The Responsibility of Being Happy – Sandy B.

Well, good evening everybody. My name is Sandy Beach and I'm an alcoholic. How are you doing? It is a pleasure to be here tonight and to participate in a meeting that only takes place once a year is a little bit different. It's probably hard to keep track of the group officials and Kevin mentioned the not drinking as a bottom line in sobriety and you know it's a funny thing to talk about just that principle of sobriety, of not drinking and I very often will start a talk by saying I came into AA on Pearl Harbor Day in 1964 and I haven't been drunk since that first meeting and I owe it all to not drinking and in a sense that's a true statement but in another sense it's not true at all in other words it reminds me of in order to stay alive all you have to do is breathe well that's a true statement but on the other hand if all there was to living was breathing after a while we might choose to quit you know just out of boredom or so on down and I think the same thing is true if you've been in AA for a while and you're going to meetings and you are not drinking and you thinking of suicide you're probably not doing it right. You know what I mean? There's something missing. It would be as if someone came up to you and said, you know, I've been drinking a lot lately. This is many years ago when you first started out. You're growing up and one of your friends says, you know I drink a lot and I don't get drunk. I don' t know what you would say but I wouldn't believe him. I would call him over and I'd say, I'd like to watch you drink and not get drunk because I have faith in the power of alcohol and I just don't think there are people who can drink and not get drunk and then I'd watch him and if he's a typical non-alcoholic he would have one drink and quit and I would say well we've narrowed down your problem your problem is you don't drink enough and I find the same analogy here in AA that if we're working the program and you aren't happy, you're not working it enough. In other words, there's no such thing as the program didn't work for me. Because the program has to be a thousand times more powerful than alcohol. And so it's the same thing. It is willingness to go ahead and drink more of the program and get it into our souls and in our system and it will work. And it's a heck of a responsibility when I was early on in I heard somebody out in Manassas one of those old timers back then say let me just tell you something if you're an AA and you're not happy you're doing it wrong well that's good news and it's bad news it's good new it's news that there's that much power here but it's Bad News because it puts the responsibility right on me you know what I mean if I'm getting up every day and I'm not enjoying life it's something that I'm doing You know, in our 10th step, it talks about if we're disturbed, no matter what the cause, there's something wrong with us. And the program focuses it all back on me, which was the last place I wanted it when I got here. That was not my style at all. And in observing things over the last 21 years, I think that there's a lot of other people who arrive here with that same perspective. In other words, when something's wrong, we immediately look around and place the blame somewhere. lousy job wrong kind of a wife that's my problem you ever hear us when we really get going wrong kind of a life that's that's my problem basically and she just doesn't understand me or if it's the other way around I got this husband he's never home I got the wrong kind of a thing and wrong job wrong upbringing that's another one I remember for the first four years in AA I blamed my alcoholism on the Catholic Church the very convenient place to blame And, you know, when you think about it, we sort of think of life that way. That if we're not happy, if it isn't going right, our job is to look around and see what's wrong out there. You know, and that's where the geographical cure came in. It was such a common thing. Well, it's not working here. I'll go to Dallas, Texas. And everything will straighten out. You remember that kind of thinking where you just go, I'll goes to Dallas Texas. Well, I never went to Dallas, Texas, but I joined the Marine Corps. Which was... Probably should have gone to Dallas-Texas when I think back about it. But, you know, that was one of the things that was going to fix something. I was goingto turn my life over to the Marine Corp and stand back and see what happened. And I'll have to admit it was kind of like drinking. It was never boring. There was something happening all the time. and I learned early on the concept of a higher power when I met the first sergeant that I had ever run into. And you know, this is a funny story I've forgotten about. I don't think I've ever told it at a meeting. But I came out of Yale University and it was during the Korean thing and I think everybody had to go into the service and some guy was talking about the Marine Corps and we were all drinking beer and he said, why don't we get out and join now? And I said, let me finish this beer first. I want to think it over, you know, like a big lifetime decision. And it's made on a Saturday afternoon in about the 12th beer. And about 12 guys just got up and relieved ourselves one more time and went off to the recruiting office and said, we're just cut out to be Marines. And the guy took a look at this crowd and said well, we'll take you anyway. We're very hard up right now. so sign up here and boy we were in you know, and We would do the report after graduation