The Paradox of Winning by Surrendering – Sandy B.

Good evening, everybody. My name is Sandy Beach and I'm an alcoholic. How y'all doing? Thank you for inviting me back. I think I've been to several of these. I can't recall exactly how many and I'M DELIGHTED TO BE HERE TONIGHT AT OBVIOUSLY THE BEST ONE SO FAR. 42 YEARS. THAT'S JUST I AGREE WITH THE OBSERVATION THAT HOW MANY many people have gotten sober in this room. I know I came here for, I guess, six or seven years up until about 12 years ago when I shifted meetings over into Washington and I have lots of great memories of coming up here on Wednesday nights and screwing around with the tables where Jack Dennis had everything arranged just so, you know what I mean? And I'd walk over and switch the 12 and 12 in the big book. And he'd come back and go, who moved the 12 and 12 in the big book? And it put him back, you know, once you do something once in an AA group it's a tradition and you don't go back and screw around with it. And God, he was phenomenal at these parties when they'd have the group anniversary, all the food would be out and I'd go back and just move the potato salad and the coleslaw and the next time back he'd spot that and put it back the way it was. Just because we get sober doesn't mean we take to change too easy. Have you noticed that? And I think that's what sobriety is. You know, I've been coming around here a while and if I had to characterize what sobrietty consists of, it consists of change. That's the deal. And it still comes difficult. It's just, I have a problem admitting that there's anything that needs to be changed. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm sitting there and when things are brought to your attention, you know how they come up and your family's threatening to leave or those little hints that get dropped in your lap and you realize, well, maybe there is something about me that needs changing and you inventory a little bit and you find this one remote item and work on that and assume that that's it for the rest of your life, you know. And so us alcoholics, We don't come by this change deal too easy, and I think that's just the nature of the illness. I really feel that way. Everything in my drinking life centered around getting other people to change and getting the environment to change and working change through drinking on myself, but I never focused in on changing like we do here in the program. I generally start out with my talk I've been doing it for a lot of years by making one observation about sobriety for the benefit of anybody who is new because we have a lot of slogans in AA he does it day at a time there but for the grace of God think where's another one leaving one out let go and let God But we don't have one that says, don't drink. Have you ever noticed that? We just, and you read the literature, you know, I don't know. I've never noticed it in there where it says, attention readers of the big book, don't drank while you're reading this book. So the specific words, don' t drink, are remarkably missing. and you know if you're a new person and you're very careful to listen you will go home noticing that people told you a lot of things but they didn't specifically say the words don't drink and so I'm going to just get that out of the way if you are new we really suggest don't drinking I haven't been drunk since the first night I came to AA in 1964 and I owe it all to not drinking. That is the entire element. There isn't anything beyond that. The reason I haven't been drunk is due 100% to not drinking. That's the end of that. There isn't any other variable in there. It's not meetings, it's not a higher power, it's nothing. Not getting drunk is due to not drinking. Those two things have to be gotten out of the way. Now, I also had a month's sobriety in jail once. And it was due 100% to not drinking. It was a program of enforced sobrietry. And then later on in the nut ward, I had about four and a half months of not drinking and I had four and an half months sobriery before I got out of there and started drinking again. And so I knew that this thing called not being drunk was due to not drinking. And so it's kind of a circular thing that we get involved in, if you knew. This not drinking is absolutely essential to sobriety, and yet we have to work the entire program in order to be able to not drink. But in order to work the program, we have to not drink in the first place. And it sounds like the carts before the horse. Bill's written a little bit about that. When you compare Alcoholics Anonymous with some sort of a medical or psychiatric approach to problems, you find that in a psychiatric approach they will work on all of the various characteristics and after a rather lengthy process you're able to achieve the grand result of not drinking if this process ever worked. You would engage in some sort of a five-year therapy period at the end of which time, due to