The Direct Pipeline to Being Undisturbed – Sandy B.

Thank you. Okay. Hi, everybody. My name is Sandy Beach and I'm an alcoholic. How y'all doing? It is great to be here tonight. I agree with everybody who has said the energy here is wonderful. The conference is just terrific. I want to thank the committee and all of you for inviting me here. And I'm just, I don't know, I just love AA. I'm like Tom. It just shows that this is it, man. It doesn't get any better than being in AA and allowing all that power to take us through life and all the circumstances that we meet. And I am really very, very grateful. I feel kind of bad because I was going to try something new tonight I brought slides with my story and maybe I'll try just a couple of them and we'll see how it goes can we get that first one it's a shot of me taking my first drink. Here's a shot of me losing my first drink. For those of you that aren't alcoholics, when I say losing it, it doesn't mean I don't know where it is. I no longer have possession of it. That's what I meant by that. Here's a shot of me back in my drinking days when I bought a brand new car. Here's a shot of me picking up a hitchhiker in my brand new car. Shot of the hitchhikers sticking me up in my brand new car. Here's a shot of the hitchhickers driving off in my new car here's a shot of me hitchhiking Here's a shot of the hitchhiker picking me up in my new car. Luckily, she didn't recognize me. Okay, okay. I just showed Frank how to do this thing. If you weren't here this afternoon, then you don't understand all this and you'll have to ask. Anyway, my story is divided into two parts. What happened during the years that I drank and what I thought happened during the years I drank. And I haven't been sober long enough to have those other people come in and tell us what really happened during the years that I drank, so we'll settle for what I thought happened. I'm one of these people who believes that alcohol was the solution to my problems, and that's why, that's what made me an alcoholic. You know, typical like a lot of us, life was kind of confusing, to say the least. um i sometimes felt like i was born on the wrong planet and just you know i i saw other people and they looked comfortable and they seemed to know what they were talking about and i always had the feeling that there was just something wrong something wrong in my family something wrong in the church which was terrifying and the neighborhood but i had my job was to pretend that everything was cool and i found out later on there's a lot of people doing that and we're fooling each other. So you feel like you're the only one who isn't cool, you know, because you see all these other people around. And so by the time I got to be a teenager up in Connecticut, I had a nice family and we weren't starving to death or anything like that. But I just was anxious. That would be the best way of putting it. Just incredibly anxious. And I really didn't know about what. It was just like something was wrong with me, and I was going to find out eventually. I remember they had a polio epidemic. I was talking at dinner tonight about that, and I had forgotten all about it, that went through. And I was in the home for crippled children for, I guess when I was eight or nine, for about a year. And, I remember when I was in there feeling like this is what I deserve. You know what I mean? I don't know what for, but it was like, this is what you're entitled to. This is what your life is going to be like. I had just sort of a frightened, negative outlook and other people made me very uncomfortable, but I was doing alright. I would get good grades. I was Doing Alright in Athletics. I was keeping up a good front but I had just a sense inside that this really, one of these days I'm going to find out what is happening around here. Nobody's telling me yet, but it's going to come out and I'm gonna find out. And I would hear people talk about what a nice world it was. I'd hear them, you know, little old ladies knitting and just going, isn't it a great world? And aren't we lucky to be alive here? And just look at the birds and look at the trees. And i would look at them and they'd scare me. look at the little old ladies and they would scare me because they knew something I didn't so I don't know what the heck they're talking about isn't this a wonderful world I read books that had these happy endings movies and all that and I just went, God I just don't have a glimpse of what you all are talking about and I think almost every talk I mention the feeling I had when I had my first drink in the local university and I was in a group of other guys and we were supposed to meet each other, which to me was like a death sentence. I mean, just to send me into a room of 30 people and say, just go in and meet all those people. It'd be like, go in there and beat them all up. You know, that might have been easier, but to just go out there and just go and go, hi, you know. I would stick my hand out and they would look right at me and I could see it in their eyes. I saw how people were I didn't have to hear them talk I could see it in their eyes and they would look right at me and go I don't want to know you you know and then the guy next to him would glance over and it would be and neither do I I better go over here and it was just wherever I went that's what they were saying to me with their eyes. Don't come over here. We've got enough friends already. We don't need you. And I circled around this room having an anxiety attack for about 20 minutes, and I was going to get ready to leave. And there was this bar. And I was 19. I hadn't had anything to