Stay ConnectedSober Sunrise brings you AA Speaker Tapes from around the world. Rather than an AA discussion podcast, Sober Sunrise brings you speakers who share step-work, workshops, and general fellowship discussion points.
We are not affiliated with AA in anyway.
Lou walked into his first AA meeting wearing one black shoe and one brown shoe, and heard something no one had told him in 28 years: “Welcome, you’re in the right place.”
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Lou, sober since November 16, 1963, shares a rapid-fire, Big Book-centered AA talk about growing up in New Brunswick, running across Canada, landing on Vancouver’s skid row, and returning to a family home with the utilities disconnected, furniture repossessed, and debts owed to 51 places. The morning after his last drunk, he heard that his drinking days were over, called AA from a neighbor’s telephone, and was visited by two men, one only 21 days sober. Lou talks about being confronted as a phony, making direct amends without loopholes, repairing his relationship with the mother he had harmed and left as a teenager, learning prayer, meditation, inventory, financial responsibility, and service, and building a joyful life with Linda. From skid row to helping hundreds through racing-industry recovery programs, his message stays simple: recovery is found in changing our reaction to life, carrying the message, and holding hands before someone is lost.
Lou F. from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada speaking at Comox AA Rally in British Columbia, Canada - 2000
Music: Deep by KaizanBlu
In Part 8 of the Joe & Charlie Founders' Day series, Joe and Charlie slow down and make the Fourth Step practical instead of mysterious.
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In this session, Joe and Charlie work through the Fourth Step inventory in detail, using the Big Book's business inventory comparison to explain why the work is written, factual, and practical. They break down the meaning of a searching and fearless moral inventory, explain moral as truth rather than shame, and walk through resentments, fears, harms, and the instincts that get threatened. They show how resentments, fear, guilt, and remorse can block a person from God, and why the inventory is not about writing a life story or punishing ourselves. Part 8 is one of the most useful workshop sessions because it turns Step Four into something a newcomer can actually sit down and do.
Joe & Charlie speaking in Laughlin, Nevada, circa 1998 - "The Big Book Comes Alive" workshop tapes - Part 8: "Working the 4th Step"
Music: Deep by KaizanBlu
Steve attended meetings almost every morning for 100 days, but without a sponsor or the Steps, he was stone cold sober and slowly losing his mind.
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Steve, sober since July 27, 1996, shares in Reykjavik about arriving in AA under court order, sitting beneath the coffee machine at his first meeting, and planning never to return. Instead, he attended that same meeting for nearly three years, initially hearing only that he should avoid drinking and keep coming back. At 100 days sober, alone on a business trip and mentally unraveling, Steve stood over a hotel minibar before returning home and making an elaborate plan to disappear using 13 old passports. One expired tourist passport and one more meeting placed him in front of a sponsor who immediately began taking him through the Steps. Inventory exposed the fear and resentment separating Steve from his father, while amends taught him to listen, become present for his dying mother, and finally love his disabled daughter without resentment. Steve connects those experiences to sponsorship, complete honesty, prayer, service, and the moment another recovering father was restored to his own son. His message is direct: meetings help us find one another, but the program of action is in the Steps, and desperation can become the gateway through which grace finally reaches us.
Steve L. from Redondo Beach, CA speaking at the Road to Recovery conference in Reykjavik, Iceland - September 17th 2010
Music: Deep by KaizanBlu
In Parts 6 and 7 of the Joe & Charlie Founders' Day series, willingness becomes action as We Agnostics leads directly into How It Works and the Twelve Steps.
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In this combined session, Joe and Charlie begin with We Agnostics and explain why the Big Book does not demand a particular religion, a polished understanding of God, or perfect belief. Instead, it asks whether the alcoholic can become willing to seek a power greater than human power. From there, they move into How It Works, the wording and development of the Twelve Steps, and the difference between reaching conclusions in Steps One and Two and making a decision in Step Three. They break down will as thinking and life as action, explain why self-will cannot solve a problem rooted in self, and show why the Third Step decision must immediately be carried into inventory. Parts 6 and 7 form the bridge between understanding the problem and beginning the practical program of action.
Joe & Charlie speaking in Laughlin, Nevada, circa 1998 - "The Big Book Comes Alive" workshop tapes - Parts 6 & 7: "We Agnostics" and "How It Works"
Music: Deep by KaizanBlu
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
Karl called his father, a minister and theologian, expecting him to explain God. His father gave him a much shorter answer: God is whatever got you to those people, so do what they say.
