I Ran Out of Lies and All My Toughness Just Went Away - AA Speaker - Don P.
I Ran Out of Lies and All My Toughness Just Went Away - AA Speaker - Don P.  
Podcast: Sober Sunrise - AA Speaker Podcast
Published On: Tue Apr 21 2026
Description: Don P. has been sober since 1967, served as a world trustee of AA, and says the greatest promise of the program isn't that you'll stop drinking — it's that you'll become useful. We just launched our new Episodes page — search hundreds of AA speaker meetings by topic, speaker, or step ☀️  Sober Sunrise Episode Archive Check out our lighthearted sober t-shirts and help support the channel🧡 Sober Sunrise Merch In this two-part weekend talk, Don P. shares over 30 years of sobriety with the depth of someone who died on Christmas night 1967 and woke up in a body that wouldn't quit. He found a dollar in the snow on Christmas Eve, bought a nine-foot tree for a seven-foot ceiling, and his little boy wrapped everything in the house in blue paper towels because there was nothing else. His father met him at the door and said his mother couldn't stand watching him die — then snuck them into the basement anyway. He got sober in a penitentiary where smiling inmates with numbers on their chests read him the Big Book and told him to shut up and listen for five weeks. Years later on an airplane, he watched a flight attendant pour wine and his mind said "that looks good" with no thought of alcohol at all — and a prayer started in him that he didn't start. Today he reads the Big Book out loud to people because that's how it was brought to him, and he says if you want to get closer to God, get closer to His children. Don P. from Aurora, CO doing a step workshop in Slidell, LA - December 5th-7th 1997 Music: Deep by KaizanBlu