The Spiritual Cushion and the Slow Leak in the Tire – Sandy B.

Hello. Today is Friday, May the 1st, 1992. My name's Earl Chess. I'm an alcoholic. I invite you to listen to the 32nd anniversary of the Falls Church City Group in Falls Church, Virginia. I thank you and I hope you like this tape. The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. There are no dues or fees for a membership. We are self-supporting through our own contributions. AA is not allied with any sect, denomination, politics, organization, or institution, does not wish to engage in any controversy, neither endorses nor opposes any causes. Our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety. Okay, I understand I need to turn up the volume a little bit. All the way to the left? Is this okay? How's that? Too much? Is that all right? Okay. That's all right. Anyone who brought food tonight, they're very busy in the kitchen cleaning up the dishes, so after the meeting if you can go in and recover your dishes and your spoons or whatever you have um they'll be nice and clean hopefully uh let's see what else secretary's report tonight hi i'm nancy and i'm an alcoholic and we have no dues or fees but we are self-supporting to our own contributions and the baskets are going around now the only announcements that i have is next friday night the meeting will be held upstairs and also the monday night group which meets at the falls church women's club can can use your support The kitchen crew, a big hand. They've really worked hard tonight. That's it. My name is Bob. I'm an alcoholic, and I'm the chairperson of the Falls Church City Group how do I get to be chairperson somebody came up and Bill couldn't do it anymore and he asked me if I want to be chairperson I said Jesus can't you have somebody else he says yes I have you're the last person so that's why I'm a chairperson but seriously I really want to thank the people who put this together and they're gonna say it was nothing. I'd like to thank Mary, Nancy, Graham, Harry Carvin in the kitchen, Patrick for folding all the knives and forks and those people that I'm going to forget. And they're going to say it's nothing. So I will take all the gratitude. Just thank me as you leave at the door. Thank you. I'll tell you, service work is an incredible thing. I started off making coffee a couple months ago, and here I am right now. I got a little promotion. So it has also brought me into a whole new arena. I've met new friends. It's just a wonderful thing to do. So whatever group you go to, making coffee and doing all those silly menial things are wonderful for you and other people. Our speaker tonight is a very special man. When I was new in the program, I used to go to Sibley Hospital and listen to him on Saturday mornings. And he really helped me to understand that there was life after sobriety. Yes, indeed. And not only that, there was humor, which was real important to me. Humor has carried me through many things in sobriete. And he has always reminded me of things about my alcoholism that I tend to forget. And he does it in a really great humorous way that I can relate to. So if you'll help me give him a hand, Sandy B. Well, good evening everybody. My name is Sandy Beach and I'm an alcoholic. How are you all doing. Can you hear me in the back all right, back there? Okay. First of all, I want to extend my congratulations to the group for 32 years. I remember this group very well when I first came into AA. We drove up from Quantico, Virginia to both of the Falls Church meetings and so there's a lot of memories in my early sobriety with this particular group so it's like coming home a little bit as far as i'm concerned and so i'm really happy that the group is still going it's clearly doing a great job you can see all the new people and all the enthusiasm and to have an event like this meant a lot of people had to really care about the group And so it's nice just to see how well AA is working all over the place. I came into AA in 1964 in Manassas, Virginia. That's where I went to my first meeting. And I haven't been drunk since that night. And I owe it all to not drinking. That's the total reason that I haven'T been drunk. now somewhere along the line i got happy with not drinking and now we're talking about aa now we'RE TALKING ABOUT THE MIRACLE OF ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS and it'S BEEN WONDERFUL IT'S BEen JUST THE MOST REMARKABLE JOURNEY THAT A HUMAN BEING COULD EVER HAVE FORCED ON HIM AND YOU KNOW IT'S UM it's funny how this is you know we're getting things we never would have asked for ever ever ever because we didn't know they existed we don't know anything about church basements i can't imagine um ever sitting around going gee i'd like to think of something that would be really wonderful for me maybe i could get trapped into going to church basements all the time and that That would be wonderful for me. I mean, how could you have thought up all the things that happened to us in AA? They're just not there in our mind to think up. And the reason I mention that is I really think that's what the program is trying to tell us, is that if we were to plan our lives to try and attain what we can dream up or what we can think about, we would get shortchanged because we'd be limited to what the human mind can think of in terms of good things to happen to us. And the program and life shows us that when we get out of the driver's seat and just try to do the next right thing, incredible things start happening to us that we never knew existed. and I think that's what this program is, and that's where the journey has been for this drunk. I'm reminded every time I go to an anniversary, I think Mary was talking about coffee making, so I'll tell you about how I got to be a coffee maker. I just love this story because it gets my sponsor into the story, and I always like to get him in there, get even for those early years, you know what I mean? The guy was so unreasonable. But anyway, he came to my house when I made the phone call. I'm not going to go into my whole drunk-a-log. I just ended up in a nut ward with the convulsions and DTs and a straight jacket and stayed locked up for six months. And A.A. came around, and they marched me down to a meeting. So that semi-qualifies me, I think, in a very few sentences. And I'll talk a little bit about the effects of drinking, I'm sure, as I get rolling along. but in any event this um there came a time