Sandy B. on Anxiety, the Promises of Whiskey, and Spiritual Air Pressure

Wow, nice welcome. Thank you. My name is Sandy Beach and I'm an alcoholic. How y'all doing? I am very happy to be here tonight. I love the energy here. I loved this hotel. It's just been a marvelous feeling. You can just sense that in this part of the country there's good AA, You don't know how lucky you are to have that real solid sobriety that I can feel here. I got sober on Pearl Harbor Day of 1964 in Washington, D.C., and I still have the same sponsor. He was a major factor in my staying sober. there was a lot of things that I had to do when I got to AA and most of them concerned changing my mind about things and as I look back on sobriety for the last 33 years or so it's been one endless series of changing my mind about thing and finding one more thing that I'm wrong about and getting rid of it. But I don't think being wrong comes natural to us alcoholics. You know what I mean? Even though we have two steps devoted to that, it just doesn't come natural. And so like every other alcoholic on this planet, I was a prisoner of my own ideas. and I don't think that's just a unique trait of alcoholics. I think that is a problem of humanity is being limited by the ideas that we assemble as we're growing up and I was the type of person who never shared anything so I just bounced my ideas off of me. You know what I mean? And I would hear things and they would scare me and then I'd go in my room and go, what is that? That's hard to deal with. Some of these ideas came from friends, came from my parents, came from church. I heard a lot of scary things in church. My sister was sitting next to me. She didn't hear any of them. You know what I mean? So I'm not blaming anything on anybody. It's just that we end up with a bunch of ideas. And I got a lot of information off of bathroom walls, which was very intimidating. I remember reading it and going, whoa, man, that is, wow. And you couldn't talk about this with anybody because then they would know you weren't cool, that you were confused about life, that you had questions, that somehow you didn't know everything. and so I started down the road that I suppose every youngster starts down which is trying to act like you know what's going on and figuring that someday you'll find out but until then you've got to just sort of look like hey man, life is not bugging me at all I'm just fine I'm standing over here smoking three cigarettes at once because I think it's a great idea and I just, I jiggle a lot because I'm musical, you know. It's not that I'm nervous and frightened. I'm just, you don't know, listening to rhythms. And so there I sat on an island of anxiety in the middle of the planet and just overwhelmed. And I don't suppose that's much different from other teenagers, you're walking around clueless as to what, you know, what is all this? And why do I feel so anxious? And why don't I understand? You know, and I'd hear people talking about things. You know I remember hearing a couple of old ladies on a at a bus stop. And I must have been waiting there for something. And one of them said to the other, isn't life wonderful? And I remember going, wow, are they out of it? You know, I mean, isn't life wonderful? So I just figured that was senility or something that they had lost touch with the reality that I was encompassing which I found very intimidating. I just found people intimidating, life intimidating, death, God, you name it. Sex, fitting in with other people. I mean just the whole thing and then studying and competition and you've got to look good on the football field or the track field or wherever it was, and there was just all these things going on. And I said, I see. What you need to do is win and succeed. And so, you know, I just would try, but, you Know, everybody can't win everything. No matter what you try, there's somebody better than you. So I just felt like this is going to be a long struggle. I just, I'm not looking forward to the future. I mean, that was my sense. I'll just make the best of it. That was my outlook in life. And I ended up in, I grew up in New Haven, Connecticut and ended up at a university and ended in the local university and I hadn't had anything to drink. And I was there and the guys came from all over the country and it's a famous university and they were all smarter than me. They were richer than me, they had cars, that, you know, they all, you could just see. You could see these guys. They knew what was going on. You could just look at them, and I was the only one who didn't. I could feel that. I just felt like Jesus's pressure of being the only 1 out of this thousand guys who doesn't know what's going on, eventually they're going to find out. They're goingto find out, and i'll be out of here. That was how I felt, but until then, act cool, act cool, just keep showing up and just keep doing the best you can here. It'll be out of here soon, but until then. Everybody was drinking. When you're in college, you're going to be, well, I wasn't drinking. I was saving up for being an athlete. I'm not sure about this, but it seemed to me the Catholic Church had some deal if you went