Sandy B. from Tampa, FL at 25th Vermont Sunlight of the Spirit – Fairlee, VT 5/30/1992

(0:06 – 6:05)
Well, good evening everybody. My name is Sandy Beach and I’m an alcoholic. How y’all
doing? I got a little bit of laryngitis, so I’m going to, that’s the terror of a speaker.
If I didn’t have my voice, I’d be unarmed. But I’ll tell you, I’m really happy to be up here. I
travel around the United States quite a bit, and when, especially when I’m in California, I
love to remind them that AEA started with two guys from Vermont.
Everything else seems to start in California and move across from the West Coast, you
know what I’m talking about. And so here we have the greatest social movement
fellowship that has ever been on the face of this earth, and we’re right at its origins,
where the philosophies and the foundation and the ideals of its two co-founders were
hammered in. And it’s just nice to be around here.
It’s just a good feeling, because AEA is remarkable. I mean, it’s just absolutely
remarkable what this fellowship is. Miracles occur so routinely in Alcoholics Anonymous
we forget what we’re seeing sometimes, you know what I mean? Somebody comes in,
their life’s a total disaster.
They’ve tried psychiatrists, doctors, been arrested, everything under the sun. They come
in here, and somebody says, okay, don’t drink, go to meetings, roam around, you know,
get the mean sponsor. And two or three months later, their whole life has turned around,
and their family is starting to blossom, and a sparkle returns to their eyes, and there’s
this wonderful energy that is released and flows through them.
And we all just go, that’s right, that’s what happens when you come around here, you
know? But it’s a miracle. I mean, that’s what miracles are, and they’re so commonplace
here that I think sometimes we forget what we’re seeing, because we’re so close to it.
We’re just around, we almost expect sobriety, because we know how powerful AEA is,
and we know what the unlimited power we have access to here.
But it is a remarkable, fun thing, and I was listening to the report about the delegates
meeting. It shows how human we are and how lucky we got those traditions, or we would
have been out of business a long time ago. You know, there was, and I’m sure most, a lot
of people know, but maybe some of the new people don’t, there was an organization
over a hundred years ago in this country that in its first three years had over a hundred
thousand sober members.
It’s called the Washingtonian Society. It started in Baltimore, and it had, it was similar to
AEA, and it got involved in politics. There were some very worthwhile issues that they
felt that they had to take a position on slavery, we had to take a position on whether
booze should be legal or not, and that organization disappeared so fast it’d make your
head spin as soon as it started getting involved in other than its primary purpose.
And so we really are lucky to have these traditions, and that somehow Bill Wilson had
this insight. He really was a man of vision, to see ahead, that in spite of his background,
and when you think about that, the Wheeler dealer, Wall Street, you know, just got him,
hit it big, and they end up with AEA taking a vow of corporate poverty. I mean, it’s just
remarkable.
Well, except outside contributions, millionaires die, they want to leave their money to
AEA. He says, no, and AEA was broke, and they’re still saying no. Absolutely wonderful
that all of these pieces somehow fit together, because if they didn’t, I don’t know where
you and I would be today.
I wasn’t about to get out of my prison on my own. Maybe you think you could have made
it on your own, but I couldn’t have. I tried everything, and ended up in a nut ward, and I
got locked up in there for six months.
And after I’d been there about four months, I started liking it. It was real safe in there. It
was very simple.
You know, my big project for the day was making a cup of tea. And if you didn’t want to
see anybody, you just told them you didn’t want to see them. And you got your meals,
and you were safe and protected.
I thought it was a real threat to leave there. But that’s where I ended up, under my own
steam. And I had a good upbringing, nice family down in Connecticut.
And I was from New Haven, so I went to Yale there and got a good education. I got in the
Marine Corps, became a fighter pilot, got married, had six kids. You would have said, this
guy’s doing good.
But if you could see inside, you could see the process of self-destruction from this
disease was just going a mile a minute. And inside this person was a very frightened,
confused man, boy, whatever you want to call it, who didn’t have the foggiest idea what
was going on, and who desperately was seeking answers, but didn’t know how to ask for
help. Like most of us, I was the Lone Ranger type guy, you know, I’ll handle this stuff
alone.
Somewhere I learned that probably watching the Lone Ranger. I don’t know. Those of
you that grew up with the Lone Ranger, you remember he was sort of a hero figure.
(6:09 – 8:32)
Whenever the town had trouble, remember that, they’d just, let’s get the mask man, if
we could just get him to show up. And then he’d come into town wearing a mask, find
out where the troublemakers were, tighten his gloves up, walk up, say a few things to
make them draw on him, blow him away, and get on his horse and go back out in the
desert where he lived with an Indian. And the townspeople would say, what a man, what
a hero, and I’d be thinking, you know, now there’s a role model.
It wasn’t until I got sober that I suddenly realized there’s a bizarre way of life to live
alone. Live alone in the desert with an Indian and just go to town to kill people once in a
while. So we collect a lot of ideas growing up and they get us in trouble later on because
a lot of them aren’t shared.
You ever notice the difference with the ideas you get in sobriety? They seem to be much
more solid and produce better results because we have sponsors and home groups and
they temper those ideas. And when we come in there, we go, just had an idea, what’s
that? I’m going to quit my job and leave my wife and go to California. I think I could get
better sobriety out there.
The group gathers around and pretty soon that idea has been modified slightly into, I’m
not going to leave my wife and quit my job and go to California. And everybody goes,
now you came up with a good idea. The first one was… So it’s sharing just the opposite
of what I was doing sober.
