Sandy B. from Tampa, FL at Tues-Thurs Group Anniversary – Venice, FL – 1/17/2008

Sandy B. from Tampa, FL at Tues-Thurs Group Anniversary – Venice, FL – 1/17/2008

(0:03 – 0:17)
Hi everybody, my name is Carol and I’m an alcoholic. Hi Dave, and a member of this
group. And when we were at a business meeting and Gene said Sandy would be coming
to speak, I said, oh, I want to chair that meeting.
(0:18 – 0:28)
And then they said, do you know that if you chair the meeting, you have to delegate all
the different committees. I said, oh, well, no, maybe I don’t want to chair. But you
volunteered, Carol.
(0:28 – 0:49)
And so why don’t you volunteer? And I’m really glad that I did volunteer. And I just want
to thank everybody for all the help that you’ve given us. And anyway, when I first got
sober in Washington, in Maryland, I had a spiritual advisor that actually was just really
paying a lot of attention to me because I was a very sick person.
(0:50 – 1:09)
And he told me about this talk downtown at the Psychiatric Institute and he thought that
I would gain something from it if I came. So I did, and it was a very small room, and you
couldn’t get a seat unless you got there an hour early. And it was Sandy, and he was
talking about one of the steps every week.
(1:10 – 1:36)
He sat up with the first step, and then he’d go right through all the traditions, too. And
then the crowd got too great, so we had to move to another place, another psychiatric
institute that had a hall, right? And we got there. And the thing of it was, Sandy had a
way of bringing the steps to life for me.
(1:38 – 1:54)
He was funny, and yet he never deviated from the literature. I’d be reading the
literature, and I’d say, well, that was what Sandy was talking about. Well, after we
overcrowded that place, then we had to move to a big auditorium at Sibley Hospital.
(1:55 – 2:08)
And then after we upgrew there, we had to move to NIH. And that was the last place that
I heard Sandy on a Saturday morning. I went every single Saturday for the first seven
years of my sobriety.
(2:08 – 2:36)
And I taped all the talks on all the steps, and I gave them all away to other alcoholics
that I knew that I felt could get a lot out of them, too, like I did. So now I have no takes
left, but I will have one from tonight. And while I’m saying that, if anyone would like a
tape of Sandy’s talk tonight, if you just check with Suzanne up at the desk before you
leave, and believe me, they’re worth it.
(2:37 – 2:47)
So with that, I’d like to introduce Sandy. Thank you. Hi, Bill.
(2:49 – 2:59)
Thank you very much, and good evening, everybody. My name’s Sandy Beach, and I’m
an alcoholic. And, boy, I can tell you, if I lived down here, I’d be a member of this group.
(3:01 – 3:24)
I mean, boy, you study those two books and have this much enthusiasm, you can’t go
wrong. I mean, it’s just wonderful to stay in the literature and stay in the path that was
carved out all those years ago, so that when you pass on a message to the next person,
it’s not diluted. It’s the same message, the one that gets all these great results.
(3:24 – 3:36)
And so there’s no better way of doing it than staying right in the message as it was laid
down. And so I tell you, I think you’re on the right track with that kind of a deal. And I like
both books.
(3:36 – 3:58)
I think that they complement each other in just the most wonderful ways, where points
are made in the 12 and 12 that are missing in the big book, and vice versa. There’s
things in the big book that couldn’t possibly be done any better, like the chapter of the
agnostic. I mean, God, you talk about an explanation of step two.
(3:58 – 4:09)
It just doesn’t get any better than that. And so I’m just very excited to be part of this. My
friend Bill and I drove down and had a nice visit.
(4:09 – 4:24)
And I always like company when I go on these trips because it’s just fun to talk about.
And we got here early, and we went to Mel’s to hang out. Obviously, we picked a nice
spot that I could tell as soon as I walked in there.
(4:24 – 4:36)
So we had lots of coffee and a few little snacks and this and that. And we just talked
about AA and life and spirituality. And the more we talked, the more happy we got.
(4:37 – 4:57)
It was just like you’re getting on a high over there at Mel’s, just talking about not talking
about football, not talking about politics, not talking about any of those things, just
talking about what we have here in this program and what the real important things in
life are. And this is the deal. This is where the main event is.
(4:57 – 5:14)
And all that other stuff, it just isn’t part of what’s important. And it’s a wonderful journey
to make the transition from the material world over to the spiritual world as far as we
can get. And that’s why letting go of things is so important.
(5:15 – 5:21)
It isn’t a question of learning anything. It’s a question of unlearning things. Oh, wrong
about that, too.
(5:21 – 5:34)
Pew, out the door. And the more things I’m wrong about, the less burden I’m carrying
and the less baggage I have. Wow, I’d like to find 100 more things I’m wrong about this
year and get them out of the system.
(5:34 – 5:38)
It’s not embarrassing. It’s exciting. Yeah, I am wrong about that.
(5:38 – 5:43)
Wow. Goodbye. I mean, it’s just getting rid of old ideas that aren’t true.
(5:44 – 5:53)
That has to be one of the healthiest things we can be doing. Of course, my ego doesn’t
like to be wrong, and I’m in a constant struggle with him. Oh, my God.
(5:54 – 6:06)
I want to talk about AA tonight, but I’ll take 10 minutes and tell you a brief version of my
story in case there’s new people here who don’t believe I’m an alcoholic. Look at that
guy. He doesn’t look like an alcoholic.
(6:06 – 6:14)
I doubt if he really is. Maybe he’s just a speaker or something. Anyway, I grew up in New
Haven, Connecticut, a long time ago.
(6:14 – 6:28)
My sobriety date is December 7th, 1964, and I’ve had the same sponsor for 41 years,
which is a blessing. He’s very ill. Bill T. has lung cancer, and I’m praying for him.
(6:28 – 6:41)
So if you have an extra prayer, send it up to Virginia because I’d like to see if we could
make it 50 years together. Wouldn’t that be something? Anyway, I grew up. I got one
sister.
