The Chapter to the Agnostic and the Three Words Change Your Mind – Sandy B.

Hi, everybody. My name is Sandy Beach and I'm an alcoholic. How are you all doing? Thank you very much for inviting me here. I've had a wonderful time. It's been a great weekend. Congratulations to those of you that picked up those three big books with six days. I wouldn't have had the guts to come up anywhere with six days, so I'm absolutely excited for you. My sobriety date is December 7th, 1964, and I've had the same sponsor for almost 39 years. So I'm a very lucky member of Alcoholics Anonymous. and my home group is the Saturday Night Fever group in Tampa, Florida and we meet on Saturday night and we have two speakers and we have a lot of fun so if you're ever in Tampa look up that group and if I'm not on the road I'll be there and we just insist on having fun and that's what I think is important for anybody who is new here, that that's what AA is designed to do, is to enable you to be happy without alcohol. And if anybody had told me that I could get happy with alcohol, I would say what anybody new would say, well, you don't understand. Every time that I'm without alcohol is when I'm miserable. Alcohol is what fixes my problems, so your idea of not drinking is absurd. How could I stay miserable and sober for any extended period of time? And the answer is you can't. It just becomes too much. That's why going on the wagon is such a heavy load, and you know when you're on the wagon. Anytime I tried it, I knew that every day that went by I was getting one day closer to my next drink because I couldn't stand it much longer. I mean, how long can you take all of this pain? And so that was my vision of sobriety, was that it would just be an endurance contest of some sort and little did I know that by following these 12 steps and by getting in the middle of Alcoholics Anonymous a transformation would take place where the world looked like a wonderful place without any alcohol in my system. And I like to think of sobriety as being in a position where there's nothing for alcohol to fix. And when there's nothing for alcohol to fix it's real easy to not drink because you just don't need it. You don't eat it for anything. It just doesn't occur to you to have a drink. They say that when a problem is addressed spiritually, it's entirely different than when we address it through the normal course of events. Normally, we speak of solving a problem. That's the most normal way of, you know, well, I got this problem, but I finally figured out a solution and then I solved the problem. But in a spiritual realm, we don't solve them. They get removed. They just don't exist anymore. And so the sobriety is not fighting alcohol anymore. I never dreamed this could happen. And I guess I'd been sober about six months, and I'll never forget the shock that I felt. It was almost like something was terribly wrong. I realized I had forgotten to think about drinking last week. And it was so scary, I almost made a little note. don't forget to worry about drinking because I've been doing that forever and all of a sudden it was almost like I forgot to worry About Drinking. Well, that's what sobriety is. It just doesn't come up on the agenda to fight. It's just not there. And so if you're new, you're in for a much more happy sobrietry than you can imagine. It doesn't look like it could happen, but it does. They say the 12 steps are a series of actions that we take that we don't believe in. Because if you look at them, you just don't see any answers in there. I remember looking at those steps. My sponsor said, everything that you need on these 12 steps. You know, the standard speech that you get in the beginning. And I remember going home and I'm going, this is going to really address my problems. And I started studying those things. and like any new person I had one primary problem and I was looking for the money step there's nothing about getting any money in any of those steps and I remember telling my sponsor what about the money stuff what about this and he said well we have these promises And he said, I know it's almost impossible for you to conceptualize this yet. But we can address fear of financial security without any money. And I remember going, you can? And he says, yes. We just removed the financial insecurity. And you're broke, but you're not worried about being broke. It's just not important. And I thought that sounded a little far-fetched, you know what I mean? I'm going, well, I'll humor him. And I'll tell you, I was so broke my first 15 years in AA that I really, but I had a wonderful time. I just had a great time, and it was just part of life. I had six kids. I got just thrown out of the Marine Corps trying to find a job and pay for all these things, and it Was a real struggle, but i had the best time. I had just as much fun as the guy who had a lot of money. And it was a freedom that I didn't know you could have, that you could solve a financial problem spiritually with no money. Seemed impossible. Very briefly, I just want to talk a little bit about my story. I like talking more about AA than my story, I have heard it a few times. It has the same ending, I could really go, you know, I drank a lot and then I got an AA and everything's great. And that would be a one-minute version of the entire talk. But I grew up in New Haven, Connecticut in the 30s. And my parents had been through the Depression. So they were really worried about money and job security and things like that. But they provided for my sister and I pretty good. And by the way, my sister has 26 years in AA. So we've gotten quite close. When