AA - Alcoholics Anonymous
May 28, 2024
(0:09 – 0:34)
Hi everybody, my name is Sandy Beach and I’m an alcoholic. How are you all doing?
Thank you very much for inviting me here. I’ve had a wonderful time.
It’s been a great weekend. Congratulations to those of you that picked up those three big
books with six days. I wouldn’t have had the guts to come up anywhere with six days, so
I’m absolutely excited for you.
(0:35 – 1:00)
My sobriety date is December 7th, 1964 and I’ve had the same sponsor for almost 39
years. So I’m a very lucky member of Alcoholics Anonymous. And my home group is the
Saturday Night Fever Group in Tampa, Florida.
(1:02 – 1:14)
And we meet on Saturday night and we have two speakers and we have a lot of fun. So if
you’re ever in Tampa, look up that group and if I’m not on the road, I’ll be there. And we
just insist on having fun.
(1:14 – 1:38)
And that’s what I think is important for anybody who is new here, that that’s what AA is
designed to do, is to enable you to be happy without alcohol. And if anybody had told me
that I could get happy without alcohol, I would say what anybody new would say, well
you don’t understand. Every time that I’m without alcohol is when I’m miserable.
(1:40 – 1:54)
Alcohol is what fixes my problems. So your idea of not drinking is absurd. How could I
stay miserable and sober for any extended period of time? And the answer is you can’t.
(1:55 – 2:07)
It just becomes too much. That’s why going on the wagon is such a heavy load. And you
know when you’re on the wagon, any time I tried it, I knew that every day that went by I
was getting one day closer to my next drink.
(2:08 – 2:36)
Because I couldn’t stand it much longer. I mean, how long can you take all of this pain?
And so that was my vision of sobriety, was that it would just be an endurance contest of
some sort. And little did I know that by following these 12 steps and by getting in the
middle of Alcoholics Anonymous, a transformation would take place where the world
looked like a wonderful place without any alcohol in my system.
(2:38 – 2:52)
And I like to think of sobriety as being in a position where there’s nothing for alcohol to
fix. And when there’s nothing for alcohol to fix, it’s real easy to not drink because you
just don’t need it. You don’t need it for anything.
(2:52 – 3:12)
It just doesn’t occur to you to have a drink. They say that when a problem is addressed
spiritually, it’s entirely different than when we address it through the normal course of
events. Normally, we speak of solving a problem.
(3:12 – 3:24)
That’s the most normal way of, you know, well, I got this problem, but I finally figured out
a solution, and then I solved the problem. But in the spiritual realm, we don’t solve them.
They get removed.
(3:25 – 3:36)
They just don’t exist anymore. And so the sobriety is not fighting alcohol anymore. I
never dreamed this could happen.
(3:37 – 3:49)
And I guess I’d been sober about six months, and I’ll never forget the shock that I felt. It
was almost like something was terribly wrong. I realized I had forgotten to think about
drinking last week.
(3:52 – 4:09)
And it was so scary, I almost made a little note, don’t forget to worry about drinking
because I’ve been doing that forever. And all of a sudden, it was almost like I forgot to
worry about drinking. Well, that’s what sobriety is.
(4:09 – 4:21)
It just doesn’t come up on the agenda to fight. It’s just not there. And so if you’re new,
you’re in for a much more happy sobriety than you can imagine.
(4:22 – 4:35)
It doesn’t look like it could happen, but it does. They say the 12 steps are a series of
actions that we take that we don’t believe in. Because if you look at them, you just don’t
see any answers in there.
(4:35 – 4:47)
I remember looking at those steps. My spouse said, everything that you do in these 12
steps, you know, the standard speech that you get in the beginning. And I remember
going home, and I’m going, this is going to really address my problems.
(4:47 – 5:06)
And I started studying those things. And like any new person, I had one primary problem,
and I was looking for the money step. And there’s nothing about getting any money in
any of those steps.
(5:08 – 5:33)
And I remember telling my spouse, I said, what about the money step? What about this?
And he said, well, we have these promises. And he said, I know it’s almost impossible for
you to conceptualize this yet, but we can address fear of financial security without any
money. And I remember going, you can? And he said, yes.
(5:34 – 5:45)
We just remove the financial insecurity. And you’re broke, but you’re not worried about
being broke. It’s just not important.
(5:47 – 6:01)
And I thought that sounded a little far-fetched, you know what I mean? I’m going, well, I’ll
humor him. And I’ll tell you, I was so broke my first 15 years in AA that I really, but I had
a wonderful time. I just had a great time.
(6:02 – 6:09)
And it was just part of life. I had six kids. I got just thrown out of the Marine Corps trying
to find a job and pay for all these things.
(6:09 – 6:22)
And it was a real struggle, but I had the best time. I had just as much fun as the guy who
had a lot of money. And it was a freedom that I didn’t know you could have, that you
could solve a financial problem spiritually with no money.
(6:23 – 6:31)
It seemed impossible. Very briefly, I just want to talk a little bit about my story. I like
talking more about AA than my story.
(6:31 – 6:40)
I have heard it a few times. It has the same ending. I could really go, you know, I drank a
lot, and then I got in AA, and everything’s great.
(6:40 – 7:02)
And that would be a one-minute version of the entire talk. But I grew up in New Haven,
Connecticut in the 30s. And my parents had been through the Depression, so they were
really worried about money and job security and things like that.
(7:02 – 7:16)
But they provided for my sister and I pretty good. And, by the way, my sister has 26
years in AA, so we’ve gotten quite close. And when she came around here, we suddenly
had a whole new relationship, and that has meant a lot.
