Sober Sunrise - AA Speaker Podcast

Epizody

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  I Needed a Drink Long Before I Ever Got One - AA Speaker - Dustin B. 02.10.2026 59min

  Dustin stayed sober on fear and meetings for more than a year, then relapsed harder than before. His AA recovery changed when a sponsor took him through the Big Book and put him to work helping other alcoholics before he felt ready. ☀️ Sober Sunrise AppListen to Sober Sunrise AA speaker talks anytime, track your sober time, take a daily pledge, and keep recovery support close throughout the day.📱 https://sober-sunrise.com/appIf you enjoy the app or find it useful in your recovery, a quick rating or review on the App Store would mean a lot and helps more people find Sober Sunrise. ☀️ Sober Sunrise Episode ArchiveHundreds of AA speaker tapes and recovery stories:https://sober-sunrise.com/episodes 🧡 Sober Sunrise Merchhttps://sober-sunrise.com/merch 🌴 Sober Sunrise Newsletterhttps://sober-sunrise.com/newsletter Dustin grew up in an alcoholic home in Cambridge, Minnesota, feeling uncomfortable in nearly every situation long before his first drink at 14 gave him temporary relief. Childhood trauma, the loss of his father, drugs, overdose, hospitals, and treatment followed. He once spent nearly a year moving through institutions, outpatient care, and as many as a dozen AA meetings a week, then remained sober for just over a year on fellowship and fear without taking the Steps. When that fear stopped holding him, the relapse was immediate and severe. Dustin spent the next five years pointing to the house, cars, job, marriage, and children as proof that he could not be alcoholic, until those outward markers began falling away and a violent, self-destructive bottom brought him back to treatment. This time, the Big Book gave him a practical solution. He wrote inventory, completed a Fifth Step, met a sponsor who insisted on real amends instead of vague promises, began daily inventory and prayer, and started taking other alcoholics through the book at barely two months sober. Dustin’s central message is the paradox he learned through the Twelfth Step: if he waits until he gets better before helping others, he will never get better. Recovery came when the Steps connected him to a power greater than himself and made it possible to be present as a father, employee, friend, and sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous. Dustin B. from Cambridge, MN speaking at the Isanti Saturday Night Live Group in Isanti, MN - October 21st 2006 Music: Deep by KaizanBlu
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  The More I Tried to Stay Sober, the Sicker I Got - AA Speaker - Joseph G. 01.10.2026 55min

  Joseph says the more he obsessed about staying sober, the sicker he became. His AA recovery changed when he stopped staring at the problem and committed himself to the Steps, amends, testimony, and service. ☀️ Sober Sunrise AppListen to Sober Sunrise AA speaker talks anytime, track your sober time, take a daily pledge, and keep recovery support close throughout the day.📱 https://sober-sunrise.com/appIf you enjoy the app or find it useful in your recovery, a quick rating or review on the App Store would mean a lot and helps more people find Sober Sunrise. ☀️ Sober Sunrise Episode ArchiveHundreds of AA speaker tapes and recovery stories:https://sober-sunrise.com/episodes 🧡 Sober Sunrise Merchhttps://sober-sunrise.com/merch 🌴 Sober Sunrise Newsletterhttps://sober-sunrise.com/newsletter Joseph drank from childhood and eventually reached a point where alcohol occupied nearly every waking thought. He remembers waking in jail, asking what time it was, and being told he should worry about what day it was because he had been asleep for three days. While serving time, Joseph first heard about Alcoholics Anonymous from another prisoner whose honesty, openness, and freedom from resentment gave him something Joseph wanted, even though the man fully expected to drink again after release. Joseph attended AA meetings inside but arrived certain that the sick people around him needed his help. He planned to take only the Steps he liked, rejected sponsorship, and later decided that AA did not work because nobody reached him the way he expected. Online recovery rooms and a New Year’s Eve alcathon brought him back. A small Step group followed, then a man he spoke with regularly finally asked whether Joseph had a sponsor and announced, “Well, you’ve got one now.” Much of that sponsor’s guidance only became clear after his death. Joseph’s deeper change came when he stopped making sobriety itself his entire focus and committed to working the Twelve Steps. He describes surrender, hope, and faith in the first three Steps; learning to live in the present through inventory; laughing through a Fifth Step in prison; discovering the Sixth Step as a state of readiness; making amends instead of spending another apology; taking a daily personal inventory; and hearing his higher power through the testimony of other alcoholics. His pathway is toward self-acceptance: getting outside himself, working with newcomers, and receiving through service what he once tried to manufacture with alcohol. Joseph G. from Royalton, IL speaking at the AA Downunder Group - July 20th 2007 Music: Deep by KaizanBlu
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  Stoned to Death With Fridge Magnets - AA Speaker - Sean A. 30.09.2026 50min

