Humility and the Tradition of Having No Opinion – Sandy B.

Thank you very much, Jim. Good evening everybody. My name is Sandy Beach and I'm an alcoholic. How are you all doing? Well thank you very much for inviting me over and I want to congratulate you all on the good work you're doing. It's just so inspirational to hear about the books going out and the food going out. And it's just Just Alcoholics Anonymous never ceases to amaze me, and I'm sure you all feel the same way. It's customary at these meetings to share a little bit about how it was back in the drinking days and how we got here and what it's like now. And when Jim was talking about the Senate, I was already thinking about this when we read the traditions. I love some of those traditions. AA, as such, ought never be organized. We certainly carry that out fairly well, wouldn't you say? I've never seen anybody coming around from General Service trying to enforce that, you know, like you people are getting too organized in your groups and we want you to slow down and obey that tradition of not getting organized. Although this event, I've got to say, you've got four, five, eight prime movers, and it's amazing what can happen there. But the one that I've always gotten a kick out of that reminded me of the Senate was the number 10, AA has no opinion on outside issues. And I think about us alcoholics. I mean, boy, can you imagine more opinionated people in the world than we were before we got here? and here we have an entire organization that has no opinion as a tradition. It's just astounding, and some of you may have heard this story, but in the early 70s, right around the same time you were talking about, a senator on Health and Human Services Committee came up with the idea that there ought to be warning labels on booze like there is on cigarettes. they figured it would just do so much good like the warning label on cigarettes so you don't just do one of those things like that, you've got to have hearings and go through all this stuff to gather information so some committee staffer said God, of all the people in the world that could give us insight on this subject would be Alcoholics Anonymous so let's get a hold of them, so they got a hold of General Service office in letter form and wanted to know if they could send somebody down to share AA's opinion on warning labels on alcohol. And somebody came down and said, we'd be glad to. Alcoholics Anonymous has no opinion on warning labels, alcohol, and they were absolutely astounded that an organization would just have enough humility to say we have no opinion, no opinion. But I like to follow that up and say now just because AA doesn't have an opinion doesn't mean that we can't have an opinion as individual members and I certainly have an opinion and I'll be glad to share it with you here tonight on that subject. I think definitely that there should be warning labels on alcohol bottles and I can tell you exactly what that label should say. it should say warning this bottle may run out you should consider buying two you know what I mean and I think then we'd have a label that's doing some good you know what I'm saying it was like Some poor alcoholic, 2 a.m., out of booze, and he read the label, and there's that second bottle out in the kitchen, and then he goes out there. I don't know. Sometimes I get up, and my mind just goes all over. This feels like a potpourri night to me. Things that have happened during the evening have reminded me of things, And so what the heck I don't know what it was Probably because it was around Christmas time Anyway, I got sober in December My anniversary was just last week I was up in Washington And a year later Right around this time of year My sponsor Who you'll hear about a little bit later He was a huge, mean marine And had no sympathy for anyone much less me, his pigeon his only pigeon and we belonged to a group right outside of Quantico, Virginia the Dumfries Triangle Group and he was the secretary treasurer of the group the general service rep the program chairman the coffee maker the grapevine salesman the intergroup representative and he had the combination lock or the combination to the lock on the podium and it was a big podium and inside the podium were the coffee pots, the signs, 10 years worth of sugar. I can still remember that. It was just in there and he was like the whole thing and it Was a speaker meeting and we had at best eight members of the group and we'd invite speakers to come down from Washington, it'd be like a 40-minute drive to talk to eight people. And you know, if you've been in AA a while, you go, talk to eight people? I mean, I'm not going to drive an hour to talk to eight people. So it was really hard to get speakers to come to this meeting. So if they saw you coming around going, hey, Fred, you know they'd be busy and be going over here. But he was mean and tough so he would just go right after him and you're speaking next which there you know whatever so he had no problem getting those speakers well one night he said to me i'm going to pick you up early we're going to have a business meeting tonight before the regular meeting starts so we go to the group there's just two of us and he's up at the podium and i'm in the chair. And he said, it's the tradition of this group that we rotate the jobs in the group. And I've been the program chairman, the coffee maker, the general service rep, the secretary treasurer, blah, blah. For a couple of years. And it's time for me to be relieved and I'm looking for