drink. I was trying to be an athlete. I think it was a quarter of a million years in purgatory if you didn't drink until you were 21 or something. And I knew I needed that. I mean, it was a very desperate situation that was going on inside of me. So I said, the heck with it. My roommates are telling me, you know, you're in college, you ought to start drinking and make you feel wonderful. And I said I'd like to feel wonderful, I've never felt wonderful. So went up and got their whiskey and drank it down and I didn't feel anything. It just tasted like gasoline or something and I was just going, man. So I had another one and that didn't do anything and I had a new one and I was getting ready to leave going, well, that stuff is overrated. All this talk about how great booze is. And I took another look at the room and this was the most astounding thing in the world. Those 30 mean guys were gone and they had been replaced by 30 of the friendliest guys I have ever seen in my life. They were all looking at me and in their eyes They were begging me to be their friend. Please come over and join us. Don't go to that group, please, please. I'm like, wow, this is more like it. I like this world. This is cool. I love this world, and then I had a little different feeling. I was like, you know, I'll be getting over there when I'm damn good and ready, man. And you guys, you're going to be lucky to know me. And I just intuitively knew how to make social conversation, how to interact, all of the... It was just natural. You know, and it was almost like all of this was blocked until I had alcohol. and then alcohol opened the door so that the real me could come out and I just said my god I've been trapped in here all these years I have stumbled down to the secret of life and that's what it felt like I was so excited the future no longer terrified me I didn't worry about the future at all because all I had to do was have alcohol so alcohol went from an unknown to the most important thing in my life in 20 minutes that's how powerful it was for me and that's why I'm an alcoholic because that's what it did for me it made the world wonderful in some sense and now as our careers go along there's some drawbacks to drinking and we all know you get your teeth knocked out you flunk out, you're no longer an athlete you smoke and drink and get lost in car wrecks and your family hates you but that was a small price to pay for for having the secret of life it was never a close call I never remember taking the scales of justice and over here is you lose your family and over here is drinking and it was just, whoom so I was an alcoholic from that second and so the rest of my story just has alcohol as the center and me as the alcoholic trying to survive with the illness of alcoholism and pretending I don't have it And that, of course, is one of the hardest parts of being an alcoholic. You have to pretend you're okay. You have go to work when you're dying. And, you know, when people go, you all right? Yeah, fine, fine. You've just been puking blood and you don't know where you are and you're just this, oh, you're so sick and you just, fine! Hey, man, what a great night. And your body's going, you're lying, man. What are you telling that story out there for? Let's go to the emergency room. No, I can't go there. I can't go there. They might find out about my drinking. So that was the secret. The secret was that I could never be separated from my alcohol, and I would do whatever it took. So as O.K. was saying, the Korean War came along. Everybody had to join the military. A bunch of guys were drinking beer. They said, let's join the Marine Corps. I said, hey, O.k., I don't know. I mean, you can look at me and you don't see a military hair on my body. But we had to go, you know. They didn't turn down guys like me. They just said, all right, come on in. So I signed up for the Marine Corps, and of course that was a very rude shock to get in there. They were deadly serious about everything. They were intense, weren't they? John will tell you. It was very intense and so for a while I couldn't get near alcohol so now I'm getting in shape and I'm running around and getting ready to just be mean. I saw a movie about pilots and the pilots were at the bar. They were not out in the snow running around going, isn't this great? And so I signed up for flight school. Even though it was three more years on top of the two I had to do, I said anything to get out of this insanity. Those guys, they're at the bar, they'RE talking like this, and there's some women in the background, and it was really attractive. So I went to flight school, and after getting airsick for quite a while, I made it through, and my drinking story involves the next 12 years of flying fighter planes for the Marine Corps. So that was how I earned my drinking money. For other people, it was a career. For me, that's how I got my drinking Money because my career was being an alcoholic and trying to do all this while dying. You know what I mean? And that's what all of you had to do, whatever you were. You were a nurse or a doctor or a lawyer or an artist. You had to go out there and say, you have to do that while you were dying and pretend that there was nothing wrong and just keep going, see, I'm doing all right, I'M DOING ALL RIGHT and try to hang in with everybody else. And, of course, it was a big struggle. I got married. We had six children, traveled all over the world. And I wish I was a better father. I've been able to make a lot of amends, and my children are grown. I have 12 grandchildren, and we're all pretty close. And, you know, we've beenable to talk about all those