More Spiritual Change Between Years 38 and 41 Than All the Previous Years Combined – Sandy R.
About This Speaker Tape
Sandy B. speaks at the Far Corners Spiritual Retreat in what appears to be one of his later talks, opening with a vivid account of passing out at a meeting in Midland while an ex-trustee was speaking. Charlie and his wife Kate were there, and Kate talked the emergency room staff out of admitting him so he could get back to speak for the 800 people waiting. This led to getting a pacemaker and what he calls an adventuresome year. He reflects on his Marine Corps service and his lifelong fascination with Higher Power, connecting the spiritual experience of drinking to Carl Jung's observation that alcoholics satisfy their longing for Higher Power through alcohol.
The heart of the talk is a series of unforgettable stories from his sobriety. He tells the legendary Wormwood story from his Marine Corps days in Japan, where an executive officer built a wooden airplane from two-by-fours, bluffed cargo pilots into shipping it to Taiwan, and eventually donated it to the Chinese Air Force Academy in a formal ceremony. He describes the military's shifting relationship with alcoholism, from the pioneering treatment program at Long Beach Naval Station to the post-Tailhook crackdown that drove AA members underground and contributed to rising suicide rates.
Sandy shares deeply personal spiritual experiences, including the Al-Anon woman at his first meeting who told him everything would be alright, and a voice on the road at Quantico that said if he stayed in AA everything would be fine. He describes the College Park step study groups that forced him to learn the steps by requiring speakers to cover all twelve over four consecutive weeks. He tells the story of Lenny, a street person whose higher power was squirrels, who prayed for snow so little kids could have a day off from school, and who put his head through a plate glass window rather than risk hurting his sponsor again.
The talk closes with Sandy urging listeners to become spiritual seekers, describing how his own seeking intensified around thirty years of sobriety and deepened further between years thirty-eight and forty-one. He credits Chuck Chamberlain as one of AA's great teachers and describes a pilgrimage to Laguna to revisit Chuck's old haunts. His message is that spirituality in AA is validated entirely through results, and that the decision to become a seeker opens doors you never expected.
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Timestamps
Full Transcript
I think I should start with the Charlie
story, my visit to Midland, because Charlie was there, it was January, right, and Charlie
and his wife Kate were sitting to my right, and an ex-trustee was speaking, getting ready
to give a talk, a briefing,...
story, my visit to Midland, because Charlie was there, it was January, right, and Charlie
and his wife Kate were sitting to my right, and an ex-trustee was speaking, getting ready
to give a talk, a briefing,...
I think I should start with the Charlie
story, my visit to Midland, because Charlie was there, it was January, right, and Charlie
and his wife Kate were sitting to my right, and an ex-trustee was speaking, getting ready
to give a talk, a briefing, or whatever it was going to be.
And I turned to Charlie and I said, I think I'm passing out.
And I went, boom.
So he, people got excited and overreacted and called the rescue squad.
And I had, I really felt that I was going, and I'm in a hurry to get there.
So this was...
It was really fine with me.
I was just going, perfect.
I'm going to go out, just like going to sleep with anesthesia or something like that, and
you're gone.
And you'll leave a legend of interrupting a trustee in the middle of a briefing.
I mean, how hot shit can you get?
I mean, that's...
But unfortunately, the rescue squad got there, and the next thing, the three of us are in
the ambulance.
And the next thing, the three of us are in the emergency room.
And who are they?
Three hours?
Huh?
Five hours.
And you never get admitted to an emergency room with a heart problem that you don't get
admitted.
You're never admitted to the hospital, unless Kate is along to talk to the nurses and the
doctors.
And she is going in there and just giving them hell, that you're not going to admit
this guy.
He feels better.
And there's 800 people back there waiting to hear us talk.
so
this little Korean doctor comes up and says to me
Mr. Beach I'm releasing you
and so we went back and
somehow gave a talk or whatever
came back to Tampa and then went to the doctor
and all this stuff started
with putting the pacemaker in
and it led to quite an
adventuresome year
but that is one persuasive person
I didn't know that
boy I missed out there
anyway that was how this year started
that's a great story
that is just wonderful
and as a matter of fact you guys were up in Tampa one time
when she was helping me fix my feet
and all this
anyway it's said to
reminisce and
I guess that's an opportunity to
tell some
meaningful things that
have happened to me in AA
well I don't have the
walker I got too tired
but it's got a little Marine Corps flag on it
and there's two organizations that
are pretty high in my life
that I'm an honor to be part of
and the Marine Corps is one
and AA is the other
and they are really
high up in stature
in my own mind
I think in spite of
my childhood
childhood
adverse reaction to the Catholic Church
and all the smoke and mirrors
and joking around that I did
I think I was always fascinated
with God
I think I just
I liked the idea that there was one
but I didn't know what to do about it
but I think that's a good thing to have
I think that's a good thing to have
is
a curiosity about
whether there really is
for you
a creator
or was it all just an accident
that
life doesn't mean anything
and we're going nowhere
so good luck
and so
there's very little doubt in my mind
that when I drank
it produced
a spiritual experience
similar to what I thought
you might have
if you had a higher power
it was that type of thing
it was just revolutionary
it was just remarkable
and
Dr. Young talks about that
that he believes that
alcoholics satisfy their
longing for God
through alcohol
and I think that's a good thing
and ironically
that it takes
God to solve the problem
that we thought we were finding
in alcohol
it's just an
interesting observation
and while I'm on Young
I'll just go random
you know, who knows
I think it's interesting
in the letter to me
to Bill where he later on
after the
Spiritus Contra Spiritum
quote
he talks about
the world in general
and about
a force called evil
evil being
you know, moving away from God
and he says
that in the life struggle
people always lose to evil
they always end up losing
unless
they have a spiritual awakening
which I find just fascinating
that
now
I don't know if there is such a thing
as evil
for me
I don't know if there is such a thing
I don't know if there is such a thing
I think it's the
part of me
that doesn't want to
stay close to God
we call it character defects
Bill is very clever
how he uses the words here
I mean, I think he only uses sin
once or twice
because that's such a religious term
so instead of having sins
we have character defects
it makes you feel better
yeah, at least I'm not a sinner
I'm just a defector
I'm just a defector
but that alcohol
God, it was such a
it was just what I was looking for
all along
and of course
there was no way to control it
and like all of your lives
it just took over
I would try to have
just ten
which would have been just right
I would have just been
not in trouble and all that
but you don't get to decide
how much alcohol you have
once the alcohol is in there
and so
I got my dream
of getting in the Marine Corps
and
I got my dream
and
I got my dream
and
I got my dream
and
I got my dream
and
I got my dream
and
I got my dream
becoming a fighter pilot
and I thought it was
the greatest thing in the world
and alcohol decided
to take it all away
and it did it very slowly
I still have a lot of friends
and we call each other
I've been to a couple reunions
up at Cherry Point
where guys that were flying
planes that are in mothballs
and museums now
and I said
you know
you know
you know
you know
you know
you know
you know
you know
you know
you know
you know
you know
you know
you know
you know
you know
They were the hot stuff in the 50s.
And it's just a wonderful part of my life and a great memory.
And I think if I remember, everybody who we hung around with had four or five kids.
We had six.
Big families were kind of in.
And just like AA, we have the big book and we're focused on this.
The pilots, we would be talking to each other constantly about,
well, here's a little trick, you want to learn this, this is a...
Just obsessive talking about flying.
And then the disease just started.
And I would end up missing a flight one time I missed.
You know what, have you guys heard the Wormwood story?
Has anybody heard that?
Well, Mike has.
Well, if you don't like it, I love it.
I tell it all the time.
But I had done all my flying.
And it was a great flight.
And I had done all my flying.
I lost my flying career when I was an air traffic controller.
You can see how smart the Marine Corps was.
This guy is in such bad shape, he can't fly.
So let's make him an air traffic controller.
And I was in Japan in charge of an air traffic control unit.
And the senior enlisted men saw what bad shape I was in.
So they would just go, Captain, here's your tent.
You bring your bike down, we'll get you coffee.
But don't you talk to any airplane.
Because we're afraid that you might run them into a mountain.