volunteers from the audience you know so I'm the volunteer you know so I get that I didn't mind any of this I was a thrilled to have the combination that somebody would trust me with the money I was thrilled when people would come up and say that's delicious coffee thank you and bring cupcakes and they'd really be happy about that but I was terrified about this program chairman bit because you're liable to get rejection. You know what I'm saying? Where you go up to people, hey, would you speak to him? No. And that might put me out of commission for a month, you know whatI mean, before I could go back and ask someone else to speak. So he had arranged for speakers for three weeks and then I was to pick up from there. So three weeks go by, I haven't asked anybody because it was too much pressure. You know, when you've only been sober a year, You can only take so much. So finally I got this guy. He was talking his mouth off somewhere, and he was the club officer at the Army base Fort Belvoir, and his name was Jack. And he was talking about how he liked to talk. And Belvoir wasn't far from Quantico, so it wasn't really an hour drive. Jack, would you like to talk next Saturday? Yes. I'm like, thank God. And I never did ask. We had two speakers. I never asked a second anybody else. He arrives, and we had one member of our group who was a jockey who was rarely sober, but he'd come to the meetings and just hang around for 15 minutes, go outside, drink a little bit, come back in. And he was there that night just kind of going out and back and out and black. And my sponsor had gone around to Manassas and all these other places and said, Come, this is Sandy's opening night. We want a big crowd at the meeting because he's really putting his heart into this. So I'm up there, my voice is trembling, reading the preamble. You know, I mean, I'm just a nervous wreck. And finally, I get through all the preliminaries and I go in our first speaker and I was going to play the routine. I don't know where our second speaker is, you know, when that time came. And then my sponsor would save me. So I introduced Jack. I can still remember it. He comes up and he said, good evening, everybody. My name's Jack. I'm an alcoholic. And everybody said, hi, Jack. He said, I'm here tonight to resign from Alcoholics Anonymous. And I went, oh my God, I couldn't. And it got worse and all I could picture was my sponsors calling General Service Office and they're taking my name off the rolls of AA and they are sending messages out to all the other groups if a guy comes in named sandy beach don't let him in you know and all that and he goes on and starts this thing about how he came to aa a year ago and he didn't know how to drink he was getting drunk all the time and as a result of these meetings he now knows how to drank without getting drunk i can't believe my ears you know what i'm going and he just went on and on i want to thank you all. I'll never forget you. It's been wonderful being in AA, but just as an example, I had a fifth today and nothing happened to me. And I'm just sliding down on the... I cannot believe that this is real. I thought I was back in the nut ward having hallucinations. I'm hearing this guy and he would have gone out all night except for dave the jockey who was sitting in the front row listening to this story about drinking a fifth of whiskey and not being drunk and so i was rescued when dave jumped up and said you're a damn liar i drank a fifth today and I'm drunk, I don't believe you and then they got into a little argument and went outside and my sponsor got up because he knew I wasn't going to get up and he just said I'd like you all to come back next week see if Sandy can top that and so I don't know what it was tonight that reminded me of that but that was my entry into service work when I think about alcohol and the disease of alcoholism I just have to share mostly for those of you that are new, what the way I remember it and now that I've had some years to think about it, you know, what were the dynamics that were going on? And for me, I relate very strongly to the sentence in the book that says alcohol was but a symptom of our problems. Alcohol was just a symptomof our problems because it's so easy to think of alcohol as the problem and whenever you read about it medically or hear people talking about it on television you know this alcohol is this terrible problem that descends on this person this poor alcoholic and if that's case then why is alcohol but a symptom and i realized that for me i already had problems before any alcohol got my system. My problems were that I didn't think that I belonged on this planet. I basically felt very uncomfortable, and I never got in harmony with the people around me, and I never could understand what they're talking about in church. It felt like something was missing. I just always had this sense that I'm not sure what's going on. I heard a speaker one time talk about he just knew any minute he was going to look up and see a spaceship come down and little funny creatures were going to come running over to him and say we're so sorry we made a mistake you're not you weren't supposed to be put on this planet earth come on we're going to take you where you belong it's over here you know and when he said that i went yeah yeah i can relate to that that's what i just kept waiting for somebody to explain this whole thing to me as to why I just felt different and not connected and very terrified, and other people seemed to understand. It was as if I was