when i needed to call aa i'd been let out of the nut ward and i called um and i started drinking again and i knew i was in serious trouble so i called aa over the weekend and my plan was it shows how our mind works i got to go back to the nut board on Monday morning, and they're going to find out I've been drinking. And so my plan was I'll join AA and blame it on AA. And then I'll say, well, what the hell? You told me to go to AA. I went there and look what happened to me. You know what I mean? And I'd shift the blame and responsibility for my actions over on Alcoholics Anonymous. But I didn't count on my sponsor in the equation. And when he arrived at my house, it was just, uh, I knew I was in trouble you know what i mean we were both in the marine corps but he was infantry and i was a pilot and we had no connection with the military pilots we just fly and we don't really care about anything of a military nature and um he was very military you know his head was shaved and he was big and strong and in shape i hadn't been in shape you know since uh boot camp I specialized in drinking and flying and driving. Why walk when you can drive? Anyway, he just came in, and I could see the way he sort of filled the entire door frame. And he just had those eyes that just go, hmm, you know, and they're just zeroing in. And he said, Hi, my name's Bill. This is a 12-step call. I talk, you listen. And I was like, uh-huh. You know, you could see there was no big dialogue going to take place. This was, you know, like, let me tell you about me and all of that. And he was just, you Know, okay, get in the car. We're going to a meeting. Get in the cart. But lo and behold, I'm staying sober. Initially it was out of fear of sponsor. That was the basic motivation. I figured if you ever showed up with a drink, you were going to get hurt. I mean, that was the feeling that I had. But a number of months went by, and we belonged to a very small group down in Quantico called Dumfries Triangle. And this group was a wonderful group. I wish I had taken motion pictures of this and recorded the history. This group is now extinct. It no longer exists. It's the only group. well maybe there's another group but i never saw one that was listed in the where and when i don't know if anybody remembers this the group probably went out of business in um 67 68 somewhere's in there but they wanted to keep carrying it in the wear and win so it was listed into where and wind as disbanded somebody finally had mercy on the group and officially shot it and it's no longer listed in the where and when but Dumfries Triangle Group in 1964 my sponsor was the mainstay I mean without him there was no group and then he had me as a pigeon and a couple months later we had one other guy who was an army guy who took care of the horses down at Quantico. He was the horseshoer, farrier, whatever you call them. And then we had some of the locals. We had a jockey, a little guy named Dave, who at one time put together almost a month's sobriety. That was his record, but he'd been around the group for years, and he was there. We had country-western singer named Evelyn who would come in and out and always in tears. that's where she got her material for the songs and should be there and then there was a couple of other bus drivers there was not a lot of sobriety in the group there was generally someone drunk at every meeting it was just that way but my sponsor was there and it was a speaker's meeting and uh in in those years there were the nearest group was manassas and then the next nearest group was coming up in this area and so you can imagine you know here comes the guys from quantico they're coming up here to the falls church group and everybody would go in the other way when we'd be coming because they knew we were looking for a meeting to come down to speak to three people two of whom might not be sober and once you've been sober in aa about six months you don't speak to just three people you know what i'm talking about your ego only three people my god i have a great story i'm not going to just tell it to three people so it was very difficult to get anyone to come down there but my sponsor was big and mean and they would say yes to him what i am leading up to is he was the coffee maker he was a program chairman he was the secretary, the treasurer, the general services representative, the grapevine representative. There was just one guy who did all of the things. So I've been sober seven months and he calls me up at home. The meeting met on Sunday night. He called me up at home and he said, I'm going to pick you up 15 minutes early tonight. We're going to have a business meeting. Two people are going to have a business meeting, you know. And the podium for this group held everything. It was built with a padlock on the back and inside were the coffee pots, sugar, the signs, easy does it, you know, and all of those things, some literature, paper plates, paper cups, you know all the stuff fit inside of here and so once you slid this podium out you had an instant meeting just ready to go and he had the combination to that lock and so he slid the podium out we set up chairs we always set up like 25 chairs like there's going to be you know then when the speakers came we'd just say I don't know where all the people are but they're so anyway he got up there and he just went call the meeting to order just me and him, and I'm sitting down here and he said, well, I've been the program chairman, the secretary, the coffee maker, the general service rep, the grapevine rep for the last year and a half and it's customary to rotate the jobs in AA groups. So I wonder if we have any volunteers that would like to volunteer to be the program chairmen. you know so he's looking at me what am i going to do so i raised my hand come on up and i'll give you the combination to the thing well i had secretly that was sort of a thrill but i had the combination and held the key to this whole aa group in my head you know um and so he had arranged for speakers for the next month so i had five weeks to go ask somebody and i don't know if you remember when you knew you don't want to ask anybody because they might say no and that would be more rejection than you could handle no what am i gonna do now so i'm procrastinating and procrastinating and bill is calling all the people he's calling up to manassas to speedy and pinky and pete nelson and all those guys extracting a promise from