He Got a Crew Cut So Nobody Could Grab His Hair Off the Bar Stool Again – Sandy B.

Welcome to the smokeless Greenwich Friday night group of AA. My name is Blair and I'm an alcoholic.
Hi everybody. We're happy that you're here with us tonight to help celebrate our anniversary.
That horn, I couldn't find a cowbell.
So in keeping with what we're going to do with some of the alcoholics tomorrow out in the water,
I thought I'd bring a boat horn to get the thing started.
Just a couple of announcements.
We're going to dispense with the usual announcements, anniversaries and so forth tonight
because of the spirit of the anniversary and our guest speaker.
One other announcement I'd like to make.
Many of you know that share meetings, where we share meetings, I'm an AA tape nut.
And thanks to Cy.
Cy down here in the front.
I was introduced to Sandy through the medium of tapes.
And Earl has come up from Fairfax County, Virginia tonight and is taping the proceedings.
And if anybody has any interest in a copy of Sandy's talk, that will be available on the way out.
We are in the context of our preamble, which we'll read in a moment.
We are self-supporting, as you know,
our own contributions.
We have expenses for this anniversary.
And we appreciate any special help as our fellows are passing out the baskets right now.
We'd like to dispense with that before we get on with the regular program.
We do have an exciting but simple program this evening.
First of all, John B. will speak briefly about the history of this meeting and the history of Alcoholics Anonymous.
When you think that it was May of 1939,
when this meeting was initiated as the third oldest meeting in the movement,
that seems like a long time ago.
And also the thing I heard the other day was at that point in time,
there were less than 75 recovering alcoholics in the world.
So this was an early, early, early meeting that we're celebrating tonight.
Thank you.
And we have...
Sandy B., who's come from Washington, as our principal speaker.
I need to say to Sandy that I, as I've told you, I've learned more about sobriety,
what it means to me and what it means to others in hearing you on the tapes.
And we're blessed that you're going to join us tonight.
And we hope to wind up the meeting by no later than 10 o'clock, probably before then.
And we have to be out of the church by 11 o'clock.
Now, for our preamble,
I'd like Brooke to come up and lead the group in our usual manner.
Brooke?
Blair, I'm Brooke, and I'm a gratefully recovering alcoholic.
When Blair first asked me to do this little stint here, I was very honored.
But also, I was quite concerned a little bit because I had some knowledge of the history of AA through reading.
And I could not recall at any time reading anything about the establishing of a preamble.
And so I did a little research on it, and it settled down on what had happened in April of 1939.
And the first copy of Alcoholics Anonymous, the big book, came off the press in April of 1939.
The first paragraph of the foreword to that first publication,
reads,
We of Alcoholics Anonymous are more than 100 men and women who have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body.
To show other alcoholics precisely how we have recovered is the main purpose of this book.
In the following pages, literally a page and one half, which that foreword takes up,
that foreword sets forth in most direct language the purpose,
us, the who, how, and what of Alcoholics Anonymous, and it's a reminder to me, and I'm sure to
all of us as we read that, of the tremendous debt of gratitude that we in A today have
for Bill W., for Dr. Bob, for that small group of pioneers really in recovery, the men and
women of 1939, and then the thousands and thousands of others following that whose dedication
and commitment to AA have made meetings such as this tonight possible and for us to have
new lives.
In June of 1967, Tom Why, the first editor of the Grapevine, edited the Statement of
Purpose out of that foreword to the big book, and with a few changes, printed it in that
month's issue.
And then within a very short while after that printing, that Statement of Purpose was adopted
and being read before meetings around the world as the AA Preamble as we know it today.
Here at this meeting, the Friday night meeting of AA, we have a custom, and for those of
you who choose, I would like for you to join with me in the Preamble and recite with me.
Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength,
and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover
from alcoholism.
The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking.
There are no dues or fees for AA membership.
We are self-supporting through our own contributions.
AA does not wish to engage in any controversy, neither endorses nor opposes any causes.
Our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety.
We are committed to serving the people of our country.
I say, Brooke, we're going to have a terrible time with Tino with that Preamble.
Now it's a distinct pleasure to introduce a guy who I've gotten to know very, very well.
He is my sponsor.
He's a marvelous guy.
I'd like to introduce John B. Would you all give him a hand?
Good evening.
My name is John, and I am an alcoholic.
I'm an active member of AA, and I would like to share with you briefly, with a capital B,
some of the movements in the history of our little town of Greenwich, and yes, the world.
This meeting, whose 52nd anniversary we are celebrating this evening, is the third oldest meeting in the world.
Like all our meetings which were to follow, it was started in 1939 by a relatively few alcoholics
who wished to share their experience.
They drank and hoped with each other, and other members, they were blessed for their close contact in those years with Bill Wilson.
It was my good fortune to have been in contact with Bill W. on several occasions later on.
He was the same as you and I, an alcoholic whose life had become unmanageable.
Fortunately for all of us, he and Dr. Bob were given the same opportunity.
He was given the spiritual guidance to set in motion the format for the AA movement.
He never wanted it to be complicated.
He wanted it to remain very simple.
He took a firm stand against financial endowments of any kind.
In the early years, there were several substantial sums offered and refused.
His feeling was that each...
...group should be self-sustained by passing the basket at meetings for nominal contributions
and contributing to intergroups for our loosely knit organization.
You will see in a bit how well his suggestions were followed.
Our first groups held largely open meetings with a leader and three speakers
and lasted on an average of one hour.
