Applying Principles in the Moment of Tragedy – Sandy B.

First, I'd like to thank Joanne for giving me this awesome opportunity to chair this meeting and mostly to host our speaker. Ever since I heard our speaker, I don't know, it's probably been ten years ago, I have just always thought a lot of him. I mean, with a name like he's got, how can you not? The beach is my favorite place. And I know that this man has been through a lot, both health-wise and personally, in the last year. And the fact that he is here with us this weekend and willing to come the distance and share his experience, strength, and hope with us says mountains to me. I am so honored and blessed to have shared a portion of his weekend with him, and I knowthat you're going to love him, and so please help me welcome Sandy. Well, good evening everybody. My name is Sandy Beach and I'm an alcoholic. And I'm delighted to be here. I've been to several events in North Carolina over the years and God, you've got great AA here and I guess you already know that But I thought I'd tell you. And it's great to see Dave. I go back to the Hal Marley days when Hal would say, Dave's coming to town up in D.C. and we'd all show up to hear him. And it was just wonderful. My sobriety date is December 7th. That's two of us with December 7. 1964. and my home group is the Saturday Night Fever Group in Tampa, Florida. And it's a big speaker meeting on Saturday night and we really try to have fun. So if you're in town, please try to drop in there. I know you'll have a good time. Before I get going on telling my story, I'm just going to get this out of the way because there's some lessons that I learned that I want to share. And I'm sure the word got all around that on May 3rd, my youngest daughter, I mean March 3rd. My youngest daughter was murdered in Madison, Connecticut. She had just taken her daughter to high school. And when she came home, somebody was waiting in the front yard and just did a terrible job. Then in June, my oldest daughter died of alcoholism. So the family really got hit hard. And the outpouring from Alcoholics Anonymous has just been astounding. The phone calls, and I know all the prayers, and i have about 300 cards, a lot of them from individuals, but also a lot of them are from groups where everybody in the group signed the card and sent it down. I even have one from an Al-Anon group in Alaska. So when you get... It just speaks so well of our family that we all live in. It's just amazing. Now what I wanted to share about that was About 25 years ago in Washington, D.C., on the evening news, there had been a murder that day of a young Afro-American boy, and they had found his mother, and they were interviewing her on the very day. And her son was like one of the, had all A's in school and was just one of these wonderful kids and he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and somebody shot him. And the reporter stuck the microphone in her face and said, how do you feel about the boy that just killed your son? And she said, I've already forgiven him. And I couldn't believe the words that I heard and I looked at her face and she was at peace. She had already forgiven Him And I knew that she was more spiritually advanced than I was to be able to do that. She must have been so close to God, and I never forgot it. And I would tell my friends about it. I said, I just saw a phenomenon, and i can't get it out of my mind. And I think about eight years later in the discussion meeting, a woman shared the same story that she had done that and found that the great power of the program lay in applying the principles in the moment and not months later. And then, of course, we all saw on television the Amish community when they had that boy that went out and killed some people and the family of the boy that had been killed immediately went over to the family of the guy who had done the killing to see if they could help him because they knew they were probably having a hard time and so I kept talking about those things to people in the program some of my friends in Tampa said alright you already told us that story I said yeah but I can't get it out of my mind how powerful that was and little did I know how much it was going to benefit me because in March when my daughter called me, the one that had found the body and she said are you sitting down and then she started describing what happened and as she went through it, it took her about 10 minutes to conclude our conversation And while she was talking, I fully accepted what had happened and I forgave whoever did it because of these examples. And in that moment, I just said from this moment on, my relationship with this daughter is on another level. She will exist in our hearts forever with the stories I can tell about her and with the memories that I have of her. and I wasn't angry at God it was just amazing they still haven't found out who did it but whoever it is they are forgiven in my heart and the same thing happened when I got the news about my other