she came around here, we suddenly had a whole new relationship, and that has meant a lot. And she's very active in the New Haven, Connecticut area and goes to meetings and sponsors people and just amazing. And brought up in the Catholic Church, and I had my sister was right next to me. We often talk about this. and the Catholic Church scared me to death. I took everything literally, you know what I mean? And they said this and I just heard those nuns and I was a little kid out there so scared to death my sister's over there three years younger than I am just going hey take it or leave it who cares this is cool I'm happy in here she wasn't buying into this stuff in the literal sense and so her relationship with that church has just been very comfortable and happy and wonderful whereas mine was, it was terror. And I had what I call a spiritual awakening when I was about eight years old, maybe nine. And I'd been studying the catechism. I'd be studying every little thing and thinking about it, thinking about punishment and being bad and the amount of trouble I was already in as an eight-year-old. and i was sitting in church one day and the crucifix was hanging down in this church it must have been 20 feet high great big wooden crucif you could not miss it it was right there and i Was sitting there looking at it when all of a sudden it was like something spoke to me from the universe and it gave me an insight that i hadn't had before and it said little boy do you see this crucifix? I said, yeah, yeah. Well, this is what God did to his only son that he loved. Guess what he's going to do to you? And I fell off the pew in a faint and they carried me out. People said, what happened? I told them, oh, I had something for breakfast. I wasn't going to tell anybody, and I'm a typical like you, the rest of you alcoholics, don't ever tell anybody about anything. It's much safer to figure it out yourself. So I've scared myself for years with that one. And so as life unfolded, I did have polio as a little kid. I had that epidemic, went through a lot of New England. And I was lucky that the Sister Kenny treatment got my arm and leg back working. But it was kind of a traumatic thing where you just got zipped out of your house and then nobody could come see you because of the quarantine. You weren't quite sure what was going on. And so that reinforced my feeling that I really didn't belong in that family. You know what I mean? That I was from some other planet or I just didn't connect anywhere. And it's taken a long time in AA to feel like I'm the same as everybody else. And so I had that little feeling, but I did well in school. Went to a little prep school in New Haven and got very high grades and was on a lot of athletic teams. It was a feeder school right into the Ivy League, and so I went to Yale, and I didn't have any – I hadn't been drinking at all. And I got there, and, of course, people are going, you're not drinking, you're in college. Come on, party, we're going to have fun. It makes you feel wonderful. No, no, I'm going to not drink. but it's somewhere in the but I've been there about three or four months and I went to I always tell this in my story I went to this social function where you were supposed to meet the other 30 guys that were in the room that was just that's all you had to do go in and meet all those guys find out where they're from just chit chat well that was terrifying to me because I knew that I didn't belong there that all these guys were much better than I was They came from all over the United States, and they were wealthy, and they were smart, and they were rich. And I was an imposter that was in this class, and they hadn't caught me yet. That was my self-esteem. So going up to meet people, I would start up to these groups that were in the room. And as I approached them, they looked at me and gave me that, you ever see people's eyes? And they tell you, don't come near me. And so I saw that in the first group. We don't wanna know you. Don't join our group. And I just, well, actually, I'm going over here, and then I went over there, and they didn't want to know me. And I made a tour around the room and just could see from people's faces that they had enough friends already, and they did not want to known me. So I never shook anyone's hand. I made the entire tour of the room, and I started to leave, which is what I always did if something is making me anxious, is to just go away from it. But there was a bar there and there was bartender. So I walked up and I'm thinking about my roommates, you know, you ought to drink, it'll make you feel good. You ought to have a drink. So I went up and ordered some whiskey something, whiskey and soda, and it tasted awful. And I sat there talking to the bartender and drank it and nothing happened. I didn't feel wonderful. So I had another one and I didn' t feel wonderful had a third one was about halfway through still didn't feel wonderful put the drink down I assumed that it wasn't working and I turned around to leave and I looked back at that group and those guys were gone and they'd been replaced by 30 of the friendliest guys I've ever seen I took a look in their eyes and every guy in that room wanted to know me. You could just see it. They were begging me to join their groups. No, don't join that group, Sandy. Join our group, please, please. And I looked around and I just said, God, the world has been transformed into a wonderful place filled with wonderful people. That was my feeling. I said, God, I love this world. I've never loved the world up until that moment. The world was very frightening and