A Deep Dive With Sandy B. Into the First Drink, the Disease, and the Spiritual Solution

Hi everybody, my name is Sandy Beach and I'm an alcoholic. How are you all doing? Needless to say, it's a great honor to be here tonight and to celebrate AA's 71st year. Sue and I got here yesterday, and we've been toured around to everything and have met hundreds of people from different parts of the country. And I'm sure you've all been doing the same thing. And if you're not grateful today, you're never going to be grateful. It is. I was thinking about how big AA is, how many countries it's in over at the inner group. They had the books translated into all those languages and millions of people all over the planet Earth have had their lives transformed. by the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous and all the miracles that have taken place. And when I was born, there was no AA. So when I think about all this, all of this happened just in my lifetime, which is remarkable to think how magnificent. And the year I was born, Roland Hazard was going over to see Dr. Young in Switzerland. And when I was one years old, Ebi Thatcher got sober. When I was two years old Bill Wilson got sober When I was eight years old, the big book got written And when I was 19 years old Dr. Jelnik was doing a study about alcoholism at Yale University And I may have been one of his subjects because that's the year I took my first drink, and I spent a lot of time lying down on the streets of New Haven, and that could have been one of the things that he was observing. And so during the first year of my drinking, AA held its first international convention in Cleveland. And yeah, Cleveland. And the sobriety countdown was a lot faster because when they got to 15, it was over. And of course, that was the year that Dr. Bob passed away and I was just getting started. When I got sober, AA had 29 years. It was celebrating its 29th year. And so there's many people in here tonight that would have been sober longer than AA existed when I got sober. So you can see that this cumulative effect of time has really been remarkable with 57 years. I mean, this is just so wonderful to be present to see that. And I'm very grateful. I grew up in New Haven, Connecticut, in the 30s, as you can figure out. And I have one sister who has got 29 years in AA up in new Haven. And my mother and father worked very hard to take care of us. It was a nice family, but I never felt I belonged to it. I used to sit at the table with the four of us and I saw the three of them and then I just felt like I just don't belong here, which I find out a lot of alcoholics have that feeling. They just something's missing and they just don'T belong. And my mother was a member of the Catholic Church and my father converted and we were sent down to see the nuns and the Latin and the incense and the priests and the ceremony and my sister thought it was the most wonderful, friendly place in the world. I thought it Was a Nazi boot camp. So you can see it is a question of perception as opposed to what really happened. And somewhere at about nine years of age, I think I had my first spiritual insight. I was sitting in the church, staring at the crucifix, which was about 20 feet high, hanging from the ceiling. And it was as if the crucifice spoke to me and it said, little boy, do you see this crucifixe? Yeah, I can't miss it. Well, this is what God did to his only son that he loved You know Guess what he's going to do to you So all on my own All on my Own I created a very scary God. Now, it's very important to understand that. All on my own. I remember hearing the speaker about ten years ago and he got up and he said, Hi everybody, my story is divided into two parts. What happened during the years that I drank and what I thought happened duringthe years thatI drank. And I think I can make that same statement about my childhood. My childhood is divided into two parts, what happened when I was a child and what I thought happened when I was their child. And so you can see that that was the beginning of some very frightening old ideas that I was putting together as I sat in that church, making them up in my head. That's what I thought I saw in that Church. And so when Bill writes, old ideas availed us nothing, he's, that's what he's talking about. It's all these ideas that I put together that constituted my story. And if you listen to my talks, when I was maybe five or 10 years sober, I had a much worse childhood than I do now. Now figure that one out. As time went on, I came to see things differently, and I actually had a darn nice childhood. And this is one of the powers of spirituality, is the power to see that the problems we think we have really aren't much. It's the power of seeing that everything already is all right. But there's no way of knowing that when you're little and you're putting together these scary ideas about everything. And so there I sat, not belonging and living in the universe with a very frightening something or other that was going to get me later on. In the meantime, enjoy life. Well, I was a pretty good student and a good little athlete. And so I made it through grammar school. My father put me in a little prep school that fed right into Yale University and I was doing well. I was very confused about life, but I wouldn't admit it. Didn't want to tell anyone that I didn't know what was going on. That was the important thing. Hey, what's going on? Oh, I know. Don't worry. I know. I'm very cool, I know all that. So I learned a lot of secrets about life off of bathroom walls. Some