Smashing the Ego Shell to Get Out of Your Own Little World – Sandy B.

Good morning, everybody. My name is Sandy Beach and I'm an alcoholic. Lee's going to fix the camera in a second. In the meantime, I can remain anonymous. I just want to thank all of you for being here and the committee all the other speakers it's really been quite a weekend and I want to thank Ann and Roland for taking care getting my health back and fixing me so I can keep walking I'm really grateful for that also So I know when you get to the end of the convention, you hate to see it end because there'll never be another one like this. There'll be another next year, but this one we were all part of and we'll all go our separate ways, but we'll have our memories of talking with each other and being together and realizing how big and powerful AA is and how it's made up of just one person after another. That's it. And so everybody in this room plays an equal role in producing the whole that we have. I want to, this is always hard, but I do want to share about my daughters because it may be useful to other people who are faced with situations like that. And so on March 3rd of this year, I got a call from my middle daughter, Conway, who has nine years in AA, that she had just found the body of her sister, Barbie, who had five years in AAA. And she had taken her daughter to high school, and when she came home, Somebody was waiting for her and hit her over the head and stabbed her a bunch of times and left her there. And Conway just did a remarkable job of being the strength in the family. There's three boys and my ex-wife, we had six kids together and cousins and so on down. And they gathered, and I had just had surgery, and I couldn't go up. And it was very frustrating because I wanted to be there to help. But when something like that happens, it gets complicated. You got the press and the police, and you can't go in the house, and you can'T do this, and you can'T do that, it just makes it ten times as hard. And so it was probably three weeks later when the memorial service and And my friend Chris, who takes me everywhere, I wouldn't get around without him. And Christine, they're going to give me a ride home. And so he went up to Connecticut with me and we went to the memorial service. It was very beautiful and there were maybe 50 family members and 300 AAs. And it was held in an old church on the green in Guilford, and it was just beautiful. And at that service was my oldest daughter, Catherine, who is in the late stages of alcoholism, or was. and she was very sick. She was thrown up during the service and so my middle daughter Conway and I, we told her we're going to come to her house and this can't go on. She has four boys and we've been talking about her alcoholism for a long time and she told me she loved me that she was so glad I was her father but she was not going to let me come there that she would call the police if we came. And her husband went along, and so three months later, she died of alcoholism. And it's a very bad death when you get cirrhosis and it kicks the kidneys out. It's just awful. And so those events all happened roughly within a three-month period. So I want to tell you what it felt like and what I did in order to go through those things. And in order To do that, I have to tell You the role models that I had, That I paid attention to as I went through life. And the first one was about 25 years ago in Washington, D.C., And I was watching the local TV, and a charming black woman was being interviewed on television. And her son had just been murdered. He was like an A student, and he was in the wrong place, and some other kid shot him. And the reporter just had this microphone in her face. How do you feel about the boy that killed your son today? And she said, I've already forgiven him. and there was complete peace on her face. I couldn't believe my ears. I couldn'T believe what I had just seen and heard that she had already forgiven him and I never forgot it. I used to talk about it with my friends. I said, I saw this woman do that. I had been around AA 25 years. I didn'T know you could get to that level. I had no idea. I mean, I realized how far ahead she was than I was at that moment. I'm sure she was in her church and was really strong in her relationship with God. And I just saw it. In other words, when you see the face and the whole thing, it just stays with me. So I remembered seeing that. And then I had heard of one other lady in Al-Anon who did the same thing. And then we all saw on the television the Amish, when they had the murder in their community and the family of the boy that was murdered went over to the family of the boys that did the killing to comfort them. And I just went, boy. So those are, but as I saw them, I said, well, that's possible for anyone. And so what I learned out of this is while my daughter was telling me about this incident, something made me totally accept it in that second. So I wasn't going to fight the universe about it. It had happened. So I accepted that from that moment on, my relationship with my daughter Barbie was on a new level. It would consist of memories and stories. And I could tell