them he probably gets some of the false church people he said please come to this meeting when sandy his first time as program chairman you know so there's a good audience and he'll feel good about this so he was really promoting this meeting that I was going to arrange and I haven't found anybody I haven'T even asked anybody yet and a month has gone by and I'm over at Fort Belvoir and there was one sober guy over there who's a major and he was the club officer at Fort Belfort. And his name was Jack. And I got a hold of Jack and I said, Jack, would you like to speak down? He said, oh yeah, I'll come down. And wonderful. I didn't even try to get a second speaker. I just figured this was close enough, you know. So the big night comes, we got a cake and we probably had like 15 people that were at this meeting. And here comes Jack. and he looked a little funny, I'll have to admit when he walked in seemed a little happier than you would expect a person to be seemed to be floating on happiness and Dave the jockey was back he had been off on a binge and was back and he had left his bottle outside he always left it outside the door and he'd go out every 15 minutes and have a drink and come back in And he was on the front row. And then we had all the people from Manassas and the other groups. So I get up, and my sponsor's watching this whole thing. He goes, where's your other speaker? It isn't here. Well, what are you going to do? I don't know. I don' t know. But I got one. So I got up and read the preamble, and my hands are shaking. I know you don't believe it now. I talk so much that it's ridiculous. But boy, I was so nervous. And I used to be able to speak, but I couldn't read anything. If I had to read it, I was trapped into those words, and my voice would shake and my hands would shake. So I read the preamble, and I said, well, thank you, everybody. Here's Jack. Clap, clap, clap. Jack gets up there, and... I couldn't believe my ears. He gets up to the microphone, and he says, my name is Jack, and now I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Jack. I'm here tonight to resign from Alcoholics Anonymous. Yeah? there's a small gasp from the audience and uh he goes on to say when i came here about a year ago i just uh whenever i drank i got all screwed up and i've been going to meetings and going to readings and aa has taught me how to drink and i'm going taught him how to drink and he said now i drink all i want and i don't get in trouble and i owe it all to aa and matter of fact i had several drinks today before i came over and the jockey got up and went out you know with that one and then he started just talking about boy i'm the club officer at bell bar if you anybody wants a drink come on up to the club i'll let you know and my sponsor's giving me the evil eye well what are you going to do what are you gonna what do you do with a guy like this and so i'm doing nothing and he's talking and talking about all this everything was just wrong you know for an aa meeting and i he'd probably still be talking if it hadn't been for the jockey because he got into this thing about aaa had taught him not only how to drink but when he first came to aa if he had like 10 drinks it'd be all messed up now he can drink a fifth and not be messed up and when he said he could drink a fit without getting messed up the jockey jumped up and said that's a goddamn lie i drink up i drink a piff and then i get all screwed up there's no god damn way you can drink a fifth and then well i do drink with the next thing the two of them are outside you know so my sponsor comes up to the microphone and he said i'd like to invite everyone back next week this is just a warm-up for what sandy can produce and then he went on and gave a little talk for about 20 minutes of real solid aaa talk and bailed me out. And so that was my first endeavor at getting a speaker. But since that time, I've been coffee maker and program chairmans and that kind of stuff for many, many groups. And I agree with Mary that that is a wonderful way of getting involved and really feeling part of something is to be the greeter or the secretary or make the announcements, the program chairman, all of these things if you're new really let's think about it the next time they're asking would anybody like to volunteer get your hand up it's amazing uh extra serenity gets handed out when your hand goes up it'S just an automatic feature anyway that that just brought back that memory of that early group and that it was a wonderful group you know I look back on it it really was my home group as bad as it was or as funny as it was or unusual it was it was my homegroup and you know there's nothing will ever replace your first home group I mean that's just the way that's the ultimate Alcoholics Anonymous is that first six months one year whatever it is in your home group that's will never leave you and you'll go to other parts of the country and they're not doing it the way they did it in your home group from where you came from, and they're doing it wrong. You know what I mean? What do you mean the meeting's an hour and a half and you have three speakers followed by discussion? Good God, that's the worst thing I ever heard of. Of course, as you travel around in AA, you find there's all kinds of different meetings and different ways of doing things, but it's like your hometown. That original home group is just always there, and that one still sticks in my mind um just some of the great breakthroughs the first time laughing just like mary was talking about this i never thought i'd be laughing at sobriety and laughing at myself and the mistakes that we make as human beings but they really are they're just they're humorous you know it's not complicated we try to analyze and over complicate things in our own lives and you know you look at Our literature, Bill has a word that I think is so wonderful. If you read the AA literature, when he's talking about some of the what we would call complex things that we do where we consistently make some mistake or we're always doing this or always doing that, he uses the word stupid, which I just think, we're especially stupid in that area. And, you know, that's right. You know, it's not that complicated. We're just like somebody hitting themselves on the head with a hammer. He says, you know, that's really stupid. You know, now that you mention it, it is. And you just stop doing it. And a lot of times that's all that