Step 2 and the 50,000-Foot Fall – Sandy B.

Thank you very much, and hello everybody. My name is Sandy Beach, and I'm an alcoholic. How y'all doing? It is a pleasure to be here, and I do like to dance, that's true, and there's a bunch of us that go to this jitterbug dancing every weekend. I keep in shape, if nothing else. If I didn't used to do that when I first got sober, I can tell you that. I wasn't going out on that dance floor without help. And I remember that was one of the great powers of alcohol. Somebody said, you don't know how to dance? Drink this. It was almost like one of The Promises of vodka. You will intuitively know how To dance. Pour it down and I knew how to Dance. Isn't that amazing what was in that stuff called alcohol? There was all kinds of wonderful things in there. Anyway, I am an alcoholic, and I came into AA on Pearl Harbor Day of 1964. And so if I make it up to December this year, that'll be 30 years in this organization. And I'm very, very grateful. it's really been a trip I'll tell you I had a lot of exciting things happen when I was drinking but things that have happened since I've been sober have been remarkable let me just talk a little bit about my drinking story I think we do that for the new people so that they don't think we dragged in some imposter to uh talk about spirituality or something you know and they go well i don't relate to that guy so we tell our stories and then you go whoa another nut um i certainly didn't start out to be an alcoholic i was trying to um be an athlete not smoke and behave myself and i was in the Catholic Church and they had a very intimidating style of presenting God to me I don't know my sister was right next to me she didn't hear it that way but I heard this terrible story about getting punished and all these terrible things that were going to happen and it seems to me there was something about if you don't drink until you're 21 you get this is back a long long time ago they may have changed the rules because I've been out of there a long time but it's to the best of my recollection you got like a quarter of a million years off in purgatory if you didn't drink until you were 21 and I knew I was going to need every one of those because there is just I couldn't turn around without screwing up according to their calculator especially one summer I come from New England I remember this summer probably in the early 40s and there was an epidemic of impure thoughts in our neighborhood and the calculator on purgatory was just going ding-a-ding-a oh wow so I'm one of those that I was probably sober 15 years before I made a dent in in guilt you know what i mean and if you read the pamphlet the members i view of alcoholics anonymous the author his name is mcginnis i think um makes that point that guilt was the first to come and the last to go you know in terms of getting rid of things that stand in in the way between us and having a nice free peace of mind and joyful life So anyway, I was trying to last as long as I could before I had this drink. There was a lot of pressure to have a drink from other guys, and they would just say, what do you mean you're not drinking? We're drinking, it's wonderful, get in here. I held out until I got in college, which boy, by today's standards, that's amazing because we have people who are just starting college with seven years sobriety. So I, you know, I got a real late start drinking. But I got in this university. I grew up in New Haven. I went to the local university there. And there was just all these guys came in from all over the country. And they were all smarter than I was. And they Were all richer than I Was. And they all knew how to dance. And they knew how To talk to girls. And all of them knew everything that I didn't know. But they didn't know I didn't know it. But I knew I didn' t know it, and I didn''t want them to find out. And so I would be very apprehensive about getting into conversations with them. And there was this one night, and this is, I can remember it as clear as a bell, probably a room about this big, and whoever was in charge of this thing said, all right, you 50 guys go in this room and mix and meet each other. That's what's going to happen over the next two hours. Well, that was the most dreaded thing that you could ask me to do, was to go introduce myself and meet complete strangers that I felt intimidated by. And I just dreaded this thing. I knew about it a couple days ahead of time and I was thinking seriously of drinking in order to go there. No, I'm not going to do that. So I got there late to minimize the amount of time that I'd have to be there. And I walk in and people are already talking and little groups around. And I would walk up to the first group where there were three guys in a conversation, and as I came up, I could see all three of them turn and look at me, and just with their eyes they said, no, don't come into this group. I can take a hint. Oh, I'm not going to be in there, though. So I just come over here and there's about seven guys sort of having a conversation. and you know the group is someone comes up they all turn same signal it was like no this is not this group either okay so there's a larger group in the back back there and i went back there and they all turned and just went no don't come in here don't even think about it and that's what i saw in everybody's eyes i went all the way around the room and everyone in that room said we don't want to meet you that's what i saw in those people's eyes so i came around and came back to the beginning and said well i guess i might as well leave i mean i just didn't see how it was going to get so the world that i lived in was very threatening as to me so i decided instead of leaving that i would have