to, you were 21 years old without drinking you got like 250,000 years off in purgatory and I knew I was gonna need that bad bad bad because I remember they were telling us even if you think about sinning it's sinning and I couldn't stop thinking about a lot of stuff you know just couldn't top it there just kept coming into my head all these thoughts and I could hear cash register well that's 10,000 ding-ding-ding you know just so there came an evening and when I was about 19 at a social event now I think I've always mentioned this my first drink because it that's where my alcoholism there was it was there and it was a social situation where he's supposed to meet everybody in the room 40 or 50 guys and they were they picked 50 of the meanest guys in the freshman class to be in that particular room these were people who already had all the friends they need don't want any more friends and resented me being in the room with them you know what I mean like man you are in the wrong room either yeah I'd go back and see the Dean you do not belong in here that's what I could see from their eyes they were just looking at me just going, we don't need you. We have enough already. And I just felt so uncomfortable. I tried to go up and shake hands, try to go out and meet, but as I got close to each little group, they would look at me and just forget it. You know, don't even come in and stick your hand out. And so I just walk around and I was about to do what I always do, leave. That's one way to handle situations if they're getting too impossible is to leave. And then the anxiety level goes down and the guilt goes up, but it's a good trade-off. And there was a bar and people had told me, my roommate, oh, you ought to drink. It makes you feel wonderful. I said, well, I could feel wonderful and I remember saying, the hell with purgatory. I'm going up there and have one of these drinks and feel wonderful, so I had one. Nothing happened. I had two. Nothing happened, and I was drinking the third one and was under the impression that perhaps this stuff really didn't work, that it was overstated by these roommates of mine. And I did not feel any change in me, but when I looked out at those 50 mean guys, they were gone and they had been replaced by 50 of the friendliest people I have ever seen. Every one of those guys was looking at me going, hey, hey I'd give anything to be your friend. could you please come over and join us don't go with those, please, please and I remember just looking and not only was there a transformation of them but I had this little zing in my step and I was kind of just going I'll be getting over there when I'm damn good and ready you're gonna be lucky to know me When I get over there. And I started experiencing the promises of whiskey. I intuitively knew how to handle situations that were baffling me. It was just wonderful. So what alcohol did was change the world that I lived in. That's what it did. That's why I'm an alcoholic, because for non-alcoholics, it doesn't change the worldview. It doesn't make all of their problems go away and transport them to a different level of existence where we're comfortable, where I felt complete. That's the first time I ever felt complete Up until that point, I always felt there was something missing. I felt like, you know, what is wrong with me? Am I from a different planet? You know, why don't I fit in here? And I had those three drinks and I now belonged on this planet with those guys. I could carry on small talk. It was as if my creativity channel was opened. See, fear had shut it down. I couldn't make small talk I'd say, you know, some guy would say, well, how are you doing? I'd go, fine, you known. And that's all I could think of to say because I was so nervous. Now that was gone. You couldn't shut me up. I had something to say about everything and I just loved it. I said, now this is the real me. I have a brain. I'm creative. I'm funny. These guys are laughing. Man, I'm so happy to have that shackle taken off. It was like somehow I had been trapped in there and alcohol set me free to be a complete person and to be comfortable and these other people were wonderful. I mean, I'll tell you, that's pretty powerful stuff for three drinks. solved all my problems. I mean, it just was the most amazing transformation. So I made a decision that night that alcohol and I were going to be very close friends for the rest of my life. I saw that I had nothing to fear in the future except the country gone dry. So I already developed a tremendous faith in this thing, this new friend. It wasn't a friend, it was a power. It was a power that somehow activated me as a human being and made me comfortable in my environment. And I just went out and got comfortable every day until I got to AA. And the price got bigger. You know how the price of drinking goes up? and my ability to rationalize went up along with it and all the way to the end I would be saying to myself yes, I'm in jail yes, I'm having all these problems I got in another fight got my teeth knocked out my wife's going to leave me my children hate me but that is a small price to pay for what I'm getting from alcohol and it is this balancing of