The Resentment That Almost Kept Him From the Meetings – Sandy B.

Thank you very much George. Hi everybody, my name is Sandy Beach and I'm an alcoholic. How y'all doing? I want to thank the committee again for inviting me back to where I got sober in the state of Virginia in 1964 and it's just wonderful. I've seen some of the people I've known a long time And it's great seeing Yvonne again. We go back a ways and keep crossing paths at some of these conventions, and it's just wonderful Sometimes I always forget to tell I'm glad you mentioned grandchildren although I rarely talk about things that happened in my life My mother and father passed away in the last seven months my father passed way last month and My mother was 92, my father was 93 and they were still in their same house. My sister is sober 23 years in AA and she's a saint and so she was over there, you know, so they never had to leave their house that we grew up in. And I want to just thank AA on the record for reestablishing the relationship between my parents and myself, which alcoholism had totally destroyed. And after I got sober, you know, and I'm sure a lot of you newcomers, you have this awkward feeling of, you go to see your parents and there's this barrier, so you sit around and go, hi, hi, hi, hi. Well, I guess it's time to go. I was trying to do something about that and my sponsor said, well you've got to take the action and so I started making regular phone calls and sending cards anytime I was traveling little postcards and you could just see what was happening I was changing myself as I took these actions and I was allowing my own love to come out which I didn't know I had and it reminds me of the program you take the actions and then the results follow and I could just feel all this so then when I would get there I'd have more to say and I'd be more relaxed and it was me that was changing and it wasn't me and it's causing the change up there and it just grew and grew so there came a time I don't know I guess I've been sort of about 10 years and I'd been running around talking at these conventions, and there was one up in Connecticut near where my parents live. And so I said to my mother, would you like to come? No, I don't want to go. I do not want to be a part of it. I don' t want to come. So I'm going, she must be ashamed of me. You know what I mean? She must feel bad that her son's a drunk who doesn' t wanna go to the AA convention. So I nursed that little resentment for a year or so. and it was not true I just made it up I never asked her or anything like that so finally a little more time went by and I asked her why she didn't want to go and she said that she didn' t want to hear about all the pain I went through because it might make her cry and it really touched me that she had said that so then a whole bunch more years went by and it was like a call every week and go up and visit as often as I could. So when I got there, my sister was taken care of and she was in the last hospice and everything. I'll tell you, when I walked in, like 24 hours before she passed away, she was sort of like in a coma and everything and when she recognized my face, the room lit up. She She was just, hi, you know, so happy. And to me, I can't thank AA enough for that because here was somebody who didn't want to see me and now I'm lighting up her face. And the same thing with my father. All he would say whenever I'd call or anything, it's so great to hear your voice, it's such a pleasure to be with you. It's so good to hear you. It's great to have your voice. It's all great to share your voice and oh, and I'm sure if you're new, you know what it feels like when you call home to get out of jail or to get money and it's not great to hear your voice hi dad, it's Sandy so that's wonderful and I do have 12 grandchildren and 6 children and one of my daughters is now in AA she struggled for a number of years And a year ago last Christmas, I got her off the streets of Orlando and flew her up to Father Martin's in Baltimore. And she's been sober ever since. And we started a new speaker meeting in Tampa on Saturday nights. And this Christmas comes on a Saturday, Christmas on a Sunday this year. And she has agreed to come down and be a speaker at that meeting on her second anniversary. And I'm going to speak with her. And I am telling you, I am really looking forward to that. You know what I mean? like have a little meeting of my own daughter and myself, and I'm the guy that she couldn't stand in her drinking years because it was my fault. She was an alcoholic, and you understand how that works. And so all these things change. It's just so beautiful to see what happens in sobriety. We just keep doing the next right thing, and God takes care of all these Things, and they do straighten out. I did want to mention that. I just had a laundry list of stuff that had nothing to do with the talk, but I'll just shorten the talk to work this stuff in. And you won't know the difference anyway, so don't worry about it. It had to do a ninth step, making amends. I don't know why I haven't told this story before. If I have, I've forgotten doing it. But about, oh, I guess 10 years ago, maybe 12 years ago or something like that, I was living up on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., rocking and rolling, lobbyists, and just having a great time. And I'm just sitting around my house, wasn't doing anything in particular. And all of a sudden I had a memory bubble. Came up from 1955. when I was in flight school in Pensacola, Florida, I had a drinking buddy who was in flight school with me and he was a bachelor. I was married but he hung around with us and we drank and we did all these great things together and I was always broke because I just couldn't resist spending money like it was going out of style and I didn't have the rent money for the last month that we were in Pensicola before we went to advanced training in Texas so I borrowed it from this guy and then i conveniently forgot