(6:41 – 6:46)
She’s got 28 years in AA. My mother and father were very nice. They took good care of
us.
(6:47 – 7:05)
But from the earliest age, as I sat at the table with my mother and father and sister, the
four of us, I always felt like there was the three of them and me. Even there, I didn’t
belong at that same table. Now, I don’t know where I got that, but I had that sense of just
not belonging.
(7:06 – 7:10)
And my mother was Catholic. My father was Protestant. He had to convert.
(7:10 – 7:20)
His family almost left him. And so my sister and I sat in the Catholic church. She thought
it was the friendliest, nicest place in the world.
(7:20 – 7:30)
Oh, the nuns are so cute, and the Latin, and the priest. Oh, isn’t this fun? And I sat there
terrorized. I mean, it’s just a question of perception.
(7:30 – 7:40)
You know what I mean? We’re both seeing the same thing, and I got scared out of my
mind. I thought it was the most, oh, my God, I hated going. It was so tense.
(7:41 – 7:49)
And when I read stuff, I would take it in and go, oh, my God, I’m in trouble. I’m a bad
boy. Oh, my God, this is awful.
(7:50 – 8:02)
And when I was nine years old, I had my first insight, you know, when suddenly truth is
revealed to you personally. And I was looking at the crucifix. It was huge.
(8:02 – 8:09)
It was 20 feet tall hanging from the ceiling. And I was sort of staring at it, and it was like
it spoke to me. And it said, little boy, do you know what this is? Yeah.
(8:11 – 8:29)
Well, this is what God did to his only son that he loved. Ha! Ha! Guess what he’s going to
do to you. I fell over in a faint.
(8:29 – 8:39)
I mean, it was just, oh, my God. You know, so this is what’s going on inside of me and
was like that for many, many years. And, of course, on the outside, you have to pretend
you’re cool.
(8:40 – 8:52)
You know, on the inside, you’re not sure you’re going to be standing in another 15
seconds, but you’re cool. Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I was a good student
and an athlete, and my father got me into a little prep school in New Haven.
(8:53 – 8:56)
I went right into Yale University. I hadn’t had a drink. I got there.
(8:58 – 9:10)
All the guys that came from all over the country, they all were smart, rich. They all knew
everything. And I was a townie who worked on the buildings in construction, and I’d be
working on them and then going to school.
(9:10 – 9:36)
And I just, you know, I said, I don’t belong in here. And I knew that in my freshman year,
they were going to call the thousand freshmen out onto the old campus, and the dean
was going to come out and go, gentlemen, we’ve been doing a little checking, and we
have an imposter in our midst, and there he is, and they were going to point at me, and
everybody was going to know, and they were all going to say, yeah, we knew he didn’t
belong here. So that was the comfort level that I had.
(9:37 – 9:42)
And everybody’s drinking, and I’m not. I’m trying to get high grades. I want to try out for
the track team.
(9:43 – 9:47)
I want to see what I can do. And my roommates are going, come on, you’re in college.
You ought to be drinking.
(9:48 – 9:51)
You’re 19. It’s fun. It’ll make you feel good.
(9:51 – 9:58)
No, no, that’s all right. That’s all right. But there came a night, and I always mention this
in every talk I give because this is what makes me an alcoholic.
(9:58 – 10:14)
My name was typed up on a list to go into this room at 8 that night, and it was a social
mixer. There was 30 names on there of guys from different parts of the country, and the
object was go get to know each other. It sounds like a simple thing.
(10:15 – 10:32)
That was like going into combat to me, to go in a group of strangers that I don’t belong
in and go actually try and talk to them was, oh, my God. And I got there, and I said,
you’ve got to go up. Just go up and stick your hand out.
(10:32 – 10:48)
Just don’t stop being so afraid. So I go in there, and they’re divided up in groups talking,
and so I started right over to that first group of six guys, and I got about three feet away,
and all six of them turned. You know how people can talk with their eyes? And they just
went, we don’t want to know you.
(10:48 – 10:55)
We have enough people in this group. Don’t come any further. It was just as clear as a
bell coming right from their eyes, and I went.
(10:55 – 11:02)
It stopped me in my tracks. It almost took my breath away. That much rejection, just like
that, just blatant.
(11:03 – 11:15)
Well, actually, I’m going over here, and as I turned, those guys turned. No, you’re not.
I’m going over there, and everywhere I went, there was that same clear message from
those eyes.
(11:16 – 11:19)
Stay away from us. So I didn’t meet anybody. I didn’t meet anybody.
(11:19 – 11:33)
I started, started, started, and I was like, well, I’ve got to get out of here, which I
normally did, but there was a bartender there, and I said, geez, maybe I’ll have a drink
and feel good. That was all I said to myself. They said it makes you feel good, so I had
one.
(11:33 – 11:42)
Nothing happened. I had two. Talking with the bartender, I got halfway through the third
one, and I decided, I don’t know if this stuff makes you feel good or not, and I put it
down.
(11:42 – 11:58)
I think I was getting ready to leave, and I looked back, and I can still feel it. It was as if
those 30 mean guys were gone, and it was replaced by 30 of the friendliest guys I’ve
ever seen. Everyone in that room wanted to know me.
(11:59 – 12:05)
They were all looking at me. Join our group, please, please. Join our group, and I’m
looking.
(12:06 – 12:13)
Oh, my God, these people are wonderful. This is just, it was like I just went into another
world. It was the greatest world.
(12:13 – 12:23)
I couldn’t believe it, and so I just said, yeah. And I started walking over towards them,
and then I felt something else different. I felt like they would be lucky to know me.
(12:26 – 12:34)
You know what I mean? They’re right. Here I come. I mean, it was a whole new thing.
(12:34 – 12:56)
And you talk about intuitively knowing how to handle situations that used to baffle you. I
was now free to be me. All of my creativity, all of that freedom to be spontaneous, all of
me that had been bottled up due to fear and anxiety and whatever, exploded.
