Steps 6 & 7 – Sandy B.

Welcome to the smokeless Greenwich Friday night group of AA. My name is Blair and I'm an alcoholic.\nHi everybody. We're happy that you're here with us tonight to help celebrate our anniversary.\nThat horn, I couldn't find a cowbell.\nSo in keeping with what we're going to do with some of the alcoholics tomorrow out in the water,\nI thought I'd bring a boat horn to get the thing started.\nJust a couple of announcements.\nWe're going to dispense with the usual announcements, anniversaries and so forth tonight\nbecause of the spirit of the anniversary and our guest speaker.\nOne other announcement I'd like to make.\nMany of you know that share meetings, where we share meetings, I'm an AA tape nut.\nAnd thanks to Cy.\nCy down here in the front.\nI was introduced to Sandy through the medium of tapes.\nAnd Earl has come up from Fairfax County, Virginia tonight and is taping the proceedings.\nAnd if anybody has any interest in a copy of Sandy's talk, that will be available on the way out.\nWe are in the context of our preamble, which we'll read in a moment.\nWe are self-supporting, as you know,\nour own contributions.\nWe have expenses for this anniversary.\nAnd we appreciate any special help as our fellows are passing out the baskets right now.\nWe'd like to dispense with that before we get on with the regular program.\nWe do have an exciting but simple program this evening.\nFirst of all, John B. will speak briefly about the history of this meeting and the history of Alcoholics Anonymous.\nWhen you think that it was May of 1939,\nwhen this meeting was initiated as the third oldest meeting in the movement,\nthat seems like a long time ago.\nAnd also the thing I heard the other day was at that point in time,\nthere were less than 75 recovering alcoholics in the world.\nSo this was an early, early, early meeting that we're celebrating tonight.\nThank you.\nAnd we have...\nSandy B., who's come from Washington, as our principal speaker.\nI need to say to Sandy that I, as I've told you, I've learned more about sobriety,\nwhat it means to me and what it means to others in hearing you on the tapes.\nAnd we're blessed that you're going to join us tonight.\nAnd we hope to wind up the meeting by no later than 10 o'clock, probably before then.\nAnd we have to be out of the church by 11 o'clock.\nNow, for our preamble,\nI'd like Brooke to come up and lead the group in our usual manner.\nBrooke?\nBlair, I'm Brooke, and I'm a gratefully recovering alcoholic.\nWhen Blair first asked me to do this little stint here, I was very honored.\nBut also, I was quite concerned a little bit because I had some knowledge of the history of AA through reading.\nAnd I could not recall at any time reading anything about the establishing of a preamble.\nAnd so I did a little research on it, and it settled down on what had happened in April of 1939.\nAnd the first copy of Alcoholics Anonymous, the big book, came off the press in April of 1939.\nThe first paragraph of the foreword to that first publication,\nreads,\nWe of Alcoholics Anonymous are more than 100 men and women who have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body.\nTo show other alcoholics precisely how we have recovered is the main purpose of this book.\nIn the following pages, literally a page and one half, which that foreword takes up,\nthat foreword sets forth in most direct language the purpose,\nus, the who, how, and what of Alcoholics Anonymous, and it's a reminder to me, and I'm sure to\nall of us as we read that, of the tremendous debt of gratitude that we in A today have\nfor Bill W., for Dr. Bob, for that small group of pioneers really in recovery, the men and\nwomen of 1939, and then the thousands and thousands of others following that whose dedication\nand commitment to AA have made meetings such as this tonight possible and for us to have\nnew lives.\nIn June of 1967, Tom Why, the first editor of the Grapevine, edited the Statement of\nPurpose out of that foreword to the big book, and with a few changes, printed it in that\nmonth's issue.\nAnd then within a very short while after that printing, that Statement of Purpose was adopted\nand being read before meetings around the world as the AA Preamble as we know it today.\nHere at this meeting, the Friday night meeting of AA, we have a custom, and for those of\nyou who choose, I would like for you to join with me in the Preamble and recite with me.\nAlcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength,\nand hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover\nfrom alcoholism.\nThe only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking.\nThere are no dues or fees for AA membership.\nWe are self-supporting through our own contributions.\nAA does not wish to engage in any controversy, neither endorses nor opposes any causes.\nOur primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety.\nWe are committed to serving the people of our country.\nI say, Brooke, we're going to have a terrible time with Tino with that Preamble.\nNow it's a distinct pleasure to introduce a guy who I've gotten to know very, very well.\nHe is my sponsor.\nHe's a marvelous guy.\nI'd like to introduce John B. Would you all give him a hand?\nGood evening.\nMy name is John, and I am an alcoholic.\nI'm an active member of AA, and I would like to share with you briefly, with a capital B,\nsome of the movements in the history of our little town of Greenwich, and yes, the world.\nThis meeting, whose 52nd anniversary we are celebrating this evening, is the third oldest meeting in the world.\nLike all our meetings which were to follow, it was started in 1939 by a relatively few alcoholics\nwho wished to share their experience.\nThey drank and hoped with each other, and other members, they were blessed for their close contact in those years with Bill Wilson.\nIt was my good fortune to have been in contact with Bill W. on several occasions later on.\nHe was the same as you and I, an alcoholic whose life had become unmanageable.\nFortunately for all of us, he and Dr. Bob were given the same opportunity.\nHe was given the spiritual guidance to set in motion the format for the AA movement.\nHe never wanted it to be complicated.\nHe wanted it to remain very simple.\nHe took a firm stand against financial endowments of any kind.\nIn the early years, there were several substantial sums offered and refused.\nHis feeling was that each...\n...group should be self-sustained by passing the basket at meetings for nominal contributions\nand contributing to intergroups for our loosely knit organization.\nYou will see in a bit how well his suggestions were followed.\nOur first groups held largely open meetings with a leader and three speakers\nand lasted on an average of one hour.\nOne and a half and two hours.