of the great philosophers will give little hints in there and you're sitting there reading, you go, wow, that's kind of scary, but I guess it must be true. And so I ended up with all sorts of ideas in my head, but I hadn't had a drink. I was trying to really be a good student. I ended Up Down in New Haven. It was the hometown college and people came from all over the country. And as they arrived, I had actually worked in construction. I was working on some of those buildings. I'd be wearing dungarees and then go into class and, you know, a typical townie. and I started watching all these guys that came in and they all seemed rich. They all had convertibles. They all knew what was going on and I suddenly realized I'm in the wrong place. I do not belong here. And I had this fear that the dean of freshmen was going to call us all out into the old campus one day and he was goingto say, Gentlemen, we have discovered an imposter in our midst and he's right over there and they were going to point to me and take me out of there so you can see this is how comfortable I was inside my roommates are telling me you're in college you ought to be drinking and I'm going no not yet not yet I'm gonna hold out and I went to a social event where the only thing I had to do was to meet other people 25 or 30 guys I went in the room I started over to introduce myself and I got stopped short by the people's eyes. You know how you can tell what people are thinking by looking at their eyes? And I looked at their guys and these four guys that I was going over towards said to me with their eyes, Don't you come over here. We don't want to know you. we already have enough friends go away and I remember going alright, I don't want to upset you I'll go over and I'll talk to these guys who then turned and said worse things with their eyes and I never met anyone because everyone's eyes told me they didn't want to know me and I didn't belong there so I went back and there was a bartender in this room they had set up a little table with some few bottles of whiskey and I said well maybe my roommates are right I ought to feel good alcohol is supposed to be wonderful so I went over and ordered something I stood there talking to the bartender nothing happened I had another one nothing happened. I was starting to think that alcohol didn't really work and I got halfway through the third one and put it down. I think I was thinking of leaving when I turned around and looked back at that room and there were 30 of the friendliest guys I have ever seen. Everybody's eyes were looking at me and they were saying, we would give anything to know you. Really? Oh yeah! God, we wish that you were our friend. Really? And I started walking over to the first group, and as I got a little bit closer, I suddenly felt like they would be lucky to know me. And I just walked into another world. This was a wonderful, loving, friendly world. I was part of it, and everybody liked me. And I remember saying to myself, you should have started drinking in grammar school. This is remarkable. And so I talked and talked and talk, and everybody left. I had something to say about everything, and I had the feeling that the real me, the creative, comfortable, happy guy, had been trapped inside by all that anxiety and all that pressure, and I was finally me for the first time in my life. And I just loved it. Now, if three drinks did that, I said to myself, I wonder what 20 could do. And we all know what that's like the first time you over-serve yourself. And however many I had, I ended up back in the dorm and just vomiting and lying by the toilet and sleeping on the cold marble tile floor and throwing up and all of that all night. And I sat on the bed the next morning, felt like an axe was in the back of my head. And the thought occurred to me, are you going to drink again tonight? And I'll tell you, it was less than a second. He said, you're darn right I am. I said, this axe in the Back of My Head and vomiting for 10 hours is a small price to pay for what I had last night. So, social drinkers do not have that type of conversation with themselves. They'll be glad to vomit for ten hours to have another drink. But that's what makes me an alcoholic. The fact that alcohol did something transforming to me and made the world a wonderful place to live. That's why I drank, because it fixed the problems that I already had. I didn't know any of that. I thought I was just partying like the rest of the guys. And so as the years unfolded at school, I started getting arrested. I lost any ability to get high grades, no more athletics, and I just drank. I made it through the school probably graduating by a .001 and the Korean War was going on the draft and you had to join the military so a group of guys were drinking beer and they said let's join the Marine Corps let's go and I'm sure that recruiting sergeant took a look at the six of us rubbed his hands together and said boy, are we going to show these guys a surprise. But after I got through the initial stuff in the Marine Corps and went six months to be a platoon leader, I loved it. I found something that I belonged to. I never felt like this before in my life. I just adored it. And we had a training movie about pilots. And I looked at this movie, and the pilots were at a bar, and they all had white scarves on and they were talking with their hands and it looked like they were having a lot of fun. So I went up and I said, I'd like to sign up for that flight thing. I've never been in an airplane in my life. And the major said, you don't want to do that because