The 2006 Crested Butte Mountain Conference in Mount Crested Butte, CO

Okay. Oh, you got a chair. Wow. Thank you. The old knees are getting sore.

So if I can sit, it really helps. Hi, everybody. My name is Sandy Beach, and I'm an alcoholic. How are you all doing? This has been a wonderful week, and, you you all have treated Sue and I with such grace and warmth that I don't think we'll ever forget it.

It's just been absolutely delightful. I've enjoyed all the speakers and the workshops. It's really been quality. Really quality. You can tell that everybody who is participating has experienced the point of Alcoholics Anonymous, which is to be reborn with a personality change that causes an entire new way of looking at everything.

And, in that sense, we are so lucky. And I think about Alcoholics Anonymous and, where it is now, I guess a 140 countries and 3a half 1000000 miracles have taken place. Maybe a 100 and 50,000 AA groups, all over the world. And as I think about AA and I think about my life, I'm gonna just tell you, you know, this is really amazing, but I'm gonna try and talk about both both at the same time by telling you this that, when I was one, a guy named Roland Hazard was on his way to Switzerland to see Carl Jung who sent him to the Oxford group so that when I was 2, he went and got Evie Thatcher and brought him to, Alcoholics Anonymous. And when I was 3, Evie went and got Bill Wilson and brought him into the Oxford group.

And when I was 4, Bill went out to see doctor Bob. And when I was 5, they had started Alcoholics Anonymous. And when I was, 8, they had written the big book, Alcoholics Anonymous. So I'm sitting there in 2nd grade. I'm totally unaware of all of this of all of these events that are, going to have the biggest impact on my life, more than anything else.

And when I was 18, I had my first drink at, Yale University. And on that very year, there was a botanist named Jelnick who did the first comprehensive study on alcoholism sponsored by Yale University, and I've often wondered if I'm in there anywhere as he observed, the downside. You remember the gel net curve, and he probably saw people like me and saw them on their way down. And couple years later, AA held its 1st international convention and they adopted the traditions. And I was, just on the verge of being expelled from the, university.

And so what I'm trying to say is that all of this has taken place in my lifetime. I mean, this is an amazing phenomenon to have something like this. And when I was born, there was no hope for alcoholics. They just went into insane asylums or died or put in prisons or whatever, but there was absolutely no place for the suffering alcoholic to go. And, I think the other thing that I when I forgot to mention when I was, 10, this is a landmark, was when Rockefeller held that black tie dinner in New York and, legitimized Alcoholics Anonymous, took away the stigma and essentially stuck himself way out.

A lot of people ridiculed him, but he essentially said, and all the papers covered it, that this is a legitimate organization and you should be grateful if you have one in your community because it is going to do wonderful things. And, his secretary, Willard Richardson, wrote about that that he's just when he just observed this in the first four years, he saw that this was one of the most precious things that he's been involved in all kinds of charitable works and looking for wonderful things to support, and, he saw this. He saw Alcoholics Anonymous and what it was all about. And I was just thinking about, how wonderful AA is. And I I was thinking if they, could find a spiritual filter for Google Earth so that you could put that on and then just zoom anywhere you want and spiritual energy would show up.

And I think they would find if they were studying it that there was these pockets all over that they were kinda hard to explain because, this spiritual blossoming would take place just for an hour, and then it would just fade away. And but it would be back the following week at exactly the same time. They would see this big burst, and in that pocket of spiritual energy would be all kinds of different, sparkles and different burst of energy, and it reminds me of the wildflowers of Crested Butte when we took that tour. And everywhere you look, there was this incredible beauty. And I think that would show up on that Google Earth if they could go around.

And I think it would be amazing that they would just look in all these countries and they would see this amazing burst of spiritual energy and, wonder, what is that? You know, and they'd go find out a little bit about the program called Alcoholics Anonymous. That's how I feel about AA. It is it is clearly God given. I just thought, you know, we when we talk about our higher power, we can only surmise.

