The Fatal Illness That Became a Gift – Sandy B.

We're not going to have a room full of sleeping people because Sandy Beach from Alexandria, Virginia is going to share his story with us. My name's Sandy Beach and I'm an alcoholic. Hi. Yeah, this is something, I'll tell you. First of all, I want to thank you all for inviting me out here and letting me share all this enthusiasm and excitement that's going on. I come from a little more conservative area of the country and we laugh every other week. Well, we're staying sober, so, you know. I came into AA in 1964 and I haven't been drunk since my first meeting and I owe it all to not drinking I just like to get that out of the way in case there's somebody new here and you're wondering what all this sobriety is about and I really think not drinking has a lot to do with it at least at least in my opinion hey and I always assume that there may be someone in your first week or month or so in AA. A lot of times I get rolling along and I'm talking about the steps or talking about a spiritual awakening or something like that and you forget to mention this, not drinking right off the bat. You know, as we get excited about talking about The Program and this and that and I really believe when we're new and our brains are a little bit foggy we might miss that part and you're coming around and you don't know and you know and you do not get any of the benefits of The Program in and you keep getting drunk, and if that's happening, I would check your drinking. This is what I'd be going after as possibly the cause of a lot of these problems. I come from the East Coast up in Connecticut and was brought up there, very conservative parents, and I think as a youngster I was being taught to be a snob. That was sort of the thrust of my upbringing. My problem as a young kid was I was very nervous and insecure, and it's very difficult to pretend to be a snob when you are nervous and insecurity and you... The reason I mention that is that I really think that gave me a lot of good training in being an alcoholic because us alcoholics, as we get into our drinking and all that really have to pretend to be what we're not and have to pretend that we're not afraid and have to pretend that we feel equal to other people so I had a head start on a lot of people as far as I was concerned and I always liked in my story to go back to the childhood because I can't go back any further than that if I could I would but that's where my memory stops and you know it's funny my mind is jumping all around because it's 11 o'clock my time and so you'll have to bear with me but something during the program here tonight reminded me of when I was in the nut ward in 1964 and I'd been locked up there for a long time and I was sort of reliving my entry in there and I remember a specific instance and this was after coming through the DTs and so on down where I was sitting in this maximum security area and they had us in beds with sides on them which is like a crib and they have the rubber mattresses underneath there and I remembered the first thing I noticed was that someone had wet the bed that I was in You know, and I was coming to, and it was shaking and really hurting. And after a while, we were starting to come around, and the guy in the crib next to me asked me if I wanted a cigarette. And I said yes. And it was then that he explained that that was good, that i smoked because now he could go to sleep because there were no matches allowed back there and no sharp bob you guys some of you been back in there you know what i'm talking about there's no uh no sharp objects no razor blades and all that and when the object was to keep one guy awake at all times keeping the cigarette going otherwise you might wait three or four hours for a corpsman to come back and give you a light so There was two of us that could do our number back and forth with a cigarette there, but over in the other corner was a Navy commander who was all by himself in a crib. And when his cigarette would go out or he'd go to sleep, his cigarette Would fall on the floor or in the mattress or something like that. And then when he'd come to, he'd have to wait two or three hours. And I can remember sitting there a couple days later when my brain cleared up a little bit and I was suffering tremendous pain and all the withdrawal and all that, sitting in my crib looking over at this guy smoking my cigarette and looking at him waiting for the corpsman to come in and I said to myself, now there's a guy whose life is unmanageable. There's a guide. If I ever get that bad, I'm going to do something about my drinking and so on down there. I don't know why something that happened tonight reminded me of that, but I just wanted to make sure to share it. Just so you know how the old brain works and who you're dealing with up here. I have a lot of problem with priorities and getting things straightened out. Like I was saying, up in New England as a little kid, I don' t know where I got all these ideas. I don''t know if any of you have ever thought back and wondered where we get all these ideas. They suddenly are in our heads and we're walking around going, people are mean. I mean, did you ever have that idea? Or the world is cruel. And I really believe that this is an essential part of the program when they talk about old ideas availing us nothing is all of them, all of these values and ideas have to go or at least be re-evaluated and re-examined or we're going to continue to use the faulty information. And I had a whole bunch of it and I suppose I was sober a few years before I started really questioning the full impact of all of this bad information. I had a lot of stuff growing up, and somewhere along the line I got the information that I wasn't as good as the next person and that really I was sort of an unwanted little kid who had a whole lot of problems and he better not let anybody find out about them. And I don't know where I got that, but I had it. and this was not helped when around six or seven I forget exactly when I got marched into the Catholic Church and I always like to share this as a matter of fact if I had to blame my alcoholism on anything I would blame it on the Catholic church just because they're big and they got a lot of money what do they care and besides I would like them to experience some of the guilt that I experienced And so I'll tell you what my memories were of walking in there. I'm trying to give you that little skinny kid who really faints a lot, you know, that kind of kid. And I'm in there and they go, Welcome, little boy, we're here to tell you about God, and you are in trouble. And that's the first thing you ought to learn about this. We're going to tellyou all about the world and where you're going after you die, and you're not going to like it. And I just got into this thing, and so what I'm sharing with you is my spiritual foundation that I took through life with me, which was shaky, to say the least. And I figured the best I could hope for out of life was a draw. And I remember somewhere in there, there was a deal that if you could... Somewhere in the service, they said, hey, we're going to all stop now and say a few prayers for those folks in purgatory. And that place really was my nightmare. I used to think about that a lot, going to sleep at night was purgatorio. And I wanted everyone to like me so that when after I died, when they got to that spot, everybody would think of me and they'd go, get him out of purgator. That's why it was pleasing people. And I didn't realize that until about last week. one of my problems in the neighborhood was, and I come from just outside of New Haven, Connecticut in case you want to stay away from that area one of the problems I had growing up there was a lot of impure thoughts in my neighborhood and they would they would come into my room