and I remember getting on that train and I had my golf clubs You know what I mean and I booze money And I said wonder what this Quantico area where the bars are and is near Washington DC That's gonna be a lot of fun. I'm just coming down here and and all I had seen was some movies about pilots, and they were at the officer's club, and they weren't going like this, and there was all these women from Hawaii were off in the background. So I just had this mental picture of this is going to be something, you know. Wait till I get down there. About four months before this had happened, there had been, down in boot camp in Parris Island, and there had been some Marines killed by the DIs marching them in the swamps. And the current directive in the Marine Corps was you can't punch people anymore, and that was in all the papers and everything, so we felt rather secure in coming down here that these guys can't lay a glove on you and get away with anything you want and no more beating up recruits and new people in the Marines. So this was very good news to us. and the crowd arrived in Union Station from all over the country. The trains were pulling in from Chicago and these little drib-drabs, you could tell they were all grouping at this one track where the train was going to go down to Quantico and there were guys with their guitars and you should have seen it, it was like a huge party we're going to get some more booze and bring it in and there was this ringleader who got in the middle of this thing I'll never forget, he sort of took over and he started telling us about our rights and they can't lay a glove on you and I'm a lawyer and when I get down there I'm going to straighten them out and the Marine Corps doesn't know what it's going to do and boy, we're just listening to this guy and I said, well, I'm glad he's here to straighten this all out because in spite of all his bravado there was a little anxiety down in the bottom as we got on the train and we come roaring down to Quantico and the train unloaded on the platform down there and we all came piling off and he was the first one off and he ran over and this big black first sergeant was standing out there. The guy must have been 6'4", you know, just... And he ran right up and he says, I'm not taking any shit off of you right now. I can tell you right no I represent these people and we're going to turn this Marine Corps around and this guy just went wham! And flattened him and they came up with a stretcher and carried him off and we're going what about no hitting what about all the rules that are going on I said well God you know well shaved all the head off you know and it was like oh well about three weeks into that we never saw him again the rumor was he died that this guy hit him so hard he died and And about three weeks into this routine down here, I was standing in line one day. You know, you just stand. You've been forever standing inline. And I look in one of the Quonset huts and here's this Sergeant E-5 typing away on a report. And it was the guy who got hit. And it turned out he was a plant. Since they couldn't hit anybody, they could stage something to make it look like they hit somebody. And he came up, he was an E-5 in the Marine Corps and just came up and took over this whole, oh, don't worry, I'll tell those people when we get down there. And I'll say it worked. Scared the hell out of us, but that got me in. And I did most of my drinking in the Marines Corps and I flew for them for 12 years and had a lot of fun. It was a very exciting semi-career. I had a career going, but the Marine Corps didn't agree. And at the end of my story, I ended up in a hospital and eventually getting thrown out of the Marine Corp. So you can see my life was kind of going backwards. And it definitely was all due to drinking. I look back on it, I was sort of a nervous, skinny teenager wondering what the hell was going on. And that's the way I remember coming out of high school. I hadn't had a drink yet. I had all of these problems of life, you know, how do you go out with women? How do you learn? What is this church stuff all about? God is so frightening. How do You really make friends? And difficult to share and felt it sometimes awkward to ask questions about things. So I learned a lot of my philosophy of life off of the writings of the great philosophers who share them in the bathrooms around the country and you will see some of the most interesting facts written in there by people who are much wiser than we are and they share these secrets of life. And you're sitting in there and you're going, God, I never realized that. Isn't that amazing? Then if you're not a sharer you never check that out with anybody and you sort of carry it around back in there as sort of a very obscure fact that you're now aware of and you can't quite sure of but on the other hand you can dismiss it totally and there's a whole bunch of this kind of information that gets collected along the way and we're so lucky in AA to have a place where we eventually sort all this stuff out through our steps and our sharing and so on down and so I, you know think about how I had come along in life before I had a drink and I was really doing terrible you know what I mean when I look back on it even without alcohol I was not doing very well. And that leads me to the conclusion that if I had never had a drink, ever, ever, never, I never would have come to AA, obviously, I would be like an old skinny neurotic walking around wondering what the hell is going on. I mean, you know what I mean? And still intimidated. I