daughter the secret was to accept it and I told God that I loved him and that was how I handled that one I went to God and I said I love you I just want you to know nothing like this will ever change the way I feel about you and it prevented me from getting angry at God. And I stayed there just telling him how much I loved him and then it was time to turn and go back and think about the situation and it was relatively comfortable to do it and that's all I can tell you. That the lessons I got, that when we apply the principles in the moment of the event happening, the only thing that I'm left to deal with is sorrow. I don't have to deal with resentment, anger and hatred and when you think about the suffering that we do very little of it is sorrow it's always anger, resentment or hatred I just hate that it happened shouldn't have happened to me you know the anger that we have and so I've been spared because of those I wish I could find that lady and tell her what a teacher she was to me just by appearing on television and being able to do that. So that's, oh, and I just, somebody I just met outside was talking about the conference in New Haven, Connecticut. And that was my daughter was the chairman of that convention. And I was one of the speakers, and my other daughter introduced me. So we had the three of us in AA up at this New Haven convention, and that is one heck of a good memory to have forever on that one. And my remaining daughter, Conway, has nine years in AA, and she's coming down for the Tampa Fall Roundup. She's going to spend a week with me, and we are going to be inseparable because she has handled all of these things. And she's been the center driving force in helping the rest of the family through these funerals and memorial services and the police and the press and all these things. And my former wife, we were married 20 years, but she's Been Married to Somebody Else for 30 Years. But we're very close because they're all our kids. and Conway, the one I'm talking about here I am I hope she doesn't get this tape at both the funerals when I was visiting with my former wife I would watch Conway just out there calming people down dealing with this dealing with that and we both looked at each other and said can you believe this because we were around when she was drinking And she was a class A alcoholic. I'm talking about, I was proud of her. The amount of trouble she got in and, oh, I mean, it was just, you've got to, she was just great. And so we're watching her handle all this stuff, this tremendous pressure. And I said to my former wife, just think, 12 years ago we couldn't trust her with an ice cream cone. And here she was. So Alcoholics Anonymous did that, transformed that person and her sister too. And so I learned a lot of lessons. I also learned about the powerlessness of alcoholism. There we are, two sisters in AA. I'm an AA, and we can't save her. We can't break through the denial of the family. And when she got sick and went in, there was all this cirrhosis that just was seven days gone. And so anyway, that's enough of that. And I just want to thank everybody for your thoughts and cards and prayers. And now you can get back to telling my story. But I think it's important to pass that lesson on. I will never forget it. Wow. Anyway, I grew up in New Haven, Connecticut. I was born in 1931. So the biggest memory of my childhood is World War II. I mean, that was the main event and it lasted quite a while. And it was just, it was a very difficult period. But all of my memories about it are good because the whole country had pulled together And everybody, every neighbor, everywhere you went, everybody was involved in the same thing. And they were delighted to be sacrificing for this. And there was, you know, you couldn't get this, you Couldn't Get That, and gas rationing. And that was fine. That was fine because we were all united behind a common enemy. And that will pull people together. You get something like that that's life-threatening, it pulls everybody together. dressed like A.A. It just, you know, and I didn't know about A.E. then, but when I got in here, I said, yeah, this is just like World War II was. Everybody knows that if we don't stay together, we're all going to die. And so that was, I was just glad to have been alive during that period. I had uncles that were in it. There was just my sister, myself, and my two parents and my sister has 33 years in AA up in Connecticut. And we'd sit at the dinner table and I would feel like there was the three of them and me. And alcoholics do that all the time. They feel like they're not in this little group and there's only four. And I still felt like there's the three of them, they're the family and then I don't know what I'm doing here but I'm not part of this. And I had that feeling most of my life that I'm in it but I'M NOT PART OF IT. and my mother was Catholic so she sent us off and we just got a steady diet of the nuns and catechism and the church and incense and confession and Latin and my