The Ism Is the I — I Separate Myself and Call It Being Different – Bob D.

About This Speaker Tape

Bob D. opens with the story of crashing a borrowed Harley on Haleakala in Maui the year before, landing in intensive care on a morphine drip with broken ribs, a broken collarbone, and a ruptured spleen. Forty or fifty AA members a day came to visit, which made it hard to enjoy the morphine, but the accident became proof to him that unconditional sobriety is real: you can go through surgery and trauma and still stay sober because Higher Power is more powerful than anything.

He describes himself as the real alcoholic from the Big Book — the guy who couldn't admit he belonged. He started drinking at twelve, was in institutions by twenty, and spent years in therapy chasing some magical childhood moment that would float him into mental health. Raised Catholic, terrified of hell and purgatory, he carried a deep resistance to Higher Power into AA and felt like a fish out of water whenever he stopped drinking. He tells the story of being eighteen at a girlfriend's family dinner, getting two glasses of wine, and sneaking off to chug a bottle of cough medicine from the bathroom cabinet — the moment that later proved to him he had Silkworth's phenomenon of craving.

The turning point came in 1978 in a Las Vegas detox after hitchhiking from Pittsburgh, homeless, suicidal, knowing he couldn't drink and couldn't not drink. Alone in a hospital room he opened the Big Book to page 63, read 'relieve me of the bondage of self,' threw the book across the room, and said his first honest prayer. He got a sponsor he still has today, started doing hospital and institution work, and eventually — in his fifth year — went back and worked a Fourth Step the way the book outlines it, which finally changed his thinking.

He closes with the last nine months: making amends to his mother as she died of cancer and emphysema, watching her waste to fifty pounds, changing her diapers, sitting twenty-three hours holding her hand through her last breaths, then sobbing in a chicken restaurant days later when the woman asked what sides he wanted. He credits the Ninth Step with letting him buy back his self-respect a nickel and a dime at a time, and warns newcomers that people who judge their way out of AA — like his friend John the attorney who ended up slitting his wrists on Skid Row — always leave it in worse shape than they found it.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Bob D. introduces himself, thanks the committee, and jokes about his sponsor
• 1:30 Harley crash on Haleakala, ICU in Maui with seven broken ribs and a morphine drip interrupted by forty AA visits a day
• 5:00 Starts drinking at twelve, in institutions by twenty, years of therapy chasing a magical childhood moment
• 9:00 Catholic upbringing, terror of hell and purgatory, the meter in heaven clicking off millions of years
• 14:00 The biker in the Saginaw County Jail meeting — 'my Higher Power, what have they done to him?'
• 19:00 Eighteen years old at the girlfriend's family dinner — two glasses of wine, cough medicine from the bathroom cabinet
• 26:00 Homeless in Pittsburgh, walking all night in the cold, hitchhiking to California, bailing out in Las Vegas detox
• 30:00 1978 hospital room — page 63, 'relieve me of the bondage of self,' his first honest prayer
• 38:00 The grocery store / traffic / newcomer meeting blow-up — first glimpse of his own selfishness and self-centeredness
• 52:00 Sitting twenty-three hours with his dying mother, the chicken restaurant meltdown, and the Ninth Step as buying back self-respect a nickel and a dime at a time