Sandy B. from Tampa, FL telling his story at The Specifics Group in Las Vegas, NV

To introduce our main speaker, Sandy b from Tampa, Florida. Hi, everybody. My name is Sandy Beach. I'm an alcoholic. How y'all doing?

I'm going to put this up a little. Yeah. I came here 42 years ago. I was in the marine corps, and another marine came to my house and, picked me up and took me to my first meeting at the Manassas, Virginia group of Alcoholics Anonymous. And the meeting lasted about 5 hours.

It was a group anniversary, and they had a 1000000 people celebrating. They had turkey and ham and, square dancing, country fiddles. And when I got to the meeting, I'd been sober about 5 hours. And I had 10 hours when the meeting ended, and I was not I was not agreeing with anyone when they came up and said, isn't sobriety wonderful? I was like, I don't think so.

And I wanted to leave that meeting. I wanted to just get away, but it was in an old Oddfellows house out near in Manassas, real country, and there wasn't even a street light or where you could go. And it was sleeting, and I just stood out there and felt really terrible. And I felt this hand on my shoulder, and I turned around. It was just an Al Anon lady who I since got to know her and her husband.

And, her name was Betsy Lynch. And she said, it's gonna be alright. And I believed her. And I turned around and went back in and sat down. That was the end that was the end of my struggle.

I just believed her. And, about a month ago, the Manassas group of Virginia was celebrating its 55th year, And they asked me to come and talk at the group anniversary. And I went there and, like Bob, my sponsor was there. And he's got lung cancer and has been really struggling for the last, year or so. And I didn't think he'd make it up from, a little bit further south in Virginia, but his home group bought him up, had him in a wheelchair.

And, so there we were. You know, it's like the bookends of this wonderful period of time in the same group where he brought me. And, so I I it was very moving and I got a picture in my wallet of the 2 of us that night and I just it was just remarkable. His home group members who I stay in touch with called me up and they said, well, it looks like it's getting real close. It's renal, kidney shutdown failure.

His family's assembling and we're hoping that he lasts until his son gets back from Germany where his son is a in the German Symphony Orchestra playing, French horn. And his son has told him, I'm coming home and I'm gonna play an entire symphony for you. So we all said, well, we know he's gonna last until that son gets home. There's no way he's not gonna last to that. So his son came and went.

And I called him yesterday. I mean, this is like 2 more weeks later. And, I said, Bill, how you doing? I'm going out to Vegas. I wanted to, you know, tell you that I'm so happy you're my sponsor and all that.

And he said I said, how are you feeling? Oh, I'm doing great. I'm walking again. So we left it that we would shoot for 50 years together. And, we'll just see.

He's a tough old guy. And, it's been I just wanted to share that with you, how important sponsors are. And it's not that often that you can get to both stay alive that long. And so it's been a wonderful journey. And, he taught me a lot about AA, taught me a lot about service.

And, so as I stand up here tonight, you know, I'd I like to talk about whatever pops into my head. And I was thinking when you were reading the Traditions, you know, Alcoholics Anonymous, one. There's no group that hates AA. There's no segment of society or segment of the world that doesn't love AA. It that doesn't love AA.

News reporters run around to dig up dirt on everybody. I mean, it's gotten bad. You know how easy it would be to sit out in front of an AA meeting and pick off the celebrities with a camera? They're like shooting duck in a pond out back. Never happens.

Doesn't happen. Why? Just not gonna touch AA. Something special about AA. And if they did, their editor wouldn't let them use it.

Now, isn't that remarkable? There's no law against it. We just happen to have a tradition. And it's being respected. And I was thinking, you know, why would it be so respected?

And you know when I came to the conclusion? Because we don't take an opinion on anything. That little sneaky 10th tradition. I And I always tell a story about when I was in Washington and the Senate Health and Human Services Committee was trying to decide whether to put warning labels on alcohol like they did on cigarettes. And they said, we got to get expert witnesses as to whether it would be a good idea or not.