One and a half and two hours.
They also usually held a closed discussion meeting
with a leader who qualified as an alcoholic
and then discussions for approximately one and a half hours.
The format for the open meetings has largely changed
to an open discussion meeting with a speaker and discussions.
The time frames of most AA meetings has shortened
to approximately...
...ultimately one hour.
Now, really some staggering facts.
1939.
Three meetings in three states with possibly a couple of hundred members.
1991.
Nationally, 46,000 meetings
in 51 states with one million plus members.
2000.
Internationally, 47,000 meetings in 133 countries, including Canada,
with an additional one million plus members.
So, you see, we have friends all over the world that we haven't met yet.
I have fortunately been ...
Pardon me, to different parts of the world and those friends are just thrilled,
...to share this very special moment.
their experiences with us. I'm serious about that. It makes it to be a marvelous trip.
I don't care where you're going, because you have friends who have a common interest,
and they just can't wait to entertain you. I won't be so bold as to say we are happy
to be alcoholics. But I will be bold enough to say that those of us who have been enveloped
in this magnificent movement are fortunate indeed. Thank you.
Thank you, John. And now on to our main event and introduction of Sandy. Sandy, I came down
to Washington two weeks ago tomorrow.
With my daughter, Catherine, who lives down there, we went to your Saturday morning step
meeting in Bethesda, near Washington. Sandy leads a meeting every Saturday morning, and
I think there were about 350 or 400 that day, and you were marvelous. Bob Peay has advised
me that you were the feature speaker at the 1980 National Meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous
in New Orleans, where you addressed 25,000 people.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
You're in constant demand around the circuit, and I don't know how you keep up with it.
As I mentioned earlier, I got to know you through the medium of tapes, even though I
should have known you at that little university up the railroad line here, since we were in
the same class together. And incidentally, there's a few of us sitting here in the front
row, including a roommate of mine that came in from Cleveland to be with us tonight.
I'd like to finish up.
Thank you.
I'd like to finish up my introduction to say to you all who are in the program that
this is a marvelous program. It's a program of sobriety, and I love the joy of sobriety.
And for you that are visiting tonight, this is an open meeting. I hope that we will be
able to share with you our feelings of joy and humor and the deep sense of sobriety.
And with that, I'd like to introduce the guy who I think is going to be the most important
part in our time today.
I think is the best at telling that story.
Would you all welcome Sandy B. from Washington.
Thank you very much, Blair, and good evening, everybody. My name is Sandy B., and I'm
an alcoholic. How are you all doing? Well, we're delighted to be here tonight and to
share in...
I've never been at a 52nd
anniversary of Sandy B..
I'm not aölololo.
of anything. And so, God, that's just amazing to be here tonight and just think about when John was
just talking about what has transpired between 1939 and now is absolutely miraculous. But the
miraculous becomes so commonplace in Alcoholics Anonymous that we miss it. We just go, of course,
there's 93,000 groups. What do you expect? You know, it's like somebody new comes into Alcoholics
Anonymous and their whole life gets straightened out and we just go, right, that's what's supposed
to happen here. And it just happens. And sometimes I think it's possible to miss the
magnificence of a new person walking into these rooms and through that incredible defense that
all of us alcoholics have that has never been penetrated before.
All of a sudden, there's a crack that opens up and the love that's in these rooms is able to go in
there and tell that frightened person that it's safe to come out now. And we're right here for you
and we were in that same jail that you have constructed for yourself and it's okay to stick
your hand out. And it's one of the first places that any of us ever dared to venture into this
thing called sobriety, which is really,
the great adventure of life, which is to get to know what everything's all about and to for the
first time for most of us to actually experience the spirituality of mankind. And all of this
happens because I drank too much. And when you think about the irony of that, you know, well,
how did you deserve this wonderful spiritual program? Well, I puked a lot. That's how I got
to deserve this.
I mean,
as you talk about not earning it in a sense, I mean, we just everything is such a gift for
for the for this life that we lived before we came here and how
dramatically different that life, that drinking life is. All of us were so ashamed of it.
I know I was. I just look back over those drinking years during the years I was drinking and I felt
nothing but remorse and shame. I was so ashamed of it. I was so ashamed of it. I was so ashamed of it.
I was ashamed of it. I was so ashamed of it. I was in a position where I had an extraordinary
attitude. I was in a position where I was ashamed of it. I was so ashamed of it that I tried to
improve myself and all the others who were involved. And I wanted to find strength in both
things. So I felt like walk away from that mode of life. Best in a toe. I was in a really
altering body. I didn't want the world to be like it used to be one Philip Costelli
who braved through the physiognomies of the Paramount's crash. I mean, I was bullied,
struggling, found a man killed in the Joyiller's that was
on our side, all day and night. You know, in the heart of my life, you know that对
I don't이� fáe. I've been through the Toledo keep going now and today, but I say Transgender
a very special gift that enables us to reach out and touch the life and save and bring new life
into a suffering alcoholic. And the very thing that enables me to do that and you to do it
that other people can't do is our horrible past. The fact that we live that way and we're able to
change is the commonality. And so the great healing that takes place here is a direct result
of those years that I drank. And instead of being totally useless and wasted, they're the
wonderful connection that is made with the next suffering alcoholic. And it's the most useful part
of my life is the fact that I can draw on that experience to enable a new person to relate and
stay here.
Thank you.
Thank you.
a horrible past, it's totally wasted, etc.
