program works even when meetings are physically impossible to attend.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Host Howard L. introduces Diego R. and his background as a Venezuelan mechanical engineer with an alcoholic father
• 3:30 Diego picks up his five-year chip and reflects on his relapse and first AA meeting in Colombia
• 7:00 Childhood in Venezuela: alcoholic father's rage, abandonment at five, being told to be the man of the house
• 12:00 Bullying, martial arts, and the shift from fear to reactive anger as a teenager
• 17:00 First drink at 15-16 during 1994 World Cup celebration leads to blackout car accident and hospital visit
• 23:00 Training himself to drink socially, chasing women as revenge after teenage heartbreak
• 30:00 Oil industry career: rotational work, entire team of alcoholics, hired through a drunken bar encounter with manager
• 38:00 Planning elaborate multi-city benders during time off, drinking by the bottle across Miami, Europe, and Southeast Asia
• 46:00 First AA meeting in Bogota, less-than-a-year sobriety, relapse triggered by a colleague's pressure over two glasses of wine
• 52:00 Finding his Houston sponsor who declared himself on the spot, working the steps over two years while on rotation
• 57:00 Pandemic challenges: stranded in Dubai, quarantine under military surveillance, 56-day offshore hitches, 18 months without income
• 63:00 Spiritual growth through unemployment, leading meetings in Colombia remotely, landing dream assignment, sponsoring his first sponsee