you'll have to sign it for three more years. I said that's alright. I like this movie. I thought that looked good. But I like to, I want to try that. All right, all right. So I passed the test. I have all those physicals. I had met a young woman in Brantford, Connecticut. And we got engaged and got married when I finished the thing. And so the two of us took off to go to Pensacola, Florida to become a naval aviator. and we got on the plane in New York City, go to Atlanta and then on to Pensacola. I got air sick on the train going to Atlanta. I got hair sick going down to Pensaco. I got a hair sick in the old SNJ and it looked pretty grim. But it turned out it was motion sickness and eventually went away after five or six flights. And then I became very good at it. I would be number two or three in my class and we went on and 18 months later I've got my wings. I've Got Orders Overseas, and the war's over. So there's nothing to do but party and fly high-performance airplanes over in Japan. And boy, that was fun. I had more excitement. I loved being part of that unit, the fighter squadron. And the colonel would get us, and we'd go to the club, and we would have our own table, and there would be 20 of us sitting around, and he would order the drinks. You didn't order them on your own. There was a, get my boys around and around and they were drinking fast enough so that I didn't want to order extra drinks. It was just wonderful. And about halfway through that tour, a major called me aside and he said, you know, you're one of the best pilots in the squadron and in a couple of years I'll have my own squadron. I want a guy like you in that outfit with a young lieutenant And I felt like a million dollars. And then he said, but I wouldn't let you drink. And I couldn't understand. I drank with this guy all the time. We all drank and partied. It wasn't until I got in AA that I realized that my drinking scared all these heavy drinkers. There was something about an alcoholic's drinking that is a little more intense. It's a little more scary even to these guys. But I had no awareness of that, and I basically went on in my career, and we had six children. I was a forward air controller. I was an instructor for three or four years. I went through photo school, and my last flying assignment was in a photo squadron during the Cuban Missile Crisis. And if you look on the outside, you'd go, look at this guy. He's doing great. You know, he finally made it up to captain. He's got six kids, went to a good school. Looks like it's in a career. He had a regular commission. Everything is lining up well, except the disease was now ready to completely take over, and I was starting to experience symptoms in the plane. and I am starting to shake and sweat and I can't see very well and I'm getting confused and there's just me in the plane. And so I'm going, God, this is really scary to fly with me. But there was no way to go. I kept that up for about a year and it just kept getting worse and worse. A lot of close calls and I finally went to the doctor and I said, I'm having these symptoms in the planes. Like what? And when I told him, oh thanks. He got quite concerned because the plane cost a million dollars. He wasn't concerned about me. He was concerned about the plane so they sent me down to Pensacola to the doctors, the flight surgeons, and there was no disease of alcoholism in the Navy. You had to have something else. In other words, there was not alcohol treatment, there were no alcohol doctors, and they studied me for, I think it was four weeks, three weeks anyway, the psychiatrist, the dentist, and everything, and they're trying to figure out what is causing my problems. And I'm standing there just confused, covered with a clammy sweat, eyes bloodshot, high blood pressure. My hands are shaking and I'm reeking of alcohol. And they couldn't figure out what my problem was. and so the psychiatrist was left with a diagnosis and they wrote it up, it's all official that I had a childhood fear of flying that showed up after 14 years of flying it just appeared and I never should have been a pilot in the first place and so this man is no longer allowed to fly planes Well, when that happens, that about killed me because that's who I was. You have to be given a new specialty. Everybody has a specialty. So I waited around three months to get my orders, and headquarters Marine Corps gave me orders to become an air traffic controller. And I went to the school in Glencoe, Georgia, and somehow made it through the school, And my last year of drinking, I was in charge of an air traffic control unit in Iwakuni, Japan, bringing in planes in bad weather when they couldn't see the runway. Perfect job for an alcoholic, obviously. Fortunately, the senior enlisted men in that unit saw me when I checked in. Captain, good to have you here. Here's your tent. Put your bicycle over there. Blah, blah, blah. Sir, we'd really appreciate it if you personally never talked to an airplane. And I went, okay. So I was simply surviving now. I couldn't eat. I was having malnutrition. I lost about 50 pounds. I stopped hanging out with my friends. Didn't even go to happy hour. I drank vodka and juice. I was trying to get nutrition from juice. and soup, and that kind of stuff. And I was really starting to freak out and see things. And one of the interesting things is when I've been sober about 15 years in Washington, D.C., I ran into some of my fellow officers from that squadron. And they came to a couple AA meetings, and they were so excited that AA had saved their friend. And we sat