The Solution for All Problems Is Spiritual Growth – Sandy B.

Very good. Thanks a lot, Ryan. Buenas noches, amigos. Yo me llamo Sandy de la Playa y soy alcohólico. That concludes the extent of my Spanish. My name is Sandy Beach, and I'm an alcoholic. How are you all doing? Thank you for inviting me. It's a pleasure to be here amongst you. I love AA events like this because it's a celebration. Everything in AA is a celebration, every meeting is a celebration. That's why it's so much fun. We're just celebrating that we ain't out there, and we're in here. And we have found something that none of us deserve, but it was given to us anyway. And I'm so happy that I was one of the lucky ones that got dragged in here kicking and screaming, convinced it wouldn't work. You don't understand me, but somehow I managed to stick around, and I'm a lucky guy to have had all these years in AA. It's been a lot of fun, and it's the best is yet to come. You rarely hear anybody who's been around AA a long time go, man, those good old days when I had one year, man they were great, they were amazing. It just gets better. There's just more insight, and there's just a more comfortable relationship with your higher power, and just all kinds of things in store for all of us. So I'm looking forward to many more years in this great fellowship. I was thinking about my sponsor. I'm really lucky because I've had the same sponsor for 36 years, and that's a good deal. Now we don't live in the same area, but we stay in touch, and it's been a great pleasure, and I thought of a funny story about him that I would share with you. I'd been sober, we were both in the Marine Corps, I'll probably get to this if I get to my story. I sometimes wander and I get talking about this and that, and if I leave out my story, you'll just have to trust that I'm an alcoholic. And didn't get here as an imposter trying to improve my resume. Anyway, I think we were both in the Marine Corps stationed down at Quantico, Virginia. That's where I came into AA and he already had about a year-and-a-half and we were both captains. We had a home group down there, the Dumfries Triangle Group, and we had five members and it was a speaker meeting. We had to go way up, you know, like much closer to Washington, D.C. to get anybody because there weren't any other meetings around there and nobody wanted to come down there. You know, your ego, you've been sober a while, you're not going to drive 45 minutes to talk to five people. So it was real hard to get, but we kept it going. And so he was, like, in charge of everything. So one night I had about eight or nine months sobriety and he says to me, I'm picking you up early tonight. We're going to have a business meeting. And I go, all right. I hadn't heard anything about business meetings. So we get in the car, we go in the church and he unlocks it and pulls the podium. It was a great big wooden thing with a padlock on it and it had everything in it to run the whole meeting. It was the package deal, the coffee pots, the sugar, the cups the signs, easy does everything was in the podium and he had the combination he opened it up and then I'm the only one there and so he gets it all set and I'm sitting right here and he calls the meeting to order and he says it's customary in AA to rotate the service job in the groups and for the past year and a half i've been the secretary the treasurer the coffee maker the general service rep the grapevine rep and the program chairman to get the speakers and so i'm looking for volunteers to take over these jobs so I'm the only one there so now I'm the coffee maker program chairman general service rep grapevine rep and all these things and part of it was fun having the combination and the key to the church it felt like a power trip you know who the heck is trusting me with all this stuff you know and so I enjoyed all of it but I couldn't I just hated the idea of asking someone to speak because they might say no and then that would be rejection and I would just fall through the floor you know what I mean so I would almost ask people all the time I'd walk right up to people and take a big breath and I'll ask somebody else and he had arranged for speakers for like three weeks but it was coming up where I had to actually get somebody and I just procrastinated procrastinated and finally there was this guy he was an army major from fort belvoir and he was standing there and i think he said something about he likes to talk and i went jack how about speaking in our meeting i'll be glad to i'll be glad too so i had one it was a two speaker meeting i never got the second speaker i pretended that i had you know what i mean and i kept looking at my watch going where is that guy? Where is that guy? Well, I don't know what we're going to do with only one here and my sponsor had gone around to all the other groups Manassas and Fredericksburg and places like that and telling them, Sandy's doing his first meeting. Let's have a big crowd there so it's