The Prison of Self-Centeredness – Sandy B.

Well, thank you, Parks. Good evening, everybody. My name is Sandy Beach and I'm an alcoholic. How are you doing? You sure got a lot of courage to be telling Al-Anon jokes. I wouldn't do that. First of all, I want to thank the group for asking me down here. I haven't been back here in about six or seven years, and it's nice to see the same enthusiasm, the same AA that we have up in Washington. I think we're lucky to have parts of the country that somehow ended up with that type of Alcoholics Anonymous that just keeps you coming back. And you've got your share of those enthusiastic members that are constantly pepping us up when life seems to be slowing down a little bit, and it's just nice. You can feel it. You can see it. I can feel when I walked in the room and met a few of the people and could just sense that we're really on to something, you know? And if you're new here, this probably is what I might talk about tonight is where you really are on to someone when you get into Alcoholics Anonymous. us there's just something wonderful here and it's just a question of learning how to get on it you know what i mean like it was how to getting alcohol or drugs you just you knew the people were on something when you're around them and you just say how do you do that and so they checked you out on that and same kind of thing happens here only I think the big difference is but we get on here loves us and it's a wonderful thing to be on which is the spiritual ride that really takes us somewhere rather than being on something that gives us the illusion of taking us somewhere which is what my whole drinking life was was an illusion that i was somehow managing reality and was getting along in this world and then came the rude awakening when i found out that i hadn't really begun to live, that it was strictly an illusion. And that's what coming into AA was. For some unknown reason, I was sitting here listening to those jokes and I was thinking of my mother. Now, my mother is an Irish lady who is very funny. She's about 85 now and she still writes me some of the funniest letters. And I know that whatever sense of humor I have. I got from her, and I can still remember a typical letter from my mother would go, with real Irish humor, would go something like, Dear son, I'm writing you very slowly because I know you can't read fast. When you come home, you won't recognize the place. we moved we had a little bit of a problem that the bus driver didn't want your father to put the bed on the bus the house was real modern it had lots of new appliances we're not quite sure how they work your father put the laundry in when he got it clean he pulled the chain and we haven't seen it since So that's the kind of humor that she has, and I love it. And it's been a great pleasure for me to see the joy that she's had as a result of my coming into Alcoholics Anonymous, although it took a number of years for that joy to set in. She was very apprehensive about all this. I came into AA in Pearl Harbor Day in 1964 and I haven't had a drink since that night and I feel very lucky part of it was a very mean sponsor was what I owe my early sobriety to I just knew that if I took a drink I was going to hurt real bad and it wasn't going to be from the alcohol it was goingto be from him I just had this incredible fear of sponsor, which is not a bad way to go in the early days when nothing else was going to keep me away from it. But when I first joined Alcoholics Anonymous, it frightened her. And she wouldn't... My father came down when I finally got a year. He came down to an anniversary meeting from... I come from Connecticut and I ended up living in Washington. And he came down and attended this first anniversary meeting went back and told her oh it was wonderful you ought to come next time and she wouldn't come she just she said i know i'm going to cry if i came there i don't want to hear any horrible things i don'T WANT TO HEAR THAT YOU WENT THROUGH ANY HORRIBLE THINGS AND SO SHE JUST PERSISTED IN NOT COMING AND FINALLY YOU KNOW AS THE YEARS WENT BY THEY FINALLY STARTED MAKING SOME TAPES and so they my father brought a tape home and ever since she heard a tape of the story and heard all the laughter in the background and the joy and the happiness why she has been an incredible fan of aa and i call home probably two or three times a week from my office and it just is wonderful i mean i love calling home and when i think back on the years before that i hated calling home i mean boy i hated calling home during the drinking years because there was so much to hide and there was such a um tension on the phone as you're calling up how are things going they would say and i would say fine you know everything's just wonderful and then 10 minutes more into the conversation i I would be getting around to the point of the call. Say, do you think you could spare $500 for a little situation that seemed to... What situation? Well, I don't want to go into too many details. We'll go into the details we'd like to hear about the situation. Well, there was the police and there was this judge and a lawyer and, you know, you'd go into all these things and they didn't really want to hear all that. And so there would be conversations that didn't say anything. We'd have visits that didnít amount to anything. And there was this great distance that existed between me and the rest of the world, and I think that happens with us alcoholics. We have this disease, and it just singles us out and pulls us