We’re More Afraid of the Solution Than We Are of the Problem and That’s the Whole Disease – Ben W.

About This Speaker Tape

Ben W. shares his remarkable journey from English cavalry officer and steeplechase jockey to prisoner to long-term sobriety, with his trademark irreverent humor and blunt honesty. Sober since December 12, 1970, he describes growing up with horses and privilege, receiving a silver flask from his father at 13, and drinking his way through a military career until he landed in a maximum security penitentiary where someone handed him the Big Book. He read it in a day and went on his first 12th-step call the very next morning — walking the prison exercise yard and telling a fellow inmate named Ralph that if they joined AA, they'd never have to come back.

Ben hammers home that this program is about action, not theory, and doing it wrong beats standing by the graves of people who insisted on doing it right. He openly mocks the "90 meetings in 90 days" idea — he got to fewer than nine meetings his first 90 days because the nearest one was 18 miles away with no car — and insists the rewards of 12th-step work are directly proportional to the inconvenience suffered. He drove 400 miles round-trip to speak to six men in orange jumpsuits at a conservation camp, and witnessed the warden — his sober litter mate — holding hands with inmates during the Lord's Prayer.

His stories are vivid and specific: his girlfriend passing out drunk on the police station floor during his first public information call, a man named Carson with 16 years sober calling from a payphone outside a liquor store, getting a 9th-step call about making amends for killing two people while being wheeled into surgery for a pacemaker. He challenges the room on the 4th step, pointing out that six relapsed sponsees with 10+ years sober had never shown anyone else how to do the inventory — and that anyone who has done the 4th step but isn't teaching it is on borrowed time.

Ben closes with the story of a 12th-step call on a very drunk man named Ed, whose savage dachshund inexplicably licked Whitey's fingers instead of biting — and because the dog didn't bite, Ed was standing on his porch the next night ready for his first meeting. Ten years later he was sober in Carson City. Ben's message is clear: go on the call, go with somebody or without, but just make sure the dog doesn't bite you.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Introduction — English by birth, Irish by disease, Scotch by absorption; the Jaguar and the fallen tree
• 3:00 The spiritual malady as a four-part cycle: bad luck, blame, drink, feel shitty — and how removing the drink still leaves three corners
• 7:00 Growing up with horses, father's silver flask at 13, steeplechase career, meeting the Queen of England
• 12:00 Landing in the penitentiary and reading the Big Book in a day — skipping every mention of Higher Power
• 16:00 First 12th-step call in the prison yard with Ralph; against 90-in-90 — fewer than 9 meetings first 90 days
• 21:00 Driving 400 miles to speak at a prison camp; the warden holding hands with inmates in the Lord's Prayer
• 26:00 Bad times in sobriety — girlfriend leaves with his sponsee, company goes bankrupt, wanting to drink on a train without a corridor
• 31:00 Carson: 16 years sober, drunk at a payphone — Higher Power puts the right stranger a block away
• 36:00 The 4th step challenge: six relapsed sponsees with 10+ years had never shown anyone how to do inventory
• 41:00 12th-step call on Ed — the savage dachshund that licked Whitey's fingers; Ed was 10 years sober last anyone checked