down talking, and they said to me one night, You know, Sandy, we knew you were dying, but there wasn't anything we could do for you. Now, you think about that statement. Anybody that knows the Marine Corps? The Marine Corps doesn't leave their dead. They go back and get them even if it takes two more lives. I mean, that's what they do. And here's officers talking, we know you were died and there wasn'Think we could dO. It shows you the power of the disease of alcoholism, that they're just standing there going, there's nothing that can be done because no one knew about AA. Anyway, I came back to the United States, somehow made it partway through a school in Quantico, Virginia. I had a grand mal seizure. I bit my tongue. The ambulance came. They take me to the hospital. and I'm there about five or six days while they're trying to figure out what caused the seizure. And still, there's no alcohol. And at that point, I went into the delirium treatments, the DTs, and I started seeing all these very scary things from CIA was trying to break me mentally and lock me up forever with all these phony tests and none of it was real, but it scared the heck out of me. and evidently I lost it and I ran around the hospital screaming at people and they grabbed me and put me in a straitjacket and locked me up for six months. So that was my story. And in the mental ward, there was no disease of alcoholism. There was three of us that were alcoholics but there was not a disease of drinking. There was no separation. We all were in with the rest of the crazy people who didn't like us. Because they thought it was not a legitimate mental illness. They would just look at, why don't you stop drinking? And I'd go, why didn't I stop drinking ? You think that's my problem? No wonder you're locked up in here. Jesus, what the hell is wrong with you? Anyway, the local AA group from Bethesda, Maryland, somehow talked their way into that mental ward and brought a meeting. And the corpsman came in, 1964, somewhere probably around August or September, and said, all drunks fall in. We went over to the elevator, rode down, and there these guys were telling their story. And I thought they were amazing. I just thought it was great right off the bat. I didn't think I had an alcohol problem, but I thought we had a wonderful program. And eventually we were allowed to go home at night and come back during the day and go home on the weekends. And during that time, I started drinking again, even though they told me I lost my career if I had a drink. And on December 7th, 1964, which is my anniversary, I called the intergroup in Northern Virginia, and they sent over to my house another Marine captain. He was the only member of A.A. in Quantico at the time, and he's still my sponsor 41 1⁄2 years later, which is a wonderful thing. He's very ill, but he's still tough and mean and one of the greatest guys in the world. Hi, Bill T. I love you, buddy. And he got me to my first meeting, and we went to a meeting just about every night. And he just pounded this stuff into me. And just by way of passing, if you don't get promoted to major in the military, then you have to leave. It's not a bad conduct discharge. So we both were eligible. You only have two tries at it. And the first year, neither one of us made it. The second year, he made it and I didn't. So now I'm out with my six kids. All those years are wasted. I went to a meeting every night. I did everything I was told. and God saw fit to treat me that way, which at the time I considered unfair. I don't know if any of you keep track of whether things are fair or not, but some of us do. And I concluded that a guy who got sober and did everything he was told and worked the steps and made amends and went to a meeting every night should not get thrown out of the Marine Corps with his family. And people got tired of hearing about that at the meetings. Oh, here he comes again, Mr. Wine. Anyway, about three months after I was out, and I guess I finally found a job of some sort, there was a story in the Washington Post, This Marine Corps instruction team that I was a member of was killed in a plane crash going into Denver. All my friends were on it. There was 14 guys on that team. And if I had had my way and life had been fair and I had gotten promoted, I would have been dead. And I remember saying to myself, well, that changes things a little now that I look at that. And then I knew that God knew that I read the article, because he knows everything. And I felt kind of foolish in his eyes. And I think I'm Mama Wood. If you just told me that was going to happen, I wouldn't have been complaining about this. So anyway, I went on. I tried several different jobs. And eventually I ended up in Washington with the credit union movement, which is a wonderful group of people to work for. And I became a lobbyist in Washington, had a career for 20 years and eventually retired to Tampa, Florida. And I love it. And I go to meetings every day and I travel around AA a lot. I'm sponsoring about 25 guys down in Tampa. We go through the steps and then we just enjoy life. We try to find a way of. I talk to them and I say, you know, I'm not going to help you work through your problems at all. I'm going to give you a different way of looking at things. I'm gonna give you the power to see that everything's already all right. And that's what a spiritual solution looks like It is very different than the traditional problem solving That we were used to before And you see in our literature, Bill writes The problems were simply removed And I know if you're