intimidating. For the first time in my life, I thought the world was great. And then I felt different. I had a little spring in my step, and I'm snapping my fingers. And I'm actually thinking to myself that they're lucky that they are going to meet me. That was... And I had something to say. It didn't matter where they were from. You know, hey, I'm from Wisconsin. Hey, Badger. You know? It was almost like I intuitively knew how to handle situations that were baffling me ten minutes earlier. And so I had this incredible sense that I had discovered a great secret to life that was solving problems that went back as far as my memory could take me. That's how powerful alcohol was. I had found something that solved everything, all these things that were bottled up inside of me. It took away all that anxiety and fear and confusion and allowed me to be in touch with my own creativity with other people for the first time ever. I could finally be me. I didn't sit off on the side and be afraid to share my thoughts. I could be me, it was almost like I finally found the on switch to turn on my brain and myself and it was just a very powerful experience so I went back to the bar Obviously. If a little is good, then a lot is going to be wonderful. And of course, 20 drinks later or whatever it was, I'm lying on the floor in the bathroom and the room is spinning and I'm throwing up and it just was awful. And I remember the next day having a hangover that was close to death. Just as bad. I didn't know anybody could feel that bad. And I got up and went in, had some ice water, I think, and sat there just aching. And the thought occurred to me, well, are you going to drink again tonight? And the answer was like that. I said, of course I am. This little suffering here is a very small price to pay for what I had last night. So I had already cut the deal. I'd already made that decision. that what I got from alcohol was worth everything. So if somebody had come up to me, you know, a little movie or something, and the devil came in and said, all right, you want to choose alcohol? Yes, I do. I want a permanent relationship with alcohol. Well, would you be willing to give up your high grades? Yes. I mean, I wouldn't have even thought about it. Would you be able to give us a drink? Would you give up athletics? Yes. Would you believe to give yourself respect? Yes. I mean, I had already cut the deal that day. Only been drinking 18 hours. You know what I mean? And I'm already, yeah. Yeah, take away my family. I don't care what you take away. I am not giving up what I had last night. I will give up anything to get that and that's what I did. And that's What You Did. You didn't know you were making that deal when you first started drinking, but as your life unfolded, just like mine, you slowly gave up everything in the attempt to keep this incredible gift. Alcohol was not a problem. It was the solution to my problems. For non-alcoholics, you will never get a non- alcoholic and ask them. I remember asking my roommate 25 years later. He was a big drinker, but a social drinker. But we got drunk a lot and we partied. And then I was in AA maybe 20 years and I was speaking in Dallas and I went out with him and I said, he came to the meeting. He just loves AA because it saved me. And we have a lot of fun together and we talk and joke about booze and sobriety and all these things. So I was asking him, Roy, looking back 25 years, if somebody were to ask you about alcohol what would you say? What pops into your head? Alcohol. What does that mean to you? So he sat there and he said well alcohol makes food taste better. That was his entire summary of of alcohol. I almost felt like asking him is that going down or coming up? Now, you and I would never answer the question that way. And he would never have said, oh, alcohol, it's the secret of life, which it was for us. And so that's why he's not an alcoholic, because alcohol did not transform him and the world that he lived in. So he wasn't prepared to give up what I was prepared to Give Up. Why would he give it up just to make food taste better? He wasn't going to puke blood for a couple of years just so food tastes better. but if it transformed your life and solved every problem that you ever had drinking was close to a spiritual experience it was a transforming event where the world became pleasant to live in and I became somebody and when alcohol wasn't present I was nobody and the world was intimidating and it was painful to live in the world sober so anytime somebody said to me why don't you not drink? I went, why? I'll be in pain all the time. And I can't get in touch with my creativity. I canít be anybody. So it would never occur to me to not drink. So with those decisions firmly in place within a very few months of drinking I was prepared now to go out and pay the consequences. And thatís what I did. I just somehow graduated it was very close, my grades got so bad I got arrested, started getting my teeth knocked out all the things that happened and as each event would happen I would go, so what, you're in jail so what? It's nothing compared to what you get from booze it wasn't even a close call the Korean War was going on everybody, the draft was there you had to join the military so a group of guys are drinking beer they said let's join the Marine Corps oh yeah, yeah, join the Marines Corps boy I got down there a few months later and I just remember going wow these guys are intense don't they ever lighten up hey guys, hey guys let's have some fun here shaving the head and we went through all that crazy stuff and at the end of that boot camp period then