The Word Prejudice Appears Seven Times in We Agnostics and That Is the Whole Chapter — Marty J.

About This Speaker Tape

Marty, a Canadian sober since February 8, 1976, speaks to an agnostics retreat at Lake Mead after stepping back from a grueling speaking circuit that had him giving 52 talks a year until he no longer recognized his own voice. He opens with gratitude, a Franklin Williams poem about an auctioned violin transformed by the master's hand, and memories of the old giants — Chuck C., Tommy Breen — whose CDs he urges listeners to collect. He frames his talk around the We Agnostics chapter of the Big Book, pointing out that the word "prejudice" appears seven times in it and is the hidden obstacle to finding a Higher Power.

He tells how he sobered up at 23 after only twelve years of drinking, guided by a 250-pound Norwegian sponsor named Dwayne who threatened to break every bone in his body out of love, and by Jeff Charlebois, a thirty-year old-timer whose simple "you're going to make it" carried him through. He describes his father — a six-foot-three Irishman who once spanked a man in a bar and who beat Marty down the night he came home drunk at eighteen looking for a fight — and his grandmother's warning to "mind your station," both sources of the prejudices that kept him locked up.

Marty walks through the We Agnostics passages about lack of power, obstinacy, sensitiveness, and unreasoning prejudice, tying each to his own history: watching for wind to blow on him at the Breakfast Group, resenting Dwayne's dead dog Tinker doing tricks at a sober Friday night, refusing to believe men could gather in a room without drinking. He names the nine young people under 27 he has buried — car wrecks, suicides, drowning in their own vomit — and a young man named Vince from PEI who hung up the phone and died that night after deciding to go back out.

He closes with the collapse of his 31-year marriage a year earlier: his wife came downstairs while he was watching golf and said she wanted her own life, wanted to go on safari, wanted to hang upside down on Ferris wheels. He never thought of drinking, only briefly of murder. A week later he called a movie-actress friend, Kiara, for a phone number and ended up dating her. Now in Washington, D.C., twenty-two minutes from the White House, writing children's cartoons and building child-safety software pitched to the Federal Reserve and Pentagon, driving a Lexus he used to hate, learning to cook, he says the through-line is the same: laying aside prejudice, staying on the broad highway, and letting Higher Power show him what's in the next box.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Opens thanking John, jokes about being four months sober longer than Keith, sets sobriety date February 8, 1976
• 3:00 Franklin Williams' Auctioneer poem — battered violin transformed by the touch of the master's hand
• 7:00 Jeff Charlebois, the dusty old 30-year old-timer, tells Marty 'you're going to make it' — the line that carried him through rattling early sobriety
• 11:00 Enters the We Agnostics chapter: 'lack of power was our dilemma' and the hidden word prejudice that appears seven times
• 16:00 Father's prejudices — 'French bastards,' spanking a man in a bar — and the night 18-year-old Marty came home drunk wanting to beat his old man up
• 24:00 Dwayne the 250-pound Norwegian sponsor threatens to break every bone in Marty's body if he drinks, because that's how we love people
• 30:00 Prejudice against men gathering sober — Tinker the ancient dog doing its 'smile' trick at Dwayne's Friday night sober party
• 38:00 Vince from PEI calls to say he's going back out, hangs up, dies that night — nine buried under 27 in 30 years
• 44:00 Wife of 31 years comes downstairs during golf and asks for her own life — safaris, Ferris wheels — never thought about drinking, only murder
• 50:00 Page 52 unmanageability passage, the broad highway, and laying aside prejudice — closes with gratitude