occasionally and those had to be confessed and of course they were racking up years in purgatory just about all this stuff when I was 13 I figured I had around 85,000 years to do on stuff I just thought of doing I hadn't even done anything yet and I was just guilty So, now we had a nervous little kid who was pretending to be a snob who was guilty. And I would like to talk about guilt because if any of you have read that wonderful pamphlet, The Member's Eye View of Alcoholics Anonymous, my favorite pamphelet of all the ones that have been written, that author talks about guilt being the first one of our character defects to arrive and very often is the last one to go in our surprise. It takes years to get rid of that thing. I think it took me about seven years to finally become officially unguilty and get the staff off of my forehead. I thought I was born guilty, that I somehow could have spared my mother the pains of childbirth. I mean, that's how self-centered I think I was. And I just... I don't know if the doctors did it or what. They would just go down the line, Hey, guilty! That one there. Oh, another one. Guilty. And I'd hate to tell you what I thought they made that judgment on, but I'll save that for another talk. But I really felt that, that that was what I had was this guilt, that sense of guilt, and I used to use very circular logic in figuring out what that guilt was. And I would go through things like, well, that guilt must be caused by all of the things that make me feel guilty. And then I would say, yeah, but I'd like to get rid of this feeling. It's so uncomfortable. Then I would feel guilty about wanting to get rid of the guilt that I had. And then I'd say, now what the problem is, I don't know what God's will is. And the reason I don'T know it is because I'm guilty. Otherwise, I would have a clear picture. I'm trying to share the number I was doing on myself growing up. I know none of you ever did that. You probably had life figured out like I assumed everybody else did, and that was the thing that was strange about growing up. Whenever you could ask another kid, how's everything going? He'd say, fine! And I really believed that. I didn't think about the fact that that's what I told other people when they asked me, and I developed the concept that I was the one who was screwed up and everybody else was alright and God forbid they should ever find out what's wrong inside here, that I was totally confused about life, it had me frightened, felt, you know, that any day the cat was going to be out of the bag, this kid should be dragged off. And so that was sort of where I was going as I moved on into high school. And, of course, that was very intimidating because there was a lot of people there. People bothered me. Not like eyeballs looking at me. I just knew that somebody was going to sense the truth about this kid, that he was just really uptight all the time and just didn't have quite all the answers. But he was trying to pretend that he did, trying to act real cool, trying to be a natural leader. Turned out I was a natural-born follower rather than a natural born leader. But I got to thinking about all the natural born leaders in the world would be nowhere without us natural born followers to follow them. So we do serve a very useful purpose and I like to do my own thing. I can remember that. The strange thing about doing my own thing, though, was that it was just the same as what everybody else was doing. I don't know if any of you got involved in that. When I was growing up, there would be a certain tie style that came in, or a clean cut, or long hair. I would think of it and then all the rest of the kids would jump right on the bandwagon the week before I started doing is. I ended up going to university right in my hometown and got there, still hadn't had a drink. Just felt that marvelous relationship with the world that I just described. And I got there and boy, there's a lot of smart people there. And all of a sudden you were a small fish in a big pond, and it was kind of devastating, and I had more of this feeling of insecurity. And the world just was quite confusing to me. And I blamed it on people like you because you used to tell me that everything was fine. It was not until I got into AA and went to a bunch of open meetings and I started seeing all kinds of people get up here and they were sharing how screwed up everything was. And then I realized that that I had been put on all these years by the various people telling me that everything was all right. And as the years went by in AA, I suddenly came to the conclusion that I would rather be me than anyone else in the world. And this doesn't have anything to do with how good I feel about myself. It's how screwed up I realize all you are. And I've heard all these stories and I just don't want to trade with anybody. It's not safe. And the other guy gets up here, oh, everything's good in my life. I go, keep it. Keep it. I'll take my mess. I'm used to the mess. I'm working on it. I'm getting some of this stuff straightened out, so I don't want to trade anymore because you've finally been honest and you're sharing with me that you're having a problem bedwetting still or something like that. And I go, all right, I relate to that. So that's been very helpful, this honesty thing to find out that other people have had a few of these problems and they've gone on a few guilt trips and can't get rid of that self-centeredness and don't understand the relationship with their parents or if they've got kids, they don't know what to do. They don't like them and they're trying to adjust to that and hey, everybody's getting honest. It made me feel good that maybe I can start working on my own problems and that was nice. That's part of AA. That was very important. There were a lot of ideas that I had to question that I was talking about and I was telling you some of them now in case I forget them. I'll get around to having a drink in a minute which I was just about to do There was a guy going to walk in and offer me a drink at the university. But I do want to share a couple of these old ideas. One of them was, and this was a critical one in the early months in AA, one of them Was that a real man never asked for help. I got that down pat. I heard that on the radio, on those old radio programs. It was in the comic books. It was In the movies. It was everywhere. was a real man doesn't ask for help. By God, you handle it yourself. If you can't handle it yourself, you're weak. And I related to the heroes and I thought this is what I was striving to be. I would have... This marvelous song came out, I don't know, five or six years ago, I Did It My Way. Now there's an alcoholic theme song. There's a hey, hey, hay! You know, I did it my way. I don' t care that I'm still in jail. I don't care that everything's all screwed up. I didn't cop out and conform. I did it my way, and then I would hear another song. For years I wondered, what is that song? And it said, people who need people are the luckiest people in the world. What is that? People who needpeople are weak. I didn' t relate to that song at all. People who made people are lucky. Couldn't understand that. I was so into being self-sufficient as a way of life. I really believe I was taught that somehow through inference, by observing what was going on. And I related most strongly to Western movies where there was a hero who always lived about 15 miles outside of town with his horse. And whenever there was trouble in town, the townspeople would go out and get this guy and he would ride into town, go in the bar, have a couple of drinks and then shoot the bad people. And he would drive back off and then the townspople would say, Who is that man? I want to thank him. and there was that feeling of that's what a real man was all about. And I was 33 when I realized