just don't see where I ever would have been forced in to the growing up process that AA has given me and given me the new view on life. I just can't imagine it, knowing me and the way things were going, how I ever would have. So I'm one of the people who says I am really glad that I'm an alcoholic. I'm grateful that I am an alcoholic, not only grateful for AA but grateful that I had this debilitating illness illness that eventually forced me to come in here where I was given, as Chuck Chamberlain says in his little book there, a new pair of glasses and took a look at this world and found it to be the most marvelous place in the world. And boy, I'll tell you, I didn't ever see it that way. And as a result, when I had my first drink, it was a dramatic event because I went, I came and poured that alcohol into a person whose view of the world was one of a very great intimidation, and people were very imposing. And it was a high level of anxiety there at all times, just walking around uptight, you know, that kind of a person. And when that alcohol got put in my system, I can remember to this day at the university feeling intimidated by all these guys that come from all over the country, and I was one of the townies, that was my hometown and I worked as a steeplejack on the Yale buildings. I almost felt like I didn't even go there, you know and then I'd go to some class and then I'd be out working and just didn't feel like I belonged with this crowd and when I would go to social events where there would be a dance or there'd be just let's all meet and get to know each other and talk I just didn'T know how you got that started you know what i mean when you walk into a room and there's 25 people who haven't met each other yet and so you walk in and and you go well i wonder if i should talk to these people or those you know where the hell is the blueprint for this thing why doesn't somebody come in and issue the instructions on what it is and pretty soon here's eight people all talking over here and here's four and there're two and then there's this and you're out you're not in any one of those groups you know what i mean and so you go well i go over to this group of eight and see if this is probably where i belong right in here and you walk over and they look over and go down you know they give you that look like what are you doing with this girl okay it's not that group of eight it's probably a little group of two over here this is the where i belongs right in here and then you go up there and they give me that look like what do you doing and and the reason you're getting the look is that you're walking over going uh you know like is this it for me and they go who's that weird guy you know so you just go dee dee deep and you find you belong in none of the groups none of them wants you at all you do not belong there and the easiest answer to that is to leave walk out the door and go back to your room and go isn't that unfortunate that I was odd man out at that thing that of all you know 40 people and 39 fit in and one didn't they probably know them from this town here and you know they just don't like me or whatever it was. Well I'm in this group with 39 people who don't like me and they pour then booze is going around and I was not drinking at that time because of a situation with purgatory. I know that may not have anything to bring a bell with everybody but there was this deal going on and I really was into it that all kinds of little deviations from the true way to live would rack up just in years and years and years in some place called purgatory where you would go upon death and spend forever in there depending on your behavior. And I just couldn't stop this. I remember in my neighborhood when I was about 15, we had an epidemic of impure thoughts that came in there. It was everywhere you went. You were just constantly racking up more years in purgatory. So I heard about a deal that if you didn't drink until you were 21, you got like 10,000 years off. I mean, it was a definite... On the other side, so I was just going, I'm going to need that and more, so I might as well rack them up. So I had already turned 19 and had not had a drink yet. Well on my way to reaching that goal, But this particular evening, and of course the people in the freshman class were all drinking. And they were surprised that I wasn't. And there was this constant, come on, you ought to have a drink. You ought to be joining in. I hadn't had a drink until I'm on my way with this deal. But the situation was just so bad. And they said, if you drink, you will feel good. And I wanted to feel good, I hadn'T felt good in a long time. And I would have enjoyed that. So this particular night, I remember getting a glass of whiskey off of the tray that was going around. and going, well, here goes the hell with that pledge. I got a real problem here today. And, you know, day at a time. You got to live in the now. The hell with purgatory. And I said, I'm anxiously awaiting to see what it feels like to get this alcohol in your system. And I drank it down. I'm standing there going, boy, this is going to be wonderful. It's going tobe wonderful. And nothing was happening. Then I was going, this stuff doesn't work. Alcohol doesn't look good. It doesn't really work after all that buildup. And another tray went by and I got another one and poured it down and I began to think the whiskey was broken. There was something incredibly wrong with the alcohol. And the funny thing, after sort of standing around waiting for something to happen for 15 minutes