the only one that hadn't been briefed on what life was all about. And as I watched other people talking, they just, yeah, isn't life great? Yeah, well, I'm going to be a doctor. I'm gonna be this. And I was going, I don't know, I haven't got a clue. You know, I just didn't have a clue so I had this sense that there was something missing that it was beyond me and I never could figure that out and I'd never had a drink until I got to college and I always talk about this first drink. I guess every single talk I've ever given I talk about it because that's when I became an alcoholic. It happened just like that and I was at a social function. I grew up in New Haven. I went to the local university, still hadn't had a drink. I'm 19 years old and my roommates are going, you're in college, man. Everybody's drinking. It makes you feel great. It's wonderful. No, I'm going to become an athlete. And I was brought up in the Catholic church. And if you don't drink till you're 21, you get a bonus of 250,000 years off in purgatory. And I knew that I was going to need that. And so I had all these inner dynamics going on as to why I shouldn't drink at all. And here was this evening, and these evenings back then were death to me. And the evening's very simple for everybody else, but the evening was, okay, you 50 guys go in this room and mix. Just meet each other and talk. and that's like telling me to go in with a bayonet against a gorilla you know and it's like oh man i don't know how if i can do that it's just too difficult but i gave it a try that evening i remember going in and the groups had already subdivided i don't Know how that happens they just seven here three six four one and i'm going where i wonder where i belong i wonder where my little group is i start over to the first group and all seven of them just turned and just went, no way, no way. Now they didn't say that, but you didn't have to hear them talk. You could just look at them. It was like wrong, wrong. You're not even from the right part of the country for this group. And every little group I went to, that was the same thing happened. And I was going to leave. I gave it my try. I went around, but there wasn't anybody there that wanted anything to do with me. And I saw the bartender up there, and I said, well, maybe I'll just feel good. And I sort of thought to myself, the hell with purgatory. Why not go up there and have a drink? So I went up in order to drink and sat there drinking it, talking to the bartend, waiting to feel wonderful. Second drink, third drink, I didn't feel anything. Put the drink down, I was going to leave. And I turned around, andI couldn't believe it, but while I was talking tothe bartender, There were these 50 mean guys left, and they were replaced by 50 of the friendliest guys I've ever seen in my life. Everyone in that room was looking at me, pleading for me to be their friend. It was like, oh God, I'd give anything to know you. Everywhere I looked, there was just people looking at us. People looking at we going, God, would we like to know You? Could You please come over? couldn't believe my eyes i just looked around i said god this is a great room these are great people and then i noticed i had a little different thing a little spring in my step and i i was just kind of saying to myself i'll get over there when i'm damn good and ready man it was almost like i agreed with them they would be lucky to know me you know what i mean it was It's just, wow. So alcohol changed the world that I lived in in about 20 minutes. It changed it into the world that I heard other people talking about when they say, isn't it great to have friends? Isn't it wonderful, all the people in the world? Isn't life great? And that was the first time I ever had that thought that I had heard all my life. Isn't like great? Look at these flowers. Look at this. Look at animals. Look at that. Never did I ever have that feeling, but I sure had it that night. And how did I get it? I got it from alcohol. So alcohol went from a total unknown in my life to the secret of life. That's where it went. In 20 minutes, I remember thinking, I should have started drinking in grammar school. I could have had great grammar school years. I could've had great prep school years, but I'm going to have some great college years, I can tell you that. So I was off to the races, and of course, I stopped going out for athletics. I started getting arrested, getting in fights. My grades went down. I was thrown up all the time. I was in trouble. My parents were all upset. The dean of the university is upset. And inside of me, I'm going, you know, there seems to be some drawbacks to this drinking, but they indeed are a small price to pay for what I'm getting. out of this booze. Sure, a few inconveniences. I'm just fine-tuning. I're still learning how to do this drinking thing. But when you look at the big picture, these little troubles are nothing compared to what I'm getting out of it because I'm a happy man now. I understand life. My problem was solved by alcohol. So alcohol was the solution. it had some byproducts uh problems but it was for me it was the answer it was not the solution so i think about it later on i you know all the years that i drank and i go back and i Go what was my real problem then my real Problem was being sober that was my problem i don't know about your problem but every time i was sober that's when my problems came in. I was back in that black and white world where people didn't like me, where it was intimidating, where I wasn't