The Only Problem Is Conscious Separation – Sandy B.

We've got Sandy Beach, Dave Pistol, Polly Pistol Carol, Linda and they're carrying the message to us you know and one of the messages that I got so far is this is a program of change. That means I'm supposed to change well slowly maybe But I've got to continue to grow. And one of the things that's helped me a lot is listening to tapes of some of our great speakers because they've got some outstanding messages. So I've Got to Remain Teachable and listen to our teachers. Thank you. And here is – I know you all came here to hear me. You know? And it just makes me feel so good, but I'll try to be humble and introduce another great speaker, Sandy Beach. Hi everybody, my name is Sandy Beach and I'm an alcoholic. And thank you, Wayne. Wayne's been my host and just a charming gentleman. And he took me to the Air Museum over in Pensacola right after he picked me up. And quite frankly, that's my favorite place to visit. All the old planes I flew were in there, only they don't look so old. Because they got them restored, so they're brand new. and when I walk around and look at them I'm 22 so pretty exciting and Colleen I've been waiting a long time to be able to say my God you've been sober longer than I've ever been I've never been alive the reason that's funny is you don't know how many people come up to us and say that. You've been sober longer than I've been alive. It makes us feel old. Yeah. Let's see, I came in to AA on December 7th, 1964. I had the same sponsor for 42 years, two months, and two weeks. And he passed away last year. His name was Bill Terwilliger. And he and I had a lot of fun together. And I wish all of you could have a relationship like that for so long, that the guy that came to your house to get you ended up being one of your best friends and you shared all the ups and downs of life. And as it got near the end, I was with him at the first meeting we ever went to. and it was a group anniversary I got to talk and share about him and we sat down and it wasn't sad it was like wow we had a great run there was a lot to be grateful for and now he's joined a lot of my other friends up in the big meeting in the sky which I can hardly wait to get to I got a lot of questions for Bill Wilson and when I get the answers I'm going to secretly signal them back somehow so we can settle all the arguments and I have a hunch the answer goes Bill what did you really mean when you said this I didn't mean anything well that's not going to help us at all Let's see, I grew up in New Haven, Connecticut. I was born in 1931. I've got one sister who has 30 years in AA. I've Got six kids and 15 grandchildren. And I got two daughters in AA and one grandson. So I've covered three generations. I'm certainly doing my share of making sure that we keep the ranks full here in AA My three sons were a total disappointment. they all got into drugs and alcohol in college clearly they were going over the deep end and I had three seats saved for them I pictured the four of us on a panel someday one by one they decided they'd had enough and they became normal citizens and they were all successful in their own right and very wonderful fathers and husbands and I wondered to myself where did I go wrong? So you never know, you know. You just think that one of them could have had the decency to come here. But... You know, my parents went through the Depression right before I was born and they somehow made... It affected them. I'm sure it took a lot of the confidence out of their lives. But they became very stoic, and they managed, and sort of the stiff upper lip type of thing. And I think they did a great job of providing for my sister and I and making sure that we had everything. And I just look back on that, and I wonder why I sat there at the dining room table with just four of us feeling like I didn't belong. I saw them as a unit, the three of them, and then there was me. And I find that this is common with alcoholics. We somehow start that sense of being different from and distant from our surroundings early on. Who knows where it comes from? But I certainly remember that feeling. and I was sent to the Catholic Church and my sister and we sat there and she thought it was the cutest place in the world. The nuns were cute, the Latin was cute, the incense was cute. Everything was cute and wonderful. Confession was such a relief and I on the other hand thought I was in German prison camp. Everything frightened me. Everything. I took it literally any word I read oh so i was not comfortable there very uptight and as i mentioned this afternoon i saw the crucifix sending me the message that that's what god did to his only son that he loved guess what he's going to do to me and it's like a lot of ideas that were not nobody taught me that i somehow figured it out by myself and those type of ideas will cause you to be quite frightened because, after all, our feelings are a reaction to our thoughts. So if you think scary thoughts, you get frightened and you then believe that it is a frightening situation instead of a stupid thought. And it becomes just a self-fulfilling prophecy. Think about scary things, you gets scared and then you live in a scary world and you wonder, how did this happen? Well, you were just playing a joke on yourself and you fell for it. After all, it says we create our own problems and that's how you do it. Did you ever sit around in the afternoon going, You know, I've got it made. Did you never do that? That's a very dangerous thing to do because your ego hears you. What's he said? I got it. I got money in the bank. Got a lovely wife, I got a lovely family, I'm in AA, I've got 25 years. My retirement's pretty well set. Life is really good. But I haven't checked on the future recently. I think I'll take a few moments and dash off into the future and see what's in store for