Sandy B. at the Pearl Harbor Pilot’s Meeting – 1991

Hello, today is Saturday, December 7th, 1991. My name is John and I'm an alcoholic. I invite you to listen to the 23rd Annual Pearl Harbor Pilots' Meeting in Arlington, Virginia. I thank you and I hope you enjoy this tape. Starting off, I'd like to welcome everybody to the 24th Annual Pilots Meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. My name ist Sandy Beach and I am an alcoholic, how's everybody doing tonight? It's a pleasure to see you all here. Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength, and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism. The only requirement for membership is the desire to stop drinking. There are no dues or fees for AA membership. We're self-supporting for our own contribution. AA is not allied with any sect, politics, organization, or institution. It does not wish to engage in any controversy. neither endorses nor opposes any causes. Our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety. And if there's anyone new to AA here tonight, why we are delighted to have you with us. I hope you have some fun. This is a little bit of a different type meeting, and that's why it's only held once a year. and it still suffers from overexposure. Those of you that have been to this meeting before and have come back, I would check with your sponsor. You already know what goes on here and you came back. Most of the people have been victimized and they're here thinking they're going to hear a meeting or something and it's going to be quite different. What happens here, this thing got started, as I said, 24 years ago. A bunch of people were at lunch one day and we looked around and said, you know, about 50% of the people at this particular luncheon are pilots or former pilots in the military or whatever. We ought to get them to have a joke meeting and have them all talk. It was about seven or eight people. So we did that one Pearl Harbor day, and it just started growing from there into the thing where people fly in from as far away as Europe, Michigan, New Hampshire, California, Texas. These speakers who you're going to hear from tonight have come just to share in this particular type of environment. And so if you'll bear with us, we'll have a little bit of fun. We're goingto end up with 22-minute speakers. and some of them are airline pilots and some of you will never fly again comfortably in the air but we have a special way of introducing these speakers to you and what we've done and spared no expense to do this we have a film a priceless film that we're going to start the meeting with, and this film will show you your speakers tonight, 20 years ago, in the Navy, in a squadron aboard a carrier. And this is what it would look like if all these speakers were back drinking and carrying on like they did before they got in this fellowship. So if we could get the lights, and Tim, again, thanks to Tim, he comes out every year to get these movies. Well, I will sit back and enjoy launching them. Go ahead, Tim. We have a dinner up here at the Hyatt before the meeting, and this guy waits in the parking lot every year. And I come down, I'm coming down to the meeting and he calls me over and he says, Hey, pal, how about giving me some money? my family's out in california and they haven't eaten in a couple of months there's my wife and three little kids and i just got to send them some money out there and when they they don't have any rent money and they're going to be evicted this weekend so i just gotta send the money out and i always fall for this every year and i say to him well how do i know if i give you of money, you're not going to drink it up. And he said, oh, I got drinking money. You don't have to worry about that. So, you know, he's one of us waiting to come here. I don't know about you, but this weather is driving me crazy. You know, one day it's about 90 degrees out there and then it's down to 30 and now it's going back up to 60. Never know what to hock. We tell that joke for a guy who's no longer with us, but he liked it a lot. Some of these jokes we tell an effigy. Tonight we have 20 speakers who are, we like to say, are living proof of three things. One, that anyone can get sober in Alcoholics Anonymous. And two, that even at the speed of sound you can only live one day at a time And three, that passengers aren't the only one who use booze to get through the flight. Now you'll be hearing from different ones of these, but one of them, their favorite drink was vodka and Windex. You got drunk as hell, but you had clear eyes. Another guy drank vodka and garlic. When he passed out in a restaurant, they could find him under the table by the smell. And the last one that was a big vodka was, what the hell was that one? Vodka and what? Oh, vodka and milk and magnesia. It was a Phillips screwdriver. I forgot that one. All right. Joe, no booing yet. The booing is on the next page. joe p drank martini so dry when he went to the men's room only dust came out that shows you how dry those martinis were they thought controlled drinking was if you only threw up twice a day their stories are divided into two parts what happened during the years that they drank and what they thought happened duringthe years thatthey drank our last speaker that you're going to hear tonight made wine his own self and he got cirrhosis of the foot we're getting close to the booing shortly before he came to alcoholics announcements one of our speakers spent two hours in his backyard trying to kill a garden hose you don't think this takes guts finally one of our speakers came to his first meeting some of us get the program in a flash you just come to the meeting and you know you're home most of us we fight it for a long time but this speaker just hit him he went to one AA meeting came home, told his wife I'm an alcoholic and this is for me AA is it and he ran all around his house took all the booze out of all the hiding places down in the basement cases of it dumped it all down the toilet as soon as he came home from the meeting four days later he flushed the toilet oh boy well that's the first half that'll be put away for another year but we have nine more jokes in the second half so you're not through yet in any event, we're delighted now to get started with this cast of characters that you saw in that movie and our first speaker who kicked it off is a guy who's now out near the Palm Springs area in California he was around back when we were starting this whole thing and we're always thrilled when he can make it one of the Navy's finest pilots, Joe Heath. Come on, Joe. Show off. I'm Joe Riley and I'm an alcoholic. Always happy to be here. I kind of miss that bosun's pipe. There it goes. So, you know, I can't help but be a little serious on a day like this. I couldn't help to think where I was and how I felt 50 years ago this morning. Fifty years ago yesterday, I made seven qualification landings on the aircraft carrier Saratoga. I was a brand new ensign, 21 years old, and that evening those of us who had qualified went down to