I Needed a Drink Long Before I Ever Got One - AA Speaker - Dustin B.

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

Mark's sponsor could take almost any complaint back to a page in the Big Book. But the daily work of AA's Steps Ten, Eleven, and Twelve was still Mark's responsibility, including the meditation he skipped for his first ten years sober. ☀️ 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 Mark gives October 19, 1982, as the beginning of his sobriety, but says it took years to understand powerlessness and begin waking up to the spiritual life described in the Big Book. In this Monday morning spiritual talk, he concentrates on Steps Ten, Eleven, and Twelve, drawing on his experiences in AA and CA. He remembers a sponsor who answered complaints with two questions: had he prayed, and did he have his Big Book handy? That sponsor also challenged him after a fifteen-minute share in a room of thirty people, asking whether taking so much of the meeting was another expression of selfishness. Mark connects that accountability with learning to take responsibility for his own recovery and to distinguish spiritual experience from opinions about things he has never practiced. His approach to Step Ten centers on watching for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear, asking for their removal, and turning toward someone he can help. He describes spending six months working with the single word "watch" and learning to notice thoughts and feelings without being completely carried away by them. His sign reading "whatever" above an altar becomes a humorous reminder of the promise of ceasing to fight. Step Eleven brings a practice he says he neglected for his first ten years sober: meditation. He describes sitting twice a day for twenty-four minutes, alongside morning preparation, attention throughout the day, and an evening review. In discussing Step Twelve, Mark explains how he talks honestly with a newcomer about willingness, inventory, amends, and the daily work ahead before they begin studying the book together. His aim is to help that person become independent of him and develop a spiritual life of their own. Throughout this direct, God-centered recovery talk, he returns to the difference between hearing about the program and living it, then asks listeners to carry that experience back into their meetings, work, homes, and service to others. Mark H. from Dallas, TX - Monday Morning Spiritual Speaker Music: Deep by KaizanBlu

Bobby came to detox with everything he owned in a dirty white leather tennis bag. A woman washed his clothes, he began doing the same for other alcoholics, and five years later he was running that detox center. His AA story puts service into very practical terms. ☀️ 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 Approaching 25 years of sobriety, Bobby looks back on growing up in Birmingham, Alabama, during segregation, graduating from high school at 16, and watching the promise of his early life give way to drinking. He describes military service in Germany, anger that grew more destructive under the influence, caring for his mother while she was dying of cancer, and eventually living on the streets of Cleveland. An AA television announcement prompts a call to central office, bringing a sponsor who begins introducing him to the fellowship. But meetings and treatment do not immediately end his drinking. After a night at the city mission, he asks a priest for help and describes finally surrendering the fight with alcohol. He enters the Salvation Army's Harbor Light program carrying all his possessions in a white leather bag. A woman who remembers him from better days takes the dirty clothes he is embarrassed to show her and washes them. After detox, Bobby starts returning downstairs to help the next alcoholic, including offering to wash their clothes. He recalls becoming that center's first Black director five years later. The work of recovery continues when he loses the job and resents people in AA: his sponsor tells him to keep attending meetings and shake their hands, even when he does not want to. Bobby also describes refusing to say God for his first five years, praying instead to whatever was watching over his sponsor, and gradually finding a faith expressed through how he treats people. He returns to sponsorship, the Big Book, the Twelve Steps, home groups, and the many ways to carry the message beyond the podium, from sending cards to visiting people in hospitals and nursing homes. Caring for his father becomes possible without the hatred he once carried, and his daughter knows a loving father rather than the man in his drinking stories. At the 30th Gopher State Roundup, Bobby's message is that sobriety can change what he does today, how he loves, and what he gives to the next person. Bobby M. from Cleveland, OH speaking at the 30th Gopher State Roundup in Bloomington, MN - 2003 Music: Deep by KaizanBlu