  Sean arrived at his first Hollywood AA meeting smelling like a gimlet and terrified of 400 friendly strangers, then felt something he had not experienced in years: safe, understood, and accepted. ☀️ Sober Sunrise AppListen to Sober Sunrise AA speaker talks anytime, track your sober time, take a daily pledge, and keep recovery support close throughout the day.📱 https://sober-sunrise.com/appIf you enjoy the app or find it useful in your recovery, a quick rating or review on the App Store would mean a lot and helps more people find Sober Sunrise. ☀️ Sober Sunrise Episode ArchiveHundreds of AA speaker tapes and recovery stories:https://sober-sunrise.com/episodes 🧡 Sober Sunrise Merchhttps://sober-sunrise.com/merch 🌴 Sober Sunrise Newsletterhttps://sober-sunrise.com/newsletter Sean began drinking at fourteen, entered the theater professionally in his early twenties, and built a successful Broadway career while consuming a quart of scotch a day and maintaining what he calls a wonderful world of chemistry. The outside still looked impressive, but inside he lived with the fear of not getting what he wanted, losing what he had, being exposed for who he was, and being punished for it. After an arrest at the end of a long vodka run in April 1974, Sean admitted he was alcoholic to a sober coworker. She stopped everything, read the Big Book with him, shared her own story, and brought him to a 400-person Hollywood Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. He arrived frightened, unwell, smelling like a gimlet, and unable to understand the barrage of slogans coming from cheerful strangers, but identification gave him his first feeling of safety in years. A sponsor then guided him through the Twelve Steps as actions rather than subjects for discussion. Inventory showed Sean that he did not have baggage but cargo; the Fifth Step gave him one person who knew the complete story; amends became a commitment to change; and continued inventory, prayer, meditation, sponsorship, and service taught an alien and outsider how to belong. At thirty-three years sober and newly divorced after a long marriage, Sean is candid about the fear, sadness, embarrassment, and uncertainty beneath his jokes. He returns to AA for reassurance and reports to the fellowship as his teachers: recovery is not a finished destination or a lawn chair on a plateau, but a full-time adventure in which people learn to carry the good news into their homes, work, communities, and relationships. Sean A. from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada speaking at the 33rd Annual AA Rally in Campbell River, British Columbia, Canada - August 5th 2007 Music: Deep by KaizanBlu
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  Nobody Will Know. God Will Know. - AA Speaker - Pat R. 29.09.2026 1h 1min

  At fourteen months sober, Pat accidentally tasted vodka and thought nobody would know. The AA foundation built through meetings, sponsorship, service, and washed coffee cups answered with three words: God will know. ☀️ Sober Sunrise AppListen to Sober Sunrise AA speaker talks anytime, track your sober time, take a daily pledge, and keep recovery support close throughout the day.📱 https://sober-sunrise.com/appIf you enjoy the app or find it useful in your recovery, a quick rating or review on the App Store would mean a lot and helps more people find Sober Sunrise. ☀️ Sober Sunrise Episode ArchiveHundreds of AA speaker tapes and recovery stories:https://sober-sunrise.com/episodes 🧡 Sober Sunrise Merchhttps://sober-sunrise.com/merch 🌴 Sober Sunrise Newsletterhttps://sober-sunrise.com/newsletter Pat, sober since August 28, 1970, grew up in Brooklyn with an alcoholic father and a mother whose long dependence on stimulants and alcohol left Pat watching other people for cues about how to think, feel, and behave. She began drinking alone at fifteen because alcohol quieted the confusion and briefly filled the empty place inside her. Over the next twenty years, drinking became the organizing principle beneath marriage, motherhood, rigid household control, late-night binges, rage, and relationships that looked acceptable from the outside while collapsing internally. After a humiliating afternoon at a family picnic and a blackout behind the wheel, Pat walked into Brooklyn’s Canarsie Group. For one hour, the hole inside her felt filled. A sponsor claimed her, the group put her to work, and she stayed close through meetings, speaking commitments, service, washing coffee cups, sweeping floors, and traveling in caravans with other members. When her family moved to rural New Jersey at fourteen months sober, that entire structure disappeared and the emotions she had never learned to face came rushing back. At a gathering one night, Pat unknowingly took a sip of a drink containing vodka. Her first thought was that nobody would know; the next was that God would. She put it down, called her sponsor, returned to a meeting, and began working the program at a deeper level. Through inventory, amends, prayer, willingness, education, nursing school, a painful divorce, a new marriage, sponsorship, and continued service, Pat found the mind, choices, emotional life, and heart’s desires that alcohol had postponed. Her message is that everything she needed to grow and change was already present in the books, rooms, and people of Alcoholics Anonymous. Pat R. from Lake Hopacong, NJ speaking at the 3rd Buckeye Roundup in Cincinnati, OH - November 11th 1994 Music: Deep by KaizanBlu
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  I've Been Around Airports for 50 Years. I Still Can't Fly - AA Speaker - Tom K. 28.09.2026 53min