(7:16 – 7:34)
And she’s very active in the New Haven, Connecticut area and goes to meetings and
sponsors people and just amazing. And brought up in the Catholic Church, and I had my
sister was right next to me. We often talk about this.
(7:35 – 7:50)
And the Catholic Church scared me to death. I took everything literally, you know what I
mean? And they said this, and I just heard those nuns, and I was a little kid out there so
scared to death. But my sister’s over there three years younger than I am just going,
hey, take it or leave it.
(7:50 – 7:57)
Who cares? This is cool. I’m happy in here. She wasn’t buying into this stuff in the literal
sense.
(7:57 – 8:15)
And so her relationship with that church has just been very comfortable and happy and
wonderful, whereas mine was terror. And I had what I call a spiritual awakening when I
was about eight years old, maybe nine. And I had been studying the catechism.
(8:15 – 8:37)
I had been studying every little thing and thinking about it, thinking about punishment
and being bad and the amount of trouble I was already in as an eight-year-old. And I was
sitting in church one day, and the crucifix was hanging down in this church. It must have
been 20 feet high, a great big wooden crucifix.
(8:37 – 8:49)
You could not miss it. It was right there. And I was sitting there looking at it when all of a
sudden it was like something spoke to me from the universe.
(8:50 – 9:01)
And it gave me an insight that I hadn’t had before. And it said, little boy, do you see this
crucifix? I said, yeah, yeah. Well, this is what God did to his only son that he loved.
(9:01 – 9:24)
Guess what he’s going to do to you. And I fell off the pew in a faint, and they carried me
out. People said, what happened? I said, oh, I had something for breakfast.
(9:24 – 9:34)
I wasn’t going to tell anybody. I’m a typical like you, the rest of you alcoholics, don’t ever
tell anybody about anything. It’s much safer to figure it out yourself.
(9:39 – 9:53)
So I scared myself for years with that one. And so as life unfolded, I did have polio as a
little kid. I had that epidemic, went through a lot of New England.
(9:54 – 10:07)
And I was lucky that the Sister Kenny treatment got my arm and leg back working. But it
was kind of a traumatic thing where you just got zipped out of your house, and then
nobody could come see you because of the quarantine. You weren’t quite sure what was
going on.
(10:08 – 10:22)
And so that reinforced my feeling that I really didn’t belong in that family. You know what
I mean? That I was from some other planet, or I just didn’t connect anywhere. And it’s
taken a long time in AA to feel like I’m the same as everybody else.
(10:23 – 10:37)
And so I had that little feeling. But I did well in school, went to a little prep school in New
Haven, and got very high grades and was on a lot of athletic teams. And it was a feeder
school right into the Ivy League.
(10:37 – 10:47)
And so I went to Yale. And I didn’t have any ñ I hadn’t been drinking at all. And I got
there, and, of course, people are going, you’re not drinking.
(10:47 – 10:50)
You’re in college. Come on, party. We’re going to have fun.
(10:50 – 10:57)
It makes you feel wonderful. No, no, I’m going to not drink. But somewhere in the ñ I’d
been there about three or four months.
(10:58 – 11:12)
And I went ñ I always tell this in my story. I went to this social function where you were
supposed to meet the other 30 guys that were in the room. That was just ñ that’s all you
had to do, go in and meet all those guys, find out where they’re from, just chit-chat.
(11:12 – 11:30)
Well, that was terrifying to me because I knew that I didn’t belong there, that all these
guys were much better than I was. They came from all over the United States, and they
were wealthy, and they were smart, and they were rich. And I was an imposter that was
in this class, and they hadn’t caught me yet.
(11:30 – 11:50)
That was my self-esteem. So going up to meet people, I would start up to these groups
that were in the room. And as I approached them, they looked at me and gave me that ñ
you ever see people’s eyes, and they tell you, you know, don’t come near me? So I saw
that in the first group, you know, we don’t want to know you.
(11:50 – 12:06)
Don’t join our group. And I just ñ well, actually, I’m going over here, and then I went over
there, and they didn’t want to know me. And I made a tour around the room and just
could see from people’s faces that they had enough friends already, and they did not
want to know me.
(12:07 – 12:23)
So I never shook anyone’s hand. I made the entire tour of the room, and I started to
leave, which is what I always did if something is making me anxious is to just go away
from it. But there was a bar there, and there was a bartender.
(12:23 – 12:27)
So I walked up, and I was thinking about my roommates. You know, you ought to drink it.
Make it feel good.
(12:27 – 12:31)
You ought to drink it. Make it feel good. And I said, oh, I’m going to have a drink.
(12:32 – 12:42)
So I went up and ordered some whiskey something, whiskey and soda, and it tasted
awful. And I sat there talking to the bartender and drank it, and nothing happened. I
didn’t feel wonderful.
(12:42 – 12:47)
So I had another one, and I didn’t feel wonderful. Had a third one. It was about halfway
through.
(12:47 – 13:03)
Still didn’t feel wonderful. Put the drink down, and I assumed that it wasn’t working. And I
turned around to leave, and I looked back at that group, and those guys were gone, and
they’d been replaced by 30 of the friendliest guys I’ve ever seen.
(13:08 – 13:19)
I took a look in their eyes, and every guy in that room wanted to know me. You could just
see it. They were begging me to join their groups.
(13:20 – 13:23)
No, don’t join that group, Sandy. Join our group. Please, please.
(13:23 – 13:35)
And I looked around. I just said, God, the world has been transformed into a wonderful
place filled with wonderful people. That was my feeling.
(13:35 – 13:42)
I said, God, I love this world. I’ve never loved the world up until that moment. The world
was very frightening and intimidating.
