The Scottish Man in the Barbados AA Meeting — Chris S.

About This Speaker Tape

Fort Worth, 1960s. A quiet kid with a "full flight from reality" and a deep well of self-hatred hides in the headphones of rock and roll. Chris S. spent decades as a stoic loner, surviving a controlling first marriage and raising three children while remaining a stranger to himself. He didn't find the bottle or the powder until his early 40s, when a single line of cocaine on a townhouse counter felt like the missing piece of his soul.

He spent the next years chasing that ghost, drinking massive amounts of alcohol just to keep his heart from exploding under the weight of the coke. After a stint in a psychiatric hospital and six "desire chips" over two years of slipping, he finally locked in his sobriety in 2009. He describes his recovery as a process of stripping away the excuses, realizing that life's wreckage wasn't the cause of his drinking, but a symptom of being an alcoholic. Now a "middle dweller" in the program, he finds his Higher Power through service in Texas prisons.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Introduction by Howard L. regarding Chris's history of late-onset addiction and initial struggles with sobriety
• 13:37 Chris discusses his childhood loneliness and the inner self-hatred that predated his drinking
• 26:20 Discussion of his first marriage and the verbal abuse that contributed to his emotional state
• 38:46 Chris describes the first time he used cocaine and the immediate feeling of finding what he had been seeking his whole life
• 50:15 The account of his 'spiritual experience' in St. Lucia that ended his compulsion to drink
• 54:44 The story of falling off a balcony while using and the resulting brain injury and seizures
• 1:04:12 Analysis of the rigorous step-work process and spending three months on The Doctor's Opinion
• 1:16:20 Reflections on the death of his second wife and his current relationship with his Higher Power
• 1:23:15 Details on his service work bringing AA meetings into Texas prisons