The 15-Pound Telephone and the Ego – Sandy B.

Thank you. Hi everybody, my name is Sandy Beach and I'm an alcoholic. How are you all doing? Well, I'm honored to be here at the Florida State Convention. It's just a remarkable event. I think I spoke at one in 75 or somewhere around there in Hollywood, Florida. yeah and uh i remember back then it wasn't as big as this but it was just full of spirit and sister maurice from new york was speaking there and what a character she was so and then i ended up moving to florida and of course every time i fly back into tampa i just go i am so glad i live here i mean i just travel all over and this is just the greatest so So anyway, my sobriety dates December 7th, 1964, and my home group is the Saturday Night Fever Group in Tampa, Florida. And if you're over that way on Saturday night, please drop in. We'll probably ask you to speak because we can't find a speaker, so that will be something we'll be glad to do. Before I get started, I've tried this announcement over the years But I got to thinking that I'm looking for this guy And he's old enough now to be retired And since most people come to Florida after they retire There's a good chance that you could be in the audience And if you're the guy, you and I were in the same military mental institution in 1964, and I was a captain in the Marine Corps, and you were a lieutenant commander in the Navy. And you and I were in the same clay class. and they were having an ashtray making contest and I had clearly and the doctors were judging it the next morning and I was in the hospital and I said I had clearly made the best ashtrae all the other patients locked up in there agreed that mine was clearly superior to that thing that you had made. And you came into my room the night before, smoking that big cigar, acting real casual, and then as if by accident, you put it out in my ashtray and knocked it on the floor and it shattered and you won the contest. Now I myself have forgotten about this incident. but I figure anybody that would do something like that is probably an alcoholic and if you were an alcoholic you could have ended up in AA you could be working the steps and you have this one amend that you're unable to make So I'll be right outside after the meeting. One chance in a million, what the heck. Let's see, briefly my story. I grew up in New Haven, Connecticut. I got one sister. She's got almost 30 years in AA. you know our parents went through the depression and money was real tight but they were great providers and my sister and I shared about this and she thought it was just the happiest little family and I thought it Was very intimidating. I didn't belong. I sat at the table and they all seemed like a unit and I was somewhere else. All in my mind. The Catholic Church frightened me. My sister thought it was the greatest place in the world. She thought that nuns were cute, the Latin was great, the incense smelled good and all is wonderful. And I sat there like I was in a Nazi boot camp of some sort and was very frightened by it all. And when I was about eight or nine, I remember looking at the crucifix and it's kind of spoke to me and it just looked down and it said, little boy, do you see this? And I said, yes. Well, well, this is what God did to his only son that he loved. Guess what he's going to do to you? And of course, that's not what the church was teaching. That has nothing to do with anything except I thought up that thought and that thought scared me almost into a fainting condition on the front pew. I mean, our thoughts are so powerful. Someone told me once that if you're sitting in a room and you see a person on the other side of the room and you think that they don't like you, the physical and emotional reaction that you have to that thought will be equal to the one as if that person walked over and said, I don't Like You. That's how powerful our thoughts are. They create the reality that we react to. So it's no wonder that we try to get rid of old ideas. And that was certainly one that just paralyzed me. And so I had no comfort in thinking about a higher power. I felt like I was isolated, and I just still have a lot of those tendencies. I was a good little student and athlete, andI went to a little prep school fed right into Yale University in New Haven. I got there, and everybody who arrived from all over the country was clearly superior to me. My God, they were rich, they had convertibles, they knew what was going on, and I felt like they were going to expel me, that they were gonna find out an imposter was in their midst. And what was I doing there? Who did I think I was to be with these people? And I'd been there a couple months, and my roommates are going, You're not drinking. No, no, I'm not going to drink. I'm going to get high grades and all that. And I was at a social function where there was 20 people were supposed to meet each other. And I find that very difficult. And as I approached each group, the guys looked at me and very clearly with their eyes said, we do not want to know you. Do not come any closer. And boy, I could pick that up. You know, that energy when you can see it and boy, they don't like you. They don't like you. And