away from people that we should be close to. and it pulls us away from the human race and from a higher power and from love and friendship and pretty soon it seems like it doesn't exist. I've often thought that when I came into AA I was convinced that there was no such thing as a god or a higher power because I had no evidence of it in my life and if you could take a lie detector and get inside of me, I would be telling the truth. There was no evidence of any love or God that had ever gotten into me, and that's because this disease of alcoholism builds a prison of self-centeredness around us, and it can't get in. And so if it can'T get in, it doesn't exist. So as far as I was concerned, it was just a rumor that there was such a thing as a higher power because I had never felt any of this, and none of it was apparent in my life. And if I couldn't experience it, then how could I believe what you were telling me about it? So this disease is quite a crippling thing in the isolation that it does. I don't really want to do drunk-a-log tonight. In case I forget, I drank a whole bunch of years and then I eventually got in a nut ward and out of the nut ward I got to AA. So I'm a definite alcoholic. I'm an primary alcoholic. Back when she wrote The Primer on alcoholism, I think she divided us into primary and secondary, which is pretty clever. And us primary alcoholics were the ones who drank socially for 10, 11 seconds and then went right over the lost control, you know the invisible line they used to talk about uh that people crossed we were born on the other side of the invisible lion never drank successfully so i don't relate to any of you that get up to the podium and talk about years and years of trouble-free drinking and then the filter broke and trouble started happening i don t relate to you at all i just as soon as as that stuff got in there it was forget it it was out of control um every bit of trouble i ever got into was from drinking uh all the uh never did i drink that something didn't happen i mean it just was not well that's why i drank caused things to happen i approached drinking in the same way that you might approach the fiction section in a library where you're looking for an exciting novel. You know, he'd go in there, well I think I'll get a western today and you look at the cover and you go, this looks exciting, three dead and five to go. You know one of those is the name of the book but you still you don't know what it's all about until you go home and read it. You can look at the front of the book and look at the back of the book but until you get it home and read it you really haven't experienced that book. Well that's the way it was with me with a bottle of whiskey. I could look at it in the package store shake it I wonder what's in here you know what I mean I wonder what's gonna happen with this bottle of whiskey and and there was no way of knowing what you were gonna get out of that bottle of whisky but I knew one thing something was gonna happen I mean I never drank and just sat there hey nothing's happening there would be something happened when people were in a bar you know how they say let's get out of here nothing's going on nothing's happening here I don't ever remember saying that if nothing was happening I just drank faster and then something would happen hey look it the cops are coming there'd be a fight there'd been something that would happen so when I checked a bottle of whiskey out of the package store and took it home and started pouring it down you just didn't know some night you'd get a hold of traveling whiskey and you'd just be sitting there sipping away and all of a sudden it's like a fade out. You know, in the movies when they do that they just dissolve the scene and then you wake up in Memphis. You know what I mean? It's one of those things. And then every hundred bottles is the good looking blonde. You remember that? And that was just every hundred bottles. I'd go in there, could you make those come up more often? I keep getting the teeth knocked out jail stuff, you know. So I'm relating to you that I had no idea what was going to happen, but boy, this is where the action was and this stuff was what the excitement was all about. In other words, to me, life began at 5 o'clock. And you put in the work day in order to qualify to enter the drinking day, which took place at the end of the workday. And it was just a countdown as 4.30 came around, 10, 9, 8, it's time, and life began. So it was a strange perspective on life, but that's what alcohol meant to me. It meant action, it meant an ability to concentrate and cope with life and get along with it. and it provided a great deal of answers to me. But I thought I was just one of the guys. I ended up in the Marine Corps. I never saw any difference between me and the other heavy drinkers. We partied, we did this. Now that I've been sober a long time and I've had a chance to talk to people that I served with and drank with, I realize there was a tremendous difference between me and most of the other people. There was a couple other alcoholics We had a lot in common, but there really was a lot going on different inside of me than the rest of the people. And I agree with Clancy, who is one of my favorite speakers, when he says, the real difference was not so much in what alcohol did to me, but what it did for me. That was what made me different than the non-alcoholics. Alcohol did a lot of things for me that were very special. Number one, it gave me the answer to life's problems. Normally, human