or so, I looked up and while nothing had happened to me, they had replaced the 39 people who previously were in the room with 39 of the most friendly, wonderful people. I could not believe my eyes. this group of eight over here were all looking at me and they were going, please come over and join us and tell us a joke. And this group is going, don't go there first. Come over and Join Us First. Everybody wanted me in their group. You know what I mean? I could just see it in their eyes. And I spread myself out, went to every single place and just laid it on them. You know What I Mean? Just doing stuff and talking and just having a gale time all the way around that room. And then I went home and puked all over the place and, you know, all of the basic learning how. But I'll tell you, that was a monumental event because I had found, as far as I was concerned, the secret to life. I mean, I was on to something big. This wasn't some way to have a little bit better time on Saturday night. I mean I saw that stuff in the classroom that first night. I meanI saw that. Yes, this will help during finals. You know what I mean? This stuff just went from nowhere to my favorite thing. You know, that's moving up the ladder of the hit parade to go from nowhere to your favorite thing in the entire world. More favorite than my mother, my father, my sister, friends, everything. Booze went all the way up. This didn't happen to a lot of other guys there. That did not happen to them. It happened to the alcoholics. Our relationship with alcohol was incredibly different than social drinkers. They look at it, isn't that interesting? Kind of like my relationship is now with ice cream. It's nice, I really love it and I get some after a meal and it's just marvelous. But I don't have to go to meetings if I want to not eat ice cream for a day. You know what I mean? I don' t need help with that. so alcohol was you know when I look back on it here it was just 15 minutes and it was the single most important thing in my life drinking and I had a few things I said well we got to work on this puking this is obviously we gotto do something about that and that took a long time to get through that and then the blackouts getting in fights I had my teeth knocked out and there were you know crashing trucks into things and just, you know, all of this stuff. And I'm getting arrested, going to jail, all this in the first year. And I've got some rough edges here to get. But never, never was I discouraged by any of these results into thinking that we might not drink. It was so central to solving problems. It was such a good thing and it was so essential to having a good time that any price was worth it. In other words, I just looked at getting your teeth knocked out as a small price to pay for all the fun you're having. You know what I mean? And that was the rationalization that went all the way to the end. And you know, I think all of us rationalize that way. We just went, well, I know, it broke up the family and nobody talks to me. But I'll tell you, when you really think about it, that's a small prize to pay for that warm glow and that energy burst that you get. You know, I mean, God, without booze, life would be absolutely unbearable. My life is so terrible. I mean I deserve booze. You know that sort of thinking and I think we all do that. We rationalize that it was a small price to pay for the fun we're having and as the disease progresses our ability to rationalize has to improve dramatically because not only does the trouble increase tenfold over what it was in the beginning but the amount of enjoyment goes down, down, down, and so we're paying a hundred times the price and we're getting a hundred times less the enjoyment we used to get and we are still going it's a small price to pay for all of that. And as a matter of fact when you get near the end and you are having blackouts and you're having the where you go in and you drink just to maintain to stop shaking and so on down and you've been in a blackout for three days i mean i can remember really being out of it and getting a lot of trouble after i got in the marine corps and coming to and i would try and talk to the people who were at the same weekend that i was at did you ever do that to recreate the weekend without telling them that you don't remember the weekend and you'd go that was really something wasn't it you know and they're going yeah yeah it really was i said yeah that was nice when we went up there and then who showed up there and then get them talking and then they'd say yeah and then you stole that guy's car and you went over and go oh yeah yeah yeah and then you went over there and you were dancing with all those Japanese girls and jumping on I said yeah I was jumping on the bar right and everything and so then I'd get these people to recreate the weekend and then I would say well in your opinion then I had a hell of a good time right and they would say yes you did and I'd say thank god I paid a hell of a price for that time that i don't remember and so now i was balancing the equation by taking someone else's word that i was that alcohol was still worth it and when you look back that's a strange way to put value in your life but that is the way i remember it anyway ended up in the marine corps went to flight school flew for them for 12 years and had a lot of exciting adventures but those have nothing to do with alcoholism, which is an inside job. If I had been a teacher, I would have been a drunk teacher. If I'd been a bus driver, I would've been a drunken bus driver. I was a