you know what i mean i just walked away like that i didn't owe him that money at all and then he went to a different place and i think our paths only crossed once or twice very briefly over the next 10 years while we were both still in the marine corps and then I totally lost track of them and totally conveniently forgot about the 90 bucks and here it is like 20 years later whenever it was I'm just sitting around and here comes you remember that 90 bucks you all that Bill Maher say yeah I do well what am I supposed to do I mean it's like 25 years what are you just surface a memory and I'm supposed to do something well now it's been surfaced you got to do something because it isn't going to go well I'll probably forget about it tomorrow you know so I'm going to bed you're gonna pay the money back you're not gonna pay their money back you're NOT gonna pay them money back so I've gone geez all right all right okay okay okay see once you start working this stuff you just can't slide around as well as you used to be able to so I go where is he this is me talking to me you know what yeah I'm willing but where is he How are you going to find a guy? He could be anywhere. And then the other side, the good side, it was like the devil and the angel are having this thing, you know. The angel's going, he likes to ski, you know that. He's in a ski state. I said, okay, a ski stay. So what, you now, what? He said he was also from New England. He's probably in Vermont. I said Vermont, huh? Okay. I'll make a deal with you. I'll call information in Vermont, and I'll ask if he's there in the phone book. And it's a very unusual name. And if he is there, I will call him. And if not, I tried. So that's the deal I cut. God darn, I called up information. Hello, information, Vermont? Do you have William P. Marseille? You do? Oh. So I get the number, and then I call him up. And he was very happy to hear from me. and we reminisced about this and that, and he said, what are you doing? And I said, well, you're not going to believe this, but about 15 years ago, I got so bad drinking in the Marine Corps and I got thrown out and da-da-da, and I get sober and I'm in AA and now my whole life has changed and I've been in AA and I have this and I am that. And I say, you know, I just remembered I beat you out of a month's rent and I figure with interest and all that it's at least $150 and I want to mail you a check up in Vermont. Oh, no, you don't have to. Yeah, yeah, I got to do it. Trust me, I've got to do it, and it's got nothing to do with the money, so I mail him the check, and he and his wife owned a gift shop at a ski resort. You know, I was right that he really liked skiing. Well, about two months later, I get a gift box from that gift shop that must have had $400 worth of stuff in it, wind chimes and all these things, and a letter, and he's writing me that they're going to move to North Carolina, and here's our new address. Please come in and see me. And of course, but I don't. Our paths don't cross. And so, oh, I guess 10, 12 years went by after that. And I was at a convention in North Carolina. And, so, after the meeting, or after the talk, this lady came up, and she was wearing an Al-Anon badge. And she said to me, you don't know me, but my name is Marcia Marseille. And I said, oh, Marcelle, Bill's wife? And she says, no, his widow. She passed away, he had a heart attack about a year ago, but he always talked about you and I wanted to come and meet you because about four months after your phone call he joined AA and had, I don't know, eight years sobriety when he passed away. So when I was thinking about why in the world did that memory bubble about that lousy 90 bucks ever come up, it was to get him sober. That's what the plan was, you know? So these steps and the actions that we take have greater ramifications than we really realize. Sometimes not only is it that we're cleaning our own house, but we are being used as an instrument in something else. So anyway, I really had forgotten that story and I really wanted to share it. Then I had a request, so I'm going to fill this one in. And actually it's because Bob B. from Minnesota was going to be here and had emergency back surgery and Bob B. from Kentucky came and did a spectacular job but there's a story about Bob B from Minnesota that maybe we can get the tape back to him and he'll feel like he participated in this conference anyway He was down in the Florida State Convention the year before last and I went down to listen to him and he gave a great talk and we were hanging around a coffee pot outside side. We were swapping stories and I bet Yvonne has some stories like this about funny things that happen at conventions where committees screw up and hotels change rooms at the last second, the band doesn't show up. There's all kinds of funny things that happen that the speakers see because you're going to a whole bunch of them. So we were swiping stories about funny thing that happened at conventions. And he had the best story I have ever heard. He went to a convention in Indiana, and he said, Sandy, I'm just like you. When I go there, the only thing I take with me is the guy's name and number that's meeting me at the airport. I don't even have the flyer, I don�t know the hotel, I didn't know anything. I just got the guy�s name that�s meeting me at the airport, and it always works out. And the guy �s name was Joe, and he was meeting him at the airport. So Bob B gets off the plane, comes down, and there's no one to meet him. He waits and he waits and pretty soon there's nobody at the airport except a guy with a sign over his head that says Captain Bob. And finally the guy came up and said are you Captain Bob? He says no I'm not Captain Bob so he went to the phone and called Joe's home number and Joe's wife answered the phone And he said I'm Bob B. I'm up here at the airport your husband well my husband went out to get you He left about an hour ago. Are you sure he's now? He's no one here, but me Well, I'll