The Unmanageability That Happens Inside of Me – Adam A.

About This Speaker Tape

Northern California, a childhood spent in teepees and school buses, and a vision of becoming an old man on a porch with a beer and a bong. Adam A. lived a life where the party was a separate entity from morality. He describes himself as a "byproduct of the 60s" who viewed his alcoholism as a badge of honor, drifting through a haze of Gallo wine, acid, and a car with no muffler and four pounds of pot in the trunk. Even a two-year prison stint couldn't stop the cycle; he was out the gates and back to a six-pack within twenty minutes.

For years, Adam played the part of the spiritual Rasta in AA meetings while remaining "loaded every single day," a hollowed-out eggshell hiding behind the right slogans. He identifies the real wreckage not as the lost jobs or crashed cars, but as the "unmanageability that happens inside." Through a Higher Power and a "textbook" approach to the Big Book, he moved from being a "rabid step-Nazi" to finding a gritty, shoulder-to-shoulder sanity.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:45 Laughter: Adam A. jokes about his 'funeral outfit' tie.
• 2:15 Early life in Northern California communes and the 'beer and bong' vision.
• 6:30 Living in a trailer with no water or power, cooking on a fire pit.
• 10:15 Arrested with 79 hits of acid and the subsequent prison sentence.
• 15:40 Discussion of the 'craving' and the allergy to alcohol.
• 19:20 The 'wet' years: attending AA meetings while actively using drugs.
• 24:10 The 'internal unmanageability' and the spiritual malady.
• 28:30 The moment of clarity and treating the Big Book as a textbook.
• 32:15 The 'Step-Nazi' phase and the struggle for balance.
• 36:40 The three-way Fifth Step and the realization that there are no gurus.
• 41:00 Defining 'recovered alcoholic' and the 10-step promises.
• 45:20 The 'Last House on the Block' home group and the role of service.