There's no way of understanding. Most of the time when we talk about God, it's through stories. And that's why I was talking about the egg yesterday, and it's throughout history. That's been the only way to talk about a higher power is by through a story or a parable or something. And, certainly, the AA history is just filled with the with these.

The humans wanting to go in one direction and the spiritual force no. We're not gonna have paid missionaries. We're not gonna have a chain of drunk tanks. As a matter of fact, we're not gonna have any money at I'm gonna keep you guys broke for years. I mean, look at Bill getting it.

You know, he's getting AA started and getting evicted from the townhouse in Brooklyn, and then the AA people loaning him a car. He'd stay in the summer camp. He'd stay over here. And all the time, he's dreaming of the big donation from Rockefeller, and it didn't turn out that way. But the energy that we all put in to, advancing this wonderful society or fellowship, pays off and it comes out in so many unique ways.

Who would have dreamed up this conference? I I mean, I'm I'm sure the 1st year you had a certain amount of the things you have now. And then every year you added something and people came up with ideas and then you end up with almost a masterpiece. I've been to 600 of these conferences and this has to be up in the top ten. Just, the way it's organized.

And that just and and I'm sure that the all the people on the committee will agree that god had a lot to do with that. In the middle of your arguing and this and that, and I'm like, And then it then it turned out a different way. And when you when it did, you went, wow. That's better than mine. So, anyway, I just wanted to tell you how amazing it was to be here for both of us.

And I'll tell you a little bit about my story, and then, I like to talk about the fellowship because it's so much fun to do that. So very briefly, I grew up in, obviously, in the early thirties in, New Haven, Connecticut. Just before I forget, I've got, 6 children. 2 girls are in AA. My boys all I had seats reserved for them, and they went to college.

They got into drugs, alcohol, trouble. I just went, man. Right? They're kicking after their father. And then each one of them in his own way said, well, enough of that.

I think I'll just straighten out and become a good citizen. And, part of me was happy, but part of me was very, very let down. But my daughters, 2 of them made up for the 3 boys in spades and upholding the family tradition, and they're, members of AA. I also have 15 grandchildren, and they're all over the United States. And whenever I travel, I try to visit them, and they're very excited about Alcoholics Anonymous.

They come to a conference if I happen to be in that town. So, anyway, I grew up there, and my parents were product of the depression, and so they had to work very hard. They supported my sister and I, did a wonderful job. I never felt like I belonged. I don't know where that came from.

My mother was Catholic. I went to the Catholic church. My sister sat next to me in the Catholic church. And to this day, she loves it and considers it the most friendly place she ever went. She just thought the nuns were cute.

The Latin was cute. Purgatory was cute. Yeah. You know, everything was cute, and she was got nothing but comfort and, peace from the entire presentation. I, on the other hand, made up a different story about what they were telling to me, and it scared me to death.

I was terrified to be in there. And, oh, they just knew they were getting me. I was I never wanted to die because the punishment was gonna be so severe until not much comfort, and I was about 8 years old. And sometimes you have these spiritual insights, and I was sitting in the front pew staring at the crucifix, which is about 20 feet tall hanging from the ceiling. You could not miss it.

And it was as if it spoke to me and it said, little boy, do you see this? Well, yes. Well, this is what god did to his only son that he loved. And guess what he's gonna do to you? And so I think I fainted and fell out of the pew and then carried me out of the church.

And so I found it, obviously, very conflicted inside of myself. But at an early age, I learned one thing, don't talk to people about anything. So I spent the rest of my life explaining everything to me on my own. And so that's where all of my old ideas came from that became so frightening and disorienting and all of that was just I made them all up and I stuck to them. Once you lock in an idea, you're not gonna change it or you'll look weak.

Even if it's obvious, you're wrong. It was something about, I know I'm in jail, but I got here. You see what I'm saying? I I did this. And but I did well in school and I, ended up in a little prep school and I was a good athlete.