incredible changes you would then be able to not drink. AA doesn't screw around like that. The day you arrive they go, okay, don't drink. And you already are doing the result before we get into the program. And this is sort of why we have such an incredible success rate is we start right off with the final result, which is not drinking. And so if you've been sober a week and you're kind of looking forward to, God, I wonder what my future holds for me. And normally we're quite frightened about life when we arrive here and we have a tendency to look off into the future and think of scary things. Well, we can tell you that if you've been sober a week, you've already gone through the roughest days you'll ever face. Because that first day of not drinking is about as bad as it gets. There just isn't anything in sobriety that can touch the awfulness of drinking and of getting sober and going through withdrawal and all of those things. So we actually get our initiation into Alcoholics Anonymous out of the way right up front. and we just take, we come walking in here and we're shaking and we'RE hurting and we'Re put right through the roughest part right off the bat. Don't drink, go to meetings. Don't Drink, go To Meetings. And we sit on our hands and count this ceiling tile or whatever you did. I know I would sit there and with two days of sobriety, shaken and hurting and I'd sit there and the speakers are talking about esoteric things like prayer and meditation and higher power and I'm going, what has this got to do with me? I don't need prayer. I don' t need meditation. I need a small loan. That's what I need. Give me a break out of this prayer and meditation. And I'd look at people and they're wearing nice suits and I'd say, I'm gonna talk to that guy after the meeting, get his phone number, his bank account and find out where he lives and get some real support for my program. and so in order to kill time at meetings I would recall doing such things tonight would be a good night if you're new to do this is to estimate the crowd and so you sit there and without moving your head you count the chairs hey, eleven and then you count the number of rows seventeen Seventeen. And then you just multiply seventeen times eleven in your head. And when you're new, that kills the whole meeting. And tonight it'll be doubly hard because we've got another seventeen times eleven over here, so you'd have to double the number that you had. And if you remember how your brain was working in those first couple of weeks, you go 17 times 11. Okay, here we go. One times seven is seven. What's that other top number? It's gone. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Remember that? You put numbers in your brain and they're gone. Where the hell did it go? That whole thing, that system was broken down. It wasn't working too well. Before I forget it, I wanted to give a commercial to our annual Pearl Harbor Day meeting. I meant to bring some flyers over here, but if you are... Every year we have, over at St. Exxon's, 830, the pilots' meeting, and everybody here is welcome to come. They'll have some food and coffee and 25 recovering alcoholic airline pilots will tell you why these guys aren't as safe as you think. And they each get to talk two minutes each, and we have a movie entitled Carrier Operations During a Blackout, which is a little eight-minute 16mm that was shot aboard a carrier back in the 50s with some amazing results. And it's just a real interesting night, and Dr. Joe Persch will be there again as our flight surgeon, and we tell flight surgeon jokes, and that's kind of the evening. So I wanted to get that plug in, and that gives me a good place to start out because when I came in, Quincy asked me, he said, tell them about your first meeting. And my first meeting was on Pearl Harbor Day in 1964, and I was down in the Quantico Marine Base, and I had been home for the weekend from the nut ward where I had been locked up for about six months, the Bethesda Naval Hospital Nut Ward. And I had gotten to be an outpatient and was coming back and forth from my house down in Quantico back to the Nut Ward during the week and then come home on weekends. And so I had come home and, you know, there was a terrible mistake. I was in there in the first place. It was not what I had in mind as a career officer fighter pilot extraordinaire and uh there i was in there with no belt buckle and sharp objects and the little wristband and it was that color wristband if you're seen anywhere in the hospital other than the nut ward alarms go off and they send you back to the nut board and there wasn't any um alcoholism in the record you couldn't have alcoholism the diagnosis had to be something else. And so we had no AA and it was all purely psychiatric. So we all sat in with the other people that were locked up in there. And, so, there came a time after three or four months that AA got in the hospital, talked the