Trembling Hands, Grounded from Flying, and the Marine Corps Made Me an Air Traffic Controller 🤦 – Sandy B.

About This Speaker Tape

Sandy B. opens this 1985 talk in Seaside, Oregon with twenty years of sobriety and a feeling of starting over. He has just remarried, is beginning a new job, and reflects on the promise that AA offers: the ability to stay sober and happy at the same time. He frames this as a shift in perspective — from blaming the world for unfairness to taking personal responsibility. If you are unhappy in AA, he says, you are doing it wrong, and that principle, while tough to swallow, is the source of real hope.

He shares two major painful episodes in sobriety. The first comes around two years sober when the Marine Corps passes him over for promotion to major, effectively ending his military career. He leaves with six kids, no job, and a burning resentment he refuses to share with anyone. While stewing in private rage, he reads in the Washington Post that the instruction team he would have been on — had he been promoted — flew into a mountain in Denver, killing everyone aboard. The second episode comes years later when his wife leaves him for another man. His friend Hal Marley calls the next morning and asks him to count his blessings. Sandy describes weeks of agonized prayer — thousands of Our Fathers with no apparent result — until one evening a brief, deep peace breaks through and he knows fundamentally that everything is going to be all right.

Sandy devotes the middle of the talk to the chapter to the agnostic and his own resistance to the program. He describes his intimidating Marine sponsor Bill who simply said "get in the car," his fake big book preparation (coffee-stained and underlined but never read), and his fear that AA was brainwashing. He compares the alcoholic's dilemma to the famous Jack Benny robbery sketch — your money or your life — and explains that Step One creates the desperation necessary to consider spiritual principles. He closes by recounting three separate crises over the years where he raised his hand at meetings and received the same three answers each time: the Serenity Prayer, the Prayer of St. Francis, and go help someone new. He resisted this universal answer for years, but now sees it as the permanent solution — faith is not designed to cause certain results but to produce a person who can handle whatever comes.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Introduction — twenty years sober, feeling of starting over with new marriage and new job
• 5:00 If you're in AA and not happy, you're doing it wrong — the perspective shift from blaming others to personal responsibility
• 10:00 Hal Marley calls the morning after Sandy's wife leaves — weeks of agonized prayer and the breakthrough moment of peace
• 18:00 Sobriety is not a plan to ensure a certain result but a power to have happy sobriety no matter what comes
• 22:00 Marine Corps career — jet pilot grounded after seizures, made an air traffic controller, passed over for promotion
• 28:00 Reading the Washington Post about his former team dying in a plane crash in Denver — the first major perspective change
• 35:00 The chapter to the agnostic and sponsor Bill's twelve-step call — get in the car, sit in the front row, don't talk
• 42:00 Jack Benny robbery sketch as metaphor for the alcoholic's dilemma — your money or your life, and Benny says I'm thinking
• 50:00 Powerlessness explained — educating an alcoholic just gives you someone lying on the floor drunk who knows precisely why
• 55:00 Three crises over the years, same three answers every time — Serenity Prayer, Prayer of St. Francis, go help someone new