forces that we do as alcoholics that non-alcoholics can't understand. They go, how can the guy, you know, he just throws up every day, he's in jail. I mean, why would he keep drinking? And the answer, the reason they don't know why is because alcohol doesn't do that for them. It doesn't solve all their problems. There's no way they could understand why we're willing to go through what we went through in order to be set free from the disease of alcoholism, which I have when I'm sober. You know, it's interesting to think about the fact that when we say we're powerless over alcohol, and I say this, I understand there's quite a few new people here tonight, so you're the only ones I'm talking to anyway. Everybody else already knows all this stuff, so it's old hat, but I love talking about AA to those of you that are new and trying to tell you that this is the greatest deal that it'll ever be in your life. And if you keep sticking around here, you're going to be amazed. It's just going to be the greatest journey. It is the ultimate journey. The ultimate ride that there is is this spiritual journey. There's nothing that can come close to it. And this powerless over alcohol occurs when there's no alcohol in our system. Now, that's a very important thing to understand. I used to think that it had to do with the fact that whenever I drank, I got all screwed up. You know? I'd pour some alcohol in my system and then everything bad happened. I couldn't stop drinking. I got arrested. I got into all these things and then I started having liver damage and blackouts and convulsions and all the troubles that came along. But if that was my only problem, it really wouldn't be a big problem because that would be simply like an allergy. It would mean that I was allergic to the chemical alcohol. And so let's say that you have some allergy right now and you don't know what it is, but every so often when you're out eating, you break out in a rash and you can't breathe and you're choking and all that, and you go to a doctor and finally, after many, many tests, they find out that it's strawberries. And they just go, your problem is strawberries. As long as you don' t eat strawberries, you won' t have all those breaking-out problems. and you know something all you do is not eat strawberries you go to somebody's house they go we're having strawberry shortcake you say no not for me I won't be having any strawberry short cake you don't get together with other people who can't eat strawberries and sit around going oh boy I saw a strawberry ice cream cone today And I could hardly resist taking it. So if the problem is only when you drink alcohol, you get all screwed up, then that's not much of a problem because all you do is not drink and everything will be fine. But we all know that isn't the truth. When I didn't drink is when I had my problem. I was back to that problem I had as a teenager. I'm right back there. Life is too much for me. Alcohol wasn't the problem, it was the answer. And so my being powerless over alcohol occurs when there's no alcohol in my system. This is why it's a fatal illness. I can go through treatment and they can teach me that I'm an alcoholic and they Can show me what alcoholism is and show me the progression and explain to me that if I ever take another drink, I will probably lose my family and my job and my health. And I can take that information and I can go home and I go, my God, if I ever take a drink, this is unbelievable. I'm an alcoholic. And I might even go down and tell my favorite bartender about this. Joe, do you know I just get out of treatment i'm an alcoholic you know if if i were to drink i would immediately i would lose my job uh my could i have a beer i would use my job i would loose i'm in the middle of explaining this whole thing having a drink having a drink so what do i learn knowledge doesn't help knowledge that all you have now is a smart drunk. You know, he's passed out on the floor and when he comes to, he can tell you precisely what happened with this disease of alcoholism. But that treatment and that knowledge contributes zero to staying sober. Doesn't help because our first step doesn't say anything about being ignorant about alcoholism. It says we're powerless. Well, I'm powerless over alcohol so I can study all I want and learn everything there is to know about the subject of alcoholism and I'm still going to be powerless over alcoholic. And that's hard for my ego to accept. It really is because like everybody else, I have been used to solving problems logically. You know what I mean? I just see a problem and I go, all right, we got to figure this out. And then we figure it out and we see a solution and it makes sense to me. I can see that solution and then I just do it and the problem gets solved. We come in here to AA and this is what I'm trying to talk a little bit about to those of you that are new. We're moving from that logical intellectual realm into the spiritual realm and everything is different it just doesn't work that way anymore so when I got this sponsor and well let me I'll just deviate for a second here and just say I did all my drinking in the Marine Corps I was uh it was the