psychiatrist into having an AA meeting. And so somewhere probably in November of 64, I got introduced to AA when a corpsman came into the ward and said, all drunks fall in. And there was a Marine colonel and me. I was a captain and then a Navy lieutenant commander. And so the three of us fell in with our little blue bathrobes, forward march, and boom, boom, and we go down the hall, get in the elevator and go down to the first floor. And here we are at the meeting. And the Bethesda AA group had brought a little meeting over and Red F., who is still over there in Bethesда, was bleeding. And I sat there and listened to these guys around. After the meeting, I went up and told them that I was very impressed. I thought it was a hell of an organization. If I ever had a friend with a drinking problem, I would send them around to there because I didn't associate me being locked up in the nut ward with convulsions and DTs with drinking. It was bad luck. It It was a lot of being overseas and eating too much rice in Japan and flying airplanes, and the oxygen supply wasn't right. And there was a Lotta Reasons, but it didn't have anything to do with my drinking. And so he just took one look at me, and I got AA's first dose of the way we talk to each other here in AA. Here I had just met this man for maybe 20 seconds, And I tell him, if I ever have a friend who needs the program, I'll send him around. So he gives me the Buck Doyle thing, the finger in the chest, you know, hey, hey, Hey, Hey. Buddy, let me ask you something. Which one of us is going to put our overcoat on and go on out to the car and drive home like a real man? and which one of us is going to put his little blue bathrobe on and go over to the elevator and go upstairs and get locked up for the night. Now, which one are you? I remember looking at him. You ever go, hello, hello? I've stepped into the wrong conversation here. I couldn't believe the guy was saying what he was saying, you know, just looking at me. And then I just said, I just met him. I remember that's what I was thinking, that normally you have to get to know someone well before you get that rude. But I had this terrible resentment and got in the elevator and went upstairs. and the doctors told me that if I ever drank again, my career would be over. And I had put in about 12 years, you know, and was working up towards making a career out of this. In my mind, the Marine Corps didn't see it that way at all. They didn't agree with that. But I remember going up there and thinking about this and the doctor said if I ever took another drink the career was over and so when I got released to go in this outpatient status I remember driving home going okay that's it no drinking career is on the line now let's get serious for once and I'm just you know how you have your conversations with yourself and you're just going right that's right no drinking no drinking for you this weekend the career You're married, you have six kids, you've got to support them and you don't know how to do anything else but fly these stupid airplanes or do something. No drinking for you this weekend, that's for sure. Boy, it's too bad there's a Redskin game on. Because I have this rule. You can't watch the Redskin Game on my television unless you're drinking beer. So I'll be sitting there with the set off it doesn't make sense to just sit there with the set off all weekend when the redskin game is on maybe if i just had one beer during the redskin game maybe not even finish the whole beer because the more i think about it now i'm getting in the role i remember breathing a great sigh of relief as I started winning the argument the other way. Part of me is going, right on, right on, keep talking over there, keep thinking, keep thinking. You're on a roll now, Sandy. And when that rationalization starts building up ahead of steam, it's very refreshing. And you realize you're going to be bailed out because my body wanted a drink real bad. And so I started building my case. And I went, that psychiatrist is younger than you are. What the hell does he know about all of this? Until AA came in there, they didn't even know anything about alcoholism. This guy's a jerk. He went to the University of Connecticut. He doesn't know a damn thing about anything. I'm just carrying on. He's much younger than you are. What the guy meant to say was, if you ever get drunk again, you're going to be thrown out of the Marine Corps. He obviously didn't mean if you went sip-sip high, youre out. Why would they throw you out ofthe Marine Corps for having one sip? He clearly meant if you ever get drunk again, you're out. So we're going to have one beer. And that was what I had. That was the most amazing thing. I came there and Sunday came and I took the beer, drank it down, watched the game, waited for this horrible thing that was going to happen. You know what they told you? The first drink gets you drunk. This will be it. Waited