like 20 people which for us was enormous and we had our core group, and there was, like I say, five, and four of us were sober. And then Dave, the jockey, was sober one week and drunk the next, and sober and drunk. And he's a little guy, and he'd been a jockey on some famous horses. So he would say, I never knew whether he was going to be drunk or sober when he got to the meeting. But he was there that night, and it turns out he'd been drinking quite a bit. Anyway, I read the preamble, and then I said, well, our second speaker isn't here yet, but I'd like to introduce our first speaker, Jack. Oh, a little round of applause, and Jack gets up, and I'll never forget it. He just said, hi everybody, my name's Jack, I'm an alcoholic, and i'm here tonight to resign from Alcoholics Anonymous. And I went, what? And it turns out he was drunk. He's standing up there. I came to AA about a year ago and I didn't know how to drink. And you all taught me how to dream. And I'm here to express my gratitude to you all. And of course, I'm sitting there going, oh my God. my sponsor's going to call General Service Office and report this to them, and I'm going to be thrown out of AA. You know, you're so self-centered there. I'm just, oh, my God, what is happening? And he just kept going on and on about how he's getting promoted at work and he goes to happy hour and drinks a fifth a day and nothing happens to him and he's doing wonderful and it's just pure blasphemy. It's just blah, blah, bla. So I'm saying to myself, how do you end this? You know, it's like... And I'm looking at my sponsor for help and he is just grinning at me. You know you got yourself in this let me see you get out of it. He thought it was funny as hell I found out later but... So the guy that saved me was the jockey. He kept sitting up there looking at this guy and listening to him, and then he went out and had a drink, came back, and he was listening and listening. And finally he stood up and he went, You're a damn liar! I drink a fifth a day, I get drunk as hell. Let me see you drink a sixth. I got a bottle outside. And so... So the two of them went outside. And I wouldn't get out of my chair. I just did this. And my sponsor got up and he said, well, I'd like to invite you all back next week. So that was my first experience at service work. but I kept that job for quite a while I was making coffee and getting speakers in I've always enjoyed that I'm making coffee back in Tampa we started the Saturday night meeting and I just like going over there and being there early and talking to people when they come in you know what I mean be like the greeter and just try to make somebody who's not feeling too good feel like they're important and boy am I glad to see you and I'm so glad you came tonight well yeah Yeah. And so that's one of the best jobs in AA is the coffee maker because you're there early and you get to talk to everybody and you feel useful. And, you know, I remember when they time was up that you're going to get somebody else. I almost had a resentment, you don't like, wait a minute. I'm not doing a good enough job. I mean, what's wrong with me? So if you're new, Look for that job. That's a good one, the coffee maker. Very briefly, I grew up in New Haven, Connecticut. I had one sister who's got 25 years in AA now. I never knew she was drank. I was so shocked when one time I was talking in Connecticut and she wanted to go with me to the meeting. And I said, well, I'm so glad that you would be willing to come and attend, you know. And she said, well, I need help. And I just, wow, I couldn't believe it. So she came, and we got her a sponsor at the convention there in Connecticut, and she never has had another drink. Our parents didn't drink hardly at all. It was a New England background, Irish mother, Catholic, and Protestant English father. And it was a very interesting family. There was a lot of tension between the other families over this marriage because it was more strict than it is today, and there was, oh my God, this is going to be the end of the world. But I remember having a pretty happy childhood. I did have polio during the epidemics and that scared me because you were sent off for about eight months locked up in the crippled home home for crippled children and the Sister Kenny treatment worked for me and I got the use of my arm and leg back which was almost a miracle. But it frightened me about doctors and it frightened me about the uncertainty of life you know what I mean? Up until then you know, you're just rocking and rolling and then it was like, whew, you could suddenly be zipped away, you know so then I was always looking for when's the next time I'm going to be zippedaway somewhere and so that may have spooked me a little and then the Catholic Church finished the job man and the funny thing is my sister sitting right next to me she didn't hear anything I heard you know I heard all this scary stuff and she heard all these wonderful stuff and and she loves it and she