I went to the other group and the other group, and they all had the same basic message. We have plenty of friends. We don't need a creep like you, and so I was thinking of leaving, and there was a bar there, and I said, well, maybe I'll get a drink. It'll help me feel better. I ordered something in soda, had two starting the third one, didn't think anything was happening, decided to leave, and then I turned around, and it was as if those guys were gone, and these 20 or 25 of the friendliest people in the world. They were all looking at me, begging me to be their best friend. Please join our group. Please come over here. And I'm looking and I felt like Alice in Wonderland. I had just gone into a new world, a new level of existence where everything was wonderful. Alcohol didn't change me, but it changed the world that I lived in and it was wonderful And I went up, and I intuitively knew how to handle things now. I could talk about anything. And I'm gabbing and talking, and everybody's going, oh, yeah, this guy is funny. He's telling jokes. He's doing all that. And I realized prior to alcohol, my anxiety and my fears had all my creativity stopped up inside of me. I was afraid to try anything. And suddenly, I'm released. It was like a reawakening, being reborn. It was just so exciting. It was remarkable. And eventually I talked to everybody so much, they left. And even then I was going, don't go home, don' t go home. You know, I don' T want the party to stop. And so I went back to the bar and said to myself, boy, if three drinks do that, what will 20 do? You know? I might as well find out. So I stayed there for quite a while just pouring down tons of alcohol and enjoying every drink. It got better and better. And I got back to the dorm, and then, of course, I started getting sick. You remember when you first start drinking, and I'm in the bathroom on the cold tile floor, which, as I was to learn, is a great place to hang out when you're throwing up and trying to feel better. And I vomited most of the night and sat on the bed the next morning feeling like a hatchet was in the back of my head. Absolutely just dying. And the thought occurred to me, are you going to drink again tonight? And it was like that. And I went, of course. I said, this hatchet in the back of the head and this sense that I may die in the next 15 minutes is a small price to pay for what I had last night. So that's why I'm an alcoholic, because what alcohol did for me was worth any price. Now, I didn't know I was making that decision. I thought I was the same as everybody. But that's how I reacted to it. This stuff is so incredible, and it solves every problem I've ever had since I was a little kid, all in ten minutes. I will – this is going to be my way of getting through life. I mean, that's a lot to happen. You've only been drinking one day. But I knew that. I knew inside that I had discovered what was missing in my life, a power greater than myself. And so I devoted myself to this new way of life, and I started flunking out. No more athletics, getting in fights, going to jail, all kinds of things happening. And none of them caused me to reassess my decision. So you get in trouble, but boy, look what you get for it. It was always fine. What's the problem? And very briefly, I did finally graduate, and the Korean War was going on. Everybody had to join the military. and we were drinking beer one afternoon two or three other guys said we're going down to join the Marines why don't you follow us yeah okay let me finish my beer sounds like fun to me and I'm sure that recruiting sergeant saw us coming in he just went oh boy have we got some live ones yes sir sign our name raise our hand and all that the first ten weeks were a little shocking to me I knew it was a mistake to have brought my golf clubs. Let's just put it that way. Anyway, somehow we survived that. And, you know, actually in the middle of all of that, I started liking it because there was so much discipline and I couldn't drink and I was getting healthy and I was feeling better and I'm starting to get this camaraderie feeling. Keith knows all about it. And it was great. You just felt like you were part of something, which is what AA enables us to be. It's not to be something but to be part of Something. And it felt good. Something is more important than you, the core. And people die for it. It's just, oh, my God, what a change in perspective. And so six months training and you're an infantry platoon leader and that's what I was trained as and we're ready to go. And I saw a training movie about pilots and I had second thoughts. The pilots were at a bar. They were talking with their hands. There were some blondes in the background, and I paused a second. They weren't sleeping in sleeping bags. They were sleeping in big rooms with TVs and that kind of stuff. So I asked somebody, what's that, the pilot stuff? I'd never been in an airplane, and they said, oh, you don't want that. You have to sign up for three more years. I said, I'll sign up für drei mehr Jahre. What is that? so I signed up and passed all the tests got my orders to Pensacola, Florida to start 18 months of training I met this lovely woman while home on