We Agnostics in a Psychiatric Ward, the Keys to the Kingdom – Sandy B.

About This Speaker Tape

Sandy B. was a Yale man, a Marine fighter pilot, and a blackout drunk who shut off his jet engine ten feet off the ground and asked the maintenance officer — hypothetically — what the odds were of it relighting. The answer was zero. Sandy already knew that.

His bottom wasn't dramatic in the Hollywood sense — it was a grand mal seizure at a career school in Washington, D.C., followed by six months in the psychiatric ward at Bethesda Naval Hospital, where the other patients looked down on the three alcoholics because they didn't think drinking was a real mental illness. AA talked its way into that ward with a speaker meeting. Sandy thought it was great — for other people. On Pearl Harbor Day, 1964, he finally made the call. His sponsor, a Marine infantry captain who specialized in explosive ordnance disposal (perfect job for an alcoholic, he said — nobody looks over your shoulder), drove him to his first meeting: a group anniversary with turkey, ham, square dancing, and fiddle champions. Sandy was nine hours sober and trying to escape into a cold, dark, roadless December night when an Al-Anon woman named Betsy L. put her hand on his shoulder and said, "It's going to be all right." He believed her. He hasn't had a drink since.

The heart of this talk is Sandy's sponsor walking him through a spiritual inventory — zero prayer, zero meditation, zero church, zero spiritual reading — and then reading him the line from the Big Book's chapter to agnostics: "You have an illness that only a spiritual experience can conquer." Sandy's response: "I don't believe in spiritual experiences." His sponsor's response: "Well, you're screwed." Sandy closes with Carl Jung's letter to Bill W. — that evil always wins, with one exception: a person who has had a spiritual awakening and lives inside a society that helps them maintain it. That society, Sandy says, is exactly what AA is. The keys to the kingdom, and the fellowship to keep them.

For the alcoholic who will go to meetings forever but keeps the Higher Power stuff at arm's length — the one who'll make the coffee but won't say the prayer — Sandy's talk is the mirror and the door.

Topics

Timestamps

• 5:00 Sandy traces AA's founding year by year against his own childhood — Roland Harris, Carl Jung, Ebby Thatcher, Bill Wilson — all unfolding while he sat oblivious in second grade in New Haven.
• 13:00 First drink at Yale: two and a half drinks in, the room transforms — strangers' eyes shift from rejection to longing. Sandy realizes alcohol didn't change him; it changed the world he lived in.
• 22:00 Major Newport tells young Lieutenant Sandy he'd want him in his fighter squadron — then adds he wouldn't let him drink. Sandy is stunned. His drinking was scaring men who drank just as hard.
• 30:00 Sandy shuts off his Crusader's engine master switch ten feet off the ground, turns it back on, hears a boom as it relights — then asks the maintenance officer 'hypothetically' what the odds were. Answer: zero.
• 38:00 Pearl Harbor Day, 1964: Sandy's sponsor drives him to his first AA meeting — a group anniversary with turkey, ham, and square-dance fiddle champions. Sandy is nine hours sober and plotting his escape into a cold, dark, roadless night.
• 44:00 The sponsor's spiritual inventory: zero prayer, zero meditation, zero church, zero spiritual reading. Then the Big Book line — 'an illness only a spiritual experience can conquer.' Sponsor's verdict: 'Well, you're screwed.'
• 50:00 Sandy's two-door quiz routine: Door One says 'Die an alcoholic death,' Door Two says 'Live on a spiritual basis.' Larry gets a phone call to ask the doctor how bad Door One really is — then picks Door Two.
• 54:00 Carl Jung's letter to Bill Wilson: evil always wins — with one exception. A person with a spiritual awakening, living inside a society that helps them maintain it. Sandy calls that society AA, and the keys to the kingdom.