AA - Alcoholics Anonymous
December 21, 2023
(0:00 – 0:43)
Thank you very much, Jim. Good evening, everybody. My name is Sandy Beach, and I’m
an alcoholic.
How are you all doing? Well, thank you very much for inviting me over, and I want to
congratulate you all on the good work you’re doing. It’s just so inspirational to hear about
the books going out, and the food going out, and it’s just… Alcoholics Anonymous never
ceases to amaze me, and I’m sure you all feel the same way. It’s customary at these
meetings to share a little bit about how it was back in the drinking days, and how we got
here, and what it’s like now.
(0:45 – 0:58)
And when Jim was talking about the Senate, I was already thinking about this when we
read the traditions. I love some of those traditions. A.A., as such, ought never be
organized.
(0:59 – 1:40)
We certainly carry that out fairly well, wouldn’t you say? I’ve never seen anybody coming
around from general service trying to enforce that, you know? Like, you people are
getting too organized in your groups, and we want you to slow down and obey that
tradition of not getting organized. Although this event, I’ve got to say, you’ve got four,
five, eight prime movers, and it’s amazing what can happen there. But the one that I’ve
always gotten a kick out of, that reminded me of the Senate, was the number 10, A.A.
has no opinion on outside issues.
(1:41 – 2:18)
And I think about us alcoholics, I mean, boy, can you imagine more opinionated people in
the world than we were before we got here? And here we have an entire organization
that has no opinion as a tradition. It’s just astounding. And some of you may have heard
this story, but in the early 70s, right around the same time you were talking about, a
senator on Health and Human Services Committee came up with the idea that there
ought to be warning labels on booze like there is on cigarettes.
(2:18 – 2:35)
They figured it would just do so much good, like the warning label on cigarettes. So you
don’t just do one of those things, you know, like that. You’ve got to have hearings and go
through all this stuff to gather information.
(2:35 – 2:56)
And so some committee staffer said, God, of all the people in the world that could give
us insight on this subject would be Alcoholics Anonymous. So let’s get a hold of them. So
they got a hold of General Service Office in letter form and wanted to know if they could
send somebody down to share A.A.’s opinion on warning labels on alcohol.
(2:57 – 3:16)
And somebody came down and said, we’d be glad to. Alcoholics Anonymous has no
opinion on warning labels on alcohol. And they were absolutely astounded that an
organization would just have enough humility to say, we have no opinion, no opinion.
(3:17 – 3:36)
But I like to follow that up and say, now, just because A.A. doesn’t have an opinion
doesn’t mean that we can’t have an opinion as individual members. And I certainly have
an opinion, and I’ll be glad to share it with you here tonight on that subject. I think
definitely that there should be warning labels on alcohol bottles.
(3:36 – 3:58)
And I can tell you exactly what that label should say. It should say, warning, this bottle
may run out. You should consider buying two.
(3:59 – 4:23)
You know what I mean? And I think then we’d have a label that’s doing some good. You
know what I’m saying? It’s like some poor alcoholic, 2 a.m., out of booze, and he read the
label, and there’s that second bottle out in the kitchen. And he goes out there, and I
don’t know, sometimes I get up and my mind just goes all over.
(4:23 – 4:39)
This feels like a potpourri night to me. Things that have happened during the evening
have reminded me of things. And so what the heck? I don’t know what it was.
(4:40 – 4:47)
It was probably because it was around Christmas time or whatever. Anyway, I got sober
in December. My anniversary was just last week.
(4:47 – 5:08)
I was up in Washington. And a year later, right around this time of year, my sponsor, who
you’ll hear about a little bit later, he was a huge, mean marine. And had no sympathy for
anyone, much less me, his pigeon, his only pigeon.
(5:11 – 5:38)
And we belonged to a group right outside of Quantico, Virginia, the Dumfries Triangle
Group. And he was the secretary, treasurer of the group, the general service rep, the
program chairman, the coffee maker, the grapevine salesman, the intergroup
representative. And he had the combination lock, the combination to the lock on the
podium.
(5:38 – 5:48)
And it was a big podium, and inside the podium were the coffee pots, the signs, ten
years’ worth of sugar. I can still remember that. It was just in there.
(5:48 – 6:02)
And he was like the whole thing. And it was a speaker meeting, and we had, at best,
eight members of the group. And we’d invite speakers to come down from Washington.
(6:02 – 6:23)
It would be like a 40-minute drive to talk to eight people. And, you know, if you’ve been
in AA a while, you go, talk to eight people? I mean, I’m not going to drive an hour to talk
to eight people. So it was really hard to get speakers to come to this meeting.
(6:24 – 6:36)
So if they saw you coming around going, hey, Fred, you know, they’d be busy and be
going over here. But he was mean and tough, so he would just go right after them.
You’re speaking next, you know, whatever.
(6:36 – 6:46)
So he had no problem getting those speakers. Well, one night he said to me, I’m going to
pick you up early. We’re going to have a business meeting tonight before the regular
meeting starts.
(6:46 – 6:53)
So we go to the group. There’s just two of us. And he’s up at the podium, and I’m in the
chair.
(6:56 – 7:19)
And he said, it’s the tradition of this group that we rotate the jobs in the group. And I’ve
been the program chairman, the coffee maker, the general service rep, the secretary,
treasurer, blah, blah, blah, blah, for a couple of years. And it’s time for me to be relieved
that I’m looking for volunteers from the audience.
