Big Book Study, Military Life, and the Reality of Not Drinking by Sandy B.

Well, good evening everybody. My name is Sandy Beach and I'm an alcoholic. How y'all doing? Thank you very much for asking me out here. And for those of you that I'm seeing again, it's a pleasure to be back with you. And For those of you that are new that I am just meeting, it's an absolute delight to be part of this real AA event. I mean, by God, how basic can you get in getting into the big book and our history and steps and all of the stuff that makes AA work? I was sitting up here tonight watching the sobriety countdown, and I see that things haven't changed. Those people with under one month's sobriete were sitting in the furthest corner of the room. Funny how that happens when we're when we come in here. My sponsor made me sit in the front row, you know. I'd sit back there and he'd grab me and say, you're sitting in an incurable row down here. I didn't feel safe down there. What if he needed to bolt out of the room? You know. Oh, let's see. I came into Alcoholics Anonymous in 1964 out of a military nut ward and I haven't been drunk since my first meeting and I owe it all to not drinking. That is that is the only reason that I have not been drunk is due 100% to not drink Now, the miracle I had six months sobriety in the nut ward It was due entirely to not drinking There was no booze available in there So in a way, the miracle in AA isn't so much the not drinking It's an absolute necessity It's kind of like breathing If you don't do it, you're not going to stay alive But if all life was not drinking It wouldn't be a very exciting life And so for me, the Miracle of Alcoholics Anonymous Is to get happy with not drinking Now we're up in the big league miracles for alcoholics to be sitting around on a Saturday night going, Yay! No drinking. This is a major league miracle. It is up in loaves and fishes and the water into wine. And the alcoholics happy on Saturday night that they're not going to be drinking. Now, I mean, this may be even in a league above those other miracles. We're talking about a major event, and yet, if you are new, I would suggest that anything I say in any talk is just one drunk's opinion. So if I go wandering off in left field, you've got to realize I was in a nut ward for a long time, so I'm not responsible for anything that brain damage may have caused. So if I get off on some tangent tonight and am misquoting the big book or screwing up the steps or something like that, you just talk to your sponsor and say, is that true? And he'll go, no, but let's humor him and get him out of town. And they will straighten you out, so just sit back and enjoy it. But I'm really convinced that if you are in alcohol, if you've been in AA for a reasonable amount of time and you're not happy, you're doing it wrong It's that simple You're doing it wrong You're the same as somebody who comes up and says I've been drinking a lot and I don't get drunk What would you say to that person? You're doing it wrong And they would say but I just got fired from my job I can't get drunk And we're going what does that got to do with anything If you drink enough you will get drunk You'll get high So don't give me that And so when you're in the program the program has much more power than alcohol ever had and it can put us in a very special place no matter what the circumstances in our life are and so i'm i like that statement that if you're in a and you're not happy you're doing it wrong you're you're just not allowing it in because when it comes in there is a sense it's not the same kind of happiness we had from booze that silliness It's a real sense of well-being and a secure knowledge that all is going to end well. You're just on a certain chapter where there's a little downturn right now, but your story is goingto have a happy ending, and the events that are unfolding right now are goingto be disclosed to you why they were all necessary, and it may seem out of line. Well, why did I have to get sick, or why did she leave me, or why is this job not working out? Wait a while. See, in sobriety we get to wait. We get to not react yet. You don't have to get drunk and fly off the handle and get arrested and go in there and see it's even a worse ending than I thought it was going to be. We get a chance to sit back and see the whole thing. Look at what happened when you first came to Alcoholics Anonymous and you walked in there. You thought it Was the end of the line. I mean, this was the death sentence. Alcoholic walks up in front of the judge and the judge says, young man, you've been arrested for public drunk and it's ten times this year, I'm finally going to have to do something. The community is getting on my back and so it's either a year in jail or one AA meeting. And the guy stands out there scratching his head thinking and thinking finally he asks the judge which jail? Because he has found himself In one of these situations So many alcoholics get in A dilemma And his dilemma is He's had friends He's been in jail He's got drinking buddies Who went to jail But they came back When they went to AA He never saw them again so he was worried and so we get here by various means I got here because of a convulsion and the DTs and so on down and that's how I got to Alcoholics Anonymous you may have gotten here because a cop singled you out and said breathe in here whom you're in a maybe your boss came in said listen if you got a minute I'd like you to brief your replacement or maybe your doctor called you in and said if I was you I wouldn't buy any long playing records I'm going to Explain advanced liver disease, and you've got it. And