(12:56 – 13:01)
I had something to say about everything. I don’t care where you’re from. Oh, yeah,
Wisconsin, the Badgers, yeah, yeah, yeah, blah, blah, blah.
(13:02 – 13:10)
I mean, I just went on and on and on. I just talked and talked until everybody left. I was
never so comfortable.
(13:10 – 13:24)
I said, jeez, this is the world they were talking about. I remember people saying, isn’t it a
great world? Isn’t it a great world? And I go, I don’t know what they’re talking about, but
now I did. Now I saw the world and the people in it for the first time the way I had heard
about it.
(13:25 – 13:37)
Up until then, it was not a friendly place, and people were not friendly. It was just not
very intimidating. So I said, well, if these three drinks did that, I wonder what 15 would
do or whatever.
(13:38 – 13:49)
So I went back and stayed with the bartender. And you know what happens when you
pour in about 15 or 20 drinks on the first night you ever drank anything. And I went back
to my room, and I’m deathly ill.
(13:49 – 14:04)
And in the bathroom, I spent most of the night sleeping on the tile next to the toilet,
which it’s good to discover that early. Something you use for the rest of your life. And it
was dying.
(14:04 – 14:19)
I got up in the morning, and this is important. I got up in the morning feeling like I had a
hatchet in my head and just splitting and dry heaving, just really sick. I sat there at
about 9 in the morning, and a thought occurred to me.
(14:19 – 14:36)
Are you going to drink again tonight? You know how long it took to come up with a yes?
That fast. Yes. This dying, this hatchet in my head, this thinking that I’m deathly ill is a
small price to pay for what I had last night.
(14:36 – 14:55)
That’s how important that transforming experience was. It was the equivalent of a
spiritual experience to suddenly be aware of the magnificence of the planet of all life and
all of that. I could see it, but I couldn’t see it sober.
(14:57 – 15:08)
And so I knew that alcohol was going to play an important part in my life from that day
forward. It was my new secret weapon. I suddenly felt like I should have been drinking in
grammar school.
(15:09 – 15:28)
I mean, it could have been a whole different journey. Well, I like to fantasize about if
there had been some kind of an angel that comes down and warns alcoholics. You know,
once we drink the first night, it’s pretty obvious who the alcoholics are and who the nonalcoholics are.
(15:28 – 15:44)
So if this guardian had come down and said, Look, before you drink anymore, we’ve got
to tell you some warning things. So we will explain the whole deal to you before you
proceed, okay? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Look, would you be willing to give up your high grades
for alcohol? Yes, that would be fine.
(15:44 – 15:49)
I’ll be glad to do that. Okay. Would you give up athletics for alcohol? Yes, I’ll be glad to
do that.
(15:49 – 15:56)
That’ll be fine. Well, how about, would you like to start getting in fights, your teeth
knocked out, almost thrown out of school? Yeah, that’ll be all right. That’ll be all right.
(15:57 – 16:01)
How about your family? They’re not going to like you. You’ll probably be ostracized.
That’ll be all right.
(16:01 – 16:24)
Well, what about your very soul? Would you be willing to give that up? Yes, I don’t use it.
I don’t think it’s very important. Now, nobody asked all those things, but I realized my
state of mind was, yes, I was willing to go to any length to stay in that world that I just
got a glimpse of.
(16:25 – 16:37)
And that became a top priority for me. That was where I always was seeking to get. So
you had to go through the workday so you could show up for life at about 530.
(16:38 – 16:45)
And then you go, hi. So this day didn’t count. That’s where you got drinking money.
(16:45 – 16:51)
But here we go. And you walk in and you go, turn it on. We’re ready to rock and roll.
(16:52 – 17:00)
I’m going to be transformed. And that’s what alcohol did for me. It did a lot of things for
me that it doesn’t do for non-alcoholics.
(17:00 – 17:17)
You don’t hear non-alcoholics when you ask them about, what does alcohol mean in your
life? You don’t hear them say, oh, it’s the secret of life. You know, they say, oh, it’s how I
relax a little or it makes food taste better. How about that line? It makes food taste
better.
(17:18 – 17:37)
Is that going down or coming up? What are you talking about? So I barely graduated. The
Korean War is going on. The draft.
(17:37 – 17:42)
Everybody had to join the military. There’s five or six of us drinking beer. And somebody
says, let’s join the Marine Corps.
(17:42 – 17:46)
Yeah, let me finish my beer. Wow. Wow.
(17:48 – 18:01)
That was a rude awakening when I got there. But as time went on, I started just loving it.
There was this camaraderie, this closeness, this, wow, it was powerful.
(18:02 – 18:10)
And it took six months after the boot camp thing to become a platoon leader. All Marines
are trained as platoon leaders. Then you can be trained for something else.
(18:11 – 18:21)
I saw a movie about pilots, a training movie. I’d never been in a plane, but I was
intrigued by it. So I asked the major, what about the flight school? Oh, you don’t want to
do that.
(18:21 – 18:26)
They want to keep you in the infantry. You have to sign up for three more years. I said,
I’ll sign up.
(18:26 – 18:32)
I’m going to go check that out. Well, I passed the physical. Next thing I got orders to
Pensacola.
(18:33 – 18:43)
I got married. I met this wonderful woman from Guilford, Connecticut, and we took off on
our honeymoon flying down to Pensacola. And I got airsick on the plane to Atlanta.
(18:45 – 18:58)
I got airsick on the plane to Pensacola. The first six flights, I got airsick in the SNJ, and I’d
have to clean it out after the flight. My instructor is going, I don’t think you’re going to
make it.
(18:58 – 19:06)
But the motion sickness went away. And then I started being number two in my class,
number five. It was just like I was meant to do this.
(19:07 – 19:15)
It was the most exciting thing. So it took 18 months. I come out the other end in a jet
fighter squadron.