I mean, we just don't want you to do that.
So I'm in a squadron that was headed by an aviator,
but it's what they call a base squadron.
And they take care of maintenance.
They take care of, like, air traffic control, the motor transport.
It's all the housekeeping duties for the Air Group 12.
And there was the colonel, the head of it was an aviator,
but his executive officer, he just was something else,
was a motor transport guy.
And he was always trying to get our squadron to have more spirit
and all this, you know, like the fighter squadrons.
So he has the colonel write a letter to the group CO saying,
saying that we just got announced from headquarters Marine Corps
that we're getting an airplane,
and we want to know what the call sign is.
No, these squadrons don't get airplanes.
So the group CO, going along with the joke,
writes back and says,
your call sign is Wormwood 1.
So we write back, thank you.
Well, unbeknownst to us, this guy, this executive officer,
is building an airplane in the hangar out of wood.
Two-by-fours, hand-carved propeller.
It had a pump engine from one of the pumps,
and the propeller would turn slowly.
Took a seat like one of these and just bolted it in,
and the brakes were an anchor.
You threw it out.
Open.
And it hooked something.
And he had, one morning, we went down with,
we all got up early and went down to the Hams flight line,
which they had their airplane there,
with a radio jeep, and we called Iwakuni Tower.
This is Wormwood 1, over.
And the tower's going, who the hell is Wormwood 1?
And they said, where are you?
We're on the Hams flight line.
So they got the binoculars, and they see a plane over there
with a propeller turning.
And there's no record of this plane ever having come on the base.
So this is a big emergency.
And they get the MPs, and the red lights are coming,
and they come over, and we're all laughing.
Funny joke.
Nice going, guys.
Even the group CO sent a note over.
That was cool.
You got me there.
Ha, ha, ha.
And then it sat out in front, and Santa Claus was in it,
and now we're going to Taiwan.
The air group's going to Taiwan on a deployment.
And we would go there first to build the camp,
put up all the tents, the showers, the heads,
and mess halls, and all that stuff.
So again, the colonel writes a letter to the group CO
and says, what flight is Wormwood flying over in?
And just,
just to make fun of the group CO wrote back,
you can go over with the photo planes.
Okay, we're going to go with the photo planes.
Well, you know, I thought that was the end of it.
This guy, Jack, he cuts the wings off,
ties them up around the plane,
and takes it down to a staging area
where the cargo planes are taking the stuff,
and bluffs the pilots.
And they go, what's this?
He says, it's an observation plane.
The colonel wants it over there.
What?
Yeah, this is, well, god damn, it doesn't look like it.
Well, it is.
It has to go.
We've got to take it.
So they took it.
Then we put it back together over there, built the camp.
And the first one to land,
bringing over the air group, is the colonel.
And he sees Wormwood parked there,
and he knows it didn't fly over.
And so he's very upset.
And he sees Jack, and he says, burn it.
I want that thing on fire within an hour.
And Jack never lets grass grow under his feet.
We were at the Chinese Air Force Academy, Gongshan.
And he went up to the general in charge of all the Chinese
air force academy.
And he calls the Chinese air activities and asks for a meeting
with them, and explains that our air group has put together
a gift for him, which is a composite of all the airplanes
that flew with China in World War II.
And he started naming the different planes.
And the Chinese general is flattered.
He's going, oh, my god, I can't believe you would do this.
So Jack goes, why?
And he goes back to the colonel and says,
you don't want me to burn that Chinese general's airplane,
do you?
So they had a ceremony, like a formal ceremony,
to turn the plane over to the Chinese.
And we're all standing out there, and the ceremony finishes,
and they bring a tow truck over and hook it up
to Wormwood, and there goes Wormwood.
And a couple of weeks later, one of the guys
said, you've got to go up into the middle of the school
in the courtyard.
And we went in there, and there's two pedestals.
And on one is a MiG-15 that defected from mainland China.
And on the other one, it's Wormwood,
with a plaque under it saying, who knows?
We can't read Chinese.
And so that was the kind of fun that we had.
And the other squadrons would have models of their airplanes
at happy hour, whatever it was, an F3D or FJ or whatever it was.
And we didn't have anything to put in the middle.
So we built out houses for everybody to use.
And so he decided that would be our symbol,
was a two-foot-high, one-holer outhouse
with all the detail, a little doorknob and a half moon
up at the top.
You opened it up, a little tiny roll of toilet paper.
I mean, it was just perfect.
And up at the top, you had to duck down to see it.
It said, you will buy a round of drinks quietly.
So we'd get people to come over.
And they'd go, what's that?
Oh, what is this thing?
You ought to see the workmanship.
Look inside.
And as soon as they saw the sign, we'd start singing,
you're in the shithouse now.
They would buy 20 drinks.
And they were allowed to sign the shithouse.
Now, once your signature was on there,
if you talked someone into coming over to look at it,
you got a free drink.
And at the end of the year, there was no room for signatures.
It was on.
Those days are gone.
You don't hear those stories.
Drinking is really not a big deal in the military anymore.
It's a shame.
Everybody's doing a great job.
Nobody's getting me in trouble.
It's really bad.
But all right.
I'm going to go.
I'm going to go.
I'm going to go.
Well, there is a problem with alcoholism.
Because I know, at least in the Marine Corps,
after a tailhook in Las Vegas about 20 years ago,
the commandant said, we will not have any alcoholics
in the Marine Corps.
And that means sober ones.
So you have to keep it quiet if you're in AA.
And it led to the suicide rate going up.
And I've got a couple of friends who are really
working on this problem.
Boy, talk about an overreaction.
Because shortly after I got sober, the Navy, some of you
guys know Joe Pursh out in California.
Dr. Joe, you know him.
And I forget the other guy who really started it in Long Beach.
This was a lieutenant commander.
And a friend of his, who was a Navy captain,
came to Long Beach.
And the captain was in AA.
And he asked him what he was doing for the alcoholics
on his base.
And he said, nothing.
He says, well, you're killing them.
You've got to start some alcohol program.
And he said, well, I'll never get permission
from CNO, chief of naval operations,
to start an alcohol program.
He said, well, then why don't you start one anyway?
Don't ask.
So he started it.
It was the first military program.
It was immensely successful.
So much so, they heard about it in Washington
and came out to look at something illegal,
I mean, unauthorized.
And it was doing so well, it became
a model for other services, but especially the Navy
and the Marine Corps.
And the Marine Corps had all its officers and staff
NCOs go through one week of training around the country.
And I remember in DC, they came to this one motel.
And we went over and gave talks to them.
And pretty soon, the stigma had been reduced down
to almost zero.
And a friend of mine, Bob Eggers, who some of you
guys may know out in the Los Angeles area,
he said it was down near Laguna.
He got promoted to colonel with alcoholism on his record, which is unheard of.
Now, after tailhook, it just went back and crashed.
So it's an interesting story to watch how, and the airlines.
I've lost track of them.
Sometime we'll get Mike to tell us, you know, birds of a feather was started to try and solve the airline problem.
Which was, if you have a known alcoholic sober pilot and he has an accident and the reporters find out,
how are you going to be able to convince him that he was sober?
Right?
That was the thing.
So if you want, in the 70s at the airlines, if you wanted to get sober, you had to go on leave.
I'm going on vacation.
I'm going on vacation for a month and not tell anybody you went to treatment and then you came back so that it was unofficial.
But they finally worked it all out with the FAA and the pilots union and all those things.
So it continues in certain professions to create the same old problem.
When I think about moving.
The stigma.
I think Rockefeller did the most to put a dent in that when he held that dinner in the 40s.
Because people made fun of him.
What are you giving a dinner for alcoholics for?
You know, why would you give a dinner for them?
And he invited all his friends and bankers and everybody.
But the newspaper coverage.
Of it talked about this Alcoholics Anonymous and it really made people sit up and think that maybe alcoholics might be okay people after all, and that they didn't have to carry the same stigma.
But whenthank you.
So at one point I think Donald Trump messed up
his own contract with theaires andaha.
He fucking has a L organization, guys anda.
He's out running his own company.
A company that stays nu inference.
But at least he must come back that way.
There are some guys really hot there as well who are stupid.