so we get here by all these various methods, and none of us are looking forward to Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm still waiting for the speaker to get up and say, one day I was sitting around my house. My life was going good. I had two cars, had a good job. And I just got thinking that there must be more to life than I'm experiencing. and I remember reading in the library about Alcoholics Anonymous, a wonderful spiritual program to character building, character development. So I joined. That just isn't it. We get here by default. We get hier kicking and screaming and generally it's the end of the line. I can't believe it. And then if you talk to somebody who's just been sentenced to AlcoholicsAnonymous, it'sthe worst thing that ever happened. You know what happened to me? It's worse than being in a nut ward. Now I have to go to AlcoholicAnonymous. How low is it going to go? And then three months later, you're talking to the same person, and guess what? You know what the best thing that ever happened to me was getting sent to Alcoholics Anonymous. And so, what I was saying earlier, when these events happen to us, we don't really know what they were placed there for. So something that has entered your life that seems like adversity, Seems like you just sobered up and came in here, and now life is going backwards. Just wait a minute. This may be a necessary little detour to get you in touch with this person who then gets you over here and sends you on a new career. When it all happens, you'll be able to look back and see how all the pieces fit together in a way. It's what sobriety is. It's the gift of a power that lifts us up so that we have a different perspective on the world. And that's all that I drank for was to have a difference perspective on the world. It wasn't to change the world, I just wanted to get high and then I could tolerate the circumstances as they were. As a matter of fact, circumstances got to be quite pleasant. First drink that I ever had was up in Yale. I'm a hometown guy and I went to the hometown university and it seemed like all these big shots from all over the country came there and I felt like the little bumpkin there. Everybody knew all the social graces and they were much smarter than i was and i could just tell that they didn't want me in their crowd you know that feeling and you walk into a room and everyone goes what's he doing here you know they look over and how did he get in here and and that sense of a very hostile world people looking at you and wondering well you know and they were saying uh this one night and it was one of these mixers you know let's take 50 guys put them in a room let them walk around and introduce themselves to each other and I hate those situations. Now I'm starting to like them. I'm understanding it a little better, but they were very intimidating to me because everyone was better than I was. I had that terrible thing that a lot of us alcoholics have, which is that inferiority complex mixed with a super ego. You know what I mean? A drunk's lying flat on his back in the street and feels superior to the people looking down at him. It's just... I know you're looking down at me and you think you're such hot shots standing up there looking down at me lying here well let me tell you something if i ever got my act together you'd be eating my dust i've got potential that is incredible one of these days i'm gonna just unload it all i mean remember that stuff but not today i'm real sick today i won't be unloading any potential today but i'm going to need a drink I'm sick, but boy one of these days am I going to be somebody. God you're gonna be sorry for all those things you said you clowns looking down at me like that so that was sort of the we were just incredibly split on that position whether we were superior to everybody or inferior but I was experiencing the inferior thing around this crowd and walked in and did my usual routine walk over here seven guys having a little conversation I figured maybe I belong with this seven so i walk over there looking for a little eye contact and all i got was you know like what are you doing here man wrong group you're probably over there somewhere hey no problem i'll just go over these two guys they're carrying a little conversation they didn't want me this group didn't wants me and they made the whole circle of the room nobody wanted me in any of their little groups and i hadn't started drinking yet i was uh 19 years old and the best of my recollection the reason I hadn't started drinking was some Catholic church deal that if you didn't drink until you were 21 you got like a quarter of a million years off from purgatory. And I needed that bad. I had a lot. God, did I have a lot of stuff. I had lots of problems. I lived in a neighborhood out there just outside of New Haven, Connecticut and back in the 40s we had an epidemic out there of impure thoughts that just stayed in the neighborhood for years. You couldn't shake it. It was just incredible and so I needed all of this bargaining stuff to balance the guilt that I was carrying around for stuff I just thought about doing. You know what I'm talking about? Just that tremendous buildup in there but this was an emergency. This night was not going well and I remember my roommates were saying, you don't drink yet? You're in college. You ought to be drinking. It's great. It makes you feel good. So I said, maybe I'll have a drink and that'll solve this problem. And I had a drink of whiskey. The waiter came by and grabbed whiskey and water or something like that and I waited a couple minutes and nothing happened. I had the feeling that