weekends one time and we had gotten engaged and so we're off on our honeymoon to Pensicola, Florida and I remember getting on a DC-3 in New York to go to Atlanta and I got air sick all over that plane it was just oh boy And then I got another one from Atlanta to Pensacola and got air sick all over that plane and got to flight school, and the first six flights I got air sickness. It looked bad, but the motion sickness went away, and then I became very good at it. I would be number three in our class, number two or whatever, and I just said, I am in heaven. I'm being paid to do this. It was so much fun. and so I got through all of the gunnery and carrier qualification and instruments and formation and all the stuff you do went to advanced training in Kingsville, Texas drinking and drinking and drink but not enough to not do well in the school and finally after 18 months I got my orders to Japan with a four month layover at El Toro, California living on Balboa Island my God had a rental unit for about $120 a month. I have no idea what it would be today, and I couldn't have been happier. Finished that Marine Corps training and then went over to a fighter squadron in Japan. The war had ended, and there wasn't much to do except fly high-performance planes and drink. And boy, we did it, and we drank as a unit. The colonel would have us all at the table in the officer's club, and we had a big model plane in the middle of it, and you did not order a drink on your own. The colonel ordered the rounds. He'd call the waiter, we want another round. And they were drinking fast enough for me. So I was never sitting there going, man, I've got to order another drink. They were drinking as fast as I do. The colonels ordered, and I said, boy, this is wonderful. And so a lot of wonderful stories and all that But about nine months into this thing I was on the end of the runway with a major who was the maintenance officer He was one of my heroes, big Irish guy And he was telling me that we were watching field carrier practice He's telling me he's going to get a fighter squadron in about a year and a half He'll be a lieutenant colonel And he wants nothing but the best pilots in the Marine Corps And he points to me, this young lieutenant And he said, and I want you. And I felt like, oh my God, I've died and gone to heaven. And then he said but I wouldn't let you drink. And I'm going, I get drunk with this guy all the time. What does he mean? He wouldn't Let me drink. Everybody drinks. And it wasn't until I got to AA that I realized in the middle of real heavy drinkers, my drinking scared him. There was something about the intensity with which I drank that scared him. He just said, this guy, he's out somewhere that we don't know about. This is not partying like the rest of us are doing. And he was right. And I went on and I, you know, looked like success. I had different assignments. We ended up with six children. I got promoted to captain. I'd been all over the place and flew photo planes in the Cuban Missile Crisis. But the alcoholism was going to bring everything to an end, and I started the physical symptoms, the withdrawals, and I decided to get on those F-8s, and I didn't want to get in there because I was anxiety attacks, and I was losing vision, and my heart would race, And it was just like something's going to happen. I knew I was going to pass out, and there's no one else in the plane. And this was going on for like a year, and I'm still going out and getting in the plane, and i just i knew something awful was going to happen um so i went to the doctors and i only go there as a last resort and i went and i said something's happened to me in the planes i said what well i'm starting to lose vision i feel like I'm going to pass out. I'm sweating. They said, oh, my heart is racing. Something is happening to me. And of course that scared them to death and they said, well, you're not going to fly anymore until we find out what this is. They sent me back to Pensacola for two weeks for all the doctors to study me and of course there was no such thing as the disease of alcoholism. There were no alcohol programs and so that was out. It had to be something else. And it was, now I look back, it was really funny to watch the heart guys test me and then the nerve guys and stomach guys and the dentist. The dentist came the closest. Because he's looking in there and that gets him real close to my breath. And he said, you reek of alcohol. And it's 12 noon. And I said, well, I got drunk last night. And he said, oh, OK, well, that's probably why you reek of alcohol and just went on with the exam. And we went through all of the different tests and they could find nothing physically wrong. So they left it up to the psychiatrist. He interviewed me. It was a bizarre interview. I don't remember some of the questions. And he concluded that I had a childhood fear of flying that just showed up after 13 years of flying. and I can't fly anymore and so that killed me because that's who I was that was my total identity was wearing those wings and just here we are now I'm going back up to Cherry Point waiting orders from headquarters Marine Corps because I had gotten a regular commission I