Sandy B. on High-Functioning Alcoholism, Gratitude, and the Big Book

good evening everybody my name is sandy beach and I'm an alcoholic it's good to be here and congratulations on your second annual Victoria sober fest I think it's just marvelous these things get started and then they take on a life of their own and you know you come back 20 years later and you just go isn't it amazing you know that this could possibly have started and so you're all in on the ground floor and it's something I'm sure you'll look back on year after year as your sobriety keeps growing my sobriete date is the 7th of December 1964 and so I'm coming up in about a month or so on my 30th anniversary and last saturday i had occasion to be in a little town called east dorset vermont which wasn't on the trivia questions tonight but it's a big town in aa history it is where bill wilson was born and it was quite an experience to go there because the town back in the 30s was a big mining area and they had two big rail lines that came in. They had hotels and in particular, the hotel that Bill Wilson was born in and those mining companies went under and just no employment whatsoever in the town and it's really a ghost town. There's like a gas station there and you don't, there isn't a soul. You look around and there just isn't anybody except for this little entourage of cars that keep arriving from Canada or New York or Florida and they pull around the gas station and go down to a road that's parallel to this, not a main road that goes through there but there's another little road And on there is a restored hotel, and that's the Wilson House. And in there, they've got it looking just like it was back then. And there's meetings, two or three meetings a day. There's volunteers that are in there and it's really something. But I think the highlight is to just go a mile and a half down on a smaller road and here you find a country cemetery that just sits on the side of a hill. You'd go, why would anybody be going in this place? And when I drove up, there was already two trucks parked there and there was a couple people standing in front of one of the particular graves and when I came up there, there Was no doubt which grave in there was Bill Wilson's because there was no grass left in front it there's an AA member standing there every single day of the year and I just left my 29-year chip there because all I could feel was a tremendous sense of gratitude for Phil being the instrument through which we've been given the probably the most precious gift any Russell ever received and it was a very moving experience so if you ever get up that way you ought to make a little stop them and you're making something on your we want to do someday and do it sooner rather than later when I first got sober every year this friend of mine Hal I think he was down here last year he would say let's go to the Bill Wilson dinner and I'd say oh I can't afford it I couldn't afford to go from Washington DC to New York City and he said well you've got to meet Bill Wilson I said well I'll go when I have more money I'll when I had more money and that went on for seven years and then Bill died I never got to meet him and of course now I'd give anything to have met bill but that's the way it goes let's see I wonder that I just wanted to mention one other thing thinking about historical things and that was my sponsor in case I forget to mention this but last year was his 30th anniversary and he got sober on August 6th and so I went down to see him he lives about 40 miles south of where I am and I said Bill I'll take you out to dinner I said you pick a restaurant down near the Quantico Marine Base which is where he now lives and that's where I was when I came in day 8 and so we went to eat dinner in a German restaurant just outside the Quantiko Marine Base and that restaurant used to be the house I lived in when he 12-stepped me. And so we sat at a table that was about as far away from the front door as that door over there and about halfway through the meal he said, you know it's a long way from that door to this table and it really was. It's just, it's amazing. You're still in the same place, still with the same person but you've been transported to a different level of existence and that's what sobriety as far as I'm concerned is all about is moving inward to a different place that many of us never knew existed and I'm that's what I'm most grateful for here in Alcoholics Anonymous now I grew up in Connecticut had a nice family I was sent to a nice little prep school a prep school with a feeder into Yale University and I went down there and I got good grades and I got out of there and when in the Marine Corps and became a fighter pilot and got married and had six children and if you would looked at my track record you would say look at this guy he's just moving along through life at a nice pace and you know like a lot of alcoholics on the outside we're able to maintain some sort of facade that everything is all right and if you had taken a look at me in 1962 or somewhere's in there I think I was still holding it together rather well he's a healthy looking guy and you know he's flying he's doing all these things and then if you would come around in 64 you would have had to visit me in a nut ward where I had been admitted for having a convulsion and biting my tongue and then I was there for three days while they tried to figure out what caused the compulsion and I went into the DTS just freaked out at hallucinated