Spiritual Awakening Is Subtraction, Not Addition - AA Speaker - Peter M.

Three and a half years sober, Cookie had a Big Book on the table and Grapevines fanned out so everyone would know she was in AA. She was going to meetings, sponsoring women, and falling apart. Then she finally opened the book and followed the directions. ☀️ Sober Sunrise AppListen to Sober Sunrise AA speaker talks anytime, track your sober time, take a daily pledge, and keep recovery support close throughout the day.📱 https://sober-sunrise.com/appIf you enjoy the app or find it useful in your recovery, a quick rating or review on the App Store would mean a lot and helps more people find Sober Sunrise. ☀️ Sober Sunrise Episode ArchiveHundreds of AA speaker tapes and recovery stories:https://sober-sunrise.com/episodes 🧡 Sober Sunrise Merchhttps://sober-sunrise.com/merch 🌴 Sober Sunrise Newsletterhttps://sober-sunrise.com/newsletter Cookie grew up loved, encouraged, and financially comfortable, yet alcohol quickly became the thing that quieted her relentless feeling of not being good enough. Her story moves from teenage drinking and a glamorous-looking marriage to trauma, serious injuries, and a life so isolated she describes crawling across an expensive Persian rug for another drink. Getting sober on October 25, 1983, did not immediately free her from shame or the need for approval. At three and a half years sober, she was busy in AA but hadn't learned to use the Big Book as a program of action. She describes beginning a Fourth Step with herself at the top of the resentment list, finding experienced Big Book sponsorship, and taking other women through the work. Years later, facing her father's death, divorce, and cancer treatment, she discovers what all that connection means: AA friends and generations of sponsees organize round-the-clock care so she doesn't have to face it alone. Cookie S. from Edina, MN speaking at the Duluth Roundup in Duluth, MN - September 24th 2005 Music: Deep by KaizanBlu

Seven trips to detox in one month, and David still couldn't believe the happy people in AA were really sober. A woman with a Big Book helped him question something even harder to let go of: the belief that he was too dirty to belong. ☀️ Sober Sunrise AppListen to Sober Sunrise AA speaker talks anytime, track your sober time, take a daily pledge, and keep recovery support close throughout the day.📱 https://sober-sunrise.com/appIf you enjoy the app or find it useful in your recovery, a quick rating or review on the App Store would mean a lot and helps more people find Sober Sunrise. ☀️ Sober Sunrise Episode ArchiveHundreds of AA speaker tapes and recovery stories:https://sober-sunrise.com/episodes 🧡 Sober Sunrise Merchhttps://sober-sunrise.com/merch 🌴 Sober Sunrise Newsletterhttps://sober-sunrise.com/newsletter David traces his drinking from childhood rejection to the streets of Minneapolis, repeated detox stays, and nights trying to keep warm behind a bank on Nicollet Mall. Entering treatment at a state hospital with almost nothing, he believed he had done too much and fallen too far to be accepted in AA. He describes the people who took him to meetings, the sponsor he called every day, and learning to work the Twelve Steps through the Big Book while finding a Higher Power separate from the religion he had rejected. After several years sober, restlessness brought him to another surrender, a greeter's job, and a renewed connection with Big Book AA. Now more than twelve years sober, he talks about forgiveness at his father's graveside, caring for a close friend dying of AIDS, and rediscovering the fellowship's love during a year of loss. The thread through it all is simple: the actions that helped him at the beginning still work, even when his feelings are pulling him somewhere else. David N. from Minneapolis, MN speaking at the 6th New Orleans Roundup - August 14th 1993 Music: Deep by KaizanBlu

More than 30 years sober, Keith leaves his best friend's hospice bedside to speak at an AA conference. Their friendship began with a cup of coffee and an offer: "I'll pray. You partner." Now, the man who once wanted nobody has learned what it means to belong. ☀️ Sober Sunrise AppListen to Sober Sunrise AA speaker talks anytime, track your sober time, take a daily pledge, and keep recovery support close throughout the day.📱 https://sober-sunrise.com/appIf you enjoy the app or find it useful in your recovery, a quick rating or review on the App Store would mean a lot and helps more people find Sober Sunrise. ☀️ Sober Sunrise Episode ArchiveHundreds of AA speaker tapes and recovery stories:https://sober-sunrise.com/episodes 🧡 Sober Sunrise Merchhttps://sober-sunrise.com/merch 🌴 Sober Sunrise Newsletterhttps://sober-sunrise.com/newsletter Keith got sober on May 13, 1973, after a desperate morning in a Washington, D.C., basement finally led him to ask for help. With Irish Catholic humor, he recalls a schoolboy scheme to put extra beads on rosaries, finding instant confidence in alcohol on his way into the Marines, and being unable to keep a promise not to drink while his premature daughter fought for her life. His AA message is practical: sobriety is not waiting until every problem is solved, but maintaining a spiritual condition, making amends, and helping other alcoholics. The heart of the talk is the return of relationships, including a $1,000 loan that let his father be his father, his mother's gratitude that AA brought her boys home, and the friend who became his brother. Speaking from his own Catholic faith, Keith describes the privilege of being present through illness and loss instead of drinking for the courage to face them. Keith L. from Wilmington, NC speaking at the 34th Midwinter Conference in Midland, TX - January 16th-18th 2004 Music: Deep by KaizanBlu