(13:42 – 13:55)
For the first time in my life, I thought the world was great. And then I felt different. I had
a little spring in my step, and I’m snapping my fingers, and I’m actually thinking to
myself that they’re lucky that they’re going to meet me.
(13:59 – 14:03)
And I had something to say. It didn’t matter where they were from. Hey, I’m from
Wisconsin.
(14:04 – 14:25)
Hey, Badger. It was almost like I intuitively knew how to handle situations that were
baffling me 10 minutes earlier. And so I had this incredible sense that I had discovered a
great secret to life that was solving problems that went back as far as my memory could
take me.
(14:26 – 14:44)
That’s how powerful alcohol was. I had found something that solved everything, all these
things that were bottled up inside of me. It took away all that anxiety and fear and
confusion and allowed me to be in touch with my own creativity with other people for the
first time ever.
(14:44 – 14:51)
I could finally be me. I didn’t sit off on the side and be afraid to share my thoughts. I
could be me.
(14:51 – 15:04)
It was almost like I finally found the on switch to turn on my brain and myself. And it was
just a very powerful experience. So I went back to the bar, obviously.
(15:05 – 15:19)
If a little is good, then a lot is going to be wonderful. And, of course, 20 drinks later or
whatever it was, I’m lying on the floor in the bathroom, and the room is spinning, and I’m
throwing up. And it just was awful.
(15:20 – 15:36)
I remember the next day having a hangover that was close to death, just as bad. I didn’t
know anybody could feel that bad. And I got up and went in and had some ice water, I
think, and sat there just aching.
(15:36 – 15:52)
And the thought occurred to me, well, are you going to drink again tonight? And the
answer was like that. I said, of course I am. This little suffering here is a very small price
to pay for what I had last night.
(15:52 – 16:14)
So I had already cut the deal. I had already made that decision that what I got from
alcohol was worth everything. So if somebody had come up to me, you know, a little
movie or something, and the devil came in and said, all right, you want to choose
alcohol? Yes, I do.
(16:14 – 16:22)
I want a permanent relationship with alcohol. Well, would you be willing to give up your
high grades? Yes. I mean, I wouldn’t have even thought about it.
(16:23 – 16:33)
Would you be willing to give up athletics? Yes. Would you be willing to give up your selfrespect? Yes. I mean, I had already cut the deal that day.
(16:33 – 16:44)
I’d only been drinking 18 hours. You know what I mean? And I’m already, yeah, take
away my family. I don’t care what you take away.
(16:46 – 16:54)
I am not giving up what I had last night. I will give up anything to get that, and that’s
what I did. And that’s what you did.
(16:55 – 17:14)
You didn’t know you were making that deal when you first started drinking, but as your
life unfolded, just like mine, you slowly gave up everything in the attempt to keep this
incredible gift. Alcohol was not a problem. It was the solution to my problems.
(17:15 – 17:34)
For non-alcoholics, you will never get a non-alcoholic and ask them. I remember asking
my roommate 25 years later, and he was a big drinker but a social drinker, but we got
drunk a lot, and we partied. And then I was in AA maybe 20 years, and I was speaking in
Dallas, and I went out with him, and I said, he came to the meeting.
(17:34 – 17:58)
He just loves AA because it saved me. And we had a lot of fun together, and we’d talk
and joke about booze and sobriety and all these things. So I was asking him, Roy, looking
back 25 years, if somebody were to ask you about alcohol, what would you say? What
pops into your head? Alcohol.
(17:59 – 18:34)
What does that mean to you? So he sat there, and he said, well, alcohol makes food
taste better. That was his entire summary of alcohol. I almost felt like asking him, is that
going down or coming up? Now, you and I would never answer the question that way.
(18:35 – 18:58)
And he would never have said, oh, alcohol, it’s the secret of life, which it was for us. And
so that’s why he’s not an alcoholic, because alcohol did not transform him and the world
that he lived in. So he wasn’t prepared to give up what I was prepared to give up.
(18:58 – 19:24)
Why would he give it up just to make food taste better? He wasn’t going to puke blood
for a couple of years just so food tastes better. But if it transformed your life and solved
every problem that you ever had, drinking was close to a spiritual experience. It was a
transforming event where the world became pleasant to live in, and I became somebody.
(19:25 – 19:45)
And when alcohol wasn’t present, I was nobody, and the world was intimidating, and it
was painful to live in the world sober. So anytime somebody said to me, why don’t you
not drink, I went, why? I’ll be in pain all the time, and I can’t get in touch with my
creativity. I can’t be anybody.
(19:45 – 20:01)
So it would never occur to me to not drink. So with those decisions firmly in place, within
a very few months of drinking, I was prepared now to go out and pay the consequences.
And that’s what I did.
(20:01 – 20:06)
I just somehow graduated. It was very close. My grades got so bad.
(20:06 – 20:15)
I got arrested. I started getting my teeth knocked out, all the things that happened. And
as each event would happen, I would go, so what? You’re in jail.
(20:15 – 20:24)
So what? It’s nothing compared to what you get from booze. It wasn’t even a close call.
The Korean War was going on.
(20:24 – 20:28)
Everybody, the draft was there. You had to join the military. So a group of guys were
drinking beer.
(20:28 – 20:40)
They said, let’s join the Marine Corps. Oh, yeah, yeah, join the Marine Corps. Boy, I got
down there a few months later, and I just remember going, wow, these guys are intense.
(20:41 – 21:05)
Don’t they ever lighten up? I mean, what’s this? Hey, guys, hey, guys, you know, let’s
have some fun here. Shaving their head, and we went through all that crazy stuff, and at
the end of that boot camp period, then we were off to Officer’s Candidate School. It took
six months, and now we were all infantry second lieutenants.
