Why the World Looks Different When You Stop Fighting – Sandy B.

Thank you very much Pinky and good evening everybody my name is Sandy Beach and I'm an alcoholic how y'all doing I want to congratulate Pinky on how many years 36 wonderful wonderful I look forward to coming out here and that you know these guys I've been speaking around here for over 25 years and I I missed one time out of 25 years. I didn't show up, I screwed up writing it down on the calendar, and that's all I hear about. Well, we weren't sure you were going to be here. We weren't certain you were gonna be here! It's probably a hundred times I showed up, but we don't hear about that. Anyway, it's a pleasure to be here tonight, and before I forget it, I heard just to help people make sure they're in the right place. I heard a young lady at Midtown about three weeks ago and she summed up in one sentence just all the essence of being an alcoholic and see if you relate to this and then you'll know you're in right place She said I may not be much but I'm all I think about so if you relate to that at all you may be in the right place and I always assume that there are new people that are here and that's the most exciting part of AA that's a great thing the most exciting part of speaking is to try and communicate this incredible AA message to any of you that may be just starting out in this fellowship to make sure you stick around so that all these wonderful things will happen to you that you don't believe were going to happen. And I think that that's really the exciting thing about AA is to relive your own awareness by watching it happen in somebody else. You know, year after year after years you get to see the incredible miracle of Alcoholics Anonymous and that's what, to me, is the most exciting part is to watch a hopeless person come in thinking of suicide and very negative and their family's all screwed up and job and everything. And then a few months go by and you just see the eyes start lighting up and the smile coming on the face and just things start straightening up, all happening somehow from the inside out. and it happens so often that we take it for granted we just go yeah yeah well that's what happens when you come to AA but it really is a miracle I mean you won't see a bigger miracle I don't think as long as we're on the planet earth here than that particular event when a person goes from thinking of suicide into looking forward to life and nothing has happened on the outside they still have the same amount of job they owe the same amounts of money their health is still straightening out and yet for some unknown reason the whole world looks different to that person and it just happens here in AA through this tremendous power of the program and it's so enjoyable to see and it refreshes our memories of when it happened to each one of us when we first got that glimpse that there was something here couldn't put our finger on it and I remember it extremely well and I like coming out here because this is where I went to my first AA meeting in December 7th, 1964 was at the Manassas group and they were having a group anniversary and Pete and Pinky and Speedy and a bunch of people were celebrating anniversaries and I'll tell you I had this big marine pick me up at my house. I was in desperate shape. I had been locked up in a nut ward for a number of months. It was a mistake. I think they got somebody, the wrong guy. They finally let me out and I went home and they told me if I ever drank again I was going to be in trouble, et cetera. And I had somehow ended up drinking, if you can believe it. And I had to go back there. I was an outpatient. I'd been locked up for six months, and now I was an outpatient. And on Mondays through Friday, I had to go up there and then drive home. And then on the weekend, you could stay home. And I started drinking about five days before I called to come to this AA meeting. And I knew they were starting to catch on in the nut ward. They were looking at me funny. and I think they knew I was sneaking out to the parking lot to get some vodka and so I made this phone call I knew that the world was closing in again you know when you've been locked up once you just get that paranoid feeling that they're after you and so I decided to come up with this plan and the plan was I was going to join AA over the weekend which they'd been telling me to do and then if I was all screwed up Monday and got caught, I would blame it on AA. I'd say, God damn it, I joined it, I get in with those people, and look, I got drunk. That was my plan for joining AA. And I didn't count on this guy who came to my house, who's my sponsor, who was 12 feet tall. He filled the entire doorway. And he just, he was another Marine. We were both in the Marine Corps down at Quantico. and he just knocked on the door bam, bam and I went there and he said hi my name is Bill this is a 12 step call I talk you listen and I was going how about some literature screw the literature just let me get in the house and he comes in and just starts talking to my family and gets a straight scoop from them they squealed on me right away okay he's a mess so none of my stories were going to work and all he kept saying I'd say get in the car get in his car and we're here we're at the Manassas group so I got here I guess I had about 4 or 5 hours sobriety when I arrived at the manassas and lo and behold it was the group anniversary and they had turkey and ham and speakers spoke forever and it just went on and on and then at the end of the meeting they cleared all the stuff out of the way and Speedy and his band, Harvey and all those guys and they started playing music, having a dance and they're serving all this food and I didn't want food, I didn' t want anything I just needed a drink