doesn't relate to me at all but I can remember just going oh my god you know it's just all these terrible things oh this and that and sin, and you're going to die and go somewhere awful, and it's going to be terrible. So I thought about this all the time. She didn't think about it at all. And I would be all alone just going, am I in trouble? I'm like eight years old, and I'm in serious trouble off in the future. Then you get to be 12, and impure thoughts just run through the neighborhood. and that's racking up, you know, 10,000 years, 10,00 years, 10,0000 years. It was just staggering what was in store for me when I met God and then one day I passed out in church. I was sitting in the front row and I had like a spiritual insight and it just dropped me in my tracks and they carried me out and I told my parents oh, it's something I had for breakfast because I couldn't tell them I had this sudden glimpse of truth. You know when you really see truth for what it really is? And I was looking at the crucifix, and suddenly it was like a voice came down and said, This is what God did to his only son who he loves. Guess what he's going to do to yours? Bam! so we have basically a kid who's not too comfortable in his own skin if you know what I'm saying but he knows that you got to be cool and pretend that you know everything and you're fine because that's how the game is played so if you ask me how I'm doing I'm fine how do you like church it's great how do you like life I love life I loved everything about it it's wonderful it's wonderful but inside I'm just like yeah and I knew I wasn't as equal to anyone that was much worse than everyone but I had more potential than everyone so I I was worse and better at the same time. You know what I'm talking about? Oh, the whole room knows what I am talking about. So we have an alcoholic in the making. I mean, we obviously have all of these little mysterious ingredients running around in his head that are... And I was using my own self to make me very uncomfortable. No matter where I was, I would show up and go... And then I'd go, oh God, this is awful. It didn't matter what it was. I would ruin it for myself with thinking. Well, I'm at this wonderful football game. I think I'll think about it. I better leave the game. It's getting awful in here. What? What? What? So I kept this up. I never had a drink. I was trying to be an athlete. I graduated from prep school and the prep school just was a pipeline right into Yale. went down there and all these people are coming from all over the country see I thought it was just a hometown school I didn't think much about it and guys that are coming there going oh man this is great came from California and this and that and they all seemed smart they all seem rich they all knew what was going on and I knew I was the only one there that didn't and I always had this fear that they were suddenly going to go over the PA system all over the university We have discovered who the imposter is in our midst. There's one person here who shouldn't be here, and we're going to ask him to come forward now so that we can get him out. So that was my little secret that I didn't want anybody to know. And so I was always like never comfortable anywhere. And one night I had to go to this thing, and I hadn't had a drink. I was probably there about three months, you know, and everybody's drinking. And I'm, no, no. I don't want anything to drink. I want to try and be good and all this. And then my roommates are going, you're in college. Come on. Everybody's drinking? This is part of the growing up. What's wrong with you? Well, you knows, even then, I'm abnormally sober. You know what I mean? I wasn't even doing that right. so uh i was scheduled to go to this thing i still don't like them very much we want you to go in that room over there there'll be 30 other guys meet them just go in and meet them all say hi hi hi learn all their names just mix around and have a good time i was like oh god that's worse than going into combat i just can't but i tried and i think i've said this at every AA talk I've given was to describe that night of the first drink and I went in there and I said this time just go up and say hello do something and I started over to the first group and they'd already broken up into groups I don't know how they'd know how to do that it's five six two three and they all love each other and they're talking and I'm like where do I go and where do i go and I'M TRYING TO GET A SIGNAL FROM ONE OF THE GROUPS so i start over to this one and they just took a look at me i could see them all four of them just turned went no not no no it was right in their eyes it was just boom and i got the signal and i went oh that's all right i was actually going over there relax relax start over there same signal right you just glance there they glanced over actually I was going over there so I sort of circled each group and I got a reading from all of them that they had enough friends and they didn't want to