It's an incredibly useful, it all makes sense, and this program has a way of just putting
things in perspective like that.
Now, just about every meeting around the world, the speakers get up and they share a little
bit about how they got here and what happened and what it's like now, and I'm no exception.
I am what they call a primary alcoholic, which is a person who drinks about 10 or 11 minutes
and then goes into alcoholic drinking, you know what I mean?
I drank socially maybe 10 minutes, and that's it.
There was no more social drinking in my whole history other than that first drink.
I was sort of sitting there, hey, I'm a social drinker, but as soon as that drink took hold,
I became a former social drinker.
I was on my way to qualifying to be an Alcoholics Anonymous.
I grew up in New Haven, Connecticut, so I'm not far from where I grew up, and had very
nice parents, a sister.
My sister's now got 12 years in Orange, Connecticut, in Alcoholics Anonymous.
I didn't even know she was drinking, but she was at home very quietly, a housewife with
her children, and the world caving in.
And so she did all her drinking in the kitchen, so you don't hear much about that.
Her brother was not drinking in the kitchen.
He was out with the police and getting, you know, getting all the headlines, like she
says.
I always hog the headlines from her.
And I suppose, you know, when we come into AA, we think we have so many unique problems.
God, do we think we have terminal uniqueness.
Everybody who arrives here has the most incredible set of problems.
And anybody who'll sit down long enough, we'll talk to them about them.
You know what I mean?
Just on and on and on about the problems, as if there's something that can be accomplished
by constantly rehashing the problems.
Fortunately, when we get in AA, we learn how to just stay in the solution and talk about
it.
And then we go back and take a look at the problems.
And while we were away, somebody solved them.
And they just look entirely different.
You know, we learn that going to meetings.
You go to a meeting, it's all screwed up.
You come out.
The meeting, something got straightened out.
You know, what happened here?
Well, it's just amazing.
But as I came in, I thought I had this unique story of being uniquely frustrated and not
understood and terrified about the world.
People intimidated me.
I didn't feel equal to anybody.
I got to this big university that everybody's talking about.
And they're all, he said, half our class is here tonight.
And the other half ought to be here.
So there's no.
And I had that sense of why am I less than everybody else?
Why does everybody else know all the social skills and they know how to dance and they
know how to talk to people and they know how to interact with everyone?
And I walk around trying to think of something to say other than nice day, isn't it?
You know, and that was the extent of my social conversation.
And then some people would say, what do you mean?
And I didn't have an answer to that, you know.
So as a result, I had the feeling that people were just not friendly and they didn't want
me around.
And that's where when I remember taking my first drink was in that sense of being in
a room with 30 or 40 people and trying to talk with them and not fitting in with any
group and walking around, see if I fit in with this group or that group and getting
rejected.
Getting rejected visually.
You know how people just look.
No, not over here.
OK, don't worry.
Over here.
You can just tell.
You don't even have to ask them.
You can just sort of glance their way and they go, no.
OK.
I'll go over here.
I don't want to intrude over there.
I obviously don't belong there.
Well, it was under those conditions.
And, you know, the world only exists in our minds.
I mean, that's where all of the reality of everything is.
And in my mind.
It was this night was a very intimidating world because of the people that were in it.
They were just sort of hostile and aggressive and competitive.
And under those conditions, at age 19, which is fairly old to be starting drinking, I had
my first drink and I poured it down and waiting for all this stuff that my roommates are
telling me that, hey, you haven't started drinking yet.
This is the most wonderful stuff in the world.
And I'm no, no, I'm going to be an athlete or whatever I was doing.
But that night.
I needed help and they were telling me this stuff does these wonderful things.
So I drank it down.
Nothing happened.
I had another one.
I remember nothing happened.
So I went back over and said, give me another one of those.
And while I was drinking it, I happened to glance back at the room and I felt no change.
I don't recall alcohol doing anything to me.
But to this day, I can tell you what happened to the people in that room.
I was busy.
Trying to get these three drinks down.
And someone came in and took that 50 people out that I don't know where they went, but
they were replaced by 50 of the nicest people you have ever seen in your lives.
They all were looking my way and going, please join our group.
Please come over.
And hey, folks, you have to wait your turn.
I'll start here and then I'll go all the way around.
And and I had that feeling.
That was to stay with me whenever I had alcohol in my system.
When I had a couple of drinks in my system, I'd be walking up to my favorite bar and I'd stand outside and I'd say, God, these people are in for a treat.
I'm here.
You know what I mean?
It was that high, you know, and that it was just the opposite.
It was just the opposite.
And so alcohol didn't really change me.
It changed the world I lived in.
And when I went into that world, the alcohol world, I loved it.
This is the world.
Everybody was talking about, you know, when people would say to me, you have conversation in the world.
Great.
Used to say to me, isn't the world great?
And I'd go, not the world I live in.
Where are you going?
I mean, great.
It's tense out there.
But when I had a few drinks in me, the world was wonderful.
God, I love that world.
People just had smiles on their face.
They camaraderie.
And we've all had this happen.
The world.
Sometimes the world gets so great.
You're sitting in a bar and you just get overcome by the.
The beauty of the people that are in the bar.
And the bartender sees you sobbing on the bar stool.
What's the matter?
I've never been in the company of such beautiful people in my whole life.
And buy them all a drink.
I just oh, my God, this is we just be overcome by the magnificence of the world that we found ourselves in.
Now, the problem with with my drinking anyway, I don't know about yours.