and we're here until 11.30 now we're finally driving home This guy's talking about going to a meeting every night for years. I mean, he's just laying it out loud. We'll be going every night and he's naming them. We're going to Fredericksburg, we're going on Falls Church. Because back then there weren't that many meetings. You had to drive a long way to get to the meeting on the next night. And I had no way of knowing that meetings didn't last four hours. so I'm going every night I'll be gone from 7.30 to 11.30 forever and I had to get out of the deal and I never did I made up some excuse on the way home and it didn't work and he just said okay don't you drink I'll see you I'll come back tomorrow and I drove off boy he was back the next night and we're off and all of a sudden I'm just trapped with this vicious sponsor just nowhere to go i got to keep going to meetings and whenever i think of having a drink i'd go okay you can either endure the pain of not having a drink because i was having a nervous breakdown not having drink i was having withdrawals again is what it was or you can face your sponsor and I would sit there and go Jesus you talk about two crappy choices and facing him seemed worse and so I just kept not drinking you know I'll get out of this someday I'll be out of AA and here it is 27 years has gone by he's still my sponsor and I still go to meetings all the time and some rather miraculous things have happened. I've just found the AA way of life and it's just been absolutely wonderful and I do intend to talk about this program and its way of Life but just for the benefit of new people I want to share what drinking was for me so that maybe you can relate to you hadn't possibly had the same relationship with alcohol that I did. alcohol contained the power for me to change the world into a comfortable place that's what alcohol did for me it was this secret ingredient that gave me the power and the knowledge and the confidence to see the world as a great place and to live in it and to learn how to be comfortable in the world. That's what alcohol did. When I didn't have alcohol in my system, it was awful. I mean, it was absolutely terrible. and I was about 19 before I had my first drink and the world was just a very uncomfortable place to be in. And the reason it was uncomfortable was I hadn't grown up yet. Growing up is the process that enables us to get comfortable in the world and alcoholics avoid that, like the plague. There are very few grown-ups in AA you know just don't see grown-ups arriving in alcoholics anonymous you see old immature people arriving and alcoholics you just nobody ever called me a grown-up i mean that's the one thing my father still asked me i went home to see my father for christmas and he said where are you going to be when you grow up but there was this incredible relationship with alcohol that occurred with me on my first drink I mean it was just a few drinks and I looked around and saw how wonderful the world was all these people that had been so intimidating and looked at me like I didn't belong there they all looked at me and they said with their eyes we love you I mean that's what happened with alcohol I mean I just looked and I said three drinks and I never felt so wanted in my life you know I'm talking about that's the magic of alcohol with no alcohol in my system I was unwanted three drinks and I looked around the same people all wanted me and I remember that third drink with hidden I just say you have to wait your turn I'll try to get to all of you before the evenings over but he's just gonna have to be patient I mean that was the transformation into just boy talk of being part of something as soon as that alcohol went in when it just changed the dynamics between me and my environment and it was wonderful it was just wonderful now there was a few drawbacks of puking and going to jail and these were sort of details that just had to be ironed out smooth them out over the years I mean I realized there were some things that were happening that but it was there was this small price to pay for the miracle that was that was taking place this absolute guarantee of a transformation that would take place by merely drinking and so I had an early on a very positive relationship with alcohol alcohol didn't cause problems it solved problems that's what alcohol was the solution for me and in a literal sense I often when I'm talking to new people I say you know that when you really look at it our problem wasn't alcohol our problem was sobriety every time we were sober it was awful and what we wanted to do is to get unsober in the way you do that is through drinking and then there was other problems sometimes that came with drinking but they just never impressed me that they weren't as devastating as sobriete you know what I mean you had a key you get a drunken driving thing you gotta go to court you can burn it was sort of a problem that you took care of but sobriety would go on forever I mean if you didn't drink you just sat around sober all the time and you were you knew it you just said I'm still sober it still feels terrible I'm not still nervous and I'm and they're all rotten look at them and they just there they were the world just was there and it was a very much of a dog eat dog world there was this let's go get them I never felt this camaraderie until the alcohol got in then you left that cruel world and you went into this wonderful world where I understood some spiritual principles I'm the type guy who could go into a bar a strange town you know just walk into a barn have three or four drinks and all sudden the bartender would find me sobbing over there I'd say what's the matter that's I don't know I just came into this town a total stranger just a few hours ago and I