(7:23 – 7:31)
So I’m the volunteer, you know. So I didn’t mind any of this. I was thrilled to have the
combination that somebody would trust me with the money.
(7:31 – 7:40)
I was thrilled when people would come up and say, that’s delicious coffee. Thank you.
And I’d bring cupcakes, and they’d really be happy about that.
(7:40 – 7:57)
But I was terrified about this program chairman bit. Because you’re liable to get
rejection, you know what I’m saying, where you go up to people, hey, would you speak to
us? No. And that might put me out of commission for a month, you know what I mean,
before I could go back and ask someone else to speak.
(7:58 – 8:08)
So he had arranged for speakers for three weeks. And then I was to pick up from there.
So three weeks go by, I haven’t asked anybody because it was too much pressure.
(8:08 – 8:17)
You know, when you’ve only been sober a year, you can only take so much. So finally I
got this guy. He was talking his mouth off somewhere.
(8:17 – 8:25)
And he was the club officer at the Army base, Fort Belvoir. And his name was Jack. And
he was talking about how he liked to talk.
(8:25 – 8:35)
And Belvoir wasn’t far from Quantico, so it wasn’t really an hour drive. Jack, would you
like to talk next Saturday? Yes. And I’m like, thank God.
(8:35 – 8:39)
And I never did ask. We had two speakers. I never asked a second anybody else.
(8:40 – 8:53)
He arrives. And we had one member of our group who was a jockey who was rarely
sober. But he’d come to the meetings, and he’d hang around for 15 minutes, go outside,
drink a little bit, come back in.
(8:53 – 9:10)
And he was there that night just kind of going out and back and out and back. And my
sponsor had gone around to Manassas and all these other places and said, come, this is
Saturday’s opening night. We want a big crowd at the meeting because he’s really
putting his heart into this.
(9:11 – 9:16)
So I’m up there. My voice is trembling reading the preamble. You know, I mean, I’m just
a nervous wreck.
(9:16 – 9:23)
And finally I get through all the preliminaries, and I go in our first speaker. And I was
going to play the routine. I don’t know where our second speaker is, you know, when that
time came.
(9:24 – 9:31)
And then my sponsor would save me. So I introduced Jack. I can still remember it.
(9:31 – 9:36)
He comes up, and he said, good evening, everybody. My name’s Jack. I’m an alcoholic.
(9:36 – 9:51)
And everybody said, hi, Jack. He said, I’m here tonight to resign from Alcoholics
Anonymous. And I went, oh, my God.
(9:51 – 10:01)
I couldn’t. And it got worse. And all I could picture was my sponsor’s calling General
Service Office, and they’re taking my name off the rolls of AA.
(10:03 – 10:13)
They’re sending messages out to all the other groups. If a guy comes in named Sandy
Beach, don’t let him in, you know, and all that. And he goes on and starts this thing
about how he got into Alcoholics Anonymous.
(10:13 – 10:22)
He came to AA a year ago, and he didn’t know how to drink. He was getting drunk all the
time. And as a result of these meetings, he now knows how to drink without getting
drunk.
(10:24 – 10:29)
I can’t believe my ears, you know what I’m going on. And he just went on and on. I want
to thank you all.
(10:29 – 10:38)
I’ll never forget you. It’s been wonderful being in AA. But just as an example, I had a fifth
today, and nothing happened to me.
(10:41 – 10:49)
And I’m just sliding down. I cannot believe that this is real. I thought I was back in the nut
ward having hallucinations.
(10:50 – 11:13)
I’m hearing this guy. And he would have gone on all night except for Dave the Jockey,
who was sitting in the front row listening to this story about drinking a fifth of whiskey
and not being drunk. And so I was rescued when Dave jumped up and said, You’re a
damn liar.
(11:13 – 11:23)
I drank a fifth today, and I’m drunk. I don’t believe you. And then they got into a little
argument and went outside.
(11:25 – 11:39)
And my sponsor got up because he knew I wasn’t going to get up. And he just said, I’d
like you all to come back next week. See if Sandy can top that.
(11:41 – 12:08)
And so I don’t know what it was tonight that reminded me of that. But that was my entry
into service work. When I think about alcohol and the disease of alcoholism, I just have
to share, mostly for those of you that are new, the way I remember it.
(12:09 – 12:30)
And now that I’ve had some years to think about it, what were the dynamics that were
going on? And for me, I relate very strongly to the sentence in the book that says,
Alcohol was but a symptom of our problems. Alcohol was just a symptom of our
problems. Because it’s so easy to think of alcohol as the problem.
(12:30 – 13:02)
And whenever you read about it medically or hear people talking about it on television,
it’s this alcohol is this terrible problem that descends on this person, this poor alcoholic.
And if that’s the case, then why is alcohol but a symptom? And I realized that, for me, I
already had problems before any alcohol got in my system. My problems were that I
didn’t think that I belonged on this planet.
(13:03 – 13:21)
I basically felt very uncomfortable, and I never got in harmony with the people around
me, and I never could understand what they were talking about in church. I felt like
something was missing. I just always had this sense that I’m not sure what’s going on.
(13:21 – 13:41)
I heard a speaker one time talk about he just knew any minute he was going to look up
and see a spaceship come down and little funny creatures were going to come running
over to him and say, We’re so sorry, we made a mistake. You weren’t supposed to be put
on this planet Earth. Come on, we’re going to take you where you belong.