come out and get you said never mind Tell give me the hotel and I'll get a cab and go down there So he got a cab And he drove up to the hotel where the convention was He got in the lobby and the committee was there and they were all kind of giggling And they said come on in we'll tell you what happened Here's Joe, who was supposed to meet you. Joe went up there and a guy got off the plane, an 80-year-old guy, very distinguished in a suit, and something told Joe, that's Bob B. from Minnesota. And Bob B., or this Bob coming down the ramp, was Captain Bob, who was coming to a family reunion that was being organized by his nephew, William. And so Joe went up to him and asked the two magic questions to establish identity beyond all doubt. Hi, are you Bob? Yes. Are you a friend of Bill's? Yes! boom so that so that cemented the deal I mean there wasn't anyone oh come on go get your luggage we'll go and we got your room in the hotel and the captain Bob thought he was staying in somebody's house now he's got a hotel room he's feeling he's feeling wonderful about all of this and they talking about the trip all these things on the way down and somehow nothing got mentioned that tipped the scales either way. They walk into the hotel lobby and some of the committees there, and Joe, Bob this is Fred, this is our chairman Alice, oh welcome Bob. Captain Bob is feeling great about now that he's getting this incredible reception and they said well Bob we're just about to have lunch would you care to join yes yes yes they went in and the committee came this close to suffering a heart attack when when their Saturday night speaker ordered a scotch and soda. So if you people on the committee had a few things go wrong, I bet you didn't have anything like that. Oh, then let's see, the last loose end. When Becky was doing the history thing today, those of you that missed that, it was really wonderful. And I just love hearing the story of AA. can tell it to me year after year. I cry every time and get all excited at certain parts and it's just so much fun. So she was talking about the traditions and how they got started and I had a story about tradition that I'll share. Our 10th tradition, AA has no opinion and outside issues, that's pretty remarkable. Us drunks don't have an opinion. Just the idea of having that as a tradition just blows my mind. No, I don't know. I don t have any opinion on anything. Well, there was, I was working in Washington and you sort of made aware of a lot of funny little bills and legislation that s going around. There was a bill in the Senate to have warning labels on alcohol, and they were trying to get some feedback for a hearing. Who could we call to get feedback on whether a warning label would do any good on alcohol? And what better place to go? AA! Man, there you'd have some experts on whether a warning label would've done any good. So they contacted General Service Office and they said, we'd like to get some input on this warning label thing. So General Service had somebody go down to talk to them and they were asked, whoever went down from General Service, could you please tell us what AA feels about the warning label on alcohol. And they said, AA has no opinion whatsoever on putting warning labels on alcohol." And the senators were astounded. You have no—no, we have no opinion whatsoever on whether to put a warning label on alcohol. And that was it. That's the official record. That is the end of it. And it did leave people kind of going, that's a funny organization, the Alcoholics at Home. They won't accept any money. They don't want anybody to know who they are. They have no opinion on outside issues. It's just a very strange thing. There's no organization, nobody in charge, and yet it functions beautifully. But just because AA doesn't have an opinion on warning labels on alcohol doesn't mean that us as individual AA members don't have opinions on warning and I have an opinion, and I'm going to share it with you. I think there should be warning labels on bottles of alcohol, and I know exactly what the warning label should say if it's going to do any good. It should say, Warning, this bottle may run out. you should consider buying two and then we'd have a label that would do some good you know what I mean you go oh good you wouldn't be running out in the middle of the night you got to get in the car go down drive while intoxicated but I don't think that's what they had in mind when they were oh boy so that's that's about most of my story there. I'll definitely get the short version about growing up in Connecticut. Parents didn't drink very much, there was a lot of alcohol on my mother's side, Irish. Went to prep school in New Haven and that school was like a pipeline right into Yale University. I had good grades, I was a good athlete, but I was like a loner. Ever since I can remember being alive, I always felt like something was wrong, that you know, I'm not the same as other people. And I couldn't figure out what it was and about 12 years ago I was at a convention and a speaker got up there and he told my story. He said he knew when he was about 15 that someday he was going to be standing out in a wheat field somewhere and a spacecraft was going to come down. And two little guys were going to get out and come running over and go, Fred, Fred come here. And he was gonna go, what? And said we're so sorry. You don't belong on planet Earth. you belong on Uranus get in here we're going to take you out and he went see I knew I knew I didn't belong here he just felt that different but didn't know why he just didn't have a clue and that's how I felt I just felt like there's something missing I'm not the same as all these other people are talking about and I could not connect with what in God's name was going on for them to say things like isn't this a great world Isn't life wonderful? Isn't it fun having all these friends? Isn't that just nice? Don't you have that great feeling? I go, no. No, I don't have that. I don' t