went crazy and they put me in a straitjacket and locked me up for six months and so there was something going on inside that wasn't apparent to the outside world and that thing was alcoholism because even though I look back and I think I had a nice childhood and I was sent to a church and I had comfortable surroundings and so on down I never felt comfortable when I looked around at the world I found it very threatening I found people very intimidating to try and get to know people was beyond me I had few guys that I hung out with but beyond that it was extremely difficult to for me to get out and feel like I was a part of something I don't know why I just always felt like I didn't quite belong and it really got bad when I got down to the university and it seemed like people who were real smart and rich and they all came to that University and they drove up in fancy cars and they had real good clothes and I remember just going whoo I hope they never find out who I really am you know they wouldn't even want me in here and that was sort of the feeling that I had and whenever I was in that surrounding I felt extremely uncomfortable and I felt that the other people could see it and they could do they just knew that I was sort a stranger in their midst and there was a a time, well I guess halfway through my freshman year we were getting ready to move into these other colleges and the one I was going to go to, they had one of these events that I absolutely dreaded. And it was a get acquainted night. Did you ever go to any of those things where they go, alright you 50 guys, go in this room and just mix. It's, you know they got some sandwiches over here and they got a bar over here but I wasn't drinking I was trying to get good grades and be an athlete so I wasn t involved in drinking and I walked in there and I just made the best effort this I swear to you I tried as hard as I could to do this and I walked over to the first group of guys there was about seven of them talking and I started up to him and it was like all seven turned to me and I could see in their eyes not this group not this little step and I I just sort of stopped and said, well, I'll just go over here. There's just two guys talking over here and I'll have my hand out as I'm coming across the floor. You know what I'm saying? And I started to put my hand down and I could see them and went, wrong. Put your hand back in your pocket. Don't even bother coming over here and then I went back there and I went back there and I got the same look all the way around the room and I never met anybody. Never met. I almost met a lot of people but I never met anybody and I made the full circle and I said well maybe I ought to leave because this is too threatening to keep staying here and I got thinking about what my roommates had said and they said you're you know you're in college now you guys you should be drinking it's part of being here that's part of the social environment besides alcohol makes you feel wonderful so I decided that would be my night to start drinking because I needed to feel wonderful so I walked over and ordered a whiskey and something from the bartender and I said well here I go I'm gonna feel wonderful and drank it down I stood there waiting to feel wonderful I'm waiting and I don't feel wonderful and I'm waving and I feel wonderful so go back and get some more drinks I well maybe it takes more than one to feel wonderful so i get a second drink and I pour it down i'm waiting to be a wonderful and I don't feel wonderful so I go back get the third one and I'm sitting there or standing there sort of waiting to feel wonderful and I don' t really feel any change at all but I look back at the room and while I was messing around with this alcohol those 50 mean guys left and they were were replaced by 50 of the friendliest people you have ever seen. All of them were looking at me and smiling and going, please come over and join our group. I could just see it in their eyes. They were all just saying, we'd give anything for you to come join us. That's what I saw. And I couldn't believe it. I just felt so wanted and welcomed. I mean, it was just marvelous that was one change and then the second change was for some unknown reason inside of me I felt like you'll just have to wait your turn you really will be lucky when I get there and be your friends and so I'm here to tell you that alcohol may not have changed me very much but it sure changed the world that i lived in and boy when i got in that world i was a happy camper that's the first time i ever remember feeling that good about the world in my life why people were great and i intuitively knew how to handle situations that used to baffle me i mean i just conversation flowed out of me about any subject but i mean I mean, normally I'd just be so frightened that I couldn't be creative and think up anything. And here I could tap into my natural talents and I could be fun and happy to be with. Boy, this was a great discovery on my part. I remember going home that night. Later on I puked all over the place because it takes a while to learn how to drink and I considered that a minor inconvenience. small price to pay for this wonderful discovery that i've made and i wondered why i didn't start drinking in grammar school you know what i mean because it certainly would have made grammar school a lot more that's the way i felt about alcohol just wow am i on to something well i was onto something and i have to admit that my social life was very comfortable