you stories about her for a long time, and she will continue, and it felt good inside. And I also decided to forgive whoever did it. I could really care less. They still haven't decided. Everybody thinks it's her ex-husband, probably could be, but it's of little interest to me because whoever it is is forgiven and all I had left was sorrow and God helps with sorrow but he doesn't help with hatred he doesn' t help with resentment and he doesn´t help with anger because those are self-induced that´s ego deciding this shouldn´t have happened and most of all it shouldn´T happen to me It's okay, I read in the paper it happened to you But it shouldn't happen to me And so I'm just telling you that the sorrow is still there And I tear up whenever I think I'm going to start talking about it But then when I get started, I'm alright Right. And so the lesson is that the real value of acceptance and forgiveness occurs in the moment that it happens. That's where the real volume is. It happens. You accept you get fired, you accept. And you can go out looking for another job and you won't be angry, resentful and unfit for an interview. Who wants to hire this angry woman? You see what I'm saying? So that was the new lesson for me was you do the acceptance and forgiveness now. Otherwise, resentment, anger, and hatred get in, and then you can't get them out. You can try, but they just stay there, and they stay there. And the other thing that I had read about in a lot of readings that I do, When I found out, I kind of knew that my oldest daughter was, you know, something was going to happen someday. And so when I got the same call from my daughter Conway, she was in the hospital up in Virginia and that this had happened. The first thing that I did, I went, I didn't react to it. I went to God and I said to God, I just want you to know how much I love you. I want to spend time with you because you're more important than anything. And I wantto assure you that any of these events that are happening to me don't change how I feel about you. And that really kept everything solid. it. And after a few minutes of that, then I turned back to the situation and I was relatively comfortable with it. I just said, well, if that happens, we'll have this service and we'll help the family and we'll go through this. And again, I accepted and didn't get angry over it. So you can see the role that God plays in everything. It's how soon do You want to let them in. Okay, that's all I wanted to comment on that. And then I can get back to my exciting story. So you can see the importance of the now. Do it now. Now, anyway, in the time I have left, I will tell my story a little bit. I grew up in New Haven, Connecticut, near where a lot of my relatives still live. My sister has 33 years in AA up there. my parents went through the depression but they somehow kept their act together and did a good job of taking care of my sister and I there was this family everybody was nice and I didn't feel I belonged in it this is, everybody in this room tells a story similar to that I sat around the table, four people sitting around the table, there's the three of them and me and I don't know what that is, but alcoholics seem to do that. My mother was Catholic. She brought us up Catholic. My sister and I sat in the same pew. She found the most welcome home. She still goes there. She loves it. She loved the nuns. She love the Latin, the incense, the confessionals, the whole nine yards. I, on the other hand, I didn't see it that way. I saw sort of a prison camp secret. Don't trust anybody wearing those outfits. And I just never saw God as a friend. I saw him as an enemy. He's going to get me. And I knew what the confessionals, they're gathering evidence for later when they put you on trial and all that kind of stuff. So I got no comfort out of going in there. I just was uncomfortable the whole time. I would get dizzy because I would just keep imagining all the horrible things that are going to happen. But somehow I got through there, and I went through school. I had polio when I was about 10. I was very lucky that the Sister Kenny treatment worked in a very small number of people, these hot packs and therapy, so I lost the use of my arm and leg, and I got most of it back. And I went to a little prep school in New Haven, probably 40 people in the class, wonderful teachers, I'm getting high grades. pipelined right into Yale, the local university. When I got there, I had worked on their buildings. I knew all about the place. But when I got here and was a student, I saw all the rest of the students were like rich guys. And I recognized some of their names. And I'm going, holy cow, I don't belong in here. I'm supposed to work on the buildings. I'm not supposed to be inside going to school. So I just felt so threatened the whole time My roommates are telling me, come on, drink. We're in college. No, I'm going to get high grades. I want to try out for athletics and all these things. But I'd been there a couple months, and it was just so uncomfortable. I was thinking of just quitting. And I went to a social event to meet these people. My name was typed on a list. Go in this room. Here's these