I Wanted to Know How You Stopped Starting - AA Speaker - Jeff W.

One of AA’s original members recalls how a living example showed him the difference between being forced to stop drinking and finally learning how to stop taking the first drink.

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Jeff shares a remarkable firsthand account of alcoholism and the earliest years of Alcoholics Anonymous. His drinking repeatedly carries him from his Brooklyn home into courtrooms, missions, psychiatric wards, and life on the street until a coworker finds him outside a flophouse, takes him home, bathes and shaves him, and introduces him to a small gathering of men demonstrating a new way of life. Jeff realizes that hospitals had taught him plenty about stopping temporarily; what he desperately needed was a way to stop starting again. He recalls learning early Twelve Step work through experience, the flood of requests for help following the Saturday Evening Post article, and how even an apparently unsuccessful call could plant a seed that later transformed an alcoholic’s life. With humor, humility, and more than 27 years of sobriety, Jeff contrasts the lonely man once talking to himself in a Brooklyn gutter with the husband, father, grandfather, and respected member he became through AA, faith, fellowship, and carrying the message.

Jeff W. from Los Angeles, CA, one of the original 100 AAs, speaking in Sacramento, CA - 1965

Music: Deep by KaizanBlu