all there. I wasn'T functioning. I couldn't be creative without alcohol. And so when I went into a bar, I never said this to the bartender, but what I was actually the transaction that I was negotiating with the bart vendor was, sir, have you got something back there for sobriety? I seem to have it again, and the quicker we can get rid of it, the better. One, two, three. There. I am now a former sober person, and I feel much better. I feel complete. I feel as if I am not sober. I am 100%. there was always something missing, and this power, the power of alcohol, activated what was missing in me so that I could be spontaneous. I could Be Somebody in the world. It was like, now, world, come on, we'll deal, we're talk. Not tomorrow morning, now, because tomorrow morning I'm going to be sober again, and it's going to very difficult. So that was my relationship with alcohol now in order to be an alcoholic you have to earn drinking money and all of us engaged in various hobbies to um some of us were surgeons or ministers or doctors lawyers housewives painters horse racing whatever and my hobby was being a marine corps fighter pilot that was what i ended up doing to earn drinking money. So most of my story after I got out of college was in the good old U.S. Marine Corps, and as you can see, I don't have a military bone in my body, and I don t know why I ended up in the Marine Corps but I did. Those people are serious military people. I mean, that is, they don't like jokes about Marines. They don't anything. You know, it's like semper fi, this is it. And it was too intense. I mean, it was just, for me anyway, I don't know. It was just too intense and I saw a training movie about pilots and they were at the bar. They were talking with their hands so I signed up for flight school just to get out of being an infantry officer because I saw that was not going to happen and I made it through flight school I don't know how it happened I came down to Pensacola I got air sick on the way down I was there sick for quite a while in the old SNJ but then everything straightened out and it turned out I had a lot of talent I have some coordination and i liked it and so boom all of a sudden i'm through flight school i got married within eight years we had six kids i'm getting promoted to first lieutenant i'm getting promoted the captain and i'm just moving on overseas finding the fighter squadrons a lot of great stories but what's really happening is my disease of alcoholism is progressing right on schedule. And it is causing more and more problems. It is causing lies to be told. You know, an alcoholic cannot tell the truth because the truth is not acceptable. You can't walk into your boss 10 in the morning and say, oh, sir, it's time for my morning fix if I don't have a couple shots of vodka I might explode I won't be able to do a bit of work so I'll be out, I'll back in 20 minutes I'm just getting a shot of vodka now if we had understanding bosses in the world we could tell them the truth but we can't do that so I have to go in and go Colonel, I have got to go up to the wing legal office this morning I have get some background papers on this court martial that we're working on so then I go out and I'm up at wing legal and the executive officer is up there and he says to me, what are you doing up here and I don't remember what I told the colonel you know and so I make up some story about I'm going to do a special services inventory of softball equipment or whatever it is and then these stories come back and well you told the colonel this and you told that we have to write our lives down even then we got the wrong days list and it's just but the truth is not acceptable so we have to tell these stories these incredible stories and people know you know they know and i think they just go hey he'll be transferred in three more months the next command can worry about him or whatever but that was hard because i knew i was lying. And I knew I was lying to myself. I knew I was flying to my family. Oh, yeah, I'll be home. Oh, don't worry. Of course, I'd be home for your birthday party. Of course, I'll be at your graduation. Of course, I'll be at your softball game. It's the big game, isn't it? Remember saying all those things? Of course. And now we got to see him in the morning. Dad, where were you? Well, you see and you could tell, you You know, I'd make up this story. We had an emergency last night. Someone was threatening to attack the country and we all had to stay at work. You know? And they would just be looking. They would say those words, but you knew what they were thinking. And it was hard. It was just hard being a drunk because one of the things we had to do was to pretend that there was nothing wrong. It's the only disease I know where you're not allowed to display the real symptoms of how sick we really are. You're not allowed. You've got to keep showing up, because if you don't keep showing up, they're going to ask you about your drinking. And heaven forbid they should ask us about our drinking, because we might have to stop, and that would be death. And so it required this incredible willpower to shake all night, sweat, be terrified about the next morning, get up in the morning, throw up blood, try to get your clothes on and shave and you're shaking and cutting your face and all that and driving down to work and you are not sure what you are supposed to be doing that day and somebody sees you. How are you doing? Great! You remember that? Being able to put that face on? Great! How are YOU doing, man? Yeah, yeah! Oh! God! That was so hard to pretend that nothing was wrong. There we were, racing along full speed ahead. Where's my, got my plane ready? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Going out there, sucking up that oxygen, trying to get over the hangover, just, oh, come on, man, let's go, let'S go, and then get up. Oh, you know, and this stuff is moving fast, and you need good reflexes, and there came a time that I began to realize that I was not safe to fly with. you know what i mean it was just me in the plane but there was like me the passenger and me the pilot you know it's like man you you're losing it up here you don't i don't think i want to go with you anymore but i had to go with me and what i was doing i was having alcohol withdrawals in the airplanes and because i wasn't drinking for 12 hours prior to flight and you don't drink for 12 horas you are going through withdrawals big time and so god it was just awful and it's wet and i couldn't see and um i just had some terrible experiences but again you just go hey yeah great great great i could hardly wait and finally there came a time i never crashed or hurt anybody but there was so many close calls i can't tell you and in 1963 up in cherry point i was flying the f8s out of a photo squadron at cherry point i finally had i turned the engine master off on takeoff by mistake and turned it back on and thing relit which happens about one in a million and then um i had some kind of emergency i couldn't remember the procedure for it, and I damn near pranged the airplane, but I got that straightened out. And there was three or four other things that happened. Finally, I went to the doctors. I just went in, and I said, I'm having some problems in the planes. And they said, what? Well, losing consciousness. I can't see the instrument panel, and and I'm getting real dizzy like I'm going to fall over, and I fly sometimes with my hand on the ejection seat just in case I pass out. I'll fire out of the plane. So they're going, you're not flying anymore. You are grounded from flying. We're going to send you to Pensacola, and we're going let all the experts in the medical field in the Navy examine you and find out what this is. So I come down there, and now I'm just terrified because I've got people looking right at me. Doctors of all types, psychiatrists, dentists, heart specialists, they're all looking in to find out what might be wrong with me. And you know, for an alcoholic, that's an awful spot to be in. We're going to look inside you and see what might not be right. What might be right or what might go wrong? And they couldn't find anything. All they could find was that I was very thin. and I shook a lot, and I sweat. I had bloodshot eyes, and my voice trembled, high blood pressure, alcohol fumes all the time. And at this point, there were no such thing as alcoholism. There were no treatment programs or anything like that in the military, so it had to be a different diagnosis. And at the end of two weeks, I got my final write-up, and they said, you are no longer allowed to fly. You are removed from flight status due to a childhood fear of flying that has just manifested itself, and we are analyzing your psyche, and you never should have been a pilot in the first place. I went, wow. Took 13 years to find that out, that I never should Have been a Pilot. And so I was sent back to Cherry Point. I waited three months for headquarters Marine Corps. What are you going to do with a has-been pilot? And I'll be darned if I don't get orders to be an air traffic controller. So I go to air traffic control school, and that's what I did in the last year of my drinking. But fortunately, when I checked into the unit over in Japan, the senior enlisted man took one look at me and said that I wasn't allowed near the radar. And that was good. So during that year, my last year of drinking, I just sat around a Quonset hut. I drank vodka and grain alcohol. I'd mix it with juice. I tried to eat cereal sometimes. I didn't go to happy hour anymore. I didn'T drink with anybody. I just sort of stayed in the Quonsets hut and then went to work. And I lost 50 pounds. I had malnutrition. I just was surviving. I mean, it was just, I don't know, it's hard to describe, but it was really scary. and I got orders back to Quantico and I went to a career school back there and I'm having problems in class I can't find the classroom that I'm supposed to be in I can' t find the school coming in the main gate and I' m starting to hallucinate and I am starting to get into the DTs like people are moving the school and it's a plot to drive me crazy and under those conditions i had a seizure in the school one of those grand mal seizures i bit my tongue and they carried me out and put me in bethesda naval hospital and after three days of studying me to see what caused that convulsion they still didn't have a clue i went into the dt's i just freaked out and started screaming and yelling up and down the hall and they put me in a straitjacket and locked me up in the nut ward for six months. They just, in you go. This man is crazy. So I'm in there with all the crazy people and there was two other drunks and 30 legitimate occupants. Manic depressives and suicides and paranoids and all this kind of stuff and the three drunks. And it didn't take long to realize that the three drunks were outcasts from the legitimate mental illnesses. You know what I mean? It was like, what are you doing in here? And then every so often the psychiatrists in group therapy