have a clue what you're talking about. Church did nothing to help that. It scared me to death. So I just was doing well, but I just always was like peeking out at the world like, what is going on around here? And I had that same feeling when I got into college and I just felt very, that was all these high powered guys were coming there from all over the country and they were rich and handsome and had new cars and they all knew each other and they All were happy and then there was me. That's how I saw it. I couldn't help seeing it that way. That's why I always saw the world and I had not had a drink and I'm 19 people going you haven't had a drink. Everybody's drinking. What are you doing? You're standing out like a sore thumb. Oh, I don't want to drink I'm going to be an athlete or whatever it was. But they kept telling me it would make me feel wonderful. It's the greatest thing in power. You love it. Happy, happy, happy. So I was at one of these things. I think I've said this at every talk I've given. I was that one of those things I can't stand, which is the dean or somebody said, all right, we've got 50 guys here. We're going to put you in this room. We want you to just meet each other. Just go in there and introduce and go hi, hi, high, hi. high, high, and just get to know each other. And I would rather go into combat than do that, like go in people I don't even know and walk in and just walk in. And so I said, all right, I'm going to do it. I'm doing my hardest beating is just terrified, something like this. And I walk in, and the guys have already subdivided into the groups, boom, boom. It's three, two, seven, nine, four. Boom, boom. And I'm going, I know I belong in one of these little groups, and I'm gonna just... But I don't know which one. And so I start over towards this one, and as I got close, I could see that three of them just turned to me and just went, uh-uh, no, no. They didn't do that. They just did it with their eyes. They just, a glance like that said, no. Got it, got it. I was actually headed over here. I wasn't headed over there. and then they did the same thing it's like there was just that look and I tried each place and got rejected all the groups and it was unanimous in each group there wasn't like one guy going let's let him in there was this unanimous ha so I said oh so I'm standing up by the bar I got to make like I'm cool I'm really not ready to meet anybody yet I'm just hanging out so I go hell with it I'm gonna have a drink I would like to feel happy so I ordered something and started drinking it tastes terrible I just was sitting there sipping some more look at my watch how long does this take you know I'm drinking some more and got another one gun I was on my third drink and was about to conclude that alcohol didn't work because I didn't wasn't feeling anything so I put the glass down I start to turn around to go out and i looked out and those 50 guys were gone and they were replaced by 50 of the friendliest guys i have ever seen i look back out there all of the groups were looking at me begging me to join them they were just please please please i know you know it's like a kid in a yeah I didn't know where to start they were so excited about seeing me and then I felt you know like I just had some sort of a I'll get over there when I'm damn ready you know it's like I suddenly agreed with them they would be lucky to know me and it was like and I just went around to all these people and hi hi I I could make small talk. My creativity was activated. I could remember people's names and things about were they part of the country they came from, and I just intuitively knew how to handle situations that used to totally baffle me, and all the fears went away, and I was just there. That's why I'm an alcoholic. That's what alcohol took the fundamental problem I had as a human being and solved it. and for non-alcoholics, it doesn't solve anything. But for us alcoholics, it's like Alice in Wonderland. We just walk through the door, and boom, we're in another world. It gets technicolor. I thought my system was energized for the first time. Now I understood when people said, isn't it a great world? And I went, you're darn right it is. This world, I thought I should have started drinking in grammar school. I mean, this was what a wonderful invention was this power to see the joy of living and to see how wonderful people were. I was so excited. It was just wonderful. So later that night, I had too many drinks and I'm throwing up and I got dizzy, you know, you don't have those things didn't faze me at all. I mean, throwing up, that's a small price to pay for the ability to have your problem removed and taken away. So all I just signed over without knowing it, I had made an arrangement with alcohol. I just knew I would always have it and that everything would be okay. You talk about faith in something. Whenever I thought about the future, I go, well, you're going to go down and have to do this? Yeah, but I'll have a couple drinks. it'll be easy yeah there's nothing I can think of to be afraid of you just have a drink and that became my solution to everything I never remember saying to myself now here's the problem that I won't be drinking over you know what I mean because the first step in solving a problem was having a drink you know you're sitting around a house you get the mail? Oh, a subpoena in the mail or a summons or whatever it was. What do you do when you get a summonds? I don't know, but I will shortly. Tear it up. You know, you got the power to make decisions. You got the power to do things. It was like without it, I was unarmed. I was powerless without alcohol in my system. Everything overpowered me. So anyway, my grades immediately took a nosedive. I barely graduated. The Korean War was going on. We had to join the military. Some guys were drinking beer and said, oh yeah, let's join the Marines. Okay, that I went down and that was a rude awakening to get into it was like a very intense you know I'm like