Sober, you know, it’s just you. You’re the whole world and it scares the hell out of you
when you just try and be alone. It’s just you and your brain, your mind, and telling us all
these things.
(8:37 – 9:30)
And it was a very frightening world to be in. And if you don’t share, you just don’t get any
perspective on your own ideas. And they can intimidate the hell out of you.
And you walk around with all kinds of misinformation. Other people are better than you
are. You were born rotten and you’re going to die rotten.
You know, some of those great feelings that help you just go along through life. And
everybody else looks like they understand what’s going on. Because they’re not sharing
either.
So you have a very big perception problem. And that’s exactly where I was as a teenager
and growing up and just wondering what was going on. What was life? Life to me
seemed like I was one of the balls in a pinball machine.
(9:31 – 10:08)
You know, the five balls sit down there. It’s almost like you’re sitting at a bar. Lights real
low down there.
Peace and quiet. You’re just sitting there drinking. Then the alarm goes off in the
morning.
Somebody puts a quarter in the machine and you go, God damn, another day. And you
don’t want to go out another one of those days out in that damn world. But somebody
puts their foot behind you.
And that’s when that flipper goes on and you’re up there and you’re just going, Oh,
Jesus. And then here it is. Another day.
(10:09 – 10:16)
And you’re just looking around. And here’s these bumpers over here. And all you’re
looking for is that little hole, man, to get back in that bar.
(10:25 – 11:35)
At the end of the day, you know what I mean? You come in there after some days, you
know, and you just go woo at a day. And then other days, somehow miraculous, the ball
goes up and it doesn’t hit a thing. You ever seen one of those balls in the machine that
comes down and goes right directly in the hole? That’s when you come in the bar and
you go, well, hey, if every day was like that, it wouldn’t be so bad out there.
But it was like you never knew what was going to happen. Some days you’re out there
eight, ten hours just coming in the hole. Somebody hits a flipper, you go back and start
the whole day over again.
Like you’re just going home and the boss said, hey, we got to get some overtime. We
need you to stay. And you go, you don’t understand if I don’t get a drink in the next 20
minutes, I’m probably going to explode.
And they don’t understand. And you do stay there. And so I never saw any perspective
on the world.
I was just out there bouncing around and it never made sense. But I liked it when I got
back in the bar. I liked sitting there with the other guys because they were having the
same problem.
Oh, what a day, what a day, what a day. Remember that? What a day, wow, wow. Give
me a drink, give me a drink.
(11:37 – 11:44)
Then I was just more like it. Remember that? Everything looked okay. It wasn’t so bad.
(11:45 – 12:00)
But alcohol had this incredible power to change the world that I lived in. And the world
made sense when I had three drinks in me. I could feel some of the things that people
talked about.
(12:01 – 14:34)
You know, most of us practicing alcoholics have no connection with our emotions. I
mean, almost out of sync with what’s really going on. And I hear people talk about such
things as brotherly love.
And I go, are they making it up or do they really see it? Because I never saw it. I mean, I
just had this real intimidating world that I lived in with these bumpers and all of that
urgency out there. And I just didn’t see brotherly love.
And I didn’t see this great spirituality and this, just this whole beauty of the world that
poets had written about. And you go to movies and there’s people talking about this
beautiful world, isn’t life wonderful? And sitting out there going, man, I don’t see it, you
know, but I’m going to take their word for it that it’s there. But I never personally
remember just saying to myself, boy, what a year, what a year, you know, because we
were going downhill.
It’s hard to say what a year when you’re getting closer to the nut ward or the gutter or
the bottom of alcoholism. But it was there, you know, and it was very confusing to
explain this to yourself. But are all these other people making it up? I mean, what is
going on out there? But when alcohol came in to my system, it just changed all of that so
that I could see it.
I was like Alice in Wonderland. I went through the looking glass and now when I looked at
the world, I liked it. I loved it.
Three drinks and me and I would tell you what a world we lived in. I remember in Strange
Town sometime, you know how you go to Strange Town, you get intimidated by the
people that are there and nobody knows you, you don’t know anything about the routine.
Going to a bar, bartender, can I have a drink? Yeah, man.
One, two, a third drink. One time, bartender comes over and tears are coming down my
eyes and he’s going, what’s the matter? What’s the matter? Nothing’s the matter. I’ve
just been overcome by the magnificence of the people in this bar.
I’ve just looked around and I said, I’ve never been in the presence of more loving and
wonderful people that are in this bar. And I can’t stop sobbing over the beauty of this
situation and I’d like to buy everybody in here around the drinks. A six more drinks, I’m
beating the crap out of somebody, you know.
(14:38 – 16:08)
It produced, through the power of vodka, a view of the world that wasn’t there when I
was sober. I go along with Clancy, you know, that our real problem was not alcohol, it
was sobriety. Every time I was sober, it was awful.
That was my problem. I just was sober all the time and it was awful and I wanted to do
something to fix that problem. And the fix was alcohol.
Alcohol took care of sobriety. You know what I mean? I know you know what I mean. I
mean, I always say to new people that if your problem, your only problem is whenever
you’re drinking, you get all screwed up.
You don’t need us. You got no problem at all if that’s your only problem. You’re very
much like somebody who’s allergic to strawberries.
You know, we had a strawberry shortcake tonight. There are some people who when
they eat those strawberries, they get serious problems. Their body gets all screwed up
and they’re sick and they’re passing out and everything happens.
And you go to the doctor and the doctor says, your problem is strawberries. It’s like
wonderful news. They diagnose the allergy and they give this wonderful news and the
person is very happy because they know, with that knowledge, that they will now be able
to live a life problem free from that.