how weird it is to live alone with a horse as a way of life. Never thought about that. Just, you know, God, I just wanted to be that person. And when you think about that, he never talked to anyone. He just drank and shot in the horse. so there I was with these old ideas that was one another one was that this is really a free enterprise system it's competition it's dog-eat-dog and you just really can't let your guard down and you can't let people really know you because if they find out your weakness they will take advantage of it and you'll be out of the system and so I had created in my own mind very cruel world and we were out to get each other and what I say the world is in my mind is it i mean you know and i say whatever you say in your mind is it and so i was constantly on the defensive i was constantly uh being very cautious about any people and getting too close to people because of these rules that i had established these old ideas um so with this sort of outlook on life i would go to bed each night quite apprehensive i was very difficult to go go to sleep, be tossing and turning about why this is a rough place to live. I just can't stand this world. There's so much pressure in it. And it was under those conditions that I attended a party where there was some alcohol and so on. There was the pressure to conform. And like I say, I had to fall right in. And so I had this drink at some sort of a social function with 50 or 60 people there. And I sensed the hostility in the room, which I always sensed. And and I had him paranoid, and before I started drinking, as soon as I arrived at this party, I knew everybody was looking at me, and they were whispering to each other saying, who invited him? Why is he here? I thought we told him not to come. Didn't he see the way we were looking at him this afternoon? What's he doing? And they were really talking about the football scores or something like that, but I knew they were talking about me, and I was turning red in the face and sweating, and the drinks came by, and I grabbed some whiskey and drank it down and waited because some of my roommates that talked about the marvelous feeling that alcohol produces. And I drank this down and waited for this feeling, and the alcohol didn't change me at all. I just sat there and waited and waited and it had no effect. But it changed all the people in the room. Ah! Now, this was the strange thing about alcohol as far as this drunk is concerned. It didn't really change me. It changed the world that I lived in because I drank down another drink and looked back at those people, and I didn't see any hostility at all. Their eyes were friendly, and there were smiles on their faces, and they were beckoning me, come on over and join us. And I had another drink, and they wanted me to tell jokes. And I Had Another Drink, and I was right in the middle of everything, and everyone became friendly. There was this sense of camaraderie there that wasn't there before. And I felt like Alice in Wonderland must have felt when she walked through the looking glass. I had just walked into the world as I would have wanted it to be. Not that world that I had lived in for 18 years or 17, whatever it was. I had Just walked into a world that i read about you know this is what christianity is all about this is brotherly love This is people who care about each other so that rotten sober world out there is terrible. I'm never going back That's what I thought I'd only been drinking about three minutes Oh, I was into this stuff. I had done some heavy thinking about that whiskey right off the bat. I said, look what this is doing here. This is the passport to get right into this other world. It's a better world than that one. That one stinks. And so I resolved to spend as much time as I could in this new world and I felt it inconvenient that we had to go to school or do anything that interfered with this drinking. I will say for just the record that I certainly did get a full briefing about alcohol on the first night so that I can't say I wasn't warned I spent several hours throwing up I went through the dry heaves the next morning I had the shakes and a few of the cold flashes and hot flashes and sweats it was just like the higher power was saying well, I'm going to show you the whole works here and then you can make a more educated decision on whether you're going to drink again or not. And so when the crowd came around the next day and said, do you want to go out drinking again? My body, the physical body, said, no, no, we're still working down here in the stomach and the nerve endings are still jangling around. We don't want any more of that stuff in here. But the brain, which was in charge at that particular time, seemed to lose control but it was in charge at that particular time re-evaluated the situation and came up with the single decision that I think all alcoholics make and this is what keeps us going and the decision was okay so I've been sick for 12 hours okay so I've never felt this sick in my whole life And I'm really not sure if I'm ever going to get over it. But when you really stop and look at it, it's a small price to pay for the hour of fun I had last night. Right! And that was the decision. That's called beginning rationalization. That's just the beginning. Then as the years go on, the hour gets shorter, the trouble gets worse, and we still come up with the same conclusion. And as the years go on even further, we have to get our friends together the next day because our blackouts have set in. We know the trouble we've been in, but we don't know the fun we've had. So we gather our friends around and we ask them to recreate the evening, and they do. And then I say, well, in your opinion, I had a good time, and he said, yes. and I said I said thank God I paid a hell of a price for that good time now we're getting into advanced rationalization I'm balancing an equation with a rumor when you really get into a PhD in rationalization you don't involve your friends anymore because you're shamed so you imagine what they would say if they were there to explain the evening that you had. Always it had to come out that this was a small price to pay for all the fun that I think I'm having. I mean, it hadto come out that way or a rather frightening thought will pop up. Why don't you stop? Why don' t you stop drinking? And you know, when your body is totally dependent on a chemical alcohol and that thought comes into your head, you're liable to have a seizure just over that thought. Hey, what? Don't think about not drinking. that's totally out of the question I can remember when I would sit down and try to be logical every once in a while I got a drunk driving charge and then you know my conscience was always around I could never get that conscience to go away thank God I didn't realize that that was an important element but that conscience would keep going well what about this drunk driver you're in a lot of trouble it costs you all this money and so on what are you going to do about it and I can't remember saying why don't I figure out what caused me to get arrested for drunk driving why don't I think about this intellectually and I'd say alright let's think about it what do you think it is and I can remember my brain would go okay first of all we know this it has nothing to do with your drinking get that out of the way and then I'd go in to solve the problem and I come up with something about policemen didn't like my name statistically I just happened to be coming down the road and got unlucky with a radar whatever it was but we had already eliminated Drinking as a possible reason for the trouble I was getting in because I needed alcohol very quickly. It didn't take very many years for me to get physically addicted and spiritually and emotionally and mentally just totally into this way, alcohol