the loose and easy does it you know and they were like no and but I made it you know I'm smart and in condition and no drinking going on much in those first ten weeks anyway and at the end of that time I'm a second lieutenant and now we're gonna go get six month infantry training and then boom over to Korea so we're out in the snow and Virginia and Quantico in the wintertime and it's cold and they're sleeping outside and everybody's going isn't it great we're sleeping out here and it soon I'm going no it's freezing I'd rather be in Mayflower Hotel in the suite getting room service you know that's the way I saw it and so it was so intense and I made it through and did well got a high grade in my class but I saw a training movie about pilots and they were at the bar and they were talking like this with their hands and there was some blondes over in the background and there is and I said what's that pilot deal and they say you don't want that you have to sign up for three more years I said what's three years man I came out of this outfit so I went over and I I said, I'd like to sign up for flight school. I have a great interest in flying. He said, have you ever been on a plane? I said no, but I still have a great interest in flying so I signed up for flight school within three more years and all that and of course that's a hard school and somehow I made it through and I got married and I went through Pensacola and then went on to Kingsville, Texas and then El Toro and then we went over to Japan And by the time I got there, the war was over because it took 18 months to get through flight school. So it looked like a good plan so far. And it was very exciting. God, did they drink a lot? And we flew that high-performance airplanes. And I have a lot of great memories of the camaraderie. I love the Marine Corps. I love what they do. I love all of the teamwork that we had. You really were, you put the unit ahead of yourself. And it Was a great feeling, and I really enjoyed it. But I was also an alcoholic, and as the years rolled by, I was a flight instructor, and I was in a photo squadron and forward air controller and various things like that. And then we had one kid, two kids, three kids, four kids, five kids, six kids. And so life is getting really crazy, and I am progressing in my disease to the point where I'm just drinking around the clock. And eventually, I had all kinds of driving while intoxicated and missing this and a lot of really horrible things. And my health is going bad, and my teeth are rotting out, even though we have free dental care. I can't go to the dentist because he might smell my alcohol. And just all these things you just have to let go. And there came a time when flying up in Cherry Point, North Carolina, and I was starting to withdraw in the planes. I would get up, and then I was not drinking for 12 hours prior to flying, and that was causing withdrawal. And those withdrawal symptoms were awful. They were just causing me to shake, and I couldn't see the instrument panel. It would just go fade in and out, and then it would feel like I'm going to pass out. I'm not going to passing out. And that's not a good thing to be doing in high-performance airplanes. so I started to develop a distrust of the pilot of the plane I was in which was me yeah I just knew that this was getting more dangerous more and I had some close calls and I finally went to the doctor and I said I'm having these terrible symptoms in the plane and I described them he about freaked out he said what you're losing consciousness and you're doing it yeah yeah yeah yes I mean so he sent me down to Pensacola and I was there for two weeks while they Studied me to see what might be causing these bizarre symptoms, and this is in 1961 or so and the There was no disease of alcoholism in the Navy I mean nobody was diagnosed as an alcoholic you just didn't exist and so you had to have something else So I'm there and they're studying me. I remember they got an old ad sky Raider a propeller plane. They They bolted a chair into it, and they had me in there in my underwear with electrodes all sticking to my nose and out the back. And they're taking this plane and doing all these things, trying to induce whatever I told them was happening. And that's not working. So they came up and they said, well, basically all we have is this guy has got very high blood pressure. His eyes are bloodshot. His speech is slurred. His hands tremble all the time. he reeks of alcohol several doctors commented the dentist in particular you just smell of alcohol I said I got drunk last night and it was like oh okay that's probably why you reek of alcohol it was just you just stepped over it and at the end of the two weeks they left it up to the psychiatrist and my paperwork came back and I was diagnosed as having a childhood fear of flying that manifested itself after 12 years of flying. You know, it just suddenly showed up. And I didn't have the wherewithal to fight any of this. I was already defeated. I mean, I couldn't stick up for myself or anything. All I just wanted was a drink. So I went back and waited three months for the Marine Corps to give me a reassignment. Once you lose your primary MOS, you have to get something else. And I was going, well, maybe I'll get into intelligence or maybe I will get into this. And I got orders to become an air traffic controller. So back to Glencoe, Georgia, and I made it through the school, which is just unbelievable that I could make it through that. But somehow drunks are funny. They just focus their energy. That's a hard school, I'm going to tell you. That's not an easy school. Now I'm an officer in charge of an air traffic control unit bringing in planes in bad weather when they can't see the runway and all these things, and went overseas. And my last year drinking, that's what I did, and I give credit to the gunnery sergeant in charge of the unit, and the first day I showed up, welcome, Captain, good to have you here, sir. Here's the