me out there. Wow, the market's probably going to crash wiping out my retirement. this bunion on my foot seems to be turning cancerous and I felt my home group snubbing me a little bit last week I wonder if I still have that pistol in my desk drawer and there went perfection so I don't want to go into a lot of detail about my childhood I was treated well I just made up stories that it was hard and frightening and all that I did have polio as a kid they hadn't invented the vaccine yet and I'm one of the lucky ones that recovered with the Sister Kenny treatment and I'm very grateful for that. I did good in school. I got high grades. My father managed to send me to a little prep school in New Haven. That was my favorite place. It was a very small place and I really enjoyed it and I got very high grades and it was just, it was a pipeline right into Yale University in the hometown there and I had worked on their buildings. A lot of times your hometown university, you just take for granted. Oh yeah, that's what's here in New Haven. Once I attended there and I saw these people coming from all over the country, oh my God, oh my Gott, and I'm going, wow, look at these guys. They're all rich. They all had names that I had heard of before and they really knew what was going on and I suddenly realized that I really didn't fit in there with these people. They were way out of my league And I had the feeling sometime during that freshman year that the dean was going to call the thousand guys out and announce over a PA system, gentlemen, we've discovered an imposter in our midst. A man who clearly does not belong here and they were going to point at me and take me out of there. You know that feeling? Just, I don't fit in here, folks. So it was very hard to pretend that you were happy. But you had to pretend or somebody might figure out that there was something wrong with you. I went about two and a half months without drinking. There was great pressure to drink. Everybody, my roommates, oh, you can have fun. You can do all this. And one night I was at a social event where we were supposed to meet 30 other guys and just greet and talk. and I just found that impossible to do. It was just very difficult but I was going to try that night and I tried to walk over to one group who was already talking to each other and as I approached they sort of stopped the conversation, turned and with their eyes, you know how people can talk with their ears, and they all stared right into my eyes and said, we do not want to know you. We have enough friends already. leave us alone and it was strong enough that it took my breath away well I wasn't going over there I was going over here and they were already looking they already got the word from this group to them and everywhere no one wanted to know me and they just had that hostility stay away and I went well I won't be meeting anybody tonight but there was a bar there so I said well maybe I'll have a drink it will make me feel good and I say this every time I talk I had two and a half drinks, and I was beginning to think that alcohol really didn't do anything. And I turned around, and I started to walk through the room to leave, and I suddenly looked, and it was as if those guys were gone, and they were replaced by 30 of the friendliest guys I've ever seen. Everyone's eyes now said, we would love to be your best friend. please join our group and they were just beckoning me with their eyes and I suddenly went from a very frightening world into a happy world so alcohol didn't change me but it changed the world that I lived in into a wonderful place I looked around and I just went oh my god look at all these guys they all want to know me isn't it great And I started walking over to the first group. I was ready. I had all kinds of conversation ready. And on my way over, I suddenly found myself agreeing with them. They would be lucky to know me. And I went over and I intuitively knew how to do all the social things that I didn't know how to doing before. It was as if alcohol had somehow taken this trap that was hiding my creativity and my comfortability and it removed it and I could be myself for the first time in my life. I was free to just be. And I talked and talked and talked and pretty soon they're all gone. I'm still talking. Hey, hey! Where are you going? Where are your going? And it was just amazing. So I went back to the bar Wow, three drinks did that. Wonder what 23 drinks or whatever would do. and I proceeded to just pour him down, pour him down, until I could hardly walk and I went back and you know what happens when you first start drinking like that you get violently ill laid on the bathroom floor threw up in the toilet just oh sick sick and in the morning I sat on the edge of my bed felt like I had a hatchet in my head and my eyes and just everything was just ugh and the thought occurred to me are you going to drink again tonight and it was just like that I said, of course I am. This vomiting and hatchet in the head is actually quite a small price to pay for what I had last night. So something of great importance happened to me last night What was it? I had found the secret to life. I had find a way of solving all the problems that had been coming down on top of me for my first 19 years and they all vanished because of some magic thing in these glasses. And I suddenly was looking forward to the rest of my life with alcohol. It was the new, it made life so simple. So instead of studies, athletics and all the other things, I concentrated on drinking as a major focus and almost flunked out. Got arrested, got in fights. Everything that we know happens, happened. Somehow I graduated and the Korean War was going on. Everybody had to join. A bunch of us went down to join the Marine Corps, sailed off to see what the Marine Corps was like after the initial shock wore off. I suddenly found