(21:06 – 21:19)
And somewhere in that school that most of the other guys loved, I liked it, but it wasn’t
me, if you know what I mean. They said, hey, I’d rather sleep in the snow. I’d say, I’d
rather sleep in a first-class hotel.
(21:19 – 21:36)
I mean, there was that. You know what I mean? I wasn’t eagerly seeking to go out and do
these things. And there was a training movie about pilots, and I saw that, and the pilots
were at a bar in this movie in the beginning of it.
(21:36 – 21:47)
And they were talking with their hand. They had scarves, and there was all like some
blondes were milling around in the background. And then they showed some planes, and
they were just flying around.
(21:47 – 21:56)
So I asked this major, I said, what’s this pilot stuff? And he said, oh, you don’t want that.
You’d have to sign up for three more years. I said, I could take three more years.
(21:56 – 22:02)
What is that pilot stuff? Oh, you know, you’ve got to pass it physically. He gave me all
the paperwork. Well, I made it.
(22:02 – 22:16)
I got through all that stuff, and now I’m going to flight school in Pensacola. And I met
someone, and we got married in that interval. Very happy event, and we got on a plane
to go to Pensacola, and I got air sick on the plane going down.
(22:19 – 22:40)
I had never even seen an airplane, you know, up close. And I got sick in the old SNJ down
in Pensacola for the first six flights, and it didn’t look good for this particular guy. But
then that motion sickness went away, and I had found that I had found something that I
was excellent at.
(22:41 – 22:49)
It was right up my alley. I just suddenly became very good at everything and went
through that. It was an 18-month school, and I got through that.
(22:50 – 23:00)
Got into jets. Got over to Japan. The Korean War had ended, so all we were doing in
Japan was defending against something and partying.
(23:01 – 23:07)
And it was a wonderful time. I just love it. That was a long time ago.
(23:07 – 23:22)
That was in 1956. And I still think about that, how wonderful it was and how much I
regret that my drinking ruined that career that I had going. I just think back on how
wonderful it was.
(23:23 – 23:46)
And I just went to the museum in Pensacola recently and saw all the planes that we flew,
and I started thinking about that particular squadron. I was in some other squadrons, but
that one was the first one. There was just that group of guys, and I had run across one of
them, talked to him on the phone about 10 years ago, and something made me call him
last week.
(23:47 – 24:09)
And I said, Hardy, why don’t we get you and anybody else you can think of from that
squadron? We’ll meet in Pensacola and go to that museum. And he said, Sandy, next
weekend, that’s the weekend after this, there’s a Marine Corps Aviation Association
meeting in New Bern. There’s going to be seven guys from that squadron there.
(24:09 – 24:23)
And so I’m going next weekend, and I’m going to see all those guys. So I am like a little
kid in a candy store to just see. It just means a lot to me.
(24:23 – 24:38)
But in the middle of that, that was a very thick drinking thing. God, we drank as a
squadron. We went into the officer’s club, and there was a table reserved, and the
colonel sat up at the front, and we drank by rounds.
(24:38 – 24:44)
You didn’t order a drink on your own. The colonel would go, okay, bring another round.
And so everyone drank the same thing.
(24:44 – 24:53)
I bet everybody would drink 15 drinks. It was just like you were in heaven, you know.
There was just all this partying and then going up.
(24:53 – 25:19)
And I tell you all that because about six months into this, this incident occurred, and I
can still remember it, and I had no idea what it was. But I was standing out on the end of
the runway, we were practicing to go aboard the carrier, and you do these field carrier
practice landings. And this major and I were standing out there watching some of our
squadron mates practice these landings.
(25:19 – 25:23)
Oh, look at that guy. Oh, he’s too high. We’re just talking and carrying on.
(25:24 – 25:37)
And he started talking about how he could hardly wait to get promoted to lieutenant
colonel because he was going to get his own fighter squadron. He was a big Irish guy,
and I’m going, yeah, yeah, major. You’d be the best CO.
(25:37 – 25:42)
Oh, man. And he’s going, yeah. And I would just get nothing but the best pilots in the
Marine Corps in that squadron.
(25:43 – 25:50)
He said, I’d get you in that squadron. And I just felt like, oh, my God, that’s a high
compliment. I just felt so good.
(25:50 – 26:09)
And then he said, but I wouldn’t let you drink. And I couldn’t believe that he said that
because we’re all getting drunk together and all that. And I realize now that in the
middle of that incredible high level of drinking, I stood out.
(26:10 – 26:37)
You know what I’m saying? That an alcoholic even in that environment, that those guys
were looking over going, boy, that’s Sandy taking it one notch further than the rest of us,
isn’t he? And I just thought we were all the same. And, of course, when the tour ended
and they came back to the States, then they shifted their drinking to what was socially
acceptable back here. And, of course, I came back and I just drank always with the point
of getting drunk.
(26:38 – 26:49)
Well, this went on for 10 years, maybe 11 years. And the disease took over. We had six
kids in that time.
(26:49 – 26:59)
And it looked like I got promoted to First Lieutenant. I got promoted to Captain. And it
looked like I had some kind of a career going, but the alcoholism was now coming in.
(27:00 – 27:06)
I started having withdrawals in the airplanes. I would lose vision. I couldn’t think very
clearly.
(27:07 – 27:15)
I was sweating and shaking. And it was getting dangerous to fly with me. And I started
realizing that.
(27:15 – 27:31)
You know, I’m the only guy in the plane. So I’m getting like, God, this is hard. And
eventually I went to a flight surgeon.
(27:31 – 27:40)
It got so bad. I came close to buying the farm a couple times, hit the wrong switches and
stuff like that. And so I went there and they agreed I had a terrible problem.