tent, and here's your chair, and he was really polite. And he said, don't go near the radar. you know he could smell me he could see me and he knew there was an accident waiting to happen so my job was just trying to show up every day you know and it was getting harder and harder to find the unit to ride my bike to do anything and i became a daily drinker and i lost 50 pounds during that year due to mad malnutrition i was just wasting away and guys who were in my unit I saw them after I got sober, and some of them were up in Washington. And they were so happy that I was in AA. And they told me, they said, you know, we knew you were dying, but we didn't know what we could do. We didn't, we didn' t know what w e could do And somehow I got through that year, and that's how I ended up in Virginia. I was up in Quantico going through a career school to get promoted to colonel or something. And in that school, I had a grand mal seizure. and bit my tongue, you know. And so they carried me off to the Bethesda Naval Hospital and I was put up there and they were doing tests. What could have caused a grand mal seizure in a student in this school? You know, he must be studying too hard. He must be doing this. There was still a complete mystery as to what had caused the seizure and then now without alcohol for four or five days I went to DTs and they were huge. They were just right out of the Ray Milan type stuff. The CIA was moving the walls in my room. They were trying to accuse me of murder and I was defending myself and giving me memory tests and changing the walls. It was freaking me out and I'm starting to scream. Finally, I just lost it so he put me in a straitjacket, locked me up in a nut ward for six months. You're in there, man. You're crazy. So I'm in there as a crazy person. And, of course, as soon as I got sober and, you know, I got my faculties back a little bit, I started looking around. I said, There's a lot of crazy people in here. You know, it's like these guys weren't drinking. You know what I mean? I remember one guy, all he did, he stayed up all the time. I never saw him sleep, and he just went over by this window and waited for the sun to rise. And then when it got up here, he went over there to wait for it to come over. He'd just watch it go down over there. It was kind of tense in there. There were three drunks, and they didn't like the drunks. They thought we were phonies and thought our illness was a joke. It wasn't legitimate like manic depressive. You know what I mean? it's just you drink was not a mental illness as far as they were concerned and the shrink you know would have group therapy and they talk about all kinds of things and then about once every two months they'd talk about drinking and that would be the topic and we'd all be sitting around the therapist say what about the alcoholics in our midst and they'd start you know going with each one of these crazy guys all the way around and you could tell they were crazy because you know what they said he said you guys ought to stop drinking that's what they say and I remember going man you think that's it you think my problems that simple then I'm just gonna stop drinking I've got all these things as well that well anyway a a came in the hospital convinced his head psychiatrist that there were alcoholics in the Navy and they were probably on the nut ward and they ought to have an AA meeting for people who had any sort of drinking problems and that's how I got to a a the corpsman came in all drunks fall in right face over the elevator and down to the AA meeting and it was a wonderful story I thought I really admired these guys they were all excited about a a and happy and all that. And I remember telling him, boy, give me your card. If I ever run into a guy with a drinking problem, I'm going to refer him to you. Because I just couldn't see that I could be giving up drinking or anything like that. So there came a time when I was an outpatient and went home at night and weekends, but had to be all day in the nut ward, obviously getting ready to finally let me out. And after a month or so of that, I decided that I'd have a beer over the weekend to watch a Redskin game because I had a rule you can't watch a red skin game unless you're having a beer and so I was either going to have a beer or have the TV off and so um I had the beer and nothing happened and I don't know if any of you ever had this happen you have a beer nothing happens and they tell you the first drink gets you drunk you're an alcoholic you can control your drinking I remember so I had the drink I went to bed I never slept so good in my life I get in the car I'm going up nut ward and I'm going I had a drink and nothing happened I was so excited at now being a former alcoholic you know just driving back to the nut word it was just so you know like yay and I you know finally told a couple guys you know I said you know i've been drinking but now I stopped and then I know I said I hadn't have drink all the time I had appeared nothing happened I said it's unbelievable I can't I couldn't even eat lunch I was so excited about being free from alcohol. I couldn't sleep that night, the next day I couldn t eat. I could n t sleep the next night because I was free from alcohol and all I could think about was I had a drink and nothing happened. It was so great to be free totally from alcohol and I didn't eat or sleep for five days because I w as free from alchohol. So you can see what an obsession is. That's all I can think about, was I had that beer and nothing happened so that next weekend I said well if you can drink a beer you can drink a vodka and just have one you know let's we're gonna just have 1 drink a week from now on this is the new freedom from all this stuff I remember going in the package store I said I'll get a quart like a year supply I really thought that I said you know there probably be weeks I won't have any this thing could last I really thought a year that was what I had sort of a year's supply