that I loved it. I finally was part of something. They somehow have a way of making you feel like you are just a piece in this wonderful machinery called the Marine Corp. And I just connected with it. I loved It took about six months of training. and then you're a platoon leader, and I saw a training film on pilots. I signed up for flight school. I got accepted. I got my orders to Pensacola. I met this woman in Connecticut. We got married, went off on our honeymoon to Pensacoa, and I got airsick on the way down on the commercial airlines and airsICK, and that lasted a while, but then the motion sickness went away, and I went on to do just great. It was like I really was born to do that kind of stuff. I'd be second in the class or third, and we went through the 18 months of all the various things you do in flight school, went through advanced training in Texas into jets and off into the short period out in El Toro in California for further fighter training, and then we went overseas, and the war is over. So we're in Japan. We've got the top fighters, and there's nothing to do but drink and fly and drink and fry and drink and fly and what a year that was. I just had the best time, the squadron drank as much as I did it was just amazing all of them, the colonel, everybody just bring another round, bring another round. We did all these crazy exploits but everybody was a good pilot everybody was focused and it was quite a year nine months through that I was with a major who was a big Irish guy he was our maintenance officer and he was talking about one night about how he was going to be promoted pretty soon. He'd get his own squadron. He wanted to get nothing but the best pilots and he looked over at me, the young lieutenant, and he said I want you in that squadron and I went God it doesn't get any better than that and then he said but I wouldn't let you drink. Just boom and I didn't say a word I assumed he didn't mean it it went over my head why would he say that I drink with this guy every day what is going on they're all heavy drinkers this and that and I don't think it was until I got to AEA that I understood that even in the midst of heavy drinker an alcoholic's drinking scares them we're drinking beyond where they are and they're getting drunk all the time. So there was something about my intensity with the alcohol that frightened him and he saw the early signs of alcoholism. It took about 11 more years of flying for my alcoholism to end my career. It just slowly got worse even though we're having another child, you know, six children. I'm getting promoted. We get transferred every year to a new duty station. I'm doing the various jobs that we have, including three years in Pensacola as a flight instructor. And I came out of Pensacола, went over to main side and got checked out in photo planes and went up to Cherry Point during the Cuban Missile Crisis and we had the old F-8 Crusader that Wayne knew about and a radar plane. And that's when my alcoholism was tightening the noose. I was starting to experience withdrawal symptoms in the plane because I would not drink for 8 or 10 hours and I was so far along in the alcoholism that I'd start into withdrawal and I would start the anxiety attacks. I'd start the sweating. I'd lose my vision. I thought I was going to pass out. And there were no alcohol programs, so I just kept going. I would go out to the plane and I'd go, God, I really don't want to do this. And I'd get in it and then, boy, halfway through the flight it would really start. And I would just be sweating and all that. And I remember a couple of flights with one hand on the ejection seat. I'm going to fly the mission. I mean, who else but an alcoholic would be flying a mission? Okay, I could pass out in any second. Boom, I'm out. But it's insanity, and I'm not going to tell anybody. I'm nicht going to talk about it. It was just awful. And there came a time, I'd been in that squadron about six months, and we were on a cross country with four of the other planes, the electronic countermeasure plane and it had two seats the pilot and the radar guy and we're coming back in a flight of four and I said I have to get out of this plane now I mean did you ever have that where you can't stay where you are with the drinking I've gotten up in the middle of a haircut that's it I'm gone It was, I'm not staying here any longer. Now that plane didn't have an ejection seat. It had some God-blessed escape chute down the middle. You had to haul a door out of the way and I was looking at the door. I didn't remember really how it worked. And I was contemplating pulling that door up and just, I don't know. And then I'm going, well, the other guy doesn't know how to fly. So this is not going to be a good idea. So I called the flight leader and declared an oxygen emergency, which means you have to land right away. Something's contaminating the oxygen. There was nothing wrong with the oxygen, and I just declared this emergency. He found a nearby Air Force base. We're on the ground. I get out. I run to the officer's club. Oh, I feel better. Everything's cool. and of course the next day the maintenance people don't find anything wrong with the oxygen and I went out and I finally walked up to the flight leader and I said, I can't do this anymore and that was the end of flying now I don't know if I told this story around here but last year I was out in Los Angeles and the Brentwood group has a wonderful meeting on Thursday nights and they ask me to lead and they take questions and all that and I was getting ready and somebody was a lady was getting her 30 year medallion and her husband drove her up he's not in AA but he's a big friend of AA and she came up and said my husband's outside and he wants to talk to you I said really? okay so I went out there I'd never seen this man in my life and he looked at me and he said in 1962 