\nThey also usually held a closed discussion meeting\nwith a leader who qualified as an alcoholic\nand then discussions for approximately one and a half hours.\nThe format for the open meetings has largely changed\nto an open discussion meeting with a speaker and discussions.\nThe time frames of most AA meetings has shortened\nto approximately...\n...ultimately one hour.\nNow, really some staggering facts.\n1939.\nThree meetings in three states with possibly a couple of hundred members.\n1991.\nNationally, 46,000 meetings\nin 51 states with one million plus members.\n2000.\nInternationally, 47,000 meetings in 133 countries, including Canada,\nwith an additional one million plus members.\nSo, you see, we have friends all over the world that we haven't met yet.\nI have fortunately been ...\nPardon me, to different parts of the world and those friends are just thrilled,\n...to share this very special moment.\ntheir experiences with us. I'm serious about that. It makes it to be a marvelous trip.\nI don't care where you're going, because you have friends who have a common interest,\nand they just can't wait to entertain you. I won't be so bold as to say we are happy\nto be alcoholics. But I will be bold enough to say that those of us who have been enveloped\nin this magnificent movement are fortunate indeed. Thank you.\nThank you, John. And now on to our main event and introduction of Sandy. Sandy, I came down\nto Washington two weeks ago tomorrow.\nWith my daughter, Catherine, who lives down there, we went to your Saturday morning step\nmeeting in Bethesda, near Washington. Sandy leads a meeting every Saturday morning, and\nI think there were about 350 or 400 that day, and you were marvelous. Bob Peay has advised\nme that you were the feature speaker at the 1980 National Meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous\nin New Orleans, where you addressed 25,000 people.\nThank you.\nThank you.\nThank you.\nThank you.\nThank you.\nThank you.\nThank you.\nThank you.\nThank you.\nThank you.\nThank you.\nThank you.\nThank you.\nThank you.\nThank you.\nThank you.\nThank you.\nThank you.\nThank you.\nThank you.\nYou're in constant demand around the circuit, and I don't know how you keep up with it.\nAs I mentioned earlier, I got to know you through the medium of tapes, even though I\nshould have known you at that little university up the railroad line here, since we were in\nthe same class together. And incidentally, there's a few of us sitting here in the front\nrow, including a roommate of mine that came in from Cleveland to be with us tonight.\nI'd like to finish up.\nThank you.\nI'd like to finish up my introduction to say to you all who are in the program that\nthis is a marvelous program. It's a program of sobriety, and I love the joy of sobriety.\nAnd for you that are visiting tonight, this is an open meeting. I hope that we will be\nable to share with you our feelings of joy and humor and the deep sense of sobriety.\nAnd with that, I'd like to introduce the guy who I think is going to be the most important\npart in our time today.\nI think is the best at telling that story.\nWould you all welcome Sandy B. from Washington.\nThank you very much, Blair, and good evening, everybody. My name is Sandy B., and I'm\nan alcoholic. How are you all doing? Well, we're delighted to be here tonight and to\nshare in...\nI've never been at a 52nd\nanniversary of Sandy B..\nI'm not aölololo.\nof anything. And so, God, that's just amazing to be here tonight and just think about when John was\njust talking about what has transpired between 1939 and now is absolutely miraculous. But the\nmiraculous becomes so commonplace in Alcoholics Anonymous that we miss it. We just go, of course,\nthere's 93,000 groups. What do you expect? You know, it's like somebody new comes into Alcoholics\nAnonymous and their whole life gets straightened out and we just go, right, that's what's supposed\nto happen here. And it just happens. And sometimes I think it's possible to miss the\nmagnificence of a new person walking into these rooms and through that incredible defense that\nall of us alcoholics have that has never been penetrated before.\nAll of a sudden, there's a crack that opens up and the love that's in these rooms is able to go in\nthere and tell that frightened person that it's safe to come out now. And we're right here for you\nand we were in that same jail that you have constructed for yourself and it's okay to stick\nyour hand out. And it's one of the first places that any of us ever dared to venture into this\nthing called sobriety, which is really,\nthe great adventure of life, which is to get to know what everything's all about and to for the\nfirst time for most of us to actually experience the spirituality of mankind. And all of this\nhappens because I drank too much. And when you think about the irony of that, you know, well,\nhow did you deserve this wonderful spiritual program? Well, I puked a lot. That's how I got\nto deserve this.\nI mean,\nas you talk about not earning it in a sense, I mean, we just everything is such a gift for\nfor the for this life that we lived before we came here and how\ndramatically different that life, that drinking life is. All of us were so ashamed of it.\nI know I was. I just look back over those drinking years during the years I was drinking and I felt\nnothing but remorse and shame. I was so ashamed of it. I was so ashamed of it. I was so ashamed of it.\nI was ashamed of it. I was so ashamed of it. I was in a position where I had an extraordinary\nattitude. I was in a position where I was ashamed of it. I was so ashamed of it that I tried to\nimprove myself and all the others who were involved. And I wanted to find strength in both\nthings. So I felt like walk away from that mode of life. Best in a toe. I was in a really\naltering body. I didn't want the world to be like it used to be one Philip Costelli\nwho braved through the physiognomies of the Paramount's crash. I mean, I was bullied,\nstruggling, found a man killed in the Joyiller's that was\non our side, all day and night. You know, in the heart of my life, you know that对\nI don't이� fáe. I've been through the Toledo keep going now and today, but I say Transgender\na very special gift that enables us to reach out and touch the life and save and bring new life\ninto a suffering alcoholic. And the very thing that enables me to do that and you to do it\nthat other people can't do is our horrible past. The fact that we live that way and we're able to\nchange is the commonality. And so the great healing that takes place here is a direct result\nof those years that I drank. And instead of being totally useless and wasted, they're the\nwonderful connection that is made with the next suffering alcoholic. And it's the most useful part\nof my life is the fact that I can draw on that experience to enable a new person to relate and\nstay here.