(13:41 – 14:03)
It’s over here. When he said that, I went, Yeah, yeah, I can relate to that. I just kept
waiting for somebody to explain this whole thing to me as to why I just felt different and
not connected and very terrified, and other people seemed to understand.
(14:03 – 14:15)
It was as if I was the only one that hadn’t been briefed on what life was all about. As I
watched other people talking, they just, Yeah, isn’t life great? Yeah, well, I’m going to be
a doctor. I’m going to be this.
(14:15 – 14:20)
I was going, I don’t know. I haven’t got a clue. I just didn’t have a clue.
(14:21 – 14:33)
So I had this sense that there was something missing, that it was beyond me, and I
never could figure that out. I never had a drink until I got to college. I always talk about
this first drink.
(14:34 – 14:53)
I guess every single talk I’ve ever given, I talk about it because that’s when I became an
alcoholic. It happened just like that, and I was at a social function. I grew up in New
Haven.
I went to the local university. Still hadn’t had a drink. I’m 19 years old, and my
roommates are going, You’re in college, man.
(14:53 – 14:55)
Everybody’s drinking. It makes you feel great. It’s wonderful.
(14:55 – 15:18)
No, I’m going to become an athlete. I was brought up in the Catholic Church, and if you
don’t drink until you’re 21, you get a bonus of 250,000 years off in purgatory. And I knew
that I was going to need that, so I had all these inner dynamics going on as to why I
shouldn’t drink at all.
(15:19 – 15:37)
And here was this evening, and these evenings back then were death to me. And the
evening’s very simple for everybody else, but the evening was, Okay, you 50 guys go in
this room and mix. Just meet each other and talk.
(15:38 – 15:49)
And that’s like telling me to go in with a bayonet against a gorilla, you know, and it’s like,
Oh, man, I don’t know if I can do that. It’s just too difficult. But I gave it a try that
evening.
(15:49 – 15:56)
I remember going in, and the groups had already subdivided. I don’t know how that
happened. They just, seven here, three, six, four, one.
(15:56 – 16:13)
And I’m going, I wonder where I belong. I wonder where my little group is. And I start
over to the first group, and all seven of them just turned and just went, No way.
No way. Now, they didn’t say that, but you didn’t have to hear them talk. You could just
look at them.
(16:13 – 16:21)
It was like, wrong, wrong. You’re not even from the right part of the country for this
group. And every little group I went to, that was the same thing happened.
(16:22 – 16:29)
And I was going to leave. I gave it my try. I went around, but there wasn’t anybody there
that wanted anything to do with me.
(16:30 – 16:46)
And I saw the bartender up there, and I said, well, maybe I’ll just feel good. And I sort of
thought to myself, the hell with purgatory. Why not go up there and have a drink? So I
went up in order to drink and sat there drinking it, talking to the bartender, waiting to
feel wonderful.
(16:46 – 16:52)
Second drink, third drink. I didn’t feel anything. Put the drink down.
(16:52 – 17:11)
I was going to leave. And I turned around, and I couldn’t believe it, but while I was talking
to the bartender, these 50 mean guys left, and they were replaced by 50 of the
friendliest guys I’ve ever seen in my life. Everyone in that room was looking at me,
pleading for me to be their friend.
(17:12 – 17:29)
It was like, oh, God, I’d give anything to know you. Everywhere I looked, there was just
people looking at me, going, God, would we like to know you. Could you please come
over? I couldn’t believe my eyes.
(17:29 – 17:47)
I just looked around and said, God, this is a great room. These are great people. And
then I noticed I had a little different thing, a little spring in my step, and I was just kind of
saying to myself, I’ll get over there when I’m damn good and ready, man.
(17:48 – 17:58)
It was almost like I agreed with them. They would be lucky to know me. You know what I
mean? It was just, wow.
(18:01 – 18:22)
So alcohol changed the world that I lived in in about 20 minutes. It changed it into the
world that I heard other people talking about when they say, isn’t it great to have
friends? Isn’t it wonderful, all the people in the world? Isn’t life great? And that was the
first time I ever had that thought, that I had heard all my life. Isn’t life great? Look at
these flowers.
(18:22 – 18:24)
Look at these animals. Look at this. Look at that.
(18:24 – 18:37)
Never did I ever have that feeling, but I sure had it that night. And how did I get it? I got
it from alcohol. So alcohol went from a total unknown in my life to the secret of life.
(18:38 – 18:46)
That’s where it went, in 20 minutes. I remember thinking, I should have started drinking
in grammar school. I could have had a great grammar school years.
(18:46 – 18:56)
I could have had great prep school years, but I’m going to have some great college
years. I can tell you that. So I was off to the races, and, of course, I stopped going out for
athletics.
(18:57 – 19:04)
I started getting arrested, getting in fights. My grades went down. I was thrown up all the
time.
(19:04 – 19:09)
I was in trouble. My parents were all upset. The dean of the university is upset.
(19:10 – 19:28)
And inside of me, I’m going, you know, there seems to be some drawbacks to this
drinking, but they indeed are a small price to pay for what I’m getting out of this booze.
Sure, a few inconveniences. I’m just fine-tuning.
(19:28 – 19:43)
I’m still learning how to do this drinking thing. But when you look at the big picture,
these little troubles are nothing compared to what I’m getting out of this because I’m a
happy man now. I understand life.