for the rest of my stay in the university, but my grades went down where I almost flunked out. And then unfair things started happening. There was a series of totally unjust arrests that started happening where obviously the police mistook me for someone else and I'd be in jail and then people would mistake me for something else or someone else and punch me. you know and i don't have no idea why i'm sure i never said anything to bring on that type of treatment but it started happening and i'd have blackouts and wake up in the morning and my teeth would be knocked out and i'll be covered with blood and you know there was some setbacks to this new discovery that i had found but i certainly wasn't willing to give it up because what i was getting in return was worth it and i told myself that story until i got to aa the trouble got worse and my ability to rationalize got better so that by the time i got here i was willing to say that hey going to the nut ward for six um months is a small price to pay for the fun i get from alcohol you know what i'm saying and it was the equation always balanced in my mind but in any event i got out of there the korean war was going on we all had to join the military and um or get drafted and a bunch of guys were drinking beer and said let's join the marine corps and i said okay you know i never i don't know about it military is um i don't know who but anyway i'm down there yes sir i want to join the marine corps sign me up i'm in and uh boy a couple of months later when i got in and they shaved my head bald and i'm off to boot camp i said oh i think i've made a bad mistake here this is not my kind of organization the brochure that i read about showed a golf course at this base and i have my golf clubs out in the car and some sergeant told me what i could do with the golf clubs and and part way through this training that went on uh for about five or six months uh and involved infantry training and learn how to kill people and going out in the snow and digging a hole and sleeping in it and the other guys are around isn't this great We get to sleep in the snow, and I knew I was just in the wrong company. I mean, these people, they could hardly wait to kill somebody, and it was just, you know. And I saw a movie, a training movie about pilots, and the pilots were at the bar, and they were talking like this, and it Was all glamorous and this and that. So I'd never been in an airplane, didn't know anything about airplanes, But I signed up for that flight school and got air sick on the commercial plane down to flight school and didn't think I was going to make it initially with all that motion sickness and everything. But eventually I did, and that's what I did for the next 12 years in the Marine Corps. I was a fighter pilot, and it was very exciting. I went overseas and flew jets. I can tell you a lot of exciting stories about that. but what was really happening was my alcoholism was just tightening the noose and it kept tightening it and tightening it and there came a time probably in 1962 I was down in Cherry Point, North Carolina in a photo squad and I started experiencing withdrawal symptoms in the plane and I was getting loss of vision My heart would just race. I was unable to see the instrument panel clearly. My hands were starting to tremble. I'd get high blood pressure. And I talked to some other pilots later on, and they said, well, what you have to do when that happens, you haveと bring booze in the plane. And I never thought of that. I was still going along with the no drinking for 12 hours. And so these symptoms were coming on, and I finally went to a doctor because I had a couple times when I hit the wrong switch and did some things that were real bad and somehow made it. I remember turning the engine master off on takeoff. I was reaching for the landing gear and hit the engine-master switch and shut the engine off and then lit it again, and it's one in a million that it'll light again, and it did. In any event, I went to a special board of flight surgeons to examine, and this was in like I say the early 60s and at that time there was no alcohol program in the military there was such thing as an alcohol program and so when I went down there and they examined me for I guess I was there two and a half three weeks every day I'm in with these doctors and I go to a dentist I go to a general practitioner a heart guy a lung guy a psychiatrist and they're all trying to figure out what is happening to this guy in these airplanes must be some kind of weird motions that you know whatever they're trying to guess what it is that I have and the only clues that they have are high blood pressure covered with clammy sweat all the time trembling hands smells of alcohol alcohol just sort of drifting around his body bloodshot eyes incoherent speech memory loss inability to think clearly and you all know what those are all symptoms of because that's what I was diagnosed with childhood fear of flying That was a diagnosis that I got from the doctors, and they told me I couldn't fly anymore. And that just killed me because that was my whole identity. And here it was. It was gone. And three months later, the Marine Corps gave me a new set of orders that probably took them that long to figure out what do you do with a guy who's in such bad shape that he can't fly any more? And I became an air traffic controller. and that's what I did in my last two years of drinking was to bring planes in in the bad weather when they can't see the