Waiting to Finish the Steps Before Helping Anyone Is Just Ego Wearing a Recovery Costume – Steve F.

About This Speaker Tape

Steve F. shares his story at a speakers meeting in 2009, celebrating 20 years of sobriety. He opens with a thoughtful distinction between problem drinkers and what the Big Book calls the "real alcoholic" — someone with a spiritual malady, a deep sense of disconnection from the world that alcohol temporarily fixed. He traces this feeling back to childhood, describing the intense loneliness of never fitting in anywhere, and the revelation at age 11 or 12 when spiked punch at his grandfather's wedding reception gave him his first taste of belonging.

His drinking career escalated through his teens in Chicago — arrests, trouble in school, and a pivotal night in DuPage County jail at 17 that made him decide to change his crowd, if not his habits. He pursued aviation with the same obsessive intensity he brought to everything, attending flight school in Tulsa, flight instructing in Frederick, Maryland (where he was fired for "borrowing" an airplane without permission), and eventually getting into military flight school despite a lengthy police record, thanks to an admiral who knew his grandfather.

The military years brought drinking consequences to a head — two police incidents his first night in the Azores, a disciplinary board in which he faked a week of sobriety by hiding in his room drinking, a marriage falling apart, and dangerously drunk cross-country drives. He describes watching his father, now dying of alcoholism in a nursing home, never having been offered a spiritual solution — only medications that destroyed his organs.

Running short on time, Steve pivots to his sobriety. He spent seven miserable years sober without working the steps before meeting a sponsor who taught him one thing: go help somebody. He insists you don't need to finish the steps before you can be useful to another alcoholic, and warns against making too much of sobriety time, noting that ego makes it harder for old-timers to come back than newcomers. He closes with a simple spiritual principle: sow seeds of fear and you reap fear; sow seeds of love and you reap love in all your affairs.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Introduction — 20 years sober, home group is Perry Hall Speakers Meeting in Baltimore
• 2:30 Distinguishes problem drinker from real alcoholic — the spiritual malady concept
• 5:00 Drunk Dave story — convulsions stop just from knowing vodka is coming, illustrating the mental obsession
• 8:00 Etymology of alcoholism — Latin for spiritus, the word historically meant a spiritual condition before it meant a drinking problem
• 10:30 The malady of disconnection — feeling like the mothership would come take him to the right planet
• 13:00 First drink at 11 or 12 at grandfather's wedding — spiked punch gave him the feeling of finally fitting in
• 16:00 Teen arrests in Chicago, night in DuPage County adult jail at 17 — decides to change his crowd
• 20:00 Aviation career — flight school in Tulsa, Grand Theft Airplane in Frederick, military flight school
• 26:00 Military drinking — Azores police incidents, faking sobriety for a disciplinary board, marriage collapse
• 30:00 Sobriety message — seven years dry without steps, sponsor taught him to help others, sowing seeds of love vs. fear