Tijuana and I woke up December 7th with a hell of a tequila hangover. And I had many, many hangovers on December 7ths and other days after that. But the past number of years have really been delightful. And I owe it all to Alcoholics Anonymous, people like you. But I still think it cost me a hell of a lot of money to come out here and just talk for a couple of minutes. Thank you. I'm Ned Miller, an alcoholic. A few months after the original Pearl Harbor Day, I had orders to a seaplane squadron that was going to the North Pacific. The order said, Navy's pretty cunning there. They wouldn't save the Aleutian Islands because they would probably all desert. But we were going up through Alaska. We found that whiskey was selling for $75 a fill. And to that I said I'd pass. But we got to Dutch Harbor on Thursday night. There was a line there, and I got in it. It was called the booze line. And we got one-fifth of white horse scotch for $3. That sounded so good to me that I took a searching and fearless inventory to squatter it. There was two guys there. There was something wrong with them. They didn't drink. So I held their hand and got their rations. And the next day, I went in and asked the people about it, played like I didn't know about it. I told them I was on a seaplane tender, and they said, how long have you been out? I said, five weeks, and so they gave me five films. So I began to accumulate some of those brown bottles, and I had a footlocker full. and people would say, what are you going to do with all that booze? And I told them truthfully, I was saving it for my friends when they came up to see me. Now, nobody knew where I was. There was no way to get there. But I thought I was being truthful. Now, little did I realize then that 26 years later in 1968, I walk into a meeting and I just went in and sat down like I was one of the regulars or something. After the meeting, a bunch of people gathered around me and they were saying a lot of nice things and I wondered how did they know I was a new person? then when I looked around I was the only one there that had white sterile gauze wrapped around their head when I got home I told my wife I think I made quite a favorable impression on those people because they invited me to come back And I've been coming back ever since. Thank you. Well, good evening. My name's Bill. I'm an alcoholic. I guess it's up to me to lower the level here. Only Joe could get up here and talk about going to Tijuana and coming back with a tequila hangover and not even mention the clap. But I know a little bit about this movie here because that was my aircraft carrier, the number 19 boat, Hancock. And those guys made that home movie on there just a little bit before I got there. And I sort of hate to be the one to point this out to Sandy. But, Sandy, you've got to quit saying 20 years ago. 30 years ago, Sandy. And next year you can start saying 40, I think. Well, we all get here the way we get. We get here and you'll hear from a fellow here who's a flight surgeon. They like to talk about how they take care of the aviators and all of that, and they do. And we've got a wonderful friend of AA and pilots here tonight who will address you, Dr. Persh. But what some of what the flight surgeons did on the number 19 boat, the Hannah Maru, is that we would come back from a night mission and they would say, oh, you poor thing, here, have this bottle of brandy. Or if it was me, they'd say, have two bottles of brand. And that theoretically was to take the edge off and get us well from these missions that we had suffered so much stress from. But they sure did take care of us. Now, after lowering the level that way, I can raise the level with an item of poetry that everybody has come to expect from me because it describes me and my alcoholism very accurately in just a few words. And that is that it was early in December, as near as I remember, while walking down the street in tipsy pride. No one was I disturbing as I lay down by the curbing when a pig came up and lay down on my side. As I lay there in the gutter thinking thoughts I cannot utter, A lady passing by was heard to say, You can tell a man who boozes by the company he chooses. And the pig got up and slowly walked away. Good evening, everybody. My name's Doug, and I'm an alcoholic. after following that the best thing i can say is i'm glad i wasn't in the navy uh three years ago when i came here uh came to hal morley who's an old friend of mine i said my new sponsor's a friend of yours he said good you're speaking tonight so that didn't work so next time i said hell and i come back to see if maybe i don't have this good youre speaking tonight this time i thought i've always heard the story if you got a copy of the picture you didn't have to do anything. So I gave Fritz a copy of the picture. He said, that's a good picture. You're speaking tonight. So here I am again. Nothing works. You always get up here to do this. Another thing, a long time ago, I learned that the only way this thing works is to turn it over. And right now, I've turned another problem over to the good Lord, my higher power by life's little sake. So, I turned her over instead of sitting at home and wondering whether she was going to get well. I came up here and, Lord, she did get well or she's getting well faster or as fast as if I was there worrying about her. So I'm up here pestering you and she's down in Texas getting well and everybody's all happy. Thank you. Hello, everyone. I'm Max. I'm an alcoholic. And I grew up on a farm north of Lansing, Michigan. and my father had a bullet-nose Studebaker. You might know what those look like. And my uncle would come out from the city and he was learning to fly. And he had just soloed in an Aronca Champ and he had graduated to a Tri-Champ. And he would sit in that Studevaker and flip the magnetos and check them and brakes in contact and pretend to flip the prop through and he had these sound effects that were so good. And I was so enthused that I took up flying myself as I got old enough to get involved with that. And my uncle kind of dropped out of it. He never got the license, in fact. But he found booze, as I did later myself. Well, he continued to booze, and he kept dreaming. And I would take him up for airplane rides now and then after I got the license, and he was always drunk. Well, I took him up one time, eight hours bottle to throttle, but I drank until 1 o'clock in the morning, and 9 a.m. I was on the flight deck ready to go. and I was certainly in no condition. I had a terrible hangover and it was kind of a disastrous flight in that I actually put a ding in the prop. I taxied into a landing light along the edge of the runway. But I took off again and I flew back home and I'm up here to say this. You know, I love what my uncle gave me way of aviation, but I hate what ended up happening to him. He never did recover, and after four treatment centers, he lost a 20-year career job. His wife left him. His two sons won't talk to him, wouldn't talk with him, and at the age of 51, he was getting ready to go see a minister, and he died of a heart attack at the end of 51 with a half-used jumbo on the dining room table, and I don't like that. But if there's any consolation, I'm sober, recovering, and I have my wings, and I think of my uncle now and then. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Dick, and I'm an alcoholic. I'm down here to visit from an AA membership up in New Hampshire. I heard a lot about this wonderful audience down here, and I just wanted to come down and simply express my gratitude for having spent quite a few days with you now. I got a big kick out of that Carrier movie there. I was fortunate enough to be part of that fraternity for a while as well and then retired from commercial airline flying and I certainly have enjoyed meeting these gentlemen this evening and one day I will hopefully be as distinguished as they are Thank you Good evening, everyone. My name is Bill Denner and I'm an alcoholic and a classmate of Dick's and it's good to be here sitting next to him. You may wonder how some of us get into the aviation field. I got thrown out of college for drinking and I had to go home and explain this to my old man who was kind of a strict fellow and he kept asking questions until he really got to the bottom of things. He said, Billy, you are wasting my money and your time going to college. Just what do you want to do? I always had to give him an answer quickly. I thought, gee, what should I tell him? I said, gee dad, I always wanted to fly. I didn't know a thing about airplanes but it seemed like fun. I didn't have an uncle who used to imitate Studebaker or anything, but it looked like a good idea. I think somewhere along the line I heard that if you're too lazy to work, too nervous to steal, it's a hell of a good way to make a living. So he said, good. There's the door. Go down to the recruiting sergeant and sign up. That's how I got to be a pilot. I drank my way out of college. and then I drank my way out of the Air Force that took a few more years and I was fortunate to take my last drink on New Year's Day in a Quonset hut in a place called R.A. of Bentwaters in England on New Years Day of 1963 so I had to now I had to get out make a living flying airplanes rather than do it in the military where we used to military flying has been sometimes termed turning dollar bills into noise you know tax payers now I had to make a living so I got a job I had been flying all multi-engine stuff all over the world having a wonderful time on Uncle Sam I had a job flying a Cessna 172. Let me tell you something. I thought I had blown the whole thing. I can't tell you how grateful I was to have that job flying a Cressna 171 when I was in my first year of sobriety. And I got to hang up and I enjoyed it and I was very grateful and always one to kind of push things You know, the ants agree. I went to Bridgeport, Connecticut. I'm from Connecticut. I had a job near there. And my boss called me up and said, get to Kennedy right away and pick up some air freight and then come back to Bridgepoint and pickup that radio they took out of your airplane. I said, okay, yeah. So I ran down there, got my freight, came back. Fortunately, I had two radios, you know. Well, I'm coming back, and I said... Boy, this is a nice, beautiful day in the summertime, people on the beach. I looked at my fuel gauge. I hadn't put any gas in this thing. Oh, my goodness, I'm a little short, so I burn one tank dry, and I'm on the other tank also reading empty. And I said, if it quits, I'll land on the beach. So I made it up to Bridgeport, and I called in for landing instructions. He said, yeah, you can clear land to the south, as I recall. So I go, phew, I made It. It quit. the FAA is not going to like me running an airplane out of gas it's a commercial license now this is not the military they're probably going to take a dim view of this I call the tower and I said I just had some carburetor ice and I pulled the carburector heat on and it didn't work and my engine quit I need to get in there kind of fast this poor tower operator he'd get all excited and there was some guy lined up for takeoff made him get off the runway and I said, I'm going to have to land downwind. I can't make it around the right end. It's okay, everything, you can land anywhere you want, you know. The boys kept getting higher and higher. So I had to do S turns down final props standing there at attention. I hit the ground going pretty fast, never touched the brakes, scooted off over next to the fuel truck, hopped out, there was this line boy there and I should put eight gallons in that tank and nine gallons in that thing and I ran like hell out of there, you know, I was smart enough not to have them fill the tanks and be in black and white the moral of that story is any of you newcomers listen up don't listen to your sponsor all the time make sure you hang on to some of those character defects you may need them you may have to con yourself out of one more time I'm Jim Alcoholic from Mission Viejo. It's supposed to be my laugh cue for my friend back there, didn't it? When I did a lot of my drinking, I was what you wouldn't call, I guess, a low-profile drinker. I was a bar drinker and used to get in a lot of trouble and definitely made my presence known. And I always assumed a lot of different identities, like a lot alcoholics do. And I was flying at the time commercially. So the next day I'd get in the cockpit and my airline has a policy that the captain's supposed to stand in the door and greet these different people when they come on the airplane and whoosh them, you know, good flight and all that kind of stuff, and I used to never do that. And the co-pilots used to always say, Lindbergh, you never get up there and greet the people when they're getting on the airplanes. You almost act like somebody would recognize you. And I says, if you only knew. I had a good year this year. My sister quit drinking, and that meant a lot to me because our whole family's gone through a lot of pain because of alcoholism. I had kind of a nickname when I came on the program called the Mole Man and the way I got that is if I drank enough I got paranoid and I don't know why but I used to like to get underneath the rug and I used make these little tunnels and I kept food back there and I smoked cigarettes back there cigars it was great back there and people used to come in do these interventions on me and they'd just kind of walk on the rug until they finally found me so when my sister tried to quit she was missing for a while and my dad says I can't find your sister anywhere and he says well have you checked under the rug and he said well that's sure stupid And he says, well, if you only knew. Well, it turns out she'd gone the other way. She's up in the attic. Wasn't quite a low-bottom drunk like me. It's good to be here. Good evening. I'm Bill, an alcoholic. The big book tells us that the only thing you really have to do is get honest and to tell you the truth right now. I'm more scared of being up here than I would be losing two engines out in the Middle Pacific in the middle