other guys. Go around, shake hands, say hello. Well, I don't know how to do that. That is too threatening. And I looked at their eyes as I came in. And I was looking for a friendly face. There wasn't one. Everyone was kind of looking at me like, don't come over to our group. We have enough friends. We don't need you. And it was unanimous. I didn't see one friendly face, so I said, well, I better leave here. That's how I solved anxiety, just leave. But they had a bar, and I said well, maybe I'll just have a drink, see what this is all about. They said it makes you feel happy. And so I drank two, and nothing happened. And halfway through the third one, I just put the glass down. I just went, boy, I don't get this. Well, boy. When I turned around, everyone in that room wanted to know me. with their eyes they were begging me to come over to their group and I didn't know where to start should I start here? holy cow so I kind of made a decision and I went over and I realized how lucky they were that I was coming over I mean it was the whole and it was like my whole personality was let out of jail where they've been trapped by anxiety and fear and all those things. And I just was exploding all over, talking, talking and talking. Pretty soon they're leaving. Where are you going? Where are your go? Here's all these people I'm afraid of. And I'm going, where are you doing? Where are going? And they all finally went. So I went back to the bar and I said, boy, three drinks did that. What about 20? And so I had, I don't know how many, but I went and got as sick as you can get all night. And sat on the bed the next morning, just throbbing and just, oh my God. I said, I just don't know if I'm going to survive. And in that moment, I had the thought, are you going to drink again tonight? And I'll tell you, was it one hundredth of a second? Yes, I am. This puking and dying is a small price to pay for what I had last night. If that's what it takes to live in that world, fine with me. Little did I know the price was going to get bigger and the fun was going to get less, so the only thing that had to improve was my ability to rationalize, to continue to tell myself that puking in a nut ward was worth it. So the grades went and the athletics went and trouble started and I'm getting in fights and I go to jail and by some miracle I graduate by a tenth of a percent, and the Korean War was going on, so we had to join the military, and a bunch of guys had a beer. Let's join the Marine Corps. Okay, yeah, boy, hey, hi. And I'm sure that recruiting guy saw us coming in just going, Just sign here, boys, just sign here. Boy, the Marine Corp has a great welcome for anybody who wants to go in there. And at first it was a shock, but as time went on, I started to love it. They broke down everybody's personality and made you part of a team, and it was great team, and I just felt like I'm at home. I didn't have any plans anyway after I graduated. I never thought about it. And so I stayed in, and after a while I saw a thing about flight school, and that looked interesting. Guys were at the bar in the training movie. And they had white scarves, and there were some women in the background, and I'm watching. I didn't see that with the guys in the foxhole. I didn' t see any of that. I said, I like this. So I'd never been on a plane, but I passed all the tests, and I met this lovely woman who we had six children together. and so we got married went off to Pensacola, Florida right up the other end of the state and I got air sick on the DC-3 United Airlines flying to Atlanta and air sick on the way to Pensaco and air stick for a number of flights in the old SNJ but that went away the motion sickness and then I became very good at it and I went through the 18 months of the formation and night flying and gunnery and bombing and carrier and all that stuff and then advanced training in Texas Finally got into a jet, and then I went to El Toro, California for the Marine Corps' training to go overseas. And by the time we got over there, the war was over, and I'm in the front-line fighter squadron, and they just partied, the colonel drank a lot, and we had more fun gunnery contests and carrier practice and all that kind of stuff. And so it was an unbelievable year where I felt I was drinking just like the other members of that squadron. I just loved it. And we had a good airplane, old North American's F-86. And about three-quarters of the way through the tour, I was out on the end of the runway with Major Newport, the maintenance officer, and we were watching the guys practice to go aboard the carrier. You make approaches on the runway, but much slower and lower. and he's talking about getting a squadron he's going to get all these good pilots and he wants me a young lieutenant and then he looks at me and he said but when you're in my squadron I won't let you drink and this is the guy I get drunk with all the time and so I didn't ask him I didn'd dare ask him but I thought why would he say that why would we why would they say he wouldn't let me drink you know what I mean Is he saying that to all the other lieutenants, or what? And it wasn't until I got in AA that I really