(16:09 – 16:52)
But that analogy doesn’t hold with the alcoholic. You got all these problems and you go
to the doctor and he says, I’ve diagnosed you. You’re an alcoholic.
Just don’t drink. Everything will be fine. And you walk out and you go, don’t drink and
everything will be fine.
He doesn’t understand what he’s talking about. So those people that are allergic to
strawberries, they don’t get together in little groups. They try and find out what their
mother did to them.
(16:57 – 18:28)
How come I have to have ice cream and everybody else has a strawberry shortcake?
They just take the knowledge and run with it. But that doesn’t do us any good. We could
study alcoholism until it’s coming out of our ears and it does not help the problem.
We could send you down to Rutgers University where they get the advanced degrees
and studies on alcoholism. You could send an alcoholic down there. Alcoholics are funny.
He’d probably go through there and be the top in his class. When we got all through, the
leading expert in the country on alcoholism, he’ll go over there and say, well, maybe I’ll
go ask that guy about this illness. Well, you can’t ask him right now.
He’s passed out on the floor. But when he comes to, he can give you all kinds of insight
into the problem. The point of all this is, it’s in our literature in many, many places, is
that knowledge doesn’t help with this situation.
That’s not our problem. We weren’t ignorant about alcohol. Some of us were, but that
wasn’t it.
Learning things doesn’t help at all. The problem was, whenever I was sober, I didn’t like
it and I wanted to change it, and I didn’t know how to change it. So people talked about
such things as values, principles.
You’ve got to have principles. You’ve got to have values. I’m going to get some.
(18:30 – 18:35)
So I’d get some. I’d set goals and I’d set standards for myself. Then I’d fail.
(18:37 – 20:30)
Probably you all did the same thing. That’s why we feel so bad about ourselves. We just,
I can’t be a good father.
I can’t be a good employer. I couldn’t be a good pilot. I couldn’t be anything that I
wanted to strive for.
I mean, I could make certain achievements, but it was consistency that was lacking
because there were these little interruptions. Where is he? He’s in jail. I would have been
consistent if I had been there, but I wasn’t that day.
So I just couldn’t live up to values and standards. So what do we do? Lower the
standards. Hey, that’s the only way to solve that problem.
Try to live up to lower standards. Some of us went around drinking in ever lower class
bars so that we could still look down on people. You remember that? So it’s a process of
just extreme rationalization as the disease progressed, as to what became acceptable.
And in the end, everything was acceptable. Throwing up in the morning, puking blood,
lying, stealing money, just like Bill took the money from Lois. Everything was acceptable
and compromised every value there was.
No wonder we feel like committing suicide. We really, it really is such a devastating
illness when it strips the dignity of human beings while they pretend that it isn’t
happening. You know, that’s the hardest part of the disease is you have to pretend that
you don’t have it.
Which some of us were messing around at lunch about 15 years ago and we came up
with the idea for a game, a Parker Brothers game, because, see, a lot of people who
aren’t alcoholics don’t understand alcoholics. And so we came up with this game. It’s
called, so you want to be an alcoholic.
(20:35 – 21:41)
And it’s kind of like Monopoly, you know, you roll the dice around and you land in this bar
and then you go to jail. You go to, there’s more jails on this board than on a regular
board. But the big one is when you take a chance, remember to take a chance there and
get a card.
And very often these cards will read, there’s a gentleman coming into the room right
now and you will do everything that he says. And so this one was, the guy walks in and
blindfolds you, takes you off, down to an airplane, flies you to a city, you have no idea
what city you’re in, takes you up to a hotel, into a hotel room. We’ve run up about
$1,100 on the room.
It’s in your name. And we leave you there with just your underwear and four dollars. And
you have to get out of that hotel room and be in New York City in 12 hours for the most
important job interview of your life.
(21:44 – 21:59)
And you have to take these two thumb packs and jam them into the palm of your hand
and pretend they don’t hurt the whole time. Now you tell that to non-alcoholics and they
just go, God, that’s impossible. Which, no, it isn’t.
(22:10 – 22:18)
That’s not impossible. Matter of fact, we made it easy. We left them four dollars to get a
drink.
(22:23 – 23:05)
Because what is step one in solving that problem? Get a drink. Because with the drink
comes the intuitive knowledge of how to solve this problem. The 12 promises of vodka,
just like the 12 promises in the big book.
We will intuitively know how to handle the situation. And I’ll tell you that guy will con his
way out of there and take some money from the bellhop and borrow his uniform and he’ll
have a suit and he’ll be there. It’s amazing.
Some of the adventures that we all have. But those adventures we tell and we make
them exciting and so on down. But, you know, deep down we’re ashamed of it all.
(23:06 – 23:42)
It’s fun, you know, to talk about all this kind of stuff, but then later on it’s okay when
you’re 16, but now you’re 43 and it just looks funny that you’re still doing that stuff, you
know, and you just aren’t moving on. We just don’t have a different perspective on life.
And then the family, you can just see it.
You’re really not a member of it. He was like the extra child. I was the seventh child in
the family.
(23:45 – 24:14)
Total disruption, you know, I’ll be at the school play and then you’re not there or you
come in drunk at halftime and screw the whole thing up and Christmas and New Year’s
and the family reunions and all the things that just get ruined by our presence. We just
seem to have a way of if there’s one time during the year to not screw up, boy, we’ll
make that the big one, you know, when the boss and everybody is there. And we learn
how to hit people’s hot buttons.