And somebody on the staff said, well, who could be a bigger expert than Alcoholics Anonymous? So let's call them up. So they called the general service office and said, we're having this. Could you send somebody? Oh, I'd be glad to.

So they sent somebody down to interview the staff person. They explained the whole bill, and they said, now what? Where do you think AA would stand on this? Oh, we don't have any opinion on that at all. And the the the senators and the committee staff couldn't believe that someone had no opinion.

It was beyond them. They have an opinion on everything. You know what I'm saying? No opinion whatsoever. Now I have an opinion.

Personally, you can have opinions, and I think there should be a warning label, and I can tell you exactly what it should say so it would do some good. It should say, warning, this bottle may run out. You you should consider buying 2. And think of all the lives that might be saved when the alcoholic's at home, and it's about quarter 12 at midnight, and he ran out. And he's got 15 minutes to get back down to the bar, and he wouldn't have to get in his car.

So it'd probably do some good. But anyway, getting back to this no opinion. Let's say that just for example, AA took a very narrow opinion on wool blankets. So we shouldn't have any wool blankets. The people who liked wool blankets would no longer have the same opinion of AA.

Anything they you take an opinion on. The opposing opinion no longer holds you in that exalted position. It's holds you in that exalted position. It's just segments, segments, segments. As soon as that it was it's the most amazing thing in the world, how powerful that tradition is a.

And that's because we have kept that and our primary purpose, which is that's what you call this group. Right? Or no. The specific group. You talk about the primary purpose.

Group. Right? Or no, the specific group. But you talk about the primary purpose. And it's so easy to say, well, gee, there are certain things in the world that we ought to get behind, that we ought to have an opinion on.

I mean, it just seems to come up from inside and this miracle that these these traditions got stuck in there position. And How tempting it is to take a powerful solution like this and try and apply it into a much wider range. And somehow, they had the wisdom to say, yes, 12 steps are indeed miraculous. And you, with other problems, are welcome to them. Help yourself.

We'll help you understand this. Sex addiction or whatever the problem is. I think there's 100 and but not one group helping a 140 problems. Because that 140 problems, when you have one alcoholic talking to another alcoholic, you have the equivalent of a magnifying glass taking the sun and focusing it until there's a fire. And if you try to do the same thing and spread that so that the magnifying glass could put some heat on a wider area, you wouldn't get it on on It would be diluted.

The power of this message wouldn't work. They should apply to every type of problem. They do but only with a primary purpose behind it. So when one alcoholic is talking to another alcoholic, one drug addict is talking to another drug addict, one gambler is talking to another gambler, not one alcoholic talking to a person with a weight. The miracle would not generate enough force to happen.

It's one of those things that sounds good. Sounds like we ought to be able to solve all these things. And it just is it's I look at that and I just go, wow. Because all of A, these conferences, the committees, this, literature, everything only serves one purpose, to continue to supply the one alcoholic talking to another. This is that's where it all happens.

This is where we celebrate the fact that it happens. But it is the one alcoholic. It's this sitting there and there's this thing and you suddenly trust and you suddenly realize your home. And, so I just wanted to get some thoughts in on those 2 traditions. They just are amazing how we came up with these things.

And Washingtonians when they got involved in some outside issues, they were gone in 4 years, disappeared off the planet. And they had, a bigger percentage of the population sober than AA does today. Lot of people. But off went So anyway, that's enough out of that. Now, let me tell you what, grew up in the 30s in New England.

Grew up in the thirties in New England, wonderful parents, nice sister, 4 of us. I didn't feel like I belonged. My sister has coming up on 30 years in a day. And, She thought still goes there. Just thinks that she thought the nuns were cute.

She thought the Latin was cute. She thought the incense was cute and the costumes and the poop and all of that. I thought it was the equivalent of the Holocaust. I read the catechism, the same one she read, and I it scared me to death. It was I can't believe this is gonna happen to me.