\nThank you.\nThank you.\na horrible past, it's totally wasted, etc.\nIt's an incredibly useful, it all makes sense, and this program has a way of just putting\nthings in perspective like that.\nNow, just about every meeting around the world, the speakers get up and they share a little\nbit about how they got here and what happened and what it's like now, and I'm no exception.\nI am what they call a primary alcoholic, which is a person who drinks about 10 or 11 minutes\nand then goes into alcoholic drinking, you know what I mean?\nI drank socially maybe 10 minutes, and that's it.\nThere was no more social drinking in my whole history other than that first drink.\nI was sort of sitting there, hey, I'm a social drinker, but as soon as that drink took hold,\nI became a former social drinker.\nI was on my way to qualifying to be an Alcoholics Anonymous.\nI grew up in New Haven, Connecticut, so I'm not far from where I grew up, and had very\nnice parents, a sister.\nMy sister's now got 12 years in Orange, Connecticut, in Alcoholics Anonymous.\nI didn't even know she was drinking, but she was at home very quietly, a housewife with\nher children, and the world caving in.\nAnd so she did all her drinking in the kitchen, so you don't hear much about that.\nHer brother was not drinking in the kitchen.\nHe was out with the police and getting, you know, getting all the headlines, like she\nsays.\nI always hog the headlines from her.\nAnd I suppose, you know, when we come into AA, we think we have so many unique problems.\nGod, do we think we have terminal uniqueness.\nEverybody who arrives here has the most incredible set of problems.\nAnd anybody who'll sit down long enough, we'll talk to them about them.\nYou know what I mean?\nJust on and on and on about the problems, as if there's something that can be accomplished\nby constantly rehashing the problems.\nFortunately, when we get in AA, we learn how to just stay in the solution and talk about\nit.\nAnd then we go back and take a look at the problems.\nAnd while we were away, somebody solved them.\nAnd they just look entirely different.\nYou know, we learn that going to meetings.\nYou go to a meeting, it's all screwed up.\nYou come out.\nThe meeting, something got straightened out.\nYou know, what happened here?\nWell, it's just amazing.\nBut as I came in, I thought I had this unique story of being uniquely frustrated and not\nunderstood and terrified about the world.\nPeople intimidated me.\nI didn't feel equal to anybody.\nI got to this big university that everybody's talking about.\nAnd they're all, he said, half our class is here tonight.\nAnd the other half ought to be here.\nSo there's no.\nAnd I had that sense of why am I less than everybody else?\nWhy does everybody else know all the social skills and they know how to dance and they\nknow how to talk to people and they know how to interact with everyone?\nAnd I walk around trying to think of something to say other than nice day, isn't it?\nYou know, and that was the extent of my social conversation.\nAnd then some people would say, what do you mean?\nAnd I didn't have an answer to that, you know.\nSo as a result, I had the feeling that people were just not friendly and they didn't want\nme around.\nAnd that's where when I remember taking my first drink was in that sense of being in\na room with 30 or 40 people and trying to talk with them and not fitting in with any\ngroup and walking around, see if I fit in with this group or that group and getting\nrejected.\nGetting rejected visually.\nYou know how people just look.\nNo, not over here.\nOK, don't worry.\nOver here.\nYou can just tell.\nYou don't even have to ask them.\nYou can just sort of glance their way and they go, no.\nOK.\nI'll go over here.\nI don't want to intrude over there.\nI obviously don't belong there.\nWell, it was under those conditions.\nAnd, you know, the world only exists in our minds.\nI mean, that's where all of the reality of everything is.\nAnd in my mind.\nIt was this night was a very intimidating world because of the people that were in it.\nThey were just sort of hostile and aggressive and competitive.\nAnd under those conditions, at age 19, which is fairly old to be starting drinking, I had\nmy first drink and I poured it down and waiting for all this stuff that my roommates are\ntelling me that, hey, you haven't started drinking yet.\nThis is the most wonderful stuff in the world.\nAnd I'm no, no, I'm going to be an athlete or whatever I was doing.\nBut that night.\nI needed help and they were telling me this stuff does these wonderful things.\nSo I drank it down.\nNothing happened.\nI had another one.\nI remember nothing happened.\nSo I went back over and said, give me another one of those.\nAnd while I was drinking it, I happened to glance back at the room and I felt no change.\nI don't recall alcohol doing anything to me.\nBut to this day, I can tell you what happened to the people in that room.\nI was busy.\nTrying to get these three drinks down.\nAnd someone came in and took that 50 people out that I don't know where they went, but\nthey were replaced by 50 of the nicest people you have ever seen in your lives.\nThey all were looking my way and going, please join our group.\nPlease come over.\nAnd hey, folks, you have to wait your turn.\nI'll start here and then I'll go all the way around.\nAnd and I had that feeling.\nThat was to stay with me whenever I had alcohol in my system.\nWhen I had a couple of drinks in my system, I'd be walking up to my favorite bar and I'd stand outside and I'd say, God, these people are in for a treat.\nI'm here.\nYou know what I mean?\nIt was that high, you know, and that it was just the opposite.\nIt was just the opposite.\nAnd so alcohol didn't really change me.\nIt changed the world I lived in.\nAnd when I went into that world, the alcohol world, I loved it.\nThis is the world.\nEverybody was talking about, you know, when people would say to me, you have conversation in the world.\nGreat.\nUsed to say to me, isn't the world great?\nAnd I'd go, not the world I live in.\nWhere are you going?\nI mean, great.\nIt's tense out there.\nBut when I had a few drinks in me, the world was wonderful.\nGod, I love that world.\nPeople just had smiles on their face.\nThey camaraderie.\nAnd we've all had this happen.\nThe world.\nSometimes the world gets so great.\nYou're sitting in a bar and you just get overcome by the.\nThe beauty of the people that are in the bar.\nAnd the bartender sees you sobbing on the bar stool.\nWhat's the matter?\nI've never been in the company of such beautiful people in my whole life.\nAnd buy them all a drink.\nI just oh, my God, this is we just be overcome by the magnificence of the world that we found ourselves in.