started realizing that an alcoholic in the midst of heavy drinkers scares them. You know what I mean? They look at me and they all say, we're just getting drunk all the time. I don't know what he's doing. But it's way above what we're doing. So that was my first clue, but I didn't hear it. And so I went right on. We had six children, got transferred about every year or year and a half. That's the Marine Corps, so the kids are in different schools all the time. And I had some wonderful tours of duty. I was honored to be a forward air controller with the 1st Marine Division and 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines, if there's any Marines out here. And I was a flight instructor, and then at the end I was in a photo squadron at Cherry Point, North Carolina, during the Cuban Missile Crisis. And we were flying the F-8 Crusader and the F3D Radar. It used to be an old night fighter. And at this point, if you looked at the outside, you would just go, look at this guy, he's got promoted, now he's a captain, He's in this exclusive squadron. They had no lieutenants in that squadron, 15 pilots, very cool. And, you know, he's got these kids. He's had all these assignments. I was almost very close to the end, but you wouldn't have been able to see it. It was happening on the inside. I was starting to have withdrawal symptoms in the airplane. I was started to shake. I was starting to get frightened of flying with me. You know what I mean? It was, hey man, you're shaking and you're like this and you get confused. And, you know, this is a fast airplane. You can't be screwing around like that. What am I going to do? There was no alcohol programs. I never heard of AA. So I just felt this, I was stuck with this. So I'm going to have to make the best of it. Now, my buddy Hal Marley, who's in AA, he's passed away. He was an Air Force pilot and when we exchanged notes, he said, yeah, I started having withdrawal, but I knew enough to take booze with me in the airplane. You stupid Marine pilots, you go along with no drinking for eight hours and you're into withdrawals. Anyway, that's after the fact. At the time, it was just I was trapped. So for a six-month period, it was very intimidating to get in that big airplane. And I would shake and then I felt like I was going to pass out and I would be this and that. I can remember flying with one hand on the ejection seat, the left hand on there, the right hand on the stick. All the photo controls were on the stick so you could do the mission with just one hand. And then my theory was if I passed out, I'd fire that seat because I had a death grip on the ejection seat. And bam, I go out. The chute opens automatically at 10,000 feet. The plane crashes. I land safely. Problem solved. You know that feeling. You can't trap the old fox here. He will come up with it. He will find his way out of these things, you know, as if that was a legitimate solution to anything. The answer was don't drink, but that wasn't going to happen. And the months went by and finally everything came to an end. We were in the flight of four airplanes and it was a radar plane, which is easy to fly. It was straight wing, two engines. That damn thing even had windshield wipers. It was the only plane I ever flew with windshield wipers. And I was flying along. We were coming back from a cross country. I wasn't sure. I wasn'T leading the flight, and I wasn' t quite with it. And I knew I had to get out of the plane. I'd had these attacks before, these panic attacks, and I had one getting a haircut, and I just had told the barber, I'm out of here. He says, I'm not through. Yes, you are. I'm gone, and Iím out. I can't. I've got to leave. And I had that. And I said, I've got to get out of this plane now. And the doesn't have ejection seat. It had a ramp that went down out of the bottom. And I don't even remember exactly how the whole thing worked. And I was studying it. And I realized the guy next to me doesn't know how to fly. He's a radar guy. So I can't get out Of the plane. So I called the flight leader and declared an oxygen emergency. Told him we've got oxygen problems over here. And if you have that, you have to land immediately. So he saw an Air Force base over there. We went down. I went over to the club, had a couple drinks. Whew, feel better. And they were happy that we declared the emergency because now we can drink some more at the Air Force Base while we're waiting to go home. And the next morning I went down and I took a look at the plane and I told the flight leader, I said, I'm not going to do this anymore. Alcohol was just announcing to me that I was going to give up flying. which I've been doing for 14 years. And I loved it. It was who I was. It was everything. And he said, what? And I said, I'm not going to do it anymore. All right. So they got somebody else to fly. And I didn't remember how that worked, but we got back. And he says, you have to go talk to the colonel. So I went in and I said colonel, I am not going to do this anymore. He said, why? I said I'm just not going to do it. I wouldn't talk about it. And he said, you're not? No. And he says, well, I have no choice but to write the commandant of