you were flying an F3D-2Q radar in a flight of four coming back from a cross country you declared an oxygen emergency caused all four planes to land and you never flew again and I went God bless how did you know that he said I was in the plane with you really and turns out he was a pilot I didn't even remember that the second guy was a pirate he was not a pilot and not a radar guy until he explained that the reason we were not home at Cherry Point was a hurricane was coming and whenever a hurricane is coming they fly all the planes to somewhere safe, and then you drink until the hurricane is over, which could be four or five days. And so you know that the pilots come out and get the radar guy out of there, so it's all pilots that are going off to spend this four days drinking, and that's why he was in the other seat. And he went on to retire and became, he told me he was the second senior pilot at American. and so he came back the next day and he brought pictures of the squadron and he talked to me about all these things and I have to tell you this that when I came back and told them that I couldn't do it anymore this was a very exclusive squadron only had 16 pilots there was no lieutenants it was all captains a couple majors and a lieutenant colonel really an elite wonderful thing to be chosen to go in and I'm now telling them I can't hack it anymore I'm a failure I can not fly I am not going to get in planes anymore but I had to come to work in the squadron for about three months until the Marine Corps decided what other job they were going to give me and I did become an air traffic controller of all insanity but during that three month period I had to come to work every day and they decided to let me do the legal work so I would do special court marshals and that kind of stuff but mostly I sat in my office with my eyes down totally consumed with shame and I could feel the contempt of the other pilots I could just see them walking by looking in how did that creep get in our squadron You know what I mean? And I could feel that. I felt it for three months. And then any time I thought about that incident, that's what I felt for 40 years. I felt that shame. So my friend Jim says to me after talking about the history a little bit, and he said, Boy, did you know how popular you were in that squadron? Do you know How much everybody liked you? It broke their hearts. that you couldn't fly. The colonel was trying to pull every string he could to find a way around this, to get you and get you help or do something. Everyone just was pulling for you. And I went, wow. That's not my version of what happened. So I had to go back and erase, erase, erase, erase. to erase that part of my story and put in what really happened. And it felt a lot better when I put in what really happens. So you can see how wonderful it is to be wrong about things and to have the truth come in and heal you. And that was just a perfect example last year of a whole painful little area that would surface whenever I thought about that shameful incident. So what a grateful thing to have this guy and we'd call each other once in a while and it was just a God thing that he would be there and would come up and talk to me. So anyway, one more year after that I was doing this air traffic control thing and now I've just drank 24 hours a day. I got malnutrition. I stopped hanging around my friends. We were back overseas in Iwakuni, and I lost 50 pounds due to malnutrition. I was just going to work on my bicycle and just sitting in the tent and all the guys were doing the work. I was trying to survive. I stopped talking to my buddies, didn't go to happy hour. I just drank vodka and soup and tried to live on that. It was just, God, it was hard. And I got orders back to Quantico to go to a career school, Quantico, Virginia, to be promoted up to, you know, they just figured we're on a career track and nobody's noticing that I'm just about to die. And I was hallucinating. I was totally losing my memory and I would get lost. I couldn't remember the combination to my locker. I couldn'T find the classroom. And one day, I drove in the base, went by the sentry, good morning, good morning. Drove up, and then the junior school in Quantico is huge, very big brick buildings. And I went up there, and they were gone. And I'm like, God damn, that school was here yesterday. So I said, I better report this. So I went back to the front gate. I had just come in, and I came back out and made a U-turn. And the corporals out there, yes, sir? I said, corporal, junior school is gone. And he said, what? I said I just went up to go to junior school. It's gone. It's not there. He said, come on, we better check it out. So he got the car with the red light and the sergeant with him. Got up there. It was back. so I just turned to him and I said it's back boy I wish I could have been a fly on the wall at the front gate after that so shortly after that probably a couple more weeks I had a ground mouth seizure in the school almost bit my tongue in half they carried me off to the hospital to see what could have caused the seizure, there's no alcohol thing so they don't say alcohol I don't know what it could be, mental all that and about six days later I had the delirium tremens, the DTs I saw all these frightening CIA trying to break me mentally and put me away forever and just, I guess I just panicked and started screaming and they put me in a straitjacket and locked me up in the nut ward for six months. So that was my boom. And somewhere in there, some alcoholics talked the psychiatrist into letting them bring an AA meeting in. And so three of us were marched down there by the corpsman. All drunks fall in. And down we go. And I heard the stories. They told their stories, and I thought it was wonderful, but I didn't know if it applied to me. I think I told one of the speakers, boy, if I