early years when I wasn't there and I'm off and just crazy. And I thank AA and God for that, to have the respect of my children and just sort of a great, fun, joyful relationship with them. and they call me and ask for advice instead of running, and it's great. And I'm very happy about that. And I have one daughter who has a year and a half in AA. And I're very grateful about that, so... There came a time when flying planes was getting bad because I was having withdrawal symptoms in the planes and I was losing my vision and shaken and all that and I started to distrust the pilot of the plane that I was in, which was me and so I went to the doctors and this was back in the dark ages before we had alcohol alcoholism was a disease I was sent to Pensacola for two weeks and they studied me, they looked at me the dentist looked at us, the psychiatrist looked at me, the heart doctor looked at me. I mean, everybody was studying me and all they could find was that my hands trembled. I sweat all the time. My eyes were bloodshot. My speech was slurred and I smelled alcohol. You could just smell alcohol around me all the Time. I remember the dentist was looking through all the cavities because i never went to the dentist because he might smell alcohol you know what i mean and so i wouldn't go and besides i knew that at some point during the appointment he was going to say okay rinse out and there's a little cup up here that's filled over the top with water and i knew it was going to look like this and that was too embarrassing so i just never went and just my mouth just kept getting worse and worse. This was free dental care. My teeth are falling right out, and that's typical of us alcoholics. We just, you know, you can't do those things. And the dentist said, you reek of alcohol. And I saw I got drunk all last night, and he said, oh, okay. That explains why you reak of alcohol, so there was just no connection made with the high blood pressure and the confusion and the disorientation, and my diagnosis was childhood fear of flying. I never should have been flying for those 12 years. So I was sent back to Cherry Point, North Carolina to wait. It took about three months for headquarters Marine Corps to give me new orders. What are you going to do with a guy who gets in this kind of shape and he can't fly airplanes anymore? I became an air traffic controller. that's what I did and it's funny here in Georgia I was sent to Glencoe, Georgia to go through the control school and I became an air traffic controller and that's why I did the last two years of my drinking only I was officer in charge and when I was sent overseas to take over a unit the gunnery sergeant in charge of the unit took one look at me and he just said Captain welcome to the unit Come on down. Here's a little chair, coffee. Don't go near the radar. He knew we'd have planes flying into mountains and all that. So I was just trying to stay alive. And that was my last year drinking. I no longer had the no drinking for 12 hours or anything. And I just drank around the clock. I drank vodka, grain alcohol. A guy in special weapons brought five gallons of grain alcohol into our Quonset hut. And in addition to all the vodka I drank, I sipped that thing dry during the year, which is a lot of grain alcohol. And it was just getting it down and keep going so you don't shake or come apart. And I stopped eating, and I lost about 50 pounds. I had malnutrition. And I was sent back to the States to go to a career school. And while I was in the career school, I had a seizure. And I Was sent up to Bethesda. And after five days in Bethesда Naval Hospital, I went into DTs, and that's when they finally said there's just something wrong with this guy So I was put in a straitjacket, and I was let put in the nut ward And I was locked up in there for six months And it was no alcohol treatment. We were just in with the other nuts and There were three alcoholics and about 35 mixed nuts I've never heard that one. But there was, you know, depressives, manic depressives and schizophrenics, suicides, and it was just one of everything in there. And I promised Tony I would mention this line, which I like to talk about. Every so often during group therapy, the psychiatrist would say, much to the chagrin of the other people locked up in there let's talk about the alcoholics and they would all go because they didn't think we had a legitimate illness and they thought we were like what are you doing in here they sort of looked down their nose at the drunks and the psychiatrists would say let's just go around the room and these crazy people are going to analyze me. And you know what they all said? You guys ought to stop drinking. And I remember thinking, you know, like no wonder they're locked up in here. They're coming up with a crap like that. My problems are much more complex than that. there's not whoa just stop drinking you know like that's gonna be an answer next place i heard that was in here so the um i was there about four months and aa the aa community convinced the head psychiatrist that there were alcoholics in there and they ought to provide an aa meeting So somewhere in late November of 1964, a corpsman came into the nut warts. All drunks fall in, right place, over the elevator with the standard government issue blue bathrobe and blue pajamas and down to this thing. Three guys were there to give us a meeting. And there was a leader and two speakers, and they talked, and they were so excited about AA. And I remember going, God, that's so exciting. Those guys love it. And I just told the guy afterwards, Red, I said, Red. I said I'm very impressed, and give me your