runway. So we've come a long way in terms of dealing with alcoholism in this country since then, but that's my story. Since I wasn't flying anymore, I became a daily drinker and my last year overseas, that's when I really almost died because I got malnutrition I just drank that's all I did I drank vodka in the morning and just tried to survive I could feel that something awful was about to happen to me physically and it did it was a convulsion but I just felt that something was just going to be awful and I also couldn't be around people even the guys that I drank with I just didn't to be with them anymore and i just stayed in the quonset hut i'd go down to work when i could make it and the guys would cover for me for a lot of times when i'd just be too sick to go down to work and i was drank and food made me sick so i tried to put booze and juice that was my going to be how i stayed alive was drinking orange juice and try to take some vitamins or something like that and it was just so i lost 50 pounds from what i weigh now and i'm pretty thin now and i just was walking around um i don't know just trying to get through one day after another and i was sent back to the states to go to a career school you know where you become a general or something like that now i'm in this school and i'll tell you the truth i couldn't find the school a lot of days i would get in my car i was starting to lose it i mean i'm talking about really losing it hallucinating and all of that and i would come in the main gate and the gate wouldn't look familiar then that's the century where's junior school you know you asked me that yesterday i know but i didn't i think they've moved it i don't think it's you know what i'm telling you i mean it was just like man and then i'd get there and i wouldn't know what classroom i was in. I went into my locker, how to open the combination lock. It was way beyond anything I could do. And I'm still going, you know what I mean? No one came along and said, hey, we've got to get this guy out of circulation. It's just, keep trying, pal. It was a strange thing to think about. But that went on and on. And finally, I had a seizure in the classroom. And you know how you bite your tongue in an emergency, they bring up the ambulance and now I'm in Bethesda Naval Hospital and had the DTS and hallucinated about all kinds of things after I was in there about four months Alcoholics Anonymous talked to the head psychiatrist they had been in to Bethesden the Naval Hospital in 1962 and they went from 62 to 63. They had AA meetings. At the end of 63, the head psychiatrist concluded that they had cleaned up all the alcoholism and we didn't need AA anymore, and he stopped the meetings. And the group had been trying to get back in to the hospital ever since, and they got back in in the fall of 1964 and so the way I got to AA a corpsman came into the nut ward and said all drunks fall in and there were three of us and the rest of the people were you know weird we were the regular guys but in the nut war the drunks are the outcasts because the people with mental illnesses look upon drunks as phonies what do you mean a mental ill I mean we were just looked down at by the other people that were locked up in there and I remember thinking about that years later that my new position of stardom was low man in the nut board you know the rest of the people that are locked up there feeling uncomfortable that you're in their midst and so Corman said all drunks fall in right face over to the elevator down to the first floor and into this room and then three guys came in and they told their stories and they just said hi I'm this and that and I really was impressed I just never saw such sincerity they had a sense of humor and I was very attracted to what they had to say and I told this little red-headed guy afterwards I said you know I really like this and it sounds like you guys got a great organization going and if I ever run into a guy with a drinking problem I'm gonna send them around this I mean but you know I didn't have any connection with me you know in other words I still didn't connect why I would be involved in this and when I was let out of there as an outpatient I started drinking again sneaking drinks at home and then bringing vodka back into the nut ward and hiding it out in my car and then I knew they were going to get me and they told me if I ever took another drink that my career was over with and I had 13 years that was going to go down the drain and so I wanted to protect it and so i on this One weekend of December 7th, like I was telling you, I decided I couldn't get a drink to stay down. I was feeling sick and I had to go back to Nut Ward the next day. So I called Intergroup up in northern Virginia and I said, help, I need help from Alcoholics Anonymous. And they said, we'll get somebody over there as soon as possible. And they started calling around the Quantico and there was only one AA member then. He ended up being my sponsor. and that was about three hours later. He made it over to my house. Well, I got some drinks to stay down by then and I didn't need him but I didn' t know what to do because he was already coming. So I sat around the house figuring how am I going to get rid of this guy and after a while there was a knock on the front door and the whole house shook. You know, and then when I opened the door no light came in through the door frame. I mean, I'm sure there's a lot of guys in Texas like this guy. You know what I mean? It was like, hi! And