(19:16 – 19:26)
I’m at El Toro, California, waiting to go overseas, and I get over there for a 14-month
tour. The war is over. So there’s nothing to do but fly high-performance planes and drink.
(19:28 – 19:39)
And, God, that was just the most wonderful 14 months I’m over there. Bill flies a lot. And,
God, did we have fun.
(19:39 – 19:54)
And it was this unit. I just can’t get over how tight-knit everything was. When we went to
happy hour or to the officer’s club, you had a table for the squadron, had a model of the
plane in the middle, and you didn’t order a drink until the colonel got there, and then he
ordered for everybody.
(19:55 – 20:01)
Bring my boys a round of drinks. And the rounds came as fast as I could drink. That’s
how fast everybody else was drinking.
(20:02 – 20:07)
I thought I was in heaven. You know, you didn’t even have to sneak one. Boom, boom,
boom, boom.
(20:07 – 20:17)
Give my boys another round. So as far as I was concerned, we’re all drinking the same.
And we’re raising hell and out till 3, get up at 5, fly up flights all day.
(20:18 – 20:30)
And I’ve been there about seven months. And I just think back on this, it was just
amazing. I had a hero in there, this big redhead Irish guy, the maintenance officer, Major
Newport.
(20:30 – 20:39)
And I was out the end of the runway with him. We were getting ready to carrier qualify,
and you practice on the field. And some of our buddies were making these practice
landings.
(20:40 – 21:05)
And we were out there evaluating and critiquing and all that and just talking. And he
turned to me and he said, You know, Sandy, in a year and a half I’ll be a lieutenant
colonel, and I’m going to get my own fighter squadron, and I am going to make it the
best fighter squadron in the Marine Corps, and I’m going to get nothing but the best
pilots. And then he pointed at me, a young first lieutenant, and he said, And I want you in
that squadron.
(21:06 – 21:17)
And I’ll tell you, I felt like I had died and gone to heaven. And then he said, But I wouldn’t
let you drink. And I’m going, I drink with this guy every night.
(21:17 – 21:40)
What is that? I never understood until I got to AA that even in that crowd of guys, my
drinking scared him. I was drinking with an intensity or with an abandon or with
something that told him danger, danger, danger, danger, that guy right there. He didn’t
say that about anybody else.
(21:40 – 21:53)
He just zeroed in on me, and he was right. And over the next years, 12 years or so, I got
promoted to first lieutenant, I got promoted to captain. We had six children.
(21:54 – 22:08)
I finished a fighter pilot tour. I was a forward air controller with the Marine Division. I was
a flight instructor in Pensacola for three years, and then I went through photo school,
and I was up at Cherry Point during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and we had our photo
planes.
(22:08 – 22:15)
And on the outside, you would say, Look at this guy. You know, everything’s going good.
I’m just about to have it all over.
(22:16 – 22:38)
Because on the inside, alcohol is winning, and it’s getting urgent, and the whole inside is
starting to explode with anxiety and confusion, and the inability to stop drinking, even
though I would try and not have a drink for eight hours before I got in the plane. You
don’t drink for eight hours. You’re in withdrawal.
(22:39 – 23:06)
And that’s the worst thing to be in when you’re flying because you’re shaking and you’re
confused and your heart is racing and I can’t see very well, and I’m just having the
feeling that I don’t trust the pilot of the plane I’m in, which is me. I mean, I’m going, You
don’t know what you’re doing half the time, and your reflexes and all of that, and I’m
getting, and it got really, really bad. I almost did some very stupid things, but nothing
happened.
(23:06 – 23:23)
But I went to the doctors, and they went, What? What? What? What is that? My God,
you’ve got to go down to Pensacola and let the doctors look at you. And this was in the
early 60s, and they didn’t have alcoholism. It was not a disease in the Navy, so you
couldn’t be diagnosed as an alcoholic.
(23:23 – 23:27)
You had to be something else. And so I’m down there for two weeks. They’re testing me.
(23:28 – 23:36)
And several of the doctors, especially the dentist, I remember him going, You know, you
reek of alcohol. And I said, Well, I got drunk last night. And it was almost like, Oh, well,
that’s probably why you reek.
(23:36 – 24:16)
And then he just went on with, but I just stunk of alcohol all the time, high blood
pressure, disorientation, clammy, bloodshot eyes, trembling hands, all of the things. And
at the end of the two weeks, they decided that the psychiatrist said, You know what you
have? You have a childhood fear of flying that somehow was covered up for 12 years,
and so you can’t fly anymore. And that killed me because that was my whole identity,
but I had no inner fortitude to fight it.
(24:16 – 24:24)
I just went, Well, that’s that. But I had a regular commission. I was making a career, so
they had to give me a new specialty.
(24:25 – 24:46)
It took about three months, and I got my orders to become an air traffic controller. And I
made it through the air traffic control school, which is unbelievable. In that shape, to get
through that school, and my last year of drinking, I was in charge of an air traffic control
unit in Japan.
(24:47 – 25:00)
And fortunately, when I checked in, the senior enlisted men, who are the smartest of all,
saw me, and they just went, Captain, welcome aboard. Now, we were in tents down on
the end of the runway. God, it’s good to have you here.
(25:00 – 25:15)
Here’s your little place and coffee and all that. Sir, we’d appreciate it if you personally
never talk to an airplane or go near the radar. You just try to show up for work, and we’ll
do all the rest.
(25:15 – 25:24)
And that was what that year was. It was a frightening year, because now I drank around
the clock. I got malnutrition.
(25:24 – 25:29)
I couldn’t eat solid food. I lost 50 pounds. I stopped hanging out with my friends.
(25:29 – 25:33)
Didn’t even go to happy hour. I was trying to eat soup. I’d have vodka and soup.
(25:34 – 25:50)
I’d have this and… It was just… I was getting alcohol poisoning. I was very, very sick. And
the funny thing is, after I got sober in Washington, D.C., I ran into some of the guys that
were in that outfit, and they were so happy.