phone number. I said if I ever run into a guy with a drinking problem, I'm going to send him around to see you. You know, and he was like this is my first contact with AA truth. You know how in AA we don't mince words sometimes? and he just kind of went, poke, poke poke, you know you get that much with new people, hey pal let me ask you something which one of us is going to put his overcoat on and go on out and get in his car and drive on home to his family which one of us is going to put his little blue bathrobe on over the elevator and go upstairs and get locked up like an animal I remember going oh, God damn it, I just met this guy. What the hell is he talking about then? But at least I heard about AA and I was seriously thinking about it and there came a time when we were able to go out as outpatients and I decided to have a beer to earn a football game on the Sunday that I was home and that led to smuggling vodka back into the nut ward and I knew they were going to catch me. They told me if I ever had another drink I'd be thrown out of the Marine Corps and my career was over You know, I had like 12 years of service and regular commission. I was going to make a career. So on this Pearl Harbor Day weekend, which is my anniversary of 1964, I called AA on the outside, you know what I mean, from my house. And they said, well, there's one Marine in AA down at Quantico. We'll try and get a hold of him and get him over to your house. About an hour later, I got some more drinks to stay down, and I called him back to cancel out. You know, it's amazing. I won't be needing that guy. And they said, too late. He's on his way. Oh, man. After a while, there was like a knock on the door and the whole door frame shook. You know... And opened the door and no light came through the door. This guy was a Marine Captain Infantry And he was like My name's Bill, this is a 12-step call I talk, you listen He said, I'd like to hear about Your alcoholism and he calls my family in and asks them what kind of a father is he what kind of a husband well they're all making up these terrible stories about me so he concludes I have a drinking problem and we're going to a meeting and I said how about some literature just drop off and I'll read it and study up on AA see if I like it and he was just going get in the car get inthe car and it was like whatever I said it was get inthecar and that would be every day when I would argue about the meeting you know Get in the damn car. So I thought that was AA's first step, you know, get in the car. I didn't know, so we're off to the meeting. He sat me on the front row, he called it incurable row, and all new people sat up there. Don't ever talk. All you do is listen. We don't want you saying anything. You don't know anything. Just don't say, if you need an opinion, I'll give you one. Just shut up. All the old stuff. And so the group, the Monastas Virginia group was having an anniversary. They had several guys with them, five years, ten years. They had all the food, home-cooked ham and turkey and all that. They had square dancing afterwards. This damn meeting lasted until 1130. And he's telling me we're going to be going to a meeting every night for like 11 years or something. Oh, man. And I didn't know they weren't all five hours long. You know, and I'm just going, oh, my God. This is going to being terrible. I better get out of AA. You know? And I was right about this. I said, if you don't get out tonight, you may never get out. Is that right? And little did I know, I was right. I never got out. So I probably told this before, but this is the truth. On my way home, about a 30-minute drive, I'm thinking up my story. Remember when you're going to think up your story? This is going to be it to make your break. So I decided to do the birthday routine. I was going to make up that my six kids starting tomorrow was one kid's birthday, then the next, the next. the next, the next. Then my wife, then me, then our wedding anniversary. And that was like nine days that was obvious excuses from AA. I mean, birthdays and all that. So I'm practicing it in the car. And I've been sober now five hours. Which is, you're not doing too well. I'm back going through withdrawal again. And so when we pulled up, I ran around to his side and he rolled his window down. He knew I wanted to say something. And I got out there, and all this speech went from my head down to my mouth, but it didn't come out. It just went, and I was just going like, and he just looked at me a couple of minutes, and he said, you don't take a drink. I'll pick you up tomorrow night at 730. He's gone. I think he was just out of sight, and then it started coming out. I won't be able to go to the meeting. and that was it so I never escaped I never made it out of there and never had another drink I still have the same sponsor which is a wonderful miracle you know when he had I'll tell you a little quickie when he said when he was 34 years he has about a year and a half more than I do he only had 18 months when he was 12-step from me. And so when he had 34 years, he had moved down south of Washington a ways. And I said, I'm going to take you out to dinner. We're going to pick a restaurant. Any restaurant will go there. So I went down there and I said did you pick a restaraunt? And he said yeah. And he and his wife were driving up Route 1. And I asked where we were going. He said go up near Quantico, the Marine base. So we're up there. And he says pull in here. And I pull into this German restaurant and the restaurant used to be the house I lived in when he 12-stepped me. They had turned it into a restaurant, and we went in there, and