know me so I came back up to the front where there was a bar in the bartender and some well maybe I will have a drink they said it makes you feel good I would like to feel good tonight I feel awful I'm terrified and this is just I can't stand this so I ordered something probably whiskey and soda something like that and I tasted it was awful ah can't believe people drink this stuff I drank it down I'm okay I don't feel you know nothing's happening well I'll have another one and I'm waiting to feel good and I had a third was halfway through the third one and i concluded that this stuff didn't work that it was vastly overrated and I started to leave I remember saying thank you Charlie whatever the bartenders name was and I turn around to go out and those 30 mean guys had left and that were replaced by 30 of the friendliest guys I've ever seen. Everybody in that room was begging me to be their friend, I could see it in their eyes they were just going oh join our group please join our group and everywhere I looked there was just people wanting to know me they were just so happy to see me and I was just looking around going wow my world had just been transformed and then I felt a little different I just sort of had a little spring in my step and I was like you know the more I think about it these guys are gonna be lucky to know me they're in for a treat I'm not sure which group I'm gonna give the blessing of being first one there. And I just, boom, intuitively knew how to handle situations that used to baffle me. I had it. I was suddenly in touch with my own creativity. I was certainly a hundred percent for the first time ever because I had no fear. All of that was gone and I was what I call me. I was finally free to just be me and I was funny and I knew what to say and it was just wonderful in this world that I had just found was marvelous. See, I had heard people talk about how wonderful the world was before. Isn't the world great? Isn't the world Great? And I would go, what world? What world are you talking about? Now I knew what they were talking about. Here it was. It was right there. It's the most exciting thing. Those five groups of guys that had terrified me, where now it was just wonderful. I was just so happy they were there and they were alive and they would smile. I couldn't believe it. Alice in Wonderland. and I've only been drinking 10 minutes. I'm an alcoholic. Alcohol solved all of my lifelong problems in 10 minutes by transforming the way I saw the world, and I now saw the word as a wonderful, happy place to be and not a threatening, overpowering, frightening place, and I loved it and I thought to myself you should have been drinking in grammar school this is unbelievable I just had this thing and I just thought about the future and I said man as long as there's alcohol life is going to be wonderful I just saw this it was almost like I had been given a medicine to cure an allergy that I had you know what I mean it was just like my god well I kept on drinking and threw up all over the place that night and woke up the next day with the worst sickness I was just shaking and my head hurt and it was split wide open and I remember saying to myself that morning this is a small price to pay for what I had found last night wasn't even close it wasn't ever close I just knew that oh I've got to fine tune this drinking I've gotta learn how to not get sick and a few of these things, but the basic premise was there. Alcohol is the answer to the problems that I have, and that's what makes me an alcoholic. It wasn't that alcohol caused problems. It was that alcohol solved the problems, and that is a very fine distinction to understand if you are new. When you really think about it, The alcoholism that kills us happens when there's no alcohol in our system. The disease of alcoholism is at its fatal worst when we're totally sober. Because if the only problem that we have is whenever we drink, we get all screwed up, what an easy answer. Don't drink. That would be the end of it. Everything would be fine. But you talk to an alcoholic and you go, No, it won't be fine. Why won't it be fine? Because I'll be sober. That's why it won'T be fine I'LL BE SOBER ALL DAY Day after day after day After day There will be Never any relief From being sober That's what an alcoholic is We are As the big book says Restless, irritable, discontent We just Can't get comfortable in life and alcohol fixed that. Yeah, it caused problems with DWIs and jails and liver and all these kind of things. But those weren't... That isn't the crux of it. The cruxof it is there's no way that I could avoid the first drink on my own. We can be taught all about... See, because we're powerless. We're not ignorant about alcoholism. We're powerless over it. So I could go through treatment and I could learn all about the disease of alcoholism I could see it down to my soul that I'm an alcoholic. I could see, my God, look what it's done to me. I could confront the truth and the reality. And