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Karl, sober since January 21, 1987, shares a rapid-fire AA talk about growing up in Borneo, blacking out from his first drink at 11, earning ten college credits in three years, dealing drugs, living on the streets, and joining the Navy to escape people he owed. His drinking followed him into military life, where he drove through a guard shack, repeatedly drank on Antabuse, landed in jail, and was finally sent to treatment under threat of the brig and a bad-conduct discharge. At his first AA meeting, one sentence described the condition he could never explain: his mind would have killed his body, but it needed it for transportation. What followed was a weekend of meetings, a recovering alcoholic waiting for him aboard his ship, nightly Big Book study in the battery shop, inventory, difficult financial amends, an honorable discharge, and a return to college. Karl explains how meetings, the book, and service became recovery, unity, and service in action, and how loading newcomers into a broken Volkswagen taught him that helping someone else could improve his life before the car even left the parking lot.
Karl M. from Covina, CA speaking somewhere in Texas, sometime in 1994
Music: Deep by KaizanBlu
Paul went to AA for seven months with no intention of becoming an alcoholic. Then he attended one meeting too many, caught himself laughing with everyone else, and never drank again
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Paul, sober since July 31, 1967, shares a wonderfully funny AA talk about being a doctor who could diagnose everyone except himself. After weight loss, convulsions, headaches, and a growing sense of insanity convinced him that he had a brain tumor, alcoholism landed him in the psychiatric ward of the hospital where he practiced medicine. He first attended AA to satisfy his psychiatrist, kept returning because his wife enjoyed the meetings, and finally discovered that the laughter, Steps, meetings, and fellowship were reaching him despite everything he thought he knew. Paul talks about the noisy committee in his head, giving God a 51 percent controlling interest in his life, assigning God the worry while he handles the work, redoing the Steps, carrying the message, and learning that sobriety requires both meetings and action. At the heart of the talk is the point of the V: accepting that he was alcoholic changed the entire direction of his life, because acceptance did not mean approval. It meant facing reality and finally having a choice.
Paul O. from Laguna Beach, CA at 19th Everett Conference - November 28th 1997
Music: Deep by KaizanBlu
Michael knew he was alcoholic for twelve years before AA, but the part that changed his life was learning what came after putting the drink down.
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Michael, from Montana, shares a direct and thoughtful AA talk centered on Step One, especially the unmanageability that remained after alcohol was removed. He talks about years of drinking Granddad in private, blackouts, hiding car keys from himself, waking up afraid of what he might have done, time behind bars, wrecked cars, hospitalizations, and the slow degradation that made him believe he did not deserve to sober up. After court, treatment, relapses, early sponsorship choices, and the death of a friend, Michael describes the moment he got on his knees with other sober men and finally asked for the compulsion to be removed. From there, he walks through why every Step after Step One deals with the same deeper problem: resentments, fear, selfishness, sexual behavior, sponsorship, amends, and becoming a builder instead of a destroyer. This is a strong tape for anyone who has heard “I’m powerless” but still wonders what AA means by “my life had become unmanageable.”
Michael McK. from Whitefish, MT at Kalispell, MT May 17th 1998
Music: Deep by KaizanBlu
In Part 5 of the Joe & Charlie Founders' Day series, Joe and Charlie dig into the strange mental blank spot that makes the first drink possible again.
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In this session, Joe and Charlie walk through More About Alcoholism and the Big Book's deeper explanation of the mental side of the disease. They break down the obsession that says someday we will control and enjoy drinking, the illusion and delusion that return after consequences, and why knowledge alone does not protect the alcoholic from another first drink. Using the Big Book examples of the man of thirty, the jaywalker, and Fred, they show how the alcoholic can be sane in every other area and still have no effective mental defense when the thought of a drink returns. Part 5 sharpens Step One by showing that the problem is not only what happens after drinking starts, but the mind that keeps taking us back to the first drink
Joe & Charlie speaking in Laughlin, Nevada, circa 1998 - "The Big Book Comes Alive" workshop tapes - Part 5: "More About Alcoholism"
Music: Deep by KaizanBlu
Daniel says he spent his drinking years chasing the perfect level, but every time he found it, he flew right past it.
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Daniel, from Benton, Arkansas, shares a funny, raw, and deeply alive AA talk about getting sober young after alcohol and drugs took him from anxiety and feeling different into blackouts, jail, withdrawal, rage, and wanting out. He talks about his first drink removing the knot in his gut, the daily chase for the “perfect level,” and the morning of August 8, 1998, when he asked God to let him die or give him help. What came next was detox, treatment, and three AA members who shook his hand, told him they were glad he was there, and carried a message real enough to give him hope. From there, Daniel walks through the Steps, sponsorship, inventory, amends, young people’s AA, service commitments, the recovery-unity-service triangle, and the joy of watching other alcoholics come alive. By the end, his message is simple: there is no advanced AA, service keeps the structure standing, and if God has a plan for your life, make it count
Daniel E. from Benton, AR speaking at Arkansas Conference of Young People in Alcoholics Anonymous in Morrilton, AR - October 7th 2005
Music: Deep by KaizanBlu
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