beings get the answers to life problems by going through a rather painful process called growing up. And, you know, it all starts in school and a little baby and then in school and you get learn to deal with rejection you learn to deal with failure you go through the pains of relationships and you go through the panes of learning how to stick with it and plotting along and being able to apply yourself and overcome the tendencies in it to want to screw off and do this and you finally build discipline takes a lot of effort and pain and failure and so on down, and it's a rather lengthy process. But it does produce a pretty good product, you know? Some of my heroes in the country are grown-ups, genuine grown- ups, where they just walk around sort of with a perspective on life that's very valid and in balance. And the exact people that are my heroes now are the people that I thought were the last kind of people that I ever wanted to be. They look like the most boring people in the world, grown-ups. You know what grown- ups do? Grown-ups get out of bed in the morning, get dressed, get in their car, drive straight to work, work all day very hard at the job, get in your car, drive home, uh deal with their family help with the children's problems work around the yard clean the place up go to bed get up in the morning go back to work i mean it just goes on forever and ever and it looks boring i'm going anybody can live life that way i mean i understood where the main road of life was you know what i'm talking about is they started explaining life to us when we're growing up i understood that a person could be successful at work if they showed up every day and worked hard i that was a given as far as i was willing to concede that you could succeed if you did that what i was trying to experiment with was the outer limits of life you know what I'm talking about? How many days can you miss and still keep your job? You know what I mean? I wasn't arguing that if you showed up every day, you would keep your job. That was... I wasnít debating that. I wanted to get over where it was more exciting. This looked terribly boring to just behave yourself from day one until you died. It look like a mistake that's what it looked like to me i saw life a little differently why not have as much fun as you can and then just before you die straighten everything out and slide under the the door all straightened out and end up in the same place where these people who've been behaving themselves for their whole life did and then you sort of had your cake and need it too. You know what I'm talking about? You could have a lot of fun because I found that on the main road of life were no massage parlors. There just wasn't any... They were over in the boondocks. They were all over in town. They were in the shoulder, in the weeds and in the rough area where the road wasn't as smooth as the main highway. So I was choosing between the boredom of a straight-ahead life and the dangers of the fringe areas and as a practicing alcoholic i grew to love excitement and if it wasn't exciting it just didn't seem important to me so i became a fighter pilot in the marine corps and we had a lot of excitement doing that and drinking was a lot exciting when i was working and uh my way through school i was a steeplejack figure you know this typical alcoholic the higher the risk, the better it was. And I look back on it now and I think I was just trying to prove that I wasn't afraid. You know, we have that fear, that underlying fear and that sense of not being anybody. I always had that feeling like I wasnít anybody, no matter how much I accomplished. When I got there, it wasnít anything. You Know What I Mean? I had an uncle who was an Air Force pilot in world war ii and he was sort of my hero growing up i was probably a teenager or 10 11 12 when he was flying in the war he'd come home in his uniform he was a captain in the air force with the wings on and i remember saying that's about as close to being god as you can get if you ever became a captain with the uh wings and everything well some years later i ended up in the marine corps and through a series of mistakes i did get promoted to uh captain and I remember pinning those bars on and looking in the mirror with that great sense of expectation and there was just this terrible feeling like they sure don't make captains like they used to. There was just that and it wasn't there. So no matter what I tried to do, I couldn't get rid of that feeling that I really wasn't anybody. It was still there. There was that little voice inside and a part of me was going well I'm somebody now and a little voice going, you're nobody. You know, just lurking in there. And I was trying to fix that. And I think a lot of us have that. It may not be a voice that says you're a nobody, but it's a voice that says there's something missing. Do you ever have that feeling in life? You know like, crime side, my job seems to be going pretty good and I've got a fairly decent relationship here. My health is going, everything ought to feel pretty good here. and then deep down there's this little thing going no you haven't got it yet there's something missing well what is that you know well i gotta get more money gotta get more relationships i mean i always was seeking out there and oddly enough there was something that fixed that and it was drinking that was the strangest thing how this drinking fixed this particular sensation that something was wrong. When a certain amount of alcohol got inside, it just changed