Korean War we all had to join the military I got it up in the marine corps and I didn't like it but I saw they were terrible they just were mean to me and I was trying to tell him I'm special and that didn't help but I did see a movie about pilots and they were at the bar and they were talking like this and there were women in the background and it really looked appealing so I signed up for flight school and made it and then I I flew fighter planes for the next 12 years. And I also got married, I had six kids, I got promoted to first lieutenant, I got promoted to captain. And on the inside, I was being destroyed by alcohol. So on the outside, you'd go, oh, look at this guy, you know, all these things. And i am coming one day closer to a grand mal seizure, malnutrition, puts me in the nut ward. I'm there for a week and I go into the DTs and they lock me up in a straitjacket in the nut ward for six months. So that was sort of my ending. That's my whole alcoholism story. And it's not a complicated process. I have a disease and it progressed and I happened to be flying airplanes while it progressed. You happen to be teaching school. You happened to be practicing law. You happen to be bringing up four kids. You happen to be whatever it was, you know, a painter. But it's the same story. It's just different background music. And it's just difference scenery going by. You know, I had clouds going by in mine. But it' s the same story. That's why we all can connect in here. Because it's not out there. It' s what was going on inside. I was getting more and more frightened. It was terrifying. And more and more I just got inside myself. I' s terrified they'd find out I was an alcoholic. I didn't I was an alcoholic. I was terrified somebody would say there's something wrong with this guy and he ought to stop drinking, and that would be the end of my life because they wouldn't understand how essential alcohol was. It was my medicine that was keeping me from shaking so I could fly, and it was just absolutely critical in my life. So in a nutshell, that was my drinking story as this disease progressed and took me into that nut ward where after five months, AA came in and three of us, three alcoholics out of the 25 in the nut ward were marched into an AA meeting. You know, all drunks fall in, right face. Get on the elevator and go down and there was three guys from the Bethesda, Maryland AA group and I really liked what they had to say but I didn't really connect. I thought it would be great if I ever had a friend who was an alcoholic. I was going to send them around and see those guys. And when I got let out as an outpatient, in a matter of weeks, I was drinking again. I was smuggling vodka into the nut ward, even though they told me if I ever had another drink, my career would be over. And I just didn't think they meant it. So I did start drinking. and knowing I was going to get caught on Pearl Harbor Day of 1964, I made a call to Intergroup while I was home over the weekend and my sponsor came to my house. And he was an infantry Marine. Huge. Just huge. And when he knocked on the door, the house moved a little bit. And it was just... And he just came in. hi, my name's Bill. This is a 12-step call. I talk, you listen. Oh, God. And it was just, you know, the very basics. Just sit there and don't talk. We didn't go to a discussion meeting. Back then, we didn't do that. We didn' t go to discussion meetings until he had three months. And I'd say, well, why? And he says, what could you say? What do you know about anything? know a lot man I got I went to Yale and I'm a fighter pilot and I've done he said you got a wristband from a nut war down nobody wants to hear from you so I started tucking it up under my sleeve so it's just you know sit down and shut up sit down and shut listen listen listen don't drink listen listen i'm just going crazy with this guy but i'm staying sober and we're going to meeting every night we jump in the cars and the meetings were far apart sometimes we drive 40 minutes now there's a meeting in Washington, D.C., there's meeting on every street corner just about. So we got a lot of A.A. driving in the car, driving back, talking, talking about life. And sobriety came in and spirituality came in. And I finally realized that I had been introduced to something that my education had not given me, and that was the basic course in Life 101. You know what I mean? What is life? What it all about? You know, what is the deal? And I had to come to AA to find out what it was. And that's what our 12 steps are. They're finally going to explain all the mysteries to us, and they're not going to explain them in the way that we are used to in education, and are not going to solve problems the way we've been used to before we get to AA. And that's what I'd like to talk about tonight to those of you that are new, is the immense practicality of Alcoholics Anonymous and a spiritual program and how necessary an open mind is in order to be successful in this. You don't have to be smart, but you have to have an open-minded mind. You have to be willing to allow ideas to come in and to try them even though you don't think they're going to work. If you