(27:40 – 27:55)
They sent me down to Pensacola for two weeks and the doctors studied me and there
was no such thing as alcoholism in the Navy as a disease. No, I mean there was plenty of
alcoholics, but there was no diagnosis. You couldn’t be an alcoholic.
(27:55 – 28:10)
You had to be crazy or depressed or something. That was your diagnosis. And so they’re
studying me down there for two weeks and running me up in planes and all the dental,
the psychiatrists, and all these things.
(28:10 – 28:20)
They couldn’t find out what was wrong, even though it was pretty obvious. My hands
shook. I was very confused.
(28:20 – 28:24)
I was covered with clammy sweat. My eyes were bloodshot. And I reeked of alcohol all
the time.
(28:25 – 28:51)
That was all there was to go on. And so they left it up to the psychiatrist and I got my
right up out of there. They said, you’re no longer going to be allowed to fly because you
have a childhood fear of flying that just is showing up after 12 years of flying.
(28:52 – 29:09)
And I knew that was crazy, but I had no way to fight it. I had nothing left inside of me to
fight back against anything. And it took about three months to be reassigned since I was
a career officer, and I got my orders to become an air traffic controller.
(29:14 – 29:38)
And I went to the air traffic control school in Glencoe, Georgia, and I made it through the
school, which is unbelievable. In my last year drinking, I was in charge of an air traffic
control unit in Japan, and fortunately the senior enlisted men saw me check in and they
took one look at me and they just went, hey, Captain, good to have you here. Here’s
your chair and here’s the tent and there’s your coffee and all that.
(29:38 – 29:49)
Don’t you personally go near the radar. We will talk to all the planes and cover for you.
You just try to show up for work, which is what I did.
(29:50 – 30:06)
And during that year, now all the restraints were gone for not drinking for 12 hours prior
to flying, and so I lost 50 pounds to malnutrition. I stopped hanging around with my
buddies, my drinking buddies. They said, hey, we’re going to happy hour.
(30:06 – 30:18)
Do you want to go? No, I’m going to stay in the hut. And I would stay there and just drink
green alcohol and vodka, and juice was the only thing I could eat. I was trying to subsist
on juice.
(30:19 – 30:52)
And so I was very sick when that year ended and came back to Quantico to go to a
career school, and in the middle of that school I had a grand mal seizure and almost bit
my tongue, and they carried me off to the hospital. And even up there they were going,
well, what could have caused this convulsion? We’re still in the dark ages. And after five
days without alcohol, I went into the DTs and saw all kinds of CIA stuff in my room, and
they were trying to drive me crazy, and I was keeping notes, and it was like Mission
Impossible.
(30:53 – 31:22)
It was absolutely terrifying. And somewhere, evidently, I just jumped up and started
screaming up and down the halls, and they grabbed me and put me in a straitjacket and
locked me up in the nut ward for six months. And so I was in there with two other
alcoholics and a bunch of crazy people, and it was obvious after a few months that the
crazy people resented that the alcoholics were in there.
(31:25 – 31:45)
Because it really wasn’t a legitimate mental illness. But AA talked that head psychiatrist
into allowing them to bring an AA meeting in, and so I got to AA when a corpsman came
on the nut ward. All drunks fall in, right face.
(31:46 – 32:23)
Went down to a meeting, and I really thought it was great what those guys talked about,
but I didn’t see where it was for me. And so when I was made an outpatient, and I’m
going home, but I’ve got to come back during the day, I had a few drinks one weekend,
and then I really got drunk the next weekend. I knew they were going to catch me, and
on Pearl Harbor Day, 1964, I called AA from my home, and they sent over my sponsor,
who was another Marine captain, and he just came into my house, and he asked my
family about my drinking.
(32:23 – 32:30)
He didn’t ask me, and they all squealed on me. My kids said, whoa, the worst father in
the world. My wife said, I hate him.
(32:30 – 32:37)
He’s terrible. He’s rotten. And off we went to a meeting, and I haven’t had a drink since.
(32:37 – 33:01)
I came back, and this guy just nurtured me. A couple of years of going to meetings every
night, and I didn’t get promoted to major, and I was thrown out of the Marine Corps, and
I had to start over with all these kids and try and get a job, and I had this big
resentment. I remember, you know, I wouldn’t say this to anybody else, but by myself, I
would go, hey, God, thanks a lot.
(33:04 – 33:11)
I turn my life over to you, and you’ve crapped all over my family. Thank you, God. I
really, really appreciate it, God.
(33:11 – 33:25)
Thank you, God. I mean, boy, I had a very bad resentment. And probably three months
after I was out in this civilian life, there was a little story in the Washington Post, one
paragraph.
(33:26 – 33:46)
I don’t know how I just happened to see it, and it said, Marine Corps instruction team
killed in plane crash in Denver. It was my unit. All the guys I had been with for the last
year flying around to put on these various training shows were going to Denver, and the
plane flew into a mountain out there, and they were all killed.
(33:46 – 34:00)
And if I had had my way and gotten promoted, I would have been on that plane. And so I
remember looking at that, and the first thing that occurred to me when I read it was, God
knows I just read this. So I’m going, oh, well, listen, God.
(34:04 – 34:20)
If you had just told me this was going to happen, I don’t think I would have had all of
these bad feelings about you. So I guess it gave me a little sense that you never know.
When something bad happens, maybe it’s good.
(34:21 – 34:37)
There’s so many spiritual paradoxes. And that started me down the road. I got out, and I
did get some other jobs, and I ended up in Washington, D.C. My last 23 years, I was a
lobbyist for the credit union movement, and that’s a great group.
(34:37 – 34:48)
All the credit unions in the country, they do some great work. So it was fun to work on
their behalf. And about four years, five years ago, I retired and went down to Tampa.
