The Bar Where You Needed 32 Customers to See a Full Set of Teeth – Paul M.

About This Speaker Tape

Rockaway Beach, New York—the "Cirrhosis by the Sea." Paul M. describes working a gin mill where you needed 32 customers just to see a full set of teeth. He arrived in America as a long-distance runner fleeing a "stone in the shoe" and a "knot in the stomach" born in Northern Ireland, only to end up in a Bronx basement on a blood-soaked mattress. He speaks of the Faustian bargain of booze: a magic elixir that fills the holes in the soul but eventually demands a pound of flesh.

After years of being "flotsam and jetsam on a sea of booze," Paul found a Higher Power through a note under a door and two men who bookended him into his first meeting. He warns against "ballroom mentality" and the danger of being "His Majesty the Baby," refusing the steps while starving at a spiritual banquet. For Paul, sobriety isn't a pardon but a daily reprieve, a quantum leap from the wreckage to a life built on concrete.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Opening jokes about the 'tumbleweeds' of the convention and a note from Bob.
• 3:15 Discussion of Step 1: the physical allergy and the mental obsession.
• 7:45 The metaphor of the 'unlived life' and the 12 Steps as the only way out of the forest.
• 12:10 Laughter: The 'Cirrhosis by the Sea' description of Rockaway Beach.
• 16:40 The 'and then' moment: the note under the door and the prayer for help.
• 21:15 The road-rage incident in the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel and the realization of untreated alcoholism.
• 26:30 Reflection on the 'ripple effect' of sobriety and his daughter's scholarship.
• 31:00 AA History: The story of Connor F. and the start of AA in Ireland.
• 34:20 The 'common solution' in Belfast: Catholics and Protestants sitting together in a meeting during a riot.