as a way of life. I think an alcoholic has the simplest way of like there is. It's one word, drink. we get sober and we have all kinds of ways we're trying to handle things although I do think it can be brought down to a very simple foundation if I had to condense it all into one word or two words I would say grow spiritually and that replaces drinking but before drinking was dead what did I do when I was frightened? I drank what do you do when you're angry? You drink what do YOU do when YOU're sad? You drink what do You do when You don't feel good? You drink how do You celebrate? You drink there was nothing that wasn't answered with drinking. So I certainly had it down to a simple plan for living. It was just, hey, drink. I mean, you know, and wow, that's nice. Then you come into AA and they say, okay, don't drink. You realize what you're saying to someone when you say don't drank. That's taking away all there is. You know, if you could say that there was a game plan for living like there is for a football team, it would be the equivalent to a football team that only knew one play. Give the ball to the fullback, he runs up the middle. Give the football back, he run up the Middle and you come into the game and they say by the way for this game we're not going to allow the play where the fullback runs up to middle and you've taken away the whole thing. I mean they're standing around going that's the only play we know. That's what I think happens when we go into AA and they say don't drink. I go how do you live? How do you cope with things? How do you handle problems? How do you think? It's so terrifying to think about not drinking when that is my total life. And that's why it's scary to come into AA. And That's why it's frightening, I think, to hear about not drinking when we're brand new. That's a big thing! That's a big emotional deal to get rid of that drinking. And yet if we don't, it's going to kill us. And what a dilemma to be in and what a marvelous dilemma. And I do want to touch on that later, how grateful I am that I'm an alcoholic and how I believe that my fatal illness is the greatest gift that was ever given to me. Anyway, we were getting out of school and I graduated. I even graduated from there. I don't remember it, but I did graduate. I had gotten into blackouts and had a lot of problems, but somehow I kept my grades up and got out and I was standing around with some guys on a Saturday afternoon we were all drinking beer and somebody said let's join the Marine Corps what a thing to do right so I followed him down and I yeah I want to join the Marine Corp so I was jeez when I sobered up and I went I was down in Quantico, Virginia we were running around and I shaved my head and I'm digging holes and sleeping out in the woods and I going this is a bad decision and whatever that was going on. Now, I didn't relate to this too much. I had brought my golf clubs down there. There's a little teeny sergeant told me what I could do with his own golf club. So I didn' t like this at all. I could see this as a bad deal and I saw a movie about flying and so I ran in and told them all about how I wanted to be a pilot. And that, Jesus, what a strange way to plan a career off of a movie You snap the decision off of a movie, and I'm down to flight school. So I've now added three more years to the two that I was already in for. And, you know, just a day at a time going along with my plan. And I ended up spending 14 years in the Marine Corps. Then I got thrown out. Two years after I was in AA. A lot of things have happened to me as an alcoholic. I should mention some of them. I did, I got throw out of the Marine Corps with a career going. Then I had a marriage of many, many years completely fall apart and I had to move out of house with six kids and another guy gets married and he's in there and then I'm into another marriage and that goes to a wash and wherever they go. Into bankruptcy and going from job to job. All of this after I come into AA. I just wanted to throw that out. So, I don't have much sympathy for my pigeons that tell me that sobriety is rough. I go, no, you're wrong. It's not that bad. Anyway, I got into this flying and I really liked it And I had a lot of good stories I could tell about being in a fighter squadron And flying around overseas in a big jet pilot Oh, this is exciting A lot of drinking And I enjoyed all this But the disease was really progressing It was moving on schedule I was getting more and more frightened I would have to set higher and higher goals I don't know if any of you ever did this. I would say, if only I were a jet pilot flying off a carrier, I would beat somebody. And then as soon as I was a jet pirate flying off the carrier, I would tell myself, you know, they don't make jet pilots flying off carriers like they used to. Kind of like whoever it was, Groucho Marx or whatever it is, I wouldn't join a club that would have me as a member. You know, once I got there, the whole issue was degraded and lowered and that was that marvelous self-opinion that I had so there were several years that I went around I was fine didn't have any accidents really didn't get in too much trouble but the disease was progressing I was getting more and more frightened about just the day-to-day living and I never could share any of this with anybody I think that's one of the other AAs of being an alcoholic is all alone. There's so many things you just can't share, and not having a spiritual life at all, no relationship other than one of absolute terror with a higher power, it was necessary to try to drink a little bit more at night in order to just turn off all the thoughts. If I could just shut them off, then I wouldn't have to endure the pain of the conscience that was pointing out all the things that I had left undone. If there's things that I worry about, it's things I haven't done. I'm not really a person who does a lot of bad things. It's leaving things undone, not saying hello to people, never seeing my children much, not showing up on time, not doing this, not doing things that I want to, just being sort of forced around by the mood of my body or the mood or the booze that I happen to drink and not knowing where I'm going to go and not know what's going to happen to me and just sort of that kind of life um was the frightening part to me that i wanted to turn off that i wanted to be able to just get some peace from all of this and drinking was a way to do that i could drink enough at night to finally quiet all this noise down and go to sleep eventually that medicine of course just needed to be strengthened even more i was went for a number of years not drinking during the day this uh was sort of my last resort was God, you can't drink during the day. You can't just go pour booze in and get into an airplane and go fly, you know? So I was holding off. But the body, with the physical progression, was about to take control in this issue. I really don't think that daily drinking is an intellectual decision any more than coming into AA. It's an intellectual position. I haven't heard too many people who intellectualize their way into AA, saying, hey, I was sitting around a house one night and got to thinking about my drinking and the potential for trouble that I might have somewhere down the road. So I came on in day A rather than go through any trouble. And I don't think that's really the case. So if you're new and you feel you're here under pressure, under duress, you really didn't want to be here at all and you're anxious to get out and you'd wish I'd shut up and sit down and then you could leave, that's good. That's how everybody got here. That's sort of normal. That's why you get here that somebody's got you and you're in here. And the pressure comes from many different sources. You can go home, and there's your family packed, and they're going