then I could go out and try and stay sober on my own. Just me, armed with the knowledge about myself. I'm not an alcoholic, I'll die if I keep drinking this stuff. Now I've got it. And I'd be in my favorite bar drinking Coke, talking to my bartender, you know, I'm a alcoholic. He said, I know you are, I've seen that man, you're an alcoholic too. Yeah. And you know what the doctor told me? Well, no. What did he tell you? He said, your liver is marginal. You start drinking again, I give you maybe six months. And my wife said, if I ever have even one drink, her and the six kids, they're gone. Can I have a beer? And I'll tell you something else. My boss told me that if I have it, I'm losing my job. And the bartender's going, what's going on? So we know we could know all this stuff, but there's no way you could stay sober on that knowledge because we're powerless and Alcohol is cunning baffling powerful. There's gonna come a day when we have no defense against the first drink and boom We're off to the races So that's why we have a program Now I wasn't looking for a program. I had just found the secret of life And I went on and almost flunked out of that university I had very high grades until I took my first drink, and then drinking became the main event. And it was that until I got an AA. I somehow managed with very, very low grades to make it out of there. The Korean War was winding down, but the draft was still on. Everybody had to join the military. Guys were drinking beer one afternoon. Hey, let's join the Marines. Okay, yeah, I'll go down and join the Marine. went down there, yes sir I want to join sign here, ok and later that year we're off to Quantico, Virginia they had a 10 week boot camp type thing and I got in there and I was like man, I remember that was my thought these guys are really intense they ought to lighten up a little bit whoa it was like relentless those of you that have been through that stuff know what I'm talking about so we get to that and now we're second lieutenants and we're going six months to become a platoon leader and this is that same thing it's just all day long in your face this is how you kill this way, this is How You Kill That Way dig a hole in here, why sleep inside when you can sleep in the snow why eat steaks when you can eat sea rations and i'm going what i'll take the steak and i'll sleep inside and you can have my sea rrations i don't you know and i saw a training movie about pilots in the middle of this six months and the pilots were at the bar and they were talking with their hands and there was a couple of blondes in the background and there was all this. So I went up to the major and said, what's that pilot stuff? He said, you don't want that. I said, yeah, but what is it? He says, well, you have to sign up for three more years. I'll sign up four three more year. I'll be glad to. All right, well put your name in. Well, turns out I make it. I get accepted. I passed the thing. My eyes were good, you know, coordination, whatever it was. So, I get orders. I'm off to flight school. I got married. We get on a plane to fly down to Pensacola, I get air sick on the commercial plane. And we're going down and it's like, ugh. I get there, we're in the old SNJ, if there's any old pilots around, that was the old trainer and I was sick of that for the first six flights, I'm cleaning it out afterwards and my instructor says, I don't think this is going to work for you and that went away and bang, I make it, and it turns out I'm very good at it. And so I get through, and now I've got my wings. It takes 18 months, and we're off to Japan in a fighter squadron. We got the fastest planes over there, these jets, and exciting thing. And, and so I got a career, and a family's going, you know, one kid, two kids, three kids, four kids, five kids, six kids. I'm looking around, I said, there's no room at the dining room table for me. So if you were to look at this, you'd go, boy, this guy's really doing well, graduated from college, he's in the Marine Corps, he's a firefighter, first lieutenant, captain, moving up, da-da-da. No, inside I'm about ready to die because I'm an alcoholic. So I have all this exterior stuff, all this excitement so that I never have to stop and think about the truth, about my life. That's why we want the party to keep going. Keep it going, keep it going because I don't want to sit down and think about the truth about how bad everything is. So I just was left with this keep it moving, keep It moving. Let's have a drink, let's have another party. Let's go fly, let get something going all the time and eventually I was having withdrawals in the planes because you didn't drink for 12 hours theoretically but even if you don't drink for six or seven hours you're still going through withdrawal up there flying and it was scary because I couldn't see very well the instrument panel and I was sweating my heart was racing and I'm having all these physical symptoms and I am starting to feel nervous about flying