\nNow, the problem with with my drinking anyway, I don't know about yours.\nIt needed some fine tuning to there was definitely it wasn't always the wonderful world overcome by the beauty.\nThere was these strange, bizarre events.\nSometimes the police would show up.\nI wouldn't understand why they wanted to interfere with this incredibly beautiful world.\nBut you'd be off in jail somewhere or some guy would take exception to some philosophical point that I had made.\nAnd teeth would be falling out and I'm on the floor and going home and waking up in the morning and blood all over and teeth missing while it gone just, you know, really hurting and I'd say to him, but I'll tell you one thing, it never ever did the thought come in.\nYou know, you ought to stop drinking that thought never got in there.\nWhat would come in is, God, I wonder what happened.\nAnd I would always explain it in terms that had nothing to do with drinking, hanging out in the wrong neighborhood.\nI remember one time in New Haven, I was drinking down in the pizza part of town where kind of some tough guys down there.\nAnd some guy came up behind me while I was drinking beer and having a pizza, minding my own business.\nHe walked up behind me, grabbed me by the hair, yanked me off the bar stool and beat the hell out of me.\nThat's the way I remember it.\nI might have said something, but I.\nBut I remember that.\nAnd then I remember having discussions.\nYou've all had discussions with yourself after you've been arrested or your wife yells at your husband, yells that you get fired or something.\nYour your conscience gets the best.\nYou have to explain things to your own conscience.\nWell, what are you going to get you get down there and get the help beat out of you again?\nYou got to stop going down there.\nAnd I mean, no, that's where it's great part of town.\nThat isn't it at all.\nAnd I remember thinking, well, you've got to do something.\nI mean, you just can't leave everything and not learn a lesson out of that evening.\nSo I went out and got a crew cut.\nThat was my answer to never having anybody grab me by the hair and pulling me off of the bar stool.\nAnd us alcoholics come up with answers to problems that are about as humorous as that they have, because we have to bypass the obvious answer, which has to do with our drinking.\nAnd as far as I was concerned, very shortly after drinking, there was never going to be anything to get between us.\nThere was never going to be anything to get between me and my drinking.\nI didn't realize I had made such a commitment to alcohol, but it became, without me knowing it, my way of life, my literally my higher power.\nIt gave me answers.\nIt gave me energy.\nIt gave me the ability to make decisions.\nI never remember having a problem where I said to myself, here's a problem I won't have a drink on.\nNever, never.\nI don't care.\nNever.\nThe problem was step one.\nHave a drink.\nThat was step one.\nTry to figure something out.\nGeez, I can't seem to figure this out.\nGet a glass, get some ice.\nThe answer will be coming soon.\nAnd just as the little glass of wisdom is going in there and it would come.\nYou know what I mean?\nBecause what would happen is the fear would be chemically removed and I would be free to think up something.\nIt might not be the smartest thing.\nThe world, but at least it was an answer.\nAnd at least something always happened to alcohol.\nWhen I thought of sobriety, I used to think a lot about boredom.\nSomeone said you ought to go to AA and not drink.\nI just said, boy, here comes 50 years of boredom.\nThere'll be nothing happening because I connected alcohol with action.\nSitting around, nothing happening.\nYou just got a bottle.\nI like to think of going into a package store.\nIt was like going into a library where you're going to check out a adventure book, you know,\nand you look at the cover of the book and it says shooting the rapids in Canada, you know,\nand you go, oh, this looks like a good one.\nBut you really didn't know that the story went from Canada down to Mexico, where they got into a gold mine and almost died.\nYou couldn't tell from the cover what was going to happen.\nAnd the same thing with a bottle of whiskey.\nYou could look at that thing and hold it up to the light and shake.\nIt and smell it, and you would have no idea what was in store for you inside of there.\nYou might be going to Wiggins, Mississippi.\nYou know what I mean?\nYou had no idea you weren't planning on leaving.\nYou might be going to jail.\nYou might be a big blonde might be showing up that night.\nBut there was no way of knowing from the label on the bottle.\nThere was just you had to go home and drink it.\nBut you knew one thing.\nYou knew something was going to happen.\nI never went back to the guy.\nAnd said, you know, I'd like to take this bottle back.\nI drank it all last night and nothing happened that I know never happened.\nAnd I said, I'd take it back and go, I don't want any more just fighting whiskey.\nI mean, I'm just tired of getting the hell beat out of me.\nHave you got the kind where you behave yourself and you just get high and you don't do anything wrong?\nI'd like a case of that.\nAnd my wife would like me to have a case of that because that's what she would like.\nEvery so often, statistically, by pure accident, I'd have a night where I behave myself all night.\nYou know what I'm talking about?\nYou just drank a lot and you didn't get in trouble.\nYou just sort of hung in there.\nYou were nice and you didn't throw up and just everything.\nAnd my wife would say to me, why can't you do that every night?\nNot so she's right.\nWhat did I do last night?\nYou're trying to recreate last night.\nLet's see. I start out with a little wine.\nI think I had a glass and a half of wine.\nLet's be recreating it the next night as if it was.\nA.\nIt's like a chem lab experiment, you know, like if I could just get the right formula,\nI could ensure consistent drinking behavior that was good.\nWell, this is all just part of being an alcoholic.\nSo in my own case, I think that our stories about being an alcoholic are the main event.\nI mean, that when you really study our lives,\nthat is the central focus of our thinking.\nAnd we're maneuvering everything else around it.\nWe start choosing our friends.\nI mean, somebody says, hey, Joe's having a party.\nWant to come? And then you go, wait a minute.\nJoe doesn't drink. There's no alcohol there.\nNo, I won't be going to Joe's party.\nI mean, we just it clearly mandated a lot of things and I had to maneuver around it.\nAnd so alcohol was clearly the centerpiece.\nBut then there was the background, the incidental things that were going on, like a career.\nAnd mine was in the Marine Corps.