  Tom says being around AA is like spending fifty years around airports without learning to fly: recovery began only when he became willing to do absolutely anything, take the Steps, and stay useful. ☀️ Sober Sunrise AppListen to Sober Sunrise AA speaker talks anytime, track your sober time, take a daily pledge, and keep recovery support close throughout the day.📱 https://sober-sunrise.com/appIf you enjoy the app or find it useful in your recovery, a quick rating or review on the App Store would mean a lot and helps more people find Sober Sunrise. ☀️ Sober Sunrise Episode ArchiveHundreds of AA speaker tapes and recovery stories:https://sober-sunrise.com/episodes 🧡 Sober Sunrise Merchhttps://sober-sunrise.com/merch 🌴 Sober Sunrise Newsletterhttps://sober-sunrise.com/newsletter Tom, sober since September 15, 1978, shares what Alcoholics Anonymous taught him about living with alcoholism rather than searching for a loophole out of it. Born in Pennsylvania and introduced to heavier drinking while attending college in Ohio, he entered marriage and fatherhood wanting to be dependable but steadily became the opposite: he lied about his drinking, took company money, lost jobs, neglected his family, and repeatedly lowered the line he swore he would never cross. Even after a doctor identified alcoholism, Tom turned a controlled-drinking experiment into proof that he had passed the test, then stayed to give himself a graduation party. A geographic move and a country-club career could not stop the progression. When the job, home, finances, relationships, and hope finally collapsed, the AA meetings he had resisted became the only place left to go. Tom told a sponsor he was willing to do absolutely anything, and the fellowship began teaching him how to live through the Big Book, the Steps, a home group, prayer, accountability, and action. At a year and a half sober, legal and financial consequences returned, but another member helped him stop asking God to remove the burden and start asking for the strength to carry it. Tom follows that lesson through family decisions, General Service, sponsorship, and daily practice of Steps Ten, Eleven, and Twelve. Nearly thirty years into recovery, his message remains practical: it is not the meetings you make but the Steps you take, spiritual maintenance cannot wait until something breaks, and all anyone can stay sober in is now. Tom K. from Jacksonville, FL speaking at The 42nd Annual New Hampshire Convention in North Conway, NH - April 11th 2008 Music: Deep by KaizanBlu
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  I Didn't Know AA Had a Skybox - AA Speaker - Charlie P. 25.09.2026 1h 16min

  Seventeen years sober, Charlie thought he had already experienced what AA could offer. Then deeper Big Book work showed him he had spent all those years in the cheap seats without knowing there was a skybox. ☀️ Sober Sunrise AppListen to Sober Sunrise AA speaker talks anytime, track your sober time, take a daily pledge, and keep recovery support close throughout the day.📱 https://sober-sunrise.com/appIf you enjoy the app or find it useful in your recovery, a quick rating or review on the App Store would mean a lot and helps more people find Sober Sunrise. ☀️ Sober Sunrise Episode ArchiveHundreds of AA speaker tapes and recovery stories:https://sober-sunrise.com/episodes 🧡 Sober Sunrise Merchhttps://sober-sunrise.com/merch 🌴 Sober Sunrise Newsletterhttps://sober-sunrise.com/newsletter Charlie, sober since March 22, 1985, shares a funny and direct Alcoholics Anonymous talk about the difference between staying away from alcohol and treating alcoholism. He remembers discovering drinking at sixteen, regular blackouts, crashing his mother's car into a parked police vehicle, pawning his family's belongings, entering treatment, and making promises to his father that he sincerely meant but had no power to keep. AA gave him physical sobriety, but over the following years he repeatedly hit a wall and settled into a meeting-based program while dishonesty, self-will, isolation, and the bedevilments continued operating underneath his life. Surviving a plane crash briefly sharpened his gratitude, but the deeper change began when a sponsor took him back through the Big Book and showed him the material he had missed between willingness and inventory: selfishness and self-centeredness were the root problem, and alcohol had been his solution. Charlie describes revisiting inventory, completing long-delayed amends, practicing Steps Ten and Eleven daily, sponsoring other men, and helping build Austin's Primary Purpose Group around line-by-line Big Book study. His message is directed to the person with years in AA who is no longer feeling the fire: the full program is still available, the best years can still lie ahead, and nobody has to relapse before beginning again. Charlie P. from Austin, TX speaking at Summer Serenity at the Beach in Destin, FL - August 26th 2010 Music: Deep by KaizanBlu
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  The Pink Cloud Was Never Supposed to Turn Gray - AA Speaker - Chuck C. 24.09.2026 1h 32min

  Nearly twenty-one years sober, Chuck challenges an old AA assumption: the pink cloud is not supposed to fade when the Steps keep turning physical abstinence into a peaceful way of life. ☀️ Sober Sunrise AppListen to Sober Sunrise AA speaker talks anytime, track your sober time, take a daily pledge, and keep recovery support close throughout the day.📱 https://sober-sunrise.com/appIf you enjoy the app or find it useful in your recovery, a quick rating or review on the App Store would mean a lot and helps more people find Sober Sunrise. ☀️ Sober Sunrise Episode ArchiveHundreds of AA speaker tapes and recovery stories:https://sober-sunrise.com/episodes 🧡 Sober Sunrise Merchhttps://sober-sunrise.com/merch 🌴 Sober Sunrise Newsletterhttps://sober-sunrise.com/newsletter Chuck had spent nearly twenty-one years carrying the Alcoholics Anonymous message when he gave this talk at the 1966 Monteagle Roundup. He begins by taking the spotlight off famous speakers and placing it back where AA lives: one alcoholic talking with another, making coffee, sweeping floors, visiting jails, and sharing the language of the heart in a quiet room. Chuck then asks what sobriety really means. During a twenty-five-year drinking career, he repeatedly achieved physical abstinence and still returned to alcohol; the miracle came when the program gave him a way to live peacefully, joyously, and comfortably with himself. From there, he challenges the idea that AA’s early honeymoon must fade, recalls the stubborn self-will that exhausted every personal resource he had, and insists that “here are the Steps we took” means action rather than reading, debating, or waiting for God to do the work. Walking through surrender, inventory, confession, amends, prayer, service, and the destruction of ego, Chuck describes the Steps as the actions that roll away the stone and make conscious contact possible. He came to AA willing to accept the unhappiest sobriety on earth if he could simply stop drinking. Instead, he found his health, family, work, usefulness, a God of his own understanding, and what he calls the whole package. Chuck C. from Laguna Beach, CA speaking at the 1966 Monteagle Roundup in Monteagle, TN - 1966 Music: Deep by KaizanBlu
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  The Martini Became a Coffee Cup - AA Speaker - Michael D. 23.09.2026 46min