get a friend who has a drinking problem, you guys are the greatest. And it wasn't long after that that I became an outpatient on my way back to duty and started drinking again, bringing vodka into the nut ward, even though they told me if I drank again, I'd lose my career. and paranoia set in. I knew they were about to catch me. So I think I called AA as a defense so that when I got caught, I could say I joined AA and it made me drunk. I was going to blame you. I don't know what I had in mind, but the one thing I wasn't reckoning on was my sponsor because once he got into the picture and came to my house, it was I had no say about my life after that and he just listened to my family and they all ratted me out real bad he decided I was a bad bad bad alcoholic and there was one thing that I had to do and I said what's that and he said get in the car and we went off to our first meeting and we Went to meetings and meetings and meetings and meetings. He almost lost his career, but he kept it and went on and retired. I lost my career, was forced out of the Marine Corps with my six kids and tried to make a living. I'm not a financial person at all, and we just were starving for those early years. I think I had 15 years of sobriety before I earned more money than I owed. With the six kids, and it was just overpowering. But we somehow hung in there, had a lot of fun, went to lots of meetings, and eventually everything came to pass. I did find a wonderful job. And I'm going to tell you about this job interview. I got tired of selling. That was not me. It looks like I'd be a good salesman, but I don't want to close. Are you sure you want to buy it? Think it over. I mean, that ain't going to work. Maybe you'll change your mind. Think it over. And so my friend who worked on Capitol Hill, he was an ex-Marine POW from Korea, good man, AA guy. And he said, you know, I got a Marine colonel lawyer and there's a little government agency that regulates credit unions and General Nickerson just took it over after he retired and they're looking for a congressional liaison guy for the agency and I can get you an interview. And I said, what is Congress? What is liaison? What are credit unions? I know you can get a loan there. Obviously, I knew nothing about it, but I got the interview. So I went in to see this colonel, and he's describing what they want and all that. And I said, well, I could learn it real fast. You know, Marine officers, we learn fast. I know I can do a good job, blah, blah. I could tell he liked me a little bit, but he said, by the way, what did you leave the Marine Corps for? And I was like, God, I wish he hadn't asked that question. so I said I got thrown out for drinking but I've been sober in AA for 10 years and I know I can do that job he said I'll let you know a couple weeks later personnel office called me and said if you want the job you can have it and I went there and came in there's a lot of young lawyers and they said what does congressional liaison do And they said, well, whenever the general testifies on Capitol Hill, you write his testimony. And he's testifying in three weeks. On what? On a banking bill. Here's the bill. And I went, what is this? And I remember just looking at that. And this is amazing. The one book on my desk was a history book about the credit union movement. and it was started by Filene from Filene's department store in Boston. And he saw these credit unions in India and he wanted to bring them to his employees so that they could have a way to borrow money because you couldn't borrow from banks back then. And he hired a lawyer to get laws passed and the lawyer was extremely religious. So he put together a whole set of spiritual financial principles that these credit unions would abide by. And as I read it, I felt like I was reading our big book or something. And I studied that. It caught my attention and it was just really wonderful to see this thing. Now, of course, as success comes and you get things, you can change your personality a little bit, but this was in the origins. And so when somebody explained the bill to me so that I got an explanation of it, I simply went through and applied the principles that I had read in that book to the position you should take on the various issues, wrote it up, and they took it into the general. And the guys in the office said, if you hear from his secretary, you're in trouble. And it was the next day his secretary came back. The general wants to see you right now. And I went up there. He said to me, he hadn't met me even yet. And he said, did you write this? And I went, yes, sir. He said, this is great. And I just became his guy. And it was just like because of what I had read there, it was Just Like Magic, it gave me this insight. So I ended up with a 20-year career doing that kind of work, both for the government and the trade association. And then I retired to Florida. So there's my job history. and three months after I was asked to leave the Marine Corps and I was so convinced that it was unfair that I didn't get promoted to major after all, I was going to a meeting every night for two years this new God that loves me how could he do this? How could he dump these eight people out to starve to death? And there was a little story in the paper about the group of officers that I was with who went around putting on a presentation about the Marine Corps and they were on their way to Denver and they flew into a mountain and killed every one of them. So if life had been fair and I had gotten promoted, I would be dead. And I read that and I remember going, well, that does change things a little bit. And the main person I've been complaining to was God. And I knew he knew, I just read that. And so I was like, oh well, listen, if you just told me this was going to happen, I wouldn't have been so upset with you for being so unfair to me. So you