\nI ended up getting out of school and joining the Marine Corps and becoming a fighter pilot.\nAnd so all of my drinking takes place in school or in the Marine Corps.\nAnd by the time I got out of there, I had finished drinking or drinking had finished me one or the other.\nBut so my story is about traveling around and flying airplanes and be with a bunch of guys.\nAnd a lot of exciting stuff.\nI've got a lot of good flying stories and going overseas and going aboard carriers.\nand a lot of fun.\nI mean, there's a lot of good stories.\nBut it has nothing to do with being an alcoholic.\nIt really is just sort of background.\nIt's just like somebody gets up here,\nwell, I was a lawyer and I was down on Wall Street\nand I was doing this.\nAnd that's their background to the main event,\nwhich was going on inside.\nAnd the lawyer and the housewife and the fighter pilot\nand the real estate salesman and the stockbroker\nand the lobbyist are all coming apart inside.\nWe're watching a human being self-destructing\nand pretending that it isn't happening.\nProbably the hardest part of being an alcoholic\nis pretending you're not an alcoholic.\nI mean, how many times we got up and went to work\nwhen, if I ever feel this bad today,\nI call in sick for a month.\nYou know what I mean?\nThat's a typical day in our drinking days.\nYou get up and you're puking blood and you're shaking\nand you're hurting and you're this,\nand you're going to work.\nYou're going to show up down there\nand not only are you going to show up down there,\nyou're going to act like you're fine.\nThere's no pain in my body.\nHey, great, hey, go, ha, hoo, ha.\nYou remember all that?\nJust talk a good game, man.\nThey won't see that you're dying inside.\nAnd so no one was allowed in.\nBecause what would happen if they got in there?\nThey might go, hey, it's all messed up in here.\nWe've got to stop this guy from drinking.\nAnd that would be a major threat to staying alive.\nIt would be a major threat to surviving.\nI mean, my very essence was saying,\ndon't ever let anybody in here\nand allow them to cut off the booze supply.\nBecause that could be fatal.\nThat could cut off all of the wherewithal that I have.\nAnd so without realizing it,\nI had literally turned my life over to the care of vodka\nand was completely,\ndependent on it as a source of power in my life.\nAnd I can remember being calmed down\nwithout even drinking it.\nIf I could just see my car in the parking lot\noutside of the building where I might be working\nand I knew I had a quart of vodka in the glove compartment,\njust seeing it right over there\nwould give me a sense of calmness.\nAnd I could just, well, I'm this close.\nI could be out there and get some\nin just a second.\nAnd it would give me a feeling of peace.\nAnd I could last another half an hour\nwhen it might be time to go out and get a drink.\nSo my story is simply one of a primary chronic alcoholic\nwho hung in as good as he could,\nbut was only able to last about 14 years.\nSo my whole drinking career was short-lived.\nThere's people around here that were able to\nhold out against this battle for many more years.\nBut I don't think I was going to last many more years.\nIt got very bad near the end.\nWhen I ended up not being able, I flew for 13 years\nand then I got so bad in airplanes that,\nand I never drank.\nNow I hang around with a lot of pilots\nwho told me what a mistake I made.\nI could have flown for three more years\nif I'd just taken booze in the plane with me.\nBut I didn't know about that.\nAnd I was going through withdrawal every day.\nI was getting up and not drinking\nfrom maybe midnight the night before.\nAnd I'd show up to fly an airplane\nat 8 or 10 in the morning.\nAnd that was in the worst possible shape\nyou can be in, in alcoholic withdrawals,\nas that stuff is wearing off.\nAnd I'm flying around and losing my peripheral vision\nand sweating and heart palpitations,\njust all kinds of terrible problems.\nAnd I finally went to the doctors.\nI only went there\nas an absolute last resort.\nAnd to make a long story short,\nthey examined me for a couple of weeks\ndown in Pensacola, Florida,\ndiagnosed, what does this guy have?\nAnd this is back before alcoholism\nwas a diagnosis in the Navy.\nThat just was not in the books.\nIt is now, and we have alcohol programs,\nbut in the early 60s,\nthey didn't have anything along those lines.\nAnd so they looked at me and I had high blood pressure,\nhigh blood pressure, bloodshot eyes.\nI sweat all the time.\nMy hands shook like this.\nI smelled of alcohol.\nAnd I was tested for two weeks by all of the experts\nand they could find nothing physically wrong.\nAnd so it was left up to the psychiatrists.\nAnd my diagnosis was childhood fear of flying.\nAnd that was, and so they wrote up something.\nWe made a big mistake.\nThis guy never should have been a pilot in the first place.\nSo take him off of flight status.\nAnd so now I was, it was just a terrible ego blow.\nThat was my whole identity.\nAnd all of a sudden, you're not a pilot anymore.\nYou're nobody.\nAnd I sat around and waited for about four months\nfor the headquarters Marine Corps\nto come up with a new specialty.\nThey had to retrain me.\nNow, what are you gonna do with a pilot\nwho can't fly airplanes such bad shape?\nWe won't let them near an airplane.\nAnd lo and behold,\nI got a set of orders to become an air traffic controller.\nAnd so.\nI went back through air traffic control school\nwith shaking hands and filling those little strips out.\nIt was a real show to any air traffic controllers here.\nWell, if you're in this program,\nyou probably learned the same thing I did.\nWhen you're trying to bring planes in,\nin bad weather and you see two center lines,\nyou just cover up one eye and you go, hey,\nYou're on the glide path, you're on the glide path.\nAnd that's what I did during the last year of my drinking was I was an air traffic controller.\nBut fortunately, I was overseas and I was the officer in charge of this unit.\nAnd all the people who worked for me saw that the last thing they wanted the captain to do was to get near one of those radar scopes.\nSo I was in charge of making coffee, trying to find where the unit was, which was a real challenge.\nBecause I had now, without flying, I could drink around the clock and I had become a daily drinker and vodka.\nAnd it was just a nightmare.\nIt was just, it's very terrifying to think back on that last year.\nI lost about 40 pounds, malnutrition, just never talked to anybody.\nI was just surviving.\nJust trying to keep drinking alcohol, never look anybody in the eyes.\nAnd everybody would just say, well, let's carry him through this last year and then he'll get transferred back to the States.\nThe military did that with drunks a lot.\nThey'd go, well, he's only got six more months over here.