The Readiness to Yield and the Art of Acceptance – Easy D.

About This Speaker Tape

Columbus, Ohio, in a seven-room hotel suite with a fifth of liquor in every room. Easy D. opens with the image of the alcoholic as a frantic perfectionist—the kind of man who grabs the driver's arm and screams, "Stop this car! Right now!" For Easy D., the alcoholic personality is a "gadfly," a creature that zooms to a great height only to plummet back into the water as fish food.

He argues that sobriety is not a sudden event but a slow, painful carving, like a sculptor working stone. He warns against the "sudden saint" who loses it just as quickly as they found it. By shifting focus to the ultimate end rather than the immediate result, he replaces panic with a "readiness to yield." He describes the mind's neurosis as a jammed PBX telephone system, where wires are pulled and plugged into the wrong holes. The remedy is "easy does it"—not as an excuse for laziness, but as the disciplined art of doing the footwork and leaving the results to a Higher Power.

Topics

Timestamps

• 1:15 Story about the alcoholic in the Deichler Hotel suite with liquor in every room.
• 5:40 The gadfly metaphor and the warning against the 'sudden saint' in recovery.
• 8:10 Discussion on the 'ultimate end' and the comparison between spiritual patience and political domination.
• 11:20 Clarification that 'easy does it' means 'do it,' not an excuse for laziness.
• 14:10 The boxing story about Benny L. and the wisdom of going around obstacles.
• 17:30 The anecdote about the psychiatrist who called him hopeless.
• 21:10 Advice on dealing with 'yakking' spouses and the patience required for parenting.
• 25:40 The danger of overworking (18-20 hour days) as a trigger for relapse.
• 28:15 Discussion on the necessity of a Higher Power and the realization that 'Higher Power did it all'.
• 31:20 The PBX telephone system metaphor for acute neurosis.
• 33:10 The philosophy of attraction rather than promotion in AA.