were to look at A.H. 12 Steps, for almost every single person in this room, you will find that those 12 steps are a series of actions that we took that we didn't believe in. You don't think I thought that was going to work, do you? I studied those things very carefully when they told me, see these 12 steps? This is it, baby. This is your plan for living. Whatever problem you have, how many sponsors have told you, Whatever problem you have, they're in the first 164 feet. They're in these 12 steps. So I took them at their word. I said, all right. So I went home and I thought about the problems that I had. What did I have? I had the fact I was getting thrown out of the Marine Corps. I got passed over from promotion. I've got six kids and I'm being bounced out with a year or two sobriety and I don't know what I'm going to do so I don'T have any money. So I know that I have a job problem. I got a money problem. I got a health problem. My marriage isn't working too good so I got a relationship problem. So I said I see these steps what they tell me is true these steps are the answer to those problems. So I went back with a renewed interest because I knew how serious these problems were. They were bugging me. They were a threat to my sobriety. So I went back and took a look at these steps and I got home and I studied them. Anybody ever studied these stuff. You say, finally, I'm going to get into this. You know what I mean? You finally decide, you know, maybe this is right. I'm going to do it. I've got to do this. I'm not going to give in to this program. So I remember going home and I really read the big book and then the 12 and 12 on top of that. And I got all through and I said to myself, man, I got to go back and read this again. I missed the money step somewhere. I didn't see That was the most pressing thing, and I think for most of us new alcoholics, money is a big, big problem. And I kind of said to myself, I've missed the money step. I must have gone right by the money steps. And I went back looking and looking, and there was nothing in there. I did not see anything about money. Then I looked for jobs, and didn't see anything about jobs in there, and I looked for relationships, and I didn't see anything about relationships in there. And I decided from analyzing those steps that they didn't apply to my problems. And I could probably still be studying them and concluding the same thing, that they don't apply to my problem. So I'm sharing all this with those of you that are new because in order for this program to become visible, we have to do it. We actually have to take these actions in order for them to become invisible. It kind of reminds me of alcohol. Think back on alcohol when you're about 16 years old and you're afraid to ask the girl to dance and you are at the dance and you just standing up there and you want to go out and all that but you don't know how to dance. You wish your mother had or you wish you had followed your mother's advice and taking some dancing lessons or whatever it was. And somebody said, drink this, just drink this and you'll know how to dance. And I'm going, are you telling me there's like in this glass right here, there's 12 Arthur Murray lessons in this class is what you're saying? They're going, yes, There are. Well, I don't see them. I mean, that doesn't look possible. It doesn't looks possible that there could be 12 Arthur Murray lessons in that class. Well, the only way you're going to find out is to drink it. You have to drink it. And then you drink it and you find out there's 30 or 40 Arthur Murray Lessons in that glass. And you're out there with... I mean it's unbelievable. but what about the person who refused to drink that drink they could go to their grave swearing that whiskey there wouldn't have been any Arthur Murray lessons in there they could all the way to their grave just saying you know back when I was 16 you know what they told me this story about a glass with Arthur Murray lessons in it do you you know I'm glad I didn't fall for that I'm glade I didn see those are old ideas and they're sticking with them. And a lot of us stick with ideas that we come into AA. I had so many of them. There's no God for me. This spiritual stuff, that's okay for other people, but it isn't going to work for me, I don't think I could really get into this God stuff. I don' t think I c ould really do this spirituality. And you know, AA has the most wonderful way of teaching us, because all of us come in here with tremendous smarts, whether it's college smarts or street smarts or whatever. We have survived. You know, for alcoholics to survive, I mean, we do pretty damn good when you think about it because we're out there in this competitive world with one hand tied behind our back, alcoholism, and we're still doing pretty good. A lot of us get up there to be, you know, people that people talk, Look at that guy. He's a professor of the university. He pukes a lot, but he's a professor of the university and he's doing this, you know what I mean? He's doing this with one hand tied behind his back. I mean, he has to deal with blackouts, lawyers going to court and all that. All the other teachers just correct