he just came in. Oh. And he said, and he just said, Hi, my name is Bill. This is a 12-step call. I talk, you listen. And then he just started, Here's the drill. You're not going to drink. You've had your last drink. No more drinking. and we're going to meet tonight we're gonna meet every night for maybe 10 years how do you like that you know and get in the car and we got out of here and i'm i'm going hey just could you leave some literature it was like everywhere just sit in the front row is called incurable row you will sit here and uh you need an opinion i'll give you one you know that kind of a sponsor which is exactly what i needed somebody else that might have driven him out of the program but that is the type of control because i like to think and i like to solve my own problems i like do all these things and he just came in and took over my life and i've never had another drink since that night in the in the manassas group in manassus virginia a lot of things have happened a lot of things that happened on you know that um i suppose are interesting don't have anything to do with sobriety but they are the events that occurred as time went along when i went to a meeting every night for two years and didn't get promoted twice and was pushed out of the Marine Corps. And I'll never forget that. I had a small resentment. I don't know if anybody else has come to AA and then things got worse. You know what I'm talking about? In other words, it didn't seem right to me that you would go to a meetings every night and then be forced out. I mean, I thought you'd go to the meeting every night and it's then they'd hand you the keys to the kingdom or something. You know what I mean? That's the way I thought it would work. And boy, I had a resentment about that. Here I am, now I'm out, I get nothing. They told me I could keep my sword. You know, that was the... And so I wasted all those years and I got six kids to feed and I don't know what to do, I don' t have a job and I'm out there trying to find a job and I didn' t plan too well and so I had a big resentment about this. And I remember after a couple of months I found some part-time work but it was really, I was running out of money and you know just going, what's this? You get sober and now you're out of the world and you're running out of money and you don't have a new job and you talk about a whiner. People at meetings used to go don't go near me just whine, whine. And people kept giving me the stupidest advice. I'll tell you, it was just unbelievable. There's a guy, he needs money, he's done, he got thrown out of the Marine Corps, and he's got all this, and you know what they'd tell me? They'd say, say the serenity prayer. And I'd go, screw you! What the hell is that going to do? You know, go find a new alcoholic and help him. What the heck is wrong with you? Say the serentity prayer, you know, all these things they kept telling me and I kept thinking, I must not have explained my problem to them. So, there's a communication breakdown here because I ain't telling them what my problem is and they keep telling me this stuff. You know, so I saw no connection to that. But the end of this story is two and a half months after this tragic event happened, I was reading the Washington Post and there's an old story back on page 10, somewhere it's in there, you know, very small story. It said Marine Corps instruction team killed in Denver and this was the unit that I was the operations officer of. And if I had been promoted, I would have been on that plane and everybody that I worked with was killed. And I had just been complaining to my higher power about getting thrown out of the Marine Corps. You know, I mean, I had bene whining to him for three months. Thanks a lot, God. Really appreciate it. Turned my life over to you. Screw you, you know. What's with me? I got nothing, you know. So I read this story and I know that he knows I just read this storey. You know what I'm talking about? So it's like, well, if he'd just told me this was going to happen, I wouldn't have been whining all the time. But all this stuff. So, then I guess about seven or eight years later, all of a sudden my marriage of almost 20 years is ending and I'm out and some other guy is moving in and I am going, this ain't supposed to happen in sobriety. I don't think this is supposed to happened. And I remember going to meetings and whining. You can always tell when we are having a chance for more spiritual growth. years whining at the meetings and you want to know the funny thing the advice for divorce is very similar to getting thrown out of the Marine Corps I just thought don't know why surrendering prayer work with new guys double up on your meetings prayer st. Francis it's really amazing that team coincidence that getting thrown on the Marine Corp and getting divorced have the same solution and then later on I got in the real estate thing in the early 70s the mortgage market dried up and I'm almost going through bankruptcy I mean I couldn't believe it not a lot of years and I am whining at meetings and I know bankruptcy what did you know what do you do for bankruptcy this was amazing the answer from bankruptcy was the same as getting thrown out of the Marine Corps and getting divorced. It was the serenity prayer. Find a new guy, work with him. Double up on your meetings in the prayer of St. Francis. And so I'm suddenly dawning on me that perhaps somebody around here is trying to tell me that the preposterous proposition that in this