ESH: Speaker Potluck

ESH: Speaker Potluck

Curious about how others navigate their sobriety journey? This Speaker Potluck episode lines up four very different AA shares, each around 15 minutes, giving you that “real meeting” feel where you don’t quite know what’s coming next. First up, Angelo talks openly about growing up in party houses, emotional drinking after his mother’s death, homelessness, and the shock of hearing himself talk to himself on the streets.

He reads from *There Is a Solution* before admitting he once thought he was “a high-powered mutant, too rare to live, too weird to die.” His story runs through New Orleans strip clubs, failed attempts to manage his drinking, 14 months dry without AA, and finally surrender: “I just gave up, and then I just called the dude that I’d asked to be my sponsor.” Now he talks about sponsoring others, less rage at the supermarket, and actually wanting to live.

He credits treatment, The Salvation Army ARC in Seattle, and a sponsor with helping him rebuild: “I wanted to be a person again… and I missed living.” Today he talks about blue toilet water, retirement savings, and genuine peace of mind as small but unbelievable miracles. Joe brings a raw, funny, slightly anarchic edge.

Tucker shares as a “real alcoholic” who mainly drank but used that to feel superior to “dirty drug addicts.” Multiple treatments, church detours, and relapses eventually brought him back to AA where he’s clear that helping others keeps him sober, even if he jokes about being lazy and self‑centred while doing it. Trevor rounds things out with a mix of sexuality, trauma, family alcoholism and expat drinking in Turkey, London, Japan and Singapore.

He contrasts alcohol as his first solution with a new life rooted in God and authenticity: “I came into Alcoholics Anonymous to solve a specific problem. I got a whole new way of life.” If you’re wondering whether AA really changes lives, these four stories might give you something to sit with today.