sister thought it was the most wonderful thing in the world she still goes there and felt like it's the safest place I just love it it's just wonderful I on the other hand sitting next to her on the same pew who felt like I was in Auschwitz, and this was some sort of a nightmare what they're talking about. Boy, I just saw nothing but trouble ahead for me. And when I went to confession, I didn't say a word because I knew they were gathering evidence for later when the big day comes and you go, you down. So I got no comfort sitting there. And I've mentioned this before, I was probably about nine years old and suddenly I looked up at the crucifix and I went, oh my God. It was like it spoke to me and it said, little boy, do you see this? This is what God did was the only son that he loved. Guess what he's going to do to you? And I almost fainted that Sunday. One more truth about the church came through. So you can see that early on my perception of things was wrong. But you have to live with your perception because That's what you've decided is real. And my perception about a lot of things scared me to death and made my life very uncomfortable. I was doing well in school. I liked athletics, and so my father sent me through a little prep school outside of New Haven and fed right into Yale, which is the local university. I had worked on their buildings. I was, it didn't mean anything to me. My father worked there and, you know, I just, so now I'm as a freshman and I'm looking around and I're going, who are these guys? And they were all like rich. Some of them were I knew from being in the newspapers and I am just going, I am in the wrong league. I don't belong here. This is awful. and I just knew they were going to catch me. The class was going to report me to the dean and go, we don't want him in here. What's he doing in here? So that was the comfort level that I operated at. But I wasn't drinking yet and I was going still get high grades and try out for track and try to do well but the pressure was really getting to me and my roommates are talking well you ought to be drinking we're having fun this is college. No, no. And I've told this every time I tell my story. I finally was probably been there about two months and I was at a social thing where you're supposed to meet everybody in one of these mixed things. I still hate them. I'm sorry. They don't want to know me. And so I just stood there and I almost went over and talked to a few people. But as I started over, they looked at me and went, we don't wanna know you. You know how they do that with your eyes? They just, don't come over here. Okay, I'm just screwing around, just kidding. So I walked around a lot, but I actually met no one. And I was going to leave, and I said, God, there's this bar there. Maybe my roommates are right. So I went up and I says, I'd like something, and it tasted terrible, but I drank it down, probably whiskey and ginger ale or some stupid drink. and I had one too and halfway through the third one I had concluded that it really didn't work because I certainly didn't feel wonderful or anything like that and I turned around I think I was getting ready to leave and while I was drinking those guys were gone and they had been replaced by 30 of the friendliest guys I've ever seen everyone in the room wanted to know me would you come over hey hi oh come over come over and I didn't know where the heck to start. And I was so happy to be in the world where there was this kind of people. And as I walked over to the first group, I had that feeling that they were right. They would be lucky to know me. And I had something to say about everything. I don't know, where are you from? Oh yeah, Badgers, all right, right, and just non-stop. And it was as if I was now free to be me. And all the panic and nervousness and all that anxiety was gone and I was allowed to just be me and do whatever I wanted. I just loved it and I talked and pretty soon people are leaving. I'm going, where are you going? Oh, we got to go to here. Gee whiz, now there's no one there but me and the bartender. But that was just so wonderful I went, God, three drinks did that. I'm going to see what 20 drinks will do. I went up and stayed until the bartender had to go home. And I'm gone, what do you mean you have to go home? You can see the pattern of my whole life is happening in that one night. What do you means we have to get home? So I went back to my room and was violently ill all night, slept by the toilet. Just, God I was sick. and in the morning I sat on my bed and it felt like everything was exploding and the thought occurred to me, are you going to drink again tonight? And it was like that. And I said, of course I am. I said this puking, retching and whatever all this is is a small price to pay for what I had last night. So you can see we already are an alcoholic. The experience that I got from drinking was so monumental, it was worth any price. And I was willing to pay it. That was like a spiritual experience. I just, oh man. So