Episode Details

Nearly twenty-one years sober, Chuck challenges an old AA assumption: the pink cloud is not supposed to fade when the Steps keep turning physical abstinence into a peaceful way of life.

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Chuck had spent nearly twenty-one years carrying the Alcoholics Anonymous message when he gave this talk at the 1966 Monteagle Roundup. He begins by taking the spotlight off famous speakers and placing it back where AA lives: one alcoholic talking with another, making coffee, sweeping floors, visiting jails, and sharing the language of the heart in a quiet room. Chuck then asks what sobriety really means. During a twenty-five-year drinking career, he repeatedly achieved physical abstinence and still returned to alcohol; the miracle came when the program gave him a way to live peacefully, joyously, and comfortably with himself. From there, he challenges the idea that AA’s early honeymoon must fade, recalls the stubborn self-will that exhausted every personal resource he had, and insists that “here are the Steps we took” means action rather than reading, debating, or waiting for God to do the work. Walking through surrender, inventory, confession, amends, prayer, service, and the destruction of ego, Chuck describes the Steps as the actions that roll away the stone and make conscious contact possible. He came to AA willing to accept the unhappiest sobriety on earth if he could simply stop drinking. Instead, he found his health, family, work, usefulness, a God of his own understanding, and what he calls the whole package.

Chuck C. from Laguna Beach, CA speaking at the 1966 Monteagle Roundup in Monteagle, TN - 1966

Music: Deep by KaizanBlu