of the night. But I'm really glad to be here and glad to have been able to do this. I'm glad to know that I'm going to be sober today. Thanks to, I'm a three-time winner in this program, and thanks to Dr. Joe Persh and the FAA and groups like you and my higher power for going to give me another chance. Thank you. my name is Bill and I am an alcoholic ain't it great to be here and sober ain't had a drink all day 16 years ago I was about two months shakily dry and a guy named Hal and a girl named Sandy pick me I didn't go to this I didn' t know about this luncheon and all that jazz I was sitting out there in a pair of dirty jeans and a dirty shirt a dear friend of mine is now dead but he died sober on a fishing trip he brought me down here he said there's a bunch of pilots to get together downtown I want you to meet them anyhow these two guys standing in hell said come on get up there you talk about shaking this last gentleman my God but something clicked folks Something clicked in this beautiful fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. I don't remember what I said, but I do remember when I ended it. I said I'll be back. I thank God. I thank Gott every day that I'm given the opportunity to be back Yeah, I got my first time an assessment, I mean a Ronca C2, the little two-banger, in 1938 at the age of 14. And I went on to get 12 cylinders, but that's a long story. And all I'll say is, and the 172, I could tell you one on that too. I just flew one of them last week, and that's the story all itself. I've resigned the Quantico Aero Club and decided that after a year I would fly down home, down in Tappahannock. Oh, I Could Go On. But what I'll tell you is what it gets me, if you're new in the fellowship and you're having a little hard time, Baxter's, I'm Bill Baxter, Baxter Actions. One of mine is if you are an alcoholic and you drink, you will have problems. If you don't drink, I will not promise you that you will grow hair, become handsome, get laid, or get a good job. But you will not get drunk and Bill's third axiom is that life is lumpy folks enjoy the smooth parts just take the bumps and keep coming back I thank God every day I am sometimes in awe of the good things that have come my way since I found you folks Alcoholics Anonymous thank you We've got all the prizes here, so if you'd get your tickets out. If we could have the basket brought down, we'll draw. Boy, we've got a few. And we'll do this real quick and then get the second group of speakers. Who's got the basket with the tickets in it? Are they in the bag? Okay. In the bag. You trust me to do this. Charlie Page, you haven't got a chance. okay and if you win them just come on up and pick up the book here's all these are AA literature the first one is Daily Reflections and the winner is 8043 8043 here we go All right, the next one is As Bill Sees It, and the number is 8478. Right there, okay? We'll pass it back to you. Dr. Bob and the good old-timers. And the winning number is 8560. 8560 there it is ok we'll pass it back and the next one is for the big book 8449 right here alright all right we got pass it on that's great and the winner of pass it on is 8061. Hey, Mike. We got two more. Another big book, and then we have a tape, Clancy I. The big book, 8302. Hey, how about that? Okay, last but not least, whoever wins this, if you've never heard of Clancy tape, you are in for a treat. His annual Christmas talk. Oh, this is a wonderful tape. Well, he wants them to give their pony back that they gave him. Eighty-two seventy-nine. Yay, Robert! All right! We'll pass it back to Robert. Right back there. Okay. now having gotten the drawing out of the way are they going to pass the baskets no oh they are passing them all right it's already done all right good now before we get to the second group of speakers and wasn't that first group wonderful i'll tell you that was just a marvelous collection And Dr. Persch leads off our second half, and Dr.persch, back when he and I were both in the military, was a flight surgeon, psychiatrist, and became very well known in the field of alcoholism now and is a great friend of A.A., and we've always dedicated the meeting to the flight surgeons. And the flight surgeon's purpose, as one of our speakers pointed out, In a squadron, the main function of a flight surgeon was to get medicinal brandy for the pilots. It was just a very important role because it was free and they just would hand it out and you're flying in cold weather and dark or light or something like that. Get that medicinal brandY. And so a lot of these stories are true stories about flight surgeons. And the first one involves a time back in 1955. I was in a fighter squadron over in Japan, and I was at happy hour. This is a true story. And I'd been drinking at happy hours about four hours. You know how you're just there, just drinking and drinking, talking with all these guys. And I looked down, and it was a shrimp fork stuck in my chest. It was sticking out about this far. and I remember telling the guys look at this god damn shrimp fork and they said that's serious you better go see the flight surgeon alright you know I hate to leave happy hours so I went over to see the flight surgeon you know what he said there's a lot of that going around in order to cut back I only drank when I smoked I got up to 8 cartons a day some of these flight surgeons were very weird I remember going in for an annual physical one time the flight surgeon would hand me a little bottle already full still don't know what the hell you're supposed to do when they hand you that I got real nervous as part of the annual physical, he told me to bend over. He put on a rubber glove and put on a Ray Charles record. That's the first time that joke has ever got a laugh. What's in the coffee? I got very depressed in the early 60s and went and saw my flights urgent I said God I feel awful I said nobody likes me he said don't worry you haven't met everybody yet he was so dumb he thought Saul Peter was a downer Someone asked the flight surgeon for an anonymous donation. He said he would like to get an anonymous donate. So he didn't sign the check. Oh, booing. I didn't hear any booing when I snorkeled into Tokyo Bay with the surrender terms. finally I went into the flight and I said what would you recommend I smoked a lot just smoke, smoke, smoke, smok, smoke what would you recommend that I do about these all these yellow stains on my teeth he said wear a brown tie that's it folks now it's our great pleasure uh to turn the second half to our lead off speaker is the great doctor friend of alcoholics all over the world joe's written books and been on television talking about and has just knows this disease and knows aa and is one of the greatest friends we have in the medical profession, Joe Persch. Doctor? Thank you, Sandy. Ladies and gentlemen, good evening. Since I'm not an alcoholic, I can't say my name is so-and-so, I'm a recovering. So what I do say in meetings like this is my name ist Joe and I'm a recovering alcoholic abuser. which means I'm a doctor of medicine, which