It needed some fine tuning to there was definitely it wasn't always the wonderful world overcome by the beauty.
There was these strange, bizarre events.
Sometimes the police would show up.
I wouldn't understand why they wanted to interfere with this incredibly beautiful world.
But you'd be off in jail somewhere or some guy would take exception to some philosophical point that I had made.
And teeth would be falling out and I'm on the floor and going home and waking up in the morning and blood all over and teeth missing while it gone just, you know, really hurting and I'd say to him, but I'll tell you one thing, it never ever did the thought come in.
You know, you ought to stop drinking that thought never got in there.
What would come in is, God, I wonder what happened.
And I would always explain it in terms that had nothing to do with drinking, hanging out in the wrong neighborhood.
I remember one time in New Haven, I was drinking down in the pizza part of town where kind of some tough guys down there.
And some guy came up behind me while I was drinking beer and having a pizza, minding my own business.
He walked up behind me, grabbed me by the hair, yanked me off the bar stool and beat the hell out of me.
That's the way I remember it.
I might have said something, but I.
But I remember that.
And then I remember having discussions.
You've all had discussions with yourself after you've been arrested or your wife yells at your husband, yells that you get fired or something.
Your your conscience gets the best.
You have to explain things to your own conscience.
Well, what are you going to get you get down there and get the help beat out of you again?
You got to stop going down there.
And I mean, no, that's where it's great part of town.
That isn't it at all.
And I remember thinking, well, you've got to do something.
I mean, you just can't leave everything and not learn a lesson out of that evening.
So I went out and got a crew cut.
That was my answer to never having anybody grab me by the hair and pulling me off of the bar stool.
And us alcoholics come up with answers to problems that are about as humorous as that they have, because we have to bypass the obvious answer, which has to do with our drinking.
And as far as I was concerned, very shortly after drinking, there was never going to be anything to get between us.
There was never going to be anything to get between me and my drinking.
I didn't realize I had made such a commitment to alcohol, but it became, without me knowing it, my way of life, my literally my higher power.
It gave me answers.
It gave me energy.
It gave me the ability to make decisions.
I never remember having a problem where I said to myself, here's a problem I won't have a drink on.
Never, never.
I don't care.
Never.
The problem was step one.
Have a drink.
That was step one.
Try to figure something out.
Geez, I can't seem to figure this out.
Get a glass, get some ice.
The answer will be coming soon.
And just as the little glass of wisdom is going in there and it would come.
You know what I mean?
Because what would happen is the fear would be chemically removed and I would be free to think up something.
It might not be the smartest thing.
The world, but at least it was an answer.
And at least something always happened to alcohol.
When I thought of sobriety, I used to think a lot about boredom.
Someone said you ought to go to AA and not drink.
I just said, boy, here comes 50 years of boredom.
There'll be nothing happening because I connected alcohol with action.
Sitting around, nothing happening.
You just got a bottle.
I like to think of going into a package store.
It was like going into a library where you're going to check out a adventure book, you know,
and you look at the cover of the book and it says shooting the rapids in Canada, you know,
and you go, oh, this looks like a good one.
But you really didn't know that the story went from Canada down to Mexico, where they got into a gold mine and almost died.
You couldn't tell from the cover what was going to happen.
And the same thing with a bottle of whiskey.
You could look at that thing and hold it up to the light and shake.
It and smell it, and you would have no idea what was in store for you inside of there.
You might be going to Wiggins, Mississippi.
You know what I mean?
You had no idea you weren't planning on leaving.
You might be going to jail.
You might be a big blonde might be showing up that night.
But there was no way of knowing from the label on the bottle.
There was just you had to go home and drink it.
But you knew one thing.
You knew something was going to happen.
I never went back to the guy.
And said, you know, I'd like to take this bottle back.
I drank it all last night and nothing happened that I know never happened.
And I said, I'd take it back and go, I don't want any more just fighting whiskey.
I mean, I'm just tired of getting the hell beat out of me.
Have you got the kind where you behave yourself and you just get high and you don't do anything wrong?
I'd like a case of that.
And my wife would like me to have a case of that because that's what she would like.
Every so often, statistically, by pure accident, I'd have a night where I behave myself all night.
You know what I'm talking about?
You just drank a lot and you didn't get in trouble.
You just sort of hung in there.
You were nice and you didn't throw up and just everything.
And my wife would say to me, why can't you do that every night?
Not so she's right.
What did I do last night?
You're trying to recreate last night.
Let's see. I start out with a little wine.
I think I had a glass and a half of wine.
Let's be recreating it the next night as if it was.
A.
It's like a chem lab experiment, you know, like if I could just get the right formula,
I could ensure consistent drinking behavior that was good.
Well, this is all just part of being an alcoholic.
So in my own case, I think that our stories about being an alcoholic are the main event.
I mean, that when you really study our lives,
that is the central focus of our thinking.
And we're maneuvering everything else around it.
We start choosing our friends.
I mean, somebody says, hey, Joe's having a party.
Want to come? And then you go, wait a minute.
Joe doesn't drink. There's no alcohol there.
No, I won't be going to Joe's party.
I mean, we just it clearly mandated a lot of things and I had to maneuver around it.
And so alcohol was clearly the centerpiece.
But then there was the background, the incidental things that were going on, like a career.
And mine was in the Marine Corps.
I ended up getting out of school and joining the Marine Corps and becoming a fighter pilot.
And so all of my drinking takes place in school or in the Marine Corps.