everything, and I went there, and I truly felt at peace with myself, and I felt part of something, and I became almost in harmony with the universe. There was a very spiritual dimension to drinking. It didn't last very long. it sort of existed between the third and fifth drink you know what i'm talking about it was right in there and i was always trying to maneuver that feeling to stay there permanently you know what i mean it was like if i could have this particular view of the world boy it would be worth anything so early on i guess i knew that fixing this particular yearning was an inside job that somehow I could get that feeling fixed inside. And, you know, now that I've been in AA a while, I realize that that particular sensation was a spiritual problem, that that feeling that something was missing was something was messing with me. Something was missing spiritually. I didn't recognize that. It was a case of misdiagnosis, you Know, like hypoglycemia tells us more sugar, keep eating more sugar. And that's the worst thing that we could be doing for it, but that's the signal that's coming up to the brain. And so it is with a spiritual longing or this feeling that it still isn't right. And it comes up to us in false information about it, and it's telling us there isn't enough money. That's what it is, and we're off chasing a million wrong answers to this particular spiritual problem. And we come in the program, we learn all the things that we have in the programme, and I still do it. if there's, it must be the human condition. If there's anything I'm constantly doing, and my sponsor loves to tease me about it, I'm consistently having problems that the steps don't apply to. You know what I mean? I can't believe it. I just had another exception to the steps come into my life. And it's clear that I'm going to have to come up with my own solution to this one. and off I'll rush to come out with some crazy thing and then eventually, when all else fails, I'll come back to the steps and lo and behold, they will work just fine on this particular situation. So we have in the program sort of a universal fix known as our program, our 12 steps. No matter what the problem is, this is what the solution is. This shouldn't be new to us alcoholics. we were used to universal fixes before we got here because no matter what my problem was, drinking was the answer. I was like Johnny Carson with the envelope up here. I would tell you the answer first. Now, what's the problem? You know what I mean? And I had my envelope up there and inside the envelope it said, take a drink. So go ahead, tell me a problem. The sheriff's at the door, he wants to get you, you owe $1,000 or you go to jail. What do you do? Take a drink. And then the 14 promises of vodka come through. And we intuitively know how to handle situations that were baffling us two minutes ago. And we pour the vodka down, and we're suddenly given some beautiful gift of gab to negotiate with the sheriff. Sheriff, come in here. I want to discuss this problem with you. Certainly have a problem. And the next thing you know, we're buying him a drink and we're both going off for a vacation somewhere. So it's just all I needed was access to alcohol. So there was a tremendous spiritual relationship with alcohol in the very sense that we talk about it in the program, at least for this alcoholic. This was my higher power. This was something that I had great faith in. This was nothing that I could turn to no matter what the problem was. I could get comfort from alcohol without drinking it I can remember being very upset I'd be in some sort of a meeting and it wasn't going well and I would excuse myself and if I could go to the bar and if i could get to a window and look out the window and see my car in the parking lot where there was a pint of vodka in the glove compartment just knowing that it was right there made me feel better and I could walk back into the room and go hell I can handle this vodka's right there In case it gets really bad, I can be fixed in nothing flat. So just knowing the proximity of the drink could help me get through certain situations. So this is having faith in something. And I remember coming into Alcoholics Anonymous and trying to cut the ties to alcohol completely isn't the easiest thing in the world. We can surrender and we're working the program, but I can remember probably for six months I had a secret compartment in my wallet with a $50 bill in it. just in case I was the one guy that God didn't like. You know what I mean? As it turned out, he goes, I'm going to get everybody sober but you. You know What I mean?" And I go, well, I've got that contingency covered because I've Got enough here for a case of vodka. And I would be off. So I had to protect myself. It was real hard to cut psychologically the dependence on this other higher power known as vodka. Anyway, my particular story just happened very quickly, and I got to the daily drinking during the last couple years, malnutrition, into a nut ward with a convulsion in the DTs. And out of that particular stay, which lasted about six months, this is before the Navy had any alcohol programs, and they put the alcoholics in with the regular nuts. I mean, we were all mixed in in one nut ward. And it was real funny how they would have the group therapy sessions and the psychiatrists would gather us all around in the little chairs and they would discuss legitimate illnesses like manic depressive and suicides and schizophrenia and all of these various things. And then