papers, you know, so it's really amazing how far we do go on our own power and we come in here and they're just going this isn't the way it works anymore we're going to show you a way of living and it involves changing your mind about a lot of things and that's the problem I think the first time us alcoholics change our mind it's kind of like having the Queen Mary turn around in Baltimore Harbor you know what I mean it takes about 50 tugboats on either end you know to get this and finally you know you're going oh god it hurts to change your mind you remember that and i remember you know finally one time with my sponsor i just he just was going on some point i forget what it was he was just going on and on and finally i just went okay okay okay you're right and he said no you're wrong same thing he said well say it and i remember, it was like, oh, I'm wrong. He said, I can't hear you. It was like a chicken bone was sticking in my throat. Wrong, wrong, wrong. It just wasn't going to come out natural being wrong. And geez, today I just love finding out something else I'm wrong about to get rid of this. Because when you think about all the wrong ideas that we have. All the self-centeredness, all of the way we saw the world. It was so important to be somebody. We all are born with this desire to be somebody because we sense that something's missing and there is something missing. And I love the story about Dr. Carl Jung because I think he wrote to us about what's missing. If you remember the story in the history of Alcoholics Anonymous, the millionaire's son, Roland Hazard from Rhode Island was an alcoholic and his father wanted him to take over the business and was willing to spend whatever it took to get Roland sober and nothing worked in the United States. He had tried everything that they had. This was in the early 30s, and he had heard about the world-famous psychiatrist in Europe, Switzerland, Dr. Carl Young. He said, well, I got all the money we need, so I'm going to send Roland. He sent him over there to work with Dr. Young for a year. And Dr. Jung worked with Roland and tried to cause this massive personality displacement that we call a spiritual awakening here in Alcoholics Anonymous. At the end of a year, he said, I've done everything that I can, Roland. I think you understand your situation. Godspeed. And Roland got as far as Paris and somebody asked him the wrong question. They said, would you like a drink? And he said yes, I would like a drinking. He immediately got drunk, stayed drunk for a while, felt terrible, went back to Dr. Young and said, Dr. Young, I'm drunk again. And my life, it's a mess. You know, what's going to happen to me. What can you do? And Dr. Young started this wonderful thing that was read in chapter five when it said no human power could have relieved our alcoholism. Well, if you were looked for a symbol in the world of no human Power could have believed our alcohol is and what could be greater than Dr. young. This was the epitome of human power dealing with alcoholism and Dr. Young said to Rowland, Rowland there's nothing I can do for you a tremendous act of humility you know psychiatrists with all that education and he said to rowland there is nothing I can do for you so he induced in Rowland a terrible sense of hopelessness and despair and he said you mean I'm condemned to be locked up for life and he said it may be true that that's what's going to happen to you but I have heard of isolated cases where people have found a spiritual transformation and they're just I would go seek out some form of spiritual life and that this might happen to you and as we all know Rowland went and found the Oxford movement and they taught him some spiritual principles which are the precursor to the AAA 12 steps and he got sober and at the chain of events was that he had occasion to call on Ebi Thatcher and get Ebi sober and in the Oxford Movement, and then Ebi went and got Bill Wilson and brought Bill to the Oxford Moment, and then Bill met Dr. Bob, and you and I are all sober because of this chain of events. Well, about 15 years later, Bill realized that they had never written back to Dr. Young to tell him the chain of event that happened after he said to Roland, there's nothing I can do for you so he wrote him this letter saying perhaps you don't remember Roland Hazard but as a result of his visit and what you told him he went and sought a spiritual experience and that led to the founding of AA which is now in 30 countries and it is a wonderful movement that's going sobering up people all over the place and this letter came very was very timely because Dr. Young died about six months later but he wrote back and he wrote Back to Bill and he said, I'm so happy to hear. I didn't know what happened to Roland. I was so happy to hear this. He said, back when I was treating Roland, back that was 15 years earlier, it was not fashionable nor safe for us psychiatrists to talk about spirituality. We'd be laughed out of our profession. But I long felt that what Roland Hazard was experiencing was an inordinate longing for God. Now, isn't that a wonderful way to describe our disease? That what we have is an inordinate