(24:15 – 25:22)
And I didn’t notice this in myself. I thought I was the exception to this. Because the best
defense is a good offense.
And when you think somebody’s zeroing in on your drinking, you throw hand grenades
all over the place to create a diversion and cause so much disruption and keep them off
balance that they never can hit you as a moving target and come in. And we’re great at
shifting conversations. People try to zero in and talk about our drinking and we get them
off on other things.
You know, your car just was stolen. They’re over here and they’re over there. And Bill
writes about this in our literature.
He says we learn how to bring out the very worst in other people. And that’s the world
we live in. So we go around bringing out the worst in people.
And that’s all we see. And we think that’s how they are all the time. And so the world we
live in is part of our own creation.
Number one, we’re so frightened inside ourselves. And number two, we’re getting a very
different reaction from the world around us. It’s like being around an alcoholic is like
being around a crazy person.
(25:23 – 25:42)
You get edgy. You don’t know what they’re going to do. They’re having a nice
conversation and they puke all over you.
You know what I mean? You’re sort of listening, but you’re on the guard. You just don’t
know what’s going to happen. And we see that in people.
And we go, geez, they don’t trust me. I’m not in the circle. That’s right.
(25:44 – 26:49)
My sister came into AA. She’s got 15 years now down in Connecticut. And my parents
were having a 50th wedding anniversary some years back.
And all the whole family was coming, including an uncle, Don. And I remember saying to
my sister, damn, I wish he wasn’t coming. You know, he gets so rude.
He’s the guy who kind of screws up these reunions whenever we have them. He just gets
real hostile and tense and curt. And she looked at me and said, oh, he only does that
when you’re around.
Huh? It was astounding. I couldn’t believe it. Could not believe it.
And she convinced me that when I wasn’t there, that there was something in the air. And
so I took her word for it. And I just came in like he was my best friend, you know, when
we came there.
And it was changed instantly. It just disappeared, this whole behavior. So it must have
been me that I had learned how to do something and thought that it was being created
by somebody else.
(26:51 – 28:16)
In any event, I don’t have any great drinking story. I just drank a lot, got drunk a lot,
screwed up in the Marine Corps, flying airplanes, and ended up in the net war. And I was
a primary alcoholic.
I don’t relate. People get up here and say, well, I drank 10 years or so, no particular
problem. And then the filter broke and things started getting out of control.
Well, that’s not me. I drank socially about 10 minutes. And then, and it was just like that
to the end.
There was never any time that alcohol came into me that there wasn’t. For me, getting a
bottle of alcohol is like checking a book out of the library. You know what I mean? You
get an adventure book and you go, boy, I wonder what this book’s about.
It looks exciting, and the jacket tells you it’s a real exciting travel book or love story or
whatever, you know. But you really don’t experience the book until you read it. And
that’s the way it was with a shake it, smell it.
But you didn’t know what was in store for you. So you drank it, you know. And I wish you
could, there was some control over these bottles.
(28:17 – 29:51)
I’d go in there and I’d tell the guy, you know, last bottle I got in here, I got in a big fight
and got arrested. So, uh, you remember what case that one came out of? Because a
couple of weeks before I got a hold of one and I ended up with this big blonde and it was
great. So which box did that one come in? You know, I don’t want this one.
And the guy said, I, hey, we don’t have them categorized that way. You just got to take
your chances. And you never knew what you were going to get, you know, you just, but
you always got something.
I mean, you did not get no story. I never related to, you know, these lines, two guys are
in a bar and say, hey, let’s get out of here. Nothing’s happening.
You never heard me say that. If nothing’s happening, you’re not drinking fast enough.
You just stay here, keep pouring it in.
Hey, there’s the cops now. Look at that. Yeah.
Something will happen. It’s just, you know, just, and I’ve had that traveling whiskey, you
know, you just, you’re sitting in your basement, just having a couple of drinks. And then
all of a sudden you’re in Wiggins, Mississippi, you know, with your new partner in the
chicken feed business.
(29:51 – 30:12)
And you’re like, Jesus Christ. And your family thinks you’re still in the basement. So we
do have adventures, that’s for sure.
(30:15 – 31:54)
And they’re fun to laugh at. And they really are. You know, the stories are, there’s a lot of
laughter in AA now.
I mean, now that we’re sober, we can hear this laughter because we’re laughing because
we’re not doing it anymore. That’s what’s so damn funny about it all. So anyway, I got
into that nut ward and I was there.
I was 33 years old. My parents didn’t want to come down and see me. Nobody knew how
to say anything to me.
What do you say to a guy, you know, who’s in there? I’d had a convulsion, the DTs and
all those kind of things. And they just put me in a straitjacket. And the Navy, who does all
the medicine for the Marine Corps, didn’t have a diagnosis of alcoholism in 1964.
So you had to be something else. So I was diagnosed as, I forget what the hell it was,
whatever you have convulsions and DTs over that isn’t alcoholism. And so they just kept
me in there with the rest of the people and there were crazies and there’s about three
drunks.
And every so often a psychiatrist would, we were in group classes all the time talking
about manic depression and suicide and neurotics and this and that. And the funny thing
about those people that were locked up in there, they didn’t think that drunks belonged
there. We were like the low people in the nut ward.
It was, we didn’t have a real illness as far as they were concerned. But every so often the
psychiatrist would have the group discuss alcoholics. There were three of us.
(31:55 – 32:04)
And you know what these people would say? This is why they were locked up in there.
They would say, you guys ought to stop drinking. That’s what they would say.