a drink because my roommates had told me the great powers of alcohol they said this stuff will make you feel wonderful it just gets inside to you and it just is amazing what it does to you so i went up to the bartender who was in this room and said um i'll have scotch and soda i've heard somebody else order one of those and he brought it over and i sort of sniffed it and you know first time you smell whiskey it doesn't smell like it's going to be particularly good and i remember taking a few tastes and it didn't taste very good and i said what the hell get it down here and let's see what's going to happen and nothing happened so i gave back to the guy and said let me have another one of those things and i poured that down i'm waiting and waiting and nothing's happening so i gave him the glass again and i'm just finishing that third drink and i still don't feel anything i can still remember this strange thing i'm just standing there waiting for something that's supposed to happen and I take another look at the room and those 50 guys that were there are gone and they have been replaced by 50 of the friendliest people you have ever seen. I look back all of the groups in that room were looking at me going please come over and talk to us Please come over. It was just wonderful. I don't know what happened to them. They just became so friendly, they could hardly wait for me to get over there. And instead of being shy, I can remember having this feeling, you guys are just going to have to wait your turn. I'm going to start here and then I'll be there. And it was like, boy, are they lucky that I'm gonna be joining them shortly. and so there is my introduction to alcohol and alcoholism because alcohol changed the world that I lived in that's what it did for me and it changed it into a wonderful world damn that was a great world especially after about four drinks it got crappy after about 20 but right in there around four it was the greatest world I mean it just made all of you human beings, you fellow human beings became just the most magnificent people. I could have just loved it after three or four drinks I just felt so close to anybody that I was drinking with I don't know if you had that feeling we're going to die together there was just that wonderful closeness and I can remember being in strange towns sometimes, go into a bar sit there drinking and after about five drinks the bartender comes over and i'm sobbing and he's going what's the matter something wrong with the whiskey and i said don't i was just overcome by the magnificence of your customers i'm just looking around at the people in here and it's like something that michelangelo ought to paint you know these are these people are saints and so that was the power of alcohol to just make my world um so friendly it was just wonderful to be in that world and that's where i wanted to stay and as soon as alcohol wore off the old world came back and it was i didn't like it well i didn'T know all this was happening i thought i was drinking the same as everybody else and i'm sure you all did the same thing you thought you were pretty much the same as everybody else and so i just went along now my grades immediately took a nosedive and all athletics that was over with and i started getting arrested and in fights and trouble and all of these things but it never occurred to me to not drink even though i could pinpoint that it was drinking that was doing this and i'll tell you why because alcohol was giving me so many rewards, I was willing to pay this price. So you get your teeth knocked out. That's a small price to pay for everything I'm getting from alcohol. So you're in jail. But that's worth it of what I'm Getting Out About. So I was willin' to consciously take some abuse, so to speak, in my head in terms of having the right to continue drinking because drinking was so important to me. It became a big answer in my ability to move along through life. So the grades are going terrible. I did graduate barely. I mean, I'm telling you, that was the closest thing to get that diploma. And the Korean War was on and everybody had to join the military and a bunch of guys were standing around on Saturday afternoon drinking beer and one guy said, let's go join the Marines. And I went, oh, okay. And we all went down and finished the beer and went in, okay, signed the name and then, you know, boom, shaved the head. That's why I'm growing a ponytail in the 60s. I was trying to grow a ponytail and the Marine Corps wouldn't let me. So I'm in and um it was it was a bunch of fanatics i mean these people liked pain that was what i found just loved pain as long as it hurt and it was awful let's do more of it i mean this was the infantry and boy after about four months of that i was looking for an alternative and that's when i was in this training class and they had a movie a training movie about pilots and the training movie about pilots was in a bar and the pilots were at the bar in their uniforms and they were all handsome and this and that and they would be talking like this you know, the airplanes and then later on they were out in the flight line they had these scarves and everything and I went man this is what I want now of course I'd never been in an airplane in my life I didn't know anything about airplanes so I signed up for flight school and I got accepted and I passed the test and everything and all of a sudden I'm on a commercial plane flying down to Pensacola, Florida to go to flight school, and I'm getting airsick on the commercial plane. And then the old SNJ that I was taking instruction in, I got sick about the first six flights and come back and had to clean the airplane out. Things weren't looking good, but that cleared up, and I went on and became