on a vacation, and you don't know what to do. You're not going. And you're getting the message subtly from these little pressures. Or you go down to the office, and the boss says, come on in, I want you to meet your replacement. You know, oh, I didn't know about that. Or you Go over and see the doctor, and he says, hey, listen, I wouldn't buy any long-playing records if I was you I want to tell you about your liver and of course more recently we got the judges and this is where you really get the pressure you've got the guy up there and he's looking down and he says this is about the eighth time you've been in here for this drunk driving thing I'm going to sentence you to a year in jail or one AA meeting And the guy's standing out there going, boy, you really know how to hurt a guy. And he's thinking about it and he's thinking about him and he says, well, which jail? Because so it's pressure. Pressure gets us in here. They talk about that in the sixth and seventh step we have to deal with the fact of suffering and uh that's right um only i think as in sobriety we put it to use get some mileage out of it and go forward instead of backwards and that's the difference all the suffering i did drinking i went backwards and now it's the other direction it's nice um so i was getting this pressure it was coming from inside it was a pressure to drink during the day and it came in a physical fashion i'm sitting at desk and i'm going i can't last till 4 30 and i've got these feelings from my body and it's saying leave now leave work now when you can't stay here and i go i gotta stay here there's a colonel sitting over there wait let me walk over and tell him i gotta have a drink in them you know i'm having the internal dialogue any of you ever talk with your body oh good and uh the brain is going no i'm gonna sit at my desk and look cool i'm busy working and the body's gonna leave now Now, we're coming apart in here. Look at your hand, a little trembling starting. And you're not going to be able to write much longer. And then finally there was a huge spasm and that was the last straw. And I raced out of there and made up some excuse that I had to leave at 3 o'clock in the afternoon. Went over to the officer's club and walked in. And the whole body on the inside is just screaming for this alcohol. And the brain is trying to be cool and walk up to the bartender. And the bartenger says, yes sir? And I said, go ahead and wait on him. I'm in a hurry. and all those nerve endings inside her going what are you doing up there we know we're here at the bar we can see the eyes you know sent a message down that they were at the bar so so the stomach knew where we were and i was very upset down there so finally the alcohol would be put in and it was marvelous what that alcohol would do it just goes down it was almost like the postman making its appointed rounds it would just go down and start in the legs with me The vodka always started in the legs. It went down there like being in a massage parlor. It would just go down, and all of a sudden, all those muscles that spasm up all night would just suddenly calm down. I'd be standing nice and steady at the bar where I'd been really all twitchy and nervous beforehand. Then it would come up into the stomach where that raging fire was going on. It would jut come in here like a foam and put all that out. Then it'd go out into the arms and hands, which had been too trembling to even light a cigarette. I may have started to light one and noticed a guy looking at me as I was starting to light it and the hand was shaking so I quit smoking right in the middle of lighting the cigarette. But then after this vodka went out into those fingertips I could suddenly feel how steady they were I took up smoking again. I would look the guy right in his eyes as I brought the match in very, very slowly and said, Hey! I don't have a problem with shaking I don' t have any of those problems and then the last thing that would happen they would come up into the brain which was so confused and so nervous couldn't make a decision which way to go what to do and it was just almost like an act of God as that vodka would come into the brain it was like it was a hand that just went peace and I had once again changed the world that I lived in I suddenly would be standing there going I wonder why I was so nervous when I came in here god damn job I have down there the pressures of being in a squadron and all these potential problems isn't it lucky that I have alcohol as a friend to solve these problems and little did I know that this was the cause of all of them that alcohol was truly the cause of all these problems that it was adding an impossible barrier to my solving any of these problems I feel very fortunate that my body gave out before the brain went all the way as you can see there's been some residual damage up there but if I don't drink and I fool people all the time I have a very nice job now up on Capitol Hill and I wander around just like they don't know who the hell they're dealing with you know that this guy came out of a nut ward or something I'm just in there and they go yes sir good morning and all that and it's really fun to be you know just like hi and what do they know if I didn't have a drink I can probably keep it up for years and they'll never know what's going on so And so anyway, I'm very grateful that my body gave out. It finally did. There's a long story. I got into flying. Boy, that was bad, the last six months of the flying. I was having withdrawals and all kinds of vision problems and heart palpitations and sweats and just awful. And I really didn't want to fly with me. I finally saw the doctors and they agreed we had a terrible problem that I should be out of the airplanes and so I was and it was a very degrading experience to be grounded from flying for some weird psychological reason because they did not identify the alcohol and I was retrained as an air traffic controller. And now I was working on the radar, and I Was bringing my friends in for landing when the weather was bad. Fortunately, nobody got hurt, no horror stories to tell there, and I ended up, my last year drinking, I was in charge of this outfit, so I didn't have to do any work. I was overseas and I got into daily round-the-clock drinking, malnutrition. I just stopped eating. A very lonesome existence. I just sort of stayed in a Quonset hut and ventured out occasionally to go to work. I remember one horrible event that just sticks in my mind. There's so many embarrassing moments during those years. But one was when President Kennedy was assassinated. And he was one of my favorite presidents. And I really, even in the state that I was in, and I was very upset and really relating to the whole event, and they were having a ceremony. And I was on my way back to the Quonset hut to get about eight ounces of vodka because I knew that could see me through the ceremony. I was now into daily drinking. I had to keep a certain level. When it got low, the whole body started shaking, and I went on the way back together. It was crucial. And this commanding officer stopped me and said, Come on, I'll give you a ride in the Jeep to the ceremony." No, no, no. I've got to go over here and get this. It's very important. And he said, Get in. And I was at the thing unarmed, so to speak. And I'm standing there, and I was already shaking. And now this thing lasted like two hours. And the more it went on and on, the more that alcohol level got down. It got lower and lower. The more I was shaking and sweating and turning and getting unarmed. So to speak, and standing there. And I's already shaking, and now this things lasted like 2 hours. And the moor it went one and on the more that alcohol level got down it got lower and lower the more I was shaking and sweating and turning red and I felt every