(32:07 – 35:13)
And I remember looking at them going, this problem that I have is so complex that there
is no one little sentence answer like you’re given there. Guess where the next place
where I kept hearing little one sentence answers, real simple stuff, you know, like
grammar school, like easy does it, you know, right here. AA was not in that hospital then.
It had been in in the early 60s and then the head psychiatrist determined that it wasn’t
doing any good. And so when I was first went in, there was no AA. And I guess I’d been
there about three or four months and the local AA group talked their way back in.
They got a new Navy captain and psychiatrist and he said, all right, we’ll let you guys
have a meeting in here. So I led a meeting on Tuesday nights and it’s still going on. And
so I got the AA because the corpsman came into the network one night and said, all
drunks fall in.
Down the elevator and we’re in this room and these three guys from the Bethesda,
Maryland area were given a pitch. And in spite of myself, I liked it. I said, these guys, you
know, that’s all right.
Just the way they were talking, you know, it’s kind of funny and they were refreshing and
everything. I went up to this little redhead guy afterwards and I said, yeah, really? I think
you guys got something super going here. If I ever run into a guy with a drinking
problem, I’m going to, I’m going to send him over here.
And that’s when I got that first AA’s hard love, you know, he just started poking me in the
chest and he’s, let me ask you one question. Which one of us is going to go out and get
in his car and drive on home to his family? And which one of us is going to put his little
blue bathrobe on, go in that elevator and go upstairs and get locked up like an animal.
And I remember just going, Jesus, I just met this guy talking this way to me, but boy, it
stuck.
You know what I mean? It was like, there was only one instance where something like
that stuck in my mind. It was probably about eight years earlier, I was in a fighter
squadron and we were doing some, getting ready for some carrier work. And we’re out
on the end of the runway and guys, I was with our maintenance guy who I drank with a
lot.
And then we were watching the landings and kibitzing and all this and that. And he was
saying, boy, I can hardly wait till I’m a lieutenant colonel and get my own squadron. And I
remember saying, oh man, that’ll be a great squadron.
You’d be a great CEO. I’d really love to be in there. And he said, I’d love to have you in
my squadron.
I like guys that can fly like you, but I wouldn’t let you drink. And I remember just, I never
asked him what he meant by that because we drank together all the time, but he just
must have taken one to see what, the only guy who ever said that in all the years I was
drinking. And it scares me to this day.
I can still remember what that felt like. It was like somebody really knows. Somebody
saw right in there that what was going on.
(35:15 – 36:02)
So anyway, I went to that meeting and eventually got out of there. As soon as I got out, I
started drinking. That lasted for two or three days.
And I called in a group and a great big guy came over, another Marine. And he walked
into my front door and he said, hi, my name is Bill. This is a 12-step call.
I talk, you listen. And I remember saying, couldn’t you just leave some literature? I mean,
I knew this, he was like this big, you know what I mean? It was, if you drank, you would
get hurt. And that was the feeling that I had.
And I really needed a drink, but it was the choice of what kind of pain. So anyway, that
guy is still my sponsor. We went to meetings all the time and now it’s a long time ago.
(36:04 – 36:13)
And I’ll tell you one story about service work. And then I want to talk a little bit about the
program. But I was reminded of it when I was listening to the report.
(36:14 – 37:13)
We had a very small group down near the Quantico Marine Base called the Dumfries
Triangle Group. We had about four members who were sober. And then we had about
four that were drinking all the time.
And they would be in and out. One of them was a jockey named Dave, a little guy. And
he’d be in and then he’d be off drinking in the woods.
And then he’d be back and this and that. And there was a speakers meeting. And we’re
about 30 miles from anybody.
So when they would see us show up looking for speakers, you know what I mean? Would
you bring a meeting down? And boy, people were ducking and turning because they
didn’t want to drive 30 miles to talk to two sober people, maybe. Even though we’d have
a nice cake for them. But anyway, my sponsor was the whole group.
I mean, he was the program chairman, the coffee maker, the general service rep, the
grapevine rep, the treasurer, the secretary, the whole thing. And we had a big podium
and with a padlock on it. And inside the podium was the whole meeting.
(37:14 – 38:46)
The coffee pot, the sugar, the signs on the wall, you know what I mean? Paper plates,
forks, napkins, everything was in there. So this is like an instant AA meeting with this
podium that you just swung around. He had the combination to it.
So he says to me one night, come to the meeting tonight, 15 minutes early, we’re going
to have a business meeting. I should have suspected something right there, right? I
come over there. He’s got the podium set up and we got maybe 20 chairs out there.
And he’s the only one there. And he said, sit down here and we’ll start the meeting. I’ve
been the program for the past two years.
I’ve been the program chairman. It’s customary to rotate these jobs. So tonight we’re
going to rotate.
And I wonder if we have any volunteers tonight who would like to be the program
chairman, the secretary, the treasurer, the coffee maker and all that. So I’m looking
around, there’s nobody there. So he gives me the combination.
I learned how to make the coffee and I’m doing all that. And, you know, a lot of that was
just really fun. I hated, you know, you get a coffee maker, sometimes you can’t get rid of
them.
They really, you know, no, no, no, the other guy won’t know how to make it right. And he
had booked the speakers for the next three weeks. So I had a month to get somebody.
But, you know, when you’re new, you’re afraid to ask if somebody’s going to say no.
Anybody ever had that problem? No, that’s that guy over there. No, he’s going to say no.
Well, that’s this guy over here. No, he’s going to say no. I can’t take two no’s in one
night.