you know what happened. The grades went down. There wasn't any more athletics. Now I'm getting in trouble. Now I'M getting arrested. Now I' m getting in fights. And I may not graduate. And it's very close. By about a tenth of a point, I did graduate. The Korean War was going on, the draft. Everybody had joined the military, so a bunch of us had a few beers and said, let's join the Marine Corps. Yeah, that'll be fun. I looked in the brochures, and boy, they had golf courses and all the bases. And I'm in Marine Corps country around here with Jerry Point and Camp Lejeune. Anyway, after the initial shock wore off, I strangely just thought it was great. I just loved the discipline. I loved that they had just made you part of something. You couldn't be an individual anymore. You were part of this Marine Corps. And I just thought it was just wonderful. I did about six months infantry training, and then I saw a training movie about pilots. I'd never been in a plane, but it sure looked like they were having more fun than the other guys. And I think that some of the scenes in the training movie took place in a bar, of all things. And they're talking, and they have light scarves on, and there's some women in the background doing, whoa. This looks a little better than digging a hole and sleeping in it. So my ignorance led me down to something that turned out to be just wonderful. So I signed up and passed all the tests, and now I have orders to Pensacola, Florida for 18 months of training. I'd met this woman who was the mother of all these children during that year. and she was from Connecticut, and so we went up and got married in Madison. And we went off to Pensacola, and I got airsick on the first plane going to Atlanta, and I had airsICK on to Pensacoa, and it was really hard for a while. But the motion sickness went away, and all of a sudden I'm very good at these things. I'm B number two or three as we moved along through instrument flying and formation flying You go aboard the carrier and gunnery and bombery and night flying, all the things that you go through. Then we went to Texas for advanced training. And finally, after 18 months, we got our wings. I got assigned to a fighter squadron in the Far East. I went to El Toro. We had about four months of Marine Corps fighter training. And then we went over, and the war is over. And I'm in a high-performance squadron, so the only thing to do was to fly missions and drink. and the squadron drank like I did. That's what it looked like anyway. And the colonel would order the drinks and we'd all sit around in the club and we flew hard and played hard and it just was so exciting. I just looked back on it and I said, God, I am really in the right place. And there was a lot of partying and hard drinking and just really this. and I became close to all the people in that squadron. There's 21 pilots. And about the ninth month, I was standing out in the end of the runway with the maintenance officer, a big red-headed guy named Newport. And he was talking about his promotion was coming in to lieutenant colonel. He's going to get his own squadron He's got nothing but the best pilots in the Marine Corps. And he pointed to me, a young lieutenant, and he said, and I want you in that quadrant. And I'm going, oh man. And then he said but I wouldn't let you drink. And I pretended I didn't hear him. I never asked him what he mean or anything like that. I just went, yeah, well, it is nice out here. And look at this guy landing. I had no idea why he would make a comment like that and it wasn't until I got to AA that I realized that in the middle of heavy drinkers my drinking scared them. I was doing something beyond heavy drinking if you know what I mean they just could see I don't know what this guy's doing we're just having fun he's, whoa you know there was probably even when I was violently ill I was joining them getting drunk and then you know I had I ended up with 14 years in the Marine Corps before my drinking got me thrown out And during that time, we had the six children. I got transferred to all kinds of wonderful duty stations. I spent a tour with the 1st Marine Division. That was an honor to be a forward air controller with them. And three years as a flight instructor, and then at the end, I was right here in Cherry Point. was where my everything flying-wise came to an end. And I was in a photo squadron during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and they were flying the Crusader out of Cherry Point. And this is a very high-performance airplane, and I was starting to experience withdrawal symptoms flying because I would not drink for eight hours, and then I'd get in the plane, And when you're in that advanced stage of alcoholism, you can't be not drinking. You have to be getting it in there all the time or you're going to have a seizure. And so I'd not drink for eight hours and then I'd get in there and boy, it would just start. I never knew what was going to happen. But it generally worked along the lines of it felt