Ego Deflation with Wesley P., AA MaleEgo Deflation with Wesley P., AA Male
Recovery Radio Network
AA member Wesley P. explains how ego deflation, the 12 steps, the 12 traditions and active service keep his sobriety and happiness intact after many years. He talks frankly about slipping into complacency, returning to meetings, and learning to put unity, love and responsibility at the centre of his life.
1:15:09•27 Oct 2026
Ego Deflation and the AA Triangle: Wesley P. on Staying Sober
Episode Overview
- Sobriety requires ongoing ego deflation; complacency and self-importance can quietly lead back towards drinking.
- The 12 steps teach living with oneself and God, while the 12 traditions teach how to live in unity and love with other people.
- Personal welfare means keeping sobriety first, ahead of work, family and social approval, because alcohol and a sober life cannot coexist.
- AA members benefit from loving and 12-stepping everyone in the group—newcomers, old-timers and those in the middle—rather than assuming anyone "has it made".
- True anonymity is doing for others without expecting anything in return and forgetting the credit, focusing instead on shared growth and service.
“"You never have it made in Alcoholics Anonymous. You've got to grow or you've got to go, one of the two."”
What drives someone to seek a life without alcohol? In this AA talk from the Recovery Radio Network, Wesley P., an Alcoholics Anonymous member with over three decades of sobriety, lays out how "ego deflation" and the full AA triangle of recovery, unity and service keep him sober and sane. Wesley explains that for him, the 12 steps weren’t a one-time fix but the start of an ongoing "inside job".
He speaks candidly about how, after a spiritual awakening, he began to slip back into self-importance: missing meetings, believing his group could get on fine without him, and quietly convincing himself he was different from “those sick alcoholics”. His sponsor called him on it, pushing him back into active AA life. A big part of the talk is how Wesley re-frames the 12 traditions at the "I level".
You’ll hear him stress unity and unconditional love inside AA: accepting others “just the way you are, not the way I want you to be”, 12-stepping newcomers, old-timers and “middlemen” alike, and insisting that nobody ever has it made: "You've got to grow or you've got to go, one of the two." He mixes serious experience with humour, describing alcohol as a "screwdriver" that tightened his loose screws, and AA as a self-inflicted programme that only works if you actually work it.
Tradition One becomes "my common welfare comes first", meaning his daily sobriety must outrank work, family, and social approval: "I can have what I've got today, or I can have one drink of alcohol. But I can never have both." The steps teach him to live with himself and God; the traditions, he says, teach him how to love and live with other people.
For anyone in recovery who’s feeling complacent, distant from meetings, or stuck in self-focus, Wesley’s story offers a very clear question: are you deflating your ego, or quietly inflating it again?
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