longing for a higher power. In other words, we all sensed that something was missing. Life was just never right. The problem is that we diagnosed it as not enough sex, not enough money, not enough power, you know, and then we tried all those things, and they didn't work. And we tried alcohol until we almost died from it. Now, at times, it appeared to fix this spiritual longing, but it never lasted. As soon as we sobered up, we all said to ourselves, I'm back where I was. There's just something wrong with me. and we never guessed that what was wrong with us was we weren't close enough to our higher power. And so tremendous signals were sent out and we were fortunate enough to be selected to come into Alcoholics Anonymous to have this program explained to us that here are these 12 steps and all we need for you to have a beginning in all of this is to change your mind about all kinds of things. And I think the way that people become spiritual in AA is not by having anybody explain a higher power to us so that we can believe in it. But this is how I think spirituality works. The disease of alcoholism is explained to us. And it is explained that if we keep drinking, we're going to die. And the only thing that can stop us from dying is a higher powerful. And I like to think about taking somebody if I had my way and I have somebody new and I want to teach them about AA and I used to be a pilot, I would say, I'm going to show you all about spirituality in 30 minutes. And we just jump in a jet and fly up to about 50,000 feet and you're sitting up in the front and I'm gone. Now what I got to start teaching you about first is powerlessness. Okay? And I want you to experience powerlessness so that you don't, you know, just not the dictionary definition. You got to feel it in your gut. I want to show you what powerlessness is, and without you knowing what's going to happen, I roll the plane upside down, pull some negative Gs, and you go out. You're out, and you have no chute, and you're just floating along, and I've got the radio, and I said, are you experiencing powerlessness? Do you feel powerless out there? And you're going, wow, I'm experiencing power, you know, because there isn't a thing you can do about this situation. and gravity is now in charge. You know what I mean? You can be real cool, you can go like this. And it takes quite a few minutes to fall from 50,000 feet and you can be going, whoa, whoa. Anytime he's going to bring that plane back and get me in, I know, or he's got a rope or I know something. And all of a sudden it's getting down around 3,000 foot and you're on your feet and you see the ground moving now. It wasn't moving before. Now it's going, oh, it's coming up. and there's a truck in the parking lot down there with your name on it it's just a I said you got the powerless have you got the powerless part have you gotta yeah yeah got the powerless and about eight feet from the truck a big hand comes out of the sky and grabs you and a big voice said excuse me we're conducting a survey do you believe in God and you go no but I'm willing to reconsider so this is how practical AA is AA doesn't try to convince us of the existence of God. It convinces us of the need for God. It just shows us what powerlessness, what is the fatal illness, unless you change your mind about a higher power, you can hit the truck. And even our ego says, well, I'm not going to look that bad to the other guys if I change my mind right near this truck. And we become open. And that is the secret to this whole program, is simply staying open. You don't have to figure anything out. You just have to get open. And in order to stay open, we have to Get Everything that's blocking the opening. You know, the 11th step has a prayer of St. Francis, Lord, make me a channel of thy peace. So here's this peace that's inside of us. Bill says in the big book the fundamental idea of God was born inside of us, just like the idea of a friend. It's there waiting for us to be in touch with it, but it's blocked. and all our 12 steps are designed for is to remove all these blockages just find out these character defects or blockages because they are preventing me from having a personal conscious contact with the higher power and unless we have conscious contact it's a theory it's just a theory so sobriety and working with your sponsor is going to open up this channel until an awareness settles in to you that there really is this loving spirit inside of you, and for those moments when you can get that close, you sense that completeness, and you finally feel like, I understand life. I understand that in order to see the world as it really is, I have to get close to my higher power. I have to become God-centered instead of self-centered. Self-centered view of the world is so painful and frightening and intimidating because it is only seen from a human being who is trying to get his or her way. That's the only problem human beings have, is not getting your way. And AA suggests, oh, you know what the answer to that is? Don't have a way. Don't having a way, who will I be? I'll be nobody. No, you're going to be much better than you ever dreamed of because Bill talks about