(19:43 – 19:50)
I have. My problem was solved by alcohol. So alcohol was the solution.
(19:50 – 20:09)
It had some byproducts problems, but it was, for me, it was the answer. It was not the
solution. So I think about it later on, you know, all the years that I drank, and I go back
and I go, what was my real problem then? My real problem was being sober.
(20:11 – 20:26)
That was my problem. I don’t know about your problem, but every time I was sober,
that’s when my problems came in. I was back in that black and white world where people
didn’t like me, where it was intimidating, where I wasn’t all there.
(20:26 – 20:56)
I wasn’t functioning. I couldn’t be creative without alcohol. And so when I went into a bar,
I never said this to the bartender, but what I was actually, the transaction that I was
negotiating with the bartender was Sir, have you got something back there for sobriety?
I seem to have it again, and the quicker we can get rid of it, the better.
(20:57 – 21:07)
One, two, three. There. I am now a former sober person, and I feel much better.
(21:08 – 21:21)
I feel complete. I feel as if I am now a hundred percent. There was always something
missing, and this power, the power of alcohol, activated what was missing in me so that I
could be spontaneous.
(21:22 – 21:28)
I could be somebody in the world. It was like, now, world, come on. We’ll deal.
(21:28 – 21:32)
We’ll talk. Not tomorrow morning. Now.
(21:33 – 22:04)
Because tomorrow morning I’m going to be sober again, and it’s going to be very
difficult. So that was my relationship with alcohol. Now, in order to be an alcoholic, you
have to earn drinking money, and all of us engaged in various hobbies to, some of us
were surgeons or ministers or doctors, lawyers, housewives, painters, horse racing,
whatever, and my hobby was being a Marine Corps fighter pilot.
(22:04 – 22:29)
That was what I ended up doing to earn drinking money. So most of my story, after I got
out of college, was in the good old U.S. Marine Corps, and as you can see, I don’t have a
military bone in my body, and I don’t know why I ended up in the Marine Corps, but I did.
Those people are serious military people.
(22:30 – 22:42)
I mean, that is… They don’t like jokes about Marines. They don’t like anything. It’s like
Semper Fi, this is it, and it was too intense.
(22:42 – 22:57)
I mean, it was just… For me, anyway, I don’t know. It was just too intense, and I saw a
training movie about pilots, and they were at the bar. They were talking with their hands.
(22:58 – 23:11)
So I signed up for flight school just to get out of being an infantry officer because I saw
that was not going to happen, and I made it through flight school. I don’t know how it
happened. I came down to Pensacola.
(23:11 – 23:27)
I got airsick on the way down. I was airsick for quite a while in the old SNJ, but then
everything straightened out, and it turned out I had a lot of talent. I had some
coordination, and I liked it, and so, boom, all of a sudden, I’m through flight school.
(23:27 – 23:33)
I got married. Within eight years, we had six kids. I’m getting promoted to first
lieutenant.
(23:33 – 23:55)
I’m getting promoted to captain, and I’m just moving on overseas, flying in fighter
squadrons. A lot of great stories, but what’s really happening is my disease of alcoholism
is progressing right on schedule, and it is causing more and more problems. It is causing
lies to be told.
(23:55 – 24:21)
You know, an alcoholic cannot tell the truth because the truth is not acceptable. You
can’t walk into your boss at 10 in the morning and say, oh, sir, it’s time for my morning
fix. If I don’t have a couple shots of vodka, I might, boom, boom, boom, explode.
(24:23 – 24:30)
I won’t be able to do a bit of work, so I’ll be out. I’ll be back in 20 minutes. I’m just
getting a shot of vodka.
(24:33 – 25:40)
Now, if we had understanding bosses in the world, we could tell them the truth, but we
can’t do that, so I have to go in and go, colonel, I have to go up to the wing legal office
this morning. I have to get some background papers on this court-martial that we’re
working on, blah, blah, blah, so then I go out, and then I’m up at wing legal, and the
executive officer’s up there, and he says to me, what are you doing up here? And I don’t
remember what I told the colonel, you know, and so I make up some story about I’m
going to do a special services inventory of softball equipment or whatever it is, and then
these stories come back, and, well, you told the colonel this, and you told that, you
know, so we have to write our lies down, and even then we got the wrong days list, and
it’s just, but the truth is not acceptable, so we have to tell these stories, these incredible
stories, and people know. You know, they know, and I think they just go, hey, he’ll be
transferred in three more months.
(25:41 – 25:53)
The next command can worry about him or whatever, but that was hard because I knew I
was lying, and I knew I was lying to myself. I knew I was lying to my family. Oh, yeah, I’ll
be home.
(25:53 – 26:00)
Oh, don’t worry. Of course I’ll be home for your birthday party. Of course I’ll be at your
graduation.
(26:00 – 26:16)
Of course I’ll be at your softball game. It’s the big game, isn’t it? Remember saying all
those things? Of course, and now we got to see them in the morning. Dad, where were
you? Well, you see, and you could tell.
(26:16 – 26:27)
You know, I’d make up this story. We had an emergency last night. Someone was
threatening to attack the country, and we all had to stay at work, you know, and they
would just be looking.
(26:27 – 26:47)
They would say those words, but you knew what they were thinking, and it was hard. It
was just hard being a drunk because one of the things we had to do was to pretend that
there was nothing wrong. It’s the only disease I know where you’re not allowed to display
the real symptoms of how sick we really are.