And I was just I would hyperventilate sitting in the church, just sitting there next to my sister who's going, isn't this fun? And so and when I was 8 or 9, I was staring at the crucifix and it spoke to me when my first spiritual insight, little boy, do you see this Oh, yeah. Yeah. I see that. Is my story.

My old ideas not. This is the story. Speaker talk one night, and he said he was being funny. And he said, my story is divided into 2 parts. What happened during the years that I drank, and what I thought happened during the years that I drank.

And as you think about it, What happened when you were a child and what you thought happened when you were a child. What happened when you were a child and what you thought happened when you were a child. In other words, it's a story. Head about what happened. There was this mean uncle who came over.

Well, come to find out, he's a very nice man. He wasn't a mean uncle, but he wasn't my story. He's a real mean uncle that came over. The the reason I'm saying all this is that if you were to listen to the talks I gave when I had 10 years sobriety compared to now, you'd find out that now I had a much better childhood than I used to. Well, how is that possible?

How could you have a better childhood now? I'm looking at it from a different perspective. Bob was talking exactly about it. Our consciousness changes. And from that new perspective, we see parents that were trying as hard as they could.

They had tons of problems. And we just didn't really see their side of anything. And so this is the freedom that is obtained in Alcoholics Anonymous. It's freedom from those old ideas. The willingness to let go of things.

I've been working 8 months on a men's retreat down in Tampa. It's next weekend. And I've been doing a lot of thinking, you know, preparing some lectures. And I've suddenly realized something that a lot of you may already know, but it just came to me in, just like boom. Holy cow.

I never thought of that. That, the 12 steps says having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps. That means the entire point of Alcoholics Anonymous is to have a spiritual awakening. That's it. That's why you come here.

That's what the steps are for, which is to change your consciousness. And we carry this message to other alcoholics. What's the message? How to have a spiritual awakening. That's the message.

Well, boy, it's a program of action. What is the action? I'm going to tell you in 2 words what the entire action of the AA program is. Letting go. Every step that we take is designed to make us let go further.

We admit we're powerless over our ego, so we gotta let go of that. Then we have to come to believe that something's gonna take care of us. So I have to let go of me taking care of them. And then I'm gonna start inventorying all the things I wanna let go of. And I'm gonna share with my sponsor.

This is all the stuff. These are all the defects and everything that I need to let go of. Good. Well, now we got it listed there. And then I'm gonna go and I'm gonna ask my higher power to grip my hand so that I can let go of these things.

And then I'm gonna let go of the past. And then I'm gonna go through every day letting go of anything that disturbs me so that I can maintain this awakening with this higher power. So it's it's a strange situation when you come here and you think you need to learn and get knowledge and move, grow spiritually. Grow spiritually is to shrink. Smaller.

In fact, you you you look at all the information you have and you go, whoops, wrong. It's gone. You don't learn anything. You unlearn. We had a guy I remember when I my 1st month, I didn't know what he was talking about.

A little guy. He's a lawyer for the House of Representatives, Charlie Bruton from Alabama. He's been passed away a long time. I hadn't thought about him in years. And he used to get up there and say, well, you know, it isn't the things you don't know that gets you in trouble.

It's knowing things for sure that just ain't so. That's what we did. We knew a lot of things for sure Drove ourselves crazy that I'm a terrible person living in a terrible world with people you can't trust. There's no such thing as a loving God. And, they just said, well, we're just gonna have to get rid of everything that isn't true.

And pretty soon, there was nothing left. You know what I'm talking about? You know that it just no. No. That's wrong.

Chuck talked about it all the time. Uncover, discover, discard. Oh, wrong again. Look at the 10th step. Oh, what else am I wrong about?

What whoever would have thought that we would delight in being wrong? That was the hardest thing for any of us to do was to admit I was wrong about anything. First time I did it, my sponsor finally said, well, do you see where you're wrong about that? And I said, you know something, Bill, you're right. And he said, no, you're wrong.