I had very high grades and it was a pipeline right into Yale. I got down there and, all these people came from around the United States and they were all rich and smart and they all knew what was going on and I knew I didn't belong there. And I knew that sometime during that freshman year, they were the dean was gonna call out. It's about a 1,000 freshmen, and he was gonna announce on the old campus, gentlemen, we have an imposter in our midst, and there he is. And they were gonna finally expose me for what I was and get me out of there.

Well, it didn't happen, and I was very, nervous at all times. I just couldn't fit in anywhere, but I hadn't had a drink yet. And my roommates are telling me, jeez, you're 18 years old. You ought to be having drinks. This is what college is for, to make you feel good.

And I I've talked about this and every time I give a talk that I went to a social event and I was supposed to meet these other 20 guys, and I couldn't. I'd walk up to a group and with their eyes, I don't know if you're aware of this, but people can communicate things to you with their eyes. And as I approached each group, they looked at me and made it very clear they did not wanna know me and would appreciate it if I would go somewhere else, but that group didn't wanna know me and I never met anyone. And I was about to leave, which is what you do when you can't handle the situation. Look at the pressure I was under.

And there was a bar there and then so I decided to have a drink even though I was gonna try and stay away from that stuff. And I had 2a half and I was on that third one. I had the feeling it wasn't working. So I put it down, I was just ready to leave. And I looked back at the guys and everyone in the room was looking at me and their eyes were saying, I'd give anything to be your friend.

I I couldn't believe what had happened. The world that I lived in was so wonderful. I mean, these people were wonderful. I just was I was so excited. I started running over to the first group.

And on my way over, I had the feeling they were right. They would be lucky to know me. God bless it. And I just intuitively knew how to handle everything, social event, you know, conversation. And as the evening went on, I realized that alcohol had removed all these barriers to me and my creativity.

I could now be me. I'd never been me before. I was always hiding in there somewhere. And I thought to myself, you should have started drinking in grammar school. This is amazing.

So alcohol didn't change me, but it changed the world that I lived in. And all of a sudden, I love this world. I love the world. Oh, I just talked about it, but it went away when I got up in the morning. And I was back in the old world, the scary world.

So I could hardly wait for the day to get over so that I could go down and enter the technicolor world. And very soon, the priority became drinking. And my grades started to get bad. I didn't seem to care too much about studying anymore. I gave up on making the track team and, started getting in fights.

I went to jail a few times, and, it was obvious that a lot of trouble was coming. But as far as I was concerned, all of that trouble was a small price to pay for what I got out of drinking, and that's why I'm an alcoholic. Because a nonalcoholic wouldn't tolerate all that trouble because they weren't getting what I was getting. I thought it was easily worth the price because I was being transported into a wonderful world where I just thought it was marvelous. In this in a way, it really was the equivalent of a spiritual experience.

It was the transformation of my own reality into something marvelous. And it all took place inside of me without anything out there changing at all, which is what spirituality is. We get absolutely happy with the situation and the situation never changed. We just are suddenly comfortable in our own skin and comfortable because we're near our higher power. It is the, power that does the work.

In any event, the Korean war was going on and they were drafting everybody. So a group of us had some beers and went down and joined the marine corps. And, I did not know what was in store for me. I took my golf clubs. It was a strange, And I I did not understand what they're talking about when they told me where to put them.

It was, what? And so there was the boot camp thing for 10 weeks, and then, and but, you know, it's as, ridiculous and and severe as it was, part of me also liked it because I was being disciplined. There was something good happening to me that I would never do on my own. And I got out of there and it took 6 months to become a platoon leader. And during the course of that training, I saw a movie about pilots, training movie, and that caught my eye.

I'd never been in a plane, but these guys look cool. They had the scarves. They're talking with their hands at the bar, and then they showed some of the planes and the carriers. And I just went, god. Boy, that's great.

So I asked this major, I wanna sign up for that. And he said, no. You gotta you'd have to sign up for 3 more years. No. No.

