Sober Sunrise - AA Speaker Podcast20 Jun

It Was Never the Lack of What I Am- AA Speaker - John V.

John spent years believing he was unwanted because he was Indigenous, uneducated, poor, and unable to speak the way other people did. AA taught him that none of those things had robbed him of life nearly as much as refusing to accept himself.

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John shares how he arrived at his first AA meeting at 28 after seven years on Skid Row, unable to read or write, living in a mission, and interested mainly in the free coffee and donuts. A lawyer greeted him at the door, introduced him to people who treated him with care, and gave John his first experience of belonging sober. Although the desire to drink disappeared, loneliness, fear, and isolation returned after several years because he still had no program for living. A Step meeting and an unlikely friendship with a priest challenged John to become teachable, stop blaming his identity and circumstances, and begin where he was with what he had. From one underpriced house-painting job came a room of his own, a ladder, a business, a driver’s license, an 11-passenger station wagon, a wife, six children, and a life spent helping others. John’s message is not that AA turned him into somebody else, but that honesty, faith, and the Steps finally taught him to stop fighting the person he had always been.

John V. from Berlin, MA speaking at the 1st Atlantic Summer Roundup in Moncton, NB - June 23rd 1989 Music: Deep by KaizanBlu

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