(34:49 – 35:00)
And I love it down there. I’m sponsoring about 20 guys and go to six meetings a week
and get off to these conventions quite a bit of the time. And AA just means the world to
me.
(35:00 – 35:40)
It is just everything. But in addition, you know, we have these wonderful conventions and
meetings and all of that. But the purpose of those meetings and conventions and all that
is to motivate us to establish a personal relationship with a God of your understanding,
because that is the point of Alcoholics Anonymous, is for you as an individual to establish
a conscious contact, a personal awareness that there is this spirit of the universe inside
of you that makes life wonderful.
(35:41 – 36:00)
Now, if you had asked me before I started working these steps, Sandy, have you ever
had any evidence of God anywhere? I would have said no, and you could have put a lie
detector on me, and it would have said, yeah, he’s telling the truth. I never had any
awareness. I had heard about it.
(36:00 – 36:14)
People had taught me about it, but I didn’t have any awareness of a higher power. And
you explained to me, of course you didn’t. You are cut off from the spirit of the universe.
(36:16 – 36:29)
Your character defects and your self-centeredness are blocking you from the most
important thing that you can find. As a matter of fact, the purpose of being alive is to
find that power. That’s why we’re here.
(36:31 – 36:54)
And so you said we have these 12 steps, and they are designed to cut through all of the
blockages until the channel, like the prayer of St. Francis, until the channel is opened,
and you experience this transformation. So don’t worry about the moral issue of these
character defects. Just look at them as blockages.
(36:55 – 37:21)
You know what I mean? There’s this channel, and it’s all filled with this junk, and nothing
can flow through that spiritual channel. So we’ve got some steps that are going to get
that stuff out of the way, and then you’re going to experience something that is the most
important thing you can experience. Do you remember the wonder of the first drink and
how, with those 30 guys, you remember that scene? Oh, yeah.
(37:22 – 37:30)
This is way beyond that. This is way beyond that. And I’m going, boy, this is just
amazing.
(37:31 – 37:45)
And so I started like anybody else, going through this stuff and not believing in it. I
mean, what’s there to believe? I’m just looking at these steps, and they’re going, well,
you’ve got to do this, you’ve got to do that, you’ve got to do this. And I’m resisting it.
(37:45 – 38:07)
I’ve got my old ideas about this punishing God with the crucifix up there, and so when
are you going to come up to me and say to me, Sandy, we’re going to sit down tonight
and we’re going to explain the AA God to you so that you can believe in it? It turns out
there is no AA God. Nobody’s going to explain anything. If there’s 500 people in this
room, there’s 500 higher powers.
(38:08 – 38:21)
So there is no. So how does AA get us to believe in this? Well, of all the places where this
is explained, it’s in the most unlikely place in the book. It’s in the chapter of the agnostic.
(38:22 – 38:34)
What a place to hide it, huh? I remember when I first got the big book and my sponsor
said, everything you need to know is in here. And I’m going, yeah, yeah, Bill, I need
money. I don’t need this book.
(38:34 – 38:53)
I don’t need anything, you know. But I could tell that he wanted me to read it, and I
looked in there and I said, oh, God, what is this? But I went through and I pushed the
pages, made them look like they had been read. I put magic marker, you know, wow,
wow, wow, in a few places.
(38:55 – 39:16)
So while I was doctoring up the book, I saw the chapter to the agnostic. And like you, I
knew what was in it without reading it. That that was the chapter that the agnostics used
to stay sober, and then the rest of the non-agnostics did the steps and did all the rest of
it.
(39:17 – 39:27)
And, of course, later on when I became more familiar with the book, if you’re new, I can
tell you what the chapter to the agnostic says in three words. Change your mind. That’s
what it says.
(39:31 – 39:37)
Become a former agnostic. That’s what it says. But there’s a wonderful introduction in
there.
(39:37 – 39:50)
And if you’re new, I want you to listen because this is getting spiritual. We’re going to get
spiritual right now. It says in there, the very first paragraphs, if when you drink, you have
little control over the amount you drink.
(39:50 – 39:56)
Uh-oh, that’s me. Okay. And if when you try to stop, you can’t stay stopped.
(39:56 – 40:01)
Uh-oh, okay, that’s me. Well, then you’re probably an alcoholic. Okay, I go along with
that.
(40:01 – 40:10)
I’m an alcoholic. Then comes the clincher. If that be the case, then you’re suffering from
an illness that only a spiritual experience can conquer.
(40:12 – 40:41)
And I’m looking at that, and I’m going, what? You have an illness that only a spirit. I
remember to my sponsor, I said, what does that say? He says, you have an illness,
Sandy, that only a spiritual experience can conquer. And I’m going, well, how many
illnesses are there in the medical association directory under the heading, illnesses that
only a spiritual experience can conquer? He says, I don’t know, but this is one of them.
(40:46 – 40:57)
And I said, but Bill, I don’t believe in spiritual experiences. He said, oh, you’re screwed.
Oh, sorry.
(40:59 – 41:12)
Oh, oh, sorry. And then he started asking me questions. And this is, if you’re new, I want
you to answer these questions.
(41:12 – 41:19)
And he said to me, Sandy, do you believe in prayer? And I said, no. He said, do you pray
a lot? No, I don’t pray, Bill. I don’t like prayer, and I don’t pray.
(41:19 – 41:30)
Put me down for no under prayer. Well, listen, do you go to church and hang around
spiritual people? No, I don’t go to church. I haven’t been there since I was 20 years old.
(41:30 – 41:34)
I have no interest in going to church. No, put me down, no. Church activities.