there. Nothing. Not a thing. Walked by. There was other beers in the refrigerator. My family's in panic, and I can still see the terror in their eyes. And I just sat there and said, hey, no problem, folks. That's it for me. I'll be going off to bed here. Went up, went to bed, and slept like a baby Sunday night. Just slept right through. Got up the next morning, got in my car, drive back to the nut ward from Quantico to Bethesda, and they're just building Shirley Highway. That's a long drive. And I'm driving along and I'm just going, can you believe it? I had that beer and nothing happened. We have an amazing phenomenon here. We have driving this car a former alcoholic. This is the most incredible story. The one drink and I am just floating along here. and that beer, well, it's going to get you drunk. And I'm just thinking about, I had a beer and nothing. I was going to write a song. I had the beer and nothing happened. I got up there and it was all I could do to not tell everybody. You know, but God, that would have been suicide. So I'm sitting in these group therapy sessions and they're talking about your mother and your father and all that. And then I'm jut sitting there going, I've had a bear and nothing happen. I had a beer and nothing happened. You talk about being free from alcoholism. The freedom that I was experiencing was incredible, just sitting there whistling away. I had the beer and I couldn't hear what they were talking about. I went to lunch. I couldn' t eat any lunch. I was so excited about being totally free of booze. I had a beer and nothing happened all afternoon just around there clay class basket weaving I had the beer and nothing I had to be I'm in the car driving home I had a beer and nothing happened I came and I stayed awake all night just lying there just going I had a beer and nothing happened I can't believe it and I'm just walking around going free of booze at last totally free from the clutches of booze. And that lasted all week. I don't think I ate or slept, didn't do anything. Celebrating total freedom from alcohol. Now if you're ever looking for a good example of an obsession, that was it. I didn't doing anything that week but think about that beer. I just consumed with thinking about the beer. And as the weekend approached of Pearl Harbor Day and Pearl Harbor Day was on a Sunday that year and little did I know it, but I was getting ready to go to my first AA meeting. I'm driving home in the car and I'm going, you know, last weekend you had a beer. This weekend, I think you ought to have a shot of vodka. No beer, a shot of vodka. And just for economy purposes only, let's get a six-year supply. We'll get a quart. You know, when I went into the package store, I really said, this will probably last me six years. under my new plan of a beer one weekend and a shot of vodka the other weekend. That's going to be quite a while before I finish this bottle of vodka. And so you all know what happened. It was in just a matter of a few hours, and I was totally bent out of shape. I was sick. I was frightened. I was drinking this stuff and hurting. And I got up Saturday morning, drank some more, trying to calm down, trying to figure out what in the world I would do. Then I couldn't get the boots to stay down. It was dry heaving. And I thought about AA. And I said to myself, if I join AA over the weekend and go back drunk, it certainly won't be my fault. Because I did what they told me to do, and it didn't work. So it would be their plan that failed. So I decided to call AA. I couldn't get a drink to stay down, and I dialed Intergroup and got the Northern Virginia Intergroup from Quantico. They took my number and name and sent a big Marine over who's still my sponsor and he came into my house and I've told this story a million times. Hi, my name is Bill. This is a 12-step call. I talk, you listen. And I went, God. I was hoping he could leave a little literature. And he was talking about we'll go to a meeting every night for 20 or 30 years and we'll see how you're doing and get in the car. we're getting ready to leave now and i'm trying to get another drink i'm going i don't want to go to a meeting until i have another drink and he knew what i was doing he's following me everywhere i go so that i can't get a drink and now i'm building up sobriety because he's hanging around me and the more sober i get you get sober you're sober six hours you're hurting it's shaking and everything now seven hours and i've gone go away go away and he's going get in the car it's meeting time meeting time everybody in the car and we drive to Manassas, Virginia and that's the one Quincy was talking about and on that night they were having just like tonight here the group anniversary and they had ham and they said they had turkey and they had yeah macaroni and coleslaw and cold cuts and all of the corn on the cob and all that stuff, and I didn't eat at all. I didn' t eat for years. I