is necessary is to just stop. You know what's funny about the way a spiritual program works? You really don't go get things. You get rid of things. You know What I mean? Somebody once said, I always thought it was the most wonderful line that some sculptor had just done this incredible statue and this how do you know i mean how do you do something like this he said you get a big block of granite and you just take away everything that isn't beautiful like this and he was describing sobriety you know that's and and this program all we're doing is getting rid of all the things that aren't beautiful and the beautiful person that was there all along suddenly becomes magnificently apparent and so it isn't a question of going and getting anything um it's kind of like you ever try to get a suntan and it's a beautiful day except for one tiny little cloud between you and the sun and you just go i can't believe that little cloud is still why isn't the hell down that part of the beach you know what i mean it's just right over you and you can't get a tan just that one little thing and very often that's all it is there's one character defect that is still there and as soon as it is removed as soon as you make any progress on it there's just a brilliance that shines from the inside out You know, you see people come into AA, and if your friends are theirs, you watch a couple months, and you ever watch what happens to them? You just start looking at their eyes. Do you ever see their eyes after about three months' sobriety? And it's just there's a whole new glisten. There's a luster. Women come in here. I notice even more in women. They come in, and then you come back six months later, andyou go, excuse me, are you the daughter or what? I mean, it just is remarkable the look, this whole physical appearance. It just radiates. It's remarkable. And all that's happening is we're getting rid of things. We're getting red of old ideas, old ways of living, abandoning things. It's just been, and that's what I think sobriety consists of. So what did I get rid of? I'll get back and just tell you a little bit about my story. Well, I got rid of all the package that I put together in the 32 years before I got to Alcoholics Anonymous, which I considered was the real me. Everything that I assembled, it was my idea of the world, and that was me. And my identity consisted totally of these ideas that I had accumulated and my possessions and, you know, you look down my resume and this is who I was. I was a Yale graduate, a father of six, a Marine Corps fighter pilot, a guy who did this and he's this tall and he wears these kind of clothes, and that's who I am. And then they took away my wings for being a fighter pilot and then they threw me out of the Marine Corps and then I had a convulsion and the DTs and all of a sudden I'm nobody. You know what I'm talking about? Everything that I thought was me was disappearing, and I began to feel like, God, who am I? And I had certain ideas. And these ideas had been collected since I was a little kid. I picked up ideas about God in a church, and they were kind of screwed up. They never had been matured. They never were refined. they were very frightening and confusing but i never thought about them much after i was 12. so i'm 30 years old and i'm still living with 12 year old ideas that i've been sitting with i learned a lot about life you know there was something i don't know if it's still true with young kids growing up even though i got a bunch of them i'm not sure whether they had the same thing but as far as life itself was concerned in other words as you walked around as a human being going i wonder what the hell life is all about you know what i mean that fundamental question you have inside you never asked you know i mean that you figured out on your own and until you figured it out you act like you had it figured out hey i'm cool i know what's going on i mean i know i know i know but then when you get home you go i haven't got the foggiest idea what's going on i have no idea you know what is this planet is where we're going what the purpose of my being here is maybe i'm supposed to make a million dollars that's the purpose you know you get so you're trying to put some sense to all of this and i found a lot of information on this subject on bathroom walls you would, some of the great philosophers of the world would write little things in there and you'd, whoa, boy I didn't know that that's certainly wow, that's kind of threatening but it wouldn't be up there if it wasn't true so you get it what I'm saying is you collect a lot of information and it's yours and it'S mine and it's there and it is like perpetual motion those same ideas will just keep circulating and give you opinions on things and will form tremendous prejudices we'll have fears about this sort of situation we'll be in a situation where we'll feel anxious we'll get anxious we'll experience we'll have anger about this we'll have resentments about that and it'll stay that way it just gets set up and you know it's just random and stuff gets collected it isn't anybody's fault it's not my fault It's not your fault. This is the garbage that has found its way, and loosely I called that my philosophy of life, for lack of a better word. It should have been called this is my garbage collection that I have randomly assembled with no real thinking about it. It's just all been dumped here, and I sort of carry it around and regurgitate it whenever somebody wants to hear an opinion on something. And it was what I remember most about those years, I guess teenage years and a little bit later, is being afraid. I think that's the strongest memory that I have. It's just sort of a nameless fear. It wasn't a fear of a certain person or anything like that. It was just, that's how it was. That's the way it is. You just wake up in the morning with a start. You know, you wake up and you go, oh, hi, it's another day. Well, God damn it, I'm scared already. I wonder what's going to happen. I hate to go in the bathroom. There's probably trouble in there. Well, I'll go out and see what's gonna happen. But, and so that was, you know, just my inner dynamics because of this collection of ideas. And in order to counter that, and Dan and I were talking about this at dinner tonight, He and I both were fighter pilots, and he went on and did crazier things. He can tell his story some night. But we were trying to do brave things to get rid of