a fighter pilot. And I flew jet fighters for the next 10 and a half, 11 years. So that's where I did most of my drinking was in that environment. It was a lot, very exciting. Had some overseas tours and we had some fast airplanes and you're young and you'RE immortal and other guys die but you don't. Just go out all night and party and then go out and fly. It was just, it was very exciting, that's all I can tell you. It was so exciting, you don't even notice the progression of this alcohol and how it's just slowly coming in and taking over my whole life. And it had. It just became the central, most important thing was to always have access to alcohol and physical symptoms were starting to develop. I became a flight instructor, then I went back into photo squadron and when i was in that that was in near the end of my jet flying i was in a very high performance airplane at that time and it was hard to fly which one of the few that i remember that this damn thing was just not that good a plane and uh people were busting their butt just landing it you know what i mean it was one of those things you really had to be on the ball and i'm coming down there with going through withdrawals in every flight you know because i'm not drinking i'm letting 12 hours go without a drink and of course you don't drink for 12 hours you're in withdrawal you ought to be drinking if you're going to be flying because withdrawal is the worst thing you can be having if you think about it because that's what you are have just the worst control over your body and your mind so i'm trying to fly this thing and having these loss of vision I'm sweating my heart is racing I feel like I'm gonna pass out I mean all these things and none of those are in the training manual there's no page and the Crusader what do you do if you're suffering alcoholic withdrawal while flying this airplane the people probably assumed incorrectly that there wouldn't be alcoholics flying these things but there were so we had to come up with our own procedures for what you do and i can remember one time i thought it's going to pass out and i said what do you do when you're passing out and I said well here would be a logical thing. And my answer was to get a death grip on the ejection seat curtain. And my theory was that if you passed out, you'd fall forward and it would fire you out of that airplane. And the chute opens automatically and then you'd probably wake up coming down with the fresh air and all of that. And your airplane's gone but you're okay all you have to do is make up some story of what happened but I didn't have to do that but I did have you know this is what I'm saying I think alcoholics have to deal with problems that no one thought were ever going to exist if you know what I mean it's just I won't even go into what you do when you throw up in an oxygen mask but I'm sure everybody who whatever your job was i'm sure you have stories of that nobody else with that job had to deal with that problem and i don't care what it is um but there came a time when i just felt this this was getting real bad you know i was in the plane with me and i knew that my life was on the line with this guy who didn't know how to fly anymore and so i went and saw a doctor and told him about this and they agreed this was a terrible problem the planes cost a lot of money and we're going to send me down and they're going take me out of um north carolina and send me down to pensacola florida where all these expert doctors are and we'll leave you there for two weeks and they're gonna find out what is wrong with you well this was in the early sixties and there was no alcohol programs anywhere none in the military there was no such thing as a disease of alcoholism so you couldn't even have it so now I'm down there and they're trying to see what's wrong so the psychiatrist is talking to me the flight surgeons are talking to be the dentists are talking to me the heart guys are talking to me the eye doctors are talking to me and they are all studying this person and I'm getting drunk every night and I reek of alcohol I come in and they go man you smell like you've been drinking I have been drinking well that's probably why you smell like this so at the end of the time they said his hands tremble all the time his eyes are blood shot and his skin sweats he's just always covered with a clammy sweat his mind is erratic he's very not clear at all and he has high blood pressure and he reeks of alcohol What do you think this is? I mean, you know, those were the clues. And none of the regular doctors could figure it out, so they left it up to the psychiatrist, and I still have the paperwork, and I was written up, this guy's problems are clearly a childhood fear of flying. who has just now caught up with him. You know, I think I had a couple thousand hours at that time. I've been aboard carriers. I mean, we did a lot of things for fear of flying to suddenly catch up. So I was grounded from flying and that hurt because that was like my whole identity. That's who I was. And I just felt sort of naked walking around waiting to see what the Marine Corps was going to do with me. So they're up there at headquarters of the Marine Corp figuring out, what do you do with a captain who's been in the Marine Korps for 12 years and he's been a fighter pilot the whole time? What are we going to doing with him? He's now in such bad shape he can't fly those airplanes. And three months later I had orders to be an air traffic controller. Yeah. My job is to bring the planes in in the bad weather when they can't see the runway. And so you could see there was a lot of people who had a problem with my alcoholism besides me. And that's what I did the last two years of my drinking before I came into