the Marine Corps and tell them that they have to give you a new assignment. It'll take about three months. So I was assigned to do the legal work for the squadron for those three months, and I didn't look anybody in the eye. I sat in that room, and they would bring the work. And I could feel the rest of those pilots looking at me like, how did that piece of junk get in our squadron? And I just felt shame. I just couldn't look at anybody because I was such a screw-up. And I was so glad when I got orders away. Oddly enough, I went to air traffic control school. So I did that about a year and ended up in the nut ward and AA and eventually lost my whole career. But that was the moment on that cross country. And I was out in California at the Brentwood group. They have a big group, about 500 people. And the meeting is done by, they have an old-timer or somebody who's been around a while. They talk a little bit about their story, but then they talk about a topic. And then people in the audience raise their hands, and they used to have Chuck Chamberlain go there on a regular basis. And can you imagine sitting there, Chuck, could you tell me more about this or that? I mean, wow, wouldn't that have been something? And I was going to lead the meeting, and a lady was getting her 30-year medallion. Her husband drove her there. He was not in AA, but he went to meetings all the time. He knew the AA people. But that night, he was just going to go drink coffee and pick her up. And she mentioned my name, said he's leading the meeting. She said, was he a pilot? She said yes. She said I think I know him. Tell him to come out here. So I go out and see this guy. I've never seen him. He looks at me and he says, in 1962, you were in the flight of four F3D radar planes on a cross country. and you declared an oxygen emergency and all those planes landed and you never flew again. And I went, how do you know that? He said, I was in the plane with you. I went You were? And he said yes and he wasn't the radar guy he was a new pilot who had been recalled from American Airlines for the Cuban Missile Crisis And he later retired as a second senior pilot, an American. His name was Jim Heff. And we became friends after he told me the whole story. And we'd talk on the phone and all that. And the next day, he came up to Oxnard and brought the photographs from the squadron. He had all this big collection. And there's the colonel and the lieutenant and the other colonel. We had two lieutenant colonels. And I said, oh, yeah, I remember this and that and this and dat. And then he said, he said did you know how popular you were in that squadron? It broke our hearts that you were leaving. The colonel did everything he could. He called everyone he knew. How do I save this guy? What do I do? And we couldn't come up with anything. We felt we let you down. Well that's not the way I remember it. So, obviously one of us is wrong. And I've been sober long enough to realize I was the one that was wrong. And all that information that I had from 42 years ago had to go. I had to throw it away, erase it. So I went back to 1962 and changed three months of my past. People say you can't change your past. Oh, stick around. What is your past? It's your old ideas. So I took all those old ideas, shame, all that stuff, threw them away. When I think back on that, I go, boy, was I lucky to be with those guys. What a great bunch of guys. I had a disease. Nobody knew how to do anything about it. They would have given anything if they knew how to save me. Wow, that's a pleasant memory. It used to make me sick to think about it, so learn that. Just because you think you remember what happened and then you emotionally react to it when you recall it, there's a big chance you're wrong. A big chance you're wrong. And that's what spirituality is, is to see everything differently. And then you find out, well, actually, my mother was really trying as hard as she could. She was an alcoholic too. Wow, when I think about that. Actually, my brother was this. Actually, that first boss I had, boy, he gave me about six chances. And then he dumped me. And I've hated him to this day. I didn't really see his side. So we go back and we start changing and getting rid of all these wrong ideas. And then we emotionally react to the new truth. And it's fun. We just love our life. And we like the world. The world is a lot more understanding than we thought. and it's a wonderful transformation process to understand. That's why I tell that story, to illustrate how powerful it is and how wrong we are about so many things. I kid around. I heard a speaker say, my stories divide into two parts, what happened during the years that I drank and what I thought happened during the years that I drank and that captures it very well. it captures exactly what we're talking about. What I thought happened during my childhood, what I thought happen in grammar school, what I though happened in high school, that's just part of it. That's what you thought happened. And you're looking at it from a very self-centered, frightened place. And so what you see is very different than what really happened. And so in a literal way, we all live