would just slide late-night fried rice or something, and that would be it. But food, I just couldn' t hold the plate. I shook. I hurt. I want to get out of there. And they' re in this old Oddfellows Hall out there, cold December night. The space heater is the only heater in this thing, and my sponsor sits me right in front of it, up in the front, and the space heater' s hanging down. It goes, whoa! It blows hot air on me, And I'm just going, oh, Jesus, get me out of here. And I'd go back to the bathrooms in the back, which stunk. I don't think they had plumbing. It was just like an outhouse back there. It was awful. And I look outside and it was freezing dark rain, cold. So I'm back in. There's nowhere to go. I'm like trapped in there. And people are going, isn't sobriety wonderful? No, it's not wonderful. It's terrible. I hate sobriete. And they're just, ha-ha, aren't we happy? It's wonderful. Speedy Baker and Pete Nelson and Pinky. I think Pete was celebrating eight or nine years in the group anniversary, and this thing is going on. I mean, they're talking and talking and talk, and now they finally end the meeting around 10, and they clear all the chairs out, and Speedy Maker and Harvey and that crowd had a hillbilly band, and the square dancing started. and I'm going God help me I want to go home now I got to go home I need a drink I don't need to square any of this thing hey sobriety is wonderful we're going and so I knew I had to get out of there and on the way home he's talking about we'll be going to one of these meetings every night this week I'll pick you up and I had no way knowing that all meetings weren't just like that. I just went, phew. That's five hours a night every night of the week. So I needed to get out of his clutches. And on the way home, I thought up my getaway plan. They say that when you're captured, the best time for escape is right away. You don't get in there too long. And so on the way home, I started thinking, okay, tomorrow's my wedding anniversary. That'll go over good. He can't want me to go to a meeting on my wedding. It wasn't my wedding Anniversary, but I was going to tell him that. And then the next night was going be my birthday, and the next day after that was going my wife's birthday, and then the six kids, one, two, three, four, five, six. Then was going to be my parents are visiting and then my sister is visiting and so I had this little speech all set for when we got to my house and it was going to end up and so when all this is over I'll call you back and we'll go to another meeting. That was going to be how I got the hell out of Alcoholics Anonymous on the opening night and I got out of the car and I decided to go around to his side so I could talk to him through the window. So he watched me come around in front of the headlights and rolled down his window, and I looked in, and the speech that I had ready left my brain on the way to my tongue to tell him. And it went somewhere. It just must have gone down in my feet or somewhere because I just stood there going... and he looked at me and looked at me and then he said don't you take a drink and I'll pick you up tomorrow night at 730 and those taillights were just going out of sight when here it came I won't be going to that meeting tomorrow night my birthday is tomorrow night and the whole thing finally showed up from wherever it had been and it was too late he was gone and so I had to stay sober because he was a very big guy and I knew there would be something bad and I haven't got rid of him since and it's almost 23 years later and so there's just in like one day you know what I'm saying what a difference just that day was. That was my day. I was being singled out that day to get out of the hell called alcoholism and to be put in what we've all found here in this fellowship. And if you're new, it's sort of, once you get into a program like this, you find everything. This is the spiritual program and I'm not going to dwell on that at any great length but you'll just have to realize that's what AA is and we have different kind of answers than you are normally accustomed to or different kind of solutions to situations than you're normally accustomed to and I love to hear Buck talking about this. He'll be talking about everything is backwards with alcoholism and with sobriety. In other words, if we have a practicing alcoholic in the later stages of alcoholism and he gets promoted we go too bad. Oh, isn't that too bad he got promoted. But if he gets fired we go good. This is That may get him in here. And if he goes to the doctor and the doctor says, oh, you're very healthy, we go, too bad. But if he comes back and says, your liver damage is going to kill you tomorrow, we go great because now the guy may make it. He's liable to come in to Alcoholics Anonymous. So we need the bad news in order for it to be good news. And if you don't believe this, look at your own story. Some of you that