  Michael turns his AA recovery story into a slide show where the martini keeps reappearing, until a hospital death watch, the fellowship, and nearly fourteen years of sobriety replace it with a coffee cup. ☀️ Sober Sunrise AppListen to Sober Sunrise AA speaker talks anytime, track your sober time, take a daily pledge, and keep recovery support close throughout the day.📱 https://sober-sunrise.com/appIf you enjoy the app or find it useful in your recovery, a quick rating or review on the App Store would mean a lot and helps more people find Sober Sunrise. ☀️ Sober Sunrise Episode ArchiveHundreds of AA speaker tapes and recovery stories:https://sober-sunrise.com/episodes 🧡 Sober Sunrise Merchhttps://sober-sunrise.com/merch 🌴 Sober Sunrise Newsletterhttps://sober-sunrise.com/newsletter Michael grew up in San Francisco, flew during World War II, tried monastic life, studied theology, and built an award-winning advertising career across Portland, Los Angeles, New York, Sydney, and Kansas City while martinis gradually became the organizing principle of his life. By 1978 he was isolated at home, drinking roughly half a gallon of vodka a day, and making a blizzard trip in layers of pajamas and black leotards because running out overnight felt unthinkable. When he finally called for help, he collapsed in a hospital tunnel, spent five days in intensive care, and awakened paralyzed from the waist down under a death watch. Michael initially rejected the hospital AA meetings, but later found identification at Kansas City’s Plaza Fellowship and helped establish the Live and Let Live group in 1979. Approaching fourteen years sober, he uses a deliberately theatrical slide presentation to challenge several AA myths: the Steps are not casual suggestions, nobody graduates after completing them once, life does not become permanently manageable, and recovery means more than excusing behavior with “what do you expect from a drunk?” His program is built around change, inventory, learning through mistakes, accepting divine delay, and the three givings of giving, forgiving, and thanksgiving. The final slide replaces the old martini and black leotards with an AA meeting and coffee cup. As Michael says, there have been a few changes. Michael D. from Kansas City, MO speaking at Chicago Roundup - July 20th 1991 Music: Deep by KaizanBlu
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  We Don't Want Change. We Want Relief. - AA Speaker - Bob B. 22.09.2026 1h 10min

  Bob got sober at twenty-four, but AA's harder lesson came years later: he did not really want transformation - he wanted relief without surrendering the behaviors that were wrecking his sober life. ☀️ Sober Sunrise AppListen to Sober Sunrise AA speaker talks anytime, track your sober time, take a daily pledge, and keep recovery support close throughout the day.📱 https://sober-sunrise.com/appIf you enjoy the app or find it useful in your recovery, a quick rating or review on the App Store would mean a lot and helps more people find Sober Sunrise. ☀️ Sober Sunrise Episode ArchiveHundreds of AA speaker tapes and recovery stories:https://sober-sunrise.com/episodes 🧡 Sober Sunrise Merchhttps://sober-sunrise.com/merch 🌴 Sober Sunrise Newsletterhttps://sober-sunrise.com/newsletter Bob started drinking at fourteen, was diagnosed as alcoholic at nineteen, drank his way out of Notre Dame, and repeatedly watched each fresh start collapse. At twenty-four, frightened by another multi-day drunk, he called Alcoholics Anonymous and met two men at a diner who did not interview, diagnose, or instruct him; they simply shared their lives, and Bob recognized his own. He drank twice after entering AA, including a dangerous honeymoon relapse in Acapulco, but returned to meetings and stayed. Going to AA was easy for him. Living AA was not. Over the next several years, gambling, debt, anger, poor work habits, marital conflict, and harsh parenting followed him into sobriety while he quietly rebuilt the wall he had torn down as a newcomer. Around eight years sober, Bob discovered that he believed God could restore "us" to sanity but did not believe God could restore him. That second surrender changed his work, marriage, and parenting, but later success brought another problem: a period of "deep shallowness" in which money and status became his identity. After losing eight million dollars and facing a son's alcoholism at twenty-four years sober, Bob had to discover who he was without his wealth. His message after thirty-one years is that AA recovery is not merely mechanical and spiritual experience cannot live on yesterday's bread. Real transformation asks alcoholics to stop bargaining for relief, face the false self they are protecting, and move through the pain that opens the door to surrender. Bob B. from St. Paul, MN speaking at the Sacramento Spring Fling in Sacramento, CA - February 13th 1999 Music: Deep by KaizanBlu
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  My Higher Power Has a Substation in My Computer - AA Speaker - Paul O. 21.09.2026 51min

