What Step 11 Means to a Man Who Has Been Doubtful More Often Than Agitated – Bill M.

About This Speaker Tape

Bill M. speaks at the Monday Night Blue Chip Speakers meeting at the Nama Club, sober since December 15, 1993, with 9,371 days and a standing goal of 10,000 meetings in 10,000 days. His home group is the Clean Air Group at the 8111 Club on Roswell Road in Atlanta. His wife Barbara got sober roughly eight years before him — she was the designated driver who kept him out of legal trouble his last drinking years and now jokes "clean living" every time she finds a parking spot.

Bill traces his service arc from being told to chair a meeting, to GSR, district treasurer, alternate DCM, DCM, state treasurer (elected on the third try), and five failed runs at delegate before a call from the Atlanta Roundup Committee redirected him. His rule now: if somebody asks, he does it; he no longer picks his own service. He credits a 25-year spiritual-advisor sponsor who told him never to lead with advice — only experience, strength, and hope — and a workplace sponsor a psychiatrist recommended so he'd have someone in the same business.

The heart of the tape is three prayer stories. As a four-year-old he prayed for a red Radio Flyer wagon; his grandmother told him to pray harder; 65 years later his home group bought him one. Months into sobriety the compulsion to drink was still there, until his spouse taught him to ask his Higher Power each morning to get him through the day and thank Him at night — the compulsion vanished without him noticing. And his sponsee Kerry, stuck between ex-wife "A" and AA girlfriend "B," was told to leave room for "girl C" in the prayer — he ended up marrying B and the question reframed a woman's job search the same week.

Bill names impatience as his worst defect, quotes Step 11 — "we pause, when agitated or doubtful, and ask for the right thought or action" — as the most profound guidance he's gotten, and closes with Gilbert from his home group: "I don't have bad days anymore. My days are filled with either blessings or lessons, and a day filled with divine blessings and lessons cannot possibly be a bad day." The through-line: a Higher Power who works on His own schedule, speaks through the rooms, and sometimes makes a man stand in a dark closet for 65 years before the wagon shows up.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Chair Richard opens the Monday Night Blue Chip Speakers meeting at the Nama Club and Tom reads the page 29 preamble
• 2:30 Tom introduces Bill M. as the anchor of the Clean Air Group at 8111
• 4:45 Bill opens with the brake-fluid-addiction joke and states his sobriety date of December 15, 1993
• 8:00 Goal of 10,000 meetings in 10,000 days — 93% there with 17 months to go
• 12:30 Service arc from GSR through state treasurer and five failed delegate runs to Atlanta Roundup Committee
• 19:00 The red Radio Flyer wagon story — 65 years from first prayer to delivery by the home group
• 24:00 Spouse teaches the simple morning-and-night prayer that lifts the compulsion to drink
• 30:00 Kerry's girl A, girl B, girl C prayer — leaving room for the Higher Power's third option
• 38:00 Counselor Toni Curry sessions and Barbara's answer: "we laugh more"
• 48:00 Corbin finds Tom across the table in a Prague AA meeting down a dark alley; Bill finds Kurt from 8111 in Santiago, Chile
• 58:00 Gilbert's line — no bad days, only blessings or lessons — closes the talk