The same thing. He said, well, say it. It didn't wanna come out of my mouth. It did not wanna come out of my mouth that I was wrong. I think, oh, wrong.

Like, that would be the end of the world. And so it's it is very paradoxical, a lot of things that happen in here. That it is I was in the marine corps and they told me this key to the whole thing is surrendering. Just put up a white flag, to solve a problem, was to let go of it. And I you know, I was thinking if my higher power came into my room and and and said, I'm here to help you.

What what's going on? And I would say, well, I'm really frightened about this situation here. He'd say, well, that's not yours. Give me that. I brought up, he'd just said, no, no, don't.

You're not supposed to who do you think you are, God? Give me that. That's not yours. And I wouldn't have anything left. There wouldn't be anything left.

He would have taken everything away from me, and I'd say, what am I supposed to do now? He says, go out and play. Absolutely insist on enjoying life. Your job is to be happy, joyous, and free. I'll take care of all the problems.

Sounds too simple, doesn't it? Alcoholics don't like simple things. Remember what they said in the very beginning? Okay. Just don't drink.

Problem is gonna be about 40 pages, not don't drink. That's too it couldn't be don't drink. And then everybody would go, just don't drink. Even if your butt's falling off, don't drink. Even if your butt's fallen off, don't drink.

Okay. So we have the same feeling when somebody said, just let go. Couldn't be that easy. Just let go. Let go?

You mean let go is the answer to all the prob Yeah. It's one solution for all problems. Oh, come on. The world's a lot more complex than one solution for all problems. I mean, that couldn't possibly be true.

Okay. What were you doing before you got here? What'd you do when you had a problem? Well, I went out in the kitchen. I got a glass.

I poured some whiskey in it and poured it down. One solution for all problems. I don't I don't ever remember saying, well, here's a problem I won't be drinking over. I'll be I'll be solving this one, sober. How are you gonna solve anything sober?

So we already know one solution for all problems. What was the solution? We took something that changed us inside so that everything looked alright. Yeah. Yeah.

That's it. Well, I thought everything was all screwed up. Well, it was, but it's not now. Everything's fine right now. How could it be fine?

I don't know, but it is. Everything looks different. You know, the first time I saw that was with my sponsor. I came in, you know, about every 3 days, you come running in. Bill, this time, the sky really is falling.

I was just out there and it's coming down hard coming down. All right. What is it? Well, my wife is going to go over there and I got 6 kids and then I'm going to hear the Marine Corps does Okay. All right.

All right. All right. Well, you know, that's true. Yeah. That's true.

But don't forget, you got all these new friends. And you got this program, and it's taking you on a wonderful direction. And your heart is just being filled with all these when you get all through, I'd say, well, if you look at it that way, not so bad. If you look at it that way So strangely, And And sometimes I think, we ought to have a ceremony, a 2 years. And if they've successfully worked the steps, we call them up to the podium.

We take off the life sucks glasses. Spiritual glasses. It It really is. It's an awakening. I'm just so happy.

Now here's the problem. We say to the person, it's we strongly suggest that you throw away those life suck glasses. Oh, yeah, I will. So I'm just gonna I'm just gonna keep them in my pocket for a while. Sort of a memento of the old bad days.

And about a week later, we get the phone call. Oh, god. You're not gonna believe they're fired. Everything's terrible at work. And I said, what?

Well, have you still got those new gla No. Put on the old ones. And I'm very familiar with having problems. I'm not used to not having problems. We're problem people.

Bill writes that we create our own problems. Our problems, we think, are of our own making. And it is in the problems, that we separate ourselves from our higher power. That is, why it's so lonely deep inside of us. And there was one thing that used to fix that.

That's that cosmic loneliness that mankind feels. And we wondered, how do you fix this? Of course, it was And of course, it was it was the right path. It was the wrong higher power. It had the idea that this could not be fixed in any traditional way, but it had to be fixed as an inside job, which is what alcohol was.