\nLet's carry him.\nAnd then it's the next guy's problem.\nTransfer him over to the next duty station.\nAnd so I somehow got through that year in 1963 and came back to Quantico, Virginia,\nto become a corpsman.\nI was in a career school and it was in that school that I had a grand mal seizure where you're just there in class and all of a sudden you're up and you bite your tongue in half and you're on the floor and I ended up in the military nut ward and there was no alcohol units and I was locked up for six months, just in a nut ward, just in there with all the other folks and that is amazing.\nI could go talk all night about it.\nJust the nut ward.\nBut I won't do that.\nI will share one story and that was that every so often they would get everybody around on a chair and the psychiatrist would, instead of talking about manic depressive or suicides or schizophrenia or whatever other people had, it'd say, today let's talk about the drunks.\nAnd it'd start around the room asking all these crazy people.\nThere was three drunks in there with all the crazy people.\nIt asked them, what do they think about the drunks?\nAnd these crazy people to a man would say, you guys ought to stop drinking.\nThat's what they would say.\nAnd I remember looking at them just going, no wonder they're in here and coming up with an idea like that.\nIf the answer to my problem was that simple, I would have thought that up.\nJeez.\nCan't be that simple.\nAnd it was in this environment after being there about five months.\nThat AA managed to talk the head psychiatrist into allowing an AA meeting in the nut ward.\nAnd that's how I got to AA.\nI was up there sitting around playing bridge, played a lot of bridge in nut wards.\nAnd Corman came in and said, all drunks fall in.\nAnd it was just one of these forward marks, left face.\nAnd there you are.\nAnd I was at an AA meeting.\nSo that's how I got to AA.\nAnd I listened to these guys.\nI was impressed.\nI thought it was wonderful.\nI went up afterwards.\nI told this little redheaded guy from Bethesda, you know, you've got a wonderful story.\nI couldn't believe what you guys got here.\nIf I ever run into a guy with a drinking problem, I'm going to send him around to see you.\nI really thought you had something wonderful here.\nI sold on it, but not for me.\nIt was clear that it was a winner and so on down.\nAnd that was when I got my first taste of AA honesty, that hard love.\nAnd he just told me.\nHe took his finger and he just went, pal, let me ask you something.\nWhich one of us is going to go put his overcoat on, go on out, get in his car and drive on home to his family?\nAnd which one of us is going to put his little blue bathrobe on and go over to that elevator and go upstairs and get locked up like an animal?\nAnd I remember just going, God damn, I just met this guy.\nHe starts talking this way to me.\nBut I was soon to find that.\nThat's the way AA worked.\nWe just talked, boom, right straight out.\nYou never beat around the bush.\nOld AA guy from Washington, Buck Doyle, he's dead now.\nBut boy, he had just never minced words.\nAnd he smelled booze on somebody.\nHe'd always walk up and go, one of us has been drinking.\nThat was his.\nJust take a big, hey, one of us have been drinking.\nAnd he just never, you know, beat around or anything.\nSome of us might go, I'm not sure.\nI smell anything and I don't want to hurt his feelings or anything like that.\nBut bam, it came out.\nWell, that got me started and I didn't like it.\nI'd have us down there every week.\nAnd eventually I was let out of there.\nAnd I did drink for about a week.\nAs soon as I was put in an outpatient status and it got so bad that I knew I'd have to do something or they were going to catch me.\nSo I called AA for myself and a great big guy.\nAnother Marine showed up.\nAnd he's a huge guy.\nName is Bill.\nHe's still my sponsor.\nAnd that was back in 1964.\nAnd he came to my house and just said, sure.\nYou know what I mean?\nAnd so I started my AA journey that is still continuing.\nAnd what can I tell you about this journey?\nWell, it's really.\nIt's really amazing how different it is than how I thought it was going to be.\nAnd I suppose that's what sobriety is.\nI like I say, I just wanted him to leave me some literature.\nThat was my preconceived notion of how this thing ought to be handled.\nAnd he had other ideas and his other ideas were very extreme.\nI've noticed that everything about AA is very extreme.\nHave you ever noticed that?\nThere's just.\nAll our shortcomings.\nYou know what I'm talking about?\nAll the people we had harmed.\nAll.\nAll.\nYou know.\nYou ask your sponsor, how much can I drink this year?\nNone.\nYou know, it's like none at all.\nNone.\nZero.\nI mean, it's just.\nI was used to compromises.\nYou know.\nI guess they call them in AA half measures.\nThat was my specialty was almost doing things and sliding and maneuvering.\nAnd you get in here and it's just very clear, you know, you ask your sponsor a question.\nHe goes, no, that's the end of that.\nYou know, there's no way you want to talk it over.\nNo, I don't want to talk it over.\nNo, sit down.\nThat's the end of that.\nIt's just bam.\nAnd it's just go to a meeting every night.\nDon't drink.\nWe're going to do this.\nThere was just a whole set of things.\nAnd it.\nIt wasn't tailored at all.\nYou know what I'm talking about?\nThis program, they just do the same thing.\nGreat big tall guy.\nGo to a meeting every night.\nLittle short guy.\nGo to a meeting every night.\nBlack guy.\nGo to a meeting every night.\nA woman.\nGo to a meeting every night.\nI mean, they don't listen to the problems and come up with unique programs for each of us.\nIt's just as if they had the ultimate answer to everything.\nAnd they do.\nAnd that's why they don't cut any.\nThey don't slack.\nAnd they don't compromise.\nThose of you that are new, there just isn't any compromises there.\nYou know, they talk about a suggested program.\nWell, that's what that word is a real tricky word.\nThat's just to keep you around.\nThey knew if they told you it wasn't optional, you wouldn't stay.\nBut the longer you stick around, you find out that it isn't what you thought it was.\nAt least that's what has happened to me as I've looked back over the years.\nNothing works the way I thought it would.\nAA is completely different than I imagined it after I was here a while.\nYou know, when you're smart and you get here, you figure it all out ahead of everybody.\nYou know what I mean?\nAnd you're ready to tell your sponsor some tricks that you've thought up and you've read\nthe book and you have some changes and going to rearrange the steps and shorten them down\na little bit.\nAnd I got a better procedure for running the meeting.\nI think we ought to read the preamble at the end.\nAnd you know how you're just.