Hopelessness Made the Big Book Exciting - AA Speaker - Lee Y.

In an Orange County jail library, Lee found the Big Book directly in front of him and discovered on page 63 the same prayer he had been reading before his arrest. Hopelessness finally made AA's program exciting enough to try.

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Lee, sober since November 20, 1984, shares how a thinking problem and complete self-obsession preceded his drinking by years. As a frightened teenager unable to speak to the girl he loved, one bottle removed the fear and sent him onto his grandparents' roof declaring himself ten feet tall and bulletproof. The relief quickly became an unquenchable thirst, and the years that followed brought stealing, broken relationships, failed jobs, repeated incarceration, and moves across the country in search of a fresh start that never lasted. At his first AA meeting in New York, two members gave Lee something he had never heard from his family: "We understand." He was not ready then, but he remembered those words years later in a Florida jail. Weekly AA meetings led him to a jail library, where he found the Big Book, recognized himself in the jaywalker story, and discovered on page 63 the same prayer his wife had once given him. Lee began working the Steps while incarcerated and spent his first two years sober in a correctional facility, where service, prayer, and a small AA group taught him that he could find happiness even in prison. After his release, members surrounded him with meetings, transportation, sponsorship, work, and the insistence that he clean up his past. Through amends, education, service, and years of showing up differently for his family, the man who once believed he was worthy of being despised became someone whose presence brought forty relatives together. Lee's message is simple: AA does not work merely for people who need it or want it; it works for people who do it.

Lee Y. from Lake Mary, FL speaking at the Springtime in the Ozarks Conference in Eureka Springs, AR - April 2001

Music: Deep by KaizanBlu