I'll do it. So I signed up. I passed the test. I had met this woman from Connecticut who was to become the mother of our 6 children, and, we hit it off, got married, and I'm off to Pensacola to become naval aviator number 4,000 or whatever. Now I got airsick on the civilian plane going down to Atlanta, and then I got airsick going to Pensacola, then I got airsick in the old SNJ, and things were not looking good for this, hotshot aviator, but it turned out it was motion sickness and it it did go away.

And then I became great at it. I would be number 2 or number 3, and, it was a wonderful 18 months going through all that training and formation and gunnery and the carrier and everything. And finally, down in Corpus Christi, Texas, I got my wings and went off to the Fleet Marine Force. It's been a short 5 months in, El Toro in California, and we lived on Balboa Island. And, man, life was great.

Now I got my orders to a fighter squadron in Japan, and the war is over. Yay. And so the main job was to fly high performance planes and drink. And I just loved it. I loved the squadron.

I loved the idea of being part of a unit. We all drank together with the colonel there and then we had our table and you flew hard and you just, did whatever was asked of you but then when it was over, however long the day was then you went and you party just as hard as you worked and it was all done as a unit. And we all were getting drunk. We're doing this. We're doing that.

And I just felt like I was the same as everybody else that this was just marvelous. And about 8 months into it, we were getting ready to go aboard the carrier, and we were practicing field carrier landings. And I was out in the end of the runway with one of my heroes, the maintenance officer, a big red headed Irishman named Major Newport. And I just listened to everything he said. You know?

He was great. And he started talking about, you know, Sandy, in about 2 years, I'll be eligible to be a lieutenant colonel, and I can get my own squadron. He start talking about how happy he'd be to have his own fighter squadron and how he'd get nothing but the best pilots. And then he said, I want you. Well, I mean, you know, you're a young lieutenant and this guy, I want you.

I just felt like $1,000,000. And then he said, but I wouldn't let you drink. And I was shocked. I just why would he say that? I mean, he gets drunk right with me.

What is this? And it wasn't till I got to AA and I learned about alcoholism that I learned that even in a crowd of really big drinkers, my drinking scared them. You know what I mean? It would there was an intensity. There was something that you can spot that isn't casual.

You know what I mean? Or situational. See, these guys, when we went back to the states, they went back to what's normal drinking back in the states. I just kept right on. And so, you know, we got transferred around.

I was a forward air controller, flight instructor, and a photo pilot during the Cuban missile crisis. And during that time, we had 6 children and we're I got promoted to first lieutenant. I got promoted to captain. So on the outside, you could say, look at this guy. He's doing pretty good.

He's got the big family. He's got flying these planes, blah blah blah. Must be, you know, nice to be that guy. Well, you would have made a bad trade if you had decided you want to trade places with me because, it was about to end. All of the finality of alcoholism was taking place inside of me, and everything was starting to close in.

And I was starting to get very apprehensive about flying with me because I was having withdrawal symptoms, because I didn't drink for 12 hours. I would lose, vision. My heart was racing. I would get up there and just feel like I'm gonna pass out, and it was just awful. And I kept that up for about a year and didn't, crash anything or have any accidents, but there were close calls that I knew about.

I took a crusader off of Cherry Point one day and it was you had to put the wing down real fast, and I hit the engine master switch, shut the engine off about 10 feet off the ground. Went oh my god. They turned it back on, and there was this boom, and it relit. And later, I talked to the maintenance officer. You know how you wanna find out something so you ask hypothetically?

I remember going, hey, Walt. Hypothetically, if you shut off the engine master and turned it right back on, what are the odds of it relighting? And he said, it won't. You know? So I just went, oh.

You know, like 0. So, anyway, I was frightening myself to death. I was very sick, and, I finally went to the doctor. We had no alcohol programs, in the Navy at that time, and so everything was left up to the psychiatrist. And the doctor agreed I had a terrible problem.