in our own little world. We used to use that as a derogatory term. You know her, she lives in her own little world. Well, so do you. And so do I. And you could be married for 40 years and you still don't know that other person's little world completely. There's just, it's impossible. We know a lot about it, but we don't Know It. Their world is separate from ours. And the way we resolve all this is to each one of us destroy our own little world through this process and try to all move from our little world into God's world. And that's the journey in here. Leave ours behind and try To Get to God's. This is the ultimate challenge for a human being, and few people really make it all the way home before they die. St. Francis did. It came damn close when you read his life and think about his prayer. He certainly gives us a clue as to what it looks like. And so this is the, that story illustrates smashing part of my little world. And a writer that I was reading, he said, So that means on this planet there's 6.7 people living in their own little world? and someone said, yeah, but there's the real world. And he said, yeah, but no one lives there. I thought it was an interesting observation. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I live there, but there is a real world too. Yeah, well, no one loves there. That's a great little thought to lose sleep over for a week. And the secret to that, if you ever run into these secrets, the secret is pray to get rid of the desire to find the answer. That's the only way. It's much faster because there is no answer and you're never going to find it and you are going to found out that spirituality has nothing to do with learning anything. It has to do with smashing old stuff so that you can see something new. Learning about it doesn't help. It's just academic knowledge, like I learned about God. I knew where he was born. I knew this. I knew that. But it didn't help my life at all until I got into God's house and God got into my heart. And he said, hi, I'm here. And I went, God, this is great. So I experienced God as a lot different than learning about him. And as we talked about earlier, the people who mostly get to experience him are ones who are driven down to somewhere near desperation so that they smash that ego shell enough to let us look out and go, Whoa, there's something out there besides my world. And how far we get out of there is up to our own individual trying, seeking. And that's what the program sets us up to do. It puts us in a perfect position through our steps to become God-seekers. How much you seek is up to you. See, the group only takes us so far. Then we're going to go as far as we can. And so it's fun to share about that. And maybe you can get people who are interested in studying a book. These are all outside activities, but there are things to do to keep moving ahead. All within the confines of AA, all part of our wonderful program. It just enabled us to go as an individual further. Now, not further than the guy next to us because there's no way of measuring that. Further than where we used to be. You can only measure yourself. you may look at somebody over here and go wow look at that guy he's grumpy all the time whatever it is he may be so far ahead of us it's ridiculous so I don't like to ever judge anybody because people will surprise the heck out of you they will suddenly do the most selfless thing and you just realize oh my god anyway I did go Just to finish out my Marine Corps, I did become an air traffic controller. I don't know how I made it through the school. And I want to thank, there was a guy, I don' t know who it is. There are certain people that I'd like to go back and thank. And one of them was the flight surgeon that was giving me my exam for flight school. And he, I never mentioned polio because I knew that would disqualify me from a lot of things. So I just never wrote it down. But there was the atrophy of some muscles in the back of my right shoulder, and he was feeling my back and poking, and he put his hand in this kind of an indentation, and he said, what's this? And I went, I don't know. And I could hear him, and he had his finger in there, and he Was going, hmm. And then he went, okay. I'd like to find him and thank him for saying okay. And then there was a seaman, third class, who was in charge of the swimming in flight school. And you had to swim a mile in a pool. And I had drowned, almost drowned as a kid. And the water was, I loved to dive around and play, but being able to relax in the water was impossible. So I was not making, I was now passing this test. So he had me back every night. And if you don't make it in a certain time, that's the end of flight school. It could be learning about engines. It could this. It could Morse code. It could do this. And so I went there every night and says, OK, Lieutenant, try the side stroke. And I'm going and going, and I'd come up, and I would be half a lap shy when the time came up. So it was the last night, and I'm counting, and I'm looking at the clock, and I'm just going, my heart sank. And he said, nice going, Lieutenant, you made it. I'd like to find that guy. And the guy I'd like to