(25:50 – 25:57)
I had 20 years sobriety or something. We sort of had a reunion. And they said something
absolutely amazing when you think about the Marine Corps.
(25:59 – 26:08)
Now, the Marine Corps is famous. They won’t leave a dead Marine out on the battlefield.
They will go lose five Marines to go get them.
(26:08 – 26:19)
They just… You do not abandon anybody. I mean, this is just… That’s in the history books
all the way. Now, let me tell you what these guys said about my alcoholism.
(26:21 – 26:40)
They said, You know, Sandy, we knew you were dying, and there wasn’t anything we
could do for you. That’s a hell of a statement, isn’t it? That shows you the power of
alcoholism where these guys are saying there’s nothing we can do for you because they
didn’t know about AA. There’s no alcohol program.
(26:41 – 26:53)
And what they did, they just transferred the drunk onto the next unit and let them worry
about it, and eventually maybe he’d die or something would happen. He’d fall by the
wayside. But I thought about that line.
(26:53 – 26:59)
You were dying. There’s nothing we could do. It’s just like, God, if you guys can’t do
anything, no one can.
(27:01 – 27:12)
Anyway, I got back to Quantico, Virginia. I’m in a school to become a field grade officer,
all high levels. I was studying all this stuff, and I was starting to hallucinate.
(27:12 – 27:19)
I was really freaking out. I couldn’t find my desk. I’d come to the school, and I wouldn’t
know what classroom I was in.
(27:19 – 27:23)
I was very disoriented. One day I came in. I lived off the base.
(27:23 – 27:32)
I drove through the gates, saluted the century, drove up. The junior school was about
three big brick buildings. I drove up, and the buildings were gone.
(27:33 – 27:39)
I went, God damn. And I looked around, and they were gone. They were flat, gone.
(27:40 – 27:50)
So I drove back to the gates and reported. And the corporal saw me. I just drove in.
(27:50 – 28:00)
Now I’m driving out, and he’s going, but I made a U-turn. I came around. He said, Yes,
sir? I said, Corporal, junior school is gone.
(28:01 – 28:07)
I was just up there. He said, What? I said, Junior school is gone. He said, What? He got
the car with the red light.
(28:07 – 28:17)
Follow me. It was back. It was there.
(28:19 – 28:29)
And he turned, and he looked at me. He’s pointing, and I said, It’s back. It’s funny now,
but it was pretty scary then.
(28:32 – 28:43)
Anyway, in the school, a few days later, I had a grand mal seizure. I almost bit my
tongue in half. They got an ambulance, put me in the hospital, and once again, we start
the routine.
(28:43 – 28:50)
Wonder what caused the grand mal seizure. Maybe he’s studying too hard. What’s his
diet? Get my wife.
(28:50 – 29:12)
What does he eat? What could be causing this? I was there about five days, and five
days without booze, I went into the DTs, the delirium treatments, and I hallucinated
about the CIA. I was never so scared in my life. They were trying to break me mentally so
I’d be locked up in a mental institution forever when they had these memory tests.
(29:12 – 29:25)
None of it’s happening, but it’s just real. It’s so real, it’s unbelievable. Evidently, I broke
bad down the hallway, and they grabbed me and put me in a straitjacket and locked me
up in the nut ward for six months.
(29:26 – 29:45)
So that was my finale, so to speak. I made one more little try, and somewhere at the end
of four months, the AA group in that area talked to the head psychiatrist and said, you’ve
got alcoholics in there, you ought to let us bring an AA meeting in. Well, I don’t think we
have any alcoholics.
(29:45 – 30:07)
Yes, you do. So there were three of us in with the others who really didn’t like us there.
They felt that alcoholism was not a legitimate mental illness and what are we doing in
their nice place? But I went down, and I loved what these speakers had to say, but I
didn’t connect for myself.
(30:08 – 30:27)
Even in spite of all the evidence I had, I said, God, if I have a friend with a drinking
problem, these guys are the answer. This is wonderful. And at the end of the time, I was
now going back to duty after all those months, and they let you be an outpatient while
you’re getting ready to transition.
(30:27 – 30:33)
So I’m going home. It wasn’t long before I’m having a beer. They told me, if you had one
more drink, your career is over.
(30:33 – 31:02)
And then I have a vodka, and then I got a bottle of vodka in the car, and I’m bringing it
into the nut ward, and I know they’re going to get me. And paranoia is setting in. They’re
all looking at me, all the psychiatrists, and so over the weekend of Pearl Harbor Day,
1964, I called intergroup, and there was one other Marine in AA down at Quantico, my
sponsor, and he came to my house, picked me up, took me to my meeting.
(31:02 – 31:06)
I haven’t had a drink since. It just took. He was very powerful.
(31:06 – 31:17)
We went to meetings every night. We just did the whole nine yards, and that’s 41 years
ago, and lots of things have happened. I will mention this for those of you that are new.
(31:18 – 31:30)
Sometimes things happen, and you can’t understand why they’re happening, because
you think once you get sober, things should start straightening out. Well, I went to a
meeting every night for two years. I made coffee.
(31:30 – 31:33)
I spoke when I was there. I was sponsoring people. I never said no.
(31:34 – 31:45)
I was probably going six meetings a week. I just couldn’t have been more active in AA.
And in the military, you have to get promoted to major to make a career.
(31:47 – 32:03)
Otherwise, you have to leave, honorably, but you have to leave. And so my sponsor and I
were up for promotion to major, and you get two tries, and on the first try, neither one of
us made it, with our backgrounds and everything. On the second try, he made it, and I
didn’t.
(32:04 – 32:25)
So I felt that if I now am straightening out, I’m going to meetings, I’m a responsible
person, I’m doing all the things that God wants me to do, this new loving God, not that
one that you told me, oh, no, no, no, don’t worry about that one. This one loves you.
Well, now I’m being thrown out of the Marine Corps with six kids, and all those years are
wasted.
