Why Emotional Sobriety Is Not a Poster Child – Bob E.

About This Speaker Tape

1962, Pasadena. A 26-year-old Bob E. is 135 pounds of wreckage, shaking in a cockroach-infested apartment, staring at a woman built like a professional football fullback with a pint of booze in her hand. This "Eskimo" is the first image of AA he ever sees, and it’s exactly what he needs.

Bob describes a life lived as a "dangerous person," smuggling narcotics from Mexico and dodging gunfire, all to quiet a "bubbling pot of sewage" inside him—a deep, inherited shame from a childhood of broken noses and right hooks. Even after 17 years sober, living in a Santa Monica penthouse with expensive cars and a big checkbook, he admits he was still a "crumb" who woke up wanting to die. He warns against the "poster child" version of sobriety, where everyone is "fine" while harboring homicidal rage over a missing button at the dry cleaners. Only through a torturous surrender and professional therapy did he stop pretending and finally meet the man he actually is.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Bob E. opens by challenging the idea that seniority in recovery creates a 'bunker' that exempts one from life.
• 4:15 Recounts childhood trauma, including being punched for answering questions in school.
• 10:30 Describes the 'bubbling sewage' of shame and the period where substances stopped working.
• 15:45 The miracle of a judge who, instead of jailing him, encouraged him to find AA because his own brother was sober.
• 21:00 Meeting the 'monstrous' woman with a pint of booze who took him to his first meeting.
• 28:30 Laughter: Discusses the 'rule' against getting emotionally involved in the first year of sobriety.
• 35:00 Describes the 'dry drunk' rage of early sobriety and the turn-signal freeway chases.
• 42:15 The paradox of being a successful TV writer in a penthouse while still feeling incomplete and suicidal.
• 48:00 Discusses the necessity of professional therapy and the 12 Step approach to mental health (referencing page 132/133 of the Big Book).
• 54:20 The grief of losing his wife, Taylor, to cancer and the subsequent emotional collapse.
• 61:00 Realizing he had 'lost himself' again at 32 years sober and the need to return to therapy.
• 68:00 Emphasis on the 9th Step (Amends) as the step that 'separates the men from the boys'.