new, you're going What are you talking about? What do you mean a problem is removed? I mean, you just can't have it go away Well, did you ever walk into a bar with a lot of problems? Going nuts. God, I got more than him. And what did you say to a guy who came into a bar with the same problem as you? With a lot of problems. Your good friend Joe would come in. Oh my God, you're not going to believe it. You know, my wife is thinking of leaving me. You know I don't know what you said, but I know what I said. Let me buy you a drink. Didn't matter what his problem was, did it? Didn't mater. Oh, you got fired? Hey, let me buy you a drink. Let me buy your drink. Why do we want to buy him a drink? Because after two or three drinks, he just suddenly went, I don't have any problems. This is great. I'm doing great. Remember that feeling? That's what our higher power can do. That's where the spiritual solution looks like. It is being filled with a power. Thank you. It fills us with the ability to see that we're fine, that we have something that is taking care of us, something that was missing all the way back when I was little. You know, Bill Wilson in the big book mentions There's one book that I'll maybe mention another one, but the one I'm aware of is The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James. And he talks about that book and how helpful it was to him to read that and to understand certain things about life, etc. And so I tried reading that book when I had about two years sobriety and I would not recommend it. That is not easy reading So when I had 25 years of sobriety I decided to try and tackle it And it turns out that this man was a very brilliant philosopher And understood all kinds of things And he became the father of American psychology And being brilliant He was asked by Edinburgh University in Scotland If he would come over and give a series of lectures on religion. And he said to himself, well, I don't know much about religion. That's going to be fun to go over there and give a series of lectures. So he started thinking about it and studying it. And I'm not going to go into all of the things that he talked about. But the thing of interest to Bill was his study of spiritual awakenings, which is what AA specializes in. It is the point of joining Alcoholics Anonymous is to go through a process where we have this transformation and we personally feel the nearness of our own creator in our own heart. And we recognize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves all throughout our literature, that that is the point of getting sober is to have that happen. And so he studied these things. They don't happen just to alcoholics. They happened to people all around the world, these spiritual awakenings. And the one thing they all had in common was people were desperate. Something awful had happened to them that made them open to having help, a spiritual help. And of course, Bill saw that and he said, my God, that's alcoholics. the disease of alcoholism pushes all of us into a point of desperation where we're willing to do anything. And, of course, willingness is the ticket to freedom in our fellowship. It is the most wonderful thing in the world. But what he went on to say was a very interesting thing. He said that inside of every human being is the sense that something is wrong or something is missing. And that all religions say to that person, hey, you know that thing inside of you that makes you feel like something's wrong and is missing? We know how to fix it. and that is what is attempted in any spiritual path is to fix that feeling that there's you know we talk about the empty hole in our stomach that there is something not quite right that there ist part of me that wants to live differently but I can't Bill writes about if a mere code of morals was sufficient to get us by we would have been fine. But we all had a way that we wanted to live, and we kept failing. We could not live up to our own standard. And it turns out that nobody can without help. So I knew none of these things. I came into AA, and I just knew what the material world taught. And it was an interesting set of lessons. I'm sure everybody here had the same things It basically went like this. Okay, little boy, here's the deal. You want to know what the world is all about? You go to school and you study hard, you'll get high grades. If you get high grade, you get to a good school. If you gets to a great school, you will get a good job. If you work hard, your get promoted and you get a lot of money. And when you got a lot money, you can get married, you could get a boat, you could a house and then came the lie. Then you'll be happy. That's the only thing in that whole sequence that doesn't work. And everybody knows that. Well, maybe you need two boats. Maybe I need a bigger car. Maybe I needs a different husband. Maybe I needed whatever it was we're constantly seeking. And interestingly for us alcoholics, alcohol fixed that. Alcohol made us a complete person. It was the solution to all of our problems. And so you come into AA and they go, okay, no more drinking. And it's like, no mehr drinking? You know why that's so bad? If you don't drink, you are sober all the time. You are, you're sober 24-7. It goes on, month after month, sober. And you suddenly realize, drinking isn't my problem. Sober is my problem, that's why I'm... I can't stand being sober. That's why it drank. We never said it, but this is what was happening. We go into the bar, we go, bartender, I'm sober again. Get over here. We got to fix this in a hurry. One, two, three. That's