(32:25 – 32:37)
I get nothing. And I go, I don’t think this is, and this is a word we should never use, fair. I
don’t think this is fair.
(32:37 – 32:44)
I’ve since learned that fairness is a one-way street. It only goes out from me. It’s not
supposed to come to me.
(32:44 – 32:52)
The only thing that matters is, am I being fair? Forget anything else. That’s their
problem. Are they being fair? If not, then they’re going to suffer.
(32:53 – 33:04)
But it is a one-way street. Well, I didn’t know that, and I’m just, I’m upset with the Marine
Corps, I’m upset with my sponsor, but I’m mostly upset with God. I am just adamant that
he shouldn’t have done this.
(33:04 – 33:32)
What the devil is this? Boy, if you would have known me back then, every time I came to
a meeting, I mean, it was just whining at the top level, whining, and people that run in
the other room, I don’t want to hear that crap again, Sandy. And three months, I wouldn’t
talk to God, I wouldn’t pray, I mostly just said, thanks a lot, really appreciate it. I’m really
not finding a job.
(33:32 – 33:50)
I’m in a resentment. I can’t look. I’m consumed with this unfairness, and if I got a job, it
might be more fair, so I got to stay unemployed to stay resentful and keep this story
going about, oh, God, is this awful what happened.
(33:50 – 34:10)
And there was a little story in the Washington Post, one paragraph, I happened to see it,
it said, Marine Corps Instruction Team. That was what I was on. It was a wonderful job,
and it was headed by a general, and we went around the world and put on these
presentations about the future of the Marine Corps with film and slides, and it was quite
a show, eight hours long.
(34:11 – 34:28)
Marine Corps Instruction Team killed in plane crash in Denver. And I read, and all my
buddies are dead. And I went, boy, if you had your way, and it had been fair, and you got
promoted, you’d be dead.
(34:29 – 34:42)
And I remember going, well, that makes it a little different. You know what I mean?
That’s different. And then I knew, that God knew, I just read it.
(34:44 – 35:02)
And I sat there like a jerk, you know. And I think I mumbled, well, if you’d just told me
that was going to happen, I wouldn’t have been so upset about all these things. So
anyway, I just, I went on, I had real hard time getting this job, that job, just trying
everything and struggling and selling and all.
(35:02 – 35:20)
And I finally ended up with a wonderful thing, the credit union movement. All the credit
unions in the country, and geez, the military, we all rely on, they’re great organizations.
And I had a 20-year career as a lobbyist for all the credit unions in the country trying to
make sure they got good laws passed to help them.
(35:21 – 35:32)
It was just like being part of AA. It was just that kind of a family, and it was wonderful.
Then I retired, came down to Tampa about 10 years ago, and the AA up there is just as
good as it is down here.
(35:32 – 35:47)
It’s very exciting and life is wonderful. So now I’ve got some time left, and I would just
like to talk, just some thoughts about AA. And, I was going to start with this.
(35:47 – 36:21)
This thought occurred to me, I was talking with Tom Eye from North Carolina, some of
you may know Tom, he’s here about 49 years, and gives a great presentation about the
program. And we were on a program together, and he was looking at the service
structure of AA, and how it’s changed since in 50 years, and trying to make some
observations of could we fix it, or is it worse, or better, and all that, and did a wonderful
job. And he asked me to talk about the spiritual side of AA.
(36:22 – 36:48)
Have there been any changes, is there, do you see anything happening, and this and
that. And so, we got talking before the meeting, and then, I decided to start out with this,
and that’s what I’m going to start out with here tonight. And that is, that if you went back
60 years ago, in most mid-sized cities, and certainly all towns, there was only one
meeting a week.
(36:50 – 37:04)
You know, it’s getting started in all these different locations. One meeting a week. And
people were getting sober and staying sober at a rate that at least equal and perhaps
higher than today.
(37:06 – 37:22)
So, gosh, you ask yourself, well, how the heck do you stay sober when you’re brand new
on one meeting a week? And we came up with this. Well, number one, you really look
forward to the meeting. Well, four more days, I’ll be at a meeting.
(37:23 – 37:36)
So there’s that, it’s kind of exciting, looking forward to it. And then maybe you meet
somebody who’s in your group and you meet for coffee once a week. So you and another
gal or another guy sit and have coffee and talk about staying sober.
(37:37 – 37:58)
But in the final analysis, the secret was you prayed like hell. You prayed and prayed and
prayed. And today, we have 6 a.m. meetings, 8 a.m. meetings, noon meetings, 5 o’clock
meetings, 7 o’clock meetings, midnight meetings.
(37:58 – 38:01)
We got conferences. We got CDs. We got tapes.
(38:02 – 38:14)
We got pamphlets on every single thing you could possibly have a problem with. We
have a support system in place now. You don’t have to hardly pray at all.
(38:28 – 38:41)
And out of this support system and relying primarily on it, you can get pretty good
sobriety. Pretty good. Pretty good.
(38:42 – 39:02)
Let me tell you what pretty good is. Pretty good is Bill quotes Abraham Lincoln as saying,
the biggest enemy of the best is the good. It will prevent you from having what’s really
here more than when you’re really having a hard time, when you’re desperate.
(39:03 – 39:23)
See, good takes us to a certain level where and as Tom and I were talking, we went
through phases of this where you got to a comfort level and it’s a WEED program and
we’re all kind of there and you go along and you go along and it’s fun. You’re going out
to dinner. You’re doing this and you’re that.
(39:23 – 40:21)
But then you look back on the last ten years and you realize you personally haven’t
moved that much closer to your higher power. Everything is nice, but you, and we’re
very aware of this, we’re very aware that there’s much more available if we would just
do something and so that is what I got thinking about is once you get, it’s a WEED
program, up to a certain level and when you read the promises tonight, I see that, I know
our sponsors take us all the way through the steps, but as we take the steps and you get
to step nine and you read those promises and at the end we say, are these extravagant
promises? And then we go, we think not. They are extravagant.