AA. And I'm very lucky that I wasn't involved in flying a plane into a mountain or something like that. One of the main reasons was I was the officer in charge of this unit over in Japan, And the troops, who really have all the expertise anyway, they said, Captain, come on down to unit, hang around, do whatever you want, but don't go near that radar. Your job is to get on your bicycle and try and find the unit every morning. And, you know, I swear they were moving it. You know what I mean? Because there were days I'd just go, I know it's here. Now it's around the other side of the field, Captain. So we're into my last year drinking and it's just survival drinking now because I don't have any waiting 12 hours for this or that. So I became a daily drinker, drinking vodka. I stopped hanging around with anybody, wouldn't go eating. Quonset Hut where they had the meals, I'd just get stuff and bring it in the room. Most of that wasn't eating. I was just trying to drink vodka and just stop having nightmares. You know, all those things that were happening are just very personal. This whole hideous scene is the tips taking place inside of my head and I lost 50 pounds from what I weigh now pretty skinny and just so I guess you know you could say just sort of staying around in the hut dying and my friends would come in and talk to me and they didn't know what to do finally I got transferred that was the big thing that's what you did with alcoholics if I recall back then you just wait till they get transferred and then there's somebody else's problem but that's how I got here in this area to Quantico and I was in a school down there to become a career general or something you know heavy-duty studying schools and I couldn't find the school I couldn't fight I mean every day it was a hilarious I just come in I would know where I sat I wouldn't just amazing how that people couldn't see what was happening but they could but about a month into that school I had a seizure and just about bit my tongue off in the class and you know when you have those seizures that just stops everything they used to we used to have an AA all the time and they were great training aides for new people I don't know if I need the program and some guy over here that's what's gonna happen to you if you don't take a fearless moral inventory and you old-timers remember this and the secretary i mean whoever was the secretary in charge of compulsion they'd run out in the kitchen and get a spoon and wrap a napkin around them the two big guys would hold the guy's jaw open and you just make sure the tongue didn't go down there and you call the emergency squad and um convulsions never bothered the person having them that was strange i remember in mine too it'd be minor they regain consciousness they go hi you know like it's okay fred just like oh i'm all right and they go back into it i guess it's very very life-threatening but it doesn't seem that way to the person having it So anyway, that got me to the hospital and I went to Bethesda and put me in an ambulance and now they're looking at me for three days to figure out what caused the convulsion. Again, clueless as to what my problem was. And I went into the DTs and I had to, just like Ray Milland, I mean, I just had these hallucinations and they were after me and I was going to get them and it was scary. and so I got put in a straitjacket and locked up in the nut ward they just, whoa this guy is crazy so I was locked up there for six months they just put you in and goodbye it's real funny because there's no way to get out of there the more you say there's nothing wrong with you the more they say that's what everybody says really I'm fine I just, and AA had been in the hospital, like I heard, in 62, and they were there for about a year, and then the head psychiatrist determined they didn't need AA anymore. And so there hadn't been any AA meetings in Bethesda Naval Hospital, and sometime probably in November of 64, the AA talked the psychiatrist into letting them bring a meeting in on Tuesday nights. I think it still meets over there on Tuesdays. And so that's how I got to AA. Corman came in the nut ward, said all drunks fall in. Christ face. And three of us went down and listened to this meeting and I was very impressed and I thought it was wonderful and I told the guy if I ever ran into a guy with a drinking problem I'd send him right over the door. Well, I didn't connect that it was me. and when they let me out as an outpatient within a matter of a few weeks I started drinking again and I was just smuggling vodka back into the nut ward and I knew they were going to catch me and then they told me that my career was over if I ever had another drink and so one Sunday I was getting ready to go back you know, as an Outpatient you have to go during the working hours Monday through Friday and I KNEW they were gonna get me that Monday So I decided to join AA, the real AA, you know, the outside AA, over the weekend. And then I could blame it all on AA. So I joined them, which is what you told me to do, and I'm drunk. You know what I mean? It would be AA's fault. But I didn't count on one thing, my sponsor. I didn'T count on that part of the plan. And the problem was when I called AA to join, they sent this guy over to my house. and he was a giant he was an infantry marine with a shaved head and his neck was this thick when he knocked on the door to my house it was like the house went and you open the door and no light comes through the door that's the way I remember it and he just you know looked at me and he said my name is Bill This is a 12-step call. I taught you listen. And then he just got my family in and said, Is he really bad? And they all squealed. Yeah, he's terrible. So it was, okay, get