eyeball in the hangar was looking at me and it finally came to the end they were playing Star Spangled Banner and I knew my arm by this time was spasming all over the place and I was confronted with a horrible decision of are you going to salute and have everyone look at that arm just jerking all over or are you not going to say we're not going to salute and have everybody say what's wrong with that guy he's standing there President Kennedy is the ceremony and he was not raising his hand. I mean, you talk about no choice. You know, who do you want to kill? Your mother or your father? It was that kind of a situation. I chose not to bring my arm up and I could hear people talking, what's the matter with him and all that and I just wanted to melt. I wanted to disappear and go away. I think it took a year to get over the internal embarrassment of that one little incident and there must have been hundreds of those that happened to every alcoholic where you just go, ah, mortified. You talk about being humiliated and just going, why do I have to be in a situation like this? How do I get out of this? No way to share it with anybody. I never even broached the subject. I just went away and got drunk. And that was it, you know. So that was where it was kind of going. When I made it through that year with malnutrition, I was just barely surviving and got back to Quantico, Virginia and had a convulsion in school. and that got me into the mental hospital. They figured out what caused the convulsion and then I went to DTs and that explained what caused the convulsions and that's where I ended up in the nut ward and I was there for six months in there and I guess somewhere during that time AA came in and they marched us all to a meeting and that is how I got to a meet and Corman came in and he said all you drunks fall in right face and wrong at a meeting and I didn't like being at the meeting I didn' t relate to what was going on but I found out about AA I did drink one more time for about three days when I was an outpatient bringing the booze back in and all of a sudden it was totally out of control and I dialed operator one weekend and said, I need help and a great big marine showed up at my house and he stormed in and he said, hello, my name is Bill this is a 12-step call I talk, you listen and there it was and then he ran around he looked in the back of the toilet and found the vodka and he looked in a couple other spots that he already knew I figured my wife had briefed him on all of this but she wasn't even home so I don't know how he knew and he knew so many things and he just took over my life and I'm very glad because he took the choice of going to meetings away from me he took all kinds of choices away from you and he said get in the car I could relate to get in the car right there hey we're going to a meeting and we're Going to a Meeting and you know and I'm there sit here you know and that's the way it was and then we'd go home and he'd say don't you drink and I'll be back tomorrow night at 7.30 and I would go I better not drink that guy is big and he's mean and I needed a drink but I didn't need him to see me drinking and so I stayed sober I guess for a month out of fear of sponsor hey I knew I would incur great physical damage from this guy if I showed up drunk so I had to stay sober long enough to get rid of him and then I'd be on my way because even though I've been in AA a month I knew it was just for a temporary basis until I got my life figured out because everybody solves their own problems right the real man I was just here temporarily and then I'll be on my way thank you very much get the pressure off my back get the hell out of that nut ward get back to duty, and so on down. So that was the beginning. I'm very grateful that guy stayed on my back and kept me going to meetings, kept me not drinking. And pretty soon I had built up some time and I had a program. And my program was don't drink and go to meetings. Don't drink undress. Don't go to meeting. Don't drank and go the meeting. Well, I'll tell you something. I guess around a year and a half, that's not enough. For somebody else, it may be six months later. That's not enought. Because I was going around to meetings and I started feeling different from people, even while I was at meetings. I started going, you know, I'm not getting what they're talking about. I'm going to meetings that I'm like, I don't know what they want me to do. I'm drinking, I go to meetings, and not drinking, but I don' t feel, I' m starting to feel different again. I' M starting to feeI like I' Am going to have to get out of AA. I' AM starting to feI something is wrong. I wasn' t relating to people talking about being spiritual. I would block my ears when I'd hear that I'd say, I don't need that because all I do is go to meetings and don't drink all I need to hear is spiritual I don' t need to say the Lord's Prayer I don''t need to pray to God I don ''t need higher power all I''d do is not drink and everything will be alright and I didn''t realize that yes, that''s true everything is going to be alright I'm going to stay alive long enough to get myself straightened out and I really believe now that what was going on is sort of a full circle that works in AA. And not drinking is the beginning of it. And the way it works for me is that I have to not drink in order that I can stay alive so I can work the steps so that I won't drink. And that's how it comes all the way back to not drinking. And what I was doing is I was sitting on a time bomb. I was siting on how long can you hold your breath kind of a situation. I was just testing my ability to stay sober without changing. And I think everybody's just got a certain amount you can be stretched. And then you're going to have to go one way or the other. You're goingto have to get into AA. You're gonna have to leave. You're gona have to take some of the steps or go away. There's that moment, and it's kind of like having one foot on the shore and one foot in the boat, and the boat's going out, and you're goin', I'm not sure if I wanna go there or I wanna stay here. Are you really in AA? I'm makin' my mind up, man. you better make it up soon because you're going to fall in the water and that's where I was and I had to make a jump one way or the other and the jump involved a tremendous leap of faith the jump involves becoming spiritual and I wasn't spiritual and I said how the heck am I going to become spiritual and that was the problem I didn't relate to that I kept hearing about higher power and I remember studying the third step and I called my sponsor about two o'clock in the morning I said you see this in the third steps talking about God I said, let me just ask you one question. That isn't the God, is it? You're not talking about the official God, are you, in the middle of this thing here? I saw a higher power and then all of a sudden it was God was there. And he's laughing like, he says, we'll talk about it tomorrow and I come over there and he starts, I said this guy's been looking for me. Millions of years to do in Purgatory, I've got all the things, this guy, oh no, I'm not turning my life over there, We've got a lot of trouble. And he's laughing away, and he says, Wait a minute, wait a minute. We're going to make an emergency for you. We've Got a Problem Here. We're Going to Have to Make an Emergency. Well, we're going To have you do. Why don't we have you turn your life over to whatever will take it? Hey! All right! And if we do that, we'll have a miracle. And I went, okay, I like the miracle. And you know what he said the miracle was? He says, the miracle will be that your life will no longer be in the hands of an idiot. We could go out here in the street and stop the first truck driver coming down and have him run your life for the next year and it would be better off than if