fear. You know, if I do this, I'll jump out of a parachute, and as soon as you come down, you won't be afraid anymore. Then you come back, and you go, I'm still afraid. You know what I mean? None of that works. There's a different situation that has to occur. So I think I was a person who was looking frantically for a fix from fear. Other alcoholics were looking for fixes from something else. And the first drink that went down, fear disappeared immediately and it was replaced by comfort. Total comfort. Alcohol, I used to think alcohol changed me but I realized that it didn't. Alcohol changed the world that I lived in. that's what it changed the world see when i looked at the world through the ideas that i had formed so through my eyes when i look at the world when i was sober it was a very threatening place to live mainly because you all occupied the space in it and you are threatening people to be around you know what i mean i can just look at your eyes and you're all going wish that guy would quit but that was how i saw the world it was just intimidating and it was the people in it and i heard about a different world gotta talk to people and they'd go is this world wonderful do you ever get with somebody and they're saying you hear a conversation you know two people talking over here there's they're standing one foot away from you and one of them saying isn't the world wonderful and the other one says yeah it's wonderful and you go are you looking at the same world that i'm looking at i mean what what world are you looking at right here this world right here it's wonderful and then you go over and stand over where they're standing and you look you know it's not wonderful what the hell are they talking about i had no idea why anybody would say this world was wonderful isn't it filled with loving people isn't that marvelous this this and that not just like unbelievable you'd be describing the world this way then it be describing love isn't it wonderful that feeling of love and it's just and if just to have this concern for other people i said well i have to take your word for it i never have experienced that well with self-centered fearful person isn't going to experience that so i had to just take it on other people's word for these things this great sense of love this and that never never saw it had a drink first drink first time i drank i saw exactly what they were talking about that i saw that world that they were describing it was filled with wonderful people it changed all the people that were in the room where i had my first drink from threatening people to people who could hardly wait for me to join them in a conversation before i had the drink they were staring at me wondering what i was doing in the room with them after three drinks everyone was going would you please go over cool we just love you come over and join us hey you'll have to wait your turn man i'm gonna start over here i can only spread myself so thin i'll start here and then i'll be over there and then i'llbe over there as i'm going around i could just see the groups over there god when's he going to be here i mean you know it's just they could hardly wait for me to get there they just loved me i could just sense everybody cared and there was just this camaraderie the most remarkable thing alcohol what a power to transform the world into a joyful place to live what more could anybody ask didn't need anything else there was absolutely didn't need a single thing once i got alcohol it was the magic answer to everything and i have to talk about this um with a friend of mine that i started drinking with now i always bring him into my talks roy he was my roommate in college and we sort of did a lot of drinking together but he's not an alcoholic so he never ended up in aaa he ended up in dallas and uh and i go down to visit him and sometimes i'm talking aaa meetings down there and he comes and he loves aa he just thinks he helped his buddy and he likes all the people that he met and so we made him an honorary member of a yeah you know what i mean come on roy you can come and sit down enjoy the meetings and i had a conversation with him maybe 10 or 15 years ago and i said roy you and i started out we were drinking all this this and that and i said but i'm an alcoholic and i'm an aa and you you're just you know regular person never had any problem with this at all maybe it would be interesting you always hear us alcoholics talking about drinking it'd be interesting to hear what you the non-alcoholic have to say about drinking well how would you you're 50 years old now if you were to tell your an audience something about drinking what would you tell them what would you just stream of consciousness tell us something about drinking what it means to you what it is to you and he thought about it and this is the truth he said well the first thing i would say and this guy he really is into this uh fancy foods and the best restaurants and everything and he said the first think i would say is that alcohol enhances the taste of fine food and i just went boy that's not what i would have said you know i don't think anybody in this room here would have been boy i relate to that and i said to myself going down or coming up you know enhances the taste of food i mean you know and then he had something about when you come home from work and it serves as a transition you'll have one drink that day and it's sort of you come in you just sort of have a drink and and then that ends the work day, and you go have a shower, and now you spend the rest of the evening with your family. Eh, I could semi-relate to that, but not just one. And then there was something about, you know, four or five times a year get a group of people together, and it's just sort of mixed, people will mix better, and that's it. And that was the total thing for him to describe alcohol, and he never said, alcohol? Oh, it's the secret of life. He never said that. I never said that, which is what I would have said. You know what I mean? And so here's two people that did a lot of drinking and did this and that, and alcohol, there was something different between Roy and I. And the difference was what alcohol did to me. I mean what it did for me, not what it Did to me, what it It did for me. So many times we focus on what it does to us. It gives us the DTs and the convulsions and liver damage and and that's why it's an alcoholic. Hell, if we could get a non-alcoholic and