(26:47 – 27:24)
You’re not allowed. You’ve got to keep showing up because if you don’t keep showing up,
they’re going to ask you about your drinking, and heaven forbid they should ask us
about our drinking because we might have to stop, and that would be death, and so it
required this incredible willpower to shake all night, sweat, be terrified about the next
morning, get up in the morning, throw up blood, try to get your clothes on and shave,
and you’re shaking and cutting your face and all that and driving down to work, and
you’re not sure what you’re supposed to be doing that day, and somebody sees you.
How you doing? Great.
(27:25 – 27:31)
You remember that, being able to put that face on? Great. How you doing, man? Yeah,
yeah. Oh.
(27:32 – 27:43)
God. That was so hard to pretend that nothing was wrong. There we were, racing along,
full speed ahead.
(27:43 – 28:22)
Where’s my, got my plane ready? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Going out there, sucking up that
oxygen, trying to get over the hangover, just, oh, come on, man, let’s go, let’s go, and
then get up, oh, you know, and this stuff is moving fast, and you need good reflexes, and
there came a time that I began to realize that I was not safe to fly with. You know what I
mean? It was just me in the plane, but there was, like, me, the passenger, and me, the
pilot, you know, it was like, man, you, you’re losing it up here.
(28:22 – 30:15)
You don’t, I don’t think I want to go with you anymore, but I had to go with me, and what
I was doing, I was having alcohol withdrawals in the airplanes, and, because I wasn’t
drinking for 12 hours prior to flight, and you don’t drink for 12 hours, you are going
through withdrawals big time, and so, God, it was just awful, and I’d sweat, and I couldn’t
see, and I just had some terrible experiences, but again, you just go, hey, yeah, great,
great, great, and I could hardly wait, and finally, there came a time, I never crashed or
hurt anybody, but there were so many close calls, I can’t tell you, and in 1963, up in
Cherry Point, I was flying the F-8s in a photo squadron in Cherry Point, I finally had, I
turned the engine master off on takeoff, by mistake, and turned it back on, and the thing
re-lit, which happens about one in a million, and then I had some kind of emergency, I
couldn’t remember the procedure for it, and I damn near pranged the airplane, but I got
that straightened out, and there was three or four other things that happened, and
finally, I went to the doctors. I just went in, and I said, I’m having some problems in the
planes, and they said, what? Well, losing consciousness. LAUGHTER I can’t see the
instrument panel, and I’m getting real dizzy, like I’m going to fall over, and I fly
sometimes with my hand on the ejection seat, just in case I pass out, I’ll fire out of the
plane, so they’re going, you’re not flying anymore, you are grounded from flying, we’re
going to send you to Pensacola, and we’re going to let all the experts in the medical
field, in the Navy, examine you, and find out what this is.
(30:15 – 30:41)
So I come down there, and now I’m just terrified, because I’ve got people looking right at
me. Doctors of all types, psychiatrists, dentists, heart specialists, they’re all looking in to
find out what might be wrong with me, and you know, for an alcoholic, that’s an awful
spot to be in. We’re going to look inside you, and see what might be wrong, and they
couldn’t find anything.
(30:41 – 31:35)
All they could find was that I was very thin, I shook a lot, and I sweat, I had bloodshot
eyes, and my voice trembled, high blood pressure, alcohol fumes all the time, and at this
point, there were no such thing as alcoholism, there were no treatment programs, or
anything like that in the military, so it had to be a different diagnosis. And at the end of
two weeks, I got my final write-up, and they said, you are no longer allowed to fly, you
are removed from flight status, due to a childhood fear of flying, that has just manifested
itself, and we are analyzing your psyche, and you never should have been a pilot in the
first place. I went, wow.
(31:37 – 32:08)
It took 13 years to find that out, that I never should have been a pilot. And so I was sent
back to Cherry Point, I waited three months for headquarters Marine Corps, what are
they going to do with a has-been pilot, and I’ll be darned if I don’t get orders to be an air
traffic controller. So I go to air traffic control school, and that’s what I did in the last year
of my drinking, but fortunately, when I checked into the unit over in Japan, the senior
enlisted man took one look at me and said that I wasn’t allowed near the radar, and that
was good.
(32:08 – 33:03)
So during that year, my last year of drinking, I just sat around a Quonset hut, I drank
vodka and grain alcohol, I’d mix it with juice, I tried to eat cereal sometimes, I didn’t go
to happy hour anymore, I didn’t drink with anybody, I just sort of stayed in the Quonset
hut, and then went to work, and I lost 50 pounds, I had malnutrition, I just was surviving.
I mean, it was just, I don’t know, it’s hard to describe, but it was really scary. And I got
orders back to Quantico, and I went to a career school back there, and I’m having
problems in class, I can’t find the classroom that I’m supposed to be in, I can’t find the
school coming in the main gate, and I’m starting to hallucinate, you know, and I’m
starting to get into the DTs and stuff, you know, like people are moving the school, and
it’s a plot to drive me crazy.