you keep running it. This is the problem. And then you will come to understand a higher power through what happens to you by relinquishing control of your life. And I have seen no better explanation for us who are so confused about a higher power than is contained in the 12 and 12 and the third step when it compares it to electricity. I just love that. That explained it all to me. I don't have to understand electricity in order to use it. I still don't understand electricity. I don' t understand volts and amperage and blah, blah, in order that you vacuum my apartment. I don''t need to understand that. I just know that if you plug into that power and you go around and do the work, it works. What do I have to understand? Do I have write down electricity and this and that? I don't have to understanding that at all, but I can understand. I know all about electricity now in my life. I know where I can use it to turn lights on when it's dark. I can get warm. I can air-conditioned. I can do everything with this source that I don' t understand at all. And that's exactly the way I feel about a higher power now is simply I understand the difference that took place in my life as a result of trying to turn my life over to this, of trying this unidentified, as far as I'm concerned, source. I don't understand it still other than what the results are. And you know, that's what AA is all about, is results, results, results, they say that the only people who scoff at prayer are those who have not tried it enough. and then you try it enough and then you get results and then you say what is prayer prayer is what causes these results that's what spirituality was and I would say you know I'm not a spiritual person I'm all guilty and I'm this and that somebody would say you seem spiritual to me that startled me I said I seem spiritual to you yeah you're really concerned about that new person you have feelings inside of you about that person you really care I said oh is that spiritual and they said yeah that's really spiritual That's what we're talking about. There is inside of you a whole set of values that want to come forth. Inside of you there's a whole package of good that wants to cut loose, that you have denied exists. You've run around saying, I'm not this kind of a person, and the frustration and the conflict has been you've been that kind of person all along and you've never let it out. You've never gone inside to see what's there. and the second thing you haven't done is you haven's done the work yet to see what's blocking the entrance of all this power you have never taken an inventory you've never gone in there to see what are all these old ideas what are these personality traits that cause you to mess up interpersonal relationships on a day by day basis what is it that causes all your fears what are some of the what are your problems that you would like vaguely removed you know we don't deal in generalities You get to the seventh step and you say, hey, I'd like everything removed. And God's going to say, what is it specifically? And you say well I never did make the list and I never have done the inventory. He says well why don't you go back and do the work, come on back and then we'll deal with this stuff once you've identified what it is you want done. And they won't settle for I just want to feel better. No, you can't do that. We've got to get in and do some of this work. And that's where the education comes in. And I think Alcoholics Anonymous is one of the higher education levels you can come to. This is beyond a Ph.D. in self-knowledge here in AA. This is an incredible opportunity to learn about ourselves and to find out what being spiritual is all about and to found out that that can replace drinking. Being spiritual can replace drink. There's something magic about that. I find that it's possible through these steps to change the world that we live in. This is what seems to happen by a simple process of taking an inventory, of bouncing it off somebody else to make sure we're honest, of trying to achieve some measure of humility to even get a definition of that particular word and to even seek it as a goal to try and become more humble in an eager looking for the will of a higher power because it's the best deal I can get. That's the Best Deal that I Can Get. It's better than anything I can think of for myself. How many times, into a job now I never knew existed so I wouldn't have known to even ask for it. And it's only in retrospect that I find out it was the best thing that ever could have happened. I was sober two years and I got thrown out of the Marine Corps. And you want to see a guy get into a self-pity bag. Hey, what's going on? I'm going to a meeting every night and I'm out. My past caught up to me. I didn't get promoted, and I'll never forget that. I was sitting around in the house, and I was looking for a job, and I had all these kids, and I can't get a good job, and I'm resenting it, running out of money. And I'm sitting there doing a number on myself, and I remember reading in the newspaper, and it was Washington Post in this little article back on page six, and it Was talking about a plane crash in which all these Marine officers were killed, and they were all on this instruction team that I was on. And if I had been promoted, I would have still had that same job. And so I read that, and I knew that God knew that I just read that. And I knew that he knew what I had just been thinking before I read it. And I was trapped and I started sweating and I made believe I didn't read it and I was like, oh. And I know I knew he had me, you know, I was going, hey. All of a sudden he said, now do you understand, you know? Now do you see what happened? Now do You see the big picture? Now do you understand that maybe I know more about the world than you do and that you could trust me and that what apparently is a setback today may be necessary in my big plan for you? Do you get a picture? And I remember, well, I really felt about that small. And I started mumbling about, I really like civilian life. I really didn't like those uniforms. And I really, you know, so it was a little lesson. It was a Little Lesson, but it's a more... you know, the reason I learned that lesson is because I wasn't drinking. You know, I never would have read the paper when I was drinking. I would have missed it. All of those little things. And I think the same thing was happening when Iwas drinking. Only I never could put the answers together. I could never see this little setback as a necessary thing to here and there. There's no awareness. There's not putting things together when we're drinking. We're just reacting to the chemical. Oh, I'm running out of time and energy, so I've got to get here and just finish off on these steps. I do like to just share a couple of thoughts about them for those of you that are new that you're going to get into these things. They're the most exciting part of the AA program, are these principles that we can come to love. And, you know, the book, The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, it's my... I'm just pitching it for myself. It's my favorite stuff to read, so I'm jut throwing that out. And it's written by the same people who wrote the big book, only they had 13 more years sobriety. And they went back and they took a look at what they had written in the big book, and then they said, hey, let's amplify this a little bit further. Here's some more thoughts about these principles. Here's a little more of our sharing about what's going on here. And it's amazing how essential the first step is to the whole program. And I really think this point can be missed, and that's one I alluded to a littlebit earlier about my fatal illness. I don't think it's possible to go through steps 2 through 12 unless you believe step 1 because who is going to