Doug R. – AA Speaker – Hilarious recovery share – “Hope and Laughter” NEW 2017

Doug is a VERY funny AA speaker with a great sense of humor. This share from earlier this year had me rolling with laughter a few times as Doug was telling his awesome stories. I absolutely LOVE messages that are both hilarious and have a powerful story of recovery! Doug has wonderful sobriety and has an incredible ability to convey the message of the 12 steps to a huge audience. This tape is a MUST listen and one that you will be telling your friends and family about. Enjoy!

Reservations about the “God thing” and voices at 3:00 a.m.

When I walked into my first AA meeting I expected to find a bunch of people who used to drink like I drink, and don’t anymore. I believed that. And we’re atheists and agnostics because my grandmother who was a drunk who got sober when she found Jesus and when she was sober 37 years she became a Pentecostal minister and opened a Skid Row Mission in San Pedro California on Beacon Street. You know that area. At that time in the 50s, it was a very, very rough area, and somebody got killed on that street almost every night. My grandmother’s little white dove Pentecostal mission was right there. She would bring these wharf rats and winos in and save their lives, save their souls, and they’d stop drinking. She hated AA and I always said she hated AA “because there was no God in AA” and in her view, these people got sober without God. Well, when you come here, you don’t have to be or five minutes before you hear, “My Higher Power greater than myself, I humbly asked him with a capital H. Admitted to God, prayed to God, told God, oh my God!” Are you kidding me? At the time when I read the Big Book I was so irritated, but there I was, reading this book. The secretary had said there was a whole chapter called We Agnostics. I was elated. So I poured another three fingers of whisky and I read Chapter 4 all the way through. I finished and I thought to myself, “I have absolutely no idea what I just read.” So I poured some more whiskey and I read it again, and then I poured some more whiskey and I read another time.

There are a couple of things in there that had an impact on me. One of them is a sentence that on my probably third reading jumped off the page at me. It was very subtle, but incredibly significant. It said, “We found that God doesn’t make too hard terms on those who seek Him.” I never heard that before. I knew something about religions of the world, Western and Eastern, and it seemed to me in my drunken opinion of organized religion, that every religion said you have to jump through certain spiritual hoops to get God’s attention. My grandmother’s Pentecostal church would say that God will not even heal unless you’re baptized. Anyways, I didn’t have an epiphany when I read that that God doesn’t make too hard terms or that in AA you don’t have to accept anyone’s concept of God, but it made me more comfortable with the program.

This was such a new concept, but I had to go back to AA because I knew I had a problem with alcohol. I was kind of hoping that I was the kind of alcoholic who didn’t have to stop altogether. Once I got a handle on my drinking, even if I had to stop for a couple of months, I could have a cold beer on a hot day; it just makes sense, you know. Even a glass of wine with dinner and a 12 ounce porterhouse cooked medium rare. That’s responsible adult beverage consumption, that’s what I’m looking for, just one margarita with my enchilada. I went to AA for eight months and I went five to seven times a week for eight months. I went to different groups because I really didn’t want anybody to get to know me. I didn’t have a home group, I didn’t have a sponsor, I didn’t read the book, I didn’t take the steps, I didn’t believe in God, and I was still drinking everyday.

I came home from a meeting one night as by 10:30 at night and I laid on the floor, opened a bottle of whiskey and watched TV until I passed out. Woke up in the middle of the night about 3:00 a.m. I do that, wake up by 3:00 a.m. if the bottle is half full. I didn’t know where the cap was and I was to crawling on my hands and knees to the living room, through the hallway, and into the bedroom to go to bed. Some people call it pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. I just call that going to bed. When I got there, I grabbed the whiskey, started chugging it, and voice in my head said, “That ain’t right.”