  Paul says his Higher Power has a substation in his computer: after working AA's Twelve Steps for nearly thirty years, he types his problems to God until an intuitive answer begins to appear. ☀️ Sober Sunrise AppListen to Sober Sunrise AA speaker talks anytime, track your sober time, take a daily pledge, and keep recovery support close throughout the day.📱 https://sober-sunrise.com/appIf you enjoy the app or find it useful in your recovery, a quick rating or review on the App Store would mean a lot and helps more people find Sober Sunrise. ☀️ Sober Sunrise Episode ArchiveHundreds of AA speaker tapes and recovery stories:https://sober-sunrise.com/episodes 🧡 Sober Sunrise Merchhttps://sober-sunrise.com/merch 🌴 Sober Sunrise Newsletterhttps://sober-sunrise.com/newsletter Paul opens this AA talk by making the room hug, then turns to the balance he believes keeps alcoholics sober: meetings and the Twelve Steps together. He describes attending meetings while continuing to drink for seven months, quitting every morning, and living like a tour bus with no driver while different voices in his head took turns making decisions. Through the Steps, those voices began communicating, and Paul learned to use powerlessness as relief instead of defeat. He explains why Step Three must lead immediately into inventory, why every later Step deepens the ones before it, and why he has repeated the full process roughly every five years. Along the way, Paul shares the four-column inventory guides he helped develop, writing his first inventory in code, finally taking a Fifth Step at a San Diego convention, using spot inventories for marriage and money, and typing letters to God when he needs an intuitive answer. He talks about accepting the defects his Higher Power has not removed, forgiving people without pretending to like them, and viewing recovery as a baseball diamond stretching from physical to spiritual sobriety. After nearly thirty years, his focus is emotional sobriety: if somebody else's behavior is not worth taking a drink over, Paul asks, why reward it by becoming so upset? Paul O. from Laguna Beach, CA speaking about working the Twelve Steps at the AA Desert Pow Wow in Indian Wells, CA - August 3rd 1996 Music: Deep by KaizanBlu
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  You Won't Stand Any Closer to God Than This - AA Speaker - Tom L. 19.09.2026 58min

  A Methodist minister admits that his darkest years came after he first entered AA, then explains how Big Book sponsorship, family reconciliation, and service taught him where God had been hiding. ☀️ Sober Sunrise AppListen to Sober Sunrise AA speaker talks anytime, track your sober time, take a daily pledge, and keep recovery support close throughout the day.📱 https://sober-sunrise.com/appIf you enjoy the app or find it useful in your recovery, a quick rating or review on the App Store would mean a lot and helps more people find Sober Sunrise. ☀️ Sober Sunrise Episode ArchiveHundreds of AA speaker tapes and recovery stories:https://sober-sunrise.com/episodes 🧡 Sober Sunrise Merchhttps://sober-sunrise.com/merch 🌴 Sober Sunrise Newsletterhttps://sober-sunrise.com/newsletter In this 1971 Alcoholics Anonymous talk, Tom shares how a five-day blackout, a worried wife, and an ultimatum from his employer brought him to his first AA meeting in Chattanooga. He attended to save his family and career, learned to describe himself as sick, and then kept drinking because he accepted the advice to discard whatever parts of the program he did not like. After losing his job and family and being found by two AA members on a New Orleans park bench, Tom returned to the fellowship but still tried to recover without surrender. Three years after his introduction to AA, an honest inventory and a sponsor who insisted on one clear path finally let some light into the darkness. Tom describes discovering that God had been hidden behind his ideas about theology and religion, then following a spiritual call from engineering into the Methodist ministry. Through anonymous help with his education, his wife's medical crisis, an embrace from the son who remembered his drinking, and carrying the message to another suffering alcoholic, Tom returns to one lesson: God appears when the door is opened through honesty, love, sponsorship, and service. He closes by honoring the three sponsors who taught him how to say "I love you," value what a person is over who they are, and leave Alcoholics Anonymous no less useful than he found it. Tom L. from Luray, VA speaking in Palm Springs, CA - June 6th 1971 Music: Deep by KaizanBlu
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  I Have More Time Sober Than I Did Drunk - AA Speaker - Laila M. 18.09.2026 52min

  At twenty-six, Laila has ten years sober after entering AA at sixteen, and she makes a fierce case that an alcoholic's seat is equally worthy whether they drank for six years or sixty-six. ☀️ Sober Sunrise AppListen to Sober Sunrise AA speaker talks anytime, track your sober time, take a daily pledge, and keep recovery support close throughout the day.📱 https://sober-sunrise.com/appIf you enjoy the app or find it useful in your recovery, a quick rating or review on the App Store would mean a lot and helps more people find Sober Sunrise. ☀️ Sober Sunrise Episode ArchiveHundreds of AA speaker tapes and recovery stories:https://sober-sunrise.com/episodes 🧡 Sober Sunrise Merchhttps://sober-sunrise.com/merch 🌴 Sober Sunrise Newsletterhttps://sober-sunrise.com/newsletter Laila entered Alcoholics Anonymous at sixteen after growing up in an alcoholic home, using alcohol and drugs to bury fear and trauma, and reaching a dangerous emotional bottom that led to treatment. At first, AA sounded like strange slogans, and she misunderstood sponsorship so completely that she imagined finding a business to sponsor her like a Little League team. She began learning the program, received her six-month chip from her dying grandfather during a family AA meeting in his hospital room, and then moved from a thriving young people's fellowship to a town where older members told her she was too young and had not drunk enough. Laila eventually stopped attending meetings without taking a drink, but sobriety without connection left her sick, isolated, and unwilling. A woman who agreed to sponsor her for just thirty days met with her every day, took her through the Big Book and Twelve Steps, and restored her faith in Alcoholics Anonymous. Years of meetings, service, sponsorship, and repetition later, those actions carried Laila through the deaths of an aunt and her brother within days of each other. With the phone in her hand and the book in her lap, she kept calling, kept doing what AA had taught her, and stayed sober. Her message after ten years is simple: no one else gets to measure an alcoholic's bottom, the solution belongs to every member, and one more sober day is the gift worth passing on. Laila M. from Stafford, TX speaking at the 3rd Annual Arkansas Traveler Roundup in El Dorado, AR - September 2002 Music: Deep by KaizanBlu
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  Sponsorship Is the Cake - AA Speaker - Chad B. 17.09.2026 41min