in the car. We're going to a meeting. I said, whoa, wait, whoa. Let's discuss it. There's no discussion. Get in the card. You know, and I could see like I was going to get hurt if I didn't get in the car or off to Manassas. And I went to my first meeting and that started it. I was trying to get out of it, but I could never get away from this guy. It was like every night he'd just say, I'm going to pick you up tomorrow night at 7.30. Don't you drink. He'd just drive away. And I needed a drink bad, but I knew that he was going to be there the next night. So initially, I'm just staying sober out of fear of sponsoring. I wouldn't buy in this program. I wouldn' t buy in anything. I didn' t like you. I didn't nothing. Talk of a program of attraction. I wasn' t attracted to all this happiness and ha, ha, isn' t sobriety wonderful? It' s not wonderful. It sucks. I don' t see anything wonderful. You know, in the beginning, you didn' T know this is wonderful. But then I'm getting, you know, pretty soon I have a month. And then I got two months. I can' t believe it. You know? Pretty soon it' s six months. And, geez, I'll tell you a true story. I probably had about a year and a half with this group that we belonged to down near Quantico, the Dumfries Triangle Group. And my sponsor was the program chairman, the secretary, the treasurer, the general service rep, the grapevine rep. You know what I mean? He was all of these things. And we only had about four or five people in the group. And a couple of them drank all the time, especially a jockey named Dave. and he would be in and out drinking. And so he was this mainstay of the group, keeping this thing together. So he calls me Sunday. The meeting went on Sunday. He said, we're going over early tonight for a business meeting. And we get there and it's just the two of us. And he calls the podium out and the whole meeting was inside the podium. The coffee pot was in the podium, had the door on the back. You just pulled it out and you had an AA meeting. He had all the signs and the baskets and the sugar. Everything was in that podium, and he had the combination to the lock. And so he put the podium up here, and I'm sitting down there, and he says, calling this meeting to order? I've been the program chairman, the general service, the secretary, the treasurer, and it's customary to rotate these jobs, and we're looking for... We're looking for volunteers! so you know who has his hands up what the hell am I going to do and actually I felt pretty good I had the combination to this thing I'm making the coffee and they gave me a key to the church you know sort of like somebody trusted me with something and I liked all of these jobs except the program chairman now why didn't I like the program chairman job because you could get rejected when you went up and said could you come down no I won't well that's it for a month I'll work up my courage to ask someone else in about another three weeks and so he had gotten speakers for the next three weeks so I had a whole month to get my first meeting and I kept avoiding asking people I mean I think I was so negative when they thought I'd walk up and I'd say to somebody you don't want to come down and talk at our meeting it's a long drive from where you live so i can understand that you're probably going to tell me no and that's okay so it's real hard for me to just say hey come down and talk at this meeting because it was a long way away from all the other meetings but i finally got up my courage and asked this army major from fort belvoir he was the club officer over there jack i can still remember him i said Jack, would you tell her that? Yeah, I'll come over and tell her. Oh, phew, thank you. And I never did get a second speaker. I only had the one speaker. So my sponsor called all the other groups, Manassas and down in Fredericksburg, and he said, come up to the meeting. This is Sandy's first time. He's going to read the preamble and introduce the speech. So we all want to give him support. So I'm there, and Dave the jockey shows up, and he's drunk, and he says, he's in the front row, but that's all right. And I introduced Jack, the speaker, and he looked funny when he was getting up there. Little did I know, he gets up to the podium and said, Hi, my name is Jack, and I'm an alcoholic, and I'm here tonight to resign from Alcoholics Anonymous. And I went, oh, you know, I couldn't believe my ears. He said, when I came here about a year ago, he said, I was having a terrible problem with my drinking, but you taught me how to drink. And now I drink a fifth a day and nothing happens to me. I'm just going... I said, they're going to hear about this at General Service Office in New York. I'm going to be thrown out of AA. Well, he was drunk. And he's up there resigning from AA and talking about how now he can drink all he wants and he'll be leaving us and going off into the sunset and I didn't know how to stop him. Now I'd have that guy stopped in about one second. So I'm sitting there, and my sponsor's just watching this with great pleasure. He's just... Because I'm just squirming on the front row and turning red and all that. The guy who saved me was the jockey. The jockey is listening to this guy with great interest, talking about drinking a fifth a day and not getting drunk. and finally he stands up and he says you're a goddamn liar up there so i drink a fifth every day and i get drunk as hell they start shoving each other pretty soon they're outside you can hear all this yelling and screaming sponsor gets up to the podium and he He says, now be sure and come back next week, everybody. He still kids me about that meeting. God, it was that... Of course, nothing happened. You know, we just went on. And AA survives all these