reluctantly they would discussion being drunk. They didn't even call it alcoholism. they just talked about drunks and um so on these days when they would have well there was three of us there was marine colonel myself and a navy lieutenant commander and we were in the bethesda naval hospital nut ward and so the psychiatrists go well this morning we're going to talk about these three drunks that would be the topic of this thing with these little chairs around in the circle you know how that so he would start asking these other people these manic depressives and schizophrenia obviously crazy people what about these drunks and you know what they used to say you'll get a big kick out of this is what they use to say they used to say you guys ought to stop drinking that's what they have to say and uh i remember going no wonder they're in here for crying out loud stop drinking as park said you don't understand i mean obviously you wouldn't have given that answer if you understood the problem and but fortunately alcoholics anonymous got into that hospital after i'd been there about four months they talked their way in and had a meeting and that's how i got to aa was a corpsman came in said all drunks fall in right face and i was at this meeting now i didn't like being there i didn't really take to aa that particular day as a matter of fact when i was released on an outpatient status i went back to drinking for one weekend and uh it got it got so terrible that i dialed Alcoholics Anonymous myself, and that's when I got this big sponsor that I still have, who was another Marine. He was a big, giant guy. He was an infantry Marine, and I was a pilot, and we just sort of, hey, hey. And he was like that, and he came over the door and was like, bam, bam. And I'm looking at the hinges on the door going like that. And I open the door, and it goes, yes? He said, this is a 12-step call. I talk, you listen. And I was going through this whole thing Well, if you could just leave some literature and I'll be glad to look it over And he's saying He's just repeating this one sentence Get in the car And I'm going Get in a car Get in an ambulance Get in that car Get in my car You know And it was that way every meeting you know, for the first couple of weeks. I was trying to get away from him because he was saying things like, well, we'll be going to a meeting every night for 10 years and then we'll... Then you can go to one on your own. So I, oh, this is... Sounded like boot camp or something. I wanted to get out of that deal. This guy was fanatic about this whole thing. He'd been sober about two years and it turned out later on I found out the Quantico group, Dumfries Triangle down in the Marine base had four members, two of them were still drinking and Bill so he was the only other member and he needed another sober member real bad and I was it and he wasn't going to let me go from hell or high water so there we were and he had me getting in the car every night and pretty soon I had a lot of sobriety. That reminds me of a story about that group. He was, geez, we had a podium. It was something like this. It was a little bit bigger and it had doors on the back of it and a padlock and everything for the meeting was in the podium. The coffee pots, the sugar, the cream, the coffee, the signs to go on the wall, you know, everything, paper plates and napkins and baskets, the whole thing was in there. So the person who was in charge of the group came over and got the podium and went through the whole routine. And so one night he called me up and he said, it was a Sunday night meeting, he said I'm going to pick you up a half hour early tonight we're going to have a business meeting. Business meeting? So we go over there there's just the two of us. He gets the podium out and he puts it up here and I'm sitting right down here. And he says well for the past year I've been the program chairman, the coffee maker, the secretary, the general service rep, the intergroup rep. My name's listed for all 12-step calls for this group. And I think it's time we had an election of new officials for this group. Do I see any volunteers? so i became the program chairman and all that for and it was really a deal to have the combination to this uh locker and then and these people kept coming in and out we had this one jockey i don't know if he ever got sober little dave he'd be there when we can then we had a country singer named evelyn those two evelina and uh god they would be sober and not sober and it a speaker's meeting and we were pretty far away from washington so it would take people 30 40 minutes to drive down there and they'd know the program chairman was coming i don't know about you all but our egos get out of joint sometimes when we get sober we don't like to drive 40 minutes to talk to two people big crowd of two the meeting that would arrive would be bigger than the group you know what i mean a car would pull up with four people in it we'd go hey we're going to double our size tonight. But anyway, after about a year Bill got transferred overseas and then the year after that I got asked to leave the Marine Corps and I left this podium in this group in the hands of the jockey and I went into civilian life and was up in Washington trying to make a living which is quite a struggle and geez about two years later I get a little directory You know the directory of all the meetings? And I look in there, and there's my home group. And it's listed as disbanded. Very sinking feeling that your own home group... And they carried it