better. Now we've got a bunch of people saying you've got to stay sober all the time. I don't think so. Because my vision of life as a sober person was very frightening. And I've used this example before. Somebody reminded me of it today when we were talking, and that's the pinball machine. This is how I felt as a regular person out there back in the drinking days. I was like a ball in a pinball Machine, you know, down in the dark at sitting at the bar with four other guys. You know, Down there, man, I hate it up there. I don't want to go out there anymore. That's terrible out there. Well, let's just stay down here. And then somebody puts a quarter in and you know, it's the alarm clock going off. Oh no, not another day. And all of a sudden it's your turn. The plunger goes and you go boom, boom. And you're up there and you're sitting going, oh God, I'm up here. And then the plunger comes. That's your wife pushing out the door. And you are out there just going, what's going on? What's going up? And then you hit a bumper. And all we're looking for is that little hole. That's all we want. That's our favorite bar. If I could just get back in there, if I could get back to the top of the hill, if I can just get this back in here. Boy, this is going on for... Oh, there it is. Oh, I'm almost there. And then the flipper goes boom and you go all the way to the bottom. God damn. How long is this going to last? Finally, I am in there. Oh, God, what a day I had. Give me a drink. Give me an ice cream. I'm just out there waiting for it to end so I can have a drink. That was how I felt. So now I'm coming into AA and you tell me, no more drinking. It's clear that I'm going to have to have something happen that makes me happy with not drinking. Or it's not going to work. No one can stay sober and miserable for any extended period of time. It's impossible. And so, it is. And so my sponsor said, Sandy, these 12 steps, they contain the answer to everything. All the problems you have, they're right here. They're all in the 12 steps. Now, not understanding spirituality, I looked at the steps like you could understand them from reading them. So I took them home, and I'm just going, yeah, yeah. Boy, it's all in here. It's all on the wall. It's in here, and then, well, have you read them? Yeah, I'm reading them, reading them. After about two weeks, I said, Bill, I am having a problem here. Which one is the money step? We are really broke. I got all these kids to feed, and that is my biggest problem, is money. I mean, that's what I need. It doesn't say anything about money. And then he said the most outrageous thing I've ever heard. He said, oh, if you have terrible anxiety over money, the program will show you how to lose the anxiety without getting any money. Bill, I'm not sure I'm interested in that type of solution myself. I would prefer the regular one where they hand me the cash and all of that. And so he went on to explain that reading these steps will doesn't help at all. You have to do them. You have To actually do them in order to see the results of them, much like alcohol. What if when you were 15 years old and you're at the high school dance and you were afraid to dance and somebody walked up and said, see this glass of whiskey? If you drink it, you'll go right out there and dance. You'll know how to dance. There's ten dancing lessons right in this glass. now you could have said oh how could there be 10 dancing lessons in that clip you have to try it pal you remember trying yeah yeah here I go I'm out there now what if you were the one guy who wouldn't drink it and he's 50 years old now when he was in high school and those guys told him if he drank that there were dancing lessons he'd be still laughing at it You know what I mean? And the same thing with people who don't do the steps. They say to themselves, they wouldn't have worked anyway. But that's not true. So we end up taking a series of actions that we don't believe in. I looked at those and said, these aren't going to work. And Bill said, well, where else are you going to go? They work for all these other people. And I said, Well, I don't Believe in God. I have a problem with the higher power. I got all these things, the crucifix that spoke to me and all that. And unlike a religion which would say to me, well, son, let me show you. Here's the Koran. Let me explain the history of it. Now, here's where the prophet and don't you see that that proves there's a God? AA doesn't interested in that. They do not attempt to prove the existence of God at all. What A.A. does is show you the need for God, the absolute need for a God in your own life. And it looks like this. This is how what an A.H. spiritual awakening looks like. OK, you're new. You're just getting started. OK, it took step one. Yeah, I'm powerless. OK, well, let me take you to the chapters of the agnostic, which is one of the great chapters in the big book. I think it's brilliant. And here's what it says. Are you ready? OK, this is for everybody that's new. If when you drink, you have little control over the amount you drink. That's everybody. And if you try it, when you try to stop, you can't stay stopped. OK, that's everybody then you're an alcoholic. Now, here comes the sentence. If that's the case, you are suffering from a disease that only a spiritual experience can conquer. And really? So this is my problem. And I remember going to my sponsor. I said, Bill, I don't believe in spiritual experiences. He said, too bad for you. It's not going to work. What? Yeah. And then the next sentence, to be doomed an