What Makes You Sick Is Exactly What Makes You Well and That Paradox Saved My Life – Peter D.

About This Speaker Tape

Peter D. was born on a small island off the coast of Newfoundland, one of ten children with a father who abused alcohol and his family. At six years old, he was already in the fishing boat with his drunk father when the rudder was lost overboard in rough seas — a memory so frightening he convinced himself it was a dream for decades until his brother confirmed every detail. At sixteen, he swore he would never drink like his father and left for Toronto. Within a year, he had forgotten that promise and picked up his first drink.

Peter drank for one reason: "I drank to make Peter forget. And I drank for Peter to feel good about Peter." The night that broke him was his daughter's sixth birthday. His wife begged him not to drink that day. He turned down three invitations from coworkers — until a man said it was his daughter's birthday too, and he'd just have one and go home. Peter went with him. One became many. He came home at eleven to find a smashed birthday cake with mushed candles and dried tears on his daughter's face. That moment gave him three options: quit drinking, check into a mental institution, or kill himself. Being an alcoholic, he chose the "easier, softer way" — he became suicidal, lining up bridge abutments on the 401.

What brought Peter back was the twelve steps and a letter he tried to write to a Higher Power that became a letter to his father instead. Seven years into recovery, at a retreat house called Manresa, he finally forgave the man he'd hated his whole life — and weeks later, his father called asking for help. Peter's father got sober at 81 years old and died sober three years later. His mother, still alive, "forgot that my dad ever drank. It's priceless." The daughter who once wrote "I never want to see you again" now asks him to babysit her children. Recorded at the Oshawa Al-Anon/AA Conference in Ontario, 2000, with sixteen years of sobriety.

Topics

Timestamps

• 00:02:00 Introduction and the doctor joke
• 00:05:00 The three beliefs: Higher Power, miracles, and the paradox that what makes you sick makes you well
• 00:09:00 Growing up on a Newfoundland island with an alcoholic father who abused his family
• 00:13:00 In the fishing boat at age six with his drunk father who lost the rudder at sea
• 00:17:00 Leaving for Toronto at sixteen, swearing never to drink like his father
• 00:21:00 Working at General Motors, marrying in 1964, the obsession of the mind taking over
• 00:25:00 His daughter sixth birthday, the coworker excuse, the one beer, coming home at eleven
• 00:29:00 The smashed birthday cake and dried tears, the double-edged sword
• 00:33:00 Suicidal on the 401, lining up bridge abutments
• 00:37:00 At the Manresa retreat writing a letter to Higher Power that became a letter to his father
• 00:41:00 His father gets sober at 81 and dies sober three years later
• 00:45:00 Daughter who said never again now asks him to babysit the grandchildren