are brand new, you tell me how you got here. Don't tell me you were sitting in your living room and you said, oh my, I think I need some character development. I'm very dissatisfied with my value system. I'm going to join Alcoholics Anonymous and let them lead me down a spiritual path. That isn't what happened to you. You were driving your car about 3 a.m. and the cop pulled you over and said, breathe in here. and you were being singled out to get out of the alcoholism jail. Only you thought you were getting picked on. And now that you've seen how it ended, you look back and you see that that DWI, instead of being the worst thing that ever happened in your life, was the best thing that never happened in my life. And so what appears to be very often a setback setback is how we get moved along on a spiritual path, because you can't figure it out. We don't figure out life anymore. We just get led along. We live it a day at a time, and then we come to understand why certain things happen afterwards, and we come To understand why AA is so good for us. When we first get here, we don't understand why it's good for us, although we're willing to admit that it seems to be pretty good for a lot of other people that are sitting around us, And we have to take it on good faith that maybe what has happened to them might happen to us. And so we start experiencing some of the paradoxes of Alcoholics Anonymous, and we find out that the only way we can beat this terrible, life-threatening illness is by surrendering, and that this is the way you win, is by totally giving up, which is just the opposite of anything I had ever heard before I got here. I see. If you want a total victory, you surrender. That's correct. It sounds like the who's on first routine at Abbott and Costello. You remember that? That's right. You give up and you win. All right, good. Well, now you're a winner. No, but as soon as you think you're going to win, if you think you're a winner, you're not. Because if you think you'RE humble, you're NOT. And it's gone. And the other person has it. Well, what the hell is going on here? You don't have to know that. Thank you. Well, could anybody explain it? And you say, it'll be revealed to you later. Thank you. But for today, you just have to don't drink and go to meetings and pray. All right, I will, but I don't see where that's going to do any good. You're not supposed to be able to see where it's going to do anything good. You have to take our word it's gonna do some good. Okay, I'll do that, but I can tell ahead of time it isn't gonna work. Does anybody have that feeling? I remember when I got my first big book and I brought it home my sponsor said read this everything you need to know is contained in the first 164 pages you've heard that thing and I looked at that thing and I said that's not true I can tell without reading this book that nothing in it is of value to me because some of us are smarter than the rest of the people that get here you know that thing we have that secret vision and we know things intuitively and I knew that this program and all of the cheerleading that you were doing and all this talk about prayer and meditation and God and a higher power and spiritual values and principles didn't have anything to do with a guy who needed a small loan. Don't tell me about spiritual principles when I need two thousand dollars. That's what I need, not prayers, nothing like that. Where is the bread? You don't understand, I got people knocking on the door, bills, I'm afraid to open letters, phone calls, and you're telling me God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. That isn't what I need. And it turned out you were right, that that's exactly what I needed. I found that I was able to get comfortable in situations that used to make me very uncomfortable. I used to look at situations and I'd say there's no way that my life can be worth anything until I get this mess straightened out because this problem is too big. and you taught me how to follow a program a day at a time involving certain steps and principles and suddenly I felt comfortable in spite of this terrible problem. And when you feel comfortable in the face of a terrible problem, it isn't a terrible program anymore. And you wonder why you were upset about it in the first place. And it's called putting things in perspective and I think that's what change in sobriety has been. Chuck Chamberlain on the West Coast has written in that book, A New Pair of Glasses. He's one of the best speakers I've ever heard in AA. He's since passed away, but he gave a retreat one weekend and they tape-recorded it and then transcribed it into a short little book and he called it A NewPairOfGlasses and I really think that that's what I have found in Alcoholics Anonymous. I have find that the world as I saw it was terrible It was filled with mean people living by vicious principles in a dog-eat-dog situation. And I felt