like a panic attack. My heart would start racing. I'd be sweating. I wouldn't be able to see that well. I'd feel the shaking coming in my hands. And there was nobody else in the airplane, so I had to, you know, keep going. And we had no alcohol program and I never heard of AA, so I just thought, you're stuck with this, so you're going to have to make the best of it. I mean, it never dawned on me to go ask for help. I just went, boy, this is hard. And, of course, I never talked to anybody. I just was out there. and I've mentioned I flew with my hand on the ejection seat and different techniques because there's nothing in the handbook about flying the Crusader during alcoholic withdrawals. There just isn't any. So you have to make it up as you go. And I'm sure everybody here on your job, you were having to make up a lot of things and make it all up as we went because there wasn't anything in your job description about, you know, coming to work in the blackout and have nobody find out or whatever. And the ending came one time. We were on a cross country. We weren't in the Crusader. We were in another plane that was a lot easier to fly. It was an old radar plane. And that plane had a radar guy in the right seat and the pilot in the left seat. and we were flying along I guess we were coming back to Cherry Point and I had to get out of that airplane something awful I thought maybe I was going to have a seizure I didn't know what it was but I knew I had got out of there and it didn't have an ejection seat it had some crazy way of sliding out the bottom that I quite honestly had forgotten exactly how that went and then I thought well this guy can't fly so I can't jump out of here and so I called the flight leader and I said we have an oxygen problem over here whenever you do that you have to land immediately so he looked down and he said oh there's an Air Force base okay mayday and we go down and land and I go over to the club and get a couple of drinks and I think oh god that was close I really feel terrible it was like well the next morning we go down and the maintenance people didn't find anything wrong with the oxygen And I took a look at the planes, and I just went to the flight leader. I'm not going to do this anymore. He said, what do you mean? I said, I'm nicht going to du das anymore. And so somebody else flew the plane back. I guess I got in the right seat. I don't really remember. And he said, now, you're going to tell the colonel. He said、You don't want to be saying those things. And I went into the colonels, and they said、Colonel, I don' t want to do das anymore。 And he said, what are you talking about? This is your whole life. You love it. You've been doing it for 14 years. You don't want to come in here and tell me that. I said, I don't know how to do it anymore. So my drinking just told me to give up what I love the most. I said tell this man you're not going to do it anymore and so after a while they believed me because I would refuse to put my name on the schedule. I said I'm not going to do that. So he said, we're going to have to send a letter up to headquarters Marine Corps and request that you get a new job assignment. It took three months. And during that three months, right over there at Cherry Point, I sat and did the legal work for the squadron, you know, the special court marshals and that kind of stuff. And I had a little office. And when the guys would go by, I wouldn't even look at them. I could not make eye contact with any of those pilots. I was so ashamed. And I knew what they were saying. I could feel it as they went by. How did that piece of, get in this outfit? This is a very special outfit. It had all lieutenant colonel and major and all captains. It didn't even have a lieutenant. It was really, it was cool. And I couldn't look at those guys. I just sat in there sweating and I could hardly wait to get out of there when my orders came and I'm not going to go into all of that but I was transferred to become an air traffic controller so the whole Marine Corps had a problem with their system there but I ended up crashing and burning after about a year and I didn't control any planes, I let the other guys do it so I didn't have mid-air collision on my hands or something. But I got out of there, and God, it felt good. But any time I thought about Cherry Point years later, I just felt I could still feel the shame. And a couple years ago, I was out in California, and I was invited to talk at the Brentwood Group, which is about 500 people. They have a lot of big meetings out there. And what they do is they get somebody with a lot of time, and he goes up and talks a little bit about his story, but mostly about a topic. And then they raise their hand and ask questions. And Chuck Chamberlain used to come there quite often. And I just think that's so cool to be able to raise your hand. Chuck, what about this? And you don't get an answer. But before the meeting got started, a lady was coming to get her 30-year medallion And then her husband drove her