this whiskey was broken, that it just wasn't doing anything. So I got another one quickly off the tray and I was drinking that down and I almost got drunk and I felt like I was getting ready to leave because I felt nothing. I thought, to get this euphoric feeling, I was feeling nothing. I was turning to go out the door when I couldn't believe my eyes. I didn't feel changed at all, but they took those 50 mean guys they had left and been replaced by 50 of the nicest people you have ever seen. Everyone in that room was looking over at me going, please join our group come to us and I remember going you'll all have to wait in line I'll start over here and I'll be all around just a minute and I could hardly wait for me to show up at these places and everywhere I went I had the feeling that they were lucky you know here I come with another joke and I just went around and I was experiencing some of the early promises of whiskey I was intuitively knowing how to handle situations that used to baffle me. I just was going around. Fear of economic insecurity left me. I had plenty of money to buy everybody all the drinks they wanted later that night and eat, drink, and be merry a day at a time. Tomorrow I may be dead. I have that wonderful drinking philosophy that comes when we're lifted out of ourselves into a very comfortable world and to this day I swear that what it did it changed the world into a happy place to be. And I look back on alcohol and what it did, it changed my world. Now, I love the world of alcohol. Everybody was having a wonderful time. We loved each other. You remember that? In the drink number seven, you'd look over and tears would come down your eyes because I'm so glad you're alive. You remember? You just feel the love for my fellow man and all of this stuff. So I knew it was in there, but it only expressed itself when alcohol was in me. As soon as alcohol was gone and it was just me, just me. It wasn't like that. It was real scary to just be me. Just go around totally alone and unarmed. And that's the role of us alcoholics. You see, the more self-centered we get, the more alone we are and the more along I was. And then I saw the world from my little shelter, my little bomb shelter where you hide in there and you look out at the world. I remember down in New Orleans I used this story. It's my best description of what I thought life was by the time I was maybe 30. This was my interpretation of a typical day. This is how I saw life. I was like one of the balls in a pinball machine. You know, there's five of them that sit on a little bench down in the darkness down there. It's like a little bar if you've never been down in there. And they like being down in here and they just sit on the little stools right next to each other and they're just going, man, I like it down here. Dark, just a little bit of light and you can hear the world going on and all that racket. Man, I love it. I like what I like down here, this is where I want to stay and you know, it's really rough out there and the guy next to you agrees, it's rough out here and I hate it out there. You know how when you're in the bar and you're talking like, then you pass out you know and then it's god i hope that alarm doesn't go off and i have to go to work today and just about then somebody puts a quarter in your machine and it goes lights are going oh god here it is and then bam you're kicked out the front door and you're up there going oh no another monday i can't believe it and the plunger comes back now you're out in there what's going on out here what's doing on out here and you've gone around you're stuck in these bumpers over here and you're going, what was that? You're trying to keep track of what's going on and make sense out of the day. Now you're over this side. Where the hell is that little hole where you duck in there at the end of the game? All you're thinking about out there in the day is where's that littlehole? I just want to duck in there. I just wanna duck in there. Your favorite watering hole. If I can just get through the day, I got 20 more minutes. Now it's getting down the other bottom. There it is and you just ducking in a little flipper comes up and you go all the way to the top you remember that and you're just going to make it oh three more minutes and I'll be and boom the boss wants you to work overtime but I can't I can I can I gotta go in there and finally it's over you're down in there you just go God I can stand it out there and you just all out of breath and tired and that's it it was the rat race it made no sense if only down in here with our fellow drinkers in the dark quiet of a bar could we get a handle on life and where we could get something inside of us that gave us a new philosophy and a perspective. But whatever was going on out in that world, I couldn't see. I couldnít. It was too overpowering to be there. So thatís sort of whatís going on inside of me. But you canít let anybody know that thatís whatís going on inside of you. Youíve got to be real cool. You know what I mean? So this is whatís going on outside but on the outside Iím going, ìHey man, great world. You know that Yeah, I'm enjoying eating it up man. I'm just eating this up. I just this world is something that my oyster That's what it is, you know and you carry on with all that but oh, you Know, that's a lie deep down in here. You haven't got the slightest idea of what's going on and you start developing a philosophy of life If you're new let me tell you we're in the big book Your philosophy of Life is mentioned. I'd like to mention. We're just that we're discussing the big-book here today Would you like to know where? Your