would have, the topic would be the alcoholics. And then all these crazy people would sit around these chairs and would hear what they had to say about us alcoholics I remember sitting there going, is this ridiculous? We're going to listen to crazy people decide what to do with us alcoholics. And you know what they said almost to every single person in there? You guys ought to stop drinking. That's what they Said. And I remember going, no wonder they're locked up in here coming up with an idea like that. So, that was a very low moment. But I'll tell you, it's funny about how when we get down, I don't care how low we get, we still have a superiority complex. That is the most bizarre thing about alcoholics. When I was first locked up in there, I mean, right after the DTs, I'm in the straitjacket, and then they put you in the rubber room, and you're in a bed with sides on it, you know, like a crib. Somebody had wet the bed that I was in, you know that type of thing. And I'm in one crib and there's two other guys in cribs and we're just lying there, just pure agony. You're just coming out of wherever you've been, some kind of a hell. And after a couple days they let you smoke a cigarette. They bring a cigarette in. You have no belt buckles, no sharp objects, no watches, there's no nothing, and no matches. And so to get a cigarette lit, you know what I mean? You know how we all smoked back then. And so you get to the end of the cigarette, and the guy in the crib next to me was close enough that as I was going to crash and pass out for a while, I could give him the cigarette and he could light another one and keep it going until I came to again, and he Could have, give me the cigarette. You know what i mean? but the guy in the third bed was out of range you know what I mean so after the corpsman lit everybody's cigarette his is gone we're passing it back and forth and pretty soon he's looking over with those eyes you know like God, I'm dying for a cigarette and I remember looking through the slats of my crib saying to myself looking at that guy there's a guy whose life is unmanageable over there you know you know you know what I mean he can't even keep a cigarette going you know you don't get any lower than that but I'm still able to to talk that way and think that way so one day in November of 64 Corman came into the nut ward said all drunks fall in right face and we were on our way to an AA meeting in the hospital Tuesday nights down three guys from Bethesda told their story it was all exciting and I told them man if I ever run into a guy with a drinking problem I'm sending him around to see you all you know and they they poked at me and gave me some of the AA hard truth and all that but it didn't take and when I was let out as an outpatient told to never take a drink or my career's over. I go, they didn't mean that. They meant if you ever got drunk. So the first weekend I'm home, I have a beer and all week long, all I can think about is I had a beer. Nothing happened. I had to be here. Nothing happen. I thought the first beer got you drunk. I had appear nothing happened. Hey, you want to hear what happened to me? I had a beer, nothing happened, I couldn't even sleep because of that beer that I was so excited at being a former alcoholic. You know what I mean? I had a beer. Nothing happened to me, not a thing. It was like I was exhausted at the end of the week with this new freedom from alcohol, you know what I mean? It was such an obsession, you wouldn't believe it. And so on the way home, I bought like a year's supply of vodka. One-fifth, I was going to have one drink every weekend and I got drunk and I decided I better join the outside AA over the weekend or they'd throw me out of the Marine Corps, you You know what I mean? I said, well, at least I'm in AA. I'll use that as a cover. I don't remember why, but I called AA, and that's when that sponsor of mine came over, big Marine, and he's still my sponsor. He's still up in Quantico, or just south of Quantico. And he's been my sponsor for 34 years. And it is a wonderful relationship to have somebody in your life that long. And, of course, in the beginning, his entire program for me was shut up and sit down. That was sort of, and I'd say, what about going to a discussion meeting? He'd go, a discussion meeting? Why would we go to a, so I could tell something. What do you know? You don't know anything. We'll go to a discussion meeting when you have six months. I want you to go to speaker meetings and sit in the front row and listen. And I'm going, but I have so much to offer. And I remember trying to tell somebody one night, I said, you know, some innocent guy probably had four months and I was still an outpatient from the nut ward, but I'm there. And I'm talking to him and I'm going, you know, these steps are great, but I think there's a lot beyond something like that. I'd like to share with you some of the courses that I had up at Yale. Some of the great thinkers of the world. And a guy said, I'm not sure I want to listen to a guy who's wearing a wristband from a nut board. And I went... So if you're new and you notice that you don't win many arguments in AA, I can tell you why. Because AA deals with results, not theories. And your results aren't that great if you just got here. If there's somebody who just got hier, I'm going to make a big guess. Your last year was bad. How about that? I don't even know your name and I... One of my Carnac routines. so if you have the greatest theory in the world about life don't let anybody