we were off to officer's candidate school it took six months and now we were all infantry second lieutenants and somewhere in that school that most of the other guys loved I liked it but it wasn't me if you know what I mean they said hey I'd rather sleep in the snow I'd say I'd better sleep in a first class hotel I wasn't eagerly seeking to go out and do these things and there was a training movie about pilots and I saw that and the pilots were at a bar in this movie in the beginning of it and they were talking with their hands they had scarves and some blondes were milling around in the background and then they showed some planes and they Were just flying around so I asked this major what's this pilot stuff and he said you don't want that you'd have to sign up for three more years I said, I could take three more years. What is that pilot stuff? Oh, you know, you've got to pass it physically. You gave me all the paperwork. Well, I made it. I got through all that stuff, and now I'm going to flight school in Pensacola. And I had met someone, and we got married in that interval. Very happy event. And we got on a plane to go to Pensacala, and I got airsick on the plane going down. I had never even seen an airplane, you know, up close. And I got sick in the old SNJ down in Pensacola for the first six flights and it didn't look good for this particular guy. But then that motion sickness went away and I had found that I had something that I was excellent at. It was right up my alley. I just suddenly became very good at everything, and went through that. It was an 18-month school, and I got through that, got into jets, got over to Japan. The Korean War had ended, so all we were doing in Japan was defending against something and partying. And it was a wonderful time. I just love it. That was a long time ago. That was in 1956. and I still think about that, how wonderful it was and how much I regret that my drinking ruined that career that I had going. I just think back on how wonderful it was and I just went to the museum in Pensacola recently and saw all the planes that we flew and I started thinking about that particular squadron I was in some other squadrons but that one was the first one There was just that group of guys, and I had run across one of them. I talked to him on the phone about ten years ago, and something made me call him last week. And I said, Hardy, why don't we get you and anybody else you can think of from that squadron room meet in Pensacola and go to that museum? And he said, Sandy, next weekend, that's the weekend after this, there's a Marine Corps Aviation Association meeting in New Bern. There's going to be seven guys from that squadron there, and so I'm going next weekend, and I'm gonna see all those guys, so I am like a little kid in a candy store to just see. It just means a lot to me, but in the middle of that, that was a very big drinking thing. God, we drank as a squadron. Went into the officer's club, and there was a table reserved, and the colonel sat up at the front. And we drank by rounds. You didn't order a drink on your own. The colonel would go, okay, bring another round. And so everyone drank the same thing. I bet everybody would drink 15 drinks. It was just like you were in heaven, you know. There was just all this partying and then going up. And I tell you all that because about six months into this, this incident occurred and I can still remember it and I had no idea what it was but I was standing out in the end of the runway practicing to go aboard the carrier and you do these field carrier practice landings and this major and I were standing out there watching some of our squadron mates practice these landings oh look at that guy, he's too high we're just talking and carrying on and he started talking about how he could hardly wait to get promoted to lieutenant colonel because he was going to get his own fighter squadron he was a big Irish guy and I'm going yeah, yeah major you'd be the best CO oh man and he said yeah and I would just get nothing but the best pilots in the Marine Corps in that squadron he said I'd get you in that quadron and I just felt like oh my God that's a high compliment I just feel so good and then he said but I wouldn't let you drink and I couldn't believe that he said that because we're all getting drunk together and all that and I realize now that in the middle of that incredible high level of drinking I stood out you know what I'm saying that an alcoholic even in that environment that those guys were looking over going boy that Sandy takes it one notch further than the rest of us doesn't he And I just thought we were all the same, and of course when the tour ended and they came back to the States, then they shifted their drinking to what was socially acceptable back here. And of course I came back and I just drank always with the point of getting drunk. Well this went on for 10 years, maybe 11 years, and I started, the disease took over. We had six kids in that time and it looked like I was, you know, I got promoted to first lieutenant, I got promote to captain and it look like I had some kind of a career going but the alcoholism was now coming in. I started having withdrawals in the airplanes. I would lose vision. I couldn't think very clearly. I was sweating and shaking and it was getting dangerous to fly with me and I started realizing that, you know, I'm the only guy in the plane so I'm getting like God this is hard and eventually I went to a flight surgeon it got so bad I came close to buying the farm a couple of times hitting the wrong switches and stuff like that so I went there and they