tied him down and poured enough alcohol in, he'd get liver damage. He'd get all these crazy things happen to him. It's just they don't do that. They don't get up in the morning and go, hey, I puked all night. I think I'll have another drink because I want to be in that beautiful world and it's worth any price to be there because that isn't happening to them. see they aren't it is not solving a fundamental problem like it is for me it didn't transform the world and so alcohol was a great power in my life that's why i'm an alcoholic it was worth a great deal of pain in order to have access to this kind time and i chose it it became my way of life alcohol was a way of life i'm sure we could come up with the 12 steps of alcoholism and just you know bar room we had our whole series of things whole manner of living um and in a way we were on the right track we had made a discovery that man wasn't supposed to be able to make it on his own that he was supposed to rely on a power greater than himself we had the wrong power vodka was not the best choice of a higher power but it's better than no power at all and it literally was And I think back, you know, maybe you don't agree with this, but I had the feeling that I turned my will and my life over to the care of vodka in a very literal sense. When I went into a package store, I never knew what was going to happen, but i knew something was going to happen. You know what i'm talking about? I knew that when i got a bottle of vodka, I could hold it up you know vodka looks like water you could hold it up, you could shake it, you can smell it you could look at it and you could say I wonder what's going to happen to me you know what I'm saying? I wonder what's in store for me tonight and there's no way of knowing it's like checking a book out of the library an adventure book I wonder with this story am I going to go to India and we got to go home and read it. And there you are, you have this incredible adventure. Same thing with drinking. Maybe you don't think so, but I remember that vividly. Get that bottle, take it home. Well, here we go. You just... You never knew. I mean, sometimes you get the police bottle. It seems like... It seems Like you barely got started, you're in jail. You know what I mean? Dude, shit, I barely put a dent in the damn thing, you know, and I'm off. Other times they sold you the one with the big blonde in there. Hi, where the hell did she come from? Or you went the traveling whiskey. And you woke up and you had no idea where you were the next day. You knew that you didn't recognize the room. you're in a hotel and you call up, what city am I in? Wiggins, Mississippi. Jesus, how did I get here? So things happened. Things happened. You got in fights. You beat up somebody. You beat up your family. You puked all over the rec room. You wrecked your car. But something happened. I mean, and it wouldn't have happened if it hadn't been for that alcohol. It really was a relationship that's very similar to a higher power. It was something that I had faith in, I had trust in it. I knew that as long as I had drinking money, no matter what problem came my way, I'd be able to address it. It was causing a lot of problems of its own, but somehow i had faith that this would carry me through and i remember after i got sober i had a 50 bill in my wallet in a secret compartment just in case you know a guy has to protect himself i might be the one guy the steps don't apply to and uh you know and so i still had that dependency you know just well i know where that package store is and if it really gets bad i can go get help so i really related to being incomplete without alcohol in me alcohol completed the picture i was like a battery that you buy and then you pour the water in now it'll start the car until the alcohol was in there i didn't function yesterday was a nice day too wasn't it yeah yesterday was the next day well i guess that's about it yeah it's about him for me too maybe tomorrow will be a nice yeah tomorrow that was the extent of the conversation three drinks what do you want to hear about russia china hey i know all those things baseball football around around around i mean you just just knew how to act extemporaneously you just were free your creative juices just and when i got sober and i was frightened i was just was there and i couldn't i wasn't complete there was something missing and so that's why alcohol was so important to me it took care of a lot of things alcohol fixed things i know it caused problems but it fixed things that was its main thing so i come into aa and guess what they say no drinking and of course you go no drinking you don't understand that's my whole act that's my whole routine is drinking you're going to leave me unarmed you're gonna leave me incomplete again i'll never make it through the rest of you're asking too much and of course like everybody else i saw through the day at a time thing right away guy standing up with 20 years saying he'll live a day at the time i knew secretly everybody in the room was hoping to stay sober until they died it wasn't day at time you know even i could just see this that there was secret planning to stay here forever so that's the way i thought about sobriety those you know so my sponsor's telling me a day at a time i'm going yeah i know he's going to be here forever and he wants me to be here for ever and i'm never going to have a drink ever ever again and that's going gonna be terrible terrible but here we go we started down this journey we started doing things my friend clancy has the best description of the steps i've ever heard he said alcoholics anonymous somehow gets us to take actions we don't believe in isn't that a wonderful assessment of the program it gets us to take action we don t believe him i didn't believe in those steps did you believe in those steps did hold them up there and go oh that will make you feel better wrong that has nothing to do with my problem i can still remember looking at that and i said i'll tell you where's the step where you get a two thousand dollar loan that would be a step that would be one where i could see some tangible results but but a spiritual program doesn't look like it should work any more than drinking looks like it shouldn't work does drinking look like it should what if we had doubted drinking like we doubted the aa program You know what I mean? Somebody held up a glass of bourbon and said, smell this. I know that you're