One that still cannot come back these days just because they messed him up.
I think I'll just continue with this God thing.
When I first came in in the DC area nobody was doing the steps.
Nobody was doing the steps.
There wasn't N.
Buck Doyle was Mr. AA.
And he was already totally unselfish.
Unselfish I don't know what at all.
So you're moutheeee.
It's weird.
un-self-centered. He just gave himself to the whole program.
So he was already where the steps are supposed to take you.
And he didn't understand why people just wouldn't be like him.
And so a lot of early sobriety
was go to meetings, don't drink. Go to meetings, don't drink.
Go to meetings, don't drink. And so
while I
became familiar with the steps
I didn't have any spiritual experience as a
result of the steps. But I had things happen
that I could not overlook.
And the first one was at my first meeting when that
Al-Anon lady came out. I was trying to leave.
And I didn't know which way to run. Because the meeting lasted
four hours. They had a dance and all that stuff.
Square dance. And I didn't want any part of this.
And I'd only been sober three hours when I got to the meeting. So now I'm sober
eight hours. And I'm feeling terrible. And I want to get
out of there. So it's starting to sleet a little bit.
And I'm looking around. It's dark out in Manassas. And this Al-Anon lady came out
and she put her hand on my shoulder and said, come on back in.
Everything's going to be alright.
And I believed her.
Now that is a huge thing to have happen
where you would believe that. Oh, okay.
And went back in. And then about
six months later I was driving on the base at Quantico
and it wasn't a voice
but it was the same thing as a voice.
And it simply said, if you stay in AA
everything will be alright.
And I believed it. So those are
the experiences that were
there that I couldn't deny
so that if I got negative a year later I would look back and just go
yeah, but you had this happen. You had this happen.
And it was very strong to rely on
when all the doubts and all that came.
And after a while it became the end thing.
The steps and the big book and
really started getting familiar and reading.
And there was a group in College Park.
One of the guys is down in Tampa now, Cappy.
And they had, there were two groups that did this.
They had someone come over and talk about, you know, what's going on.
And they had someone come over and talk about, you know, what's going on.
And they had someone come over and talk about, you know, what's going on.
And they had somebody else following you
And then you came back the next week and you talked about three other steps.
And then you came back the next week and you talked about three other steps.
And they had somebody else following you
so that they were constantly going through the steps.
So if you got signed up to go do College Park,
you went there four weeks in a row and you had to talk about
all twelve steps.
Well, you're not going to look like a jerk.
So
you got to study.
You, know what I mean?
You gotta
to get the book out and go,
and I remember when I started over there with them,
I would go, well, the one thing,
well, yeah, on the other hand,
you know, and I'd be going like that.
Well, you do it often enough,
pretty soon it really becomes a part of you
in terms of mentally being familiar with the words.
And as that mental familiarity
got stronger and stronger,
so did the power of the words.
They just were,
and I think that's when I first noticed
the impact on new people of certain words
and certain ways of talking about something.
And, you know, if you're speaking
and you pay attention,
you realize what is powerful and what isn't,
and what really works and what doesn't.
And that,
those classes went on forever,
and it led to starting Saturday morning live,
which anybody knows Keith Lewis?
Anybody remember Keith Lewis?
He was a speaker.
Yeah, there's guys around that knew him.
Yeah, he was a wonderful person.
So he comes to D.C.,
and he was,
he was in the Marine Corps.
So we became friends,
and he wanted to be,
me to be his sponsor.
So I said,
well, get some running shoes.
Guy turned into a runner.
Oh, you're going to go running
if you're going to, you know,
so he's huffing and puffing,
but pretty soon he's a pretty good runner.
And they offered him a job
at the Psychiatric Institute
running the alcohol program.
And he wanted to know
if I would give a lecture
on the steps,
to the patients,
once a week.
Little did I know,
he didn't give a damn about my lecture.
He knew that a lot of people
from Washington, D.C. would come,
and that's where he'd get sponsors
for the patients.
So I was the bait
to get sponsors coming in
to the treatment center.
How about that?
Your own pigeon turns on you.
And so it did get popular.
And pretty soon
we couldn't fit in the room.
So we moved up to a school,
the Hanneson-Harrison School.
And this thing was just
slowly getting bigger.
In other words,
it left the treatment center.
And then we went to Sibley Hospital
where we were going to go.
And we were going to go to a hospital
where we were going to go.
And we were going to go to a hospital
where we were going to go.
And we worked for a number of years.
That was my favorite location.
And then we ended up
at the National Institute of Health
with their whole auditorium.
And at Sibley we had bagels
and coffee,
and it was just wonderful.
And at Sibley
we had,
do you remember,
where's Dick?
Do you remember Lenny?
Where's Dick Martin?
Yeah, you remember Lenny?
Lenny was,
he was a street person
that probably one of the great teachers
that I ever had.
He was this Irish guy,
kind of,
and he just felt very nervous
if you got him in a corner.
You know,
if several people were blocking his way
out of that corner,
it would create panic in him
and he would bust his way through.
And occasionally some of the gals
would get bumped
as he ran out of the corner.
And that would require some
patching and mending
and so on down.
And he just had a funny way
of making noises.
But the big thing with Lenny was
squirrels were his higher power.
And so when they'd share at meetings
he would share about
he's a nut
and squirrels know all about nuts.
So he talks to the squirrels.
And he did it so
in a way
after you listen to him for years
you are tempted
to see if there's anything to it.
And I remember walking from
the Dirksen building over towards the
Capitol and those big trees
and there's squirrels all over the place.
And I remember one
came up and was sort of looking at me
and I went, I'm a friend of Lenny's.
It didn't seem to
Lauder knew Lenny too, yeah.
And George.
And it didn't seem to
do anything for the squirrels
so I wasn't sure but
we had a
retired U.S. Senator
that came to this thing
and
one day I looked out
in the parking lot
and Lenny was there.
And he was explaining
the squirrels
to this Senator.
And I remember saying to myself
only in AA
are you going to see
somebody explaining squirrels
to a Senator who went to Harvard
and you know all this stuff.
But he was listening intently.
Well one day
Lenny wanted to ride
he had a bike but it was over in Georgetown
and he wanted to know if I could
give him a ride over there.
And I said sure Lenny.
And we had a big snow storm
and it was melting.
So I'm driving over and I'm
I've never been on the street
so I say to Lenny, I said I bet you're glad
this snow is melting, assuming
you live on the street
that snow is a big pain in the butt.
And Lenny said
oh no I prayed for that snow.
And I went
oh boy.
Now I know he's a little off wacky.
He lives in the street and he's praying for snow.
And I said Lenny why would you pray for snow?
And he said
well when I grew up in West Virginia
and we're going to school
and you wake up
and there's a lot of snow
and school is cancelled
it is the biggest present
for little kids.
And he said I just wanted some little kids
to be happy.
And I sat there
going who's the teacher
and he said
and who's the pupil?
And
Lenny had a sponsor
I think his name was George.
And there was some kind of a
Lenny had had a slip
and he was throwing
bottles through Fox Hall's windows
if I recall.
And George went out to calm him down
and Lenny
very accidentally
gave him a bloody nose.
And it floored him.
It floored him
so much that he disappeared.
He just couldn't believe
he did that to his sponsor.
And we didn't see him
for
geez quite a few months
and then somebody told me
he was up at the
and I can't think of the insane place
in Maryland
between Washington and Baltimore.
No
it was another
another name.
Yeah.
Yep.
So I went over there
and there he was.
He's in the crazy part.
And obviously they got him on a lot of drugs
and everything.
So I brought him some cigarettes
and I said I'm going to come back and see you.
So I came back and we went outside
and I said Lenny
why aren't you in the alcohol unit?
Why are you staying here?
You're not crazy.
And I went through
and they were going to send me back to Washington.
And I
got worried that if I went back to Washington
I might hurt my sponsor again.
So I went over
and put my head
tried to put it through a plate glass window
so they'd think I'm crazy.
And they moved him over to
the crazy place
so that he would never hurt his sponsor
again.
Now
I don't know about you
but that is
commitment.
That is really
putting the well-being
it's in a very unorthodox way
but in a way
that is an amazing
heroic decision.