agreed I had a terrible problem they sent me down to Pensacola for two weeks and the doctor studied me and there was no such thing as alcoholism in the Navy as a disease. No, I mean it was plenty of alcoholics but there was no diagnosis. You couldn't be an alcoholic. You had to be crazy or depressed or something. That was your diagnosis. And so they're studying me down there for two weeks and running me up in planes and all the dental, the psychiatrists and all these things. They couldn't find out what was wrong even though it was pretty obvious my hands shook, I was very confused I was covered with clammy sweat, my eyes were bloodshot and I reeked of alcohol all the time that was all there was to go on so they left it up to the psychiatrist and I got my right up out of there they said you're no longer going to be allowed to fly because you have a childhood fear of flying that just is showing up after 12 years of flying. And I knew that was crazy, but I had no way to fight it. I had nothing left inside of me to fight back against anything. And it took about three months to be reassigned since I was a career officer, and I got my orders to become an air traffic controller. and I went to the air traffic control school in Glencoe, Georgia and I made it through the school which is unbelievable and my last year drinking I was in charge of an air traffic control unit in Japan and fortunately the senior enlisted men saw me check in and they took one look at me and they just went hey captain good to have you here here's your chair and here's the tent there's your coffee and all that Don't you personally go near the radar. We will talk to all the planes and cover for you. You just try to show up for work, which is what I did. And during that year, now all the restraints were gone for not drinking for 12 hours prior to flying. And so I lost 50 pounds to malnutrition. I stopped hanging around with my buddies, my drinking buddies. They'd say, hey, we're going to happy hour. You want to go? No, I'm going to stay in the hut. And I would stay there and just drink grain alcohol and vodka and juice was the only thing I could eat. I was trying to subsist on juice. And so I was very sick when that year ended and came back to Quantico to go to a career school and in the middle of that school I had a grand mal seizure and almost bit my tongue and they carried me off to the hospital and even up there they were going, well, what could have caused this convulsion? You know, we're still in the dark ages. And after five days without alcohol, I went into the DTs and saw all kinds of CIA stuff in my room and they were trying to drive me crazy and I was keeping notes and it was like Mission Impossible. It was absolutely terrifying. And somewhere, evidently, I just jumped up and started screaming up and down the halls and they grabbed me and put me in a straitjacket and locked me up in the nut ward for six months. And so I was in there with two other alcoholics and a bunch of crazy people, and it was obvious after a few months that the crazy people resented that the alcoholics were in there because it really wasn't a legitimate mental illness. But AA talked that head psychiatrist into allowing them to bring an AA meeting in. And so I got to AA when a corpsman came on the nut ward, all drunks fall in, right face. Went down to a meeting and I really thought it was great what those guys talked about, but I didn't see where it was for me. and so when I was made an outpatient and I'm going home but I got to come back during the day I had a few drinks one weekend and then I really got drunk the next weekend I knew they were going to catch me and on Pearl Harbor Day 1964 I called AA from my home and they sent over my sponsor who was another Marine Captain and he just came into my house And he asked my family about my drinking. He didn't ask me, and they all squealed on me. My kids said, whoa, the worst father in the world. My wife said, I hate him. He's terrible. He's rotten. And off we went to a meeting, and I haven't had a drink since. I came back, and this guy just nurtured me. A couple years of going to meetings every night, and I didn't get promoted to major, and I was thrown out of the Marine Corps. and I had to start over with all these kids and try and get a job and I'd have this big resentment. I remember, you know, I wouldn't say this to anybody else but by myself I would go, hey God, thanks a lot. I turned my life over to you and you crapped all over my family. Thank you God. I really, really appreciated God. Thank you, God. I mean, boy, I was just, I had a very bad resentment And probably three months after I was out in this civilian life, there was a little story in the Washington Post. One paragraph, I don't know how I just happened to see it, and it said Marine Corps Instruction Team Killed in Plane Crash in Denver. It was my unit. All the guys I had been with for the last year flying around to put on these various training shows were going to Denver and the plane flew into a mountain out there, and they were all killed. And if I had had my way and gotten promoted, I would have been on that plane. And so I remember looking at that, and the first thing that occurred to me when I read it was, God knows I just read this. So I'm going, oh, well, listen, God. If you had just told me this was going to happen, I don't think I would've had all of these bad feelings about you. So I guess it gave me a little sense that you never know. When something bad happens, maybe it's good. There's so many spiritual paradoxes. And that started me down the road. I got out and I did get some other jobs and