as dis banded for a couple years, and then it wasn't listed anymore. It just disappeared out of the books. And then later on, more Marines came in down there, and they started their own group. And in the last year and a half, we've been looking for the podium. That's the big search that's going on now, the missing podium. and they haven't been able to find it but it's a rather large piece of furniture so if we ever find it we'll pass the word on whether there's around a 40 year supply of sugar cubes in there if I remember and by now it would be real good it would take the entire meeting for one of them to dissolve and new people could stay busy stirring them for the whole time well enough about that it was fun it's nostalgic to think about it and I'm sure tonight there's people here who've been with this group for 23 years and can think back on some of the little stories that have happened over the years, and that's certainly one in my mind was that that was about 23 years ago when I was at this meeting elected to become pressed into service for the first time. It's a funny thing. You don't really want it, and then after you get it, you don't want to get rid of it. You remember that? And they say, well, we need a new coffee. I know, but they might not make the coffee right. I know how to make it. And then, you remember that? For the next couple months after somebody else takes over, you come back and you go, oh, no, the big book goes over here. You've got the 12 and 12 goes over there. And the new secretary says, screw you. I'm going to put the 12 in 12 over here and the big one over here and what the hell are you talking about? They're doing it wrong, you know what I mean, after we leave. No, you put too much coffee in. I can tell you, how much are you putting in there? And they finally get us out of the way in the back and eventually we're willing to relinquish control to the next generation that's taking over and there's always something wrong and, you know, I've looked at some of the changes that have come over, Alcoholics Anonymous and a lot of them have swept in from the West Coast. All my friends from California. I take great delight, I was talking to Parks about this before, it tickles me no end that Alcoholics Anonymous was started by two guys from Vermont and the major social movements in the world spread from the east coast to the west coast yay but at any rate I just think back when I guess I've been sober about five years when holding hands slid in from the west cost and I was standing at a meeting and the guy next to me grabbed my hand give me a break who is that guy do you know anything about him he looks funny to me at the luncheons he started his hand holding you hear all the old timers going ape over some new thing that was happening in their group, you know, and then somehow we survived all this stuff. And I don't know, then yelling the name back came sliding in a few years after that. And, you Know, Hi, Joe! What the hell's this Hi, Jo? I know I'm Joe. Who's starting this stuff? You know, it was like a federal case over these things. But they come sneaking around and next thing we adjust to them, first time they had us signing those slips from the court. We've got a little section over in Maryland that I think is going to drop out of AA over that thing. You know, we're not going to sign anything, and it became a federal case over that. So AA has these wonderful growing pains, but, you know, after we solve them, we can sit back and just laugh that we even made a federalcase out of them in the first place. But let me just finish wherever I'm going here tonight by talking about the program. I think that if you are new, you're probably convinced that I am an alcoholic and had some residual damage that is fairly apparent. Now, I sort of feel funny about this. I know there was probably some damage done, and a few marbles are missing here and there. And I take great delight in having a very responsible regular job out in the regular world. and I have a smirk on my face every day as I go in and people are listening to me and that makes a lot of sense. Well, that's good. Damn, I'd love to tell them about the Bethesda nut board and straight jackets and things like that and I sort of feel privileged to be playing in the mainstream and it's the wonderful gift that I got from Alcoholics Anonymous that just gives us this perspective that enables us to get along well in the world and to find people like us. They like us around. They like the sense of humor and the willingness and some of the things that we bring with us and sort of a compassion for other people. I think a lot of us bring a little more harmony into the world than we used to, and that makes it people's reaction to us entirely different than it used to be, and it gives the appearance that the world straightened out. You know how that people come into AA, and about six months later they go, you know, my whole family straightened out after I got the Alcoholics Anonymous. And I think it goes beyond that. It almost appears that the world straightened down, and it became an incredibly lovely place to live in. And what happened there? It was an inside job all along. When I straightened up, everything seemed to straighten out. You know, I think about how the heck is that possible? And I'll tell you what I think the deal is. I'm going to just take 15 minutes and tell you what I think. If you're new, how does a spiritual program work? What are we talking about when we say we've got a spiritual program here? Well, if