means I've been abusing alcoholics for many years. But since this is getting to be passe and since so many new things are developing in our field, you know, adult children of alcoholics and codependents and all that, I have updated my introductions to where I now say my name is Joe and I'm an adult doctor from a dysfunctional medical school. And that automatically helps me zero in on this sad crew. The first thing they pulled on you, of course, you thought that this film was a joke when it was really a film in which they all appeared before. The film deals with spoof, but in reality, before we come here over to dinner, we talk about what tremendous patsies flight surgeons are. We are, you know, as Sandy and others here have said, we're the ones that give them booze and we give them light-duty chits and we commiserate with them because they have to fly in the dark and in the light and whatever. We even have a name for patsis like doctors and flight surgeons and it's called codependence. I know a lot of you are working in the field because you said hello to me and we chatted as I walked in here, so we can turn this maybe into a kind of mini teaching session for our brethrens here and maybe let them reminisce about how they managed to get this sick before they finally started to get well. It's really because of all the help they had from codependents. See, we've discovered lately in this field that if we were given the power to cure and to be in the hospital, in jail or in the morgue then here is how this happens. You see any self-respecting alcoholic on a Sunday night is so sick and tired of thinking about tomorrow he's going to have to be back on that job working for that foreman who don't know nothing and not be appreciated so he has himself some last minute and last hour reinforcements and he gets drunk and the next morning he oversleeps and finally he sits up looks up wakes up chucks up and his wife co-dependent Mary gets him up cleans him up washes him up dresses him up sits him up gets him coffee runs out in January in that little tract house they have in Toledo Ohio it's cold as hell everything is frozen so she starts up the car gets the heater going gets the defrost turned on so in about 20 minutes the windshield will melt and it'll be fine, he'll probably make it with this kind of help. Then she runs back in, gets a toast just right, burns it a little and gets the marmalade on him because he's kind of shaky and gets him back out, puts a scarf around his neck so he won't catch cold, puts him in the car and practically points it in the direction of his office. As he then drives off to work, and if he's, say, a dentist, he drives into his own clinic parking lot and as he drives in, his chief nurse, the senior nurse, looks out the window watching him park in order to be able to make a diagnosis because she is an expert codependent, you see. And she can judge by how he drives in and how he parks, what kind of shape he is in. And depending on how he parts, she right away says, oh, all right, Betsy assigned two of his cases to Dr. Dobrinsky, two of His cases to this young doctor, Dr. Taylor. and oh, at noon, Dr. Schneider will you go and speak to these grey ladies and dental hygienists down at the country club just fill in for him and he comes in and sits in and they just hide him, and he can hardly wait till lunch when he goes to his favorite bar and as soon as he walks in, the bartender is there and puts him his drink out and he goes for that drink and after about three long draws on it all of a sudden he says, hot dog who has a problem, lookie here and then he goes back to work and by five o'clock he's glad to go home and he gets drunk again and the next morning his wife is just too sick of waking him up again going through all this for which occasion the good Lord has provided him with another co-defendant his daughter now Mary Lou jumps into the bridge and she loves doing it he and she are like this anyhow and as she is getting him up sitting him up chucking him up cleaning him up and getting all this done she kind of she lovesdoing this And what's going on in her head, she is humming the all-American alcoholic ethical song. And the song goes like, I want a boy just like the boy that married their old mom. And she takes care of him. He gets back at her and he gets back to the office and at the office they take care of him. That afternoon, he tells his drinking buddy here that he got a DUI two nights ago. He gets him in touch with the best lawyer in town. And so they give him the afternoon off so he can go and see the lawyer and also make a loan at the bank to pay the lawyer. And, of course, on Tuesday night he gets drunk again. Wednesday morning he can't wake up. Wife can't wake him up. Daughter can't awake him up. So wife comes in the breach and gets on the phone and calls Dr. Feelgood, an ex-squadron flight surgeon. And he already knows what that call is about the minute he hears Mrs. Heineken is on the phone. And he just says, hey, listen, Betsy Lou, he's probably got the Irish flu again. Just just make some chicken soup and have him wash down a couple of alliums with that chicken soup. He's one of those doctors who still thinks that alcoholism is a valium deficiency and so she puts that down and he kind of perks up and at the office they have a little caucus and his friends and his wife and they all get on the phone they all make a decision, let's give him Thursday afternoon, Thursday off all together and the boss figures He'll be all right. And on Friday morning, when he finally comes in the office with a lot of chicken soup and Valium and some coffee, and the boss looks up and he says, thank God he's back. You know, he's still the best man we got when he's sober. And so he starts another hour. He can hardly wait for Friday to finish so he can go through the afternoon happy hour and end up with a shrimp fork. So you see, we doctors are not the only ones. There are all kinds of codependents around. Wives, sisters, children, neighbors, lawyers, bankers, doctors, counselors, ministers, bosses. So you see the outstanding quality of these guys here is that they are expert manipulators. These are the Kissingers of the drinking world. They know how to manipulate this whole thing and make it look their fault. And that's what those of us in the field are doing every day, They're trying to treat this relationship between these co-dependents and the real substance dependents. Well, I'm glad they're here. I'm Glad all of you are here for all of us. Many of us, this is getting to be an annual repetition compulsion. We keep coming back here to see how we look and how we do and how you guys are recovering. For me, it's kind of a homecoming and having me put back in my place. All I have to do is see Sandy Beach. and I remember because I was one of the doctors who misdiagnosed him at Bethesda when he was in there with this common disease and we didn't know we thought he was a pretty good fellow we diagnosed him as a heavy social drinker yeah we said he's a heavy social drink because every time