being catapulted into the fourth dimension of existence. And you know what that level is? It's the intuitive level. We don't give up being in charge of our lives. We give up trying to think it up in our brain and we work these steps so that we can have some sense of serenity and peace and be in touch with the intuitive levels of ourselves where we become so efficient. We're tuned in to ideas just occur to us. We just see solutions to problems that used to be bad. That's what the promises are talking about. They just go, if you will stop trying to figure everything out and all uptight and panic, if you Will take the time every day to restore your spirituality, intuitive answers will be provided to you. You don't have to work that hard at life. You will become, in your own way, a program of attraction. As each of us becomes God-centered, we are more attractive to people around us. People like being near unselfish people. They like being dear people who are loving. And as a result of that, we have friends. We have business. We have things just happening to us. But as soon as we let up on our spiritual program, they all go away. I think about this in closing. I'm right at the end of my time. I like to think about our 10th step where it talks about maintaining our spiritual condition, you know, that what we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on our spiritual conditions. I just bought a new car. It's the greatest. It's a Sebring convertible. I got down in Florida. I haven't had a convertible in 40 years. I am the happiest guy in the world. I'm driving around. I got my sunglasses on. I got a hat and I'm just having it's I'm so happy. I can't believe it It's the smoothest ride in the world, and you know what makes that ride smooth free air in the tires That's the secret to a smooth ride That doesn't matter if it's a BMW Mercedes whatever it is no air in tires bad ride Bad bad ride very bad and I don't know about you, but did you ever get a slow leak in your tire and you're late for a very important appointment? I'll just put a little air in it and I'll fix it tomorrow. And we go off and we get away with it for one day, we getaway with it two days, getawaywith three days and now we're on to a really important meeting and all of a sudden, BAM! There's a pothole, the rim hits there and you know the rim, that tire cuts from the inside. The rim hits it and it cuts it and BAM! And that's it. The ride is over. You know what I think that's what a slip looks like? That's just what a slip looks like. We let our spiritual air pressure get down dangerously low. We know it. We know we've got to call our sponsor. We've gotto do something. But you know, I'm making a living. I got all these things, you know. I'll get to some meetings later on and we're walking around with about three pounds of air and guaranteed that's when life is going to throw the biggest pothole you've ever seen and you're going to go out and you are going to encounter the very situation that our first step talks about. Life is going overpower us. Something is going be too much for us because we as alcoholics are not going to stay sober on our own. What we need with us every day is our higher power, not total burning bush conscious contact, just about 30 pounds of pressure. You know what I'm saying? You and 30 pounds of spiritual pressure and you're going to have a great future. That's what it takes. And in closing, those of you that are new, I always like to wrap up with this. The present that AA gives you is you. You haven't seen the magnificence of you yet. You look in a mirror and you go, oh, there's that kid who screwed up in grammar school and my mother made fun of me. And you've got all those things. That's who's there. And AA's going to say, do you know all those ideas? We're going to get rid of all of those. and we're going to show you a very loving and caring person who is going to contribute to this world in a great degree of usefulness. You look on your resume and you think that all those things that are on there are there to entitle you to a certain salary and you go out and try and demand this and you wonder why you get a lot of resistance as you barge into life and the program is going to take your resume and it's going to spiritualize it and it' s going to enable you to look at it and it''s going to say see this list these are all God given gifts that I was given so that I can be useful out in the world and I'm going to go out into the world a servant I'm gonna go out and just be useful I'm Gonna take these talents and I''m gonna accomplish things that are gonna benefit other people and pretty soon you'll be living in a mansion and you're going to find out that everything's just going to be given to you because you're not demanding them anymore you're gonna find things are attracted to you, you're gunna find you are a awesomely beautiful person with a heart of gold that has been trapped inside of wrong ideas and when those are stripped away and you start blossoming and smiling and that sparkles in your eye. All of us that have been around a while want to cry because we see our rebirth again and again and I thank you all very much. Good night.