Told the Judge His Kidnapper Looked Like a Cross Between ZZ Top and Jesus 🤣 — Cornbread A.
About This Speaker Tape
Cornbread tells his story at a Blue Chip speaker meeting in Atlanta with raw humor and unflinching honesty. Raised in Brunswick, Georgia by two alcoholic parents, his father was a deputy fire chief who got sober while his mother refused treatment and moved to Canton, Ohio when Cornbread was six. He started drinking at twelve or thirteen, discovering that alcohol made him confident and social, and quickly progressed into stealing cars, skipping school, and cycling through the justice system — often protected by his father's position in the community. His dad, sober himself, tried every creative intervention he could think of, from tricking him into boot camp disguised as a camping trip to catching him hiding in dumpsters after skipping school.
After years of escalating consequences in Georgia, Cornbread was sent to Atlanta on a Greyhound bus and spent two and a half years rotating through halfway houses and treatment centers. He describes hitting a desperate low point — drinking Jack Daniels and Coke in an apartment with no power, eyes bugging out from crack use — when he finally called Charles B. and begged for help. Charles made him wait thirty minutes to prove he was serious, then came with another man and did a twelve-step call. They took him to pick up a white chip and got him into FOCUS, a veterans' program.
Cornbread got a sponsor from the Monday Night Titans group who insisted on starting the steps immediately — not later, not after work, but the next morning. He describes the revelation that there was actual action behind the steps, something he had never understood despite being raised around AA. His most powerful amends was to a cousin he had robbed while the cousin was working offshore — a man who never drank or used drugs and only wanted his cousin back, refusing any money. Thirteen years sober at the time of the recording, Cornbread reflects on the miracles in his life: his cousin now trusts him with the alarm code to his house, his grandmother no longer hides her purse, and his family's medications are safe in the cabinet. He also shares the pain of watching his sister remain in active addiction while her children ride along.
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