see you because your results are terrible and a age results are remarkable and that's what happens we come in and we go if you want what we have look where you are and look where we are look at all of us we're sitting in here we have clothes that fit we have cars with current registrations we have business cards hi phone numbers two checking accounts we have things going and you don't you're afraid to answer the phone you're scared to open your mail You're afraid of people. You have no hope. You're thinking of suicide. Or is that the newest thing? Little marks on the wrist. So your results are terrible. Why can't you abandon your plan for living just based on the results it gets? And then look at this plan for life and living just based on the result that you see. You see, sober people, happy people. You have to get happy. That's what sobriety is all about. The miracle isn't that we don't drink. You can do that in a nut ward. You can doing that in jail. The miracle is to be happy with not drinking. Hey, it's Friday night and I'm going to be not drinking and I am so happy about it. That's sobriete is. It's freedom from alcohol. Alcohol isn't here. You know, in the intellectual world, problem solving is done intellectually. We look at these steps and then we go, oh yes, if I untie this, if i move that, if i move that, we can see that the problem is solved. But you know, in the spiritual world, problems don't get solved. They get removed. They just aren't there to bother us anymore. We get spiritually lifted above stuff that used to just trample us. We really were overpowered by the world. It's too much. How many times have we said that? I don't know exactly what it is, but life is just too much for me. Well, life is supposed to be too much for just you. I don'T think we're supposed to be able to get through life on our own. I think that's why we can't make it so that we're forced to reconsider asking for help and reconsider the proposition that there might be this loving God that everybody's talking about that we have never seen. We've heard about, we might have believed in it, but we've never experienced it. We came close to experiencing it chemically. You know what I mean? That felt like something wonderful, like a higher power and it kind of worked from the inside out and it changed the world without changing anything. We still didn't have any money, but we were happy. So it was sort of like what we're talking about, but this is a whole different ballgame and it just asks you to be honest about your situation. Don't you think it's time to abandon your plan? It stinks. Your plan is awful. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking the same thing that I thought. I know it stinks, but I thought it up. I got in this mess all by myself. Nobody help me. I'm in jail and I did it, man. I stuck up to him. I didn't conform. I never asked for help. I just go out and do my own thing. And I go, but your own thing stinks. How about dropping the whole thing? That's what surrender is. Reach in your pocket. Get the white flag and just go, goodbye old ideas. I don't have a clue what's out there, but come on over and get me. That is how you get spiritual. All we got to do is get open. and you don't have to see anything, you don' t have to believe in anything. Matter of fact, our 12 steps are a series of actions that we take that we don' T believe in. How could you believe in them by reading them? Do you believe those steps by looking at them? Somebody says, the answer to all your problems are contained in these 12 steps. And you go down those steps. You remember doing that? Going, oh, midway powers over alcohol? I don' Te see anything in there. Okay. Restoring me to sanity? Hey, I'm already M-Saint. Turn my life over? Hey, I don't care. Amid a searching for its inventory? What am I going to inventory? I don' t see this. Admit it to God. Where's the money step? Where's the job step? Where's the sex step? I don''t see anything in here for me. I could see doing this just before you die. So you slide under the door and go in there with all the other people that were behaving themselves all the way through life. But why straighten out too soon? So steps don't make any sense. And so why are we going to end up taking them? Because alcohol makes us take them. You ever think about that? We don't really get talked into anything. We just have come up against a situation, and if you're new, I've got to tell you this, and probably your sponsors haven't told you this yet, But around every AA meeting, in the grass about this high, are half pints of vodka patrolling. They just go round and round and around. And they stay real low in the glass, just going around, going around. Waiting for someone to come out and says, I don't need AA. I'm sick of this. I can do it on my own. Then they jump up. And you look over and you go, got a half a pint of vodka with a seal on it. It must be God's will that I have a drink here. So now the process begins of getting ready to take the steps. And you drink the vodka, and the vodka goes boom, boom. You ready to takethe steps yet? No. And it's just boom. And then we get driven down, and finally we get an open mind. And we go, I don't want to do this anymore. Are you ready to make the steps? Are you going to take certain actions? So it's just wonderful that we were given something that drove us down to have an open mind. I don't think I ever would have chosen this. I'm too intellectual. So I'm grateful that I'm an alcoholic. Not that I mean AA, I'm thankful