philosophy of life is mentioned in the big book. Old ideas availed us nothing. That's where your philosophy... But those are the ideas that we assemble, and we collect them from other kids in grammar school, we collect some from the great works that we read, and a great deal of knowledge comes from the philosophers who share their wisdom in bathroom walls. And you see strange facts that you learn in there, But if you're a self-centered person, you're never going to ask anybody about that. You're just going to process that information alone. It'll cause a lot of confusion in later years. You're going to say, oh, I didn't realize that. That's an amazing tidbit. I don't know how to incorporate that into my life, but I'll deal with it someday. So we have a lot OF misinformation. We have a LOT of things we've never shared, and it's called our game plan for living. And each one of us has assembled some sort of a game plan for living, sort of an haphazard hodgepodge of whatever's been going on in our lives. And in my case, I just was bouncing along through college. I graduated somehow, miraculously. The Korean War was going on then, and I'm almost positive everybody had to join the military. At least that's what they told me. I was drinking so much it could have been a joke. and a bunch of guys were drinking beer and they said let's go down and join the Marine Corps so I went down, hey I do, I do and later on I found out that was a very serious step that I had taken when I got in with that crowd and so my life for the next 13 years was in the Marine Corp wasn't any particular plan of mine I just found myself there and couldn't get the effort to get out of there I'm just, there I am and I was only there about six months when I saw that I had made a terrible mistake. I was in with a bunch of fanatics who wanted to be infantry officers and their favorite thing was to wait and see for the coldest day of the year and then go sleep out. That would be, hey, it's 40 below. Let's go outside tonight. Why sleep inside? And I'm going, why? Because it's very difficult out there. And I am going, well, then why would you want to go out there? I know how to be miserable without going out there I don't need to practice that. It comes naturally. I have a very, I can freeze to death just without reading a book on it. So I saw a movie about pilots and the pilots weren't doing that. They were in the bar and they were going like this, talking about these things. So I became a pilot and that was a little more up my alley because we did have a pretty good life. We got paid extra money. We drank a lot more than everybody else, I think. I don't know. and I got into fighter squadrons and flew jet airplanes and went all around and got a lot of good stories but it had nothing to do with anything that's going on here tonight. That was my hobby. That got a few hours a day of my time but my full-time thing was being an alcoholic. That was consuming me in planning things around getting drinks and making sure there was a party to go to and recovering from some of these drunks so I have some stories that involved flying in crazy episodes overseas with drinking and trying to come in and sober up enough to get in an airplane and all the other guys. In the 50s, it was kind of loose. There wasn't that much traffic control. They couldn't keep track of you like they can today and you could fly under bridges and do all those crazy things. So we had a lot of exciting times but as the years went on, my alcoholism was slowly taking control so that even flying was not sufficient stimulus to enable me to forget the stuff that was consuming me on the ground. Eventually I would be flying around worried about all the problems that us alcoholics, those nameless fears and something bad is going to happen any second and so on. Eventually after flying for 12 years I started having withdrawals in airplanes. i would be losing my vision and heart palpitations and sweating and felt like i was going to pass out and i would put one hand on the ejection seat and that was my theory that if i passed out as i fell forward my hand would pull the ejecting curtain and i could go out and the chute opened automatically so i had solved the problem of being a fighter pilot who was about to pass out and it was uh you know it's one of those things like okay what's the next problem i mean it was really funny we're just you didn't see anything wrong with the situation so hey problem came up problem solved why like this it's like driving with one eye shut you remember that hey there's the white line i can see it so it was the same kind of a thing and we pat ourselves on the back as having solid problem but eventually it got so bad that I began to distrust the pilot of the plane I was in which was me. I knew that I was starting to have hands that trembled and I was hitting wrong switches and I turned the fuel master switch one time off during takeoff and turned it back on and it's about a one in a million shot that the engine will restart and boom and it restarted and i remember just going god you know i was trying to hit some other switch and i'm just you know getting in worse and worse shape and you know what the problem is now i've been sober a while and i've been around a lot of other pilots you know What these guys were doing they were taking booze up with them i was Trying to fly in extreme withdrawals and i wasn't having anything to drink from uh midnight and it'd be like noon the next day and boy when you're sober 12 hours, you're in bad shape. You'd be in better shape with some booze in you than when you get, because I was getting near the end of the line, which