Tom's AA Podcast
These are short audio-only podcasts about Alcoholics Anonymous, working the 12 steps, and my personal experiences.
Episodes
19 episodes
Balking
This podcast is about what to do when you find yourself balking at a particular step with AA's twelve steps.
Steps 6 & 7
This podcast is about how to do Step 6 and Step 7 within Alcoholics Anonymous.
Fear
This talk goes into how fears drive our resentments, how they degrade our ability to be fully present, and how to write a fear inventory.
Columns One and Two of the Resentment Inventory
This talk explains how to get started with columns one and two of your resentment inventory.
Staying Angry in the First Three Columns of Inventory
This very short talk makes the case for why it's helpful to let yourself be angry as you get started with your resentment inventory.
The First Paragraph of We Agnostics
This talk focuses on the very first paragraph of chapter 4, We Agnostics. A compact and useful definition of alcoholism is there. I talk about how to decide whether you have this disease.
A Few Thoughts on the Word 'Agnostic'
This is a short talk about what the word 'agnostic' means and how it fits in AA's 12 steps.
More About Alcoholism
More About Alcoholism, third chapter of AA's Big Book, explains why it is that alcoholics can't rely on self-knowledge to stay sober.
Unmanageability 201
This podcast shows how to use part of Chapter 5 to better understand Unmanageability.
Unmanageability 101
This short podcast focuses on the second half of the first step, unmanageability, and the Bedevilments found on page 52 of the Big Book.
How to Find God (Sort of)
This podcast focuses on how to find a conception of a Higher Power, aka God, suitable for a successful Step 2.
The Doctor's Opinion
We dig into the Doctor’s Opinion from the AA Big Book and test its claims against our lived experience. We focus on physical craving, loss of control, and how to read the text line by line to see the truth without drama.Weir...
About God I
We direct this podcast to those of us uncomfortable with the concept of God or anything that might be described as religious. (We'll get into the difference between "spiritual" and "religious" in later podcasts.) Obviously, these ideas will inc...
The Mental Obsession
What is the mental obsession we talk about in 12-step programs? And why is it so all-fired important? This episode introduces the mental obsession and how Bill Wilson, the author of AA's Big Book, likely uses the term a little differently than ...
Starting Step One
This episode helps people start Step One regardless of their fellowship. For alcoholics, that will be pretty straightforward. For people in other fellowships, it's important to customize your first step to fit the problem that has led you into ...
The Physical Craving
This episode introduces the concept. We sometimes call the physical craving and other times call the physical allergy in AA.