find was, when I went to air traffic control school, was, I don't know his name, but he was a Marine captain. And he brought an old, they had some training planes down there so that the people who were going to control airplanes would go up and ride in the plane that was being controlled by their friends so they would see what was happening while they're on the ground talking. So I'm in the back seat, and we're going, and I knew this guy or he knew me or something. So we sat and talked. Obviously, I knew what it looked like to make a GCA. And we got through doing that, and he said, Would you like to fly it for a while? And it had been about six months, and I felt better. and I used to teach in that airplane and I took that thing and flew it did every acrobatic maneuver I could remember it was so nice and I gave it back to him and that was the last time I ever flew anything and I'd like to thank that guy because at the time I didn't know what a big deal he was doing for me to give me those little things so there's probably everybody in this room if we could go back There are people we'd like to go back and thank, and we had no idea. Like I was talking about yesterday, go thank that cop that pulled you over, gave you a DWI and got you in here. Life is filled with those things. So I made it through the air traffic control school. I went to Cherry Point briefly, and then from my last year of drinking, I was overseas in an air traffic patrol unit, and I couldn't. The enlisted men saw me and saw how bad I was, So they just said, Captain, you just try to get here in the morning on your bicycle. Stay in the tent. Don't go near the radar. Don't you talk to any airplane. And we'll take care of you. So that was what I was doing. I was trying to survive as I became a hopeless alcoholic. I couldn't eat anymore. So I lost 50 pounds. And I'm just drinking vodka and soup or juice. I put vodka in the juice, and I was shaking. And it was just awful trying to make it through that year. And I got sent back to Quantico, Virginia to go to a career school to get promoted so you could become a colonel and so on down. And I was hallucinating going to the school. I'm right near the end. My seizure is just around the corner. It's just another month. And then I'll be locked up in the nut ward. But I'm still trying to go to this school, and I would get there, and I couldn't remember where my classroom was. I couldn'T remember the combination to my locker. I wouldn'T know where I sat in the room. I mean, every day it was just people were looking at me. I came in one day. I lived off the base in Quantico. I drove in, went up to school, and the school buildings were gone. I couldn't believe it. So I went back to the front gate to report it. And there was a Lance Corporal out there who had just saluted me in. I just went in, and now I'm coming back out, made a U-turn, came up, and he looked at me, and he said, yes, Captain? And I said, Corporal, junior school is gone. I just went up there to go to class. It's gone. He said, Gone? And I said, Yes. So he got one of the cars with the red light and we drove up to junior school. It was back. And I just looked at him, and I just said, it's back. So, I think we'd all love to be in that guard check when he got back to tell the officer of the day what just happened. Anyway, in one of those classes, I did have a grand mal seizure. I was sent up to Bethesda Naval Hospital, put in where all the good guys are. What could have happened to this poor man? See, they had no alcohol program. And so I'm there for about five days, and I start hallucinating and have the delirium treatments, and it was just terrifying. The CIA was trying to trap me and accuse me of being mentally crazy and lock me up forever and so on down. And I finally started screaming, and they put me in a straitjacket, And I was locked up for six months in the mental ward. And somehow, and they had no alcohol program, but the AA group in Bethesda talked to the head psychiatrist who let them bring a meeting in. So I got to my first meeting by the corpsman came in the place and said, all drunks fall in, and there were three of us. And we went down to that meeting, and they told their stories. And I thought it was the greatest thing in the world. I told the guy afterwards, I said, this is exciting. You guys really got something. If I run into a guy that needs this, I'd like to get your number. And that guy, little red-headed guy, he started poking my chest. And he said, hey, buddy, let me ask you something. Let me ask You something. He said, which one of us is going to go out and get in his car and drive home to his family? And which one of us Is going to put his little blue bathrobe on and go upstairs and get locked up like an animal? And I went, geez, I just met the guy. I was encountering A.A.'s truthfulness right off the bat. So when I finally got released, And it was, you know, I was let out. I'm back to duty, but I'm not going back to that school. That school was long over with. And I checked in with the officer of the day. And evidently he had gotten the word from Bethesda that an alcoholic was returning to Quantico. And he went, an alcoholic is returning