and of course that was gone over the weekend and now bringing vodka into the nut warden they told me if I ever drank again that throw me out of the Marine Corps oh the whole world was gonna crash so the following weekend Pearl Harbor Day 1964 my anniversary I called the outside AA you know, the inner group. And I said, I want to join AA for real. And they said, hang on, we got a guy, another Marine who's sober down in Quantico. There's only one other guy. And he finally came over to my house a couple hours later and came walking in. He's big, mean infantry Marine, just rawr. And he just, it was like, hi, I'm here and I'm going to kill you if you don't get sober. Now, he didn't say that, but that's what I felt like when he was in the room. So I'm in the car with him. I'm not arguing with him and we're on the way to a meeting and it was a fabulous meeting in Manassas, Virginia and it Was a group anniversary. They had square dancing. They had pies and cakes and turkeys and five speakers and they stayed there until 1130 at night and by the time the meeting was over I'd been sober about eight and a half hours and I felt awful and people are going isn't sobriety wonderful isn't this great, isn't it great and I went it's awful I want out of this outfit and I knew that if I didn't get out of AA that night I might never get out and I was right because I thought on the way home I said I gotta get rid of this guy it was a cold December rainy night so I'm thinking what can I do to get rid off him he's so, you know, look at him he's scary looking He might hurt me. I've got to come up with, so I came up with birthdays. I figured you would never have to go to AA on your kids' birthdays. So I just made up a story in my head that one of my kids was tomorrow night and then the next kid the next night and the next child. Then it was my birthday, then my wife's birthday, and then our anniversary. So it's going to be ten days before I'm eligible to go again. And I knew he'd go, well, that's fine. That's fine, I mean, birthdays. that sounds good so I'm practiced this speech on the way down nice you know I'm going this is it man this if you don't get out of here was like getting out of prison it was a prison break is what it felt like just so he pulls up in front of my house and I got out and ran around he saw me running around so he rolled his window down and I the speech left my head where I thought it up and I don't know where it went but didn't go to my mouth it just went somewhere and I had my finger with he told me my finger was going like that and I was making a clicking noise and he said I don't know what's wrong with you but if you have a drink I'm gonna really hurt you and I'll pick you up tomorrow night at seven o'clock and he just drove off and I think he was pulling away and then it speech came you know I won't be able to go to that meeting tomorrow night and that was it and haven't had a drink since and that uh that guy is still my sponsor and yesterday was his 36th anniversary August 6th he got sober on Hiroshima day and I got sober on Pearl Harbor day so we knew it had something to do with getting bombed so under his tutelage there began a transition I've been through a lot of stuff I went to a meeting every night for the first two years and at the end of that time I didn't get promoted to major in the Marine Corps the first year, and then I didn'T get promoted the second year so you have to leave you aren't really thrown out, you are pushed out So now I'm out, my whole career's over, I got six kids, I don't know what I'm going to do to support them and I got a resentment about going to AA every night and now I am out. Does anybody ever have something in their sobriety that wasn't supposed to happen according to you? I thought this was so off the charts that a guy would go to a meeting every night and then life would just go I just had a resentment that you wouldn't believe talk about an injustice how am I going to feed all these kids and I knew if you talked about this resentment they might get it away from you so I didn't talk about it I just stayed in my room like you're building an oven and just get this resentment was getting bigger and bigger and it was about mostly it was that God I had started to try to come back to this happy God and loving God, and I just thought this had ruined it as far as I was concerned. And so I was complaining to God. I said, thanks a lot, God. I just want to thank you again up there, big pal. Went to a meeting every night, didn't drink, followed every single thing, doing the next right thing. And you saw fit to kick me in the teeth. Thanks, God, I just wanted you to know and I'm just being sarcastic as I can be. and I had the Washington Post and I was reading it and I saw this little story that said Marine so I looked at it a little small story and it was about the amphibious warfare presentation team out of Quantico that went around to all the service schools and put on a big eight hour show and that's what I was on that's why I was the operations officer of that team it had just been killed in a plane crash in Denver on its way out to do a show for the Air Force out there and if I had had my way and gotten promoted I could have been on that plane so I'm reading that and I went jeez all those guys I know are dead and then I knew that God knew I had just read that and I was like um well if you had just told me this was going to happen I wouldn't have been so upset about all these things so I think it's one of the first lessons in sobriety about things not going our way and and and of course we need these things to make us grow and to prove to us that we really do have this power and this newfound freedom to be reasonably happy no matter what the circumstances are. And I think that's what AA is all about. And I would suggest to anybody who's been around AA for any reasonable amount of time, if you aren't reasonably happy almost all the time, reasonably, then you're doing it wrong. You know, it'd be