somebody says I think I'll have a drink Sandy would say so shall I thank you very much That's a hard act to follow, and this is the second year in a row it's happened to me. My name is Ken, I'm an alcoholic, and I was not in the Navy. I came out of the Alaska bush, and the flying we did up there was very similar to what you saw on the screen except in slow motion. Nothing happens very fast up there at 50 below zero, But then I came down here in 1955 and got a job as a DC-3 co-pilot right over here at National Airport and retired two years ago. The left seat was 747, so you don't have to worry about flying with me anymore unless you want to ride my 1931 Stinson. But over at the dinner table we were discussing holidays coming up and one thing or another and, you know, it starts Christmas time and you start thinking about things like Christmas trees and it reminded me, gee, some years ago we were living up in northern New England and I owned a couple hundred acres of land up there. There was trees all over this land and about half of these trees were Christmas trees and about this time of the year my wife set me up on the mountain to bring down a Christmas tree and it's cold up there at this time so I had to take along a little fortification and I got up there and it was a lovely day and a beautiful view and everything so I sat down and just had a little nip there and getting colder and colder and a few more nips and anyway pretty soon it started to get dark so I figured I better get on with it and I chopped down the Christmas tree and dragged it on down the mountain to the house and she took one look at it and she said I want a tree with limbs on it and she went out and bought her own Christmas tree and I guess she's going to do it again this year That's the story of my life. Thank you very much. Hello, everybody. My name is Chuck Wheeler, and I'm an alcoholic. And it's through the grace of God and the power of this program that I'm here in Sober, and I'm very grateful for that. I'm from Lansing, Michigan. I flew down with three of my friends. Every dream I've ever had has come true since I've sobered up. or the ones that haven't aren't important to me anymore. My life is so full and so happy in this fellowship and this program that I can't believe it. I was watching that Shapiro film. It's the first time I've heard of it, the first times I've seen it. I've read a lot about it. My whole life before Alcoholics Anonymous was directed by Sam Shapiro. I'm glad that I'm under new management and it's not Sam. Thank you. My name is Lou Finch, and I'm a grateful recovering alcoholic. I wasn't in the Navy. I was in the Army, and 30-some-plus years ago, this time period, I was flying an L-19, and it thought it was a real good idea because we had some weather coming in this pass called Snoqualmie Pass that we'd put the airplane down in the parking lot of the ski lodge. It didn't make any difference. The cars were parked there because we hade radio contact, and we told these guys on the ground to go in and start moving these cars out of the way. And, of course, all these civilians are in there looking at the U.S. Army doing an orbiting wing-on-wing around this gorge, and we saw some daylight and flipped through. But that was great because I didn't fly drunk, never flew drunk. A lot of hangover time, but never drunk time. So I got out of the Army and started flying in private aviation. Someone mentioned a 172. I was fortunate enough to do an engine out at Leesburg and land at the left-hand side of Arthur Godfrey's place in this stubble wheat field. Couldn't wait to get back here at an appointment in the Pentagon, see my Air Force buddies, and tell them about this engine out. And what we had to do to celebrate that was, of course, I didn't say anything to the higher power about thanking you very much that I'm still alive today. But what I had to do was get over here to the 14th Street Marriott, was it? And we drank until 2 o'clock in the morning. Got home, wife said, did you have a problem today flying? I said, well, gee, yeah, I think I did. How'd you hear about it? Some guy had told her that he had picked us up in a pickup truck coming across the field. But in any event, I got there thinking the other day. I was out. Now I'm fortunate enough to be part owner of a Mooney aircraft. and we fly out of Manassas, and we're shooting some touch-and-goes on Saturday, wind 17 to 24 crosswind. We're shooting power-on landings on 16 left, which was not the thing to do. But got through the day, did it nice, got my proficiency check from my instructor. He signed my logbook off for that day. And I was driving home, and I'm thinking, you know, today I don't have to pour booze on top of the good times that I have. And today I can enjoy exactly what I'm doing and enjoy it without having to put booze on top of it. And one final thing I want to suggest to the newcomers in this program, and I still do it today, I always carry two chips. And these two chips are very valuable to me. When I first came to the program, I'd go to meetings, I would get a 30-day chip on Monday, I'd get a30-day ship on Tuesday. When I had my six months, I did that. I'd always get two chips The reason I carry two chips is that I always, whenever I thought about having a drink, I'd close my hands around two chips. Now it looked pretty stupid to walk into a bar and pick up this bar stool and try to move it over here and say to the bartender, I'll take a drink you know, take this drink like this I couldn't open up a beer bottle it was very difficult to take a drink and I had these two chips but it also kept my thumbs free to leap through that big book and that's a suggestion I make and it worked for me thank you very much Hi, everybody. I'm Frank, and I'm an alcoholic. And I remember when I first got out of treatment, they told me suffer or serve, and then I chose to serve. And I started getting involved answering telephones at the central office when I was about two weeks out of training. I was in treatment with another experienced volunteer, and I was really nervous about that, talking on the phone and everything. And I took the easy calls, like the meeting information and stuff. And he took the 12-step calls. And I was really nervous. And after about a year, one day he didn't show up. And I lived through it, you know. And so then I started taking my own shifts. And I'm still really nervous about it and didn't like it, you know, and I was thinking, well, what's going to happen if someone's killing themselves? You know, what am I going to do? And I just kept going. I was very nervous about that. And then one day I did get a suicide call, and I lived through it. And so did the other guy. But I did, and that's been a part of my sobriety, you know, and it's been an incredibly good part of mine. And then I had my private pilot license for about two years, and Bill P. asked me to be the editor for The Bird Word, which is a newsletter for birds of a feather. And all I could think about is suffer or serve. And I took the job, and that was about nine months ago. And