And I never saw him again.
Lost track of him.
But that's
those are the type of things
that you just never forget.
And
God teaches us
there's all kinds of teachers
some are standard looking
but others
are remarkable.
And sometimes it's the ones that are having
a problem with AA.
And we watch
and see what happens.
And we give up on them
and then they make it.
And then we can't explain
well why would you make it this year?
You failed 21 years in a row.
What was different this year?
God's grace.
It's just
this is what happens this year.
Then I had a great sponsor
and he was another
marine captain.
He went through the same nut word I did.
And
he was a man of few words.
And the
first three words to me were
get in the car.
When he came to my house.
You know about get in the car.
And I looked at him
he's a lot bigger than I am
and I went oh shit okay I'll get in the car
but I'm not staying around AA.
And every night
he'd drive over and get me.
So we were the two military
people.
The only two guys in the whole Marine Corps
base there. And then an army guy
came along who was in charge of the horses
named Bill.
And we had three.
So when we
drove up from Quantico
we'd go to Big Mike's group in
Columbia Pike.
And he would refer to us as the
military advisory group to
alcoholics anonymous.
Has now arrived
at the meeting.
And he was the first atheist that I met.
Big Mike.
Big tough guy.
Ship designer.
And he'd give this talk and he's going
well yeah but I don't buy any of this.
And he'd go God bless you all.
So he was
going to stay an atheist even though
he had decided he liked
God so that's okay too.
And
his favorite
story he grew up in Bedford-Stuyvesant
in New York
and Brooklyn and
he liked violence growing up.
He just loved it.
He'd ride the subways at night and
sometimes have a gun.
Just hoping that the trouble would arrive
so that he could have a successful evening.
And so when he got
sober he got teamed up with
an Indian.
Another big guy who'd been
released from prison for murder.
He did his time.
And so they would go to
meetings and they were very boring.
So they started going over
to Harlem.
They would hear stories that were more
in line with their
drinking.
And they're at the meeting one night
Mike and this Indian
and
someone had invited a
Park Avenue
woman who
had all the money in the world
and lived up in a penthouse and all that
and she comes to tell her story.
And she's talking
about well I have this penthouse
and I sit and drink
my wine and my butler
brings it over to me
and my little kitty cat sits
in my lap and I have the flowers
growing in the
hot house and they're
all blooming and things are
wonderful and the more I
drank the more my
kitty cat didn't want to sit in my lap
and the more my
butler looked at me with disdain
when he gave me the drink
and the flowers
began to droop.
So I decided
that I had gone down far enough.
And
I joined Alcoholics Anonymous
and my kitty
cat sits in my lap
and purrs and my
butler brings me a Coca-Cola
with a big smile and the flowers
are all blooming.
And of course
the room is rather quiet
and she finishes
and Mike said he left
and they're walking up the street
and he turned to the Indians and said what did you think of that?
And he said that's the most beautiful story
I ever heard.
And so
you just don't know
how you're going to reach people
and what is going to
be left with people.
Once that Saturday morning
meeting got going
I suppose
now I have
I don't know
fifteen
fifteen to twenty years
and I started being interested
in a lot of outside reading.
I just found it
fascinating.
Some of these concepts
and thoughts
and
I also was doing a lot of running
which can produce
pretty spiritual
experiences.
And I do remember running
and
suddenly realized
the shadow I was
looking at in front of me
was the same
shadow I had in Africa
a couple thousand years ago.
I mean it was as clear
as a bell that this was.
And those type of
experiences people
will laugh at
but you don't laugh at them yourself
because you're the one who experienced it.
So when you experience things like that
it's okay.
It's your experience.
I've had
a lot of them with
trees
emitting energy
and bushes and
things like that that just are
unmistakable.
There's some sort of a glow
or whatever it is.
And so this
seeking
picked up in intensity
somewhere around thirty years.
And it
just
became something that I thought about
a lot at night
and then I'd
wake up, that's the big
thing is that I always, these things
happen, I wake up at three o'clock in the morning
and I'd
better get a pencil quickly
because this thing's going to be gone.
And so I turn the light on
and write down whatever it was and there's
just, I have a whole collection of
stuff that I really enjoy
that arrives.
So we can be
things can happen
to us
and we just have to pay attention
that they're happening.
And
my favorite is to
I do this with people I sponsor
but I also can do it with myself
and I'll go, you know
everything's all screwed up.
I'm sure
everybody in this room has had that feeling
you just go, you know everything's all screwed up.
And the
answer is
wait a minute, let's take another look
and make sure
they're screwed up. You might have
seen it wrong.
So we're going to go back and re-examine all this
and we're going to ask
God to help us
take a look at
what life is
like.
And all of a sudden it's not screwed up.
As a matter of fact
sometimes you will see
how wonderful everything is
and you were totally wrong.
Absolutely wrong.
One way of
sponsoring people is when they have problems
is to invite them over
and talk them out of the fact
they have a problem.
Disagree that that's
a problem.
No, you're seeing it wrong.
You are looking at
it incorrectly.
Let's look at it this way.
And
geez, I remember that happened
early in sobriety. My sponsor
had come running over
it's probably an
every talk I've given that
the sky was falling again.
You know I got two years sobriety
I'm getting thrown out of the Marine Corps
whatever the hell's going on.
So I got to go see him.
And I come over and I go
everything's wrong.
Well what is it?
My wife isn't happy, the children are hungry.
The Marine Corps is going to go
oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's interesting, you know, but
you've got, what have you got now, 18 months?
I said yeah.
You know people really
like the way you talk at meetings.
Have you noticed that?
As a matter of fact they want you to come back to
Manassas, really.
And if you think about it
your health is returning.
You're starting to run now.
You're starting to take care of yourself.
And he would start
through this whole list of things
and when he finished I'd go well if you look at it
that way
I guess
things are okay.
So it wasn't
what was really going on
it was what I was seeing
that was
incorrect.
And there's a lot of power
in that.
A disease of perception
so if our perception is off
our life
is going to look
uncomfortable and
not on
target when it
really is.
So those
happened and then
between
38 and 41 years
the most change
took place
more than
all the other years
combined.
In terms of
change in perception
I became
so connected
to Chuck Chamberlain's teachings
even though he had already been
a hero of mine.
And if you don't know who he is
you better find out.
Because he was
one of the great teachers in
AA.
And his talks
the new pair of glasses
as a matter of fact
did we go last year Chris
out to Laguna?
I wanted to just go back
and be around
Chuck's energy and go buy
his house where he lived.
He didn't live there anymore.
Go to some of the groups that
he went to.
It was a fun visit.
You guys were there.
And I got to talk
at a couple of them.
It was just
something
I never would have done
15 years earlier.
This suddenly
was
this man
life.
Let's go back and
thank him.
Let's go back and
review. Haven't been there since the 80s.
1980 may have been the last time
he died in 82.
And
that was a wonderful visit.
And it was just
to experience
the energy
that I remember
from him.
So we have
some good teachers in AA
and there's a lot of them in this room.
And it's
if you're
new and you're sponsoring
people, you can pay attention
to
develop your own
style. But there are things
that you can learn from
some of these other people.
The answers
to give, the stories to tell,
the things that will
make
and you can see
yourself how it's
working by watching the
person you're sponsoring.
And if you see them
with light bulbs going off
all the time, you're obviously
on the right track.
And they're going, oh, I get it.
Because
we got to remember, when we come in here
and we start talking about spiritual
things, it's
like talking about ghosts.
Yeah, well, don't forget the ghosts.
There's ghosts in the room.
And nobody can see it.
So they go, yeah, spiritual.
So they say the word.
But until you experience it
and have a sense of it,
it's just a theory
that this is true.
Funny that
Ernie Kurtz says that
the saying
that AA is spiritual,
not religious, has no
origin.
No one knows where it came from.
It's not in our literature.
He didn't have it in any of his.
It just appeared.
And he said that
for AA to make
spirituality acceptable
in the society
was almost
equal to making religion acceptable.
I mean, it's that high.
And
so the
only way they were able to do it
was through results.