(33:05 – 34:20)
And under those conditions, I had a seizure in the school, a grand mal seizure, I bit my
tongue, and they carried me out, and put me in Bethesda Naval Hospital, and after three
days of studying me to see what caused that convulsion, I still didn’t have a clue, I went
into the DTs, and I just freaked out, and started screaming and yelling up and down the
halls, and they put me in a straitjacket, and locked me up in the nut ward for six months,
they just, in you go, this man is crazy. So I’m in there with all the crazy people, and there
was two other drunks, and thirty legitimate occupants, manic depressives, and suicides,
and paranoids, and all this kind of stuff, and the three drunks. And it didn’t take long to
realize that the three drunks were outcasts from the legitimate mental illnesses, you
know what I mean? It was like, what are you doing in here? And then every so often the
psychiatrists in group therapy would have, the topic would be the alcoholics.
(34:21 – 34:45)
And then all these crazy people would sit around these chairs, and would hear what they
had to say about us alcoholics. I remember sitting there going, is this ridiculous? We’re
going to listen to crazy people decide what to do with us alcoholics. And you know what
they said? Almost to the every single person in there? You guys ought to stop drinking.
(34:45 – 35:25)
That’s what they said. And I remember going, no wonder they’re locked up in here,
coming up with a idea like that. So, that was a very low moment.
But I’ll tell you, it’s funny about how when we get down, I don’t care how low we get, we
still have a superiority complex. That is the most bizarre thing about alcoholics. When I
was first locked up in there, I mean, right after the DTs, I’m in the straight jacket, and
then they put you in the rubber room, and you’re in a bed with sides on it, you know, like
a crib.
(35:27 – 35:41)
Somebody had wet the bed that I was in, you know, that type of thing. And I’m in one
crib, and there’s two other guys in cribs, and we’re just lying there, just pure agony.
You’re just coming out of wherever you’ve been, some kind of a hell.
(35:42 – 36:23)
And after a couple days, they let you smoke a cigarette. They bring a cigarette in. You
have no belt buckles, no sharp objects, no watches, no nothing.
And no matches. And so to get a cigarette lit, you know what I mean? You know how we
all smoked back then. And so you get to the end of the cigarette, and the guy in the crib
next to me was close enough that as I was going to crash and pass out for a while, I
could give him the cigarette, and he could light another one, and keep it going until I
came to again, and he could have, give me the cigarette, you know what I mean? But
the guy in the third bed was out of range.
(36:24 – 36:53)
You know what I mean? So after the corpsman lit everybody’s cigarette, his is gone,
we’re passing it back and forth, and pretty soon, he’s looking over with those eyes, you
know, like, God, I’m dying for a cigarette. And I remember looking through the slats of
my crib, saying to myself, looking at that guy, there’s a guy whose life is unmanageable
over there. You know what I mean? He can’t even keep a cigarette going.
(36:58 – 38:01)
You know, you don’t get any lower than that, but I’m still able to to talk that way, and
think that way, and so one day in November of 64, a corpsman came into the nut ward,
said all drunks fall in, right face, and we were on our way to an A.A. meeting, in the
hospital, Tuesday nights, down, three guys from Bethesda told their story, it was all
exciting, and I told them, man, if I ever run into a guy with a drinking problem, I’m
sending him around to see you all, you know, and they they poked at me, and gave me
some of the A.A. hard truth, and all that, but it didn’t take, and when I was let out as an
outpatient, told to never take a drink or my career’s over, I go, they didn’t mean that,
they meant if you ever got drunk, so the first weekend I’m home, I have a beer, and all
week long, all I can think about is I had a beer, and nothing happened. I had a beer, and
nothing happened. I thought the first beer got you drunk.
(38:02 – 38:17)
I had a beer, and nothing happened. Hey, you want to hear what happened to me? I had
a beer, and nothing happened. I couldn’t even sleep because of that beer, that I was so
excited at being a former alcoholic, you know what I mean? I had a beer, nothing
happened to me, not a thing.
(38:18 – 39:28)
It was like I was exhausted at the end of the week with this new freedom from alcohol,
you know what I mean? It was such an obsession, you wouldn’t believe it, and so on the
way home, I bought like a year’s supply of vodka, one-fifth, I was going to have one drink
every weekend, and I got drunk, and I decided I better join the outside A.A. over the
weekend, or they would throw me out of the Marine Corps, you know what I mean? So at
least I’m in A.A. I’ll use that as a cover, I don’t remember why, but I called A.A., and
that’s when that sponsor of mine came over, a big Marine, and he’s still my sponsor, he’s
still up in Quantico, or just south of Quantico, and he’s been my sponsor for 34 years,
and it is a wonderful relationship to have somebody in your life that long, and of course
in the beginning, his entire program for me was shut up and sit down. That was sort of…
And I’d say, what about going to a discussion meeting? He’d go, a discussion meeting?
Why would we go to a… so I could tell something? What do you know? You don’t know
anything. We’ll go to a discussion meeting when you have six months.
(39:29 – 39:49)
I want you to go to speaker meetings and sit in the front row and listen. And I’m going,
but I have so much to offer. And I remember trying to tell somebody one night, I said,
you know, some innocent guy probably had four months, and I was still an outpatient
from the nut ward, but I’m there.
(39:53 – 40:13)
And I’m talking to him, and I’m going, you know, these steps are great, but I think there’s
a lot beyond something like that. I’d like to share with you some of the courses that I had
up at Yale. Some of the great thinkers of the world.
(40:13 – 40:38)
And a guy said, I’m not sure I want to listen to a guy who’s wearing a wristband from a
nut ward. So if you’re new and you notice that you don’t win many arguments in AA, I
can tell you why. Because AA deals with results, not theories.