was convulsions and DTs and all of that. So at any rate, I did go to the doctors and they admitted that I had a serious problem. It was two or three weeks down in Pensacola, Florida, find out what is causing this problem in the airplanes. And this is back in the dark ages of the military and alcoholism. And at the end that time, the psychiatrist was left with the diagnosis. The rest of the doctors had come up with trembling hands, profuse sweating, bloodshot eyes, high blood pressure, nausea, incoherent talking sometimes, and the psychiatrist said, hey, we have another case of childhood fear of flying. just manifesting itself in the plane so I was grounded from flying which was a terrible blow to my ego because that was who I was and now I was being stripped of any identity and anything that was worthwhile and I felt just awful but I had no resources to fight it or to question it. I just was coping and trying to find my next drink and so on down and the Marine Corps took this wreck and retrained me as an air traffic controller. So you can see that we had some incredible thinking going on and so that was what I did in the last two years of my drinking. I was bringing planes in in bad weather when they couldn't see the runway and they're trusting me and a radar screen to get them all down on that runway. And through the grace of God, I don't have any horror stories. As a matter of fact, the last year, I was like the officer in charge overseas, so I didn't do anything. I just let all the other guys do the work, and mainly my job was to try and find our unit every day. I would get up in the morning. Where do I work? And it was hysterical. I could go through. I won't go through all that, but I had a little bicycle. I was now drinking daily since I wasn't flying anymore, and I lost 50 pounds during that last year of malnutrition just pure maintenance vodka drinking, just drinking juice and vodka and trying to just get through each day. And I knew something terrible was going to happen, and I came back to Quantico, Virginia to go to a career school to become a general. And while in this school, I had a grand mal seizure where you bite your tongue and you're lying on the floor. And even then, even the Marine Corps had to admit this that looks like a problem down there So I went off to the Bethesda Naval Hospital To find out what caused the seizure and after three days up in the tower at the Bethasden Naval Hospital, I went into the DTs and that let the cat out of the bag as to what the convulsion was all about because other people have convulsions But not too many people have DTs other than alcoholics So a straight jacket and back into the nut ward And I was locked up there for six months I mean, they don't mess around They just keep you there And I'm in with the nuts And there were a few drunks And we were there forever And every so often they would have Or they had group therapy every day And the psychiatrist would be talking about various things And I'd say about once a month Just because they had to They would talk about alcoholics most of the time they like to talk about legitimate diseases like schizophrenia, manic depressive, suicide or something like that and there was a pecking order on the nut ward and you know where the drunks were we were at the bottom and the other people that were locked up in there looked down on us who was also locked up and so when the psychiatrists would talk about alcoholism well what do you think about alcoholismo these people no wonder they were lockedup in there you know what they said you guys ought to stop drinking i remember i remember looking at him saying to myself no wonder you're in here to come up with an idea like that do you think my problem has anything to do with drinking my problem was uh the diet i was on in japan i was eating all that rice i got malnutrition i came apart and stressed president kennedy was assassinated i'm married i have six kids uh it's overpowering i don't fly anymore that's got nothing to do with alcohol it's got to do with all the bad breaks that are occurring in my life. So I didn't relate to any of these things until after four or five months, the local AA group gave one more try. They went to the head psychiatrist and they said, you know, AA really is good for alcoholics. Don't you think we could start up our AA meeting? They had had it there for one year, I think in 1962. And the psychiatrist determined that it wasn't doing any good. So they stopped it. And now they came back in. And so I got to AA, my first AA meeting in the Nut Ward after being there five months when a corpsman came in and said, all drunks fall in. Left face, forward march. I'm in my AA meeting, a little blue bathrobe. I'm sitting down there. It felt like an invasion of privacy. These outsiders are there. They know I'm an alcoholic, you know what I mean? And now they're gonna go tell everybody and I really didn't like it but after the meeting I went up to this little red-headed guy he's still over in Bethesda I see him all the time and I said to him you know you were very interesting tonight and I thought what you had to say was it had a lot of validity and if I ever have a friend with a drinking problem send him over to see you and Red started poking me in the chest and he said let me ask you something that's the first AA honesty you know how we get it here in AA let me ask you a question before I go home which one of us is going to put his coat on walk out get in the car and drive home to his family and which one of us is going to put his little blue bathrobe back on and go over to that elevator and go upstairs and get locked up like an animal now