They sent me down to Pensacola for 2 weeks to be studied by the doctors, and they studied me. There was every kind of a doctor and they I remember they had an old AD Skyraider and they put a chair in like the ones you're sitting on, bolted it in, and then had all these wires. And they went into me and I'm in the chair and they're doing the planes, doing all that, and they got a doctor sitting there watching all the stuff like they're gonna diagnose alcoholism, in an AD. Anyway, at the end of the time, they, couldn't find anything wrong, so they left it up to the psychiatrist. And he, wrote a a long report on how I was experiencing a childhood fear of flying that showed up after 12 years of flying.

It just appeared from nowhere. And I was told I would never fly again. Well, that just about killed me because that's who I was. And, took about 3 months. I was a career officer, and I got a new specialty, and I became an air traffic controller.

And that was my job until, I ended up in AA. I went over I made it through the school. I'm shaking even worse. I went overseas, for a whole year. I checked into the unit and the senior enlisted men who are the backbone of every military, the c 7 came up.

Welcome, captain. Good to have you here, etcetera, etcetera. And then he said, sir, here's your tent. Here's your coffee. You know?

So blah blah blah. Sir, we really appreciate it if you personally would never go near the radar or talk to an airplane. And, I knew what he meant, that I could barely get to work, and so that's all I did. I just now I could drink around the clock. And I got, during that year, I lost £50.

I had malnutrition. I drank a lot of, I couldn't eat solid food, so I drank soup. And I'd have vodka and soup, and it was just it was terrible. I stopped hanging out with my buddies. We didn't even go to happy hour with the guys.

I was just lost inside of myself. I was just trying to survive, and I survived all the way through that tour and back to Quantico, Virginia, which is how I ended up in Washington DC, going to a career school. And in the school, I had a grand mal seizure. I just about bit my tongue in half, and they took me up to Bethesda Naval Hospital. I was had malnutrition, was really sick, alcohol poisoning, all of those things.

And I got up there, and they said they don't have a clue what the problem is. So I'm in a regular hospital room and they're studying what could have caused the seizure. And it took about 5 days without alcohol for my system to absolutely freak out with the DTs, the delirium treatments, and I was I saw these horrible things. The CIA was trying to break me mentally with memory tests, and they were moving the walls of the room and and changing everything, trying to drive me crazy. And, I guess in the middle of one of those, I went screaming down the hallway and they captured me and put me in a straight jacket and locked me up in the mental ward for 6 months.

So that was the treatment that was available in 1964. And nothing was helping me in in there. The psychiatrist would talk about the childhood and then the rest of the people who were in the mental ward were very upset with the 3 alcoholics because they didn't think we had a legitimate mental illness. And they would, I remember them sort of going, why are you guys even here? You could tell they were looking down on us.

And I I remember thinking where I had arrived, you know, Yale class of 53 all the way to low man in the nut board. And that was the it was not very reassuring as far as my own life was concerned. But AA talked their way in and brought a meeting in. And it was a speaker meeting, and I didn't connect fully, but I thought it was exciting. And if I ran into an alcoholic, I would certainly send him to these guys because they were great.

And not long after that, I was an outpatient while they were gonna give me new orders so I could go home at night and weekends. And when I did, after about 3 weekends, I just decided to have a beer and then the beer led to this and that. Now I'm got a quart of vodka in the parking lot at the nut ward, and I know they're looking at me. I know they're gonna nail me because they told me if I had another drink, I'd lose my career. And so I decided, to call AA on my own.

And on Pearl Harbor Day of 1964, I made the phone call. It got forwarded to somebody at their home, and they got the only other marine down in Quantico who was in AA, another captain, and he came to my house and he's my sponsor to this day. I've had the same sponsor for almost 42 years. And, he knocked on the door. I went there, and it seemed like he filled the door frame.