there. He wasn't in the AA, but he came to a lot of events. But that night he was going to go drink coffee and pick her up later. And she mentioned, you know, Sandy Beach is going to be leading the meeting. He said, was he a pilot? And she said, yeah. Well, tell him to come out here. I think I know him. So I went out there, and here's this guy. I've never seen him. And he said, in 1962, you were in a flight of four F-3Ds going back to Cherry Point. You declared an oxygen emergency. All the planes landed and you never flew again. And I went, God damn, how do you know that? How could you possibly know that?" And he said, I was in the plane with you. and what are the odds 42 years later that I'm going to meet the guy that was sitting over here and it turns out he wasn't the radar guy he was a pilot that had been recalled from American Airlines for the Cuban Missile Crisis and the reason it was all pilots was that where we had been there was a hurricane coming near Cherry Point and you have to go fly all the airplanes somewhere safe, and then you drink until the hurricane goes away, and then You fly them back. So there wasn't any radar guys going on that mission. And I said, I'll be damned. That's just amazing. So I was talking the next night in Oxnard at a convention. He showed up again. He had all the photographs of the squadron and the airplanes and just going on. Oh, yeah, I remember him. I remember Him. Then he said this. he said did you know how popular you were in that squadron it killed us that you were leaving he said the colonel tried everything, he was calling headquarters Marine Corps, can't we just wait we'll keep them here for six months can we do this, can we do that we were almost crying when you left and I went damn, that's not the way I remember it So I had to go back 42 years ago To the past And erase all of my old ideas And put in the truth Now you think you can't change the past? Well, there you go We change the passed all the time When we find out the truth about it There's so many parts of our past That aren't true and if we're lucky it gets revealed to us there was a speaker I remember him he's just so funny and he said my story is divided into two parts what happened during the years that I drank and what I thought happened during the years that I drink and that makes a very good point about spirituality we could make that statement about any part of our life my childhood is divided into two parts. What happened when I was a child and what I thought happened. What I thought happened. And I talked about the perception I had of the Catholic Church. That isn't what was going on. That's what I thought was going on. So you can see the world that we live in is built out of one building material, thinking. That's the only thing that holds it together are thoughts. and the thoughts that we put in there cause us the emotional pain and the emotional feelings that we live with. And everybody constructs a world like that. But as they grow up, they learn how to get out of there either in their church or somewhere but not alcoholics. We live there until we get to AA and you find out that you were wrong about something. I didn't know I would ever admit I was wrong about anything. I never had up until I got to AA. No way you could trap me into saying I was right. I was always wrong. I would keep arguing until I died. I'd go home and get an encyclopedia and at 3 a.m. I'd call you back. Wait a minute, there's this thing here. because I was not going to be wrong. There was something fatal about being wrong. And my sponsor trapped me into a corner one time on something, and I went, oh, God. And I finally just said, okay, all right, you're right. He said, no, you are wrong. And I said, well, it's the same thing. Well, let me hear you say it. It wouldn't come out. I would just go, wrong. Finally, I got it out. All right, I'm wrong and I didn't die. I was just wrong and it's still okay. And of course, when you look at what the 12 steps do, they force us to find out everything we're wrong about and get rid of it. Chuck Chamberlain used to talk about that. Uncover, discover, discard. In his later years, he was thrilled to find something else he was wrong about. Oh my God! And then throw it away. Because it's screwing up our peace of mind to be wrong about something. And we got a whole step about it. Tenth step. Wrong, wrong, wrong. And when you realize how wonderful it is to get rid of wrong ideas, you're so excited when you find one. Holy cow, I'm wrong again. And we all know, we all realize that. And we stop pretending to be something that we aren't. It's the greatest freedom in here, this spirituality of being wrong and not having to be perfect. And it's funny, even there we brag. Before we get to AEA, a group of guys would get together and go, how did your week go? Oh man, shot a 75 on Tuesday got a promotion at work a little bonus 15 grand not too bad got two babes on the side I'm really had a hell of a good week what about you well he has to top that well I had