(40:22 – 40:31)
They’re absolutely extravagant. Self-seeking will slip away. Let’s see you do that one on
your own.
(40:35 – 41:06)
Fear of people and economic insecurity will leave you? Okay, Fred, I’ve been bothering
you all these years, I’m out of here. That’ll leave you? You’ll intuitively know how to
handle situations that used to baffle you? All of these things, you know why we think
they’re not extravagant? Because God’s doing them and nothing’s extravagant for him,
but those are monstrous. Holy cow, that would be like saying, you’re going to own Utah.
(41:07 – 41:20)
Is that extravagant promise? Yeah. So those verbs are all spiritual verbs. Those verbs
don’t come from going to a therapist and figuring something out.
(41:20 – 41:30)
This is spiritually removing things. There’s nothing figured out there. Fear of people,
economic insecurity leaves you.
(41:30 – 41:37)
You don’t sit there and go, well, I have a financial plan, I’m going to save some money.
Yeah, now I see, now it’s starting to leave me. No, gone.
(41:38 – 41:57)
Gone, gone, gone. So, the last sentence. Somebody’s wondering, what does a spiritual
awakening look like? How about we suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we
couldn’t do for ourselves? That’s a pretty good description of a spiritual awakening.
(41:58 – 42:08)
Spiritual awakening is awareness. This stuff is going on all the time. I mean, God’s in our
lives all the time, but we’re not aware of it.
(42:08 – 42:38)
We just take credit for stuff, and we’re this, and we see everything with different rules
than the spiritual principles. And all of a sudden, somewhere in that ninth step, because
we’ve done all this work, and we’re ready now to live it a day at a time in the last three
steps, that’s where this spiritual awakening really takes place, is that awareness that, oh
my God, God’s doing this for me. Nobody told you, you suddenly felt it.
(42:39 – 42:47)
Conscious contact. Jackpot. We have this two points touching each other, and we
experience it.
(42:47 – 42:59)
So, we have this glimpse. And then in the big book, when Bill gets to the tenth step, what
does he say right off the bat? We have entered the world of the spirit. What an
interesting sentence.
(42:59 – 43:15)
Why would we enter the world of the spirit in the tenth step? Because we just had this
experience. So, from now on, we want to try and live by spiritual principles. Starting now.
(43:15 – 43:33)
Up till then, we have to get everything out of the way and settle with the past and get rid
of defects that are blocking the channel of this energy coming in. But now, it’s a question
of using that energy, maintaining that contact that they talk about at the end of the
tenth step. We don’t have a cure.
(43:33 – 43:52)
We have a daily reprieve contingent on maintaining our spiritual condition, which is the
awareness of God being with us. And so, it starts us into this wonderful realm of the
spirit. Now, the hard part is staying there.
(43:53 – 44:08)
And it’s interesting in the letter from Carl Young to Bill Wilson. I’m not going to go
through the whole history thing, but Bill wrote Dr. Young after AA had been around a
number of years. He’d forgotten.
(44:08 – 44:32)
It was almost an oversight that he wanted to give Dr. Young credit for helping to start AA
because of what he told Roland Hazard about I’ve done everything I can for you. And
Roland went out and got drunk. And that was, Dr. Young was considered just about the
end of the line in terms of human help.
(44:33 – 44:54)
And he turned to this man who he had treated for a year, went out and got drunk and
came back, and he said, There’s nothing I can do for you. That is the equivalent of no
human power could have relieved our alcoholism. Where are you going to go after Dr.
Young? And what he did was AA’s first step.
(44:55 – 45:09)
He eliminated all hope from Roland. There’s nothing I can do for you. Where do I grab?
What do I do? And then he said, There are exceptions.
(45:10 – 45:30)
People like you have had spiritual experiences which transformed them in a way that
enabled them to live a happy life. If I was you, I would try and go find one of those.
Roland wouldn’t have gone and tried to find one until he pulled the rug out.
(45:31 – 45:46)
If he had told them before he got drunk, we would call it character defects. And he
always loses. How do you like that judgment? And he always loses.
(45:46 – 46:06)
And then he went on to say, with one exception, a person who has a spiritual awakening
and is in a society that helps him maintain that spiritual awakening, which I maintain this
group does. This isn’t a group. It’s a society.
(46:07 – 46:27)
We actually are a society who has our own principles that we attempt to live by.
Granted, we’re here under duress. We can’t take the credit of saying, you know, I was
out there and thought I’d live at a higher level, so I came in here.
(46:28 – 46:34)
Now the Oxford people could do that, but you and I can’t do that. We came in here with a
gun in our head. Go in there.
(46:36 – 47:12)
So we can’t take credit for coming up with this plan, but we can acknowledge the
magnitude of what we’ve been given here. This indeed is the golden opportunity to try
for the golden ring, which would be to escape as far as we can from the earthly
principles, the material, and all of those messages that happiness lies here and
happiness lies there, which is essential to the free enterprise system. If everybody got
spiritual, we wouldn’t buy anything.
(47:18 – 47:39)
And so this is the chance to do it. If you think about it, this is what an epic story is about.
When we talk about epic, we’re talking about this is the whole point of being alive is to
try and make the journey from your head to your heart.
(47:40 – 48:04)
See, your heart wants to do loving things all the time, and your head vetoes it. Oh, I
know you want to be nice to that guy, but we’ve got to screw him on this one business
deal because we’ve got to pay the bill back here, and then we’ll be nice to him. I mean,
everything coming out of here is love, and then up here, which has been taught to be,
oh, no, we’ve got all these unrelated, you know, this poor heart.
(48:04 – 48:19)
We just break our own heart all the time, all the time by vetoing love and coming up with
something else. And so that’s what the seeking is all about. Seeking is one of the great
words in our book.
(48:19 – 48:30)
You know, God could and would if he were sought. Sought. What is seeking? I remember
as a kid in grammar school, seek, what is seek? It sounded like a funny word, so the
teacher said, well, we’re going to play a little game today, show you what it is.