walk into this bar and I have three drinks and I look around and I was just totally overcome by the beauty of the people in here it's just bringing tears to my eyes presence of such wonderful loving people you know what I mean and this is what it just sort of was a spiritual awakening to have some vodka and it was a very powerful experience now no one in my life appreciated this and they were always trying to cheat me out of that wonderful spiritual experiences ago why don't you stop drinking you're screwing up your whole life and what did we say you don't understand you don' understand what's happening inside of me when I drink. I thought this happened to everybody. I really did. I thought that all people had this same transformation when they drank, and it turns out that mostly only alcoholics have this transformation. Clancy talks about that it isn't what alcohol does to us that makes us alcoholics, it's what alcohol Does for us that is different than the non-alcoholic. They don't get this incredible, powerful transformation that we get. They get some enjoyment out of it. But I kid around. I remember last time you were here, I was talking to you about my roommate. He and I drank together in college, and he's not an alcoholic. He's tried, but he just can't hang in there. He poured a lot of booze in there, and then he stopped pouring it in because he had better things to do and he just couldn't hang in there. But he's a big fan of Alcoholics Anonymous. He lives down in Texas and when I speak down there, he always comes to the meeting. He thinks it's wonderful. He just can't believe what changes it's made in my life. And so we've had chances to talk about these things and I've asked him, Roy, I said, now this is 25 years after we had our first drink and i said if you had to describe alcohol to um someone what would you say about it and you know this was amazing he said well let me think about that this is one thing he said alcohol and he meant wine in particular so alcohol just really has the power to make food taste better and i remember looking at him going boy now there's one i never would have dry alcohol makes food taste better I wanted to ask him going down or coming up makes the food taste better and then he said something about he comes home from work and at the end of a work day he'll have a drink while he's getting ready to take a shower just as a way of transitioning from the work day into being at home and I could relate to that a little bit but I wouldn't stop with one drink and then He talked about sometimes you get a group of people together three or four times a year, you'd have a party and people just had a nice time And that was his total description of alcohol. And he never said, oh, alcohol, yes, alcohol is the secret to life. He never said that. It wasn't even on his agenda as that important anymore. It was something that came in and it was good. If it wasn't there, that's okay too. For me, it really was the secret of life. Without realizing it, without realizing I was different, I became very dependent on alcohol. I relied on it. It was a very essential ingredient in living. And as I looked about it, it was how you... If you couldn't make a decision, step one, have a drink. Remember that? Geez, I don't know whether to sell the house or buy a house. Well, have it drink. Hey, I'm going to buy two houses. Can't go to sleep. You know what I mean? Just can't get to some... Go out and have several drinks. Bam! You pass out. Tired. You have no energy. Go have a drink. Don't know how to dance. Have a drink! Don't want to ask a girl out. Have a Drink! just you know can't seem to get rid of this anxiety have a drink I'm always afraid then where can I get some courage here's a bottle of courage drink down it comes like I'm just so dull I can never think anything creative have a dream how many writers and artists oh I have these drinks and I suddenly get creative and all these things it's just amazing what came out of alcohol It was sort of the secret supply of all action, of all great ideas. It was just amazing how powerful alcohol was. Went to a package store. You know what it was like getting a bottle of booze at one stage in my life? It was like checking a book out of a library. You know What I mean? You go to the library, you look at the cover of the book and it said Action Adventure Book, you know, down the Nile wounded or something and you go, boy this is probably going to be an exciting book but you wouldn't really know what it contained until you took it home and read it and then it really contained a whole story about submarines and places that you never even dreamed of same thing with a bottle you're in the package store and you hold that bottle up to the light and you shake it and you know I wonder what's in it I wonder what's instore for me inside of here and you could sniff it you could do anything you want but you had no idea what was in store for you inside of there until you drank it and then Christ it might be traveling whiskey you know what I mean you weren't planning on going anywhere but all of a sudden your family getting a collect call from memphis or remember i remember like once in a while you get a bottle it was like they remember the monopoly game go directly to jail do not pass i mean barely got the bottle halfway finished handcuffs what the hell you feel like going back and trying to get your money back Jesus Christ, look what you sold me if you're crying out loud the one I like to go back and say you remember the bottle you sold me a week ago Tuesday I want another bottle like that that's the big blonde bottle I had three drinks out of that bottle and this big blonde showed up what a night I want the lot number on that whiskey so you see if you think about it in a way we