thinking of suicide, that people are terrible, your whole life's a mess. Just drink this. It'll transform the world into a wonderful... Jesus Christ, it smells like kerosene. You're saying if I drink that, the whole world will get wonderful? I don't believe it. Prove it. You know, suppose we tried to prove the power of alcohol to someone. How could we do it? We could get drunk and say, look at me, look at me. See how happy I am? Do you believe it now? And they would see it, but they wouldn't believe it. They would still be saying, well, I don't think it would happen to me. I'm smelling this stuff. How could that make the world wonderful? It doesn't look like it could. It doesn' t look like i should. How can something in a glass transform the world into a wonderful place? It doesn''t seem possible. It's beyond the human imagination. But it happens all the time, right? We all saw it happen with drinking. We come in here and people in AA tell us, if you take these steps, if you want what we have, this is how you get there. And we see what they have. We see the enthusiasm. We see that incredible energy and the transformation that takes place in other people. And then they go, and this is the steps. And we just look and go, I just can't believe he did this stuff. And we carve out exceptions for ourselves. Very hard to believe this. and that's why we end up taking these things by default you got to take them i mean you know your sponsor takes to a step meeting and they're going to talk about steps that night well maybe they're gonna talk about the seventh step tonight you go jesus i don't know i better study up on that i don'T want to look stupid when they call on me so i remember doing a lot of step work just so i'd look smart at meetings it had nothing to do with thinking that it would actually work I never saw that this would work. AA, why should AA work? Do you ever try to describe Alcoholics Anonymous to your friends? You know, maybe where you got sober at work and they go, Joe, you look wonderful. God, Joe we've never seen anybody like that. What are you doing? I'm in AA. I know but why do you look so wonderful? What happens at AA? Oh well let me tell you about it. It's the most exciting, wonderful thing. At 8.30 we all go down to the basement and we sit around the table and then one person comes up with like a topic. You know what I mean? We have some coffee and everybody's having a cigarette and comes up for the topic, you know, like, hey, resentments. And then we go like around, you know and go Mary and then when Mary says, we go, hi, Mary and then Joe and then hi, Joe and then we'd go all the way around and at 930, we go home. Are you sure there isn't something else that goes on down there, Fred? They pass around some pills or something I mean, so AA doesn't look like it should work. It shouldn't. Why should this work? Why should we go in these rooms for an hour and have our entire day transformed and put in perspective and the rotten day that we thought we had, we suddenly go, wasn't that rotten? I had some lessons I learned here and actually I feel pretty good about myself and to go home, we're a happier person. So you know what it is? At least this is my opinion. it's power that's all it is it's power it's raw power it just energizes us it addresses the deficiency in ourselves as human beings that makes the world look inadequate and when we get pumped up with this power we see everything in its true picture and that's why we start with the word powerless that's all that's required to start a spiritual program is to understand powerless as soon as we say that we're powerless we have said unless i go find a higher power it's all over and so the whole point of the aa program of spiritual program is to address powerlessness to go find a power and the interesting thing is just all these paradoxes in here you know you win by surrendering and various things the more dependent you become the more independent you become and this one is in order to go find this higher power you go nowhere because it isn't and you don't have to go anywhere bill wrote in the big book the fundamental idea of a higher power was born inside of us just like the fundamental ideia of a friend all we have to do is go inside it's They are just waiting for us to get in touch with it, but it's being blocked. Being blocked by our character defects, being blocked by instinctual drives that have gone amok. Great word, amok, I've always liked that thing, you know. My drinking, people said amok a lot on it, or words that sounded like amok and so you know sobriety just seems to consist very much like if you have a slow leak in your tire it's very important to go put air in it and as long as there's enough air in your tire you'll have a very smooth ride and as Long as you have spiritual cushion you'll have a very smooth life it's when we let it go down to almost empty and then we're driving down the road and there's a big rut and the tire gets cut from the inside out through by the rim and all it was it wasn't enough air and air is free it's the freest thing there is and it can ruin the whole journey because it wasn't nothing there so every day we take a look at this talk about that in our literature our sobriety is totally contingent we have a daily reprieve contingent on our spiritual condition condition i'm putting you know what it is totally conditioned contingent i'm putting air in the tire that's all it is every day see we want to be able to put a year's supply in at once i don't have to screw around with this see that's that's what we want but it doesn't work that way you know the lord's prayer says Give us this day our daily bread. And man's been trying to improve on that ever since. I understand we can live life a day at a time, but I think we can improve onthat. We're just going to study and we're going to do all that. We can't improve on it a dayat a time. That's the deal. There's never anything other than today. Never, never, never. And so each day is checking the tire. Let's put a cushion, a spiritual cushion between us and the world and it'll be a smooth journey that day. But a lot of times there isn't time because we've got so many important things to do. Couldn't possibly take 11 seconds to go put air in the tire. Have you ever had a day when your entire spiritual program consists of speed reading the 24-hour day book? Only the first paragraph? I've got a real rough day today. You go out the door. Do