things. Just one note about my sponsor, Bill. last august was his 30th anniversary and so i took him out to dinner and this is unbelievable the restaurant a german restaurant down near quantico is where we went and that restaurant used to be the house i lived in when he 12 stepped me and so we came in and we're sitting at a table that's about this far from the front door that he came through and we both sort of said it about halfway through the meal we looked over at that door and we said, you know, it's a long way from that door to this table. And it really was because I'll tell you, there's a lot of things have happened since he walked through that door. And, um, it all has to do with sobriety. And that's what I want to talk about now. Um, for those of you that are new is to just give you some thoughts that I have about sobriety and this program that we have here because it's not an easy program to understand when you first come in. It really isn't, and the reason it's NOT easy to understand is you never understand it. You see, we come from the intellectual world when we come into Alcoholics synonymous. And we're coming from that world into the spiritual world. Now, in the intellectual world, when somebody presents you with a solution, with analyzing a problem or whatever, you understand it ahead of time. They diagram it on the blackboard and you can see, just step one, two, three, click, and you Can see that this will in fact produce the results that you're talking about but in a spiritual program you cannot see this it'll never be apparent from reading it that it works it never you won't read the 12 steps and go boy i sure relate to that that's just as clear as a bell i read those things and i said i don't think i've explained my problem properly or you wouldn't be telling me that this is the answer to my problem. Where's the $2,000 loan? I don't see any step in here. Where's the job? I mean, I got serious problems about what you're just screwing around meditating. I mean I got stuff to do. You know what I mean? So as we analyze our own problems and our own answers This stuff seems like it just has no connection whatsoever, and it never will. It will never look like it's going to work. What has to be done in the spiritual environment, in order to see it work, you have to do it. Then as soon as you do it, you can see it. So it's a different type of thing, and then it's very hard to get used to that when we come in here. so I like to think of the 12 steps as a series of actions that we take that we don't believe in you don't believe in them before you do them you don' t look at them and go right I can see that it's clear as a bell I do that I'm going to be fine but you know we've done this before we've seen things that didn't look like they would work one of the big ones was drinking did drinking really look like it would work Did you understand that intellectually, that if you drank this four ounces of vodka, you wouldn't know how to dance? Did you? Did you not understand that? Could you read the label on the bottle and say, oh yeah, I can see why. You just drink it and it goes titty-teat and your feet just start going like that. So if you chose, you could still be a doubting Thomas about alcohol. Now, I'm not drinking that stuff till you prove. On a blackboard, that it will teach me how to dance and it'll make my world wonderful. You couldn't if you wanted to play the intellectual game with alcohol, but what did you do? What did I do? I took the word of the other guys. They said, I know it sounds crazy. This really will make you feel... And I took their word, so I said, give me that stuff. Boom! Then I did it. I experienced it. Then I believed it. Then I knew. So the same situation comes true here in Alcoholics Anonymous. the other people who came before you are the reason that you're willing to try something that you cannot possibly intellectually believe in but you take their word for it and that's what faith is all about so we just have faith in this program so i would make that observation to those of you that are new it just it'll never look like it's going to work our minds will always be trying to come up with answers other than spiritual answers as to what our problems are and what we ought to do about them. And that's why meetings are so important, so that we remind each other, don't listen to that shit you just shot up today. This is the answer. Remember? Oh yeah, yes, serenity prayer and meetings and then we just keep pushing each other back into this solution because it's a very powerful solution but it'll never look like it is the solution it sure will if you keep doing it as long as you're doing it every single day that solution will look it'll just be there it'll be as clear as a bell the spiritual side of ourselves will become apparent but as soon as we stop working on it it disappears and just this human side comes back and then there's problems and then we're the center of the universe and we have all these problems so that would be one observation i would make if you knew The other one I would make is God. That's one of the great things we have to do when we come into AA. We have to somehow change our mind about a higher power, and we all have different ideas when we arrive here, and many of us are not interested in anything to do with God. And we come in here, and we think it's a religious program, and they're going to tell us all about God. And I would submit to you that AA doesn't do that at all. I don't think AA ever tries to convince anybody of the existence of God. But I'll tell you what we're good at. We specialize in convincing you of the need for God. That's what we do. And we do that by teaching what the disease is, that you're powerless over alcohol. And