fellowship there's one solution for all problems. Now does that sound... Those of you that are new, Doesn't that sound a little far-fetched? One solution for all problems. It does? Well, what did you do before you got here? Did you have one solution for all problems? I did. It was called drinking. I never remember having a problem where I said, now here's a problem I won't be drinking over. I'll be handling this one sober never never I don't care what the problem was the first step let's go get a drink because as soon as I had a drink I had the power to solve problems I had the ability to think I mean I needed that calm down I needed alcohol so alcohol became the one answer for all problems if I'm tired on need energy go get alcohol if I am afraid and I want to calm down go get an alcohol if i'm too keyed up and I wanna relax go have a couple of drinks to unwind so they unwind and pick you up I mean it doesn't matter which direction you want to go alcohol was the one answer and so it's not so outrageous that we come in here and find out one answer for all problems so let me spend some time giving you some thoughts I have about the program which is just the most astounding thing if if there's anybody new here and you can save a few bucks by next June and you can get your way out to San Diego I would sure go see that thing and if you don't go this time then save up for five years from now because every five years years we have the World Convention of AA and you haven't seen one of those things it'll make you understand as you can never understand what has happened from just two drunks getting together in Akron and trying to help each other and this is now all the way around the world and countries come in and they'll fill that football stadium out there with probably 65 70,000 sober alcoholics at one AA meeting and they bring the flags out from all the countries and if it doesn't bring tears to your eyes I'll be absolutely surprised so something very powerful has occurred in Alcoholics Anonymous and it's called spirituality this is a spiritual program and when I was new that put me off a little bit so spiritual I'm not interested in spirituality and you know what people would say to me yes it shows which I thought was a great response and so if you are new maybe you're put off by this but let me just try and explain or share some thoughts that I have about what a spiritual plan for living is number one the greatest thing that happens if you will adopt the a plan for living is you will stop using your plan that's the huge step forward that takes place right away because your plan is what got you where you are right now and the reason a lot of us go way out on a limb and say this plan is probably superior to your plan is we just look at you and just take a clue that I'm not going to read your book as I remember trying to sound real smart at a meeting one time when I had about six months and the guy came up afterwards he said it real hard to listen to a guy wearing a wristband oh I'm sorry about that and I still have wristband on from the network so in a we're not interested in theory we're interested in results and we compare the results of your current plan for living which has produced a very resentful fearful person with no friends with clothes that don't fit who's looking for a job has no friends and doesn't like the world and it's thinking of suicide but doesn't want to give up any of his ideas how to live life because he put him together I remember holding on to my old plan for living and I know it was a rotten plan but I thought it up you know there was sort of that pride of authorship you know that I thought this plan up and I'm gonna go down with it what I mean and there was some sort of a sense of conviction there that I'm willing to die with this rotten plan that I have I felt that you ought to get some sort of reward for that or you know that people would write a country-western song about you what a hero stuck in there all the way to the end and and they do write a song and they go what an ass that's the song and bill uses a word throughout our literature you find the big book you find a lot of different places when he describes this phenomenon of wanting to hold on to our ideas even though they're not working and unwillingness to try and be open to the spiritual program and he calls it stupid you'll see this in a lot of place we were especially stupid about this or we were specially and he's saying we because he remembers clinging on to old ideas there's a lot things about a spiritual program that's very foreign to all of us that arrive in here because we're used to living by our own mind and we're use to solving problems through logic and through thinking up the answer to the problem and we come in here we go that's not how this works at all you in order to win you have to surrender you have to totally give up and yet to stop trying to figure anything out there's going to be a lot of paradoxes that occur in here and you're just gonna have to trust them the first thing that you'll have to understand is a spiritual program will not look like it should work you can read those steps till they're coming out your nose and they still won't look like they work I mean I looked at those things and I'm going people said I did all these things and I'm happy and everything is fine and I looking at them and I am trying to connect them to my life and I was going fearless moral inventory prayer and meditation making amends where's the $2,000 loan step