(41:36 – 41:46)
Well, do you like to read spiritual literature? You know, some of the New Age things,
anything spiritual, some of the old authors. No, Bill, I don’t read anything spiritual. If I see
it’s in the house, I throw it out.
(41:46 – 41:55)
No, I don’t want anything to do with spiritual. Well, do you meditate? Do you like to sit
around and contemplate God? No, I don’t. I don’t have anything to do with meditation.
(41:55 – 42:17)
It makes me nervous to even think about it. And then came the spiritual question. He
said, so listen, how’s it going? Oh, it’s going awful.
(42:19 – 42:26)
And he said, well, let’s move to the next paragraph. So we go to the next paragraph.
Now, if you’re new, you’re about to get spiritual.
(42:27 – 42:44)
We’re getting there. Next paragraph, it says, to live on a spiritual basis or to die an
alcoholic death are not always easy alternatives to face. So you know what that says?
You’re on a quiz program.
(42:46 – 42:53)
You’re the contestant up on the stage. And I’m the quiz master, and I go, well, this is
where you have arrived. There’s two doors back here.
(42:54 – 43:02)
You have to choose one. Live on a spiritual basis or die an alcoholic death. And if you’re
like the rest of us, you’re going to do this.
(43:03 – 43:37)
Oh, two bad choices. I may have to call my doctor and say, doctor, I have a friend who’d
like to know how bad an alcoholic death is. Because I know what living on a spiritual
basis is going to be.
(43:37 – 43:51)
That’s going to be like Mother Teresa. What is that? I mean, God, you probably give
everything away to the poor, and you have nothing. I had no idea what live on a spiritual
basis was.
(43:52 – 44:00)
But all of a sudden, there was nowhere else to go. There was no other door. There was
nowhere to go.
(44:01 – 44:14)
You want an alcoholic death, or do you want to live on a spiritual basis? Because that’s
where you are now. And that’s what happens when you take the first step. You’re
powerless over alcohol, and there isn’t anything you can do.
(44:15 – 44:41)
And I’m not going to go through all the steps, but I do want to say, for those of you that
are new, about what it means to be powerless over alcohol, because sometimes that’s
misunderstood. Very often we think that it means whenever I drink, I lose control, and all
these bad things happen. That’s not the part that kills you, because if that was the only
problem you have, all you’d have to do is not drink, and everything would be fine.
(44:43 – 44:49)
No, it’s quite different than that. This is what powerless is. You go to treatment.
(44:50 – 45:15)
You attend lectures on alcoholism for 28 days until you understand alcoholism as well as
a doctor does. You’ve had everything explained to you from liver disease to jake leg to
itching to alcoholic blindness to everything. And you understand to the heart of your soul
that you’re an alcoholic, and if you ever drink again, you’re going to die.
(45:16 – 45:28)
And do you know how much that knowledge helps you to stay sober? Not at all. It doesn’t
help at all. It does not help, because it doesn’t say that we’re ignorant about alcoholism.
(45:28 – 45:44)
It says we’re powerless over it. And there will come a day when you have no defense
against the first drink, and you’ll be standing maybe in your old favorite bar where you’re
now drinking Coke and having hamburgers, and you’ll be talking to the bartender, and
you’ll go, you know, I’m an alcoholic. I went through treatment.
(45:44 – 46:00)
I understand alcoholism. If I ever drink, I’ll lose my family. And the doctor explains, could
I have a beer? I will probably, and you explain this whole thing as you drink a beer.
(46:01 – 46:10)
We have no defense against the first drink. So it isn’t that if you drink, you’re going to
get in trouble. It’s if you don’t have a miracle, you will drink.
(46:12 – 46:25)
And so that’s what powerless means. Unless we find a power to protect us from that first
drink, we’re going to take it. And then when we take it, the other part of the disease
kicks in, and we’ve been had.
(46:26 – 46:47)
So what happens in AA about this? How do we get spiritual? AA does not try to convince
us of the existence of God. It convinces us of the need for God. And as soon as you
understand how much you need God, you’re going to find him because you’re going to
take these steps.
(46:48 – 47:04)
You know, Dr. Young made a wonderful thing when Roland Hazard went to see him, and,
you know, this wonderful psychiatrist. And Roland went there for a year, and then Dr.
Young said, I’ve done everything I can. And then he went off and went to Paris, and
somebody asked him the wrong question.
(47:04 – 47:12)
Would you like a drink? And he said, yes. And he’s back at Dr. Young’s. And he said, Dr.
Young, I’m sorry I went back to drinking.
(47:13 – 47:37)
You told me that if I drank again, I’d end up in a sanatorium. What can you do? And this
is where AA’s first, you know, the A and B at the end of Chapter 5, that were alcoholic
and could not manage their own life and probably no human power could have relieved
their alcoholism. Well, Dr. Young had to be the epitome of human power at that time.
(47:37 – 48:00)
There wasn’t any place else you could go. And this representative of all human power
looked at Roland and Roland said, what can you do? And Dr. Young said, there’s nothing
I can do for you. And it caused Roland to surrender to such a level that he was open for
anything.
(48:01 – 48:20)
And Dr. Young said, now I have heard of some alcoholics of your type who have had
profound spiritual experiences and were able to live happily and sober. If I was you, I
would go try and find a profound spiritual experience. And the Oxford group was very
popular at that time.
(48:21 – 48:27)
And he joined one, got sober. He 12-stepped Ebby. Ebby 12-stepped Bill Wilson.
(48:27 – 48:45)
And we’re off and running with Alcoholics Anonymous. And many years later, Bill Wilson
realized he had never closed the loop with Dr. Young in Switzerland. So he wrote him a
letter saying, God, I don’t know if you remember Roland Hazard, but he saw you in 1931
or whenever it was.