were literally turning our life over to the care and protection of whatever we drank there was a sense that I don't know what I'm not satisfied with my life the way it is and I'm willing to pour this in and take whatever comes my way because I know it's going to be exciting I never remember drinking and nothing happened sometimes you know people are in bars hey nothing's happening around here let's go somewhere else I go no let's drink faster something will happen There it is. Guaranteed. Hey, look at there. Here comes the red lice. So alcohol had this power. I guess that's what I'm trying to say. In the end, it just went through and it just destroyed us from the inside out. Pretty soon it was ruining my family life. It's ruining my Marine Corps. I wasn't flying anymore. It had taken care of that and itjust went through and eventually brought me to the nut ward. In my last year of drinking, after I'd been grounded from flying, I was drinking around the clock and pretty soon I couldn't eat anymore. I did malnutrition. I lost about 50 pounds. I'm withdrawing. I don't want to go out and be with people anymore. My hands are shaking so much I don' t like them to see it. Even when I was drinkin', my hands would keep shakin'. So I didn't want anybody to see that. Of course, you didn't want anybody to know you had a problem. Probably the most painful part of being an alcoholic is to pretend that nothing's wrong. You know what I mean? You're dying. You've just been throwing up blood. You're just barely making people... How are you doing? Fine, fine. Do you remember how much energy it took to try and act like everything was fine and just look them right in the eye? Fine, fun. Oh yeah, I'll be right out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then they'd close the door and just go ahead crying, you know, just not sure. I would never go to work feeling that bad today. I mean, if I ever caught some flu bug that made me feel like that, I'd be calling in and we used to have to go. Remember showing up when you just thought you were going to die? Because if you didn't, somebody's going to say, well, what's the matter? Oh, you're drinking. Well, you should stop drinking. That was the great fear that someone would come in and say, you're going to have a heart attack. You're going have to stop drinking." Well, we all had our bottom when we got here and mine came because of a convulsion and the DTs and into the nut ward and all of that. And we get here, and then it starts. And I guess let me take the next 15 minutes or so to talk about what I think happens. What is AA? What is this program called Alcoholics Anonymous? And if you are new, let me tell you what I'm talking about. That's what I don't think it is. And anything you hear is just one person's opinion. There's no official spokesperson for AlcoholicsAnonymous. You probably already know that. but we've been around a while this is the way it looks to me what do we get here in AA I think we get a game plan for living I think we get a set of directions that if we follow them we will go through life on precisely the path we're supposed to be on and this is a very different feeling for an alcoholic to have the feeling on the inside that he or she is where they're supposed to be doing what they're supposed to being doing I always felt I was in the wrong place that's what the geographic cure was all about need a new job a new family and a new place to live and then everything would be alright because I was never comfortable where I was and I didn't have a plan I mean we had a plan we had a drinking philosophy you ever think what you had when you got here as far as your plan for living it was probably just hang around and drink and hope to get a job and you know never trust the guy that won't drink that was a very essential part of my plan but as far as knowing what was going on having life make any sense it didn't make any sense to me I was unable to see any sense in it and I think that's what happens here in a we're given a plan for living and it turns out that the essential ingredient in this plan for Living is that you surrender you don't figure anything out once we leave the world the drinking world and come in here we come into a different world there's a lot of different ways of looking at things because we're talking about a spiritual program it's not a material program and so there's a lot of changes is a different way of looking at things and there's just an endless series of paradoxes that you find in here and I'm sure you're familiar with the first one which is that in order to beat alcohol you must surrender and it sounds backwards you know how can you win by surrendering well that's exactly what is necessary it's almost like a a person drowning sometimes you have to knock them out so they'll stop fighting so that they can surrender to the rescue and we there were a lot of people trying to help us but we fought it we fought we called it meddling you remember that got my nosy mother's trying to get me to sober up and then boss was sticking his face in my business you remember we resented people stick in their face in our business and we called it meddling and we resisted it we told them to go away and then after they left we said there's no love in the world no one cares about me i'm all alone because all we saw was meddling and it was really very caring people trying to reach out and save us and we wouldn't have any part of it and we couldn't be saved until we stopped fighting being saved or surrendered and so each one of us hit our own bottom the thing that we all have in common is not that we intellectually decided we needed a a i haven't heard too many speakers get up to the podium and say well i was sitting around my house one night and i got thinking about