for that, but I'm Grateful That I'm An Alcoholic because it forced me to reconsider every fundamental idea that I had put together in my head in favor of these wonderful spiritual principles I was willing to surrender everything in order to get out of the mess that I was in and the pain that I was in. And aren't we lucky? And sometimes I imagine, what if I had never had a drink? Well, then I would be an elderly, skinny neurotic who never had a drink, who's walking around wondering what life is all about. And I never would get in enough trouble to ever do anything about it. That's just my own analysis of myself. And so alcohol was a great gift to me because it has opened the door to an Alice in Wonderland existence that I never dreamed existed. The things that I like today that are my favorites were never on my list. Serenity, being humble, being useful. Those words, I never heard of those words before in my life. if you had your choice between you can have anything that you wish for or you could have God's will I understand now that I would be cheating myself to death if I chose everything I could wish for because everything I wished for would be ego driven it would just be oh more of this and more of that and more this and then I come in here and I find out it's just the opposite the energy flows the other way it doesn't flow from the world into us it flows from inside of us out to the world, just like we heard about at the beginning of the meeting. That's why nothing felt right. When we were out trying to get everything, we were going the opposite way of happiness. We had the flow going the wrong way. It was me, me, I want to be this, I wantto be that. And then we come in here and we finally say you have to surrender that. You know our twelfth tradition anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our principles. Anonymity, what it does it takes the identity that we had before we got here. You know your identity. I was talking about this the other night. Sometimes the best way of describing our identity is our resume. Everybody in here got a resume? Just in case there's downsizing somewhere. And you've got that. What's that thing got on there? It has everything good about you that will entitle you to a lot of goodies from the world. And you put down everything you can think of. I even helped little old ladies across the street. and I went to this school and I have a master's and I read these 12 books and I also belong to this club and I know the president of that bank and here's my references so when you see this you ought to be attracted to me and want to pay me a lot of money and that's what it is and we take our 12th tradition and say that's who you are I don't think that'swhoyouare let's go back and take another look anonymity is the spiritual foundation you know who youare You're a child of God. We say in AA, I'm an alcoholic. I'm Sandy, I'M an alcoholic I don't give you my whole resume I just say I'm sandy, I' m an alcoholic But if I had to look at that resume You know what it would be on there? See here is a list of all the attributes That God gave to me That enables me to be useful in the world So this is what I can bring To your office To help this situation To help us grow To help you do that When all of us do that it's a program of attraction. And people are attracted to this kind of a person and they want you to work there and they wanna pay you more money than you were gonna ask for. This is what happens when we are transformed from the inside out and we change the energy so that this higher power, this says in the big book, the fundamental idea of God was born deep down inside of us much as was the idea of a friend. And there it sits waiting for us to open the channel to it like the prayer of St. Francis says and we can't open that channel until we get rid of the character defects or the blockages that are blocking this out if you think about our higher power as in biblical terms as the still small voice within until we can hear that through conscious contact we can never have this inner awareness that it's real but character defects make a lot of noise resentments go and you're trying to hear it is still small but you can't hear it we have to get rid of these things you know spiritual growth consists of getting rid of things rather than getting anything do you ever think about that it's like riding in a gondola the more you throw out the higher you go the more we can get rid off old timer has been in aa for many many years say what are you doing these days oh six and seven six and nine and ten and eleven and twelve and thirteen and sixteen and seven looking for something else that's wrong and trying to get rid of it we're trying to become you know we always wanted to be big shots well the secret is to become a small shot we want to become as small as we can i'm like this small and something that small when it goes through the world offers no resistance it's our egos that get in the way we our eagles will send out. We'll be 900 yards wide and a foot deep, and we're wondering why it's so hard to go through the ocean of life. And that's our self-centeredness as we try to push it. And we get rid of all that and simply become one alcoholic carrying this message to the next. And the rewards that come into our lives are absolutely unbelievable. If you're new, I wish you Merry Christmas. I wish you the blessed sobriety you are in for the surprise of your life don't let go get a sponsor hang on for the full ride and you will be amazed thank you good night