this stuff isn't relevant right now is maybe later when I get all these problems solved I could screw around with this abstract stuff but I mean I got real problems here I don't have time for this Mickey Mouse I'll get to that look so I just saw no connection between those steps and me I couldn't see that's that's correct that's one of the things I'm going to tell you right now you will never see the connection a spiritual program will never look like it's it'll work it only looks like it'll after you do it then it becomes very visible you go wow yeah this really was but we have to do it but our intellect says i'm not going to do anything until i see it until i can see it and that's a lot of the problem that many of us have look at aa it doesn't look like it should work does it did you ever sometimes you get sober some people been sober maybe five or six months you're down at work and when your co-workers come says helen are you on a diet are you in a health club you just look wonderful there's something about you that is just different. And we're curious, what is it? And you don't want to tell them, I'm in AA and I'm not drinking, but maybe you've got a real close friend down, well, let's have lunch and I'll tell you. Okay, I'm INAA. Well, do they run? No, no, they don't run. Well, is there an AA cookbook? No, there's not a cookbook. Well, what is it that you're just sort of glowing? You just look healthy and you're so positive. What is it? What is the thing that you do? Well, I go to meetings. What happens at the meeting? Oh, they're wonderful. Let me tell you about my home group. We meet down in this church, about 15 of us, and we have a discussion meeting. And we get there at 8.30. I'll tell you exactly. Oh, it's exciting. And we sit around the table in there. There's 15 of US, okay? We all get some coffee and we sit there and like one of us will be the leader for that night and she will come up with a topping, okay? Like, hey, resentment. Okay, then each one of use gets to share around the table until the hour is over and then we all hold hands and say the Lord's Prayer and go home. and the friend goes no running or yeah would you like to come no no no I don't want to come there so AA doesn't look like it should work does it I mean why would that transform my whole day why after all these years I have a terrible day I walk in I sit down with 15 other people We talk about easy does it one day. There was some hokey grammar school slogan, one day at a time, give me a break. And I come out of there feeling wonderful. I come Out of There with a Whole New Perspective on Life. Doesn't look like it should work, but it does. And so I'm telling you that, that if you're new, this stuff will never look like it's going to work until after you do it. The other thing is, there's a lot of things that are different in here. There was a fellow from Washington named Charlie Bruton. Maybe some of you old-timers may remember a long time ago from Alabama. He's a lawyer. And he had a saying that really was important to understand. And he said, it isn't the things you don't know that kill you. It's knowing things for sure that just ain't so. and so in our intellectual lives we want information to be added a learning experience so that we can better deal with whatever our problems are we come in here we go no more learning no more we want you to start unlearning we want you to stop getting rid of ideas we want you to get rid of things old ideas availed us nothing we got inventory all these whole ideas and throw them away and so we find out that character building is done by not adding anything but by getting rid things and we spend the rest of our sobriety trying to find something else that were wrong about now you know for us alcoholics being wrong is not a word that we're used to and I don't know about you but I can remember after about six months in the program had a big argument with my sponsor over some point in the programming I'm you know really hammering around and finally I guess maybe he had a point so I said to him Bill you know you're right and he said No, no, no. You're wrong. And I said, Hey, same thing. He said, Well, say it. Do you know how much harder it is to say I'm wrong than you're right? I could barely get it out. Wrong, wrong, wrong. I mean, wrong. And just think about it. That's what sobriety is. It's finding more things we're wrong about to get rid of them this is what we get free from our wrong ideas and what are all these ideas your ideas and my ideas are our world and if all of your ideas tell you that this is a rotten world filled with rotten people and that you're rotten and there's no higher power and life is going to be awful forever that's where you're going to live forever when old ideas avail us nothing those ideas are going to stay there till we go to the grave unless we make the effort to clear all of this out and continue to take inventory and what will look at the fence there and when we're promptly admit it so freedom is freedom from ideas that are wrong and being and to me that's what happy sobriety is all about is the fun of being wrong Wow here's another thing I give it's like finding another thorn in your side and going gone freedom from getting rid of these things so the strange thing is and I say this especially if it's new people because a lot of times when we come in new we have very low self-esteem and we feel that we're gonna have to accomplish a lot in order to become something so that we'll feel better about