which one are you hey I just met this guy I mean what the hell is he coming off with this kind of thought my head is terrible resentment against him and I kept that resentment and kept it and kept that and as soon as they let me out I got drunk at him and started bringing I was an outpatient I was bringing booze back into the nut ward continuing treatment and I knew they were going to catch me and they said if I ever drank again they were gonna throw me out of the Marine Corps and so on down so one weekend I knew that the shakes were coming back and they were going to start noticing it Monday so I had typical insane alcoholic plan on that saturday night i said you know what i'll do god it came to me in a flash as i'm drinking i'll join aa over the weekend then when i go back on monday morning i'll say i joined aa and look what happened to me and i blame being all screwed up on aa which was their idea and maybe it'll take the blame off of me you know how we always want to make someone else responsible for our actions so that was my plan and one thing I didn't reckon with was a sponsor that was the thing that I didn't know about and God I dialed a number to send the guy and the guy's over there he's a big marine captain same rank I am and he says my name is Bill this is a 12 step call I talk you listen you know and he had a shaved head he wasn't an aviator it was an explosive ordnance disposal guy he said that was the perfect job for an alcoholic because there was nobody looking over your shoulder while you were working and there he was and he was just there and we're in the car we're going to meet and then on the way home he's talking about we're gonna meet every night for 10 years or something like that You know, forever and ever and ever And you're with me And I'm not letting you out of my sight And I go, God, I've got to get out of this outfit But I couldn't I couldn' t get away from him And I stayed sober Without a fear of sponsor Just get rid of that guy I needed a drink But I knew he'd hurt me And so He's still my sponsor His 25th anniversary is August 6th. Clancy's going to be speaking that night and I'm going to get Clancy to call him up there and say something nice about 25 years in the program. So here we still are, same two guys. He went on and retired from the Marine Corps and I'll tell you what happened to me in a little while but AA has been an incredible journey. One that I never asked for, never planned on, never knew was here. I just came here to stop drinking. That's all I wanted was to stop drinking and you told me there was a little bit more than not drinking to the program that it was really too little thing too little things so i say this for those of you that are new don't want to think that it's overpowering all you have to do is not drink and change everything there is about you too little things and that's all that you have to do and it takes the rest of your life to do it so anytime you stop changing you're going to be in trouble doesn't matter how long you've been in here anytime you decided you've gone far enough you're in deep trouble it's like being part of a tree that stops growing the rest of it will crush you so i don't know it's you know to put aa what is this all this and what is it all about i was talking earlier about if something's going wrong here um wait a while see how it turns out i went to a meeting every night for two years every night per two years at the end of my first year after going to meeting every night and doing a perfect job at work and getting outstanding fitness reports i got passed over for major temporary setback obviously you know they had to take into consideration the guys in the nut ward what the hell next year no problem go to media every night outstanding fitness reports passed over the second time now if you're not familiar with passover in the military it's not a jewish holiday and it's not like baseball two strikes and you're out and they just said goodbye we're not paying you anymore it's not a it's not like getting thrown out it's like why don't you leave you know what i mean and so you just pack up all your stuff and leave and uh i got out and i had six kids and uh and you don't get a retirement you get to keep your sword that was about it so so i'm out there and i'm in all honesty i'm going to confess i had a little resentment this is like a killer resentment it was like anybody that would talk to me you know what happened to me i mean you couldn't you could stop me anywhere if you could be a complete stranger hi sandy my name is joe joe you want to have me at the marine court You could call me at 4 a.m., wake me up You wouldn't have it to me It was a resentment of advanced degrees And I'm out there and I'm trying to get a job Salesman or something Used fighter pilots are worthless I'm selling junk to the government I'm not making any money And the kids are all starving And I don't know what's going on And I think that's why I'm resenting So I'm sitting in my room one night if you're going to keep a resentment I'll tell you this is the truth if you knew if you want to keep it don't tell your sponsor about it don't talk don't call the group about it don't telling anybody about it just get in your room and you can boy that's like putting yeast in dough it just goes pretty soon there isn't room for you in the room with the resentment it's just squashing you well that's what I was doing with this resentment because it was a justifiable resentment. It wasn't like yours. You know, this was a justifiable resentment. And so when you have justifiable resentments, you have to get angry. It's a law. I figured somebody would call a