I ended up in Washington, D.C. My last 23 years I was a lobbyist for the credit union movement and that's a great group, all the credit unions in the country. They do some great work, so it was fun to work on their behalf. And about four years, five years ago I retired and went down to Tampa. And I love it down there. I'm sponsoring about 20 guys and go to six meetings a week and get off to these conventions quite a bit of the time. And AA just means the world to me. It is just everything. But in addition, you know, we have these wonderful conventions and meetings and all of that. But the purpose of those meetings and conventions and all that is to motivate us to establish a personal relationship with a God of your understanding because that is the point of Alcoholics Anonymous is for you as an individual to establish a conscious contact, a personal awareness that there is this spirit of the universe inside of you that makes life wonderful. Now if you had asked me before I started working these steps, Sandy, have you ever had any evidence of God anywhere? I would have said no and you could have put a lie detector on me and it would have said, yeah, he's telling the truth. I never had any awareness. I had heard about it. People had taught me about it, but I didn't have any awareness of a higher power. And you explained to me, of course you didn't. You are cut off from the spirit of the universe. Your character defects and your self-centeredness are blocking you from the most important thing that you can find. As a matter of fact, the purpose of being alive is to find that power. That's why we're here. And so he said, we have these 12 steps, and they are designed to cut through all of the blockages until the channel, like the prayer of St. Francis, until the Channel is opened and you experience this transformation. So don't worry about the moral issue of these character defects. just look at them as blockages. You know what I mean? There's this channel and it's all filled with this junk and nothing can flow through that spiritual channel. So we've got some steps that are going to get that stuff out of the way and then you're going to experience something that is the most important thing you can experience. Do you remember the wonder of the first drink and how with those 30 guys, do you remember that saying, oh yeah? This is way beyond that. This is way beyond that. And I'm going, boy, this is just amazing. And so I started like anybody else going through this stuff and not believing in it. I mean, what's there to believe? I'm just looking at these steps and they're going, well, you've got to do this, you've got to do that, you've got to do this. And I'm resisting it. I've got my old ideas about this punishing God with the crucifix up there and so when are you going to come up to me and say to me, Sandy, we're going to sit down tonight. We're going to explain the AA God to you so then you can believe in it. Turns out there is no AA God. Nobody's going to explain anything. There is no, if there's 500 people in this room, there's five hundred higher powers. So there is now. So where do, how does AA get us to believe in this? Well, I've, of all the places where this is explained, it's in the most unlikely place in the book. It's in the chapter of the agnostic what a place to hide it huh i remember when i first got the big book and my sponsor said everything you need to know is in here and i'm going yeah yeah bill i need money i don't need this book i don' t need any you know but i could tell that he wanted me to read it and i looked in there and i said oh god what is this but i went through and i pushed the pages, made them look like they've been read. I put a magic marker, you know, wow, wow wow in a few places. So while I was doctoring up the book, I saw the chapter to the agnostic and like you, I knew what was in it without reading it. That that was the chapter that the agnostics used to stay sober and then the rest of the non-agnostics did the steps and did all the rest of it and of course later on when I became more familiar with the book, if you're new I can tell you what the chapter of the agnostics says in three words change your mind that's what it says become a former agnostic, that's how it goes that's not what it said but there's a wonderful introduction in there, if your new I want you to listen because this is getting spiritual We're going to get spiritual right now. It says in there, the very first paragraphs, if when you drink, you have little control over the amount you drink. Uh-oh, that's me. Okay. And if when YOU try to stop, you can't stay stopped. Uh-uh, okay, that' s me. Well, then you're probably an alcoholic. Okay, I go along with that. I'm an alcoholic Then comes the clincher. If that be the case, then YOU'RE suffering from an illness that only a spiritual experience can conquer. and I'm looking at that and I am going what? you have an illness that only a spirit I remember to my sponsor I said what does that say he says you have an illness Sandy that only a spiritual experience can conquer and I was going well how many illnesses are there in the medical association directory under the heading illnesses that only a spiritual experience can conquer he says I don't know but this is one of them. And I said, but Bill, I don't believe in spiritual experiences. He said, oh, you're screwed. Oh, sorry. Oh. Oh. Sorry. And then he started asking me questions. And this is, if you're new, I want you to answer these questions. And he said to me, Sandy, do you believe in prayer? And I said, no. He said, doyou pray a lot? No, I don't pray, Bill. I don' t