with me you know what I mean I know some of the stuff I'm hitting the wrong switch. I'm doing this. I'm, you know, making mistakes. But I'm still going. I'm going. I'm gone. I'm finally, I had two or three close calls and I finally went in and talked to the flight surgeon. I said, well, sir, I'm having a few little things. Like what? And I started describing and he just went, jeez, those things cost a million dollars apiece. We're going to send you down to be evaluated and I was sent down for two weeks to all of the expert doctors, the flight surgeons, what could be wrong with this guy? So they studied me. Now you've got to realize this is in the early 60s and there was no diagnosis for alcoholism in the Navy. It's just there was not an alcohol program and there were no alcoholics. You had to be diagnosed with some psychiatric disorder, but there was now alcohol. So I'm down there and all they had to go on was I had high blood pressure, I was covered with clammy sweat, red blotches all over my body. My hands trembled. I was confused. My eyes were all bloodshot, and I reeked of alcohol all the time. That was all they had to go on. So they're studying me, and, oh, I don't see anything wrong with him this way. Oh, his heart's all right. We'll give him some blood pressure pills. we don't see this and it went on for two weeks every test you can imagine and at the end they left it up to a psychiatrist so he gave me some tests and asked me questions about my childhood and all that and he finally wrote it up said that uh this i've been flying 12 years and he said what has happened here is this man had a childhood fear of flying just showed up he just showed up and he's no longer allowed to fly well that just killed me now now that was my whole identity and I come back I'm beaten I'm just some guy but I'm a career officer and they have to give me something else to do so I wait three months and the Marine Corps in its wisdom made the obvious choice they made me an air traffic controller. I went to the air traffic control school, which is a very hard school, and I make it. I don't know how I got through that school. And now I'm off my last year of drinking. I'm the officer in charge of an air travel control unit back in Japan. And we deploy and set up a tower and set all this bringing planes in in bad weather and could coordinate with the foreign governments on their air traffic, and now I'm in charge. And I checked in, and we had a gunnery sergeant and senior enlisted. He took one look at me, and he said, Captain, here's your chair. We're in tents. He said, here'S your chair, there's a little tent area over there, here' s your coffee. Don't go near the radar. And he knew that he didn't want me talking to any airplanes, and I was just trying to stay alive. since I wasn't flying I drank around the clock drank a lot of grain alcohol vodka I was just surviving I couldn't eat lost 50 pounds had malnutrition my buddies all they told me later said we knew you were going to die but there's nothing we could do we're just waiting for to be transferred out of there and I somehow got through that year it was a nightmare came back to Quantico to go to a career school you know to become a general or something and I'm in the school and I'm starting to space out. I'm having hallucinations. The school, somebody's moving the school. I come in the gate and the school's gone. I go back to the century. Where's junior school? It's right up on the hill, Captain. I was just up there. It's not up there yet. Well, we'll escort you up there, okay? So they'd take me up and it would be back. so in the middle of the school I had a grand mal seizure the ambulance came took me to Bethesda Naval Hospital they checked me in what's wrong with this guy he's got a seizure he must be studying too hard we don't know what's wrong with him and the third day there I went in the DTs and it was very terrifying the CIA was after me I was a spy and they were coming in like Mission Impossible. Somehow it could cause the walls to move so that I'd be in a different place, you know, and it would scare me to death because that room was gone and now I'm out here. They're giving me memory tests and I couldn't pass them because they kept moving the walls. I'm writing it all down. I'm going to report them all later on to the Defense Department. I mean, it was really scary. And I finally freaked out and I must have done something off the wall and they put me in a straitjacket and put me into the nut ward for six months. Boom, you're in there. And that was where they just put you. So I'm in with all the crazy people and there's three drunks in there and the rest are manic depressive, suicide, schizophrenic, whatever. They all had all these different things and they resented the alcoholics being in there But what the hell are you? You're just drunk. I'm a schizophrenic. I mean, you know, it's like... So, Alcoholics Anonymous came into that hospital in 1964 and said that, you Know, there's alcoholics in your