Episode Details

Paul expected God to make him famous enough to win a Nobel Prize. Instead, AA made him anonymous and taught a doctor who entered through the hospital psychiatric ward how surrender, the Steps, sponsorship, and love in action could keep him sober.

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Paul shares a fast, funny AA talk about the strange route from being a physician on a hospital staff to becoming a patient on its psychiatric ward, where attending Alcoholics Anonymous was initially just his way to obtain a pass. He spent seven months coming to meetings before accepting that he was even a little alcoholic, then discovered that meetings alone were not a substitute for working the Twelve Steps. After twenty-two years sober, taking a drink is no longer an active concern, but thinking can still turn any small inconvenience into a carefully nurtured problem. Paul talks about sponsors who do not need to “reek with profundities,” the many competing personalities in his head, the spiritual equality of AA, and the freedom of letting powerlessness remove responsibilities that were never his. His central lesson is that recovery teaches alcoholics to express the love they once tried to suppress with alcohol. Through caring, sharing, listening, service, and making his wife's morning coffee exactly the way she likes it without expecting appreciation, Paul learns the difference between love and barter. The doctor who once imagined winning a Nobel Prize and making God famous instead finds something better: anonymity, usefulness, a marriage approaching fifty years, and the chance to become a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Paul O. from Laguna Beach, CA speaking at the Desert Rose Roundup - May 20th 1989

Music: Deep by KaizanBlu