my drinking and i said gee if i keep drinking i may get in trouble someday I think I'll go down and join AA early before any trouble sets in. That is not the normal story. We just get driven to some sort of a bottom, and each one of us has our own story of how that happened. But that is what we all share in common, is this surrender, this common surrender. Each one of Us had fought it. Some people fought it many more years than I did. They just said, you ain't getting me forever. And they just told booze, go ahead, try and kill me. And you can hear some stories that will make your hair stand on end of people who took this thing as far as they could. But it doesn't matter. Whatever it was, uncle, I've just had enough of this. I just can't take any more of this, and we came into AA. and it turns out that that enables us to be able to see the plan. There's a very true thing, you read in our AA literature, Bill writes this in several places in the big book in the 12 and 12, that the only step we can take 100% is the first step. That's the only one. But if we don't take it 100%, then the rest of the program will not work. and so it's possible to come into AA and take a look at that first step I'm powerless over alcohol my life became unmanageable and qualify it a little bit in your mind maybe you're younger than some of the other people in AA, maybe you are richer maybe youre the president of a company maybe you re a star athlete or maybe you r street smart which is smarter than everybody else maybe but whatever it is this exception that you cut for yourself and you say, well, yeah, I'm sort of powerless over alcohol. But I mean, Jesus, I am not powerless over alcohol. I mean I am totally. So in our minds we say I am almost powerless over alcohol. That will haunt us in the days and months and years ahead in AA because if we are almost powerless in our minds over alcohol, then we almost need a sponsor. We almost need to go to meetings. We almost needed steps. We almost needs a higher power. And we almost get sober. It's just as close. But it's like the only thing like that that's close is in horseshoes and this game isn't horseshoos. This is for all the marbles. This is for your life and to almost be powerless over alcohol is almost like not getting here at all because the rest of it just doesn't work and you sit here and you can talk to people where this has happened I guess because I was locked up in the network or something I just said oh my god I'm out of control but I've had people that I've worked with and I've talked to people who have been in AA they've been in AAA for 5 years, 8 years and they wonder why the program isn't working they keep looking, maybe I'm not doing enough inventory maybe I need to be doing this and they can tell that other people that have been in AA less time than they have just seem to be grasping onto something that they don't have and they go, God, well maybe God doesn't like me maybe there's something wrong with me whatever it is and lo and behold it turned out that they never surrendered in the first step and that that was the only problem. And we can go back and take another look at that and realize, my God, I've been telling myself that I was almost powerless. And so that is, as far as this game plan for living, that's the one absolute requirement to make it work. If you want to see this thing boom into the third dimension and have all these promises and all the wonders of this program, that's the one requirement is that we understand in our guts that we're powerless over alpha then the rest of it can work then we can apply our energy and you will see all the magnificent transformation take place but it's almost like you can't be on the shore and on the ship and the ship is pulling out but you really don't want to be in it and you have one foot here and one foot there and you're going to fall in the water eventually as that boat starts pulling out when the AA boat is going out where you're either in it or you're not. And so I always mention that first step. It's so essential for the rest of this plan to work in our lives. And the rest o' the plan, the reason that's so essentially is the rest fo the plan is simply how to get plugged in to power. That's all the rest f the plan is. That's what a spiritual program is. It says if you're powerless, that means unless a higher power is allowed to flow through your life, you're going to die drunk. That's what powerless means. And so all the rest of this plan is simply a very practical way to stay plugged into a power so that you're not powerless. When this power is flowing through, we have total freedom from alcohol. I'll tell you, those of you that are new, when problems are solved in a spiritual sense, It's entirely different than when we were used to solving them. We're used to saying, I'm an alcoholic, let's solve that problem. And you watch psychiatrists and you watch the medical profession and they're trying to solve this by figuring it out. Well, if we could just figure it out, well, your mother dropped you on your head and then the wrong diet when you were little and the wrong gene is over here and there, here's all the answers, now the problem is solved. But that's not how it works in here. You know, once you come in here and say, I am an alcoholic that's the end of it we stop trying to figure out why you're an alcoholic you ever been to a meeting where the topic was why I'm an alcoholic I never have it's a waste of time nobody cares about that that's useless information so what do we do don't even worry about why you are an alcoholic all you have to do is make coffee and go down to that meeting at 8.30 and listen to the topic but when do we figure out we don't ever figure that out other than how are we ever going to have this