like prayer and I don''t pray. Put me down for no under prayer. Well, listen, doyou go to church and hang around spiritual people? No,I don'''t go tochurch. I haven'''ve been there since I was 20 years old. I have no interest in going to church. No, put me down. No church activities. Well, do you like to read spiritual literature? You know, some of the new age things, anything spiritual, some of the old authors. No, Bill, I don't read anything spiritual. If I see it's in the house, I throw it out. No, I want nothing to do with spiritual. Well, did you meditate? Do you like sit around and contemplate the God? No, don't let anything do with meditation, makes me nervous even think about it. And then came the spiritual question. He said, so listen, how's it going? Ah, it's going awful. And he said, well, let's move to the next paragraph. So we go to the next paragraphs. Now if you're new, you're about to get spiritual. we're getting there next paragraph it said to live on a spiritual basis or to die an alcoholic death are not always easy alternatives to face so you know what that says you're on a quiz program you're the contestant up on the stage and I'm the quiz master and I go well this is where you have arrived there's two doors back here you have to choose one live on a spiritual basis or die an alcoholic death and if you're like the rest of us you're going to do this whoo whoo whoo whoo whoa oh oh two bad choices oh oh I may have to call my doctor and say, Doctor, I have a friend who'd like to know how bad an alcoholic death is. Because I know what living on a spiritual basis that's going to be like Mother Teresa. What is that? I mean, God, you probably give everything away to the poor and you have nothing. I had no idea what live on a spiritual basis was. But all of a sudden, there was nowhere else to go. There was no other door. There was nowhere to go on an alcoholic death or you want to live on a spiritual basis because that's where you are now. And that's what happens when you take the first step. You're powerless over alcohol and anything you can do. I'm not going to go through all the stuff, but I do want to say for those of you that are new about what it means to be powerless over alcohol because sometimes that's misunderstood. Very often we think that it means whenever I drink I lose control and all these bad things happen. That's not the part that kills you because if that was the only problem you have all you'd have to do is not drink and everything would be fine. No, it's quite different than that. This is what powerless is. You go to treatment you attend lectures on alcoholism for 28 days until you understand alcoholism as well as a doctor does you've had everything explained to you from liver disease to jake leg to itching to alcoholic blindness to everything and you understand to the heart of your soul that you're an alcoholic and if you ever drink again you're going to die and do you know how much that knowledge helps you to stay sober? Not at all. Doesn't help at all it does not help because it doesn't say that we're ignorant about alcoholism it says we're powerless over it and there will come a day when you have no defense against the first drink and you'll be standing maybe in your old favorite bar where you're now drinking coke and having hamburgers and you know I'm an alcoholic I went through treatment I understand alcoholism if I ever drink I'll lose my family and the doctor explained could I have a beer I will probably I will probably and you explain this whole thing as you drink a beer we have no defense against the first drink so it isn't that if you drink you're going to get in trouble it's if you don't have a miracle you will drink and so that's what powerless means unless we find a power to protect us from that first drink, we're going to take it. And then when we take it, the other part of the disease kicks in and we've been had. So what happens in AA about this? How do we get spiritual? AA does not try to convince us of the existence of God. It convinces us of the need for God. And as soon as you understand how much you need God, you're going to find him, because you're going to take these steps. You know, Dr. Young made a wonderful thing when Roland Hazard went to see him and, you know, this wonderful psychiatrist. And Roland went there for a year, and then Dr. Jung said, I've done everything I can. And then he went off and went to Paris, and somebody asked him the wrong question. Would you like a drink? And he said, yes. And he's back at Dr. Young's and said, Dr. Young, I'm sorry I went back to drinking. You told me that if I drank again, I'd end up in a sanitarium. What can you do? And this is where AA's first, you know the A and B at the end of Chapter 5 that we're alcoholic and cannot manage our own life and probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism. Well, Dr。