was making a career this was my career and it took about three months and they gave me orders to become an air traffic controller I went to air traffic control school and passed. That's a hard school, and somehow I got through. The hardest part was my hand shook so bad I could hardly fill out those little strips. There was no computers. You did it manually. And I was sent overseas to be in charge of an air traffic control unit in Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, Japan for 14 months, and I got there, and thank God the senior enlisted men, E-8, came up to me when I took over the unit, and, oh, Captain, we're glad to have you. Here's your tent, and put your bike over here, blah, blah. And he took one look and could smell me, and he just said, Sir, I think we should have an understanding that you personally never talk to an airplane. And I went, right. So my job was to try and show up. That was basically what I would try and do, It was to ride my bike to work and stay there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But mostly I was drinking. I now didn't have to wait 10 hours before flying. And during that year, I lost 70 pounds, 50 pounds. And I had malnutrition. I stopped hanging out with my buddies. Didn't even go to happy hour. I just stayed in the Quonset hut, went to work, and tried to stay alive on soup and vodka and juice because hard food, solid food just wouldn't. I'd start to chew it, and I'd just start throwing it up. And so that was a very bad year, and it's just so sick. And the funny thing is about that year, I was in an outfit that had incredible spirit. We had reunions later on back in Washington. It was just a wonderful group of guys, half of them pilots and half of other marine officers. And we got together after I'd been in AA about 15 years. And we're sitting around talking and, you know, they were drinking a beer or two. It wasn't a big party or anything. We're just reminiscing a lot of funny stories. And two of them were talking to me privately and they said, you Know, we knew you were dying. I mean, it was obvious. You were throwing up blood and we just knew you were dying. But there wasn't anything we could do for you. Now, that's a heck of a statement. The Marine Corps goes back to get their dead, even if they lose other people. I mean, this is you do not leave anyone anywhere. And yet with as far as the disease of alcoholism was concerned, they were powerless. There was nothing we could doing for you and I remember, boy, wow, What a statement to make. There you are. Sorry, we can't help you. And that's where we were as far as the disease was concerned in 1963 and 64. Somehow I made it through the year and I came back of all places to Quantico, Virginia, to go to a career school to become a bird colonel or something. And most of the time I couldn't find the school. I was now getting the hallucinations and things were really starting to go freaky in my head. I mean, I remember every time I would find the school, I couldn't find the room I was in. And when I came to the room generally late, I would stand there. Which table am I at? We were divided up in groups and guys would be going here, here, so I'd go over and sit at the table. And then there'd be PT and everybody's going to their locker to get their athletic gear. and I wouldn't know where my locker was, and so somebody would show me. And then I couldn't work the combination lock, even though I had the combination. Three right, and then we'd go back. Did I do three right? Have I already done three right. Maybe I've got to do three Right again. So I'd never get my locker open. So you can see it was like, whoa, things are bad. And right about then I had a grand mal seizure. right in half and ambulances came and off I went to Bethesda to see what caused it. I was there about four days while they're studying me to see how I could have caused a grand mal seizure when I went into the DTs where you hallucinate and I saw the CIA was trying to break me with memory tests. None of it's real, but you know, when you go in a nut word, every nut word I've heard about, You go in, they go ask you your name and then they go, listen, would you mind counting backwards by sevens from 100? Oh, I see a lot of people. OK. And what happens is you go 93 and you never get another one. That's the end. See, that was hard to do when you're sober and OK. But wow, 93 minus seven. Let me start over again. OK, 93. So he can't do it. So that must have got my mind going. They're trying to embarrass me and break me. And so then the CIA came in, they asked me all these questions, and then they would move everything. So when I went out to tell them what was there, they had changed it and they moved walls. Clearly they were trying to drive me crazy. And evidently I reacted to this and ran out and they caught me and put me in a straitjacket. And I was locked up for six months. So that was the finale. And during that period, there was no AA. They were handling everything psychiatrically. And we would go and sit with all the other people, talk about our mother, talk about whatever. And one day, the AA group from Bethesda talked the psychiatrist into letting him bring an AA meeting