  Chad arrived at his sponsor's door ready to skip straight to Step Four, but a coverless Big Book and the complete Twelve Steps showed him why sponsorship was not merely the icing on recovery - it was the cake. ☀️ Sober Sunrise AppListen to Sober Sunrise AA speaker talks anytime, track your sober time, take a daily pledge, and keep recovery support close throughout the day.📱 https://sober-sunrise.com/appIf you enjoy the app or find it useful in your recovery, a quick rating or review on the App Store would mean a lot and helps more people find Sober Sunrise. ☀️ Sober Sunrise Episode ArchiveHundreds of AA speaker tapes and recovery stories:https://sober-sunrise.com/episodes 🧡 Sober Sunrise Merchhttps://sober-sunrise.com/merch 🌴 Sober Sunrise Newsletterhttps://sober-sunrise.com/newsletter Chad shares how his first drink at seventeen made him comfortable in his own skin, then traces the progression from weekend drinking to alcohol in the shower, drinking before work, blackouts, DUIs, and the realization that willpower could not solve his problem. About thirty days sober and certain he would drink again without a solution, he finally asked the AA member who kept checking on him to become his sponsor. Chad arrived for their first session with pencil and paper, eager to begin Step Four, but his sponsor slowed him down and started at the beginning of the Big Book. In this practical walk through the Twelve Steps, Chad describes recognizing his powerlessness in the Doctor's Opinion, turning his fear over to God, inventorying the resentment he carried toward his father, sharing his secrets, and making direct amends. Somewhere in that process, the obsession to drink disappeared. The deepest surprise came with Step Twelve: after receiving a two-year token he never expected to earn, Chad found himself giving one to a man he sponsored and realized that carrying the AA message was not the icing on the cake. Sponsorship was the cake, the icing, and the whole deal. Chad B. from Fairborn, OH speaking at the Trinity Lakeside Group in Dayton, OH - February 6th 2009 Music: Deep by KaizanBlu
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  I Found AA in a State Mental Hospital - AA Speaker - Rachel L. 16.09.2026 53min

  Rachel entered her first AA meeting in a state hospital furious that they had brought the father of a movie star, then one sentence about an alcoholic seeing the pain in his family's eyes broke through everything. ☀️ Sober Sunrise AppListen to Sober Sunrise AA speaker talks anytime, track your sober time, take a daily pledge, and keep recovery support close throughout the day.📱 https://sober-sunrise.com/appIf you enjoy the app or find it useful in your recovery, a quick rating or review on the App Store would mean a lot and helps more people find Sober Sunrise. ☀️ Sober Sunrise Episode ArchiveHundreds of AA speaker tapes and recovery stories:https://sober-sunrise.com/episodes 🧡 Sober Sunrise Merchhttps://sober-sunrise.com/merch 🌴 Sober Sunrise Newsletterhttps://sober-sunrise.com/newsletter Rachel got sober on December 1, 1978, after alcoholism carried her from childhood drinks with her grandmother into street life, trauma, hospitals, jails, family devastation, and a bottom where alcohol no longer stayed down. At a state mental hospital, detoxing in hospital pajamas with a broken denture and dirty feet, she refused an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting until a staff member told her the father of a famous movie star was speaking - and then made attendance nonoptional. The old man opened by calling the room a fine bunch of monkeys, but when he described looking into his wife and children's eyes and needing another drink, Rachel saw her mother's despair and felt something leave her. The speaker was Chuck C., and his message that he needed AA and people like her gave Rachel the first direction she could trust. Twenty-nine years later, after sponsorship, the Twelve Steps, and a life built inside the fellowship, Rachel describes reconnecting with her father, an invitation from her family, her mother's embrace, and the AA members she now recognizes as the hand of the God she had searched for all her life. Rachel L. from Bakersfield, CA speaking at the Saturday Nite Live Group in Santa Maria, CA - March 22nd 2008 Music: Deep by KaizanBlu
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  He Didn't Make Me Famous. He Made Me Anonymous - AA Speaker - Paul O. 15.09.2026 1h 19min