were sitting at a table having dinner, and the front door was about 20 feet away. We were in the old living room of the house, and about halfway through dinner, he said, you know something? I said, what? He said, it's a long way from that door to this table. And it really was. There's a lot of things that happen a lot of things happened mostly I learned how about life somewhere I never got that damn class you know, life 101 what the heck is life all about and how come it doesn't make any sense and why is it so confusing and why am I here and where am I going and you know what is all this stuff so I never learned that I had a lot of ideas about it that I got from other people I got a lot off of bathroom walls oh there's stuff in there that's really scary and so I didn't have a clue and now you've taken away my only way of surviving in the world alcohol and you just left me here in AA but I just had the protection of a home group and a sponsor. And I was reassured very directly. It wasn't intellectual. It was like from the heart. It reminded me of when I was a little boy and I'd run over, you know, like you're five years old and you go next door and a dog scares you. You've never seen a big dog and it suddenly jumps out from behind a tree. And you run home and my mother would come out and go, what's the matter? A big dog. And she would just hold me and go, it's okay. And I'd go, oh, good. You know what I mean? We didn't have to explain anything. We didn' t have to do anything. She just put her hand on me and if she said it was okay, I just bought it. I just said, oh okay. And you know that's what happens in AA. I'd come running to my sponsor and he'd go it's ok and I'd say, oh good. Boy, I'm so glad. I'm sure I'm glad it's OK. and you know that's what spirituality is it's the power to overrule your decision that things aren't okay you're scared to death by your own mind I'm scared to death of my own mind I look around and go oh my god and then I go and take these actions and I get in touch with a very loving higher power that just puts his hand down and goes it's okay. And then I go, oh, good. Nothing gets explained. You know what I mean? It's not analyzed. It's a direct pipeline into okayness. That's what spirituality is. It just, zoom. We're going to change you from the inside out so that you see things differently. And so I began this journey that I think is an epic journey. Spirituality, sobriety, whatever you want to call it, is the ultimate game. This is, you can't get higher than this. This goes way beyond anything that we may have had in terms of goals in the material world. This is to me the jackpot of being alive is to stumble on to a way of life that hardly gets promoted in the outside world. when's the last time you saw a commercial where they used the word humility with the product drink bud, get humble what? try to be nothing I mean, you know, what? try to do that try to become nothing of myself i'm nothing the higher power is everything i mean you just don't hear those things you know this is just the opposite everything is just backwards in here and so if you're new and you look at the 12 steps and they don't ring a bell they're not supposed to ring a Bell You know, this is a different ball game. We're used to intellectual solutions. We've got all these problems. Everybody who comes in when they're new, what do they got? We've Got the standard problems. We've GOT relationship problems, sexual problems, money problems, job problems and prestige problems. You know what I mean? My self-esteem is so low, snakes crawl over me. that kind of stuff. So I have all these things, and someone comes up, and they just go, see these 12 steps? Take them home. This is it. Every problem you have, this is the solution. This is the resolution. Enough people told me that that I finally believed it. You know what I mean? I said, okay, okay. Okay. There's guys in here. They're smart. They do this. There's ladies in here who are real smart. I connect with them. They swear with their lives, that everything was in those 12 steps. So I went home and I read them very excitedly. Now I'm into it. You know, the first time I read it, I don't know what all this is. Now I am reading them. And I get through and I go to myself, I must have missed something. That's it? I'm at the end of the deal here? Where was that money step again? I didn't see the I really needed money bad knocking on the door stuff coming in the mail you're going to have to need a lawyer soon I didn't see anything in there about that and I'd been thrown out of the Marine Corps and I need a job real bad and I went up and down job, job, no job sexual problems Sex? Nothing in there about any of that stuff? There was nothing in the steps that I saw where they were going to help me with anything, you know what I mean? So what is this all about? You know, we might ask ourselves, and what it is, we have to take a series of actions that we don't believe in. Reading them is not going to convince us of anything. Doing them convinces us because we're not going to get answers to anything. We're going to have problems removed. That is a big difference between having problems solved and having problems removed Our drinking problem miraculously gets removed. I was obsessed when I got here with why am I an alcoholic? It must be because my mother dropped me on my head And my uncle came over here and did all that. So if I understood that, and then I could go back and get my uncle to apologize and my mother to apologize, I could drink again. You know what I mean? That would be a solution. But instead, I did these stupid steps, you know, just making amends