The Chapter to the Agnostic That Says This Thinking Has to Be Abandoned – Russell

About This Speaker Tape

The football field in Great Neck, New York, where the captains pick teams and Russell S. is always the last one standing in the center. He describes a lifelong habit of building a "protective wall" to hide the humiliation, a wall that grew three feet thick until he couldn't even feel his own emotions.

For Russell, the disease isn't the booze—which he calls a drug used to treat alcoholism—but a mind that naturally thinks "alcoholically," operating from a place of being "less than." He spent years as a "thumb-sucking crybaby," restless and irritable, trusting a brain that only ever got him into jams. Now, 32 years sober, he relies on the Big Book as a rock, refusing to build his life on the sand of his own thinking. He speaks of the "unperturbable" nature of old-timers and the value of being a "steady" father, choosing the Higher Power over the corrosive threat of fear.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Russell S. introduces himself and mentions his fedora.
• 4:15 Laughter: Russell S. describes himself as a 'self-pityaholic' and a 'yes-butter'.
• 7:30 Discussion on the 'unperturbable' nature of old-timers and the concept of emotional sobriety.
• 10:15 Russell S. shares a gritty memory of his alcoholic mother and the chaos of his childhood home.
• 13:40 The 'picked last' playground metaphor and the fear of being discovered as a 'phony baloney'.
• 17:20 The 'house built on sand' vs. 'house built on rock' metaphor regarding self-reliance.
• 21:10 Reading from the Big Book regarding the 'alcoholic scrap heap' and the love of a Higher Power.
• 25:45 Russell S.'s take on the 'Chapter to the Agnostic' and the necessity of spiritual belief.
• 28:30 Closing thoughts on the difference between the 'not drinking club' and the fellowship of the Spirit.