solved? Watch. So we come here and do things that have no apparent connection whatsoever. We're going on 12-step calls, we're going over here, we've gone over there. And then the spiritual solution sets in. You know what the spiritual resolution to alcoholism looks like? Let me tell you if you knew. This is what it looks like. You're doing all these stupid things that has no application. I mean, you just go in here, you're sort of humoring your sponsor. Okay, I'll read the big book. What a childish book. I'm going to edit this later after I sober up. Really jazz it up a little bit and look at these little slogans talk about some platitudes easy does it, barf barf. Right? You know, a day at a time oh boy isn't that exciting a day of the time I mean it looks like what is this second grade? But we're going along with it because we're in a bind we got boss says if we don't stay here we lose the job the wife says you stop going to AA you never get back in the big bed so there's a lot of reasons there's there's a lot of reasons we're continuing down this path other than we believe in it Clancy you know one of my heroes is Clancy and he just says when you cut through all of it AA causes us to take actions we don't believe in and that's really what's happening in the beginning we can't see why this is going to work but we do so what's this miracle I was talking about what is this solution to the alcohol problem this is precisely what happens as a result of taking all these stupid actions that have no connection whatsoever to your problem you notice one day that you forgot to worry about drinking last week just think about that you forgot to worry about drinking drinking didn't even enter your little brain last week I remember the first time I became aware of that I became nervous I said, Jesus, I better write down worry about drink it was so astounding that I forgot to worrying about drinking for a whole week what had happened during that week I had been so busy in the program I've been just following instructions that the problem was removed during that week. And this is how spiritual solutions work. They don't figure anything out. They just cause things to be removed. Fear gets removed. Drinking gets removed, other obsessions that we apply the steps to, they just lift out and they're just gone. We don't understand why. It's just a wonderful gift that's been handed to us as a result of taking certain actions. And so the drink problem is described well in our literature. It's just lifted out of us, but it's lifted out on a daily basis. And we look in the tenth step and it talks about a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition. So we've been given a set of directions that will provide access to a power that will lift problems so that they are no longer of any concern to us as long as we stay plugged into this. A lot of times, sometimes we'll go on vacation. I'm sure some of you have done this. You go, well, it's a little inconvenient to go to meetings. You ever done this? You go down to the beach or something like that. I'll just have a wonderful time. You have a great time for about four days and then all of a sudden the family all turns into a bunch of crap heads. And it's... and you've got resentments, and it's just like the world is awful. We've just run out of power. That's all that happened. We've jut run out of this wonderful spiritual cushion that going to meetings and following this game plan puts around us so that the world is no longer poking us with little needles. We're just walking around going, hey, everybody's behaving themselves. That's what it looks like or what it feels like. and it was simply the nourishment that we get by taking these steps we can be given this daily reprieve so each day I'm going to learn how to work this plan so that I walk out not vulnerable to drinks or any of these other things that led to drinking so all I'm saying is that in my judgment what happens here is we are given a plan that gives us access to a power and all we got to do is stay in touch with it and the world will look different just like it did when we were drinking i don't mean just like it but i mean in the same fashion the the people in it will look like loving people we start seeing it in aa but when the 12 step talks about practice these principles in all our affairs there's no reason that the people outside of a shouldn't look as wonderful to us as the people in this room in the beginning we say well I'm safe here in AA but if you practice these principles we get in touch with this power we have the power to just make the whole world honorary AA members and walk out there just as comfortable as you are in this room because that is what is possible through the application of these steps by simply being in touch with this power so the question is where is this power I remember saying that to myself oh yeah I want to get in touch with this higher power where is it Get on a tramp steamer and go to Tibet, climb the mountains and find a higher power. And it turned out I don't have to go anywhere. It's right inside of me. The fundamental idea of a higher Power was born inside of us, as Bill writes, just like the fundamental love for a brother or a sister was born outside of us. It is that part of us that was screaming out for us to stop drinking. it was that part of us why we ended up wanting to commit suicide because we were in conflict with the part of uns that wanted to be a good person that really wanted everything to be different and so in the short time I got left let me just say what happens is we are given a set of instructions that removes all the things that are blocking the flow of this higher power. And we will come to see and experience this higher power as it flows through us. And what blocks