like somebody, what if somebody came up to you and said, you know, I drink all the time and nothing happens? I would say, let me watch you drink. Because I know the power of alcohol. And they're probably drinking wrong. They're probably sipping or something like that. Because we know that if you take enough of that in, it's going to do something. Because we have to drink. Because we don't know the same thing with the program. We know this power is here. And we've seen friends, or maybe we've done it ourselves, gone through devastating illnesses, family deaths, divorces, bankruptcies, and still had a positive attitude and still have a sense that in spite of all this seeming adversity that fundamentally all is well and all of that comes from contact with a higher power that's where this signal, where this awareness where this wonderful ability to know that everything is alright comes from and if you're new, this is what our steps are designed to do is to enable you to be in touch with a guidance system in your life that can move you down this spiritual path so that you will change your priorities. That's what placing first things first means. It means put spirituality first and everything else will straighten out. And the other thing I want to say if you're new is that the spiritual path does not look like it'll work. Nothing spiritual makes sense intellectually. we have all kinds of paradoxes that occur in the spiritual life and of course the first one is that you win by giving up and that makes no sense whatsoever until you do it and then you realize how free you are from alcohol once you put the white flag up and totally surrender you're just not fighting that battle anymore you're calling in the army and the navy now you're getting all of AA comes in to help you with that struggle. And all of a sudden, you have the power to be lifted above the alcohol problem. Now, another thing you have to understand if you're new is that when problems are addressed spiritually, it isn't the same as figuring them out and solving them intellectually. We're used to looking at a problem and going, oh, I see. We have to get two parts of this. We had to come over here. You can see the solution. When problems are addressed spiritually, they aren't solved, they're removed. And there's a big difference. They just kind of go away so they don't exist anymore. You just stop thinking about drinking. It's not like you're no longer an alcoholic. It's just like it just doesn't exist as long as we maintain our spiritual condition. As it says in our literature, we have a daily reprieve contingent on our spiritual condition so what we have is the power to be lifted above these problems they're still there and if we want to take them back and not stay with this power that lifts us above them we'll go right back in them we're going right back into resentment and we're right back but as long as we put in a reasonable amount of effort on a daily basis to maintain this spiritual connection we will find that these problems have been set aside they're just over here they're bothering somebody else but they're not bothering us. You know what I'm saying? They haven't been solved but they don't exist and that is freedom. That is total freedom from the various problems that can confront us and so if you're new you're going to have to try I like to think of the steps are a series of actions that you take that you don't believe in and then after you take them you believe in them because they work. So you take the word of the people that came before you And if you will do that, you will soon see the results. Your job is no longer to figure out life. Your job is to judge the results you get from this program. That's your new job. Forget anything else. Just follow the instructions that you get and then report back on the results of how it's working. And if You're like the rest of us, You're going to be reporting back. You're not going to believe it, but my family straightened out. You're now going to believe it. But my boss said some nice things to me today you're not going to believe this and you're going to find that as you follow these things that you know aren't going to work they do and then you will have this faith and you'll start having this transformation and you will be solving things from the inside out you will find that you can change yourself to adapt to the circumstances instead of trying to force the circumstances to adapt to you. But the biggest thing that's going to change is your view of yourself. In closing, let me say that I think that's the greatest gift that a new alcoholic is given in the program is that through these 12 steps, you get a present that is given to you from Alcoholics Anonymous, and it's you, and your job is to unwrap it. And most of us arrive here with the wrapping paper looking bad it's got vomit on it it has bill collectors and stamps and return to sender i mean it's Got everything on this this terrible package and you can tell from the exterior that you don't want to open it you don' t want to look inside of you you know if you ever looked in there you're going to commit suicide it's going to be so awful and you know what you're wrong that's all you're just wrong all those ideas are wrong and you're going to be forced i mean it's going to take some courage okay i'm going to go in and look at the real and you'RE GOING TO TAKE THIS INVENTORY AND YOU'RE GOINNA GO IN AND YOU'RE GOING TO FIND OUT HOW BEAUTIFUL YOU ARE AND IF IT DOESN'T BRING TEARS TO YOUR EYES TO BE ABLE TO LOOK IN THAT MIRROR AND LOOK RIGHT INTO YOUR EYE AND GO WOW YOU'RE GREAT and you finally, AA, opened your eyes so you can see you and see how magnificent you are. You've been hiding in there all these years. You want to contribute to the world. You want me to help you. You want go help somebody else. You've wanted to do that all your life and you couldn't get out. You were trapped in there with an illness and freedom is at hand. God bless everybody. Thank you. Thank you.