in, and that's how I heard about AA. now it didn't take right then I was very excited about it but I wasn't sure I was an alcoholic didn't have enough evidence and so when I was released as an outpatient you could go home at night and come back during the day and go home on weekends it wasn't long before I was having a few drinks at home to watch the Redskin games and they told me if I had another drink my career was over and I said well they didn't mean that They meant if I ever got drunk. And it wasn't long before I was bringing vodka into the nut ward because I needed it. I knew they were going to catch me, and out of desperation on this Pearl Harbor day, I called the intergroup, and they sent over another Marine captain by the name of Bill T., and I haven't had a drink since. He's been my sponsor for almost 42 years. and his anniversary is tomorrow and his home group has called me and asked me if I could come up there because he's had lung cancer for a long time and they think this could be the last one so I'm going home tonight and then go up there tomorrow morning And anyway, this guy just came to my house, put me in the car, took me to Manassas, Virginia for my first AA meeting. I'd been sober about four hours. It was a group anniversary. God almighty, they had ham and turkey and all this stuff that was going on. I couldn't eat. And I was sitting in this smelly room with a space heater blowing down. And the bathroom was not the flush type. And so when you went in there, you had to take a deep breath outside and then get in there and get back out. And then they had square dancing. They had fiddle players. They had all this country stuff going on. And that meeting lasted about five hours. So now I'm sober. I'm over about nine hours. And I'm trying to get out of there. But it's so remote. remote. There was no, I looked out, there weren't even streetlights. And it was, it was like almost raining snow and just terrible night. So I was thinking, well, I'm just going to make a break for it anyway. It looked like they were going to stay there. And I felt the hand on my shoulder and it turned out it was an Al-Anon lady by the name of Betsy Lynch. She saw what was going on. And she just, and I turned around to see who it was And it was like an angel was standing there. And I looked at her and she said, everything's going to be fine. And it Was like I believed her. And I just went back in. That was a very big turning point was that hand on my shoulder and everything's going to Be all right. And I went back In and God, it wasn't long after that about 10 months I was Driving along in my car and had sort of an awareness. It was as if my higher power told me, as long as you keep going to AA, everything will be fine. And for some or no reason I believed that because a lot of things bad started happening after I got sober. I lost my career in the Marine Corps. I lost mi marriage and couldn't get – couldn't make money. You know, I had six kids. There was eight of us and I get thrown out of the Marine Corp and I didn't know – I wasn't prepared for anything, and it wasn't very good in my mind at promoting myself or even asking anybody for a job. And so it really went years. I think I had about 15 years before I earned more money than I owed. So when I hear new people talking about financial problems, I go, do you have more than 15 years? Well, then I'll listen to you, but up to 15? What's the problem? So you've got to wait until payday to buy a new battery for the car, so you have to walk. So you remember all that, oh, the power's off for only two days and we'll have it back on. But it was a little difficult bringing people over to my house to sponsor. if you want what I have and are willing to go to any length to get it. Yet, June was asking about Ed C. from San Antonio and he and I got sober with half of 64 and we were in the class of 64 and Tom was in the classroom. Ed had the same kind of stuff and early sobriety, everything was great and then the congressman he was working for didn't get reelected and heads back in San Antonio and had about 11 years of sobriety and couldn't get a job, and he's getting depressed and all that. And Hal called him up and said, come on up to Alexandria, Virginia, we'll put you in the men's home. And he said, well, I've got 11 years' sobriete. Well, are you willing or not? So up he comes, he goes in the man's home, never forget, And I was getting divorced again and now had whatever possession I had, they were now gone. And Ed is in the men's home, and he wants to get out and not live there. So we became the odd couple in a one-bedroom apartment in Alexandria that we called the Hotel California. And I had bedroom furniture. Somehow I had saved that. I had rescued a single bed and a bureau. So when you went in my little bedroom, things looked cool. But Ed was sleeping in the dining room, and he had a bed and box with a table, and he was a night watchman in a motel, and they gave him a used TV. So we had a TV there, and the living room had nothing in it except the bicycle and the 5AA slogans scotch taped on the wall. And we each had a knife and a fork and a spoon. I don't know where we got them. And we used paper cups and