in that nine months, I've gotten my instrument rating and my commercial rating and my multi-engine rating. And I'm not bankrupt either. And, you know, that's just, like they say, spiritual progress before material progress. And, um, you Know, a lot of times we talk about God's will. And, see, the FAA likes to ground you after you sober up for about two years because they don't like to give alcoholics medical certificates. And I was about a year and a half sober, and I was all worried about this, you know. And I'm asking God, well, God, give me a sign, you Know. Am I ever going to get to fly again, You know? And so I went and took my private pilot written test, and I'm praying for about five minutes before the test. And I ended up getting a 96 on it, and then I only missed two questions. One of them was about carburetor ice, and the other one was about engine detonation. And I'm saying, yeah, this must be God's way of telling me I belong in jets. And about a month ago, I took my written test for my commercial rating, and I only got one question wrong, and that was about frost on the upper surface of the wing. And I am thinking, wow, it must be I need to be flying jets in Hawaii. And that is what sobriety is to me. Thanks a lot. Everybody, my name is Tim. I'm an alcoholic. Presently based up in Philadelphia. Formerly of Haleiwa, Hawaii and formerly of Honolulu and formerly Miami and formerly Milwaukee and formerly Minneapolis, St. Louis, Mobile, Alabama, Atlanta. I'm formerly of Washington, D.C., formerly of Ocean City, Maryland, and formerly of Cleveland, Ohio, and several other cities along the way. I originally started out in Boston, and I have a gold medal in geographical cures. Thirty-five years ago, I was in the fifth grade. I have no idea what you guys are doing. But I've had the pleasure of knowing these gentlemen for the past seven years, or so. And how I got into flying, well, that's a long story. But how I got into this program was about seven years ago, a little over seven years ago, I was trying to get change for Manhattan someplace out in San Francisco. In the meantime, there was an $82 million 747 waiting for me on the ramp in San Francisco. And they were disturbed about this and they ended up losing that job. And it was a job that I'd worked for for a long time. It took me about 13 years of hard work to get there. And it meant a lot. And I lost that job. I lost the income. I lost a lot of things. I lost my house. I lost our relationship. I lost all of my family. I lost myself respect, which I don't know if it was there to begin with anyway. And so I guess one thing I'd like to say is that I have a lot of gratitude for this program because I've gotten pretty much all that stuff back. And I'm grateful for that. I mean, one thing I got in touch with here was the spirituality part of this program. And I'll tell you, I'm living proof that miracles happen. I mean I was in a bad way. And I learned a lot of things. I've learned a little bit about God. I've had a lot to grow through this program, and I had a hard time with the spiritual program when I first got in here. And I was raised Catholic, so I figured the spirituality program, if I was going to be really humble and do it right, I'd have to give up everything I own and move to South America and save pagan babies. And I didn't know if I could do that. That seemed like an awful lot for me to do. And so my sponsor told me to just keep it a lot simpler than that. He said, just look at what God's program is for every living thing that there is, from an amoeba to a piece of grass to a little puppy to anything, and that basically is to grow. So as long as you're growing, you're working on God's will for you. So I thought, that's pretty simple. And I lose track of that, and I have to think about that every once in a while, and I just keep going back to that one basic thing. And that is, as long As I continue to grow, then I'm doing God's Will for me, and I feel good. And when I don't do that, and when I don't believe in the program, and when I let the program work for me, the program doesn't work for me. It works as good as I allow it to work. And I remember when I first came to the program a couple guys were telling me about these newcomers who came in, and one guy said to the other guy, he told him, he said, boy, I really miss drinking wine. He said, it just makes food taste so great. And the other guys thought they were familiar. He was shaking his head, you know, and he said yeah. He said do you mean going down or coming up? anyhow i'm really glad to be here with the birds of a feather and the pearl harbour group and enjoy yourselves thanks very much i'm text only i'm grateful recovering alcoholic you know sitting by here watching this this thing about the carriers you know i wasn't in the navy thank god you know those idiots they go out there and blow the airplanes off in the ocean. But, no, I was, as one of the other gentlemen here, I flew L-19s in the Army, you know. That was a safe job, right? Until I found out those thugs were shooting at me. And they said, well, hey, that's no problem. Here, take this camera and you can take your picture of what they're shooting at you. Well, you see, you know, that was humiliating enough. When they started throwing rocks, that's kind of bad. And believe me, they do throw rocks, or they did at the L-19s at one time because that's the way that you had to fly the things. We got two howlers reach down. Anyhow, I'm grateful to be here tonight. I'm thankful for this program. This program has given me a life, a life that I never had before. As many of you hear, you know, I existed. I don't know how I survived. I honestly don't because I went from day to day on an existence that I had no connection with my fellow man. I had no connection with God. I had no connection with myself. I just was a free-floating spirit that somebody, somewhere, was taking care of me. I think that entity was God now because I certainly didn't have sense enough to take care of myself. And since I have gotten this program, though, I have gotten so many things out of it. The gentleman said all the dreams have come true all the promises have come through that are in the big book and I had never I could never even in my wildest fantasies my wildEST dreams dream what good things this program has given me in life six years ago I'd been fired broke no job no nothing But I got in this program, and believe me, it all turned around through the auspices of some very good people, some very Good Doctors in this Program, some knowledgeable people. And all I had to do was just walk behind them and walk behind the other people that have gone before me in this program because the trail is there. We do not have to be trailblazers like we have been all of our life. All we have to do is follow the path that's already been laid out for us one day at a time. With that, I'm going to hush. Hi, my name is Chuck and I'm an alcoholic And I'm one of the few people who got in this program By not taking a drink, believe it or not I was in Los Angeles the