And when you see
one miracle after another,
even our biggest skeptic,
when their cousin gets over,
who's the biggest
jerk in their family,
they have to start changing
their mind about alcoholics anonymous.
Maybe that
spirituality
is valid.
Everything in our program
is connected with results.
It is
that's why I like it so much.
What time is it?
Is it time?
Five minutes?
Then I'll have to talk about Chris for five minutes.
Anyway,
I'm glad I got on that
track
of seeking.
As a matter of fact,
kind of our motto is
seek and you will find.
If you decide
to become a seeker,
you will follow it.
You will just,
you will be led to certain books.
You'll be led to certain
program
on television or something.
Well, we have now the spiritual speaker
so and so, which
a month ago you go,
listen to that jerk.
And suddenly you find yourself
listening.
Now this door is opening
and this door is opening
and all of a sudden
you're seeing a light that was
quite a bit brighter
than the one you ever saw before.
And you realize
that it's working.
Your decision
to become a seeker.
So we like to end
a lot of our lectures here
urging people
to take that word up
as a personal
label
for yourself. Who are you?
I'm a spiritual seeker.
And see where it
takes you.
I'm sure you're going to be delighted.
You will
have personal experiences
that you
wouldn't have had otherwise.
And so I wish you a lot of luck with that
and with that we'll close.
Thank you very much everybody.
Thank you.
story, my visit to Midland, because Charlie was there, it was January, right, and Charlie
and his wife Kate were sitting to my right, and an ex-trustee was speaking, getting ready
to give a talk, a briefing, or whatever it was going to be.
And I turned to Charlie and I said, I think I'm passing out.
And I went, boom.
So he, people got excited and overreacted and called the rescue squad.
And I had, I really felt that I was going, and I'm in a hurry to get there.
So this was...
It was really fine with me.
I was just going, perfect.
I'm going to go out, just like going to sleep with anesthesia or something like that, and
you're gone.
And you'll leave a legend of interrupting a trustee in the middle of a briefing.
I mean, how hot shit can you get?
I mean, that's...
But unfortunately, the rescue squad got there, and the next thing, the three of us are in
the ambulance.
And the next thing, the three of us are in the emergency room.
And who are they?
Three hours?
Huh?
Five hours.
And you never get admitted to an emergency room with a heart problem that you don't get
admitted.
You're never admitted to the hospital, unless Kate is along to talk to the nurses and the
doctors.
And she is going in there and just giving them hell, that you're not going to admit
this guy.
He feels better.
And there's 800 people back there waiting to hear us talk.
so
this little Korean doctor comes up and says to me
Mr. Beach I'm releasing you
and so we went back and
somehow gave a talk or whatever
came back to Tampa and then went to the doctor
and all this stuff started
with putting the pacemaker in
and it led to quite an
adventuresome year
but that is one persuasive person
I didn't know that
boy I missed out there
anyway that was how this year started
that's a great story
that is just wonderful
and as a matter of fact you guys were up in Tampa one time
when she was helping me fix my feet
and all this
anyway it's said to
reminisce and
I guess that's an opportunity to
tell some
meaningful things that
have happened to me in AA
well I don't have the
walker I got too tired
but it's got a little Marine Corps flag on it
and there's two organizations that
are pretty high in my life
that I'm an honor to be part of
and the Marine Corps is one
and AA is the other
and they are really
high up in stature
in my own mind
I think in spite of
my childhood
childhood
adverse reaction to the Catholic Church
and all the smoke and mirrors
and joking around that I did
I think I was always fascinated
with God
I think I just
I liked the idea that there was one
but I didn't know what to do about it
but I think that's a good thing to have
I think that's a good thing to have
is
a curiosity about
whether there really is
for you
a creator
or was it all just an accident
that
life doesn't mean anything
and we're going nowhere
so good luck
and so
there's very little doubt in my mind
that when I drank
it produced
a spiritual experience
similar to what I thought
you might have
if you had a higher power
it was that type of thing
it was just revolutionary
it was just remarkable
and
Dr. Young talks about that
that he believes that
alcoholics satisfy their
longing for God
through alcohol
and I think that's a good thing
and ironically
that it takes
God to solve the problem
that we thought we were finding
in alcohol
it's just an
interesting observation
and while I'm on Young
I'll just go random
you know, who knows
I think it's interesting
in the letter to me
to Bill where he later on
after the
Spiritus Contra Spiritum
quote
he talks about
the world in general
and about
a force called evil
evil being
you know, moving away from God
and he says
that in the life struggle
people always lose to evil
they always end up losing
unless
they have a spiritual awakening
which I find just fascinating
that
now
I don't know if there is such a thing
as evil
for me
I don't know if there is such a thing
I don't know if there is such a thing
I think it's the
part of me
that doesn't want to
stay close to God
we call it character defects
Bill is very clever
how he uses the words here
I mean, I think he only uses sin
once or twice
because that's such a religious term
so instead of having sins
we have character defects
it makes you feel better
yeah, at least I'm not a sinner
I'm just a defector
I'm just a defector
but that alcohol
God, it was such a
it was just what I was looking for
all along
and of course
there was no way to control it
and like all of your lives
it just took over
I would try to have
just ten
which would have been just right
I would have just been
not in trouble and all that
but you don't get to decide
how much alcohol you have
once the alcohol is in there
and so
I got my dream
of getting in the Marine Corps
and
I got my dream
and
I got my dream
and
I got my dream
and
I got my dream
and
I got my dream
and
I got my dream
becoming a fighter pilot
and I thought it was
the greatest thing in the world
and alcohol decided
to take it all away
and it did it very slowly
I still have a lot of friends
and we call each other
I've been to a couple reunions
up at Cherry Point
where guys that were flying
planes that are in mothballs
and museums now
and I said
you know
you know
you know
you know
you know
you know
you know
you know
you know
you know
you know
you know
you know
you know
you know
you know
They were the hot stuff in the 50s.
And it's just a wonderful part of my life and a great memory.
And I think if I remember, everybody who we hung around with had four or five kids.
We had six.
Big families were kind of in.
And just like AA, we have the big book and we're focused on this.
The pilots, we would be talking to each other constantly about,
well, here's a little trick, you want to learn this, this is a...
Just obsessive talking about flying.
And then the disease just started.
And I would end up missing a flight one time I missed.
You know what, have you guys heard the Wormwood story?
Has anybody heard that?
Well, Mike has.
Well, if you don't like it, I love it.
I tell it all the time.
But I had done all my flying.
And it was a great flight.
And I had done all my flying.
I lost my flying career when I was an air traffic controller.
You can see how smart the Marine Corps was.
This guy is in such bad shape, he can't fly.
So let's make him an air traffic controller.
And I was in Japan in charge of an air traffic control unit.
And the senior enlisted men saw what bad shape I was in.
So they would just go, Captain, here's your tent.
You bring your bike down, we'll get you coffee.
But don't you talk to any airplane.
Because we're afraid that you might run them into a mountain.
I mean, we just don't want you to do that.
So I'm in a squadron that was headed by an aviator,
but it's what they call a base squadron.
And they take care of maintenance.
They take care of, like, air traffic control, the motor transport.
It's all the housekeeping duties for the Air Group 12.
And there was the colonel, the head of it was an aviator,
but his executive officer, he just was something else,
was a motor transport guy.
And he was always trying to get our squadron to have more spirit
and all this, you know, like the fighter squadrons.
So he has the colonel write a letter to the group CO saying,
saying that we just got announced from headquarters Marine Corps
that we're getting an airplane,
and we want to know what the call sign is.
No, these squadrons don't get airplanes.
So the group CO, going along with the joke,
writes back and says,
your call sign is Wormwood 1.
So we write back, thank you.
Well, unbeknownst to us, this guy, this executive officer,
is building an airplane in the hangar out of wood.
Two-by-fours, hand-carved propeller.
It had a pump engine from one of the pumps,
and the propeller would turn slowly.
Took a seat like one of these and just bolted it in,
and the brakes were an anchor.
You threw it out.
Open.
And it hooked something.
And he had, one morning, we went down with,
we all got up early and went down to the Hams flight line,
which they had their airplane there,
with a radio jeep, and we called Iwakuni Tower.