(48:30 – 48:39)
Hide and seek. Well, how’s it played? Well, Mary’s going to go hide, you put your eyes,
and then we go, okay, try and find her. So then you looked, and I go, Mary, Mary, Mary,
Mary.
(48:39 – 49:05)
Well, if I didn’t find her in about three minutes, I went, who cares about Mary? Okay?
That would be called a low-level seeking. Then I got a little bit older, and it was the
Easter bunny game. And my mother said, I’m going to hide four and a half pounds of
chocolate, and you seek it.
(49:06 – 49:13)
And when you get it, you eat it all. Well, boy, that got my attention a little much higher
than Mary hiding in the closet. I just went, all right.
(49:14 – 49:36)
I’m going, I’m going, I’m going, I’m going, but even then, after what? Eight minutes?
Mom, is it in this room? I need some help. I don’t have the, so that’s a medium level of
seeking. When I was about 14, we had a golden retriever, and I came home one day, and
my mother said he ran away.
(49:37 – 49:49)
He went in those woods, and he’s been missing for eight hours. We don’t know where he
is. Well, I went in those woods, and I called his name until it was dark.
(49:50 – 49:52)
And I went, just go. He’s got to be around here. He’s got to be somewhere.
(49:52 – 50:00)
And every day after school, I went in those woods, and I called his name. And a year
later, I went in those woods. He could still show up.
(50:01 – 50:14)
I think if I went back there now, up to Connecticut, and if I went by those woods, I might
just take another look. Now, that’s seeking. There’s some seeking, much higher than the
hide-and-seek game.
(50:14 – 50:29)
How hard do we seek God? Sometimes it’s down at the Easter basket level. You follow
what I’m saying? Now, this becomes the individual adventure. That’s what they talk
about in the 11th step.
(50:30 – 50:48)
The 11th step is essentially an individual adventure. Our libraries are filled with books.
Our ministers and spiritual people all over the place give us more ideas about how to see
a deeper AA program.
(50:49 – 51:14)
Now, we never leave the AA program, but it’s a way of understanding at a deeper level
what we have right here. But that’s done individually. And so that’s what I think is
missing is that we want to get away from the comfort level of this support system and
start out on our own with a personal quest to go further than we are.
(51:15 – 51:28)
And I find it the most exciting thing in the world. I don’t know where I am in relation to
any of you, but I’m way past where I used to be, which was in the gutter. I mean, it just
feels so good to keep understanding things.
(51:28 – 51:41)
And I came across something, and then I’ll wrap it up. I’m going over, I guess. And I was
reading an author who was just talking about spirituality in general, and boom, he just
gave me an idea, and I just went, holy cow.
(51:42 – 52:02)
You know the sentence, this too shall pass? How often do we say that? This too shall
pass. This too shall pass. Now, what we mean by that is a very superficial, look, I know
your heart is broken that she left, and you’re hurting, but don’t worry.
(52:03 – 52:16)
It’s going to pass. And so you could feel better knowing that the pain is going to be
reduced and will be gone. Or somebody’s on a roll, and he’s just as high as a kite, and
we don’t want to caution him or her.
(52:17 – 52:28)
Don’t forget, Charlie, that too will pass. It’s not going to stay high and all that. So that
would be a reasonable explanation of this too shall pass.
(52:30 – 52:42)
Now, let’s think about this too shall pass from a different slant. This too shall pass means
everything passes. Nothing is permanent.
(52:43 – 53:03)
Every moment that happens goes away, and another new moment appears. So there is
no reason to ever grab onto any moment. And there’s no reason to ever resist any
moment.
(53:04 – 53:21)
And there’s no reason to ever judge any moment. All events are simply events until I
turn them into problems. I decide, Oh, you were planning on passing? No.
(53:23 – 53:29)
This is unacceptable to pass. This baby ain’t passing. It’s not fair.
(53:29 – 53:33)
It’s not that. The event already happened. It’s gone.
(53:34 – 53:43)
I got this. All I have is a fist. And I go, Oh, this event, this event, this goddamn event, I
can’t believe it.
(53:45 – 53:50)
Or the event frightens me. No, it can’t happen. I can’t have that event happen.
(53:51 – 53:55)
I can’t have it. I can’t have it. You think the event goes, Oh, sorry, I’ll go around over
here.
(53:56 – 54:05)
It just goes, boom. Or I watch every event, deciding good, bad, medium. You said that.
(54:05 – 54:15)
The president said that. I’m judging everything. Why? It’s going to be gone.
(54:16 – 54:23)
What do you think, I’m judging for posterity? Gone. Now I got tomorrow’s paper. Holy
cow, Moore, get the judge.
(54:23 – 54:31)
No, no, no, no, no. Where am I? I’m never in the now. Never.
(54:32 – 54:47)
I’m worried about the future. I’m hanging on to this. Now, you take any spiritual
philosophy or way of life, and I’m going to tell you, there’s three things in all of them.
(54:49 – 54:56)
Resist not. Judge not. And grab not.
(54:58 – 55:07)
Let go. And let God. I mean, there’s a whole, like a jackpot way of looking at this too shall
pass.
(55:08 – 55:18)
This too shall pass. The last thing I’ll say is, the struggle we have with our ego, and I was
talking with Bill on the way up. In the 12 and 12, I think it’s the third step.
(55:18 – 55:26)
I’ll turn my whole life over. Well, I’ll turn my alcohol problem over, but I’m not going to
turn my whole life. Do you remember this sentence? I’ll be a non-entity.
(55:27 – 55:36)
I will be the hole in the donut. Okay. This is what I want you to think about.
(55:37 – 55:47)
You know what a non-entity is? A completely spiritual person. That’s what a non-entity is.
No ego.
(55:49 – 55:56)
Nothing left. Of myself, I’m nothing. The higher power does the work.
(55:57 – 56:03)
So I suggest, as a goal for this year, that we all try to become non-entities. Thank you all
very much.