The Freedom of Saying I Don’t Know – Jim B.

About This Speaker Tape

Half a voice box gone to cancer and a bladder in ruins. Jim B. stands before the room with a gravelly tone, admitting that the greatest gift he ever received was the freedom to finally say, "I don't know." For decades, Jim lived as a professional mind reader, a man with a thousand answers and a specialized skill for lying to his bosses, his wife, and himself. He describes his alcoholism as a disease of perception—a slippery slope that led him from being a "tall, skinny, goofy kid" to a man conducting business meetings from a ward in the Nova Scotia Mental Institution.

He recalls the wreckage of a life lived in the head: the 26 jobs he walked out of, the half-finished basement and deck that mirrored his fragmented psyche, and the ego that drove him to return to the same bar four times just to settle a score over a pack of cigarettes. After years of hiding in closets and lying about being in Singapore while hiding in Fort McMurray, Jim finally stopped peeing in the wind. He found a H...

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:45 Jim discusses his voice box surgery and his battle with cancer.
• 4:15 Laughter: Jim describes his first time getting 'wrecked' at 13 and sleeping in the bathtub.
• 8:30 Jim explains the 'disease of perception' and using alcohol to overcome shyness.
• 13:10 Jim describes the 'alcoholic skill' of reading minds to avoid honesty.
• 18:45 Jim discusses the 'great examiner' phase and gazing into his own navel.
• 25:20 The story of the 'unfinished score' with the bartender and the cigarette machine.
• 32:10 Jim's experience with the 'back of the room' crowd and their resistance to the Steps.
• 38:00 Step 5: Jim describes doing his inventory at a monastery and the subsequent life change.
• 45:15 Jim discusses his recurring cancer and his method of calling 'screwed up' people to gain perspective.
• 52:00 Jim shares a story about helping a newcomer and his wife (Al-Anon) for 45 days.