you're trying to struggle with this and you're thinking it over as a new person, I would suggest that you look at one word and use that as your doorway in to the spiritual program. And that word is in our first step and it's powerless. that if you can really concentrate on that word and understand that that's your problem, really take time and get down to the gut level of understanding that your problem is powerlessness. You are powerless. This is the problem. Now, see, you're an intellectual. Everybody who arrives in AA is an intellectual of one sort or another. You don't like to admit it because it's going to embarrass all the non-intellectuals in the room so you keep it a secret but you know and I know that secretly we're better than everybody else in here but we're not going to tell them because it might upset them and so we understand powerlessness on the one hand but on the other hand we think we can do something about it you know what I mean right out of the way we're just changing the definition of power I know I'm powerless but here's what I'm going to do well let's go back and start all over again you're powerless I know but if I study enough I won't be powerless anymore this doesn't say that you're ignorant about alcoholism it said you're powerless over alcohol if you you know what I mean but some of us think oh yes I'm powerless over alcohol so I'll go to Rutgers where I can get a PhD in alcoholism and then and you know what will happen if you go to rutgers and get a Ph.D. in alcoholism, you'll still be drunk on the floor, but you will know precisely why. You haven't solved the powerless part yet. You're still powerless over taking that drink in. You know, I know exactly why I'm taking this. Down it goes. So we haven't solved anything. Now we've got a smart drunk on our hands, which is much worse than the one we had before. powerless so if we can focus on that if you're powerless the only remedy is a power is some form of power in the beginning and it's not you it's a power other than yourself somehow we have to come to grips with the fact that we have been put in a situation and the only way out is if some help comes our way and lifts us out of this situation. The best analogy I've ever been able to think of is concerning our first step and our second step, which is where we finally get into the debate over whether we're going to allow a higher power in our lives and it all centers around powerlessness. If we understand powerlessness, we wouldn't be having a debate in the first place. It would be so obvious what we have to do that we wouldn'T even be discussing it, but it isn't that obvious. We hear the word powerless, but we haven't really digested it. And so I would suggest if you're new, if you could imagine this is a different way of coming into AA, I would suggestion the best way to bring us in, we get the new person in and we take them up in the AA airplane and we say today's lesson is on the first step and we're going to show you what powerlessness is. Step out, please. And we have a little intercom on them, you know. Start them at maybe 12,000 feet and they're just going... Are you getting sort of any flavor of powerlessness? Are you giving sort of a perspective on powerlessness Look at the ground, do you see it? Do you see that it is moving and now you're feeling what powerlessness is This is where you are. When you're an alcoholic who has arrived in AA, that's exactly where you Are. Your feet are planted firmly in midair. You are falling through an elevator shaft and you think everything's fine. Oh, I thought I set up. And for a while, you may actually enjoy the fall. It's cool and you're doing skydiving trips and going around a cloud and you may say you know this is kind of fun but now the parking lot is starting to loom large and you're going you know i don't see anybody around here to to stop this i think they've screwed up and they don't know what's happened and you are about to take the second step you don't know it but you are this close from taking the second step because just as about 15 feet from the cement a big hand comes down and grabs you at the last second and his little voice says excuse me sir we're conducting a survey do you believe in God this is where our second step comes in came to believe that a power and so if you're having a problem i guess what i'm trying to say is that it works backwards If you knew, it works backwards from the way you think it works. See, you're thinking that a spiritual program is similar to a religion and that we're going to all get here and convince you of the existence of God and that wir'e going to somehow prove to you that there is an AA god who was born 14,000 years ago in China and here's a little book with his picture in it and he's done this many miracles and so on down. Turns out we don't have an AA God. we don't have one at all we have individuals we all have our own concept if you read our steps you'll see we talk about God as you understood him so AA doesn't have an opinion on what this higher power is but each AA member has their own version of what this high power is so AA in no way tries to prove the existence of God so what do we do? where do we focus on? do we look up and start looking for God? no, we focus you on the parking lot we go take a look at that parking lot you see how close it is yes you see anything that could possibly save you no do you think a higher power might who cares let's ask him you don't have to you don' t have to believe in god you suddenly have to realize unless