technical foul if I didn't get upset when you had justifiable anger. and I just and I was complaining to God this new found God that you all were talking about and I remember going okay God big deal man do I go to a meeting hey God did I go to a meet did I not drink did I get hey one year hey God did I bitch at the end of it I said hell no I have hope I have faith in my God did you hear me bitching last year I didn't say anything I said hey God will take care of me I'm not going to worry about this okay God what's the deal here I did every night now I'm in this lousy room you and me and me and you and uh I don't want to complain but this sucks this is this is awful and I just had a little conversation with whatever your God is here in Alcoholics Anonymous and let him know what the hell was going on and so So for some unknown reason, I'm whipping through the Washington Post as I'm having this conversation, and bam, way back in page 10 in the news section, a little teeny box that said Marine Corps, and it caught my eye. Marine Corps Instruction Team from Quantico. That was my team. I was on this instruction team. We traveled around to other service schools and put on a big day-and-a-half presentation about the future of the Marine Corps like in Command and Staff College and stuff like that. Hey, there's a little thing about my team, killed in plane crash in Denver everybody was wiped out and if I had had my way and been promoted I would have been there and so I looked at that and as I'm looking at it I knew that God knew I was looking at him you know what I mean so I said look he just told me this was going to happen I wouldn't have been complaining you just don't know what's going on you just don't know so that led to something and I got one job and this job and various things. And now I ended up a lobbyist in Washington for the credit union movement, and they pay me so much money, I don't know what to do with it. And it's just one of those type of things. And I enjoy life, and I have a wonderful time. But there's a thing that happened in the program, and I suppose it is something I'll share with those of you that are new. Chuck C wrote that, or they did that new pair of glasses from the retreat that he conducted out in California. I mean, I really feel that's what we've been given is a new pair of glasses, a new way to see everything. And we're seeing it from an elevated position. We're lifted up out of our self-centeredness and out of the gutter, and we're up there, then things make sense. You know, it's if you can be lifted up above a puzzle, and you can say, oh, well, I see how all that works. But you can't see it when you're down in it, when you'RE wallowing around in our self centered position. And you can'T get up here by yourself. you have to be lifted up there it's a gift it's called a gift of surprise so we need to find a power that can lift us up there and that's what this higher power is aaa doesn't have a god you know what i mean a8 doesn't attempt to teach us anything about uh a god it does it proves the need for one it absolutely proves the need for want this is the first step if you understand the first steps that your powerless over alcohol what you've really said is unless something comes along i'm dead this is what powerless means something has to come along and if i had my way this is the way we deal with this step we could just get everybody who was new take them up to the top of the belfry or wherever it is and say you want us i want to show you what powerless mean and push him out and then you're getting the idea about powerless and And you're going, hey, the parking lot is coming up real fast. I'm getting the feeling of powerlessness. Well, this is our first step. I just wanted to show you AA's first step, you just took it. And you go, God, this doesn't seem too good. And you are about to take our second step. Are you ready for our second? Yeah, I am ready for the second step, good. And about six feet from the cement a big hand comes down and goes, just in the nick of time, says, excuse me, we're conducting a survey. Do you believe in God? Now. Now you're taking the second step. It's up to you. And that wonderful chapter of the agnostic where they were, you know, Jack Benny had that great line about when he's on a radio show and I see the same line in the chapter of the agnostic and the same line do you believe in God it's all the same and on the Jack Benny show they had Jack Benny walking down the hall and you could hear click click click click click and he's walking and then those of you that are real young Jack Benny was the great comedian and his the whole premise was he was very cheap he couldn't part with a dollar and on this particular show you hear a stick up man go stick him up and Benny goes yikes and a stick-up man says, your money or your life? And then starts the silence. Ten seconds, fifteen seconds and the audience starts breaking up and finally the stick-op man can't stand it. He says, well... And Benny says, I'm thinking. And he's wrestling with his money or his life. It's a hell of a dilemma. And we have that same line in the big book on the second step. and I'm trying to think to live on a spiritual basis or to die an alcoholic death is not always an easy choice am I going to go splat or am I going to suffer the most horrible fate for a self-centered prideful person am I gonna have to change my mind about God and there we are And when we do, and that's why I changed my mind. I thought it would be foolish to not change my mind What did I have to lose? I couldn't prove the existence of God but I sure saw clearly the need for one If there wasn't one, I