drunk pilot. When I got to the end of the line flying and the drinking was absolutely getting to the best of me and I was experiencing withdrawals in the airplanes at the very last of my flying I was down in Cherry Point and I was flying the F-8 Crusader in a photo squadron and I can recall having heart palpitations and loss of vision and I'm not going to lie and I wasn't going to and I didn't know and I had no idea and I knew and I could see and I couldn't see absolutely convinced I was going to pass out and this is because I had a rule that I wouldn't drink and fly and now I've been around a lot of pilots in AA and that was a stupid rule for an alcoholic pilot because I would have been in a lot better shape with a drink in me than I was going through withdrawals at the speed of sound. It's just a very bad, bad situation. I mean, it's just totally coming apart and the system absolutely needing a drink and sending up the signals that a convulsion is near or whatever is coming, and it came eventually. So I had this theory. We always have a chance to solve problems that other people never have. You know what I'm talking about? The average person may have a business meeting, and they have to go in that room and brief some intimidating authority figures, out-of-town bosses, you know what i'm talking About? So they have learn a presentation and get up on a stage and write some figures and memorize some stuff and act calm and not sweat in front of all these people. And the alcoholic has to do the same thing, but the alcoholic may also be trying not to puke. He may be seriously worried that a sheriff is going to burst through the door any second with a warrant for his arrest. He may Be wondering where the hell his car is, you know what I mean? And so he has like 15 other things that he's doing while he's going through this. I'd like you to buy this product or, you Know, is that a Sheriff over there? you know it's just you get to practice some problems that the average person doesn't get to practice and i can and then come up with a solution to those things early on i remember coming up with an alcoholic solution i know i'm digressing but that's the nature of the brain damage that was uh inflicted by that terrible thing alcohol and this was back when i was in college and i remember going down as a real tough part of town but that'S where the best pizzas were, and we'd go down there and do that. Anyway, this one night I was sitting at the bar, and trouble started. A couple guys came up behind me, grabbed me by my hair, and yanked me off the bar stool, just kicked the hell out of me, and came back, and everybody said, don't go to that section of town. And I remember going, no, I don't want to not go to that sectionof town. What the hell are you talking about? That's where all the fun is, and this and that. So I'm drinking and thinking and drinking and drinking, which is the best way to be, right? And drinking and thinking and finally it dawned on me. Hey, I know how to do this. I got a crew cut. And to me, that was the answer to that particular problem. Nobody gonna come up and yank me by my hair and pull me off of a bar stool again. You know, and so these are the kind of getting me ready for later on and when I was overseas in Japan, I've told this story many times and i had was into the advanced drinking really bad shape um and i needed booze at all times when i would go to sleep i would leave notes in the morning you know buy booze and don't forget this because it just was an absolute daily requirement and on this particular day i woke up i went back it was a saturday afternoon i went Back and took a nap and woke up and i was needed a drink so bad and my shakes were just out of control. And I looked over at the bottle, and it was empty. And I just couldn't believe that it was empty. And worse than that, I looked at my watch, and the package store closed every Saturday afternoon for three hours from 3 to 6. And they did inventory or something like that, and it wasn't even open. It was like four minutes to three. And I went, oh my God! And I jumped out of bed, and I'm standing there, and I went to put my shoes on. I got the clothes on in a hurry, and I want to put the shoes on, and I'd been out the night before and it stepped in several banjo ditches and things like that and the shoelaces being leather had gotten soaked and caked with this stuff and then they had dried up and they were just and I had a fork in one hand and I'm working on the things and I thought I was going to have a heart attack I'm looking at the clock you know and we would have thought it was Mission Impossible you know the bomb is going to go off in eight more seconds nine I got to get this thing you know I finally got one shoe on I'm getting it on in the other shoe and I got on my bicycle over to that Quonset hut where the package store was and the guy's just putting the lock on. I'm going, wait a minute, wait a minute. All right. And he sold me a bottle of vodka and I go back to the Quonsets hut and I got the vodka and I poured it into my system and I started getting calmed down and then pretty soon I'm sort of, well, I wonder what I was so upset about just a little while ago is just amazing. But my conscience got the best of me that day and it said wait a moment, wait another minute. We're not gonna let this one slide. Let's review the facts here. Let's sit down and see what just happened. You're 33 years old, you're captain of the Marine Corps, you're father of six children, you'RE sitting on a goddamn bed with a fork in your hand trying