Why the Big Book’s Concept of Higher Power’s Will Is Baffling – Marilyn S.

About This Speaker Tape

West Los Angeles, the 1960s. Black Russians and flamenco dancers at the Matador provided a fake international travel that mirrored the void inside. Marilyn S. was a scientist in a white lab coat with a slide rule and a PhD in progress, yet she was a "leech" on the NIH, spilling chemicals in the lab and spending her days in a fog of ethanol. She lived in a world of imaginings, longing for a Nobel Prize and a crowd that would fall to their knees and kiss her rings, while her actual life was a wreckage of lies and neglected children.

The turning point came in 1972, not through reason, but through a "custodial care" fellowship. Marilyn used her "unhealthy dependency"—the parasitic need to attach to others—as a tool. She clung to her sponsor, Marion, who flicked her off her side and forced her into the "foreign" world of the PTA. She moved from the garage to the classroom, making amends to the universe by building chemistry kits for kids. Even the shatter of her son's suicide and the de...

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Timestamps

• 0:00 Marilyn S. opens with a humorous take on the shifting goalposts of being an 'old-timer'.
• 3:15 Description of the 'Matador' bar in LA and the 'spiritual awakening' of a big pitcher of beer.
• 6:40 The 'leech' years: drinking 180-proof ethanol in the lab and the end of her science career.
• 10:15 The role of her mother-in-law in protecting the children from 'crazy alcoholic mom'.
• 13:40 The 1972 turning point: an atheist scientist's first encounter with a 12-step caller.
• 16:20 Sponsorship with Marion: learning the basics of 'normal living' and managing the children.
• 19:45 Step 3 and the Thomas M. meditation on not knowing the Higher Power's will.
• 23:10 Making amends to the lab director and the concept of 'amends to the universe'.
• 26:30 The PTA science chairman project and the 'psychic change' of helping others.
• 31:10 The tragedy of her son's suicide and the support of her sponsor, Clancy C.
• 35:40 Reflections on the passing of her husband, Bill B., and the feeling of being truly forgiven.