And by the time I got out of there, I had finished drinking or drinking had finished me one or the other.
But so my story is about traveling around and flying airplanes and be with a bunch of guys.
And a lot of exciting stuff.
I've got a lot of good flying stories and going overseas and going aboard carriers.
and a lot of fun.
I mean, there's a lot of good stories.
But it has nothing to do with being an alcoholic.
It really is just sort of background.
It's just like somebody gets up here,
well, I was a lawyer and I was down on Wall Street
and I was doing this.
And that's their background to the main event,
which was going on inside.
And the lawyer and the housewife and the fighter pilot
and the real estate salesman and the stockbroker
and the lobbyist are all coming apart inside.
We're watching a human being self-destructing
and pretending that it isn't happening.
Probably the hardest part of being an alcoholic
is pretending you're not an alcoholic.
I mean, how many times we got up and went to work
when, if I ever feel this bad today,
I call in sick for a month.
You know what I mean?
That's a typical day in our drinking days.
You get up and you're puking blood and you're shaking
and you're hurting and you're this,
and you're going to work.
You're going to show up down there
and not only are you going to show up down there,
you're going to act like you're fine.
There's no pain in my body.
Hey, great, hey, go, ha, hoo, ha.
You remember all that?
Just talk a good game, man.
They won't see that you're dying inside.
And so no one was allowed in.
Because what would happen if they got in there?
They might go, hey, it's all messed up in here.
We've got to stop this guy from drinking.
And that would be a major threat to staying alive.
It would be a major threat to surviving.
I mean, my very essence was saying,
don't ever let anybody in here
and allow them to cut off the booze supply.
Because that could be fatal.
That could cut off all of the wherewithal that I have.
And so without realizing it,
I had literally turned my life over to the care of vodka
and was completely,
dependent on it as a source of power in my life.
And I can remember being calmed down
without even drinking it.
If I could just see my car in the parking lot
outside of the building where I might be working
and I knew I had a quart of vodka in the glove compartment,
just seeing it right over there
would give me a sense of calmness.
And I could just, well, I'm this close.
I could be out there and get some
in just a second.
And it would give me a feeling of peace.
And I could last another half an hour
when it might be time to go out and get a drink.
So my story is simply one of a primary chronic alcoholic
who hung in as good as he could,
but was only able to last about 14 years.
So my whole drinking career was short-lived.
There's people around here that were able to
hold out against this battle for many more years.
But I don't think I was going to last many more years.
It got very bad near the end.
When I ended up not being able, I flew for 13 years
and then I got so bad in airplanes that,
and I never drank.
Now I hang around with a lot of pilots
who told me what a mistake I made.
I could have flown for three more years
if I'd just taken booze in the plane with me.
But I didn't know about that.
And I was going through withdrawal every day.
I was getting up and not drinking
from maybe midnight the night before.
And I'd show up to fly an airplane
at 8 or 10 in the morning.
And that was in the worst possible shape
you can be in, in alcoholic withdrawals,
as that stuff is wearing off.
And I'm flying around and losing my peripheral vision
and sweating and heart palpitations,
just all kinds of terrible problems.
And I finally went to the doctors.
I only went there
as an absolute last resort.
And to make a long story short,
they examined me for a couple of weeks
down in Pensacola, Florida,
diagnosed, what does this guy have?
And this is back before alcoholism
was a diagnosis in the Navy.
That just was not in the books.
It is now, and we have alcohol programs,
but in the early 60s,
they didn't have anything along those lines.
And so they looked at me and I had high blood pressure,
high blood pressure, bloodshot eyes.
I sweat all the time.
My hands shook like this.
I smelled of alcohol.
And I was tested for two weeks by all of the experts
and they could find nothing physically wrong.
And so it was left up to the psychiatrists.
And my diagnosis was childhood fear of flying.
And that was, and so they wrote up something.
We made a big mistake.
This guy never should have been a pilot in the first place.
So take him off of flight status.
And so now I was, it was just a terrible ego blow.
That was my whole identity.
And all of a sudden, you're not a pilot anymore.
You're nobody.
And I sat around and waited for about four months
for the headquarters Marine Corps
to come up with a new specialty.
They had to retrain me.
Now, what are you gonna do with a pilot
who can't fly airplanes such bad shape?
We won't let them near an airplane.
And lo and behold,
I got a set of orders to become an air traffic controller.
And so.
I went back through air traffic control school
with shaking hands and filling those little strips out.
It was a real show to any air traffic controllers here.
Well, if you're in this program,
you probably learned the same thing I did.
When you're trying to bring planes in,
in bad weather and you see two center lines,
you just cover up one eye and you go, hey,
You're on the glide path, you're on the glide path.
And that's what I did during the last year of my drinking was I was an air traffic controller.
But fortunately, I was overseas and I was the officer in charge of this unit.
And all the people who worked for me saw that the last thing they wanted the captain to do was to get near one of those radar scopes.
So I was in charge of making coffee, trying to find where the unit was, which was a real challenge.
Because I had now, without flying, I could drink around the clock and I had become a daily drinker and vodka.
And it was just a nightmare.
It was just, it's very terrifying to think back on that last year.
I lost about 40 pounds, malnutrition, just never talked to anybody.
I was just surviving.
Just trying to keep drinking alcohol, never look anybody in the eyes.
And everybody would just say, well, let's carry him through this last year and then he'll get transferred back to the States.
The military did that with drunks a lot.