terribly uncomfortable in there. But when I drank, it looked different. When I drank all the nice people came out. When I drink, I walked in the bar and pour all the booze in. I was everybody's friend and everybody was my friend. I remember that the third drink would come down and it would just go, hey, look who's here. and I'd look around. Hey, how you doing? Everybody wanted to see me and I wanted to see them. And I was like, boy, this world is wonderful. It's just harmony everywhere. And that's what alcohol did. It changed the world that I lived in, but it really didn't, did it? Because I was the one who was drinking it and the other people are standing there and they suddenly turned into wonderful people. So I was able to turn them into wonderful people through means of an inside job. I was able somehow inside of myself to cause the world to look extremely pleasant, and I realize now that that's exactly what the AA program does. It gives me access to a power similar in some fashions to alcohol or some other changing substance like that, only it's a spiritual change. But when I'm working this program and learn how to get access, how to get plugged in to this infinite supply of power when I'm plugged into it the world looks great the world works great you just look around and you go people are basically great that's how the world looks when I am plugged in when I get up in the morning and I had this theory that you are plugged in all day and then when you go to sleep somebody comes in and unplugs you so that when you wake up in the morning you go oh shit I'm back in that old world again help help Help, help. What a mistake I made yesterday saying people are nice and they're not. It's awful. And I haven't opened my eyes yet. You know what I mean? The alarm is still ringing and I go, oh God, not another day. Oh, please help me. Now when I forget to take the 24 hour day book, you ever do that? You're in there and you're going, oh boy, it takes 12 seconds to read that 24 hour daybook. Can't spare it this morning. Got some appointments to meet. Busy world. A lot of things to do. No time for that. Twelve seconds. Hey, man, I gotta get rolling here. I gotta read the whole Washington Post before I get to work. Read all that good news on the front page. And so I skip that. I say, hell, I'll go out and face today alone. I won't take that 24-hour day book. I won'T take a higher power. I WON'T take this program. I'LL guts it out. And that's when I get crushed. I get just annihilated by the world. People come in and I look down and I made a mistake writing something. Can't face anybody. Pencil breaks. I feel like calling my mother, Mom, the pencil broke. What am I going to do? I'm alone here in Washington and the pencil broken. Can't remember the phone number or something. And she's going, you're a lobbyist. You're supposed to be up there in charge of this. I know, but the pencil broke. I don't want to go up. I mean, the smallest thing just totally overpower me when I go out there unarmed. And it all stemmed back to trying to exist on my own resources, my own willpower and my own perspective. And things start looking grim again. And people start overpowering me. People start closing in. And I realized it's time for a timeout. And I dial my sponsor, I dial a friend, and I call them up, and they go, and you know this is the most amazing process. This is all that happens when you call your sponsor or friend in AA. You call up and you go, the world is falling down, the building's on fire, everything's happening, I'm going to die in an hour. And they go no, everything's fine. Oh, thank you. And that's it. I mean, it may take an hour for the conversation to unfold, but that's basically all it is. You just go, is the whole world all screwed? No, it's fine. Oh, good. I thought it was all good. And I go right about my work. But I don't have the power to cause that change myself. See, there is the difference between a program and trying to do things on our own. You can try to plot ahead. You can try to go on with willpower in spite of this horrible vision of the world. And you can say, I'm going to use my courage and go into this awful world with a lot of bravery. Or you can call your sponsor and go with great ease into a very comfortable world. It's just the perspective that I have. And this has been what the program has given me. It has given me, I would say, the fundamental difference between when I came to AA and now is that I focus now on the answers instead of the problems. It's a waste of time. You ever have your pigeon call up and they're going, well, I owe the money over here and you put them, I put the phone over here and I go, well, they're still going because it makes no difference what that problem is. They can go on with this stuff all night. Well, then she said to me, And then you know what we're going to say when they get all through. okay, don't drink, go to meet and pray. Because