and inventorying and all that, and coincidentally, probably just a coincidence, I stopped thinking about alcohol. now if you're new and you noticed that last week you forgot to think about alcohol you have just experienced one of the biggest miracles in your life and don't overlook it you forgot that thing about alcohol you've been thinking about it for 25 years every second and you forgot the thing about a lot of people alcohol last week that's what freedom from alcohol is for some reason it doesn't come into your head to torture you. And that's what the 10th step talks about. What we have is a daily reprieve. See, the torture chamber stays with us. It's right over here. And all we have to do is say I'm not going to be using my higher power today. You know, it's funny. It's been 15 years since I thought about a drink and I saw a Budweiser today and here it is, it's ready to jump back in. But as long as we're willing to put our higher power first to spend some time on a daily basis maintaining our spiritual condition much in the same way as we work out and read books to maintain our intellectual condition we will be given freedom on a day to day basis from alcohol. It just won't be there to bother us. It goes to bother somebody else. It's not bothering me. And to me, that's what this deal is. And of course, it just doesn't look like it could be true. Sometimes I would hear speakers in AA claiming this freedom and I felt they were overselling it and if anything, were underselling what's possible through these steps. If I were to try and describe... and this is just my latest thinking, maybe a little bit confused, but this is what I think or what I believe in, is that the ultimate objective of working these 12 steps is something incredibly simple. And I found it in the 10th step in the 12 and 12. I believe that the whole purpose is to stay undisturbed. That may sound like, gee, that's not much. That's the whole goal in life? what about the yacht? You know, what about the blonde? What about the you know, you're saying you're really shooting for undisturbed? That's like that's like a goal? Why do you think we wanted the yacht or why did we work so hard for all these other things was to achieve, we assumed if we got any of those, got to be president of the company, got to have 200 grand in the bank account, got to have her or him that would marry us. Then we would have this serenity, this sense of well-being. What do we got? We got the same damn thing I was talking about earlier. We have a direct pipeline. We can go directly to undisturbed. We can goes directly to serenety. Bypass the yacht, bypass the big job, bypass all that. It is available directly from our higher power. And so when I look at that, it just goes, here it is, that spiritual axiom, you know, the 10th step where it says, if something disturbs us, no matter what the cause, there's something wrong with us. What's wrong with that? We're disturbed. That's it. And when we're disturbed, we shouldn't be making decisions because we make stupid, stupid decisions. You know what I mean? The boss walks in, you got a great job. You got a great job." The boss walks in and he says, Fred, you know this memoir you wrote? It really stinks. And you go, screw you, I quit. And the words are going across the room and you're trying to get them back, you know what I mean? Before they get there and he says, out of here. If we only could have waited three or four seconds and then come back to undisturbed, we never would have said that. So to me, being spiritual is using our higher power and these steps in order to number one, have a defense against getting disturbed, praying for self-restraint, having a 10 second cushion between us and all the events around us. And then if I do feel the disturbance coming on, stop everything time out, time out I'll be right back gonna go into the men's room and sneak a serenity prayer sort of a spiritual drink if you will because as soon as I get disturbed I've been cut off from my higher power now it's just me against all of them and whenever it's just me against all of then I'm back to when I was 12 all of them oh no, they don't like me they're all ganging up but when it's me and my higher power when I have taken some time to clear the channel of resentments and anger and all of the character defects that make so much noise that I can't hear the signal the spiritual signal that assures me with the hand coming down that everything is alright then it's not alright because all I've got is me and my brain that's going to tell me it's not all right. And so, you know, what a simple little thing. But when I am undisturbed and I'm myself and when you are that way, and for those of you that are new, you're real undisturbed when fear is taken away, when resentment is taken way, you are a very loving and giving person. and when the real you goes out into the world and interacts with other people they respond very favorably to that we create tremendous harmony and the world seems to transform because as self-centered alcoholics we had a wonderful attribute we were able to bring out the worst in everyone so no matter where we went everyone was behaving at their worst and we said to ourselves this world sucks you know what i mean but we had no idea i remember i was organizing a party for my parents 50th wedding anniversary my sister has 21 years in aa so i really believe her now and we were going over the guest list and there was one uncle coming and i said oh god does he have to come i mean so abrasive he's just obnoxious just all those wise cracks and all that. And she said to me, he only does that when you're around. Oh, no, he's