just never know. Anyway, that began my journey into, and I'm retired now in Tampa, Florida. It began my journal journey into our program, which I'd like to spend some time talking about. And I want to tell you about my hero. I'd like to talk tonight about Chuck Chamberlain. A lot of us knew Chuck, and this is how I met him. We had almost all speaker meetings. Matter of fact, I was a panel with a bunch of old-timers, and that was what they all said, that one of the main changes in AA is it used to be all speaker meeting, and now it's almost all discussion meeting. And since it was all speaker meetings and two speakers at every meeting, just to fill the quota in the Washington, D.C. area, everyone had to talk about ten times a year. You follow what I'm saying? So you were telling your story a lot, which led to an ability to tell your story and to incorporate principles and to smooth it out and so on. And that's where the speakers came who got out on the circuit and that kind of stuff. And that's why, even to today, most of them come from California because they still have a great number of speaker meetings out there. So anyway, somewhere after five years, somebody asked me to talk in Baltimore. And I went, Baltimore? I'm going out of town. Oh my God. So I went over to Baltimore, and I gave a little talk over there, and I was always kind of funny. So somebody from Pennsylvania was there and said, hey, can you come up to Pennsylvania? And I went, wow, going to Pennsylvania. And I didn't realize this is how it happens. And then you're in Pennsylvania and somebody's got a convention over in Iowa and they go, hey, could you come out to Iowa? So this is going on and it went from 1970 up to 1975 and I was out in Indiana and Wino Joe from Tyler, Texas was the feature speaker on Saturday night And Elsa Chamberlain was the Al-Anon speaker, one of the best Al-Anon speakers. Just what a lovely lady she was. And so I talked and was talking about throwing up at Yale, lying by the toilet bowl, throwing up in the oxygen mask. I don't know. I was getting a lot of laughs out of throwing up. And the other speaker raised hogs and did all his drinking around the hogs. So Wino Joe gets up on Saturday night, I'll never forget it, and he says, well, I'm glad to be here. This is the first time I've been on a program with a pig farmer and a puking marine. And I just loved it. You know, Wino Jo, if you haven't heard his tapes, you've got to listen to him. He's just wonderful. but Elsa Chamberlain really enjoyed my talk so she went back to Chuck and she said you have to invite Sandy Beach to the Palm Springs Roundup in 76 and he said who's he? oh I heard him in Indiana you've got to invite him well we get 3,000 people at this thing I'm not going to invite some guy out there I don't even know him let me hear his tape oh he doesn't have any tapes well I'm not going to invite him out there and what she told me later was she said well you'll be sleeping alone so I don't know any of this and I'm at home one night my phone rings and it's Sandy B yes this is Chuck Chamberlain oh my god it's like Bill Wilson calling and I said yes sir Mr. Chamberlaine yes yes and he said my wife said I have to invite you to the Palm Springs Roundup. And I went out there and that's where Drop the Rock came out and Chuck just loved it. And I became like his new guy, protege or friend or something, but he became kind of a big supporter and encouraged me to really study spirituality. So I went down, I went to his house, I sat in his chair and looked out over and went to Laguna Beach meetings and had a period of about three or four years where I just got to watch this man and to listen to him, I didn't understand everything he was saying. And it's still hard because he was so far ahead of his time in our spirituality. And then, of course, right before he passed away, they asked him if he ever felt particularly connected to his higher power when he was speaking. He said, yes, there was the one time at the men's retreat and fortunately someone had a tape. There wasn't a taper, it was an individual that was there. They found him and they transcribed the tape into this book, New Pair of Glasses, which is a wonderful way to describe spirituality, which is the world just looks different because you put on a new pair of glasses. And I guess he attributed that to Father Dowling. He said, I didn't really create that. So this is what Chuck's basic message was. And I think it's important that I'd like to talk about it a little bit tonight before I sit down. And the analogy that I would like to draw is this. I want to take us back to when we were practicing alcoholics. and now we're the advisor of the practicing alcoholic. And the practicing alcoholic comes up and says, I keep getting in fights in the bar room. I just get into these arguments and next thing, bam, I'm in a fight. I'm getting in trouble. It's ruining my family. I just have this thing where I just keep getting into fights and I think I'll go to an anger management school And we go, no, don't go to an anger management school. Go to AA. Your problem isn't anger. It's your drinking. You need to go to AA and the steps will take care of the anger and everything will be all right. He says, no my problem is anger. then the next alcoholic we're talking to his problem is financial insecurity and he's drinking because he doesn't have enough money he can't take care of anything and I've really got to do that so I'm going to have to go and mortgage my house and cash it all in and get a whole bunch of money to take careof this thing and we go no your problem isn't money it's drinking you have to goto AA and we could go down the whole list of problems Whatever one is coming up in the relationship. Oh, the women, they just don't stay with me. So I think I have to take relationship courses. And we go, it won't do any good if