there is one you're in trouble that's that's it that's how that's what spirituality is all about is finally coming to grips with what the word powerless means. And we were all born powerless. See, that's what that longing was inside of us, not as alcoholics but as human beings. Our dilemma was alcohol fixed that longing and took us away from any relationship we might have developed with a higher power. It totally bankrupted us spiritually and just gave us a chemical fix day after month after year until we were finally fortunate enough to come into Alcoholics Anonymous. And it leaves a gaping hole there, and this hole, oddly, rather than being a weakness, is a strength because this hole is where the program can finally flow in through that prison of self-centeredness that had blocked out all of the love and friendship in the world. See, I didn't believe in friends because none of it could get in. I didn'T believe people loved each other because none OF IT COULD GET IN, and if it couldn'T get in, it DIDN'T exist. and this is what finally cut a hole in there was my surrendering, was when I finally hit the bottom, whatever it was, and had to reach out and ask for unconditional help. And so if you're new, the secret to this spiritual program is recognizing the hopelessness of your situation and total surrender. As soon as we do that, we've ceased fighting this, and it can start rushing in and fill up our cells with what we need in order to get along in the world if there's any advice i would give to a new person is never never under any conditions go out there alone that would be my advice never ever ever go out here alone take some you know how you used to take your bottle with you we'll take your higher power with you this is too dangerous to be out there alone we don't have the wherewithal to stay sober alone our own resources are inadequate And I like to think of life and of me going through life. The scriptures talk about wearing life as a loose garment. I have a friend, Ed C., who is from Texas. He's up in the Washington area. And he talks about a way of going through the day in order to have this cushion around you. He gets up every morning and decides to let five people be wrong every day. Just right out of the chocks, you know what I mean? and five people have his permission to be wrong that day. So the first five events that hit where things aren't quite going right have free passes to happen, and so he has built a cushion in between him and the world. And this cushion that we have between us and the World is the spiritual cushion. It's a higher power. It is that sense that protects us from the sharpness of the events of the world and make everything seem entirely different than it is when we're out there on our own. It's what a glow feels like. It'swhat a sense of well-being feels like It comes from within, no matter what's going on out there. I like to think about this in the sense that a tire has air in it. You know, you can buy a $50 tire and you can buy a $300 tire, but you've still got to put cheap, free air in both of them. And the $300 tier is probably going, what do I need that cheap air for? The $50 tier needs it, but I don't. I can get out there without it. And you know how when your tires are going flat and you know you ought to be putting air in them and you go, but i don't have time. It's like, i don' t have time to read the 24-hour day book in the morning. Some of us are so busy, we can't spare eight seconds for our spiritual side that day. We have big deals to close. We have subways to catch. We have very important things to do. So I'll go out today with no air in the tire. Well, guess what happens when we decide to leave our higher power home? Somebody in the crazy circuit passes the word. And all the crazies in the world know that we're out there unarmed. And they go, get him. Today is the day to get him, and they mm-mm-mm, and they just come over and they ping-ping, and it's like taking that tire out, and guess what day they put in some road repairs you don't know anything about, and there are potholes this deep, and you're coming around with that much air in. bam the rim cuts right through equivalent of a slip just bam there wasn't the resources there to cushion us from life that's what we're getting in the program a day at a time is a wonderful spiritual cushion between us and the world and when we got it if you just roll along it doesn't matter about the potholes it doesn'T MATTER ABOUT THE EVENTS OUT THERE because we're not trying to be out there alone. It's when we insist on our pride that we can take what's out there by ourselves so that wecan get credit for successfully meeting a day that we get overpowered because in the final analysis, our problem was powerlessness, not intellect, nothing. We lack the resources to go through a day at a time without being punctured, without something getting into us. You know how when that gets to you, that's generally your problem. Somebody calls you up and says, it got to me today. Who got to you? The janitor. Oh God. Whatever it was, it got through. It got to us. Here we have a program that's totally designed to enable us to have a system a day at a time to have this spiritual cushion with us. And when we take that out, these days are incredible. Sobriety is one of the smoothest journeys over bumpy events of life than we can imagine and if you're new let me just give you this one last thing never never go out there alone never and you will have one of the greatest trips you've ever enjoyed thanks a lot