ourselves and the truth of the matter is you already are a magnificent wonderful person you just have a bunch of ideas that are wrong those ideas that you have about yourself are wrong I don't know where you got them but they're wrong and I'll tell you the first clue that you're gonna have about this you may be only sober two or three months and you're sitting in a discussion me you the real rotten person unloving you know terrible and you sitting in an AA meeting and somebody with about four days sobriety shows up and you were just there a couple months ago so you know how they feel and you are watching them and he's over there at the coffee pot and he starting to get some coffee and his hands start to shake so bad that he puts the cup down he looks around see if anybody saw him and he gets red in the face because he's embarrassed that he wasn't able to pick it up and your heart is just bleeding for this guy because you know exactly how he feels and he goes over and sits down without the coffee and he's sitting on his hands and he sits over here and he's looking at his watch and going like this and he going like that and the meeting ends and you say I'm gonna go talk to him but he He runs out the door, and besides, you're a little afraid. And then as you're home that week, you start thinking about him. And you go, I wish I had talked to him. And I hope he shows up. And I really hope he showed up. God, I hope she shows up! And the next week, he's not there. And you're sitting at the table, sitting there with your self-centeredness, with all your problems, whatever it is. And about ten minutes into the meeting, he comes in the door and he's still sober and he goes over to the coffee pot and he's able to get some coffee in the cup. And you sit there without changing your face one bit, but inside you're going, Yay! You're so happy for this person. Now, what is this all about? What is that all about, that you're all happy about somebody else? Is this an uncaring, unloving person who's having a slip? is that what's going on or is that perhaps a little clue of who you really are I submit to you that that's precisely who you are that you are a child of a higher power who is filled with love that's trying to come out and it's been blocked all these years because of the self-centered prison that we constructed due to our alcoholism we built this place to hide in because we felt it was safe that we needed to be inside of there and we missed out on all of the love and all the reality in the world a sculptress who did a beautiful marble sculpture of a woman in a long flowing gown who was taking a step and had all that graceful action and it was all captured in this statue was asked how in the world she ever produced anything that magnificent and she said it's real easy all I did was get the block of granite and take away everything that wasn't this beautiful statute and that my friends is what Alcoholics Anonymous does there is already this magnificent creature inside of you and if you will allow it to happen a a is going to strip away all this exterior phony stuff and you're going to be left with true you this is a great journey this is the big leagues anything you've been involved with before is small potatoes compared to the journey that begins in Alcoholics Anonymous this is where the rubber meets the road and in closing let me just give you this last little thought I don't know if it was in the trivia thing tonight or not but if it wasn't it should have been in there what we have is a daily reprieve contingent on our spiritual condition that's really what we are given here in Alcoholics Anonymous we're talking about the ability to have a smooth ride through life that's what I think sobriety is all about the ability be undisturbed a day at a time as we go through whatever life has in store for us and I like to think about a ride like a car and maybe you'd look figure out how you could get the smoothest possible ride and maybe for you it's a BMW and maybe it's a BMW with $200 tires on each wheel and I'll submit to you that that's not going give you the smooth ride at all but the crucial element is the free air in the tires that is the cushion no matter what the car is and if you let that air in a bmw or in a junk heap get low the ride is going to become worse and worse and sometimes you have a slow leak in the tire and you say i'll fix it tomorrow i'm too busy i'm busy businessman i can't be pulling and take it an hour while they screw around put a plug in there and all of that I'll put a little air in and I'll just keep on going and I will get to that soon enough but if we walk around if we drive around let that get lower and lower there is going to come a day when we hit a pothole and that tire is going to destroy itself from the inside out when the rim hits the rubber and cuts it and boom the ride is over we are off the road and our journey stops and I'm telling you that's exactly what a slip looks like we let the spiritual cushion get too low and you know how long it takes to keep that cushion up about as long as it takes it put air in the tire very few minutes each day are required in order to have a spiritual cushion between us and the events of the world and when that cushion is there we have all the freedom to react in a very grown-up and responsible and loving way and so in closing let me just suggest if you're new check that spiritual condition check the air and the tires and never be in such a hurry that you leave home without it thank you very much