He was a a big infantry guy. His his specialty was explosive ordinance disposal. And he used to say it was the perfect job for an alcoholic because nobody's looking over your shoulder while you're working. And so he came in, and I was you know, I had I got some alcohol to stay down between the time I called and he got there and I didn't really want AA anymore. But he wasn't having any of that and he was getting in the car.

We're going to the Manassas group and that was my first meeting. And it was a group anniversary. They had, massive food spread, turkey and ham and baked beans and all this stuff, which I couldn't even go near. You know, I've been now I'm sober. 5 hours.

And and it's a group anniversary, and it was followed by a square dance with fiddles. They had their country fiddler champions out there, members of AA, and they're playing the fiddles, and this thing's going on till around 11 at night. And now I'm sober 9 hours, which is and I was trying to make a break for it. I kept going out on the porch of this old wooden building and, it was December 7th. So it was cold, it was rainy, and there was no street lights.

It was in the remote part. And I I was trying to run away, but I didn't know where to run. And, this hand came on my shoulder, and it turned out it was an Al Anon lady who named Betsy Lynch. God bless her. And she and her husband were at the meeting, and she saw how troubled I was.

And she just put her hand on my shoulder. And I turned around, it was like there was an angel there and she said, it's gonna be alright. And I felt it in my heart. I just went back in. That woman, she just said it's gonna be all right.

And there was something about her eyes and I just went back in and sat down. Now I didn't I felt terrible but I I believed her. That it was gonna be alright and I haven't had a drink since. And, it's just wonderful. Now life doesn't go the way you want it to.

I went to a meeting every night for 2 years. I really did well at this new job that I had which was a pretty good one. It was with a team of senior officers that went around the country and the world putting on a presentation about the future of the Marine Corps. It was like an 8 hour show, traveled overseas. It was a pretty good job.

And, the colonel and the general were giving me good high fitness reports and it came time for my sponsor and I to be eligible to be promoted to major. Now you only get 2 shots at it and then you're out. And neither one of us made it the 1st year. So now the 2nd year, I'm trying even harder. I'm just working hard because your career is over if you don't make it.

And the following year, he made it and I didn't. And I don't know why, but I thought that that was unfair. I don't know. You know, some of us are just weak. But I thought having gone to a meeting every night for 2 years, did everything that I was asked, to, prayed to this new loving god, spoke at meetings, made coffee, did everything they asked, and what did I get?

My family of 8 is now thrown out in the streets. That's what this new loving god did. And so I had a high class resentment. And I learned early on that if you wanna keep a resentment, don't tell anybody about it. Just sit home and cook it up.

Just keep reviewing it in your head. How unfair this is. Let me go through that one more time. How unfair. Oh.

And, about 3 months after I was, given this dastardly event, I read a little story in the Washington Post and it's one paragraph. Marine Corps instruction team from Quantico, Virginia killed in plane crash going to Denver to put on one of those shows. And if I had had my way and it turned out the way it should have, I would have been on the plane. And so I remember going, wow. Wow.

That changes it. And then we're just kinda saying that. And then I remembered that God was watching me read that. And, of course, I felt like, where can I hide? And you can't hide from God, you know.

I'm ducking around and well, if you just told me that was gonna happen, I wouldn't have been so upset. So, anyway, I went on from there to, several jobs. I would try and selling and I was broke. I hate to tell some of you new people this, but we were broke probably up until I had 15 years in the program. So if you wanna talk to me about money problems, you better have at least 16 years.

Up until then, I won't have any sympathy for you. But, you know, it was fun. The it was spread on the edge. You know what I mean? The the car battery dies so you gotta wait 3 days for payday so that you can go get a new battery and that type of stuff and electricity off for one day back on.

And you're sponsoring new people telling them if you want what I have. Oh, I'm amazed that he have them stuck around. You know what I mean? And, eventually, I got, you know, through a Marine Corps connection, oddly enough, I got an interview with a small government agency that regulated credit unions in this country. And it was headed at the time by a retired marine general and this general counsel was a marine colonel retired and they were looking for a congressional liaison.