(48:45 – 48:57)
And as a result of what you told him and you set him on this path, we’ve started this new
fellowship. It is now in 30 countries. And we have 600,000 sober people.
(48:58 – 49:07)
And we owe a great deal of it to you. And I’ve never acknowledged this, so I want you to
have this letter, et cetera, et cetera. And Dr. Young wrote him back right before he died.
(49:08 – 49:15)
And he said, thank you very much, Mr. Wilson. I often wondered what happened to Mr.
Hazard. I’m so glad to hear about Alcoholics Anonymous.
(49:15 – 49:31)
It’s just so wonderful. I’m so grateful I played a small part in it. Back when Mr. Hazard
was seeing me, it was not safe for me to talk as a psychiatrist about spiritual things
because my peers would have laughed me out of the profession.
(49:32 – 49:47)
But now it’s quite safe. And we all know that Young is a very spiritual psychiatrist, and a
lot of people have studied some of his teachings. And he said, now it’s safe for me to talk
about spiritual matters.
(49:47 – 50:10)
And he said, what I was trying to induce in Roland through psychiatric ways was to have
this profound transformation as a person. And I’m glad that he was able to find that
because I’ve always felt that that’s exactly what alcoholism is. And he went on, and his
words were conspiritus contra spiritu.
(50:10 – 50:35)
And reading through the lines, what he was saying is, alcoholism, I love this definition, is
an inordinate longing for God. That we as alcoholics knew there was something missing
inside of us, and we were keenly aware that this was missing. We didn’t know what it
was.
(50:35 – 50:38)
We thought it was money. We thought it was sex. We thought it was something.
(50:38 – 50:51)
And we found it in alcohol. It appeared to fix this. And alcohol is sort of a spiritual power
because it transforms us and transforms the world.
(50:51 – 51:06)
And we thought we had solved this fundamental hole that was inside of us. And Young
was so onto it. He said, now you come into Alcoholics Anonymous, and we’re going to
teach you how to open this channel to this higher power.
(51:06 – 51:21)
And you’re going to find all of that is resolved, and you won’t be looking anymore. And so
it gets down. The thing I want to close on is C. I went through A, B, and I’ll go to C now.
(51:22 – 51:36)
Everybody knows what it says. No human power could have relieved our alcoholism, but
God could and would. Ah, those are the three words, or four words, if he were sought.
(51:36 – 51:48)
I think sometimes we read it that God could and would. You know what I mean? That God
could and would. Yeah, he could and he would if he were sought.
(51:48 – 51:58)
So what is seeking? I remember thinking about that. Okay, if he were sought. Well, what
is seeking? So I started thinking about seeking, and maybe you’ve all had this same
experience with seeking.
(51:58 – 52:13)
The first time I remember hearing the word seek was in school, and the teacher said,
we’re going to play hide and seek. I went, okay, sounds cool. Yeah, one of you is going to
hide, and the other one is going to hide your eyes, and then when we go, go find him.
(52:14 – 52:21)
And I remember, you know, hey, great. And then you start out. Where the heck is Johnny
hiding? Yeah, I’m going up the tree, and I’m going over here.
(52:21 – 52:39)
I mean, we’re putting quite a bit of effort into seeking. You remember that? But if you
don’t find him in about five minutes, hey, to hell with Johnny. You know what I mean? It
was one level of seeking, but it certainly wasn’t the highest level of seeking.
(52:40 – 52:57)
So the next one I remember was Easter baskets. Remember that? It was 16 pounds of
solid chocolate, and your mother has hidden it somewhere. Well, I could go much longer
than five minutes on that one.
(52:57 – 53:14)
I mean, it was like, wow. But maybe after 15 minutes, Mom, am I warm? Can you give
me a clue? And it started to wane. You know what I mean? As much as you love
chocolate, it was like, you know, this is getting boring.
(53:14 – 53:23)
I don’t know if I can keep on seeking. You start begging and whining, and finally they, all
right. So you get the chocolate.
(53:23 – 53:46)
So there’s another level of seeking. But the highest level of seeking that I recall having
was when I was about 14, and we had a golden retriever that had been in the family for
about five years, and he ran away and never came back. And he ran into those woods,
you know, over there.
(53:46 – 53:56)
That’s where I came home. My mother and father said, I don’t know, he ran in those
woods. And I went over to those woods looking for that dog, and I was into advanced
seeking.
(53:57 – 54:15)
Any of you that have lost a dog know what I’m talking about. I would be out by those
woods every day after school, tosser, tosser, tosser, and I’d go in there and I’d look and
I’d call and I’d leave dog food. Year after year, I would go back there with the dream that
maybe that dog would come back.
(54:16 – 54:38)
So I would call that a pretty high level of seeking. And then the question comes, what
level have I put in the sea? God couldn’t would if he were Easter egg seeking, hide and
seek. Okay, if I don’t find him in five minutes, to hell with it.
(54:39 – 55:12)
Up at the lost dog level, or is it possible to go beyond that? Isn’t it essential that that
become the focus of our lives, is to find this, the ultimate treasure. You talk about a
hidden treasure, that people go looking for buried treasure and spend millions and
billions and dig up a pirate’s treasure. Look what we’re about to discover if we will persist
in that seeking.
(55:12 – 55:21)
It’s the ultimate jackpot. So those of you that are new, I urge you, please don’t give up.
Don’t think you’re not going to find it.
(55:21 – 55:34)
It’s going to happen just around the corner. You’re in for much more than sobriety in
Alcoholics Anonymous. You’re in for the epic journey of your life, and Godspeed, and
thank you all very much.
(55:34 – 55:35)
Thank you.
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