Willingness Is Doing the Stupid Suggestion Before You Believe It’s Not Stupid – John C.

About This Speaker Tape

John C. speaks at the Fit Tradition Group in Atlanta with a sobriety date of September 24, 2012. He walks through four decades of coming in and out of Alcoholics Anonymous — first as a fifteen-year-old in a Georgia rehab after one hit of LSD, again in New Orleans after working nights at a French Quarter diner so he could drink through the morning, and again on Maui where he lived rent-free as the resident manager of the Lahaina Alano Club and tried to be like his friend Shaylin.

Each time he got close, he moved — across the island to chase big waves on the north shore, then to a craft beer on a church guy's birthday, then years later to Santa Fe with a wife and kids, then to Atlanta where cocaine let him drink another twelve hours a day. He describes flying regional airline trips half drunk at 40,000 feet, a stranger to his own family between five-day rotations, certain a better career and a better balance would fix him. It never did.

The turn came at the Fit Tradition Group with a sponsor who told him to bring his kids to Saturday meetings, read the book at Starbucks, pick up a drunk named Travis from the auto parts store off Memorial Drive, and get on the committee taking the meeting to the jail. He fought every suggestion and did them anyway. At the Atlanta Roundup he realized he had been certain the whole weekend would be stupid and was completely wrong — the first time in his life he had ever been wrong about anything, and it cracked open every other certainty he carried.

He closes with the present tense: a marriage to Melissa, three daughters, and two fifteen-year-old twins who moved in a year ago and upended the house. During a hard stretch he was caregiving for Melissa's sponsee who needed somewhere to recuperate — she ate his cheese grits and bacon, said thank you, cleaned her crumbs, and he understood that his Higher Power had engineered a small piece of gratitude into the worst week of parenting he had ever had. If this story sounds like yours, he says, you probably need help — get a sponsor who is enthusiastic about AA.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Intro at Fit Tradition Group, sobriety date September 24, 2012, reads from There Is a Solution on his back porch
• 3:30 Fifteen years old in Athens, biology class kid sells him a hit of LSD for four dollars, mom hears him on the wired phone, rehab that night
• 10:00 New Orleans: nights at a French Quarter diner, drinking at the sports bar from 7am to 2pm, girlfriend's brother from San Diego on his way to International Young People in AA takes him to a meeting
• 14:00 Mardi Gras bonus buys a ticket to Maui — home group in Kihei, Radiant Ron, resident manager of the Lahaina Alano Club living rent-free in a palm-frond cabin
• 22:00 Moves to the north shore to chase big waves without telling his sponsor, meets a church guy with craft beer on his birthday, drinks one and it's fine — three months later he's drinking the only way he knows how
• 30:00 Regional airline pilot flying trips half drunk at 40,000 feet, a stranger to his own family, tension between home and the cockpit becomes unbearable
• 34:00 Moves the family to Santa Fe, wife leaves with the kids for Georgia, follows her to Atlanta and starts doing cocaine at the bar because it extends the drinking
• 40:00 Decatur sad-sack meeting with the guy who's been hanging in there thirty years, rock-and-roll guy points him to Fit Tradition, Thursday book study feels like help
• 48:00 Sponsor says bring the kids to Saturday — babysitting room with a lady from the group, his three daughters come running out begging to come back next week
• 55:00 Atlanta Roundup — Sunday reflection that he was absolutely certain on Thursday it was bullshit and completely wrong, the first time in his life he had ever been wrong about anything
• 60:00 Jail meeting committee — metal detectors, every door waiting, the respect of Trey and Robert Bell, something he would have sidestepped if he could have
• 66:00 Melissa's sponsee recuperating upstairs, eating his cheese grits and bacon and saying thank you in the worst week of parenting fifteen-year-old twin daughters