They'd go, well, he's only got six more months over here.
Let's carry him.
And then it's the next guy's problem.
Transfer him over to the next duty station.
And so I somehow got through that year in 1963 and came back to Quantico, Virginia,
to become a corpsman.
I was in a career school and it was in that school that I had a grand mal seizure where you're just there in class and all of a sudden you're up and you bite your tongue in half and you're on the floor and I ended up in the military nut ward and there was no alcohol units and I was locked up for six months, just in a nut ward, just in there with all the other folks and that is amazing.
I could go talk all night about it.
Just the nut ward.
But I won't do that.
I will share one story and that was that every so often they would get everybody around on a chair and the psychiatrist would, instead of talking about manic depressive or suicides or schizophrenia or whatever other people had, it'd say, today let's talk about the drunks.
And it'd start around the room asking all these crazy people.
There was three drunks in there with all the crazy people.
It asked them, what do they think about the drunks?
And these crazy people to a man would say, you guys ought to stop drinking.
That's what they would say.
And I remember looking at them just going, no wonder they're in here and coming up with an idea like that.
If the answer to my problem was that simple, I would have thought that up.
Jeez.
Can't be that simple.
And it was in this environment after being there about five months.
That AA managed to talk the head psychiatrist into allowing an AA meeting in the nut ward.
And that's how I got to AA.
I was up there sitting around playing bridge, played a lot of bridge in nut wards.
And Corman came in and said, all drunks fall in.
And it was just one of these forward marks, left face.
And there you are.
And I was at an AA meeting.
So that's how I got to AA.
And I listened to these guys.
I was impressed.
I thought it was wonderful.
I went up afterwards.
I told this little redheaded guy from Bethesda, you know, you've got a wonderful story.
I couldn't believe what you guys got here.
If I ever run into a guy with a drinking problem, I'm going to send him around to see you.
I really thought you had something wonderful here.
I sold on it, but not for me.
It was clear that it was a winner and so on down.
And that was when I got my first taste of AA honesty, that hard love.
And he just told me.
He took his finger and he just went, pal, let me ask you something.
Which one of us is going to go put his overcoat on, go on out, get in his car and drive on home to his family?
And which one of us is going to put his little blue bathrobe on and go over to that elevator and go upstairs and get locked up like an animal?
And I remember just going, God damn, I just met this guy.
He starts talking this way to me.
But I was soon to find that.
That's the way AA worked.
We just talked, boom, right straight out.
You never beat around the bush.
Old AA guy from Washington, Buck Doyle, he's dead now.
But boy, he had just never minced words.
And he smelled booze on somebody.
He'd always walk up and go, one of us has been drinking.
That was his.
Just take a big, hey, one of us have been drinking.
And he just never, you know, beat around or anything.
Some of us might go, I'm not sure.
I smell anything and I don't want to hurt his feelings or anything like that.
But bam, it came out.
Well, that got me started and I didn't like it.
I'd have us down there every week.
And eventually I was let out of there.
And I did drink for about a week.
As soon as I was put in an outpatient status and it got so bad that I knew I'd have to do something or they were going to catch me.
So I called AA for myself and a great big guy.
Another Marine showed up.
And he's a huge guy.
Name is Bill.
He's still my sponsor.
And that was back in 1964.
And he came to my house and just said, sure.
You know what I mean?
And so I started my AA journey that is still continuing.
And what can I tell you about this journey?
Well, it's really.
It's really amazing how different it is than how I thought it was going to be.
And I suppose that's what sobriety is.
I like I say, I just wanted him to leave me some literature.
That was my preconceived notion of how this thing ought to be handled.
And he had other ideas and his other ideas were very extreme.
I've noticed that everything about AA is very extreme.
Have you ever noticed that?
There's just.
All our shortcomings.
You know what I'm talking about?
All the people we had harmed.
All.
All.
You know.
You ask your sponsor, how much can I drink this year?
None.
You know, it's like none at all.
None.
Zero.
I mean, it's just.
I was used to compromises.
You know.
I guess they call them in AA half measures.
That was my specialty was almost doing things and sliding and maneuvering.
And you get in here and it's just very clear, you know, you ask your sponsor a question.
He goes, no, that's the end of that.
You know, there's no way you want to talk it over.
No, I don't want to talk it over.
No, sit down.
That's the end of that.
It's just bam.
And it's just go to a meeting every night.
Don't drink.
We're going to do this.
There was just a whole set of things.
And it.
It wasn't tailored at all.
You know what I'm talking about?
This program, they just do the same thing.
Great big tall guy.
Go to a meeting every night.
Little short guy.
Go to a meeting every night.
Black guy.
Go to a meeting every night.
A woman.
Go to a meeting every night.
I mean, they don't listen to the problems and come up with unique programs for each of us.
It's just as if they had the ultimate answer to everything.
And they do.
And that's why they don't cut any.
They don't slack.
And they don't compromise.
Those of you that are new, there just isn't any compromises there.
You know, they talk about a suggested program.
Well, that's what that word is a real tricky word.
That's just to keep you around.
They knew if they told you it wasn't optional, you wouldn't stay.
But the longer you stick around, you find out that it isn't what you thought it was.
At least that's what has happened to me as I've looked back over the years.
Nothing works the way I thought it would.
AA is completely different than I imagined it after I was here a while.
You know, when you're smart and you get here, you figure it all out ahead of everybody.
You know what I mean?