day the SST Came in there on its demo flight And I had a friend in from Washington And I didn't want to appear to be too far out when he arrived so I forewent my usual drinks that day. Joe's smiling at me, he remembers. The next thing I know, I woke up in the emergency room in Torrance Hospital and the paramedic had said I looked like I had a grand mal seizure. So since the Navy had no neurosurgeons, they sent me to a VA hospital where I spent two weeks being stuck with needles, brain scanned and what have you and talk about codependence. So I had to stay in there the first week so every other night my wife brought me a fifth of martinis from the VA hospital. I got out of there and they put me on two weeks leave. And then I proceeded to wipe out completely in that two weeks of free time. My wife at that point decided maybe being a co-dependent wasn't such a good idea, so she called the chief of staff and he said maybe I should go see Dr. Joe Persch down at Long Beach. That might be a good ideas. I think I missed the first appointment with Dr. Persch. I showed up the second after four martinis at Marina Del Rey with a copy of Clarence Darrow's Darrow for the Defense because I knew he was going to try to nail me and I wasn't going to let it. And so Joe said, I talked to him. He said, well, I think Captain wants you to come in here for a while. I said, no, I don't think he does. He said I'll go call him. So Joe went down and read the paper and came back. Yeah, he wants you stay here for awhile. So I did. At that point I thought, well I can tolerate this. I'll figure a way out of this. Well, I didn't. And that was the beginning for me. I never lost anything material wise. I might add I'd just been passed over by Captain about two weeks before this incident. and a year later I was re-selected and promoted after going through the program and I never lost any material over that period of time but it took a long time and only in the last few years have I realized how much I've gained emotionally and spiritually from the program and that's what I've done and I've learned from this program with your help to be myself enjoy what I am, accept the shortcomings I have and live my life And I thank everybody here, particularly Dr. Perch, for that. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Helmut. I'm an alcoholic from Frankfurt, Germany. For me, progress in sobriety is the last time when I was here, I was scared talking. Today, I'm just nervous. I'm glad we had no Navy. I'm from Austria, we had no carriers. I remember one one time that's the real, the only flight I remember flying with a hangover was on flying school and I did an approach on a small island in Denmark and I got seasick on short final or might be sick just sick but I hit this island and this runway, the runway on it but this was difficult enough and I'm glad to be here I had really problems with drinking and realizing that I'm an alcoholic when I looked at my uniform and said you can't be an alcoholic I go to medical twice a year I told my surgeon, blood surgeon that I am just drinking normally so no problems and I got sober with AA and after three years in the program I got in contact with birds of a feather and I think that was the same experience for me than the first time when I learned through AA that alcoholism is a disease and I'm not alone but then still I had the feeling the next three years I'm the only violent drinking or ex-drinking pilot in Europe And three years later, I realized I'm not alone. And it's the same experience for me to share all these things with colleagues. That's a great thing. And I'm grateful today that I'm no longer involved in any accidents. I'm now 27 years with the same company. I had an emergency after I was sober, and I was grateful. It was the first flight in the morning. I had enough sleep. I had no alcohol, I could handle the situation. I'm grateful for that. Thanks a lot. Hi everybody, my name is Fritz Graf and I'm a Grateful Recovering Alcoholic. I think that we're awfully fortunate that all of the people that have helped us get sober are not alcoholics. We have been pulled, we have been pushed, we have being led. I have been pushed, she's here. I have been led and he's here and so this is a very wonderful evening. 35 years ago I was flying those airplanes that you saw earlier and it's a Grumman F9F-8T Cougar and was flying those airplanes out of Atsugi Naval Air Station in Japan and I didn't know I was there with Sandy until one afternoon I went up to the O-Club and they said, hey, there was a Marine in here yesterday afternoon walking around with a shrimp fork sticking out of his jaw. and that's when we found out that we were indeed and in fact there together at the same time and it is with the greatest possible pleasure that I have the honor tonight to present him with his 27th chip celebrating that birthday in Alcoholics Anonymous You're wonderful. All right. Thank you all. Thank you, Fritz. Hal M. is normally here to do that little chore, and he sends his regrets the first time in 24 years he's missed this meeting. But we'll have him back here next year. And I just want to thank AA and all of you for another year of sobriety. as they say we're now well into our 28th year soon as midnight comes you know you start talking the next number those of you that are new you got to learn that and this has been a marvelous year every year in sobriety is better you'll notice if you're new to Alcoholics Anonymous you don't hear people up here talking about the good old days Oh, I remember when I had one year. Wow, was that great. We're always talking about now, and the nows are always getting better. And this year is the best year I've ever had. And you all just keep coming back, and it's going to be exactly that way. We have a great way of closing this meeting. We have two closings. We'll do the normal Lord's Prayer, and we can all say that. And then if you just sit back down, we'll just run a minute-and-a-half high flight, which will just sort of cap off this meeting. Thank you all for coming, and would you join me in the Lord's Prayer? We can get the light. Lord in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Forgive us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, and as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil for the sake of the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever Amen We come back in worship your word THE END Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth and danced the skies on laughter's silver wings. Somewhere I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth of the sun's foot cloud and done a hundred things you have not dreamed of wheeled and soared and swung high in the summit silence I'll prepare and chase the showing wind along and flun by eager craft through footless halls of air up up the long delirious burning I've topped the winds when tides were easy to race where never life nor even evil flew and from the silent lifting mind I've trod the high untrespassed sanctity of space put out my hand and touch the face of God.