ward head psychiatrist. You ought to have one AA meeting. So that's how I came to AA. a corpsman came in the nut ward once I've been there about three months and all drunks fall in bright face little bathrobe you know little blue bathrobes and pajamas and down to the meeting and I listened it was I'll tell you those guys telling their stories I was exciting and I saw how happy they were and I remember telling them give me your phone number I said if I ever run into a guy with drinking problem you know it's like I didn't even connect with him and when I was let out after six months I became an outpatient now I could go home and come back in the note where they were trying to figure out what to send me back to active duty where all that and so I started sneaking booze into the nut ward and this went on for a couple weeks I knew they were going to catch me Paranoia was immediately came back. So I decided to join AA for real on the outside and then that Pearl Harbor day 1964, I made this phone call to intergroup and they sent this marine captain over to my house, my sponsor, and he was an infantry Marine, mean, big, awful, and just ah, came into my house and man I didn't have a choice over anything it was just you know like get in the car sit in the front row don't talk and we went to speaker meeting speaker meeting speaker meetings but I was looking at the directory and there was a couple discussion meetings and I kept going when are we gonna go to a discussion meeting he said why I said well then you could talk there he said no if we go there you're not allowed to talk you can listen but you're now allowed to at the discussion meeting when you get three months will allow you to talk but you're not allowed to talk and so that started my journey that was it he just took over and we started going to meetings we were both up for promotion the major he got promoted I did you get two tries and then you're thrown out the second year and now I've gone to a a meeting every night for two years I don't get promoted my past catches up with me take your six kids and we'll see you and I got a little resentment right trust this loving God and your life will get wonderful well I have 750 meetings under my belt and I just got thrown out of the Marine Corps how do you like that and I remember going to me I think that's the only time I raised my hand at a meeting and said, anybody got a topic? Yeah, I've got a topic. Getting thrown out of the Marine Corps, that's a topic. I don't think that's a real topic. Yes it is, it's a real topic. Alright, well we'll discuss that. The topic is getting thrown out ofthe Marine Corps. First guy raises his hand. Get thrown out of the Marine Corp, serenity prayer. It's the perfect thing. Say the serenity prayer. Thank you, sir. I appreciate that a lot. Next guy said, You're going to throw it out of the Marine Corps? Double up on your meetings. You've got a lot of time. You've Got Nothing to Do. And the next guy, what does he say? He says, You're throwing it out of the Marines Corps? Work with new people. Take your mind off of that. Take your life off of it. Take your time off of them. And the last guy said say the prayer of St. Francis. St. Francis was a Marine. Just say the prayer of St. Francis. And I remember going home that night and I said, I don't think I explained my problem correctly because what I thought I would hear is some man, a very distinguished man in an $800 suit would jump up and go, what? You got thrown out of the Marine Corps? You're available? Listen, I have a huge corporation here in Washington, D.C., and I need a vice president with $65,000 a year and a car. Now that would be AA help, right? That would be what you do. You don't need a serenity prayer. What's a serENITY prayer going to do? I've got to feed these kids. So I knew they just didn't hear me. They just didn' t hear what I said. And some years later I went through a divorce and that felt awful another guy's moving in my house and that was the second time I raised my hand I said getting thrown out of your own house another guy moving in that's not a good topic it's a topic I want to use getting thrown out of our own house another guy moving in throwing out of yourownhouse huh serenity prayer that's what you have to do if you're getting thrown out ofyourownhouse double up on your meetings work with somebody new prayer of St. Francis he got divorced a lot of times don't worry you know and the last time i raised my hand i was in the real estate business the money markets the mortgage money dried up i got no money the kids are starving i'm trying to pay alimony i'm just going crazy a lot of years of sobriety and no money broke broke broke i'm gonna declare bankruptcy i'm thinking of it so i go to me what's the topic bankruptcy that's not a good topic yes it is I want to talk about bankruptcy and you know what you do for bankruptcy prayer of St. Francis that's what you doing double up on your meetings go to the eating meetings then you can get some food