that's the answer. This is the answer I mean, I may have done this the last time I was talking here I'm in a program maybe eight years my marriage breaks up and all this, six kids I'm leaving out some other guys moving in I'm not happy with this plan and I'm going to the meeting you ever do that you know every so often you get so god damn upset that when the leader at a discussion meeting says anybody got a topic you go yeah you remember that you know normally oh no nobody has the topic and you have to think of something but every so often you're so bent out of shape you raise your hand you go yeah I want to talk about divorce and marriage and people and women and relationships and they go okay Sandy wants to talk about that let's go around the room we'll see what people want to say about that so the first person says have you tried the serenity prayer. Yeah, I try the serenity prayer. Thanks a lot. The next guy over here says, how about the prayer of St. Francis? I found the prayer of Saint Francis. That's what you need to do. Marriage falling apart, prayer of st. Francis. Next guy over there says, double up on the meetings. Go to twice as many meetings. That is what I do. Twice as many. Thanks. You know what you have to do? Find a new person, work with them, get with their problems, help them out, help them out. That's what you got to do. Well, Sandy, any questions? Yeah, could you give me the name of another group? I don't think you heard the damn problem I put on the table. the psychiatrist said I got a communication problem he's right I obviously didn't tell you what my problem was or you wouldn't have given me that stupid advice it's a ranting prayer so four or five years later I'm in the real estate business the money market dries up and there's no mortgage and then 4,000 miles of Washington D.C. no money broke bankrupt and I'm going yeah you're sober 12 years you're supposed to have some money and somebody says, anybody got a topic tonight? You're goddamn right I got a subject tonight. I've been in the program for 12 years. I don't have any money. Bankrupt. The mortgage. All right, let's talk about bankruptcy, no money, and everything like that. You want to start around. Have you tried the serenity prayer? Tried the prayer of St. Francis. That's what I'd do. If you're broke, You need the prayer of St. Francis, that's what I'd do. Double up on the meetings, boy, if you don't have any money. Meetings are free. And the last guy, get somebody new, help him out. Get a guy with real problems. So what we got in here is a broken record. We got a broken recording. We got an answer, we got a solution. and the solution is designed to change how we see the world. And when we let the solution in and we take another look at the world, it isn't that bad. And when it isn' t that bad, we' re happy because we changed. We changed how we saw things by asking for it. And so it is in a very literal sense, if you're new, what you're trying to get here is a gift. That's all it is. And believe me, there are gifts here with your name on them. There is a package in Alcoholics Anonymous called you. You are the greatest gift that you're going to be given in this program and we have these 12 steps and these 12 Steps are like unwrapping this package and we just start taking the ribbon off and the package and all of this stuff that you thought was the real you and we Just start taking it away and start moving character defects out of the way and start sharing, and just start getting down to the realities of your existence and finding out that deep down under all of this mud and all of these horrible pasts that you think is so unique is an incredibly gold, beautiful, shiny thing called you. And that is the part that AA reaches in and relates to. That's the part that the love of this program reaches in and grabs. And you feel it, and you realize that part of you is now being reached that wasn't involved in your life before. And this is what gets drawn out at meetings. This is what get developed at meetings, and pretty soon these other things that were such a big deal, they get left over on the side, and you come back looking at them almost like a child looks at a lost crayon box when they're 25, and they go, I guess I just don't need that anymore. I'm on to something different. And we are on to Something Different. We're on to celebrating 42 years of continuous miracles in this Alexandria group, Russell Road Group of Alcoholics Anonymous. The people who have come, who started this, the people who Have Passed On to the big meeting in the sky, and those people who are just about, right now, The next member of this group may be being pulled over by a cop. You know what I mean? This person has no idea that they will be celebrating one year at your 43rd anniversary. They're out there swearing at their bad luck when they should be thanking God for the blessings they're receiving. Thanks a lot. Thank you.