Somebody to talk be an expert on credit unions and an expert on congress. Neither which I am, but I got the interview. So I'm talking to this guy and telling him, oh, yeah. I you know, marine officers, we can do anything. I could learn this job in a month, blah blah blah, blah, blah.

And, at the end of the interview, he said, by the way, why did you leave the marine corps? And I went, oh, man. And I said, I got thrown out for drinking. I drank so much, I ruined everything and I just was thrown out. And I've been in AA for 10 years and it's the most wonderful thing.

It just transforms you. And I know I can do this journey. So, okay, we'll let you know. And about 2 months later, like, the personnel officer calls me up and said, you want the job? And I got it and, it involved writing and speeches and testimony.

It turned out I was great at it. And, it I had a 23 year career with those people, 10 with the government agency and 10 with the 13 with the trade association. And it was just wonderful. But I after I've been there about 2 years, I became very close friends with that, general counsel, the retired marine colonel. And I was down at his house one time, and he said, did you ever wonder why I hired you?

You didn't know anything about congress or credit unions except you had a loan. And I said, yes, sir. To tell you the truth, I really did. He said, I just wondered what it would be like to work with someone that honest. Now isn't that amazing?

And, so I just if you're on a job interview, I'm not telling you what to do, but, I'll tell you what happened to me. I just said I was thrown out for drinking. And I think he just went, jeez. He's obviously not making that story up. So, anyway, off I go on, you know, so the and then I retired about 10 years ago, went down to Tampa, Florida.

And, it's just wonderful to sponsor lots of guys and go to conferences and meetings. And, it's it's it's really a great life and I'm most grateful for it. What happens to us to make it so great? Now let's not, you know, mince any words. The only thing that makes it great is god.

There's no there's no non god way of doing this thing. I mean, there just isn't. And, of course, when we're new, we just don't like to hear that. So I'll try to share with you how my sponsor led this former Catholic, if if not an atheist, certainly an agnostic. I did not wanna hear any of this stuff.

You know what I mean? I'll go to the meetings. I'll make the coffee but don't start talking all that other stuff. And so he's leading me along and I think eventually, I did say the lord's prayer after about 2 years. Alright.

I'll say it, you know, just to make everybody else feel comfortable. But I was having a very hard time understanding the AA God and how what it was all about because nobody seemed to know. You know what I mean? There wasn't anybody explaining it. Seemed like you might have one and somebody over there had a different one and this guy had one.

It was very confusing about how you got spiritual in Alcoholics Anonymous. And so he had two things that he did to me. So if you're new, I'll just do these and see if they help you tonight. I think I had about two and a half years and he said, this is what I wanna do. I wanna sit down.

It's only gonna take about 10 minutes. And would you be willing to be brutally honest with me? And I said, sure, Bill. Said I just wanna take a spiritual inventory of you and what's going on inside of you. I said, okay.

Fine. Okay. How often do you pray? I said, Bill, praying is stupid. I think it's the most ludicrous thing in the world.

I I don't pray. I I don't pray at all. I have no intention of praying. Put me down for a zero prayer. He said, okay.

0 praying. Fine. We're not gonna criticize you. That's that's it. You that's it.

Just 0. That's it. Okay. How about spiritual readings? They have these various books that help people understand spirituality.

They have How about that? Bill, I don't even go near that section in the bookstore. I don't want anything to do with that. I like murders, mysteries, sports, history, spiritual reading, out, out. Okay.

We'll put down 0. How about meditation? Do you ever sit back and just contemplate the universe and all of them? I said, no, Bill. I don't do that.

That's just like a Ouija board. I mean, this is ridiculous. I no. I don't do that. Or, well, how often do you go to church?

I don't go to church. I went when I was a little kid. It's the most stupid thing in the world. I I don't even I don't visit cathedrals when I go to England. So it's 400 years old.

Who cares? I'm not going in there. No. I don't want anything to do with churches. So he said so we could 0.