to get some shoelaces undone. You'RE shaking so bad you'RE going to fall down. You'Re going to have a heart attack because you don't have any booze. You've got a problem buddy and you have to do something about it. No more of this not dealing with these problems. Do you ever have those little talks with yourself? I'M going to get straightened out. And I said alright I am going to do it. I'm going to DO something about this. I'm gonna do something so I drank and thought and drank and thought and I went over and bought a pair of loafers brought them back and told myself you know and that was alcoholic problem solving we just come up with and then we wonder why people when we tell them that they go huh Jesus well I'm into solving problems like a grown up you know oh People don't relate to us. Anyway, I was solving another problem about ten minutes ago in an airplane, and the problem was I was about to lose consciousness. And so my solution to that problem was to fly with one hand on the ejection curtain, which is a little awkward. You have to use the other hand for all the various camera controls and the trim tabs and all of this. but my theory was if I pass out I will fall forward and eject myself out of the plane and the parachute opens automatically and I'll float down to earth and nothing will happen to me and I remember just going well, I'm really smart I'm so damn clever the way I figured these little tricky things out If the Marine Corps knew I was screwing around with one of their airplanes like that you know, well I'll just hold on they think they have a responsible person up there out there taking photographs, bringing them back we got a guy up there trying to not pass out I mean it's just so anyway the end came when I just didn't trust the pilot of the plane I was in anymore turned myself in and the doctors diagnosed me for a couple weeks this is back before they had any knowledge in the Navy about alcoholism, and they found the sweaty palms, the shaking hands, the high blood pressure, neurotic. And it was a two-week evaluation down in Pensacola, Florida. At the end of that time, they couldn't find a physical answer to what was wrong, and they left it up to the psychiatrist. And this Navy captain wrote me up as a childhood fear airplanes and that was the heart of the whole problem so I sent back I was crushed I mean that was my whole identity was wearing those wings and being somebody now I was nobody again I had that terminal problem of being nobody you know like the parquet margarine thing I'd go yeah I am somebody I'm somebody look at this I'm finally captain on this net and then little boys ago nobody you no like butter and all right well I'll go do this and then I'll be somebody you ever have that I'll get promoted and I'll this and then now i'm somebody and then you're sitting on your bed late at night he goes you're still nobody haha how do you ever get to be somebody you know and the only time i was anybody was on the third drink and then i was somebody when that stuff took hold initially not later around when you got all bent out of shape but right there when that glow first hit i'd go now this is when i would like to be like this all the time i am somebody and i had value and everything and then the fourth drink screwed it all up but there was a A little moment there when I had a glimpse of what it was to be a person when the power inside of me was in harmony with everything else. But anyway, the identity was taken away and I was sent back and the Marine Corps now had to decide what to do with a person who got himself in such bad shape that he can't fly airplanes anymore and we can tell that they had a problem as well as me because I was set to become an air traffic controller And I went down and went through the school in Glencoe, Georgia and learned how to bring planes in in bad weather when they can't see the runway. And that's what I did for the last year of my drinking was sit in front of a radar screen seeing all kinds of things on there that weren't there. I would call traffic, you know, if you've got traffic at 2 o'clock, 2 miles, and they'd go, I don't see anything. And then I'd go oh, you don't know, and I'd just blink my eyes and it would go away. There was something crossing my eyeball another broken blood vessel or something like that but fortunately nothing nobody died there's no horror stories there and anyway that's what i was doing my last year drinking i ended up going to a career school in quantico and in the middle of the school i had a grand mal seizure convulsion where you bite your tongue in half you know and fall on the floor and at that point in time they decided that we have to do something we finally had a problem of sufficient magnitude that we no longer can have him continue in the class. He's disturbing the rest of the people. We're going to have to take him out of the system. So I was finally intervened, and I was sent to Bethesda and was locked up for six months in the nut ward with the rest of the crazy people. And I tell you one story about the crazy people. We had these group therapy things where the psychiatrist would sit out there and talk about all kinds of, all these other illnesses, manic, depressive, schizophrenic, whatever there was. And then every about once a month that he'd say, well tonight why don't we talk about the drunks? And there were three of us out of 30 that were drunks. One Marine colonel, myself and a Navy lieutenant commander. And so they said, all right we'll start around the room. And you know what all those weird people in