was all over It was silly for me to fight it any longer What could I lose by saying, I surrender Whatever there is that's helping all these people Could you help me too? And that's all I've done I've just said, whatever's been helping all these people, if you have a little extra time, I'm over here too. And I'm not doing too good either. As a matter of fact, I don't do an awful. The more if you want to know the truth. And something came over and said, well, I'd be glad to help you. And whatever that is has been in my life since probably the second or third year in the program. And so we've been given an answer. I like to think of AA as an answer and I'll close with just this little scenario about that I think I mentioned to you that I went through a meeting every night for two years get thrown out the Marine Corps well when that happened I went to you know how you go to discussion meetings then people go anybody have a topic they'd like to talk about and then nobody says anything and then the leaders is all right well we'll talk about resentment or whatever the topic is well I had my hand up that night I said yeah I got something I want to talk about yes sandy what is well i got thrown out of the marine corps and so the leader said all right the topic tonight is getting thrown out on the marine corp so the guy over here says oh throw the marine core serenity prayer that's what i would recommend serenitee prayer i'm going i don't think the guy heard what the hell i said he said for serenadee prayer next guy says i would recommend the prayer of saint francis out of the 11th step that's what i would recommend next guy says you know what i wouldn't do i'd go work with some new person i'd go work for some new people that's what i'd do and the last guy said double up on your meetings go to twice as many meetings that's what i'll do you know what i said to myself you know what i'm going to do i'm changing groups what the hell was that this cross-section of the group they don't understand they don't understand me you know what I mean that's how that bit of information came across to me and about oh I guess about eight years later I'm getting divorced another guy is moving into my house I'm going this is ridiculous this is upset I can't believe you're gonna meeting on a room around the program or this and that you know they finally had immediate anybody got a topic yeah getting thrown out of your house in divorce well let's talk about that tonight guess what the guy says serenity prayer getting divorced i'm just ready prayer that's what you need no no no prayer of saint francis that's what you do the prayer of st francis next guy says double up on your meetings you got to double up on your meeting so the last guy said get some new person work with that new person and about three years after that real estate market tightened up i was in real estate went bankrupt now i got about 14 years sobriety and i'm broke and i've gone how the hell is this program Guess who has his hand up? Third time since I've been in the program, had my hand up at the meeting. What's the topic tonight? Bankruptcy. Well, you know the ending. Guy over here, oh, bankruptcy? Serenity prayer. That's what I do for bankruptcies. Next guy over here? Prayer of St. Francis. Next guy, double up on the meetings. Last guy, work with new people. That's why you're doing your bankruptcy. You got a lot of time, no job. You got to hang on. So what do we got here? we got the solution so what we do is we work the solution that's what we do we just focus on the solution a great John Lennon song watching the wheels go around people ask me lost in confusion I tell them there's no problems only solutions I got real tired I just had to let it go you remember that whole song there it is what we have here is a solution and if you work the solution just stay in the solution the problems get smaller and smaller because the solution takes you here and when you're here you look at me go I don't know why that was bothering me so much we don't go figure all these things out they get removed our alcohol problem was never figured out I have any idea why I'm an alcoholic or what all that stuff is it got taken away somebody else is being harassed with that problem as long as as long as I keep the solution in me the higher power to me on a daily basis is like air in a tire you know it's like free you want you buy a tire whatever say about the best tire you get $150 tire that tire you might think for that kind of money you wouldn't have to put cheap air in it I'll just go out there without any air in and you know what I mean it's got no cushion between it and the realities of life and you hit a chuck hole with the best tire in the world with none of that cheap free air in there it cuts it called a slip it cuts right through it's over it's finished there wasn't the protective cushion between us and the world and this protective cushion is called god it's freely available get your god quotient before you go out you're going to go on something difficult there's some person you got to make an amend to there's someplace you have to go that is very intimidating before you walk in to see this person stop in the ladies room the men's room get the little serenity prayer out God grant me a serenite to have a little conversation with your higher part hey God this is going to be rough why don't you come with me and he said sure I'll be glad to come good Mr. Jones yes I'm here to see Mr. Brown would you tell him we're here to see him and just never go out there alone if there's anything I can tell you those of you that are new never, never, NEVER get caught alone thanks a lot