  Paul expected God to make him famous enough to win a Nobel Prize. Instead, AA made him anonymous and taught a doctor who entered through the hospital psychiatric ward how surrender, the Steps, sponsorship, and love in action could keep him sober. ☀️ Sober Sunrise AppListen to Sober Sunrise AA speaker talks anytime, track your sober time, take a daily pledge, and keep recovery support close throughout the day.📱 https://sober-sunrise.com/appIf you enjoy the app or find it useful in your recovery, a quick rating or review on the App Store would mean a lot and helps more people find Sober Sunrise. ☀️ Sober Sunrise Episode ArchiveHundreds of AA speaker tapes and recovery stories:https://sober-sunrise.com/episodes 🧡 Sober Sunrise Merchhttps://sober-sunrise.com/merch 🌴 Sober Sunrise Newsletterhttps://sober-sunrise.com/newsletter Paul shares a fast, funny AA talk about the strange route from being a physician on a hospital staff to becoming a patient on its psychiatric ward, where attending Alcoholics Anonymous was initially just his way to obtain a pass. He spent seven months coming to meetings before accepting that he was even a little alcoholic, then discovered that meetings alone were not a substitute for working the Twelve Steps. After twenty-two years sober, taking a drink is no longer an active concern, but thinking can still turn any small inconvenience into a carefully nurtured problem. Paul talks about sponsors who do not need to “reek with profundities,” the many competing personalities in his head, the spiritual equality of AA, and the freedom of letting powerlessness remove responsibilities that were never his. His central lesson is that recovery teaches alcoholics to express the love they once tried to suppress with alcohol. Through caring, sharing, listening, service, and making his wife's morning coffee exactly the way she likes it without expecting appreciation, Paul learns the difference between love and barter. The doctor who once imagined winning a Nobel Prize and making God famous instead finds something better: anonymity, usefulness, a marriage approaching fifty years, and the chance to become a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous. Paul O. from Laguna Beach, CA speaking at the Desert Rose Roundup - May 20th 1989 Music: Deep by KaizanBlu
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  Hopelessness Made the Big Book Exciting - AA Speaker - Lee Y. 14.09.2026 1h 11min

  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. ☀️ Sober Sunrise AppListen to Sober Sunrise AA speaker talks anytime, track your sober time, take a daily pledge, and keep recovery support close throughout the day.📱 https://sober-sunrise.com/appIf you enjoy the app or find it useful in your recovery, a quick rating or review on the App Store would mean a lot and helps more people find Sober Sunrise. ☀️ Sober Sunrise Episode ArchiveHundreds of AA speaker tapes and recovery stories:https://sober-sunrise.com/episodes 🧡 Sober Sunrise Merchhttps://sober-sunrise.com/merch 🌴 Sober Sunrise Newsletterhttps://sober-sunrise.com/newsletter 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
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  The Party Was Over, But I Kept Trying to Restart It - AA Speaker - Bob D. 12.09.2026 36min

  Bob spent his final three years drinking alone, trying to restart a party that had already ended. After seven and a half years around AA, he finally bought the whole package and discovered that spiritual action worked whether he believed in it or not. ☀️ Sober Sunrise AppListen to Sober Sunrise AA speaker talks anytime, track your sober time, take a daily pledge, and keep recovery support close throughout the day.📱 https://sober-sunrise.com/appIf you enjoy the app or find it useful in your recovery, a quick rating or review on the App Store would mean a lot and helps more people find Sober Sunrise. ☀️ Sober Sunrise Episode ArchiveHundreds of AA speaker tapes and recovery stories:https://sober-sunrise.com/episodes 🧡 Sober Sunrise Merchhttps://sober-sunrise.com/merch 🌴 Sober Sunrise Newsletterhttps://sober-sunrise.com/newsletter Bob, sober since 1978, describes feeling like an outsider long before his first drink at twelve made him feel connected, whole, and finally good enough. Calling himself a "freeze-dried alcoholic waiting for alcohol," he explains how the craving took over from the beginning and how his search for the same effect carried him through drugs, institutions, legal consequences, and repeated attempts to control the uncontrollable. By the final three years, the social magic was gone and Bob was drinking alone, trapped by what he calls psychotic wishful thinking: all the evidence said the party was over, but he remained convinced he could somehow restart it. He had attended hundreds of AA meetings over seven and a half years without surrendering the private belief that drinking could remain his escape if life became painful enough. After reaching a dark bottom and landing in a Las Vegas detox, Bob finally attached himself to members who lived AA's primary purpose, called a sponsor every day, and began taking actions he neither understood nor believed would work. Those actions led him into service, the Twelve Steps, a relationship with God, and a twenty-eight-year process of awakening to other people. Through working with newcomers and hearing Fifth Steps, Bob discovered the comforting truth that beneath the details, alcoholics share the same fear, vacancy, and desire for connection. His message is that AA is "spiritual physics": take the actions, and recovery can awaken the life and sense of belonging alcohol once only seemed to provide. Bob D. from Las Vegas, NV speaking at the Northern Plains Group of Alcoholics Anonymous in Fargo, ND - October 10th 2006 Music: Deep by KaizanBlu
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  When I Got Sober, I Could Finally See the Waltz - AA Speaker - Charlie C. 11.09.2026 1h 12min