there, these are the, all the kinds of these weird things. They said, you guys ought to stop drinking. I can't believe what they're saying you know next time I heard that it was in here by the way same kind of strange crowd but eventually AA got in there and I got to my first AA meeting when a corpsman came into the nut ward and said all drunks fall in right face and marched us down to the room and there was a meeting. Four months later, when I got out as an outpatient, I drank and called AA on my own over the weekend because I knew when I went back to the hospital they were going to throw me out of the Marine Corps and I was going to blame it on AA. I was gonna say, hey, I joined AA over the week and it got smashed. And maybe that would buy me some time. But I didn't bargain on my sponsor that was the one thing i didn't bargain on i dial this number hello alcoholics novice yes go ahead send somebody over really we'd like to have some help here boom boom knock on the door you know and i open the door and there's this giant he just goes into the house you're the drunk sit down over here my name is bill this is a 12-step call i talk you listen get over here wait you You, the wife, you get over here. Is he really bad? He's bad. Oh, he's really bad. Okay, you. You're going to do everything I tell you. And I'm going, what the hell is going on? Couldn't you just leave some literature and the proof that I joined? And he's going, okay, there's a meeting at Manassas tonight. Get in the car. And I mean, I haven't been sober four hours. I need a drink real bad. I'm getting in with this fanatic. And we drive out in the cars an hour's drive. And he says, I don't know. And he goes, well, we'll be going to a meeting every night for about four years. you're a real bad case and we just need you and here's the meeting schedule we can drive to Fredericksburg you know that's only an hour and then we come up to Falls Church this is from Quantico these are the nearest meetings Wellington over here that was one of our regular meetings and I'm going oh my god I heard this schedule and then the other thing was that night and that's why tonight reminds me of it Manassas was their group anniversary and they had five speakers, 200 tons of food, Speedy Baker and his band, square dancing afterwards. The meeting went till midnight and we're driving home and he's going yeah we'll be doing this every night and I'm going wow. You know we left at 7 and we were getting home at 1. I had no way of knowing they didn't all look like that and I was just going oh Jesus I got to get out of this thing. And so, this was my hope. This is how I was going to get out Of Alcoholics Anonymous. I said, if I don't get out tonight, I may never get out. This guy, you know, this is one of these things you're in, they get you, they never hear from you again. You don't know it. I got to get out of this tonight. And, so, all the way home he's talking about stuff, I don' t know what the hell he's talk'n about. And I'm just going, alright, we get there in front of my house, car pulls up and that's when I hit him with my story. And I'm going to, he has to buy this. And so this was my plan. I said, we're going to get there. I'm gonna get out of the car and I'm gonna roll the window down and go, Bill, let me tell you something. You're just the greatest guy. I really appreciate that. And I'm in. Count me in. Alcoholics are nuts. But tomorrow night is my youngest son's birthday. And I've been promising him. And the next night is my youngest daughter's birthday. And I have six kids, right? So there's a whole week right there. Then it was my wife's birthday, my birthday. My parents were coming down. The wedding anniversary, and I had about 12 days. And I figured, 12 days, he'll forget about me. So we pull up in front of the house, and i got out of the car, came around, now I haven't had a drink now in about nine hours. You remember how well you're functioning if you haven't any alcohol in your system in nine hours? And I got out, and he saw me standing there, and his window rolled down, and I had my finger like this, and my speech left the brain scooting down to be said to him and went like down in my feet or in my knees you know and i'm going come on words did you ever do that and you go and there's nothing coming i'm just and i'M JUST SORT OF STANDING THERE STARTING TO SWEAT A LITTLE BIT AND HE LOOKED AND LOOKED FINALLY HE SAID DON'T YOU TAKE A GODDAMN DRINK AND I'LL PICK YOU UP TOMORROW NIGHT AT SEVEN the club and he's gone and i'm just pointing at him his tail lights got out of sight down the road somewhere and i went i won't be going tomorrow night it's a son's birthday and i went ahead and gave the whole damn speech out there on the road and my family looked out and said oh boy aa isn't gonna do much good either but there it is that was a long time ago. That was 21 years ago and I'm still here. I didn't plan on it. I didn't play any of the things that have happened to me. And if you're new, stop planning things. If you plan things, you will sell yourself short because you cannot... If you were to try and write on a piece of paper the most beautiful future that you could have for yourself if you we gave you the power in this room to sit down and write on a piece of paper how idyllic and write down what would be the most wonderful future for yourself and you could it and we could guarantee that you would have it you would shortchange yourself compared to what will happen to you if you just go along with the program. The things that turn out to be the most valuable