This is Wormwood 1, over.
And the tower's going, who the hell is Wormwood 1?
And they said, where are you?
We're on the Hams flight line.
So they got the binoculars, and they see a plane over there
with a propeller turning.
And there's no record of this plane ever having come on the base.
So this is a big emergency.
And they get the MPs, and the red lights are coming,
and they come over, and we're all laughing.
Funny joke.
Nice going, guys.
Even the group CO sent a note over.
That was cool.
You got me there.
Ha, ha, ha.
And then it sat out in front, and Santa Claus was in it,
and now we're going to Taiwan.
The air group's going to Taiwan on a deployment.
And we would go there first to build the camp,
put up all the tents, the showers, the heads,
and mess halls, and all that stuff.
So again, the colonel writes a letter to the group CO
and says, what flight is Wormwood flying over in?
And just,
just to make fun of the group CO wrote back,
you can go over with the photo planes.
Okay, we're going to go with the photo planes.
Well, you know, I thought that was the end of it.
This guy, Jack, he cuts the wings off,
ties them up around the plane,
and takes it down to a staging area
where the cargo planes are taking the stuff,
and bluffs the pilots.
And they go, what's this?
He says, it's an observation plane.
The colonel wants it over there.
What?
Yeah, this is, well, god damn, it doesn't look like it.
Well, it is.
It has to go.
We've got to take it.
So they took it.
Then we put it back together over there, built the camp.
And the first one to land,
bringing over the air group, is the colonel.
And he sees Wormwood parked there,
and he knows it didn't fly over.
And so he's very upset.
And he sees Jack, and he says, burn it.
I want that thing on fire within an hour.
And Jack never lets grass grow under his feet.
We were at the Chinese Air Force Academy, Gongshan.
And he went up to the general in charge of all the Chinese
air force academy.
And he calls the Chinese air activities and asks for a meeting
with them, and explains that our air group has put together
a gift for him, which is a composite of all the airplanes
that flew with China in World War II.
And he started naming the different planes.
And the Chinese general is flattered.
He's going, oh, my god, I can't believe you would do this.
So Jack goes, why?
And he goes back to the colonel and says,
you don't want me to burn that Chinese general's airplane,
do you?
So they had a ceremony, like a formal ceremony,
to turn the plane over to the Chinese.
And we're all standing out there, and the ceremony finishes,
and they bring a tow truck over and hook it up
to Wormwood, and there goes Wormwood.
And a couple of weeks later, one of the guys
said, you've got to go up into the middle of the school
in the courtyard.
And we went in there, and there's two pedestals.
And on one is a MiG-15 that defected from mainland China.
And on the other one, it's Wormwood,
with a plaque under it saying, who knows?
We can't read Chinese.
And so that was the kind of fun that we had.
And the other squadrons would have models of their airplanes
at happy hour, whatever it was, an F3D or FJ or whatever it was.
And we didn't have anything to put in the middle.
So we built out houses for everybody to use.
And so he decided that would be our symbol,
was a two-foot-high, one-holer outhouse
with all the detail, a little doorknob and a half moon
up at the top.
You opened it up, a little tiny roll of toilet paper.
I mean, it was just perfect.
And up at the top, you had to duck down to see it.
It said, you will buy a round of drinks quietly.
So we'd get people to come over.
And they'd go, what's that?
Oh, what is this thing?
You ought to see the workmanship.
Look inside.
And as soon as they saw the sign, we'd start singing,
you're in the shithouse now.
They would buy 20 drinks.
And they were allowed to sign the shithouse.
Now, once your signature was on there,
if you talked someone into coming over to look at it,
you got a free drink.
And at the end of the year, there was no room for signatures.
It was on.
Those days are gone.
You don't hear those stories.
Drinking is really not a big deal in the military anymore.
It's a shame.
Everybody's doing a great job.
Nobody's getting me in trouble.
It's really bad.
But all right.
I'm going to go.
I'm going to go.
I'm going to go.
Well, there is a problem with alcoholism.
Because I know, at least in the Marine Corps,
after a tailhook in Las Vegas about 20 years ago,
the commandant said, we will not have any alcoholics
in the Marine Corps.
And that means sober ones.
So you have to keep it quiet if you're in AA.
And it led to the suicide rate going up.
And I've got a couple of friends who are really
working on this problem.
Boy, talk about an overreaction.
Because shortly after I got sober, the Navy, some of you
guys know Joe Pursh out in California.
Dr. Joe, you know him.
And I forget the other guy who really started it in Long Beach.
This was a lieutenant commander.
And a friend of his, who was a Navy captain,
came to Long Beach.
And the captain was in AA.
And he asked him what he was doing for the alcoholics
on his base.
And he said, nothing.
He says, well, you're killing them.
You've got to start some alcohol program.
And he said, well, I'll never get permission
from CNO, chief of naval operations,
to start an alcohol program.
He said, well, then why don't you start one anyway?
Don't ask.
So he started it.
It was the first military program.
It was immensely successful.
So much so, they heard about it in Washington
and came out to look at something illegal,
I mean, unauthorized.
And it was doing so well, it became
a model for other services, but especially the Navy
and the Marine Corps.
And the Marine Corps had all its officers and staff
NCOs go through one week of training around the country.
And I remember in DC, they came to this one motel.
And we went over and gave talks to them.
And pretty soon, the stigma had been reduced down
to almost zero.
And a friend of mine, Bob Eggers, who some of you
guys may know out in the Los Angeles area,
he said it was down near Laguna.
He got promoted to colonel with alcoholism on his record, which is unheard of.
Now, after tailhook, it just went back and crashed.
So it's an interesting story to watch how, and the airlines.
I've lost track of them.
Sometime we'll get Mike to tell us, you know, birds of a feather was started to try and solve the airline problem.
Which was, if you have a known alcoholic sober pilot and he has an accident and the reporters find out,
how are you going to be able to convince him that he was sober?
Right?
That was the thing.
So if you want, in the 70s at the airlines, if you wanted to get sober, you had to go on leave.
I'm going on vacation.
I'm going on vacation for a month and not tell anybody you went to treatment and then you came back so that it was unofficial.
But they finally worked it all out with the FAA and the pilots union and all those things.
So it continues in certain professions to create the same old problem.
When I think about moving.
The stigma.
I think Rockefeller did the most to put a dent in that when he held that dinner in the 40s.
Because people made fun of him.
What are you giving a dinner for alcoholics for?
You know, why would you give a dinner for them?
And he invited all his friends and bankers and everybody.
But the newspaper coverage.
Of it talked about this Alcoholics Anonymous and it really made people sit up and think that maybe alcoholics might be okay people after all, and that they didn't have to carry the same stigma.
But whenthank you.
So at one point I think Donald Trump messed up
his own contract with theaires andaha.
He fucking has a L organization, guys anda.
He's out running his own company.
A company that stays nu inference.
But at least he must come back that way.
There are some guys really hot there as well who are stupid.
One that still cannot come back these days just because they messed him up.
I think I'll just continue with this God thing.
When I first came in in the DC area nobody was doing the steps.
Nobody was doing the steps.
There wasn't N.
Buck Doyle was Mr. AA.
And he was already totally unselfish.
Unselfish I don't know what at all.
So you're moutheeee.
It's weird.
un-self-centered. He just gave himself to the whole program.
So he was already where the steps are supposed to take you.
And he didn't understand why people just wouldn't be like him.
And so a lot of early sobriety
was go to meetings, don't drink. Go to meetings, don't drink.
Go to meetings, don't drink. And so
while I
became familiar with the steps
I didn't have any spiritual experience as a
result of the steps. But I had things happen
that I could not overlook.
And the first one was at my first meeting when that
Al-Anon lady came out. I was trying to leave.
And I didn't know which way to run. Because the meeting lasted
four hours. They had a dance and all that stuff.
Square dance. And I didn't want any part of this.
And I'd only been sober three hours when I got to the meeting. So now I'm sober
eight hours. And I'm feeling terrible. And I want to get
out of there. So it's starting to sleet a little bit.
And I'm looking around. It's dark out in Manassas. And this Al-Anon lady came out
and she put her hand on my shoulder and said, come on back in.