become rigorously honest who is gonna take a big inventory and share with another person go out and make amends and get into prayer and meditation unless they think it's an emergency nobody is gonna do all that you may say you're gonna do it but I don' t believe it I think you're gotta go hey this is too much I'm not gonna do this and so we go back to that first step and we go back and we start looking at what is this I'm borrowers over alcohol my life's unmanageable I'll tell you what that is alcoholism is fatal and this important point alcoholism is fatal and it kills and it killed you this is the important part up till then it was up till then it was an academic subject we're studying alcoholism it's fatal alright to some people but your alcoholism is fatal to you and that's where you've got to get in there that gets our attention hey you're going to die now we're getting the message of the first step and that discussion in there talks about how at the end of a full study of our powerlessness, we may become as willing to listen as only the dying can become, and that's how willing we can become and then everything makes sense everything makes since then I think it's very similar to if I were still flying and I was in my little fighter and I wasn't 60,000 feet and all of a sudden the thing started blowing up and I ejected and I went sailing out and my chute stayed in the plane and I'd say I think I'm in trouble but being a rationalizer after I had fallen you know it takes a long time to fall from 60,000 feet maybe after a minute of falling I'd go I don't know it's not so bad so far maybe this situation isn't as serious as I first thought when the event when it happened And the explosion is over. I'm still breathing. Everything seems to be all right. Maybe the law of gravity doesn't apply to me. Everything's going all right, and okay, so we come into AA. We're under all that pressure, and then we're sober for a while, and then мы're going, well, I don't know about those steps. I don' t see where this is the big emergency. I say that we are no different than that person falling through the air, that we are just as powerless and just as hopeless and that that crash is just as inevitable as the person coming through the air. That's where we are at the end of the first step. When a first step is taken properly, that's how you should feel. What happens now? What happens next? What happens to us now? And we're told that it's a double-edged sword. That's why it's so hopeless. Number one, we have an allergy that whenever we put alcohol in it, we're going to have to have more and more and More and it's going to surely kill us. And the other side of the story is we have a mental obsession to think about drinking all the time and that nothing can relieve that obsession. You ever try and not think about something? Okay, I'm not going to think About Beer. Ha ha, Budweiser. Don't think about beer. Don't Think About It. You ever tried to get rid of an obsession? An obsession is there all the Time. Anxiety comes in. The doorbell rings. Budweizer. Okay, okay. And what the first step is saying is that if in your mind you think there is a remote chance that there is one situation that could come up that you would have to drink, you're dead. Because that situation is going to be just around the corner. If you think they're going to come up with a solution, if there is set of conditions under which you would have to have a drink in order to get through it, you're ded. You're through. And that's what the First Step should say. This is where we should find ourselves is right at about 30,000 feet with no visible means of support. And under those conditions, a sponsor says, by the way, how do you feel about God? You shouldn't ask an alcoholic how he feels about God around some debating table so that he can tell you about, well, religions have wiped out all the people in the world, they're the worst thing that ever happened, and he can intellectually prove the non-existence of God. you got to get him at 30,000 feet where he knows he's going to die and then you ask him how he feels about God and would he like to have a more open mind about it he says maybe there's a God and it turns out the reason there's no God and the reason there's the God is because there has to be one and when there has to been one there is so go back to the first step and then you'll get spiritual as hell and then the rest of the program seems to flourish and seems to go on and I say anytime you're on the fourth step you know I got to that first step my sponsor said just picture the guy with a .45 caliber pistol right at the back of your head and he's got the hammer cocked and that's your alcoholism and anytime you get there it's the fourth steps and you say you've got to take a searching and fearless mode I'm not going to take an inventory and the guy says you're going to die well I'll take a little inventory a little even story I guess I can do that much make a list of all the people I can make a lista oh well I'll make a little list all the way through we have that and what happens as a result of that pistol being at the back of my head I'll tell you what happens I went to places inside of me that I never would have gone on my own I went into the spiritual valley I went into that realm because there was a gun at my head i did not go there through choice there's a wonderful little sentence in there we seem to settle for as much perfection as will get us by you know and i think that's in the seventh step and that's us that's human nature why why should i become a saint why not you know why not try why not shoot for perfection that's a goal um so there it is that was what happened the fatal illness is what drove me to the best things that have ever happened and I really believe that if you're new you can relate to how hopeless your life is how despairing it's been how negative it's been that this total surrender will be the most remarkable thing that ever happened and you will hit a bottom truly and you'll be grateful and you won't be able to and you run around wanting to tell everyone hey, I just hit the bottom, I'm going the other way and they say, hey, i'm going the other away, i'M GOING THE OTHER WAY I'm way down here but I'm going the other way and there's this tremendous excitement and the second bit of excitement is you took the journey down all alone. That was the most lonesome journey I think a person can take and now you're going back up and you're seeing people stick their hands out and they grab and they say oh yes, I went through those rough waters myself let me drag you let me show you how to get through there and this whole journey back is taken together and if you stay in the middle of Alcoholics Anonymous you can't fall off the edge you cannot slip off the edge if you're right in the middle the whole movement just goes forward and you're part of it or you're not there's no individuals we're just part of this and together we do anything we never have to be afraid we never really have any setbacks and be discouraged because when you're down one day I'm up and then I'll share that with you and the next time I'm down you're up and you share that avec me and we kind of even out and that's the way it works so keep coming back And I forgot, for those of you in Palm Springs, Drop the Rock. I forgot about that. No, I've got no time to tell a story. I don't remember it even. I really can't. I've forgotten the whole theme there, but somebody mentioned it beforehand. I'm really glad you invited me out here today and I've really enjoyed being part of this. I've never seen so much enthusiasm. So I really think when each one of you were coming up saying and that you love each other, that you really mean it. Because I can feel it in this room and I'm looking forward to coming back again someday. Thank you all.