And you're ready to tell your sponsor some tricks that you've thought up and you've read
the book and you have some changes and going to rearrange the steps and shorten them down
a little bit.
And I got a better procedure for running the meeting.
I think we ought to read the preamble at the end.
And you know how you're just.
Trying to help the group along in the beginning.
So I had, sure, a lot of those thoughts that coming up with my own ideas about things.
And I have learned a lot here.
It has been pounded into me over the years that nothing is the way that I thought it
was.
And there's a lot of lessons to be learned from that.
I think of the chapter five where it says old ideas availed us nothing.
If there's anything that.
Is a very important message that I'd like to talk about tonight, it is about old ideas
availed us nothing.
I had collected and everyone who arrives here has a whole bunch of ideas.
They're in your brain and you have collected them over the years as a human being.
And what those ideas tell you is your reality.
If they tell you that there's no God, that they tell you that you're no good, if they
tell you.
That you're no good.
That people shouldn't be trusted.
If they tell you there's no love in the world, that's the world you live in.
We are our ideas.
And they just keep rerunning.
They're just up there just going on and on.
And that's what an obsession with alcohol is, is this incredible punishment that makes
it so difficult to stay sober is to be sitting there with this obsession to go, if I just
had a drink, I could get some relief from some of this pressure.
And I came in here with a whole bunch of those old ideas.
That was me.
My problem was I didn't want to change any of them.
An alcoholic changing his mind when we first arrived in AA is like the Queen Mary doing
a 180 out here in the river.
It takes about 50 tugboats.
And they're going, they're pushing.
What are you doing?
Trying to get this guy to change his mind.
You know.
And it finally comes.
You know.
It comes around.
And we come all the way around.
And we want to hold a press conference.
I like to announce, I'm going to change my mind.
And, you know, I've never done it before.
And I think it's significant.
And I'll probably never do it again.
But I am going to do it this one time.
Just want to let everybody know I'm going to be changing my mind shortly.
And it comes out, and then we go, boy, thank God, I'll never have to go through that again.
That was exhausting to change my mind about something.
Because in order to change my mind, I have to do the ultimate description.
The ultimate disgraceful, awful thing.
I have to admit that I'm wrong.
We have two steps on this.
And the first time I said to my sponsor, when he finally convinced me of something, we had
argued about it, discussed it for two months.
And I finally turned to him, and I said, well, Bill, you're right.
And he said, no, you're wrong.
I said, hey.
Same thing.
Well, say it.
OK.
And I get stuck in my mouth.
I mean, I'm wrong.
I can't hear you.
I'm wrong.
I'm wrong.
You know?
To say I was wrong seemed to destroy me as a human being.
I could just feel a foundation sinking out from under me.
And yet sobriety has consisted of a constant series of finding things that I'm wrong about
and getting rid of it.
When I look back on the change in priorities.
That have taken place.
And I guess this is what the program is designed to do.
We talk about putting first things first.
And I think what that means is that somehow I'm going to have to rearrange the priority
in my head.
What's the most important thing up here?
Well, before I came to AA, it was alcohol.
After I came to AA, it was me.
That was the centerpiece of the whole program, was me.
You know, I just had that.
I'm the type of guy who I remember hearing this at a meeting one night, they were talking
about the 11th step.
You know, God did this.
I remember a higher prayer rather than God.
And this is funny.
Somebody said, enough about God.
What about me?
You know, like, let's get on to something important.
And I really relate to that.
You know, enough of that stuff.
We got, I got problems here and, uh, and it was as if you didn't, if you didn't stay
focused on those problems and just, they're liable to get grow while you're gone.
And this obsession to stay focused on myself.
Is.
The prison that my old ideas had me in that's, they did, they were on autopilot.
They just went up my head and they just, what they did, they just sat there at meetings
and they went, it's too hot.
I needed something cold to drink.
Why can't I smoke in here?
And there it is.
It's just going on the whole time.
And until that will stop, I'm not going to have peace of mind.
And so I think what the first things first, and this getting rid of old ideas has meant
to me.
Was to move a higher power to the top of the list and somehow through the effort of this
program to make that the centerpiece of my life, to somehow get my brain so that it starts
automatically when I wake up in the morning, start thinking about a higher power.
I think meetings were a wonderful beginning at this.
It was just a constant way.
We say the serenity prayer.
Yeah.
We're saying the preamble, we're saying, uh, all the things that we learned here in
Alcoholics Anonymous, it has been a interesting process to see how these old ideas have slowly.
And it's a very painful thing to get rid of them.
Um, my first one had to do, and probably the most important one that any of us has to do
is the idea of a higher power and the, and those of you that are new, if you're a typical
drunk that's arrived here, you're not too comfortable.
People say the word God or higher power, you go, I'll deal with that later, you know,
I'm just not drinking and going to meetings and that's enough and you don't need, I don't
want to mess it up.
I don't want to get messing around with that, but eventually we're going to have to deal
with this higher power thing.
Um, and I had just a million reasons for avoiding that, but until I was able to do that, it
left me in charge.
It left me as my own higher power.
And I don't know about you, but that was one of the most painful, um, depressing things
to do is to be our own higher power.
And the best help that I've had about this higher power thing is in, um, the understanding
of what AA is trying to do here.
I don't think AA tries to convince anybody of the existence of God, but I think we're
experts at convincing you of the need for God.
And we do that by simply focusing in on the powerlessness of your life and forcing each
one of us to look at it and to acknowledge that on our own, things are going to continually
get worse.