paper plates and all that kind of stuff. And then we chipped in and we bought a redwood picnic table that we assembled and put it in the kitchen. And then people who wanted us to sponsor them we'd invite them over to the whoever was having the go to the picnic table and that's where we'd sit you could see them walking through the living room kind of looking up and then we'd sit at the table do you want some coffee and we'd get the styrofoam cup I'd take my spoon out of the sink I'd rinse it off Get a little dirty towel and wipe it off. Make them a cup of instant coffee and I would explain the promises to them. Especially the part about sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. Anyway, Ed and I that was kind of a turning point he got plugged into actually it was the Machine Tool Builders huge trade association he became their top guy top lobbyist and when he retired out of Washington half of the Congress came to his retirement party and he went back to San Antonio and I ended up with a wonderful job with the credit union movement of the United States and worked there for 20 years writing speeches and testimony on behalf of the credit unions, which are a great group of people. Remind me a great deal of AA. So you can see that God has been very good to me. And it's... And, of course, I don't deserve it. None of us do. You get rewarded for messing up big time. And you go, why would that happen? You know, when you ever think about that, why do you get rewarded for messing up big time? Well, this is my thoughts. Until you mess up big-time, you rarely ask for help. And if you don't ask for health, you never get help. So if you wonder why God hasn't helped you, you've probably never asked. Never asked. Because I really believe God's will for me is to be happy, He'd be glad to personally be involved every day of my life. Just saying, I will personally guide you through each day, telling you exactly what you should do, and I will supply you the power to do that on a daily basis. That's my commitment to you. The problem is that God's real stingy with this help. He only gives it when I ask. And most of the time, I don't need that help. Matter of fact, 95% of the time,I don'tneed that help and I don't get it. And then I go, I guess God's busy. Must be helping somebody else. must not be interested in me. And that's the spiritual dilemma that we all have, is this inability to pick up the phone, inability to stop somebody at a meeting and say, can I talk to you about something? Do you remember that feeling? It's right here. You can feel it. When this meeting ends, when this discussion meeting, as soon as they say the Lord's Prayer, I'm going over to Harry, who I really trust, and I'm gonna ask him about this situation And the meeting ends, and we start over, and then we go talk to Brett and go out for coffee or something. We almost asked for help, and that's such a hard thing to overcome. Newcomers talk about the 15-pound telephone. I went over to call my sponsor, and I couldn't get the phone up off. It was just too hard to ask for help. So why is that? because in our eyes, in our self-centered ego eyes, asking for help is a sign of weakness. It is a signs that you are unable to be self-sufficient and you can't handle life on your own and, of course, that causes a great deal of problems for us. Somehow, because we're together, we keep reminding each other of the solution. I was talking with Bob at lunch I reminded him of the letter from Carl Jung to Bill Wilson when he was thanking Bill for letting him know about AA and Roland Hazard and how Dr. Jung had always felt that alcoholics were really looking for God, that that's what they were doing. They had a thirst for spirituality and found it in alcohol, and it appeared to be working, but of course that isn't God. And so that's why he sent Roland Hazard to find a spiritual solution, the Oxford Group, et cetera. So then after thanking Bill, he just was talking in a general way about human beings. And he said, I've been studying human beings, and he's a very spiritual person, for, you know, 60 years. And this is what I think. That's what he said. He said, I think that every human being has to struggle with evil. Now in AA it would say character defects. And evil always wins. That's a pretty negative thing. Evil always wins, with one exception. People who have had a spiritual awakening and are in a society that helps them maintain that spiritual awakening, which I think describes Alcoholics Anonymous to a T and enables us to be in a rather small percentage of people who actually have a chance at discovering what life is really all about, which has nothing to do with the set of rules and ideas that we thought was what life had all to do about. We suddenly realize the reason that life is so difficult and so hard to do is what causes us to look for God. Without that, we'd never do it. So it's almost like it was built into us as part of the package. And our creator wants us to return to him. He just can hardly wait for us to turn and go, I don't want all this. I don' t want a big yacht and a thing on the beach. I want you. Well, why would we ever do that? Because it's too painful to not do it. And that's