(40:40 – 40:51)
And your results aren’t that great if you just got here. If there’s somebody who just got
here, I’m going to make a big guess. Your last year was bad.
(40:53 – 41:18)
How about that? I don’t even know your name, and I… One of my Carnac routines. So if
you have the greatest theory in the world about life, don’t let anybody see you. Because
your results are terrible.
(41:19 – 41:27)
And AA’s results are remarkable. And that’s what happens. We come in and we go, if you
want what we have, look where you are.
(41:28 – 41:45)
And look where we are. Look at all of us. We’re sitting in here.
We have clothes that fit. We have cars with current registrations. We have business
cards, high phone numbers, two checking accounts.
(41:47 – 42:29)
We have things going. And you don’t. You’re afraid to answer the phone.
You’re afraid to open your mail. You’re afraid of people. You have no hope.
You’re thinking of suicide. Or is that the newest thing? Little marks on the wrist. So your
results are terrible.
Why can’t you abandon your plan for living? Just based on the results it gets. And then
look at this plan for living, just based on the results that you see. You see sober people,
happy people.
(42:29 – 42:37)
You have to get happy. That’s what sobriety’s all about. The miracle isn’t that we don’t
drink.
(42:37 – 42:43)
You can do that in a nut war. You can do that in jail. The miracle is to be happy with not
drinking.
(42:43 – 42:52)
Hey, it’s Friday night, and I’m going to be not drinking, and I’m so happy about it. That’s
what sobriety is. It’s freedom from alcohol.
(42:53 – 43:14)
Alcohol isn’t here. You know, in the intellectual world, problem solving is done
intellectually. We look at these steps and then we go, oh yes, if I untie this, if I move
that, if I move that, we can see that the problem is solved.
But you know, in the spiritual world, problems don’t get solved. They get removed. They
just aren’t there to bother us anymore.
(43:15 – 43:24)
We get spiritually lifted above stuff that used to just trample us. We really were
overpowered by the world. It’s too much.
(43:24 – 43:37)
How many times have we said that? I don’t know exactly what it is, but life is just too
much for me. Well, life is supposed to be too much for just you. I don’t think we’re
supposed to be able to get through life on our own.
(43:38 – 44:01)
I think that’s why we can’t make it. So that we’re forced to reconsider asking for help and
reconsider the proposition that there might be this loving God that everybody’s talking
about that we have never seen, we’ve heard about, we might have believed in it, but
we’ve never experienced it. We came close to experiencing it chemically.
(44:03 – 44:20)
You know what I mean? That felt like something wonderful, like a higher power and it
kind of worked from the inside out and it changed the world without changing anything.
We still didn’t have any money, but we were happy. So it was sort of like what we’re
talking about, but this is a whole different ballgame.
(44:20 – 44:31)
It just asks you to be honest about your situation. Don’t you think it’s time to abandon
your plan? It stinks. Your plan is awful.
(44:32 – 44:39)
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking the same thing that I thought. I know it
stinks, but I thought it up.
(44:42 – 44:52)
I got in this mess all by myself. Nobody helped me. I’m in jail and I did it, man.
(44:53 – 44:57)
I stuck up to them. I didn’t conform. I never asked for help.
(44:57 – 45:07)
I just go out and do my own thing. But your own thing stinks. How about dropping the
whole thing? That’s what surrender is.
(45:07 – 45:17)
Reach in your pocket. Get the white flag and just go goodbye old ideas. I don’t have a
clue what’s out there, but come on over and get me.
(45:18 – 45:44)
That is how you get spiritual. All we got to do is get open. You don’t have to see
anything.
You don’t have to believe in anything. Matter of fact, our 12 steps are a series of actions
that we take that we don’t believe in. How could you believe in them by reading them?
Do you believe those steps by looking at them? Somebody says the answer to all your
problems are contained in these 12 steps.
And you go down those steps. Do you remember doing that? I don’t see anything in
there. Okay.
(45:48 – 46:16)
Restoring me to sanity? Hey, I already am sane. Turn my life over? Hey, I don’t care.
What am I going to inventory? I don’t see this.
Admit it to God. Where’s the money step? Where’s the job step? Where’s the sex step? I
don’t see anything in here for me. I could see doing this just before you die.
(46:21 – 46:38)
So you slide under the door and go in there with all the other people that were behaving
themselves all the way through life. But why straighten out too soon? So the steps don’t
make any sense. And so why are we going to end up taking them? Because alcohol
makes us take them.
(46:39 – 47:19)
You ever think about that? We don’t really get talked into anything. We just have come
up against a situation, and if you’re new, I’ve got to tell you this. And probably your
sponsors haven’t told you this yet, but around every AA meeting in the grass about this
high are half-pints of vodka patrolling.
They just go around and around and around. And they stay real low in the grass, just
going around, going around, waiting for someone to come out and says, I don’t need AA.
I’m sick of this.
I can do it on my own. Then they jump up. And you look over and you go, I’ve got a halfpint of vodka with a seal on it.
(47:20 – 47:41)
Must be God’s will that I have a drink here. So now the process begins of getting ready to
take the steps. And you drink the vodka and the vodka goes, boom, boom.
You ready to take the steps yet? And you go, no. And it’s just, boom. And then we get
driven down and finally we get an open mind.