a wonderful guy. Everybody loves him. I couldn't believe it. He only does that when I'm around. And so I went up and treated him like she said. He was a wonderful guy. I said, hi, wonderful guy. Hi. And he was wonderful. It really was what I bring out there so i'm talking about why does the world straighten out as we work on the inside of ourselves that's it we become an individual program of attraction people are attracted to spirituality you were attracted to something your sponsor had you don't know what it was remember saying i want what that gal has i want with that guy has what it is was, was the evidence of working these steps in order to get the ego partially out of the way. We never get that all the way out of the way, obviously. But we can sense that there is a removal of self-centeredness and a beginning of God-centered ness. And you know, if you agree that self- centeredness is the root of your problems, like our book says, most self-centered people will say, yeah, you know you're right, Self-centeredness is the root of my problem, and I'm going to fix it. I'm just going to stop being so self-centered. I am going to start being... Well, how do we do that? What are you going to do? What is the opposite of self-centred? Unself-centered? I don't think that's it. That's begging the issue. The opposite of it is God-centered, and when we become God-centured And we spend a lot of effort. A lot of us think about it when you're working, you're really busy and everything like that. What does your spiritual program consist of? Speed reading the 24-hour-a-day book in the morning, right? Maybe six and a half seconds. What did it say? Oh, it's something about resentment or something. I'm out of here, man. I got to go. How's your spiritual problem? How's my spiritual program going? Oh, great. I read a little bit in the evening and I pray a little at night. You know, we give it, you know, what? Six seconds, eight seconds. So we start spending more time. We start opening this channel like the prayer of St. Francis suggests. Open this channel so that this transformation can take place. And let me tell you what I think a transformation looks like. And I like to use a resume, if I may, as an example. Everybody writes a resume when you're looking for a job and you go get people to help you write a resume. To do what? so I'll look better. You know, we put everything on there. I helped a lady across the street when I was six and worked that in, you know. Put everything we can on this piece of paper that brags about me. This is, look at me, I got all this stuff and I should be worth around $125,000. I mean, when you read this resume, this is what it is. This is... I have all these things and degrees and I have this and I has that. It's very... A lot of pride associated with a resume and now we use this paper to cause goodies to flow into us. That's the point of it. So then if you were to take this same resume and run it through the 12 steps, it might look something like... What is this piece of paper? Oh, this lists all of the gifts and attributes that God gave to me that enables me to be useful in this world. That's what this resume is. It lists all the things. And when you walk out, looking at the world that way. Well, I have these skills. I'm good with children and I'm good with teaching and I am good with helping people with stocks and bonds and I Am good with helping People find a house and I AM good with this. It radiates out that you are coming out to give to the world and the world comes to your door and you don't have any interest in succeeding financially and you succeed beyond your wildest dreams and we have turned our life over to the power of love and giving. And it's all in these 12 steps where we simply hammer down old ideas. You know, all of sobriety, we're going to spend the rest of our lives trying to find out one more thing that's wrong. One more idea. Oh God, I'm wrong about that too. Boom! And get rid of it instead of defending it. Wasn't it awful to have to defend stupid ideas that you thought up? Man, that's hard work. how did I get stuck in this stupid position oh, I said it and we can finally just be wrong no, I'm wrong about that that's the end of that now we can move on I'm free from that wrong idea I can get closer and closer to what I think this is all about I'm going to wrap up but I just wanted to tell one thing for Frank he was talking about the traditions and I had a tradition story and then I'm gonna stop and it was the 10th tradition. You know, we have no opinion on outside issues. I don't know if you heard this, but I think in the 70s the U.S. Senate was considering putting warning labels on alcohol like cigarettes and they were trying to get experts around the world to testify and bring information in and somebody on the staff up there said, you know, AA, where would you get more information about drinking and the potential of warning labels than AA? So they contacted AA, and of course, they got the answer that blew their mind. Alcoholics anonymous? Warning labels on alcoholics? We have no opinion on warning labels. And they're just going, what? I couldn't believe it. Now, having said that, that doesn't mean that you and I can't have an opinion as individuals. Well, you all can have opinions, and I have an opinon, and I'm going to share it with you tonight. I think there should be warning labels on alcohol, and I know exactly what the warning label should say. It should say, Warning! This bottle may run out. you should consider buying two I've had a lot of fun and I'm going to give you a warning this talk is running out God bless you all I'll see you next