\nTrying to help the group along in the beginning.\nSo I had, sure, a lot of those thoughts that coming up with my own ideas about things.\nAnd I have learned a lot here.\nIt has been pounded into me over the years that nothing is the way that I thought it\nwas.\nAnd there's a lot of lessons to be learned from that.\nI think of the chapter five where it says old ideas availed us nothing.\nIf there's anything that.\nIs a very important message that I'd like to talk about tonight, it is about old ideas\navailed us nothing.\nI had collected and everyone who arrives here has a whole bunch of ideas.\nThey're in your brain and you have collected them over the years as a human being.\nAnd what those ideas tell you is your reality.\nIf they tell you that there's no God, that they tell you that you're no good, if they\ntell you.\nThat you're no good.\nThat people shouldn't be trusted.\nIf they tell you there's no love in the world, that's the world you live in.\nWe are our ideas.\nAnd they just keep rerunning.\nThey're just up there just going on and on.\nAnd that's what an obsession with alcohol is, is this incredible punishment that makes\nit so difficult to stay sober is to be sitting there with this obsession to go, if I just\nhad a drink, I could get some relief from some of this pressure.\nAnd I came in here with a whole bunch of those old ideas.\nThat was me.\nMy problem was I didn't want to change any of them.\nAn alcoholic changing his mind when we first arrived in AA is like the Queen Mary doing\na 180 out here in the river.\nIt takes about 50 tugboats.\nAnd they're going, they're pushing.\nWhat are you doing?\nTrying to get this guy to change his mind.\nYou know.\nAnd it finally comes.\nYou know.\nIt comes around.\nAnd we come all the way around.\nAnd we want to hold a press conference.\nI like to announce, I'm going to change my mind.\nAnd, you know, I've never done it before.\nAnd I think it's significant.\nAnd I'll probably never do it again.\nBut I am going to do it this one time.\nJust want to let everybody know I'm going to be changing my mind shortly.\nAnd it comes out, and then we go, boy, thank God, I'll never have to go through that again.\nThat was exhausting to change my mind about something.\nBecause in order to change my mind, I have to do the ultimate description.\nThe ultimate disgraceful, awful thing.\nI have to admit that I'm wrong.\nWe have two steps on this.\nAnd the first time I said to my sponsor, when he finally convinced me of something, we had\nargued about it, discussed it for two months.\nAnd I finally turned to him, and I said, well, Bill, you're right.\nAnd he said, no, you're wrong.\nI said, hey.\nSame thing.\nWell, say it.\nOK.\nAnd I get stuck in my mouth.\nI mean, I'm wrong.\nI can't hear you.\nI'm wrong.\nI'm wrong.\nYou know?\nTo say I was wrong seemed to destroy me as a human being.\nI could just feel a foundation sinking out from under me.\nAnd yet sobriety has consisted of a constant series of finding things that I'm wrong about\nand getting rid of it.\nWhen I look back on the change in priorities.\nThat have taken place.\nAnd I guess this is what the program is designed to do.\nWe talk about putting first things first.\nAnd I think what that means is that somehow I'm going to have to rearrange the priority\nin my head.\nWhat's the most important thing up here?\nWell, before I came to AA, it was alcohol.\nAfter I came to AA, it was me.\nThat was the centerpiece of the whole program, was me.\nYou know, I just had that.\nI'm the type of guy who I remember hearing this at a meeting one night, they were talking\nabout the 11th step.\nYou know, God did this.\nI remember a higher prayer rather than God.\nAnd this is funny.\nSomebody said, enough about God.\nWhat about me?\nYou know, like, let's get on to something important.\nAnd I really relate to that.\nYou know, enough of that stuff.\nWe got, I got problems here and, uh, and it was as if you didn't, if you didn't stay\nfocused on those problems and just, they're liable to get grow while you're gone.\nAnd this obsession to stay focused on myself.\nIs.\nThe prison that my old ideas had me in that's, they did, they were on autopilot.\nThey just went up my head and they just, what they did, they just sat there at meetings\nand they went, it's too hot.\nI needed something cold to drink.\nWhy can't I smoke in here?\nAnd there it is.\nIt's just going on the whole time.\nAnd until that will stop, I'm not going to have peace of mind.\nAnd so I think what the first things first, and this getting rid of old ideas has meant\nto me.\nWas to move a higher power to the top of the list and somehow through the effort of this\nprogram to make that the centerpiece of my life, to somehow get my brain so that it starts\nautomatically when I wake up in the morning, start thinking about a higher power.\nI think meetings were a wonderful beginning at this.\nIt was just a constant way.\nWe say the serenity prayer.\nYeah.\nWe're saying the preamble, we're saying, uh, all the things that we learned here in\nAlcoholics Anonymous, it has been a interesting process to see how these old ideas have slowly.\nAnd it's a very painful thing to get rid of them.\nUm, my first one had to do, and probably the most important one that any of us has to do\nis the idea of a higher power and the, and those of you that are new, if you're a typical\ndrunk that's arrived here, you're not too comfortable.\nPeople say the word God or higher power, you go, I'll deal with that later, you know,\nI'm just not drinking and going to meetings and that's enough and you don't need, I don't\nwant to mess it up.\nI don't want to get messing around with that, but eventually we're going to have to deal\nwith this higher power thing.\nUm, and I had just a million reasons for avoiding that, but until I was able to do that, it\nleft me in charge.\nIt left me as my own higher power.\nAnd I don't know about you, but that was one of the most painful, um, depressing things\nto do is to be our own higher power.\nAnd the best help that I've had about this higher power thing is in, um, the understanding\nof what AA is trying to do here.\nI don't think AA tries to convince anybody of the existence of God, but I think we're\nexperts at convincing you of the need for God.\nAnd we do that by simply focusing in on the powerlessness of your life and forcing each\none of us to look at it and to acknowledge that on our own, things are going to continually\nget worse.\nAnd by focusing on that, I was able to understand what powerless meant.\nIt meant that unless there was a higher power, I was going to continue drinking, always return\nto drinking and have my life continue just the way it was going to be.\nThat's what it meant.\nThat's what it meant.