Ralph's two-year-old daughter caught him taking money from her piggy bank. Years later, a photo at her UCLA graduation shows him what AA has helped make possible: being a father his daughters can trust. ☀️ Sober Sunrise AppListen to Sober Sunrise AA speaker talks anytime, track your sober time, take a daily pledge, and keep recovery support close throughout the day.📱 https://sober-sunrise.com/appIf you enjoy the app or find it useful in your recovery, a quick rating or review on the App Store would mean a lot and helps more people find Sober Sunrise. ☀️ Sober Sunrise Episode ArchiveHundreds of AA speaker tapes and recovery stories:https://sober-sunrise.com/episodes 🧡 Sober Sunrise Merchhttps://sober-sunrise.com/merch 🌴 Sober Sunrise Newsletterhttps://sober-sunrise.com/newsletter Ralph grew up in South Central Los Angeles, one of six boys raised by a mother who returned to school, worked two jobs, and kept the family together after his father left. A straight-A student and student leader, he wanted to stand out, but lived in what he calls the prison of what he thought other people thought about him. A first drink at 16 seemed to supply the confidence he lacked. Party drinking became daily drinking and drug use, and even after college and a job counseling students, his life narrowed around getting loaded. He describes repossessed cars, stealing from his wife's purse, taking change from his daughter's piggy bank, and returning to his mother's home after being put out of his own. He wanted desperately to be a father, yet could barely stay for a half-hour visit before disappearing. By October 11, 1986, he was exhausted enough to enter another recovery program and begin listening differently in AA. He had previously repeated other people's impressive lines while continuing to get loaded. This time, he brought willingness and learned to read the Big Book for similarities in drinking, thinking, feelings, and actions instead of dismissing the differences in Bill's life. Ralph connects recovery with sponsorship, the Twelve Steps, meetings, working with another alcoholic, and becoming available to a power greater than himself. Twenty years sober does not mean life has been easy: he describes financial trouble, moving back to his mother's house at 16 years sober, and learning to ask whether things are all right in this moment. The gifts show up in ordinary family life. His younger daughter trusts that he will come home when he says he will, his older daughter graduates from UCLA with him there beside her, and the brothers give their mother a surprise 75th birthday party, the first party she has ever had. Throughout this warm, funny AA talk, Ralph celebrates the people whose service keeps recovery available and the families changed when someone comes back to life. He closes with enthusiasm, gratitude, and a reminder that laughter belongs in a program he takes seriously. Ralph W. from Los Angeles, CA speaking at the Santa Barbara Convention in Santa Barbara, CA - October 2006 Music: Deep by KaizanBlu

John's canceled flight put him beside a nervous AA member on her first sober trip away from home. A piece of needlepoint started the conversation, and the next three hours became a meeting neither had planned. ☀️ Sober Sunrise AppListen to Sober Sunrise AA speaker talks anytime, track your sober time, take a daily pledge, and keep recovery support close throughout the day.📱 https://sober-sunrise.com/appIf you enjoy the app or find it useful in your recovery, a quick rating or review on the App Store would mean a lot and helps more people find Sober Sunrise. ☀️ Sober Sunrise Episode ArchiveHundreds of AA speaker tapes and recovery stories:https://sober-sunrise.com/episodes 🧡 Sober Sunrise Merchhttps://sober-sunrise.com/merch 🌴 Sober Sunrise Newsletterhttps://sober-sunrise.com/newsletter John began drinking at 25 and quickly found that, once he started, enough was never enough. He describes blackouts, DWIs, moving to avoid court dates, and agreeing to treatment mainly to get out of jail. A nine-dollar-a-day treatment center fits his budget, but he arrives convinced he is too intelligent and too busy to need much help. Watching the film I'll Quit Tomorrow gives him a different view of himself: he recognizes the alcoholic on the screen and knows he can no longer explain his drinking away. Back in Reno, he attends one men's meeting a week and feels increasingly miserable until an older AA member starts taking him to meetings every day. At a Christmas meeting, John prays to win a Big Book raffle, resents the woman who wins, and then receives the book from her. A week later, he wins another copy and passes it to a teenage newcomer. Those two experiences become his picture of AA: one alcoholic sharing with another, with something given to both. After moving to Dallas, taking inventory with a sponsor, rebuilding a career, and later going through a painful sober divorce, he discovers that being busy helping others is not enough if he has drifted from the simple program passed on to him. His sponsor's response to "my program isn't working" is to suggest he try theirs. John then shares several encounters he sees as God working through people: finding a newcomer on an obscure street he happens to know, sitting beside a frightened sober traveler after his flight is canceled, and unexpectedly connecting with a relative's wife at a small conference. After his father's funeral, an airport page for a friend of Bill W. brings him into a conversation with another man who has also lost his father. Throughout this funny, God-centered AA talk, John returns to identification, the Twelve Steps, surrender, and the help one alcoholic can offer another. He closes by inviting anyone struggling to borrow his faith until they can find a power of their own. John A. from Dallas, TX speaking at Gopher State Roundup XXVIII in Bloomington, MN - May 25th-27th 2001 Music: Deep by KaizanBlu