And by focusing on that, I was able to understand what powerless meant.
It meant that unless there was a higher power, I was going to continue drinking, always return
to drinking and have my life continue just the way it was going to be.
That's what it meant.
That's what it meant.
And it was on that basis and that basis alone that I was willing to change my mind about
a higher power.
We like to kid around and talk about you're riding in a canoe going down.
You don't know you're near the Niagara Falls and all of a sudden you're hearing this noise.
Hey, I wonder what that big noise is and you're just paddling around having a sandwich and
all of a sudden you go, I think we're in trouble, Joe.
And then the thing goes over and just before it hits, a big hand comes down and grabs you.
Before you hit those rocks and a voice says, we're conducting a survey.
Do you believe in God?
And the point of that whole story is under those conditions, we'd be foolish to not reconsider
our old position.
And we might say, no.
But.
We're willing to reconsider under these conditions.
And all we do in AA with anybody who is new is to explain that's exactly where you are.
You've already gone over the falls in this disease of alcoholism.
And it's just a question of time when you're going to hit.
And that's what powerlessness is.
And under those conditions, what is your feeling about a higher power?
And so all we're saying is unless there's a higher power, you're going to hit.
So what do you got to lose?
By what?
Changing our mind.
If you're going to hit, that's a different question there.
But the question is really, how do you decide to let it go?
You've got to let it go.
You've got to let it be.
You've got to let it be.
And for me, I suppose, going through some of the things that I've had to let go of, my
feeling about people, my feeling that there wasn't love in this world, that there wasn't
such a thing as brotherly love, that there wasn't a true spirit of the universe running
through everybody.
All of these things that I denied existed I did because I was blocking them out and
wouldn't let them in.
We often kid about it.
If you're new and you were sent here by the church, if you're new to this world, you're
traffic system or something like that, and you don't want to be here and you don't think AA will
work, you do have the power to prevent it from working. You can put your arms up in front of you
and you can say AA is not going to get in here. And that's your choice and you have the power to
do that. But if you do that, you don't prove that AA doesn't work. You just prove you're a little
stupid at this point in time and that you want to hang in that misery a little bit longer.
But I thought when I constructed this jail and didn't let anything in that I proved that there
was no God, there was no love, and there was no friends, and the world was a terrible place
because it never got inside of me. And I guess what happens here is that somehow
individuals, the power of the program, gets through that wall, just opens up the smallest
little crack and allows a little bit of AA to get inside there and grab a
hold of you and dare you to come out. And what gradually gets exposed is the real you.
We find that that world that we had in our head, we just put there. It has no connection to the
real world that's here available to us at all. And the beautiful change, for those of you that are
new, is the present that you'll get in Alcoholics Anonymous. And that present is you. You're not in
touch with that.
You have never fully seen the magnificence of yourself. You've seen what alcohol has covered
it over. It's like it's piled all this garbage on top of this beautiful person. And what sobriety
is going to do, and these steps and your sponsors and your meetings, they're going to start scraping
that away. And that's a painful process, but what a product you're going to find.
You are going to find, as you start pulling this stuff back, that you are just as beautiful,
a person, as there is in the rest of the world. There's no one more beautiful than you. No one.
Everyone is just as beautiful, but there's no one more beautiful than you. The person that's here
tonight, who has those feelings that all of us have had, if there's any hope that we can give you,
is an assurance that what sobriety will consist of is an endless series of discovering the
magnificence of your true self. And that's what we're going to do. And that's what we're going to
We came here to stop drinking and we end up receiving the ultimate gift for any human being,
which is a true perspective on ourselves, our spirituality, our place in the world,
and the magnificence of this fellowship known as Alcoholics Anonymous.
I just want to say it's been a privilege to be here tonight at something like the 52nd
anniversary. I'll never forget it. And I hope those of you that are brand new will
Just come back.
Don't try to think your way through this.
Just allow the people in this room to take your hand
and take you down a road to places that you don't even know exist.
Because things are going to happen to you that you don't know to ask for.
I mean, there are things in store for you with your name on them
that are more magnificent than the stuff you've been dreaming about.
If you will just let go and stick your hand out,
you'll be reporting to the next newcomer
what a miraculous thing will happen to you
if you will just abandon those old ideas,
stick your hand out, and follow the people in front of you.
Thank you all very much. It's a privilege to be here.
Thank you.
Sandy, that was...
Ooh.
Ooh.
Ooh.
Ooh.
Spectacular and marvelous.
And thank you very much for joining us tonight on this anniversary.
On behalf of the Greenwich Friday Night Group,
I'd like to present you with a gift.
And I won't ask you to open it, but you can look at mine.
Oh, all right.
What's it say?
Can you see without your glasses?
It says, Give Time Time.
Oh, wonderful.
It has the AA triangle.
Oh, that's lovely.
And the Tree of Life.
Thank you.
I appreciate it.
Oh, that's wonderful.
Delighted to have you here.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you again, Sandy.
Well, we're about ready to wind up.
We've only got about 50,000 gallons of coffee left back there,
and a ton of cookies.
We promised to get you out in time.
Would Tino and Teddy come up, please?
Yes, please.
These are my two lieutenants that put on this production tonight,
two of our young aces in Alcoholics Anonymous.
How do you like that?
And we have a very nice way of closing.
And if you all would stand and form a chain around the outside.
Tino.
Tino and Teddy will lead us in the Lord's Prayer.
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.
Keep coming back.