you remember one word that said, no, but I remember the day. There's so many other things that are more important than putting air in the tire. So many other things. And then, bam! That's the day. That's the day they fire you. That'S the day they promote you. That's even more dangerous for alcoholics. And we just, ah! And there was nothing to draw on. There was no reserve. There was nothing in the tank. and so sobriety just consists of and that's why we have meetings otherwise we could do it on our own you know why we have means this is why I think we have means this is where I have friends in a that's where we have sponsors so that I look over you and I go your tank's empty well I don't say your tank is empty I say what's wrong what's wrong that's why you have a home group so they come up to you and they come up to me everybody gets their tank that's empty we get off track life is out there and they come they go what's the matter sam i go nothing come on get over here and then they come over and what is it whatever it is well whatever it ist your tank's empty we got to put some air in that tire so let's say the serenity prayer let's stay it again and let's do it again let's go to two meetings there now how does everything look hey it looks wonderful that's all we were just running out of power it isn't that complicated it isn's freudian and all these things we're powerless that's the fundamental thing that's why we check each other's tire pressure that's what the wonder of being having friends and being able to be honest with each other and walk over and go francine you look terrible what the hell is going on i mean we were free to talk to each other this way and it's a genuine love it's concern because we know we want somebody else to do the same thing for us and that's why it's a wee program the group succeeds false church group 32 years it takes all the people with it it's the most remarkable thing in the world when you think about it we're all losers i mean everybody lost in big time big time losers in the nut wards oh you know lost your family yeah i mean just your health your everything you put all these losers in one room you'd think you'd have an atomic explosion but somehow we're able to help each other we're able to contribute to the well-being of the group itself and as this group grows succeeds and becomes wonderful like this group has everyone in it rises right up with it and instead of becoming something we become part of something which is even more beautiful than being something being part of some magnificent huge worldwide thing called alcoholics anonymous which is just the beginning of becoming part of the human race and seeing that's the best part and i know i'm running over one just give me three more minutes is this wonderful thing in the 12th step when it talks about practicing these principles in all our affairs you know we first start out we're comfortable in aa and then we then there's out there you remember that in aa they understand me but out there they don't go out there and just start where you work just just start in your own office on the floor where you were and just make everybody on that floor an honorary member of a in your home group you know what i mean like make believe they know this serenity prayer and they know all this stuff and just talk program talk and just talk the same love and the same level that you do with people in the program, and you'll suddenly find that those people are just as responsive to these very same things as we are in here and that indeed the whole world is just as safe as it is here in Alcoholics Anonymous. That's the power that we have here. Everything focuses back, at least in my opinion, on power. There's nothing else. And the jackpot, of course, is the conscious contact. that's the ultimate which we have in our 11 step and all that is necessary is getting things out of the way Chuck Chamberlain guy from the west coast wonderful wonderful a has very simple thing it was just uncovered discover discard who you just sobriety consists of finding one more piece of garbage get rid of it and we get rid of until sobrieties like flying a balloon how do you get a better view in a balloon. You throw something overboard, and now it becomes lighter and it rises up higher. And you get tired of that view? Find some other thing to throw overboard. You're tired of the view that you have right now in your sobriety? Get rid of another character defect, and the view will get better. And, you know what? As soon as the view gets better, it won't take long before you'll be tired of THAT view. Because that's the wonderful um thing that motivates us to keep throwing garbage away so we get a better view and i think that it's all the time that we're sober you have to keep improving your view or you probably get drunk again i don't think we can ever stop and isn't that wonderful i think it's marvelous see let's our own devices would just say oh that's enough for me i don t drink and i don't rob anymore i don' want to get too good too fast i remember one time looking at the sixth step and i saw the full implication of the sixth step was statehood we're entirely ready to get rid of all our character defects and of course that threatened me immensely thought about mother teresa and how much fun she has you know i said hey you've got to watch out for this program next thing they want You know, I'll be suddenly consumed with giving all my stuff away to the poor. It could be dangerous. So I didn't want to get too good too fast. And I thought about my neighbors and how uncomfortable they'd be with a saint in their midst. All the pressure it would put on them. So I decided to stay an asshole for their sake. Pardon my language, sorry. this is the fun of being a human being we're confined in this human body and we're trying to achieve spiritual principles but the human part of us doesn't want any part of that and what are you talking about i won't have any fun if you're doing that and then we're over here but i'm trying to grow well grow somewhere else you know we have this tremendous debate going on and then they run off going there's something wrong with me it's just that we're human and just trying to do something wonderful and it's fun it's sad it's happy it's joyful it's all of these things but it's always going forward and if you're new let me tell you something If you stay with this group, you're going to have a blast. Thank you very much.