if you can understand that you are powerless over alcohol, then the only answer to powerlessness is power. You can't learn your way out of powerlessness. You can'T study all about alcohol and then avoid taking the first drink. If you study and get a Ph.D. in alcoholism from Rutgers University, where they give out the Ph. Ds these days in alcoholismo, all you will be is a smart drunk. You will still be drunk because it will not help you to stay sober learning all about alcoholism. So knowledge isn't helpful. power is what's helpful and so if your problem is that you are powerless then we suggest that you ought to bust your butt trying to find a higher power and so it isn't that you believe in one it's that you have to believe in one or it's over i like to think about this especially our second step since i was a pilot i always like to use the analogies that i'm familiar with but But if you were brand new, if you're struggling, if there's somebody out here who's new and you're struggling with this higher power concept in Alcoholics Anonymous, maybe this will help you. When we talk about coming to believe that a power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity, that involves changing our mind. We have Chapter 5 talks about old ideas availed us nothing. Well, those old ideas are our old ideas, the ones that we put together growing up that we got from other jerks that we got from bathroom walls that we've got from god knows where but we've a whole bunch of ideas that are in our head and what sobriety consists of is getting rid of most of them and seeing what's left so what i would suggest is if you're powerless over alcohol let's experiment with powerlessness so that you can fully understand it so if you will go with me we'll just take a plane ride i'm going to get one of those trainer fighters and we're going to put you in the front seat and i'll get in the back seat and we've got to go up to about 50 000 feet and now i'm gonna be talking to you because we have radio communication through your helmet and i'm gone now i want you to experience powerlessness are you ready and you go yeah so blow the canopy open roll the plane upside down push some negative g's and you fall out and you have no parachute but you can talk to me and I go do you feel powerless can you feel powerless you know it takes three or four minutes to fall from 50,000 feet and you're up there just whoa I can really feel powerless and that is what powerless is you're just out there there's nothing you know you can't do anything about this it's just out there. There's nothing, you know, you can't do anything about this situation. That's what powers me. Yeah, I can feel we're having this conversation and you're staying cool as you can under those conditions. But when you get down around 3,000 feet, the ground starts moving a lot faster than it was moving when you were way up there and it's rushing at you and you can see the parking lot out here and you could see a car with your name on It's going to hit you, and you're not even talking anymore. You're just... This is powerlessness. That is it. And just imagine a big hand comes out of the sky just before you hit and grabs you and stops you and a cosmic voice says, excuse me, we're conducting a survey. Do you believe in God? Now, what would you say under those conditions? Okay. You might say, no, but I'm willing to reconsider. I'm going to reconsider Well, if you have a good sponsor, he has explained that that is the position you're in if you're an alcoholic you have already stepped into the elevator shaft and it's just a question of time before you hit and the only thing that can stop you from hitting is a higher power why don't you try and find a higher power before you get and it is under those conditions that we become open minded it is not because someone calls God and God goes here I am can you see me It's that you see that if there isn't a higher power, you're going to hit. And that allows you to take away the barriers that led all this wonderful stuff to come in. See, you're a human being. You have free will. So if you were sent here by the court, I don't know if anybody would be on this retreat from the court but we get lots of them in there, you have the power to prevent AA from working. A lot of people come to AA and want to prove that it can't reach them. And you have that. You can prevent all the love in this room from coming in. And you know what you'll do when you do that? You will claim there wasn't any love in the room. You'll claim there was no love in your room. There wasn't a higher power, because none of it ever got into your little bailiwick. Right? I never saw any of those wonderful loves. I never thought God would come into my life. He couldn't come in. I wouldn't let him. We built our jail cells, and the jail cells we built for ourselves were to protect us from the entire world and nothing could get in there. The only thing that was in there was me and my fear. And I just sat in there and didn't let anything come in and then I claimed that none of that existed, that there was no brotherly love, that the people were awful and there was not God, there was nowhere power, there was justice in the world that made no sense and it was an awful life. That's the way I saw it from inside of there. Now the last thing... I just wanted to see what time it is. Five more minutes. The last point I'd like to make, if you're new, is think about this, because this wrestling with a higher power is very important. If you read our literature, you're going to see that it says self-centeredness was the root of our problem. Self-centered. If you can just relate to that, if you can experience what self-centeredness is, It's a very painful thing to happen, to have, is to