Everything's going to be alright.
And I believed her.
Now that is a huge thing to have happen
where you would believe that. Oh, okay.
And went back in. And then about
six months later I was driving on the base at Quantico
and it wasn't a voice
but it was the same thing as a voice.
And it simply said, if you stay in AA
everything will be alright.
And I believed it. So those are
the experiences that were
there that I couldn't deny
so that if I got negative a year later I would look back and just go
yeah, but you had this happen. You had this happen.
And it was very strong to rely on
when all the doubts and all that came.
And after a while it became the end thing.
The steps and the big book and
really started getting familiar and reading.
And there was a group in College Park.
One of the guys is down in Tampa now, Cappy.
And they had, there were two groups that did this.
They had someone come over and talk about, you know, what's going on.
And they had someone come over and talk about, you know, what's going on.
And they had someone come over and talk about, you know, what's going on.
And they had somebody else following you
And then you came back the next week and you talked about three other steps.
And then you came back the next week and you talked about three other steps.
And they had somebody else following you
so that they were constantly going through the steps.
So if you got signed up to go do College Park,
you went there four weeks in a row and you had to talk about
all twelve steps.
Well, you're not going to look like a jerk.
So
you got to study.
You, know what I mean?
You gotta
to get the book out and go,
and I remember when I started over there with them,
I would go, well, the one thing,
well, yeah, on the other hand,
you know, and I'd be going like that.
Well, you do it often enough,
pretty soon it really becomes a part of you
in terms of mentally being familiar with the words.
And as that mental familiarity
got stronger and stronger,
so did the power of the words.
They just were,
and I think that's when I first noticed
the impact on new people of certain words
and certain ways of talking about something.
And, you know, if you're speaking
and you pay attention,
you realize what is powerful and what isn't,
and what really works and what doesn't.
And that,
those classes went on forever,
and it led to starting Saturday morning live,
which anybody knows Keith Lewis?
Anybody remember Keith Lewis?
He was a speaker.
Yeah, there's guys around that knew him.
Yeah, he was a wonderful person.
So he comes to D.C.,
and he was,
he was in the Marine Corps.
So we became friends,
and he wanted to be,
me to be his sponsor.
So I said,
well, get some running shoes.
Guy turned into a runner.
Oh, you're going to go running
if you're going to, you know,
so he's huffing and puffing,
but pretty soon he's a pretty good runner.
And they offered him a job
at the Psychiatric Institute
running the alcohol program.
And he wanted to know
if I would give a lecture
on the steps,
to the patients,
once a week.
Little did I know,
he didn't give a damn about my lecture.
He knew that a lot of people
from Washington, D.C. would come,
and that's where he'd get sponsors
for the patients.
So I was the bait
to get sponsors coming in
to the treatment center.
How about that?
Your own pigeon turns on you.
And so it did get popular.
And pretty soon
we couldn't fit in the room.
So we moved up to a school,
the Hanneson-Harrison School.
And this thing was just
slowly getting bigger.
In other words,
it left the treatment center.
And then we went to Sibley Hospital
where we were going to go.
And we were going to go to a hospital
where we were going to go.
And we were going to go to a hospital
where we were going to go.
And we worked for a number of years.
That was my favorite location.
And then we ended up
at the National Institute of Health
with their whole auditorium.
And at Sibley we had bagels
and coffee,
and it was just wonderful.
And at Sibley
we had,
do you remember,
where's Dick?
Do you remember Lenny?
Where's Dick Martin?
Yeah, you remember Lenny?
Lenny was,
he was a street person
that probably one of the great teachers
that I ever had.
He was this Irish guy,
kind of,
and he just felt very nervous
if you got him in a corner.
You know,
if several people were blocking his way
out of that corner,
it would create panic in him
and he would bust his way through.
And occasionally some of the gals
would get bumped
as he ran out of the corner.
And that would require some
patching and mending
and so on down.
And he just had a funny way
of making noises.
But the big thing with Lenny was
squirrels were his higher power.
And so when they'd share at meetings
he would share about
he's a nut
and squirrels know all about nuts.
So he talks to the squirrels.
And he did it so
in a way
after you listen to him for years
you are tempted
to see if there's anything to it.
And I remember walking from
the Dirksen building over towards the
Capitol and those big trees
and there's squirrels all over the place.
And I remember one
came up and was sort of looking at me
and I went, I'm a friend of Lenny's.
It didn't seem to
Lauder knew Lenny too, yeah.
And George.
And it didn't seem to
do anything for the squirrels
so I wasn't sure but
we had a
retired U.S. Senator
that came to this thing
and
one day I looked out
in the parking lot
and Lenny was there.
And he was explaining
the squirrels
to this Senator.
And I remember saying to myself
only in AA
are you going to see
somebody explaining squirrels
to a Senator who went to Harvard
and you know all this stuff.
But he was listening intently.
Well one day
Lenny wanted to ride
he had a bike but it was over in Georgetown
and he wanted to know if I could
give him a ride over there.
And I said sure Lenny.
And we had a big snow storm
and it was melting.
So I'm driving over and I'm
I've never been on the street
so I say to Lenny, I said I bet you're glad
this snow is melting, assuming
you live on the street
that snow is a big pain in the butt.
And Lenny said
oh no I prayed for that snow.
And I went
oh boy.
Now I know he's a little off wacky.
He lives in the street and he's praying for snow.
And I said Lenny why would you pray for snow?
And he said
well when I grew up in West Virginia
and we're going to school
and you wake up
and there's a lot of snow
and school is cancelled
it is the biggest present
for little kids.
And he said I just wanted some little kids
to be happy.
And I sat there
going who's the teacher
and he said
and who's the pupil?
And
Lenny had a sponsor
I think his name was George.
And there was some kind of a
Lenny had had a slip
and he was throwing
bottles through Fox Hall's windows
if I recall.
And George went out to calm him down
and Lenny
very accidentally
gave him a bloody nose.
And it floored him.
It floored him
so much that he disappeared.
He just couldn't believe
he did that to his sponsor.
And we didn't see him
for
geez quite a few months
and then somebody told me
he was up at the
and I can't think of the insane place
in Maryland
between Washington and Baltimore.
No
it was another
another name.
Yeah.
Yep.
So I went over there
and there he was.
He's in the crazy part.
And obviously they got him on a lot of drugs
and everything.
So I brought him some cigarettes
and I said I'm going to come back and see you.
So I came back and we went outside
and I said Lenny
why aren't you in the alcohol unit?
Why are you staying here?
You're not crazy.
And I went through
and they were going to send me back to Washington.
And I
got worried that if I went back to Washington
I might hurt my sponsor again.
So I went over
and put my head
tried to put it through a plate glass window
so they'd think I'm crazy.
And they moved him over to
the crazy place
so that he would never hurt his sponsor
again.
Now
I don't know about you
but that is
commitment.
That is really
putting the well-being
it's in a very unorthodox way
but in a way
that is an amazing
heroic decision.
And I never saw him again.
Lost track of him.
But that's
those are the type of things
that you just never forget.
And
God teaches us
there's all kinds of teachers
some are standard looking
but others
are remarkable.
And sometimes it's the ones that are having
a problem with AA.
And we watch
and see what happens.
And we give up on them
and then they make it.
And then we can't explain
well why would you make it this year?
You failed 21 years in a row.
What was different this year?
God's grace.
It's just
this is what happens this year.
Then I had a great sponsor
and he was another
marine captain.
He went through the same nut word I did.
And
he was a man of few words.
And the
first three words to me were
get in the car.
When he came to my house.
You know about get in the car.
And I looked at him
he's a lot bigger than I am
and I went oh shit okay I'll get in the car
but I'm not staying around AA.
And every night
he'd drive over and get me.
So we were the two military
people.
The only two guys in the whole Marine Corps
base there. And then an army guy
came along who was in charge of the horses
named Bill.
And we had three.
So when we
drove up from Quantico
we'd go to Big Mike's group in
Columbia Pike.
And he would refer to us as the
military advisory group to
alcoholics anonymous.
Has now arrived
at the meeting.
And he was the first atheist that I met.
Big Mike.
Big tough guy.
Ship designer.
