Told My Sponsor I’m a Self-Made Man — He Said Robert, You Used Unskilled Labor 🤦

About This Speaker Tape

Robert, home group the Fifth Tradition Group, tells the story of how twelve years of meetings without a sponsor left him sitting naked on his bedroom floor with a gun in his mouth. He grew up under a violent father named Frank who broke the bones in his own hand hitting him, was sexually abused as a child, and learned the three rules of the alcoholic home: don't trust, don't tell, don't feel. His first drink at sixteen was vodka and Fresca while running away from home; by twenty-two he had five DUIs and arrests for assault and cultivation.

Judge Lord in El Cajon finally got his attention, and a probation officer handed him a Johns Hopkins true-false quiz in a six-by-six holding cell. Robert scored seventeen out of twenty — his first thought was "shit, I did it in ten." He lied about needing Antabuse and went to his first meeting at the War Memorial Building in Balboa Park after downing two tall Coors in the Jeep on the way. He laughed until tears ran and heard for the first time that alcoholics weren't bad people trying to get good, they were sick people trying to get well.

But being smart nearly killed him. He read the steps on the wall, decided he could be his own sponsor, and strung together five years, three years, one year, three years — all relapses. The gun on the bedroom floor was the gift of desperation. He finally asked Mike to sponsor him, and Mike walked him word by word through the Q&A sponsorship pamphlet, then through the Big Book and 12 & 12 a step a week for twelve weeks. Mike told him "you used unskilled labor" and made him call a recovering alcoholic every day off the phone list — liking it was optional.

The heart of the talk is history taught the way a sponsor teaches it: Roland Hazard pleading with Carl Jung in Switzerland after fourteen months of therapy and a relapse in Paris, Jung's admission that only a vital spiritual experience had ever cured anyone, the Oxford Groups' confession-restitution-service becoming Steps 5, 9, and 12. Robert has taken a meeting into state and federal prisons once a month for twenty-eight years, has taken over a hundred men through the steps, and closes with the last paragraph of Dr. Bob's Nightmare.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Jeff opens the Monday Night Blue Chip Speakers Meeting at the Napa Club; preamble read from page 29
• 2:30 Robert takes the podium and opens with Shoopy's prayer from Charleston: 'God, don't let me be stupid today'
• 5:00 Childhood under Frank — beatings, sexual abuse, don't trust, don't tell, don't feel
• 10:00 First drink at sixteen — vodka and Fresca — running away from home; five DUIs by twenty-two
• 14:00 Judge Lord, the holding cell, and the Johns Hopkins quiz — 'shit, I did it in ten'
• 18:00 Lied to the probation officer about Antabuse; drove to first meeting with two tall Coors in the Jeep
• 22:00 First meeting at War Memorial Building, Balboa Park — laughter, tears, hears physical allergy and mental obsession for the first time
• 30:00 Twelve years of meetings without a sponsor; sitting naked on the bedroom floor with a gun in his mouth
• 34:00 Mike walks him through the Q&A sponsorship pamphlet word by word — 'you used unskilled labor'
• 40:00 Roland Hazard, Carl Jung in Switzerland, the Oxford Groups, and Ebby carrying the message to Bill
• 52:00 Corrections meetings for twenty-eight years; closes reading the final paragraph of Dr. Bob's Nightmare