a shot of 71 I get a $20,000 bonus you know what I mean you just go all the way around the room then you get an AA yet the same type of guys were gathered around how'd your week go oh god I screwed up at work twice I had to make two amends it was so damn embarrassing you know at least I owned up to it how about your week two amends I had to make three amends have you noticed that competition I screwed up worse than you did what a transformation that we're so freely taking our own inventory with our friends and letting them know, boy, did I screw up here. Boy, did i do that. Then we find out we don't even make decisions without running it by other people. We just find out how valuable it is to get input on something. My favorite part in explaining that is in the 12 and 12 and the 10th step And it has those four little things about how to stay in the now and how to stay undisturbed. And they're very powerful. If something happens at work or somewhere and bends you all out of shape, you just look at that and it just says, okay, you just got bent out of shape. Self-restraint. Don't do anything while you're this upset. Don't move. Don't go off. Don't look. Good. Now we're going to have to have an honest analysis of what happened. How do we do that? We call up somebody, call up your friend, call up your sponsor, say, you know what just happened at work? I was doing this and my boss came in and he chewed me out in front of all the other people. What do you think about that? And my sponsor goes, well, what did you say? Well, I just said something about the organization in this workplace sucks. And he said, well, it's very clear you owe him an amend. So get over there and make the amend. But that's not always the way it is. Sometimes when I report it over to the people, they go, what did he say? Holy cow! That's absolutely off the wall. It's inexcusable. He is totally in the blame. Forgive him. And that's the end of the plan. That's the entire plan. Self-restraint, honest analysis. If I'm at fault, make an amend. If they're at fault forgive. I'm back to undisturbed. And in sobriety and spirituality the least disturbed person wins. that's it so you've got to be careful about angrily reporting on what a good program you have so isn't it fun when you realize that no one in the world has to change for you to get happy no one in the world the news doesn't have to change nothing has to change for you to stay happy that's because we're connected to God if you would ask me the most important word in Alcoholics Anonymous God there isn't a word that comes close to that it is the central force in my life and in our program. And we're so lucky to have a spiritual path that's laid out in a way that no matter what background you come here with, and most of us come here, as Bill says, I guess it's in the big book, half of us were atheists or agnostics when he's talking about the third step. How am I going to go in and do that or even the second step? Don't worry about that. Just leave that. Don't try to deal with that yet. Just keep an open mind and see what happens. So you put off the debate about whether there's a God or whether you're old ideas, all that. Just put it off to the side and just come along and we'll start working on the steps and we will see what happened and this and that. So as I look back on it, I just said, well they must have some kind of an AA God that they aren't telling me about yet. they're probably going to break the news to me later. So as far as I'm concerned, God is just a word, and I'm just going to say it. Well, God help me. And I'm going to pray to this three-letter word. And I hope you do this. And so I go through and I make amends and I do all these things. and you know what it says in the promises we suddenly realize that God's doing for us what we couldn't do for ourselves so no one in AA explains God to us, God does he just comes up inside of us and we suddenly are aware, wow these aren't a bunch of coincidences there really is such a thing that all these other people are talking about and when that happens that's the end of the debate that's the end of all of the old ideas when this contact takes place it's the most precious experience this awakening that a human being can have and when I sponsor people I tell them in the first meeting I said we're going to go through this and you're going to have a spiritual awakening and it's guaranteed so just follow what we're going to do here, and you're going to be astounded before you're halfway through. And they are. They just realize that it's not by accident that they're comfortable. It's not my accident that their family looks a little better than it used to. It's no by accident that people are starting to like them. It's by accident they're not angry all the time. Something big is happening. And very often, we see it before the person does. You've seen it in your home groups. You've seeing somebody who was so angry and didn't want anybody near him, they just almost snarled if anybody wanted to come around