\nAnd it was on that basis and that basis alone that I was willing to change my mind about\na higher power.\nWe like to kid around and talk about you're riding in a canoe going down.\nYou don't know you're near the Niagara Falls and all of a sudden you're hearing this noise.\nHey, I wonder what that big noise is and you're just paddling around having a sandwich and\nall of a sudden you go, I think we're in trouble, Joe.\nAnd then the thing goes over and just before it hits, a big hand comes down and grabs you.\nBefore you hit those rocks and a voice says, we're conducting a survey.\nDo you believe in God?\nAnd the point of that whole story is under those conditions, we'd be foolish to not reconsider\nour old position.\nAnd we might say, no.\nBut.\nWe're willing to reconsider under these conditions.\nAnd all we do in AA with anybody who is new is to explain that's exactly where you are.\nYou've already gone over the falls in this disease of alcoholism.\nAnd it's just a question of time when you're going to hit.\nAnd that's what powerlessness is.\nAnd under those conditions, what is your feeling about a higher power?\nAnd so all we're saying is unless there's a higher power, you're going to hit.\nSo what do you got to lose?\nBy what?\nChanging our mind.\nIf you're going to hit, that's a different question there.\nBut the question is really, how do you decide to let it go?\nYou've got to let it go.\nYou've got to let it be.\nYou've got to let it be.\nAnd for me, I suppose, going through some of the things that I've had to let go of, my\nfeeling about people, my feeling that there wasn't love in this world, that there wasn't\nsuch a thing as brotherly love, that there wasn't a true spirit of the universe running\nthrough everybody.\nAll of these things that I denied existed I did because I was blocking them out and\nwouldn't let them in.\nWe often kid about it.\nIf you're new and you were sent here by the church, if you're new to this world, you're\ntraffic system or something like that, and you don't want to be here and you don't think AA will\nwork, you do have the power to prevent it from working. You can put your arms up in front of you\nand you can say AA is not going to get in here. And that's your choice and you have the power to\ndo that. But if you do that, you don't prove that AA doesn't work. You just prove you're a little\nstupid at this point in time and that you want to hang in that misery a little bit longer.\nBut I thought when I constructed this jail and didn't let anything in that I proved that there\nwas no God, there was no love, and there was no friends, and the world was a terrible place\nbecause it never got inside of me. And I guess what happens here is that somehow\nindividuals, the power of the program, gets through that wall, just opens up the smallest\nlittle crack and allows a little bit of AA to get inside there and grab a\nhold of you and dare you to come out. And what gradually gets exposed is the real you.\nWe find that that world that we had in our head, we just put there. It has no connection to the\nreal world that's here available to us at all. And the beautiful change, for those of you that are\nnew, is the present that you'll get in Alcoholics Anonymous. And that present is you. You're not in\ntouch with that.\nYou have never fully seen the magnificence of yourself. You've seen what alcohol has covered\nit over. It's like it's piled all this garbage on top of this beautiful person. And what sobriety\nis going to do, and these steps and your sponsors and your meetings, they're going to start scraping\nthat away. And that's a painful process, but what a product you're going to find.\nYou are going to find, as you start pulling this stuff back, that you are just as beautiful,\na person, as there is in the rest of the world. There's no one more beautiful than you. No one.\nEveryone is just as beautiful, but there's no one more beautiful than you. The person that's here\ntonight, who has those feelings that all of us have had, if there's any hope that we can give you,\nis an assurance that what sobriety will consist of is an endless series of discovering the\nmagnificence of your true self. And that's what we're going to do. And that's what we're going to\nWe came here to stop drinking and we end up receiving the ultimate gift for any human being,\nwhich is a true perspective on ourselves, our spirituality, our place in the world,\nand the magnificence of this fellowship known as Alcoholics Anonymous.\nI just want to say it's been a privilege to be here tonight at something like the 52nd\nanniversary. I'll never forget it. And I hope those of you that are brand new will\nJust come back.\nDon't try to think your way through this.\nJust allow the people in this room to take your hand\nand take you down a road to places that you don't even know exist.\nBecause things are going to happen to you that you don't know to ask for.\nI mean, there are things in store for you with your name on them\nthat are more magnificent than the stuff you've been dreaming about.\nIf you will just let go and stick your hand out,\nyou'll be reporting to the next newcomer\nwhat a miraculous thing will happen to you\nif you will just abandon those old ideas,\nstick your hand out, and follow the people in front of you.\nThank you all very much. It's a privilege to be here.\nThank you.\nSandy, that was...\nOoh.\nOoh.\nOoh.\nOoh.\nSpectacular and marvelous.\nAnd thank you very much for joining us tonight on this anniversary.\nOn behalf of the Greenwich Friday Night Group,\nI'd like to present you with a gift.\nAnd I won't ask you to open it, but you can look at mine.\nOh, all right.\nWhat's it say?\nCan you see without your glasses?\nIt says, Give Time Time.\nOh, wonderful.\nIt has the AA triangle.\nOh, that's lovely.\nAnd the Tree of Life.\nThank you.\nI appreciate it.\nOh, that's wonderful.\nDelighted to have you here.\nThank you very much.\nThank you.\nThank you.\nThank you again, Sandy.\nWell, we're about ready to wind up.\nWe've only got about 50,000 gallons of coffee left back there,\nand a ton of cookies.\nWe promised to get you out in time.\nWould Tino and Teddy come up, please?\nYes, please.\nThese are my two lieutenants that put on this production tonight,\ntwo of our young aces in Alcoholics Anonymous.\nHow do you like that?\nAnd we have a very nice way of closing.\nAnd if you all would stand and form a chain around the outside.\nTino.\nTino and Teddy will lead us in the Lord's Prayer.\nOur Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.\nThy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.\nGive us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses,\nas we forgive those who trespass against us.\nAnd lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.\nFor thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.\nKeep coming back.