what the whole deal is. There is something inside of every human being that is unfixable except by God. No matter what we try, it's still there. There's a sense that something's missing. There's something wrong, even when you're on a roll. Okay, I'm there. Now everything's fine. Now everything'S fine. And you go lie down in bed and it goes, no, it'S not. No, it'S not. You are not there. what is it and of course we heard this when we went to church or we read spiritual books but we didn't connect until we got in here because out there and this is what a bill talks about this we just didn't like to listen to authority we were always being talked down to you know what I mean? The cop, the judge, no offense. Looking down at us. You know what I mean? How many times you sit in front of the judge? You were always like this. Bam, bam, bam. And so that's how we saw the wonderful ministers and priests in our lives. It was sort of down, down. Wasn't meant that way, but that's how we saw it. And in AA, the first time, the teacher was looking at us from a level playing field. It was one other sinner talking to you, going, welcome, drunk. Here's my story. And you go, wow, that's worse than me. And so we listened for the first times in our lives. So if you're new and you're so ashamed of your horrible past. And you go, God, why did I have to waste all those years? Why did I has to do all those horrible things? Isn't it awful that I wasted all those years? And then you come in here and you find out that those years are the reason that you are able to help the next alcoholic save his life. That is your gift. Thank you. In essence, that is the most valuable part of you that we have. It's the pain and suffering that we went through that caused us to become desperate enough to take spiritual actions. And that is the connection that the new person makes when they realize this guy, this gal is just like me. He's talking to me on the level playing field, looking me in the eyes and he went through it so I have visual proof right in front of me that it could work. And we instilled in the new person this hope to try this plan, and if you're new, that's the greatest thing that'll ever happen to you. Because the spiritual power that is achieved by working the 12 steps as your sponsor guides you through them is designed to cause results. And these results are magnificent, and we talk about them in the promises. And possibly the greatest promise that we get is at the very end, and I believe this is the spiritual waking itself. It says we suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves. This is a realization that you have as an individual. You suddenly go, oh my God, this is all due to my God. And that is the moment. And in the tenth step in the big book, after that ninth step, it says, we now enter the world of the spirit. And that was the transformation. Now we want to maintain this, improve this, and learn to get rid of as many old material ideas as possible and get out from under their influence, get out form under their power, and totally be directed by this new loving force. And this is the struggle of the rest of our sobriety, and we would all fail if we were trying to do it on our own. It just, there's something about being in a group, in a family, being part of something that continuously refocuses us on the spiritual answer. Because our mind and the TV, like Bob was talking about yesterday, Every other message that we are bombarded with tells us it's something other than the spiritual answer. And so when we come back to AA, we should have a sign out there that says spiritually spoken here. And this is the language that we talk to each other in. And Bill has called it the language of the heart. And when one heart is talking to another, there is a power that is beyond comprehension. It needs no translation. You simply respond to it. You simply experience it. You don't explain it. You don' t have to intellectually understand it. You simply experienced it, which is why every time we go to a meeting, we feel better. It wasn' t what was said or this or that. We went there. There was a connection made between hearts. and the healing process took place in spite of ourselves. And we walk out of there going, I don't get it, but I feel better now than I did when I walked in. I feel good. I feel much better. And that's the spiritual power of love, of fellowship, and of commitment. And if you're new, the biggest present you'll ever get is a new vision of yourself. I heard it said, and I can't remember who said it but you really are all that you can ever become you are the most magnificent creation that you could ever be that you cannot even imagine you just can't see it yet and you cannot become that you can only allow yourself to be shaped into that You are the incredibly beautiful statue that is inside of a block of marble. And there is a master sculptor who is going to chip away at all of the defects that are not you. And when this work, the work of your higher power, is finished, there will be a sight to behold. And one day you're going to look in the mirror and you're going to thank God that you stuck around for the entire process. Thank you all very much.