you're drunk all the time. You can take all the courses you want. So your problem isn't relationships. It's not money. It's an argument. It's anger. You're an alcoholic. You see what I'm saying? In other words, they come up with all the various problems and we know there's only one. And that if he solves that one, he's going to be fine. But to him it looks like anger. So now we sober up the alcoholic and now we get to Chuck's, the essence of his spiritual message. The bottom line. And this is what he says. He said there's Only One Problem. This is for all human beings. There's only one problem that includes all problems, and one solution that includes all solutions. What is the one problem, that includes every other problem? And he called it conscious separation from other people, from the world, from God, and from ourselves. Our consciousness tells us that we're separate from God, even though God is part of everything. Somehow, we believe the opposite. And the opposite of that is, in our program, conscious contact. Conscious contact with the God of our understanding. And so what he's trying to tell us is any time we divert our attention and decide that the problem is other than lack of conscious contact, we're taking our eye off the ball and we're over here solving financial insecurity instead of getting closer to our higher power. I don't know if I'm making sense with this, But it's so easy to do, you see what I'm saying? That we end up with focusing on specific individual problems and assuming that as they straighten out, our life will be straightened out. But it doesn't bring us any closer to our higher power. Now we have a little money in the bank. We followed the advice of the financial advisors. We do have our bills pretty much paid off, so we should be able to settle back with peace of mind and financial security, except we start worrying that somebody will take the money or that the market could turn or the bank president could run with all the money and we again get financial insecurity with money. You follow what I'm saying? So that wasn't the problem in the first place. The problem inthe first place was we're too far away from our creator. And so what we really have is what we had back when we were drinking. Back when we weredrinking, there was one solution for all problems. I never remember saying to myself, Uh-oh, this is a really tough problem. I'll be handling this without alcohol. What? Step one in handling all problems was... What's this? Oh my God, a summons. What the hell do you do with a summon? Why did this arrive today? Well, I'll know shortly. Brr. Oh, you just tear them up? whatever the problem was go get that drink and see what the answer is so there was one answer for all problems when we commit to AA what Chuck and what Bill what I think our literature is trying to say is the answer to all our problems is God is God right after the promises we come into step 10 I think it's the third sentence in the tenth step in the big book and it says we've entered the world of the spirit that's a new place that we've arrived we've done those first nine steps the promises came about all magic all magic the promises are filled with magical verbs They are not, they can only be understood in terms of magic. Self-seeking will slip away. What the hell is that? Financial insecurity will leave us. Hey, I don't know how to do anything. Don't worry, you will intuitively know how to do everything. What the heck is that ? Are you kidding? What is intuitive? Oh, you're just sitting there and then bing, you got it. What is all this? And then bingo, we suddenly realize God is present. And this has happened to me as the result of these steps. So really that's a spiritual awakening right there. And then we want to maintain it in the last three steps. It's one way of looking at it. So now we've done all the work to get from our old world, the material world and all the way we used to solve problems which didn't work at all and now we have entered the world of the spirit. Now when we are in the world of the Spirit there is a new way to handle all of life and right away it says when we get disturbed, upset, angry, whatever we ask God at once to remove them. Okay, what are the rest of the instructions? There aren't. That's the total instructions. Problem comes along, we go, God, could you please take care of this? Thank you. You see what it's saying? It's saying, it's over now. You doing all the work. You have to surrender. When you get upset, ask God to remove it. Ask God to move it. to remove it. Ask God to remove it. So there it is. So now let's go to a discussion meeting. Are you ready? Okay, topic, patience. Okay, we're going to have a topic of patience. Okay, let's go around the room. Jack, what do you think about it? Well, this is what I try to do. I try to tell myself, this guy is a human being like I am. And I ought to exert some patience. I want to cut him some slack. That's what I like to do is cut people slack and we can go all the way around the room and we will find that God has left out of every solution. And we do it by ourselves. I remember as a joke, we said, let's come up with New Year's resolutions. Do you make any New Year? Oh yes! I decided to treat my wife better. I decided to be more loving with my children. I decide to do this. I decided to do that. God was not involved anywhere. You see what I'm saying? Yes, I'm going to be spiritual without God. Yay! Isn't that fun? And it's so easy to do. What I think happens, I find myself doing it all the time. One of the problems with the 12 steps of AA is they work. They produce results. They get families back together. They get our self-respect back together with the world looks different. Everything is transformed and our ego is watching this. So I made up a story about the ego saying a prayer. You didn't know that egos prayed, did you? Well, I'm