And he'd give this talk and he's going
well yeah but I don't buy any of this.
And he'd go God bless you all.
So he was
going to stay an atheist even though
he had decided he liked
God so that's okay too.
And
his favorite
story he grew up in Bedford-Stuyvesant
in New York
and Brooklyn and
he liked violence growing up.
He just loved it.
He'd ride the subways at night and
sometimes have a gun.
Just hoping that the trouble would arrive
so that he could have a successful evening.
And so when he got
sober he got teamed up with
an Indian.
Another big guy who'd been
released from prison for murder.
He did his time.
And so they would go to
meetings and they were very boring.
So they started going over
to Harlem.
They would hear stories that were more
in line with their
drinking.
And they're at the meeting one night
Mike and this Indian
and
someone had invited a
Park Avenue
woman who
had all the money in the world
and lived up in a penthouse and all that
and she comes to tell her story.
And she's talking
about well I have this penthouse
and I sit and drink
my wine and my butler
brings it over to me
and my little kitty cat sits
in my lap and I have the flowers
growing in the
hot house and they're
all blooming and things are
wonderful and the more I
drank the more my
kitty cat didn't want to sit in my lap
and the more my
butler looked at me with disdain
when he gave me the drink
and the flowers
began to droop.
So I decided
that I had gone down far enough.
And
I joined Alcoholics Anonymous
and my kitty
cat sits in my lap
and purrs and my
butler brings me a Coca-Cola
with a big smile and the flowers
are all blooming.
And of course
the room is rather quiet
and she finishes
and Mike said he left
and they're walking up the street
and he turned to the Indians and said what did you think of that?
And he said that's the most beautiful story
I ever heard.
And so
you just don't know
how you're going to reach people
and what is going to
be left with people.
Once that Saturday morning
meeting got going
I suppose
now I have
I don't know
fifteen
fifteen to twenty years
and I started being interested
in a lot of outside reading.
I just found it
fascinating.
Some of these concepts
and thoughts
and
I also was doing a lot of running
which can produce
pretty spiritual
experiences.
And I do remember running
and
suddenly realized
the shadow I was
looking at in front of me
was the same
shadow I had in Africa
a couple thousand years ago.
I mean it was as clear
as a bell that this was.
And those type of
experiences people
will laugh at
but you don't laugh at them yourself
because you're the one who experienced it.
So when you experience things like that
it's okay.
It's your experience.
I've had
a lot of them with
trees
emitting energy
and bushes and
things like that that just are
unmistakable.
There's some sort of a glow
or whatever it is.
And so this
seeking
picked up in intensity
somewhere around thirty years.
And it
just
became something that I thought about
a lot at night
and then I'd
wake up, that's the big
thing is that I always, these things
happen, I wake up at three o'clock in the morning
and I'd
better get a pencil quickly
because this thing's going to be gone.
And so I turn the light on
and write down whatever it was and there's
just, I have a whole collection of
stuff that I really enjoy
that arrives.
So we can be
things can happen
to us
and we just have to pay attention
that they're happening.
And
my favorite is to
I do this with people I sponsor
but I also can do it with myself
and I'll go, you know
everything's all screwed up.
I'm sure
everybody in this room has had that feeling
you just go, you know everything's all screwed up.
And the
answer is
wait a minute, let's take another look
and make sure
they're screwed up. You might have
seen it wrong.
So we're going to go back and re-examine all this
and we're going to ask
God to help us
take a look at
what life is
like.
And all of a sudden it's not screwed up.
As a matter of fact
sometimes you will see
how wonderful everything is
and you were totally wrong.
Absolutely wrong.
One way of
sponsoring people is when they have problems
is to invite them over
and talk them out of the fact
they have a problem.
Disagree that that's
a problem.
No, you're seeing it wrong.
You are looking at
it incorrectly.
Let's look at it this way.
And
geez, I remember that happened
early in sobriety. My sponsor
had come running over
it's probably an
every talk I've given that
the sky was falling again.
You know I got two years sobriety
I'm getting thrown out of the Marine Corps
whatever the hell's going on.
So I got to go see him.
And I come over and I go
everything's wrong.
Well what is it?
My wife isn't happy, the children are hungry.
The Marine Corps is going to go
oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's interesting, you know, but
you've got, what have you got now, 18 months?
I said yeah.
You know people really
like the way you talk at meetings.
Have you noticed that?
As a matter of fact they want you to come back to
Manassas, really.
And if you think about it
your health is returning.
You're starting to run now.
You're starting to take care of yourself.
And he would start
through this whole list of things
and when he finished I'd go well if you look at it
that way
I guess
things are okay.
So it wasn't
what was really going on
it was what I was seeing
that was
incorrect.
And there's a lot of power
in that.
A disease of perception
so if our perception is off
our life
is going to look
uncomfortable and
not on
target when it
really is.
So those
happened and then
between
38 and 41 years
the most change
took place
more than
all the other years
combined.
In terms of
change in perception
I became
so connected
to Chuck Chamberlain's teachings
even though he had already been
a hero of mine.
And if you don't know who he is
you better find out.
Because he was
one of the great teachers in
AA.
And his talks
the new pair of glasses
as a matter of fact
did we go last year Chris
out to Laguna?
I wanted to just go back
and be around
Chuck's energy and go buy
his house where he lived.
He didn't live there anymore.
Go to some of the groups that
he went to.
It was a fun visit.
You guys were there.
And I got to talk
at a couple of them.
It was just
something
I never would have done
15 years earlier.
This suddenly
was
this man
life.
Let's go back and
thank him.
Let's go back and
review. Haven't been there since the 80s.
1980 may have been the last time
he died in 82.
And
that was a wonderful visit.
And it was just
to experience
the energy
that I remember
from him.
So we have
some good teachers in AA
and there's a lot of them in this room.
And it's
if you're
new and you're sponsoring
people, you can pay attention
to
develop your own
style. But there are things
that you can learn from
some of these other people.
The answers
to give, the stories to tell,
the things that will
make
and you can see
yourself how it's
working by watching the
person you're sponsoring.
And if you see them
with light bulbs going off
all the time, you're obviously
on the right track.
And they're going, oh, I get it.
Because
we got to remember, when we come in here
and we start talking about spiritual
things, it's
like talking about ghosts.
Yeah, well, don't forget the ghosts.
There's ghosts in the room.
And nobody can see it.
So they go, yeah, spiritual.
So they say the word.
But until you experience it
and have a sense of it,
it's just a theory
that this is true.
Funny that
Ernie Kurtz says that
the saying
that AA is spiritual,
not religious, has no
origin.
No one knows where it came from.
It's not in our literature.
He didn't have it in any of his.
It just appeared.
And he said that
for AA to make
spirituality acceptable
in the society
was almost
equal to making religion acceptable.
I mean, it's that high.
And
so the
only way they were able to do it
was through results.
And when you see
one miracle after another,
even our biggest skeptic,
when their cousin gets over,
who's the biggest
jerk in their family,
they have to start changing
their mind about alcoholics anonymous.
Maybe that
spirituality
is valid.
Everything in our program
is connected with results.
It is
that's why I like it so much.
What time is it?
Is it time?
Five minutes?
Then I'll have to talk about Chris for five minutes.
Anyway,
I'm glad I got on that
track
of seeking.
As a matter of fact,
kind of our motto is
seek and you will find.
If you decide
to become a seeker,
you will follow it.
You will just,
you will be led to certain books.
You'll be led to certain
program
on television or something.
Well, we have now the spiritual speaker
so and so, which
a month ago you go,
listen to that jerk.
And suddenly you find yourself
listening.
Now this door is opening
and this door is opening
and all of a sudden
you're seeing a light that was
quite a bit brighter
than the one you ever saw before.
And you realize
that it's working.
Your decision
to become a seeker.
So we like to end
a lot of our lectures here
urging people
to take that word up
as a personal
label
for yourself. Who are you?
I'm a spiritual seeker.
And see where it
takes you.
I'm sure you're going to be delighted.
You will
have personal experiences
that you
wouldn't have had otherwise.
And so I wish you a lot of luck with that
and with that we'll close.
Thank you very much everybody.
Thank you.
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