you don't even know to ask for yet. You wouldn't even have them on your list. Think about Alcoholics Anonymous. Would you have ever, prior to coming here written, going to smoky church basements is your favorite thing to do? Yeah, I'll be going there. That'll be on my list. That's not on there. That wouldn't have been on there, but look how valuable it is. Would you have talked about doing the 12 steps of AlcoholicsAnonymous Would you have put any of those things on there? Would you put becoming a better person, learning how to live in harmony with the world around you? You wouldn't have put that crap. You would have put a yacht. Right? And a million dollars and 12 women or 12 men, whatever it may be. And six months into it, you would have committed suicide because you wouldn't Have been fixed from the inside out. We wouldn't HAVE had what was in store for us. We would have had what we thought ought to be in store for us. And that's the difference between a self-directed, self-centered way of life and turning our life over so that what is intended for you arrives. What you've done, and this is just my own opinion, in your drinking and our self-centredness and our perspective that we had before, you have blocked out the most valuable components of life itself. You've blocked out the love and the help and the sharing and a higher power and joy and serenity in a frantic search for excitement so that you don't think about how things are going. If you could just keep the party going, then you'd never sit down and think about suicide. You know what I mean? You'd never contemplate the reality of it. And here, it's a whole different way of having your life unfold a day at a time. And if you don'T believe it, think about what drinking did and how much faith you had in that bottle. And how you just didn't know what was going to happen when you drank it. When I went into a package store, it was the same as going to a library, checking out a book about some novel with fiction. All this action is going to happen. You look at the cover, you got a vague idea what this might be about but until you read it, you really don't know what was in that book. And the same thing with a bottle of whiskey. You could go in there and hold it up to the light and shake it and smell it. And I wonder what's going to happen to me when I drink this. You know what I mean? You didn't know you might end up in Wisconsin. You might endup in jail. You might ended up with a beautiful woman, but you didn't until you drank it. It was one of these things and we literally turned our life over to the care of alcohol and waited to see what was going to happened and were completely willing to rely on that kind of a power source. Well, what we have in here is a power that loves you. We have a thousand times more powerful power and we have a future that is so exciting that it's just beyond description. All you have to do is let it happen. The secret to sobriety is not getting in the way. Our character defects, our self-centeredness resentments and anger and all those things block out what's freely available here. So we need each other to help us put those glasses on. Those new glasses that let us see the world from a much different perspective. Bill talks about getting to the third dimension of existence, where we see things from a bunch different way, where our whole way of looking at it, and then we see how beautiful people are. You know, people that are here tonight, did you ever think when you were brand new that you would actually care about the well-being of somebody else? You had never done that in your life if you're a typical drunk and yet long about your second or third month you're sitting there at a table probably still having a hard time holding that cup of coffee and a new guy came in across the way now you're not the junior one anymore here's a new Guy in your group and he's only got two days and he's over there trying to get the coffee in the coffee pot and he sweating and you can see the fear in his eyes and and you're sittin' there with your own problems and all little things you're worried about you don't have enough money you don t have this and when am I gonna get promoter and all of that but you're looking at this guy in the middle of the meeting somebody's talking on the subject over here and all OF A SUDDEN your damn heart practically jumps out of your throat and you just go god I hope he makes it and then you go home that night and you go Jesus that was a hell of an experience god I HOPE HE MAKES IT and then all week long you're thinking about yourself 90% of the time but you have these little flashes boy I hope next week he's there I hope he's there and then when he shows up the next week you go yeah and you're on his team you know what I'm talking about you're rooting for somebody first time in our lives for a lot of us and we just share and we just go isn't it wonderful that somebody's having an anniversary and I remember year before I would come in here I'd go I don't want to go to somebody else's anniversary I just want to go to mine you know and you go to those meetings and they're talking about God and you go enough about God what about me let's get the topic back to something important you You know, that's that old perspective. And so what's going to happen to you here if you will just stay out of the way and stop putting your judgment on top of your sponsors and the friends around you? You are in for one of the greatest lives imaginable. So sit back, enjoy it, and share it with us, will you? Thank you. Thank you very much.