going to tell you how they pray if you haven't heard an ego prayer. An ego prayer goes like this and it gets on our knees. Even the ego has us get on our knees and the ego says thank God. So you go God I'm so grateful to you for restoring my sanity for bringing my family back for putting me back in the workplace where I'm a productive member of society you've given me my self respect My parents love me again. God, I want to thank you for placing me in the position of such strength that I no longer need you. I do appreciate everything you've done. Don't get me wrong. I am internally grateful. But I'll manage it from here on in. and we get the illusion we've been restored to self-sufficiency. And we're in for a big crash. We're in for a big crash If we were desperately dependent the day we came in, a perfect program worked over the years would make us a thousand times more dependent in year 30 We'd be moving in the opposite direction of independence. This is not a self-help program, it's a God-help programme. It's not intended to restore us to be able to manage our own lives on our own. That's the set-up of success. And so we can get to a certain level of comfortability in the middle years of sobriety where we find that life is pretty good. It's pretty good and when it's pretty good, we're happy to stay at the pretty good level. And Bill quotes Abraham Lincoln that good is the biggest enemy of the best that there is. And so we can get to a, you know, it's really okay and we really know it could be a lot better but there isn't enough heat to push us on. And so this is what I call the middle-aged dilemma in Alcoholics Anonymous where we're coasting around at the pretty good level for a number of years and it starts slowly to get old. and the fun is disappearing out of our home group and the fund of attending the service functions and the funds of whatever seems to be disappearing. So we blame it on the young people coming into AA. They keep talking about drugs. We blame it upon New York office. They're getting involved in too many lawsuits. We blame them on this. We blame him on that. And what was it? it was that we settled for staying at the same spiritual level that we'd been at. It's like climbing a mountain. When you get to 10,000 feet, the view is spectacular. But if you stay there for 20 years, it gets old. So you've got to climb another 5,000, another 5 thousand. So this seeking and growing, what Chuck inspired me was how close can I get to my higher power? How much of me can I get out of the way? And I've just found that's what adds so much excitement. I've had more change in the last three years than the first the last four years than the first 39. So that's encouraging news for anybody. There's no limit to the transformation that you can experience as an individual well within the confines of Alcoholics Anonymous. It is a remarkable journey and it's open to everyone. It is yours. The 11th step in both the 12 and 12 in the big books suggest prayer and meditation is an individual adventure. Up to now, it's a we program. Now it becomes individual. Nobody can pray for you. Nobody can meditate for you Nobody can seek our great libraries and spiritual advisors and all these things that will enhance the basic fundamentals of our 12-step program and can bring what Chuck called a new pair of glasses. And I'll close with the new pair glasses thing because this is one of the things that just human beings drive themselves crazy. So let's imagine that there really was such a thing as a new pear glasses, that when we work all the steps, then our home group calls us up and says, Mary, you successfully completed three years. You had the promises come true. It's time for you to see what's really available in the world. And you come up and say, give me those glasses that you're wearing. And we call her glasses the life sucks glasses. So you're not going to wear those anymore. Put these on. And we hand them over and, boy, she looks out. Oh, most beautiful world I ever saw. I can't believe this is just, oh, my God, it's wonderful, wonderful. And we give her one little advice on the way back to her chair. Mary, we strongly suggest you throw away the Life Sucks glasses. We really suggest you get rid of those. We would call those our old ideas. Get rid of them. You don't need them anymore. They're gone. And guess who's wearing those old glasses next week? just thought I'd put them on for old time's sake. Got tired of solid serenity. Drove me crazy. Just doesn't feel right not have a bunch of problems to complain about. I don't have much to talk about at meetings. How are you doing? Oh, it's wonderful. I love God. I'll pass. Oh, well. That's going nowhere. I got no center of attention. Nobody's paying attention. They're not coming up afterwards. Oh, poor Sally. And so there's our dilemma. And that's why we need each other. So that when they come over and they go, you got those old glasses on? Give me those. Give me them. Give me these glasses. And they drag it out of us. What's wrong? What's right, Catherine? Come over here. Something wrong with you. And then we finally bring it out. We allow people to help us. We allow people to show us how to see it all differently. We really don't solve problems. When you study spirituality, what really happens is they permit us to see the situation differently until we realize there never was a problem in the first place. We just saw it incorrectly. We saw it from a self-centered point of view instead of a spiritual point of vue. It's just a situation. And that's how it gets removed instead of being solved. It just is transformed in the nature of how we see it. So if you're new, I wish you the best journey. I hope you have so much fun out of this journey that you're up here years from now telling the next new person, hold on, it's a hell of a ride. Thank you all very much. Thank you.