  Alcohol once made Charlie feel as if ordinary life had broken into a waltz. Through sobriety, the Twelve Steps, and years in AA, he learned to see that same grace without needing a drink. ☀️ Sober Sunrise AppListen to Sober Sunrise AA speaker talks anytime, track your sober time, take a daily pledge, and keep recovery support close throughout the day.📱 https://sober-sunrise.com/appIf you enjoy the app or find it useful in your recovery, a quick rating or review on the App Store would mean a lot and helps more people find Sober Sunrise. ☀️ Sober Sunrise Episode ArchiveHundreds of AA speaker tapes and recovery storieshttps://sober-sunrise.com/episodes 🧡 Sober Sunrise Merchhttps://sober-sunrise.com/merch 🌴 Sober Sunrise Newsletterhttps://sober-sunrise.com/newsletter Charlie speaks to an Al-Anon audience about the alcoholic's side of isolation, love, and recovery. From childhood he felt "three clicks off center," burdened with potential but unable to turn it into a life. His first real drink dissolved the distance between himself and everyone else, giving him a feeling he calls "there": the illusion of joy, confidence, connection, and accomplishment without having to do anything. Over thirteen years of daily drinking, the mask grew heavier, his marriage collapsed, therapy stalled without honesty, and alcohol stopped providing the relief he kept chasing. Four days after his last drink, Charlie took his newly sober sister-in-law to an AA meeting intending only to drop her off. He returned the following week three and a half hours early because a bottle waited at home, and two members put him to work setting up chairs. That small act became the beginning of service, sponsorship, the Steps, and more than twelve years of sobriety. Charlie also shares how Al-Anon helped him understand the other side of alcoholism, how he made a long-delayed amends to his father at a cemetery, why meditation means staying still long enough to be found, and how recovery taught him that love is not merely an emotion but an action. By the end, the waltz he once saw only through alcohol has become his image for the grace, welcome, and shared movement he finds in Alcoholics Anonymous. Charlie C. speaking at an Al-Anon conference in Minneapolis, MN - May 2001 Music: Deep by KaizanBlu
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  The Shattered House Became the Promises - AA Speaker - David O. 10.09.2026 39min

  Eighteen months after entering Hazelden, David stood beside his AA sponsor and watched his smiling wife and daughter come up the driveway of what had once been a shattered home. His sponsor looked at him and said, "That's the promises of this program." ☀️ Sober Sunrise AppListen to Sober Sunrise AA speaker talks anytime, track your sober time, take a daily pledge, and keep recovery support close throughout the day.📱 https://sober-sunrise.com/appIf you enjoy the app or find it useful in your recovery, a quick rating or review on the App Store would mean a lot and helps more people find Sober Sunrise. ☀️ Sober Sunrise Episode ArchiveHundreds of AA speaker tapes and recovery stories:https://sober-sunrise.com/episodes 🧡 Sober Sunrise Merchhttps://sober-sunrise.com/merch 🌴 Sober Sunrise Newsletterhttps://sober-sunrise.com/newsletter David returns to the Hazelden campus where he began recovery and shares what changed after he arrived there broken on September 13, 2003. Reading from the questionnaire his wife completed during treatment, he confronts the reality behind his selective memory: twenty years of progressive drinking and using, a family forced to organize itself around his behavior, and a trigger list that ultimately amounted to waking up in the morning. He explains why remembering consequences never kept him sober, why he could neither drink nor comfortably live without drinking, and why treatment was only a beginning rather than a cure. Afraid he would drink at the airport after leaving Hazelden, David booked the first flight home before the bars opened, found a sponsor he initially wanted nothing to do with, and began reading the Big Book and working the Twelve Steps. What he discovered was not merely a way to stop drinking, but the spiritual change his sponsor had promised: the obsession lifted, his life became manageable, and the family home once defined by fear began filling again with laughter, trust, and the promises of Alcoholics Anonymous. David O. from Chicago, IL speaking at Hazelden in Center City, MN - April 16th 2005 Music: Deep by KaizanBlu
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  The Traditions Made My Steps Come Alive Again - AA Speaker - Wesley P. 09.09.2026 1h 7min

  After years sober, Wesley watched complacency and self-importance drain the life from his AA program until practicing the Twelve Traditions personally made his Steps, his group, and his recovery come alive again. ☀️ Sober Sunrise AppListen to Sober Sunrise AA speaker talks anytime, track your sober time, take a daily pledge, and keep recovery support close throughout the day.📱 https://sober-sunrise.com/appIf you enjoy the app or find it useful in your recovery, a quick rating or review on the App Store would mean a lot and helps more people find Sober Sunrise. ☀️ Sober Sunrise Episode ArchiveHundreds of AA speaker tapes and recovery stories:https://sober-sunrise.com/episodes 🧡 Sober Sunrise Merchhttps://sober-sunrise.com/merch 🌴 Sober Sunrise Newsletterhttps://sober-sunrise.com/newsletter Wesley, sober since November 13, 1947, speaks about the Twelve Traditions as a personal way of life rather than rules reserved for AA groups and committees. He begins with the full triangle of Alcoholics Anonymous: recovery through the Steps, unity through the Traditions, and service through the Concepts. After about eight years sober, Wesley began missing meetings, concentrating on work and money, taking credit for other people’s sobriety, and quietly becoming what he calls a know-it-all in AA. His sponsor recognized the slide toward self-sufficiency, but Wesley did not fully recover his enthusiasm until he began applying the Traditions at the "I" level. He explains how common welfare means protecting his sobriety first, how unity requires accepting others as they are, how autonomy means taking responsibility for his own choices, and why self-support, primary purpose, anonymity, and service all belong in everyday recovery. With humor, history, and more than thirty years of sobriety behind him, Wesley argues that no alcoholic ever has it made, old-timers still need Twelve Step attention, and the complete AA program teaches us to live with ourselves, live with one another, and serve without expecting anything in return. Wesley P. speaking about the Twelve Traditions in Pompano Beach, FL - 1978 Music: Deep by KaizanBlu