(38:48 – 39:43)
Could threaten my sobriety, you know, so I’m not asking anybody, you know, like two
and a half weeks ago, but I haven’t asked one person, you know, what do we know how
to make problems huge? You know, you’re like asking somebody to come down and
bring a meeting. So finally I ran into this guy. He was an army major and he was a club
officer at Fort Belvoir.
There’s a true story. And his name was Jack. And I said, Jack, would you like to come
down and speak? And he said, yeah.
Wow, that’s wonderful. So I never even got a second speaker. I just had Jack come in.
And little did I know my sponsors hyping this meeting up. My first meeting, he’s getting
the people from Manassas and people from Fredericksburg and special event to come to
this meeting. And Dave the jockey came.
He came in off of a drunk. He’s sitting in the front row and his bottle is outside in the
bushes and he’s back and forth and back and forth. And my sponsor introduces me to
our new program.
(39:44 – 40:02)
So I come up and read the preamble and I’m real shaky. I could speak, but I couldn’t read
things. God, just my voice would quaver when I had to read things.
And so I finally said, Jack. Jack comes up. I thought he looked funny when he was walking
up there.
(40:07 – 40:30)
He gets up. His name is Jack and I’m an alcoholic. Hi, Jack.
And I’m here tonight to resign from Alcoholics Anonymous. And he was drunk. And so I’m
looking at my sponsor, you know, like, and he’s just going, you got it.
(40:34 – 42:14)
So I could just see, you know, I figured somebody from general service would be in. I’ll be
in handcuffs. So he goes on to explain.
This talk went on for like 15 minutes. And he said, when I came here, I would drink and
get all screwed up. And you lovely folks have taught me how to drink.
And now I drink a fifth a day and I have no problems whatsoever. I just want to express
my gratitude for this wonderful. I mean, we’re talking about pure blasphemy here, you
know.
And the jockey is going out and back and out and back. Because he can’t believe this
story either, you know. And finally, I’m saved by the jockey.
I didn’t know what to do. I’m sitting there just frozen with fear, you know, maybe you all
would have handled it better. But I just was totally red faced and embarrassed.
And the jockey stands up in the middle of his talk and just walks up to him and says,
you’re a goddamn liar. I drink a fifth every day and I get drunk. If you’re drinking a fifth,
you’re going to be drunk.
No, I’m not drunk. And all of a sudden they’re outside. So my sponsor comes up to the
podium and invites everyone to come back next week to see if we could top this, you
know.
(42:17 – 42:34)
We said the Lord’s Prayer and that was it. So that was my start in service work. But it’s
been a lot of years since then and a lot of wonderful things have happened.
(42:36 – 45:13)
And there’s something different now. You know, life makes sense. I didn’t get the
answers.
They never got one answer. You know that? That’s not funny. Got rid of a lot of things.
Didn’t get any answers. I find sobriety is like a balloon ride. You want a better view, you
throw away things.
Then you go up higher where the view is better. Get tired of that view, you look around,
find something else to get rid of. You get rid of that and the view gets better.
Never get anything, just get rid of things. Remarkable. If you’re new, you got to
understand this is a spiritual program and it doesn’t work like the regular world where
we figure out things.
You don’t figure anything out. You don’t even figure out why you’re an alcoholic. When
you first come in here, you’re obsessed with why you’re an alcoholic.
Why am I an alcoholic? You’re reading books and you’re doing all that. I think we’re
obsessed with that because we think if we could ever figure it out, we’d be able to drink
again. That’s what we were trying to figure it out.
But think about this now because our alcoholism gives us the greatest insight. Our
alcohol problem, alcohol itself, gives the greatest insight into how this program works.
You go to these meetings and I agree with what Clancy says, we end up taking a series
of actions we don’t believe in.
That’s why AA works. You don’t get convinced ahead of time these steps will do
anything. I studied those steps for about four years before I really started doing anything
with them, trying to figure them out ahead of time.
And none of them looked like they applied. I remember in the beginning, I was reading
those steps and people were saying, take these steps, your life will be transformed. I’m
looking at them and I remember going, there’s nothing in these steps about a $2,000
loan.
And that’s what I felt was the most pressing thing that I needed before I could do
anything else. Because then I could get some pressure off. I could stop these phone calls
and these bill collectors and sheriffs and all of that.
And there wasn’t anything in there about that. It was all esoteric, it seemed to me. It just
didn’t seem to apply.
Moral inventory, character building, prayer and meditation. I said, man, I got a bunch of
hounds biting me in the butt here. I sit down for prayer and meditation, it’s over.
That’s the way it looked to me. See what I mean? So it didn’t look like they would work.
AA doesn’t look like it would work, does it? Did you ever try and explain AA to your
friends? You come back from a meeting, you’re happy.
(45:14 – 45:47)
Funny, you work around there and they saw you before and now they see you now and
you’re happy and whistling and they go, what is this damn AA anyway? And so you tell
them about it. Oh Jesus, I was just at a meeting last night. It was my home group,
wonderful meeting.
Well, what happens? Well, we all go down to Church Basin about 8.30, get a cup of
coffee and get on over to the table. We get a leader, he comes in and talks a little bit
about himself and we get a topic, like resentment. So we just go around the room, Joe
talks about resentment and then Mary and then we get to the end and we say the Lord’s
Prayer and go home.
(45:54 – 47:26)
And that makes you feel great. Doesn’t look like it should work, does it? It does not look
like it should work. So in our wildest dreams, if we were given the power to have come
true, anything that we could conceptualize, we never could have conceptualized of
Alcoholics Anonymous.