Yeah. Okay. One more question. How's it going? What does it feel like to be inside of you?

It's awful in here. It's awful in here. Okay. So we're doing a little spiritual experiment. We've now run a little lab test on 0 praying, 0 meditation, 0 church, and 0 spiritual reading, and what are we writing down are the results of that?

What we're suggesting is you try something else and see what kind of results you get. Then he said, let me help you with that decision. Okay? And then then I thought, here comes the pitch about god. He's gonna finally tell me who this god is.

He's gonna have some ancient writings. He's gonna have all kinds of stories and all of that. He never talked about God. He didn't talk about it at all. He said, the way I'm going to explain spirituality to you is to explain the disease of alcoholism to you.

And I'm going to go to the chapter that you will probably enjoy the most because it's called the chapter to the agnostic. I said, yeah. I haven't read it, but that's my chapter. I know that. And I assumed, you know, how you know without reading what's in there and I knew that, that's the chapter where the agnostics go and they don't do the program.

They do whatever is in that chapter and I didn't know that, what the chapter said was change your mind, become a former agnostic. But, anyway, he said, now I wanna we're all gonna agree on the terms of the disease and it's outlined right here. And I just wanna make sure you agree with this assessment. And this is right out of the first paragraph. And, you know, If when you drink, you have little control over the amount you drink, that's you.

I see. Yep. Okay. Yep. That's me.

And if when you stop, you can't stay stopped, yep. That's me. Then you're an alcoholic. Oh, oh, okay. And then he's reached the next sentence.

If that be the case, you're suffering from an illness that only a spiritual experience can conquer. Would you like me to repeat that? You have an illness that only a spiritual experience can conquer. And I went, Bill, I don't believe in spiritual experiences. He said, well, you're screwed.

There's no other answer. And I'm going, what am I gonna do? It's gonna do something that is probably the most difficult thing an alcoholic ever does. You're gonna change your mind. Well, I remember just going, I don't think so.

I don't think we're gonna be doing that. So he went on to read the next paragraph, which is a very comedy line. It reminds me of Jack Benny. And it's it simply says, here's where you are, Sandy. Here's where you are if you're new.

To be doomed in alcoholic death or to live on a spiritual basis are not easy alternatives to face. So, I said, yeah. You're right. I remember just going, let's see. So if you're new, I just developed this little comedy routine.

The way we'll take care of this is you will imagine that it's a quiz program. And you're up on stage and I'm the emcee, and I'm going, Larry, come on up. Come on up. See these two doors back here, Larry? Yeah.

What's the first one say? Die an alcoholic death. Larry, that's door number 1. Now what's this other one say? Live on a spiritual basis.

Okay, Larry. That's door number 2. Larry's circumstances have placed you so that you have to choose one of those doors. So which one are you gonna choose, Larry? And, Larry, if you're like all the rest of us, you go like this.

Woah. Oh. Oh. 2 crappy choices. Oh.

Oh. Do I get a phone call? Yes. You get a phone call. Hello?

Doctor Seymour. Yeah. It's Larry. Yeah. Hi.

How are you doing? Listen. I got a hypothetical question. How bad is an alcoholic dick? Oh.

Oh. Okay. Door number 2. And then we say, congratulations, Larry. You just became spiritual.

And you did. You decided that circumstances have forced you into making a choice that you never would have made and that you don't believe in. There's no way you can believe in the steps ahead of time. I mean, when I remember when my sponsor told me that everything you need is in these steps and you know, and I had all these problems, you know, when you're doing all these family and all the pressure and this and that. Everything is there.

Now I'm serious. So I'm, you know, I'm okay. I'm in. I'm in. I'm going home.

I'm gonna finally read this stuff. And I'm reading and reading and reading and, you know, and you're foggy and it it's hard to get it clear anyway. And I'm back and I'm back. And finally, I said, Bill, Bill, which one is the money step? Because that was it.