(47:41 – 47:57)
And we go, I don’t want to do this anymore. Are you ready to take certain actions? So it’s
just wonderful that we were given something that drove us down to have an open mind. I
don’t think I ever would have chosen this.
(47:57 – 48:38)
I’m too intellectual. So I’m grateful that I’m an alcoholic. Not that I’m in AA.
I’m grateful for that. But I’m grateful that I’m an alcoholic. Because it forced me to
reconsider every fundamental idea that I had put together in my head in favor of these
wonderful spiritual principles.
I was willing to surrender everything in order to get out of the mess that I was in and the
pain that I was in. And aren’t we lucky. And sometimes I imagine, what if I had never had
a drink? Well then I would be an elderly skinny neurotic who never had a drink who’s
walking around wondering what life is all about.
(48:39 – 48:51)
And I never would get in enough trouble to ever do anything about it. That’s just my own
analysis of myself. And so alcohol was a great gift to me.
(48:51 – 49:05)
Because it has opened the door to an Alice in Wonderland existence that I never
dreamed existed. The things that I like today that are my favorites were never on my list.
Serenity.
(49:06 – 49:45)
Being humble. Being useful. Those words, I never heard of those words before in my life.
If you had your choice between, you can have anything that you wish for or you could
have God’s will. I understand now that I would be cheating myself to death if I chose
everything I could wish for. Because everything I wish for would be ego driven.
It would just be, oh more of this and more of that and more of this. And then I come in
here and I find out it’s just the opposite. The energy flows the other way.
It doesn’t flow from the world into us. It flows from inside of us out to the world. Just like
we heard about at the beginning of the meeting.
(49:45 – 49:56)
That’s why nothing felt right. When we were out trying to get everything we were going
the opposite way of happiness. We had the flow going the wrong way.
(49:56 – 49:58)
It was me, me, me. I want to be this. I want to be that.
(49:59 – 50:06)
And then we come in here and we finally say you have to surrender that. You know our
12th tradition. Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our principles.
(50:07 – 50:25)
Anonymity. What it does, it takes the identity that we had before we got here. You know
your identity.
I was talking about this the other night. Sometimes the best way of describing our
identity is our resume. Everybody in here got a resume? Just in case there’s downsizing
somewhere.
(50:26 – 50:58)
And you got that. What’s that thing got on there? It has everything good about you that
will entitle you to a lot of goodies from the world. And you put down everything you can
think of.
I even helped little old ladies across the street. And I went to this school and I have a
masters and I have this and I have that. And I read these 12 books and I also belong to
this club and I also know the president of that bank.
And here’s my references. So when you see this, you ought to be attracted to me and
want to pay me a lot of money. And that’s what it is.
(50:58 – 51:07)
And when you take our 12th tradition and says, that’s who you are? I don’t think that’s
who you are. Let’s go back and take another look. Anonymity is the spiritual foundation.
(51:07 – 51:27)
You know who you are? You’re a child of God. We say in AA I’m an alcoholic. I’m Sandy
I’m an alcoholic.
I don’t give you my whole resume. I just say I’m Sandy, I’m an alcoholic. But if I had to
look at that resume, you know what would be on there? Here is a list of all the attributes
that God gave to me that enables me to be useful in the world.
(51:27 – 51:43)
So this is what I can bring to your office to help this situation, to help this grow, to help
this. And when you do that, when all of us do that, it’s a program of attraction. And
people are attracted to this kind of a person.
(51:43 – 52:37)
And they want you to work there. And they want to pay you more money than you were
going to ask for. This is what happens when we are transformed from the inside out.
And we change the energy so that this higher power that says in the big book, the
fundamental idea of God was born deep down inside of us much as was the idea of a
friend. And there it sits waiting for us to open the channel to it like the prayer of St.
Francis says. And we can’t open that channel until we get rid of the character defects or
the blockages that are blocking this out.
If you think about our higher power as in biblical terms as the still small voice within.
Until we can hear that through conscious contact, we can never have this inner
awareness that it’s real. But character defects make a lot of noise.
Resentments go rawr, rawr. And you’re trying to hear the still small voice. You can’t hear
it.
(52:38 – 52:47)
We have to get rid of these things. You know, spiritual growth consists of getting rid of
things rather than getting anything. You ever think about that? It’s like riding in a
gondola.
(52:47 – 52:53)
The more you throw out, the higher you go. The more we can get rid of. Old time has
been in AA for many, many years.
(52:53 – 53:02)
They say, what are you doing these days? Oh, six and seven. Six and seven. Looking for
something else that’s wrong and trying to get rid of it.
(53:03 – 53:22)
You know, we always wanted to be big shots. Well, the secret is to become a small shot.
We want to become as small as we can.
I’m like this small. And something that small, when it goes through the world, offers no
resistance. It’s our egos that get in the way.
(53:22 – 53:34)
Our egos will send out and we’ll be 900 yards wide and a foot deep. And we’re wondering
why it’s so hard to go through the ocean of life. And that’s our self-centeredness as we
try to push it.
(53:35 – 53:58)
And we get rid of all that and simply become one alcoholic, carrying this message to the
next. And the rewards that come into our lives are absolutely unbelievable. If you knew, I
wish you a Merry Christmas.
I wish you the blessed sobriety you are in for the surprise of your life. Don’t let go. Get a
sponsor.
(53:58 – 54:03)
Hang on for the full ride and you will be amazed. Thank you. Good night.
(54:04 – 54:07)
applause applause applause
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