the flow are self-centeredness, is our self-centredness and our character defects. And so that's why the whole program, when you look at it, is simply designed to get this crap out of the way. That's all it is. And this stuff has nothing to do with moral judgment, you're good or you're bad. Forget that. It's blocking. Fear and lust and greed and envy and all those things the real damage they're doing. There's no moral judgment here whatsoever They're blocking this wonderful flow of sobriety from flowing through you That's all character defects are there don't even get hung up with guilt or anything Everybody gets a standard issue of character defects when you're born and their hair supplies Good luck and they're just the raw instincts that drive us as human beings and us alcoholics they're totally out of control and so we have this wonderful plan for getting things back in perspective just a constant state of inventory to keep a channel open if you want to think of sobriety that's all it is I want to keep a channel open so that this wonderful sobrietry can flow through me and to me that's precisely what these steps are and let me just I always like to tell this one story about the second step and then I'll sit down because it's a great dilemma and I know that there's new people that are here tonight who are worried about this dilemma your first dilemma is am I an alcoholic or not we fight that for years no I'm not no I'M NOT and finally okay I'm an alcoholic but that's all I don't need anything else I just stop drinking and go to meetings I don' t want to buy all the rest of this Well, if you're powerless over alcohol, you're going to have to find access to a power. I don't like that thing. And we end up with our second step. And I've always had a great fun with our second step, I think it's the great fun step in AA because it's first big dilemma and then later on you'll look back and you will laugh at yourself but it's not funny while you're gone through it. And this is why it's such a funny step. It's almost like this young man who a judge picked up for drinking back a number of years ago and he'd been drunk about 20 times that year in the town and the judge was under a lot of pressure to do something serious with this kid. And he said to him, Jimmy, I'm sorry but the elders are really on my case and you just get drunk all the time so I'm going to have to take some severe actions with you but I'm gonna give you your choice and here's your choice. And the young man standing right down there, he said, you're gonna have to go for a year in jail or if you choose one AA meeting and the young man stood out there and the people in the audience are watching this and they're figuring he'll just immediately say one AA meet but he doesn't say anything he's just thinking and he's shifting his weight back and forth on his feet finally the judge says well what are you choosing I'm trying to decide, I'm thinking about it god how the hell could he be thinking about this i mean why could there even be any debate over this choice and in order to understand it you have to get inside this kid's head and if you get inside his head you would be able to see the thought pattern and what's going on in there he drinks in a bar and a lot of his buddies drink in there they're all heavy drinkers and once in a while, one of these guys will get in trouble and he'll go to jail. And once in a while, in a great while, AA will get one of them. And he knows from experience that those that go to prison or go to jail come back. They're on AA. what the hell happens to him you know it's just this big mystery so he's caught in this big dilemma and he finally chooses A and then after he goes there he goes I can't believe that I stood here and actually debated and asked the judge which jail you know with this incredibly stupid decision I mean it's a humorous thing. Well, we get to the second step. Ain't to believe in power greater than ourselves. You open up the AA literature and you find Bill gets a little chapter of the agnostic is where the second step is. And he has a funny little line in there. This is the same dilemma. Because if you're new, you're just like this kid who's standing in front of the judge. Because listen to what Bill writes in the second step. To face life on a spiritual basis or dying an alcoholic death is not always an easy alternative to face so here you are having come to AA and we come up here and there's two doors and we go choose a door you know like a quiz program you ready door one live on a spiritual basis mmm door two die an alcoholic death mmm two crappy choices and we sit there and agonize over this right, right am I going to do this or that and God, it's one of the great decisions that we are struggling with as newcomers in AA Am I going to go down this higher power path or not? Or die this alcoholic death? And then later on, because you stick around here, you get peer pressure. You say, all right, all Right, I'll try some prayer and meditation. All right, I'm taking a fourth step. Gee, give me a break. And you get pushed down this path. And when you go down it, that's when the jackpot goes off. And all of a sudden, all the wonders of this spiritual way of life come rushing in and when you look back on it, you go, I can't believe I stood there at those two doors and actually called up a doctor and asked how bad is an alcoholic death? So if you're in that dilemma tonight, you've been here a while and you've come up against all of us had to come to this fork in the road and there's the door I'll hang around a while but tell you open that door to live on a spiritual basis and you are going to get the greatest kick out of life you've ever seen please stick with us have a ball stay sober thanks for inviting me over night