We never would have thought that up. Never, never, never. We would have thought up a
yacht and a blonde, right? Or something like that.
And then we’d read about Fred commits suicide on a yacht and it wouldn’t have worked.
Because we are unable to see this until we try it. So it’s a whole different thing.
So when we come into AA, we go to these stupid meetings, we do these stupid things
that people are talking about. And you’ve been coming around the program about three
months, sometimes you’ll notice, here’s what happened, here’s this incredible miracle
and you’re going to miss this. You sit around your house one day and you say, Jesus, just
to curse you.
And you go, wow, I forgot to worry about drinking last week. I forgot to worry about
drinking last week. Wow, an alcoholic that’s totally obsessed with drinking for the last 21
years, conveniently forgot to worry about drinking last week.
(47:26 – 49:22)
How could that happen? It startled me so much, I almost felt like leaving myself a note.
Don’t forget to worry about drinking. It had been such a constant companion.
Worry about where that drink, or I might need one, or I might need that. The thought
never came in here to torture me for a whole week. That is a spiritual solution.
I don’t know anything about alcoholism. I don’t know anything why I’m an alcoholic, but
it doesn’t bother me anymore. So the problem never got figured out.
It got removed. That’s the difference. We come in here and we follow actions that we
don’t believe in, and problems get removed.
They just get taken to another place. Now they’re not gone permanently. That’s what
this day at a time is exactly what we’re talking about.
This is a day at a time. And our big book talks about that. What we really have is a
spiritual reprieve, a daily reprieve contingent on our spiritual condition.
So we have a set of steps. We have a little game plan. I call the 12 steps a game plan for
living.
And I remember going, game plan for living? I already got my own plan. Somebody said,
yeah, but you’re wearing a wristband. I don’t think it’s the best plan we’ve ever heard of.
You are not the best walking advertisement for your plan. Let me put it that way. And we
take these actions and we get access to a power that changes the world we live in.
And when we live in that changed world, there’s no requirement for a drink, no
requirement whatsoever, because it’s a wonderful world. It’s a comfortable world. And
the only method of accessing this world is through this power.
(49:23 – 49:31)
It’s the same as entering the drunk world. The only way to get there is by drinking. And
when you think about it, drinking doesn’t look like it should work.
(49:33 – 50:49)
You know what I’m talking about? Like your first drink, you’ve never had a drink, you’re
15 years old and all your buddies are drinking. You drink this, you feel wonderful. You’ll
know how to dance.
You’ll know all these things. And you smell it. Maybe it was cheap blended whiskey and it
smells like kerosene.
You’re like, Jesus Christ, drink that. And you’re going to feel what? Trust us. Whoa.
I don’t know if I get that down. I mean, does it look like that was just going to be the
most wonderful thing in the world? It doesn’t look like it should work because we don’t
know that there’s a power in that alcohol. And that power comes in.
And from the inside out, it changes the world, changes our perception of the world. And
it does work. It’s very powerful.
So just like alcohol didn’t look like it would work, these steps didn’t look like they would
work. This program didn’t look like it would work. So I had to take the word of other
people.
And besides, I ran out of ideas. This is not an intellectual process. It’s like a dead end.
You just fell out of an airplane without a parachute. And somebody says, why don’t you
try prayer? And you say, why not? It’s time to become a former agnostic. Otherwise,
you’re going to be a dead agnostic.
(50:52 – 53:08)
It is not that you saw the light, you were feeling the heat. So the whole deal, the whole
spiritual program, it’s really funny. It used to be such a mystery to me, this whole thing.
And then I realized that it is so incredibly simple. And yet, it remains a mystery why I
refuse to do more. And Bill writes a little bit about that, the six and seven steps, why,
having been granted a perfect release from alcoholism, alcohol, we don’t apply the same
willingness to our other character defects.
And it’s because they aren’t as life-threatening as alcohol was. So it’s a little harder to
develop that quality of willingness. And we like to hold on to character defects.
We kind of enjoy them. You know what I mean? Like to get rid of gossiping? Yeah, after I
tell this story. And what would it be like to have no lust whatsoever? Hmm.
Sounds dangerous. Would you like to become Mother Teresa? And I’m going, Mother
Teresa doesn’t have any fun as far as I’m concerned. You know what I mean? So we limit
the goal that we’re shooting for.
And that’s the human part of us. And we’ve got to let ourselves off the hook for that. We
really do.
We’ve got to try as hard as we can. We’ve got to recognize that we’ve got a spiritual
entity that’s walking around in a human body. And the human part is going to stay
human.
Clancy talks about that. No matter how hard we try, we’re never going to rise above
human beings. But we just keep trying.
And we’re always trying for progress. Try to get rid of one more thing. Chuck C. talks
about that.
Uncover, discover, discard, and a new pair of glasses. And that’s all sobriety consists of.
It’s one more thing I can get rid of in order to have a better view.
Now why do I get a better view? Why do I get a better view? Because I’m powerless. And
that’s how this whole program fits together for me, is to go into the first step in the word
powerless. And that’s where the spiritual program comes from.
(53:10 – 53:50)
As soon as you understand that you’re powerless, you understand that your problem
cannot be solved with education or anything. You must get access to a power to take
care of powerless. And the beginning can be your sponsor and your home group and all
of that.
But it isn’t you. You on your own will always take that first drink. Always, you will go back
to that first drink.
On your own resources, you have no defense against the first drink. You know what’s
going to happen. You walk into a bar and you say to the bartender, you know, I’m an
alcoholic.