them. And now they're giving their seat to somebody. Can I get you some coffee? Is that the same guy that was here about six months ago? And we're seeing the transformation of spirituality. what a blessing that this was given to me and I hope it those of you that are new you don't just get to stay sober you get to operate at a different level Bill calls it the fourth dimension of existence I thought he was making it up oh yeah, isn't that cute fourth dimension of existence rocketed into the fourth oh yeah And then you just have this awareness. He was right. He was really right. And so I just look at the history of AA. It shouldn't have happened. Bill had other plans. Everybody had other planes. But God had the plan, and that's the one that turned out. and everything else got cut off at the pass. It failed, couldn't raise any money. What are we going to do now? Well, let's write a book, we'll sell it, then we'll raise a lot of money. So out comes the book and so we just look at how all this came out of the blue. When I look at the history of AA and I try to single out what was the moment that AA was born, and I call it the Big Bang. And if you talk to old-timers, they're not all going to agree on when this moment was. Some of them are going to say it was when Ebi came over to see Bill in the kitchen and he looked and he couldn't believe his eyes. Some are goingto say it was in the lobby of the Mayflower Hotel when Bill went, I better call somebody up. And some of us say that it was in Towns Hospital when Bill cried out, If there is a God, let him show himself to me. And the room lit up. And in a split second, there was hope for alcoholics all over the world. Up until that moment in time, if you were an alcoholic, it was a bad future. You were going to die or you were going to be locked up in an insane asylum. And in that instant came release from the disease, the obsession. Complete release. and almost replaced by an obsession to make sure every alcoholic in the world had this same experience. And here's a man, he has no money, and he devotes his whole life to making sure that you and I get an experience like the one he had. And, man, when you look back on those years, I don't forget how many times they moved, 40 or 50 times. He and Lois went from this drunk's house to that drunk's house. And they knew he had something. They just said, you're going to make it. You're going get this out there. Get this out here. And pretty soon, it all came together. And they sat down and wrote this book. And it's funny. I let you know we do a big book study. I'm sure you all attend big book studies. I'm in them. And then I go, well, I'll try something else for a while. But I always go back. I always go back and have a meeting where we're studying the big book. And my perception of it changes, and I'll see things. I didn't know that was in there before. I'm sure you've had this happen. And the last time we went through it, I saw that it was written for someone who got it in the mail. It was a do-it-yourself book. Okay, now you're going to have to change your mind about God. So here's the chapter of the agnostic. Now you're going to have to make a decision, turn your life over. Now you'RE GOING TO HAVE TO TAKE AN INVENTORY. SO GET A PENCIL AND A PIECE OF PAPER. THERE'S NOBODY HELPING YOU. OKAY, WELL, FEAR, ALL RIGHT. OH, I'M DOING ALL RIGHT, OKAY. RESENTMENT. NOW YOU'RE GOINNA HAVE TO GO FIND SOMEONE TO TELL ABOUT THIS. MAYBE A DOCTOR, MAYBE a PRIEST, A PSYCHOLOGIST. REMEMBER THAT LINE? MAYBE ONE OF YOUR FAMILY MEMBERS. I DON'T KNOW IF THAT WAS A GREAT LINE TO HAVE IN THE BIG BOAT. Now you're going to try step six and seven. Now you've got to go out and make amends. Well, now you're gonna have, learn how to live a day at a time and now here's prayer and meditation and then you finally get over to working with others and here's this guy reading the book and it said, here comes the best part. A community is going to spring up around you. There'll be other alcoholics just like you. It's just going to be this wonderful thing. Of course, you have to go find all these other alcoholists. So a good place to look in a hospital, look over here, and how many places in the country, that's how AA got started there. A lot of them got started because an alcoholic gets over and moves somewhere. But a lot ofهم get started because that book arrived and somebody miraculously followed it and started AA in this little town. I'm at the end of my time. I've had a wonderful time sharing with you all. And I just tell those of you that are new, what's going to happen to you is beyond your wildest dream. So do not stop. Just stay like a radar and locked into this. Get a good sponsor, and the only question you should ever ask is, what should I do next? That's it. That takes you completely out of the driver's seat. your only job from now on is to evaluate the results and compare them to the results when you were in charge. And I think you're going to be astounded at what you find out. Thank you all very much.