work with new people take your mind off yourself prayer of Saint Francis he took a vow of poverty what the hell's happening here in aa no matter what the problem is there's one solution and that's what i want to tell those of you that are new there's one solution for all problems and it's a spiritual solution more spiritual growth that's our literature that's when it says time after time after time oh you've had even a harder problem more spiritual growth that's why you had the hard problem that was our that was how we grow spiritually is with problems i don't voluntarily do this stuff i generally am in pain before i get closer to god and then i'm so happy that i got closer to God i take credit for it I don't know something just made me want to try meditation yeah bankruptcy that's what made me want to do it I didn't want to try it so if that sounds preposterous to anybody new one solution for all problems what about before you got here one solution for all problems right and it was called drinking I never remember having a problem where I said well I won't be drinking over this problem step one in all problem solving was have a drink okay you get a mail whoa what did I get in the mail oh god a summons what do you do with a summins I don't know what you do but I will shortly ah that didn't do it I don' t know yet tear it up you know what I mean That's where you got the answers, right? There's just one solution for all problems because that was a power greater than ourselves and it transformed the way we thought. And that's what I think happens in sobriety. If you're new, this is the greatest journey you'll ever enter. I don't care, you know, like I was a fighter pilot and did all these exciting things. You know what? That's Bush League compared to AA. This is the major leagues. this is the epic journey that a human being takes transforming oneself from the material world into the spiritual and it's the most exciting journey but it's very hard to do it's really hard to make it's pretty hard to disengage from all our old ideas about what success is and what will make you happy and we have to keep trying it maybe a yacht will make me happy it doesn't work like yachts used to work you know what i mean i got the wrong brand i got this because there's a fundamental unhappiness inside of us whatever you want to call it an emptiness a loneliness i think we miss god that's what i think that's why i think the fundamental human problem is what's wrong with me i miss god i'm too far away from him and why do i think that? Because as we draw closer to our higher power, it disappears. And we become truly happy in the sense that we've never known happiness before. It is a transformation that is of unbelievable magnitude. Bill, sometimes we're in the literature says, we sometimes think we ought to change our name because we're not that same person anymore, even though we are, but we're not. We remember it because we never want to forget it, but we're not that person. We're something beyond that person, and so I see someone new, and I can remember. I can sort of remember, but I'm really not that personal anymore, and I was thinking about a transformation. Did you ever wonder when a butterfly flies next to a caterpillar, if he remembers? If he looks over and goes, man, that looks familiar over there. Or is he just so far beyond that that he's just totally different? He's become something with a whole new set of wings, a whole New Vision of the world that he lived in. It used to be the gutter where he's crawling along on 29 legs and smelling all the junk down there and eating rotten leaves. And now the vision is the sky and trees and floating through the air and seeing the majesty of a God and the creation all around us and seeing things that we never were able to see before because we didn't have the power to have this vision. And that's what AA gives us is the power to see the magnificence of the person sitting next to you, of theperson sitting in back of you. You just turn and see. Do you know what a great person is sitting nextto you? Have you got any idea? And do you knowwhat a greatperson is sittingnext to that person? That's you. You have no idea how magnificent you are if you're new. An AA is going to unwrap you. It's going to take all that garbage wrapping paper that happens to be around you when you're brand new and it stinks and everything looks rotten and you would conclude there couldn't be anything beautiful inside of that package. But you are so wrong because when this is opened and you get to see who you really are and what you can contribute to this world and how useful you can become, your problem isn't that you need anything. Your problem was misdiagnosed. Your problem is you have so much to give and it can't get out. you have so much to offer your happiness is going to lie in opening that channel through these steps so that all of this flows out and you are just sharing the wonder of being a happy child of God God bless you all thank you