I’m a hopeless alcoholic. I got about two weeks sobriety. And I know if I drink again, I’ll
lose my job.
I’ll go to jail. Doctor says I might not survive it. And my family has got the car packed
and they’re going to leave.
(53:50 – 55:51)
If I could have a Budweiser and you know what else is going to happen? And while he’s
telling this story, we’re having the drink. To the outside world, it’s in total insanity.
There’s no defense against.
When we’re going to have it, we’re going to have it. So we need this wonderful power to
free us from that. So that thought of taking the drink doesn’t even come in.
That’s what happens. And so all of these steps are simply designed to get the things out
of the way that block the entrance of this power. And these things are instinctual drives,
character defense, whatever we want to call them.
They’re not bad or good or anything. Their main problem with character defects,
maladjustments, any term you’d like to use. The worst feature of these things is they
block the flow of this power.
It has nothing to do with good or bad or up or down or anything. They are your jail cell.
Those things have cemented us in and this power can’t flow through us.
We as human beings have been given the ability through our free will to block anything.
And we say that to new people. You’ve just come to AA, you don’t like it and you want to
prove it can’t work.
You have the ability to block out the love in this room because that’s what free will is all
about. You can sit there and not let one word of this get into your head and you can have
people come up and hug you and you can just go, no, no, you’re not getting me. You
aren’t brainwashing me.
You’re not getting this smart little guy. And you’re going to stay self-sufficient and you’re
going to commit suicide in a self-sufficient way. And you’re going to go down the tubes,
flush the toilet and jump in, and you’re gone.
And the last thing you’re going to say before you go is, at least I didn’t check it out and
ask for help. And we’re sure that the obituary column is going to praise us for not caving
in like all the rest of the wimps in the world. And instead they’re going to say, what an
asshole.
I mean, you know, pardon my language. What a jerk. I mean, it’s just not going to be the
way we see it.
(55:52 – 56:10)
And so all of sobriety, I’d like to wrap up the way I think about a day at a time. It’s like air
in a tire. You can get the most expensive tire on your car, $250 tire.
(56:11 – 57:24)
But that tire will not be very useful until you put that free air in there. And it’s the same
air that goes in the $50 retread. You know what I mean? If they don’t have that air in
there, there’s no cushion.
And that $250 tire will get cut from the rim from the inside out, which is just what a slip
looks like. Slips happen because there’s no cushion between us and life. We’re going to
be going along.
We cut back on the meetings, cut back on reading the 24-hour daybook in the morning.
And we cut back on this. Just like, you know, when you get a slow leak in your tire, you
say, I don’t have time to really fix it.
I’ll just put a little air in now, keep checking. And you’re driving around. You know you’re
going to get it one of those days, right? And you’re just, I’m going to run around.
And then just when the most important thing you got to do, emergency, bam, there it
goes. Went over a pothole and the rim cut through the tire and it’s gone. And so what we
have to do in sobriety a day at a time is never let that cushion get low.
We can ask for this five, 10-second cushion, 10-step talks about this, between us and the
world. That’s all we need. It’s called self-restraint.
(57:24 – 1:00:21)
You don’t develop that. You pray for it. You just ask, can I please have a cushion between
me? My friend, Ed C, says that he likes to start each day by allowing five people to be
wrong ahead of time.
He’s got a cushion. You see what I’m talking about? It’s just, there’s this cushion so that
we don’t react. We have time to have something happen and then we can think about it.
And then we can talk about it. Then we can decide what to do. And so I’d like to think of
sobriety that way, that I need on a daily basis to get my quotient, get that cushion.
And you know, sometimes you look at an AA meeting and it looks to me like one big tire
pump. People are coming in at 8.30, you know, and they’re dragging in from the
meeting, you know, and they’re sitting around the tables and, oh God, people at work,
they’re getting all over my case and this and that. And then the speaker gets up and he’s
talking.
And it’s almost like there’s somebody pumping because you can just watch. It’s about
9.15, you know, like life is coming back into these bodies. And at the end of the meeting,
there they are all around the clock.
Hey, how are you doing? Have a good time. Who wants to go get a hot fudge sundae? Is
that the same crowd that was in here? No, they’re pumped up a little bit. The cushion’s
been put back in and without it, that’s all it is.
That’s what sobriety is, is always maintaining this spiritual cushion a day at a time. What
a great way to live. Now, we try and improve on that.
Our egos want to improve on that. You know what I mean? We’re manufacturers, we’re
businessmen. Well, that’s wonderful.
They got a product that’ll get you sober a day at a time. There ought to be one that gets
you sober a year at a time. But it doesn’t work that way.
This whole thing, this wonderful miracle makes all of life condensed into now. And as
long as we have that power, as long as we’ve been given this wonderful thing, we’ve
given the tools to get it, the view of the world will be remarkable. And those of you that
are new, the journey you’re going on starting in this Alcoholics Anonymous is
remarkable.
The gift you’re going to get, you’ve been given it, all your job is to unwrap it. And the gift
is you. And you’re going to find these steps are going to unwrap you.
And you may think you arrived here, a piece of garbage wrapped up in all kinds of old
newspapers and this and that. And we’re going to make you unwrap it. We’re going to
undo that thing so that you finally see the magnificent, lovable, creative, special person
that you really are.
And when that shines through, and a lot of times other people will see it first and they’ll
come up and tell you, Mary, you look wonderful. And you go, what, what? It’s starting to
shine through. And what a jackpot.
And for those of you that are new, stick with these people right here. You’re going to
have the greatest future you can imagine. Thanks a lot.