alcoholic death or to live on a spiritual basis are not easy alternatives to face. And so if you're new and we were doing this like a quiz program, we'd call you up on stage. We go, Larry, come here. OK, you understand the deal. You got two doors right behind me. You've got to choose one. Die an alcoholic debt. Live on a spirit of basis. Okay, Larry, what's it going to be? And if you're like the rest of us, you go like this. Whoa! Whoa! Those are two bad doors. I don't like those choices. Do I get a phone call? Yes, you get a call. You get a telephone call. You get an iPhone call. So you call your favorite doctor. Hello, doctor? Yeah, this is Larry. Listen, a friend of mine's curious. How bad is an alcoholic? Oh, gee, it is. Okay, I'll take door number two. And that's how we decide to turn our will and our lives over to door number two. There's nowhere else to go. My sponsor said you can turn your life over to whatever will take it. Because we don't have to understand spirituality, to try it. All we have to do is follow instructions. If there's anything that we do, if we're new and we only ask one question for the rest of the time we're in AA, you'll have the happiest life in the world. The question is, what should I do next? And we ask that initially of our sponsor, of our home group, and eventually of our higher power. Step 11, ask only for knowledge of His will for us, not only the knowledge of it, but the power to carry it out. There's the entire deal. The only problem is God gets all the credit and my ego doesn't like getting zero credit. So I reserve a lot of my life for myself, handling it without His help. And that's the part that's all messed up. And maybe someday it'll get bad enough, I'll let him help. And so you can see initially you simply are going, All right, all right, take out a white handkerchief, wave it over your head, total surrender. What do you want me to do? And your job from that day forward is just to evaluate the results that you get. And if you're like the rest of us, you're going to be amazed before you're halfway through. You are going to be amazed before you are halfway through You're going to be catapulted in the fourth dimension of existence which Bill talks about. You're gonna be taken to a place that you never dreamed existed all by following directions. All by admitting that you don't know You haven't got a clue. And we enter the spiritual world of humility and serving, helping one another. And we end up being delighted with this. I was talking to somebody earlier. The highest pay grade in Alcoholics Anonymous is servant. You start out a big shot and you work your way all the way up to servant, which is as high as you can go. and you are much happier than you've ever been and you can't take credit for anything. And you start talking in a different fashion. I don't know how it is for the gals, but for the guys, before we got here, if you took six guys and sat us around the table talking about our week, you would hear more exaggeration than you can imagine. Oh, yeah, I shot a 72 on Monday. I closed six big deals. I'm getting a new car. What about you, Joe? Oh, I'm taking some night courses. I'm going to become a lawyer. I'm gonna be a big shot. And what about you? Oh, and we just go on and on. Now you come to AA. You get the same six guys sitting around the table. You know what it sounds like? How'd your week go, Larry? Oh, man, I really messed up on Wednesday. I lost my temper. Had to go back and make an amend. I really, really messed it up. Not to be outdone. You think you messed up? I had to make four amends this week. Four amends? My sponsor made me read the book three times. we're bragging about mistakes that we made because we're trying to improve and we're not trying to impress anybody. What a transformation to start having conversations like that. I'm at the end of my time, so I want to say something to those of you that are new that my sweetheart Sue reminded me about. Now, one of the things that AA gives you is a present that you never thought you would get. There's so many things, but they give you a present when you first come in here and your job is to unwrap it and really see what's in there. And this present is you. They hand you you. And generally, when we're new, the present isn't wrapped very good. Sometimes it has puke all over the wrapping. And it's pretty smelly, and it would lead one to conclude that it isn't worth opening. And that's where you're wrong, because these steps are going to strip away everything that isn't you. The 12 steps are designed to remove all of those defects that aren't you. And in the process, it is like a sculptor who has a giant block of marble and is going to make a statue of a beautiful dancing woman with a robe and all of that. As that sculptor looks at the block of marble, he already sees the statue. It's already in there. This magnificent creation is already there. It already exists just like you exist inside. And the sculptor hears a higher power and the steps are what enable him to chip away these pieces. and one of these days you're going to look in the mirror and you're going to go I love the person I'm looking at and you are going to find out yes you are going to find out that all you wanted to do was to love other people not to be mean to them that all he wanted to do was just be helpful be part of this world and you didn't know how to do it You were trapped inside of old ideas, and that's not who you are. And when you find out the magnificence of yourself, you're going to understand the magnificENCE of God. Thank you all very much.