be extremely self-centered. When you are the center, everything happens to you that happens anywhere. When your self-centeredness is out in the extremes, you sit there going, those people over in Bosnia, they're fighting each other just to upset me. You see what I'm saying? And all the news in the world hurts you. You just take everything personally. And then people are out with the Hubble telescope, discovers more planets and moons, and you just go, will you stop discovering stuff? I can barely keep up with what's going on already. You know, you just... Everything that happens, happens to you because you're the center and it's very painful. And so when you are told that self-centeredness is the root of your problem, you know what we do as self-centered people? We go, you know, you're right. I am self-centered and I'm going to fix it. Well, how are you, exactly how are you going to become unself-centered? Well, I'll stand over here. How do you get unselfcentered now that we're on the subject? Just think about that. What is the opposite of self- centered? and you go, let's see, not self-centered. Yeah, well, what the hell does that mean? Well, it turns out there's no way to get out of that without making something else the center. And that's why we become God-centered and when we become God- centered, the world straightens out and the reason the world straightens is that is the real center And so when you look at it from that center, it makes sense. Everything fits in. Our lives make sense. We can see purpose in our lives. See, the whole idea of the 12 steps, it doesn't really take you out of the driver's seat. We talk about that, but I'm going to put a qualifier on this. We've got to get out of driver's seats, but you don't end up not having anything to do with your own life. What really happens is, instead of us trying to figure out what's best for us and then go get it, we surrender to all of that and take actions that enable us to be in touch with something that will guide us. We operate what Bill writes in our literature at the fourth dimension of existence, which is the intuitive level where we intuitively have things come to us. and this is being guided now you may find this far-fetched you come in here and you go you want me to turn my life over to some cosmic guidance system is that what this guy is suggesting i don't know if i can turn my wife over well i'll tell you something i can remember many times doing that before i got the alcoholics anonymous i remember in the boy scouts when i was 12 years old the scout master got up there and he said today i'm going to teach you about a little thing here called a compass this compass will save your life if you're ever lost in the woods and the way it works is there's a needle in here and when you open the lid it points to a big rock at the north pole let's see are they buying the big rocket now if this compass doesn't point there and you're in the wood you will die of starvation You will be out there, but if you have this compass in your pocket, you will be able to get out of there. And I didn't go and say, I want to go see the rock at the North Pole. I wantto go see that. I just took that thing and had it in my pocket, and I was perfectly willing, should the situation present itself, to turn my life over to the big rock atthe North Pole, okay? And then when I got in the Marine Corps and I got into flying those airplanes, and after we trained for three or four months, they said, now we're going to stop flying when the weather's good. We're goingto fly when it's bad. And I said, how the hell do you find your way back? They said, don't worry. We have an invisible radio beam that comes up from the ground right into your airplane. And if you will tune this thing in, you can fly right between the two mountains when you can't see anything and you will come down right to the runway when you break out and be 100 feet, 200 feet above the ground and the runway will be right there you don't think i said you want me to put my butt on the line for an invisible radio beam coming up into my airplane i just said hey let's go you know right down and mountain over here mountain over there if there was no beam we fly right into it so i come in a day yay and they go you know we have these steps you can get in touch with a higher power and who guide you spiritually so that you will have one good day after another. Oh, come on. What do you think? I wasn't born yesterday? I'm going to buy in. So all of us intellectually just... But I'm telling you, that's the deal. That is the deal here. It enables us to abandon running our own lives and throw our lot in with these AA people who will move all of the barriers to this guidance system, which is already on. It's on and operating in your life right now. It's the still, small voice. But the voice can't be heard over the roar of a resentment. It can't been heard when fear is so loud that it drowns out everything or when anger is so low So the entire program consists of becoming undisturbed. And just look at our 10th step. As soon as we can become undistburbed, we can hear the presence of our own higher power and you will hear the wonderful message of what a wonderful person you are, what a Wonderful World this is we live in, and what a WONDERFUL room full of people that you have the privilege of being with. And that's what it'll look like as long as we stay in touch with that higher power. As soon as we decide to go out on our own, all the people in this world will look like mean, imposing people again. And so it's up to you. Whether you want to be in charge and be self-centered in our ego or whether you'd like to jump in the bandwagon here and get guided to a life that's beyond your expectations. Thank you very much.