The Misery of Loneliness That Only an Alcoholic Understands – Ray M.

About This Speaker Tape

A three-room mill house in North Carolina, no bath, and a father who drank from a jar in the pantry. Ray M. grew up watching a man dance with a broom because no one would dance with a drunk. He spent years trying to outrun the "lint head" label, eventually finding a Higher Power that "got him from the rear end," leading him into the ministry. But the old patterns remained. A prescription for sleep morphed into a nineteen-year slide into the gates of hell—marked by a "swinging singles" apartment, a mattress on the floor, and a double-barrel shotgun used to shoot out his own window just to trick the police into visiting him.

The turning point wasn't a sermon, but a sequence of men who looked him in the eye and said, "I know how you feel." From a doctor to a stranger in a treatment lobby, Ray was drawn to the attraction of men who had survived the same wreckage. He stopped dancing with brooms and started walking the path of sobriety.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Opening jokes about meeting a Higher Power early in the morning.
• 4:30 Story about his eight-year-old grandson reading the Big Book.
• 10:15 Childhood memories of the mill village and his father's drinking habits in the pantry.
• 18:40 The transition from a 'clean living' ministry to prescription pill addiction.
• 26:10 The 'swinging singles' apartment and the isolation of the 'drinking chair'.
• 31:00 Laughter: The story of shooting out his own window to get attention from the police.
• 42:10 The 'miracle' of the first few men who identified with him as alcoholics.
• 51:30 The trauma of the car accident and the guilt of the injured motorcyclist.
• 58:20 Early sobriety: sleeping on his mother's floor and working in the cotton mill.
• 1:05:10 Discussion of the 12 Steps and Traditions as applied to mill machinery.
• 1:15:40 The emotional reconciliation and hug with his son.
• 1:22:00 Making amends to the Bishop and the 'triangle' of recovery.