to Quantum Co. So he felt responsible to make sure I didn't have a drink. So he called a major and he said, can you take this man home and don't let him drink? This shows you how primitive all this was. And it was a Friday and the guy who was going to take me home was another major. He said, well listen, I'm going to happy hour in the club. And you're going to go with me but you're gonna stand over in the corner and just have a Coke. And so I went over in the corner and I'd been standing there a while and he had a few drinks and it wasn't enough. He went up to the bar and rang that thing where you get everybody's attention and he pointed over at me and said, That man's an alcoholic. If you see him drinking, tell me. So that's what the dark ages of alcoholism looked like. It was just, he didn't, he just didn't want anything. He didn't know what it was, but he didn' t want to be caught having an alcoholic do something on his watch. But anyway, I got a good job. I got onto a very special team. I don' t know how I got this job. It was headed by a general and we went around, we went all over Europe to the Royal Marines and the Dutch Marines and the German Marines and put on a big show about the future of the Marine Corps. We had an aviator and artillery man and a naval gunfire guy and an infantry guy and we put on this big thing and Huntley Brinkley did the lead in to the whole thing. It was like a new show five years ahead to show all the weapons and the new things and I somehow made it through that. I had six months sobriety. I'm with the Royal Marines and they're toasting the Queen and I thought I've got this damn glass in my hand and I said I could start an international incident if I don't drink but somehow I didn't I put it up and we have the queen okay, okay now if I'm sober you know I'd just be over there and they'd say where's your drink who cares about the queen I'm just sitting here I'm having a good time but there was a lot of pressure you know when you're new but somehow I made it through all that and I didn'T get promoted to major and I'm out of the Marine Corps with my six kids and I'M trying to get a job and I'm doing this, and I had a big resentment about how the Marine Corps treated me. And so at a discussion meeting, somebody asked if anybody had a topic. Yes. Getting thrown out of the Marine Corp. I'd like that to be the topic. And they said, that's not a good topic, Sandy. I mean, we just, how are we going to comment on it? Well, I want to hear it. It's my topic. All right, all right. The topic is getting thrown out of the Marine Corps. First guy. Just say the serendipity. It works for everything. Now, the reason I brought that topic up was I figured somebody in that audience was going to say, you just got thrown out? Are you available? I own a corporation up here in D.C. I'm looking for a man like you. How about 65,000 a year in your own car? Expense account? What do you think? I don't hear that. I hear, say the serenity prayer. Next guy. Double up on your meetings. You've got a lot of time. Go help the new person. Don't think about yourself. Thank you, thank you. Say the prayer of St. Francis. St. Francisco was a Marine and he learned to live without anything. And I went home that night and I said, I don't really think I explained my problem very well to these people. I had no idea they were giving me the secret to everything. You know, I remember years later, I think I went through a divorce and now there's bankruptcy. You know? Just because you're sober, you can have some fun with life. And I think I brought up, oh, I'm facing bankruptcy after 12 years or whatever it was. So, has anybody been through anything like that? Same thing. Oh yeah, bankruptcy. Serenity prayer. Just want to say the serenity prayers as often as you can. The next guy said, well, why don't you write down the eating meetings? At least you can get free food when you go there. Work with new people. Take your mind off of being broke. Prayer of St. Francis. He took a vow of poverty. So, completely different problem, exactly the same solution. And, of course, we all know it. There's only one solution in here. And Chuck Chamberlain said it. I brought it up yesterday. There's Only One Problem. It includes all problems, conscious separation from God. There's One Answer. It includes All Answers, conscious contact with God. So the answer to getting through them, thank you. So the Answer to every problem is to get closer to God. We can talk about it, but eventually we go there. And when do we go? As a last resort. After we try every other thing. Well, I talked to a therapist. Well, how did this? Now I'm running. And now I'm over here. Oh, God, none of that stuff works. I'm going to go to God. So, just like acceptance, just like forgiveness that I talked about at the beginning of the meeting. Go to God first. Leave all the rest of it out. Leave it all out. Just go there first. Just bring whatever it is. God, now I need your help with this. And just stay with Him and thank Him for being there. Tell Him you'd rather be with Him than anywhere else. And your whole life will be transformed and I love you all and thank you very much. Thank you.