Young had to be the epitome of human power at that time. There wasn't any place else you could go. And this representative of all human power looked at Rowland and Rowland said, what can you do? And Dr. Young said, there's nothing I can do for you. And it caused Rowland to surrender to such a level that he was open for anything. And Dr. Young said, now I have heard of some alcoholics of your type who have had profound spiritual experiences and were able to live happily and sober. If I was you, I would go try to find a profound spiritual experience. And the Oxford group was very popular at that time, and he joined one, got sober. He 12-stepped Ebby, Ebby 12-strapped Bill Wilson, and were off and running with Alcoholics Anonymous. And many years later, Bill Wilson realized he had never closed the loop with Dr. Young in Switzerland, so he wrote him a letter saying, God, I don't know if you remember Roland Hazard, but he saw you in 1931 or whenever it was, and as a result of what you told him and you set him on this path, we've started this new fellowship that is now in 30 countries and we have 600,000 sober people and we owe a great deal of it to you and I've never acknowledged this so I want you to have this letter, etc., etc. And Dr. Young wrote him back right before he died and he said, thank you very much, Mr. Wilson. I often wondered what happened to Mr. Hazard. I'm so glad to hear about Alcoholics Anonymous. It's just so wonderful. I'm så grateful I played a small part in it. Back when Mr. Lazard was seeing me, it was not safe for me to talk as a psychiatrist about spiritual things because my peers would have laughed me out of the profession but now it's quite safe and we all know that Jung is a very spiritual psychiatrist and a lot of people have studied some of his teachings and he said now it is safe for him and now it was safe for us to talk about spiritual matters what I was trying to induce in Roland through psychiatric ways, was to have this profound transformation as a person. And I'm glad that he was able to find that because I've always felt that that's exactly what alcoholism is. And he went on and his words were conspirators contra spiritu. And reading through the lines, what he was saying is alcoholism, I love this definition is an inordinate longing for God that we as alcoholics knew there was something missing inside of us and we were keenly aware that this was missing we didn't know what it was we thought it was money we thought if was sex we thought i was something and we found it in alcohol it appeared to fix this And alcohol is sort of a spiritual power because it transforms us and transforms the world. And we thought we had solved this fundamental hole that was inside of us. And Jung was so on to it, he said, now you come into Alcoholics Anonymous and we're going to teach you how to open this channel to this higher power and you're goingto find all of that is resolved and you won't be looking anymore. and so it gets down the thing I want to close on is C I went through A, B and I'll go to C now everybody knows what it says no human power could have relieved our alcoholism but God could and would ah those are the three words or four words if he were sought I think sometimes we read it that God couldn't would you know what I mean that God could and would. Yeah, he could and he would if he were sought. So what is seeking? I remember thinking about that. Okay, if he was sought, well, what is Seeking? So I started thinking about Seeking and maybe you've all had this same experience with Seeking. The first time I remember hearing the word Seek was in school and the teacher said we're going to play Hide and Seek. And I went, okay, sounds cool. Yeah, one of you is going to hide and the other, hide your eyes And then when we go, go find him. And I remember, you know, hey, great. And then you start out. Where the heck is Johnny hiding? I'm going up the trail. I'm coming over here. I mean, we're putting quite a bit of effort into seeking. You remember that? But if you don't find him in about five minutes, eh, to hell with Johnny. You know what I mean? It was one level of seeking, but it certainly wasn't the highest level of seeing. So the next one I remember was Easter baskets. Remember that? It's like 16 pounds of solid chocolate, and your mother has hidden it somewhere. Well, I could go much longer than five minutes on that one. I mean, it was like, wow. But maybe after 15 minutes, oh, Mom, am I warm? Can you give me a clue? And it started to wane, you know what I mean? As much as you love chocolate, it was like, you know, this is getting boring. I don't know if I can keep on seeking. You start begging and whining, and finally they, all right. So you get the chocolate. So there's another level of seeking. But the highest level of seeing that I recall having was when I was about 14 and we had a golden retriever that had been in the family for about five years, and he ran away and never came back. And he ran into those woods, you know, over there. That's when I came home, my mother-in-law said, I don't know, he ran in those woods. And I went over to those woods looking for that dog, and I was into advance seeking. Any of you that have lost a dog know what I'm talking about. I would be out by those woods every day after school. and I'd go in there and I would look and I call and I eat dog food year after year I would go back there with the dream that maybe that dog would come back so I would call that a pretty high level of seeking and then the question comes what level have I put in the sea God couldn't would if he were Easter egg seeking hide and seek okay if I don't find them in five minutes to hell with it up at the lost dog level or is it possible to go beyond that isn't it essential that that become the focus of our lives is to find this, the ultimate treasure you talk about a hidden treasure that people go looking for buried treasure and spend millions and billions and dig up a pirate's treasure. Look what we're about to discover if we will persist in that seeking. It's the ultimate jackpot. So those of you that are new, I urge you please don't give up. Don't think you're not going to find it. It is going to happen just around the corner. You're in for much more than sobriety in Alcoholics Anonymous. you're in for the epic journey of your life and Godspeed and thank you all very much