And it was very hard for me to believe that these 12 steps could do what you all said they were. I knew you believed it and I knew that you had it work, but it did not look like it could possibly be the answer to the problems I had inside of me. And when my sponsor said, read them, read them, read them. This is just take a look, and this is where it all is. I read and read and I went back to them and I said, alright.

I know I'm slow, but which one is the money step? Because if I don't get some money for my wife and 6 kids, we're gonna be evicted and and, you know, the whole world is coming down. Which one is the money step? And he said, there is no money step. What we can do with your financial And I felt like, I was in a used car dealer when I heard that.

You can what? We can give you the spiritual I remember going, okay, technically, I can see that. And I remember going, okay. Technically, I can see that. But could could we stick to the where you actually get the money part of the solution?

And we'll we'll get to the god stuff later. And he said, no. This is all the god stuff. This is all you know, so I I was getting my first glimpse of you can have financial security without money. I mean, that was like, well, what is that?

It is the power of our own creator to make us realize that we are being taken care of as we sit here. I love to tell new people in Tampa. Now, I know you all have a lot of problems, but I will give you a written contract that all your problems are now being worked on. They're all being worked on. So go get some ice cream.

Take a look at them tomorrow. See they're going to be this stuff's being worked out, isn't it? Yeah. You never saw it was going to work out that way, did you? The action situation, but you don't have a problem.

You have labeled it a problem. And then if that doesn't work, we're starting in on statute of limitations on problems. And they fit in. There's minor, medium, serious, all the way up. You know what I mean?

And minor problems, there are 3 days. You can't have it after 3 days. Sorry, but don't even bring it up. It's we no, no. That's too long to hold that problem.

You have to let it go. Dramatize the point that the solutions we seek in here are not normal. They're not what we are accustomed to in our own problem solving. One time I, was feeling bad and I decided to trick myself into feeling good. Now I don't know if anybody's ever done that.

I said, so, again, you're feeling really depressed and really upset about this issue. Go get the movie section out of the paper. And as soon as I said movie section, I went, yeah, movies. I love movies. I always go there.

So I got the movie section out and I said, god, that's a good one. Well, I'm gonna take you tonight. Oh, thank you. It's me taking me. Do I get popcorn?

Yeah. I get popcorn. And after a while, I had tricked myself into feeling better. Now, here's the part that we leave out. If we really understand it, and made it into a problem.

Yes. It was we just took some situation and made it into a problem. And we and the reason that we do this is to maintain this separate identity from our higher power. To maintain the fact that we exist in addition to being a child of God as Chuck called us. And it's that second identity that we make up that is driving us crazy.

The trouble, and this is bad. Oh, I'm so upset. I just found that about all the trouble and this is bad. Oh, I'm so upset. I just found out about this, and I just got upset, and I found out about that.

None of it has to be there. And it was it took me years to realize I could ask for freedom from all of that. And it came in the form of awakening. When we talk about our 12th step and the, spiritual awakening, it is the power to see things in a much different way. And the rest of the program is to awaken further.

Bill calls it more spiritual growth. It is to work on being able to see it even differently than we do now. Things that have been running around in my head. So let me get back to those of things that have been running around in my head, so let me get back to those of you that are new. When we come in, what we see is a very troubling world.

That's so you're not lying when you look and go, God, just everything's so over powering. And we agree with you that that's what you see. And alcohol made you see it differently. It was more of a happy world. In here, you're just gonna have to take our word that your perspective is going to change very soon.

So that you will look at the same world comfortable in it. That you will look around and it will make sense. It's like you're in the shower and you can't shave because the mirror is covered with the steam. But if you wait long enough, you'll be able to see very clearly everything. And so right now, the only thing that is troubling you is the inability to see what the other people in this room can see.

And you just have to hold our hand, and we will take you along you You won't be taking somebody else's word. Wonderful, it is. Stor Yeah, yeah. I used to be able to not see worth a damn either. Give me your hand.

I'm going to lead you along until you see it. This is kind of like a holigram. Baltimore about 15 years ago. I'd never heard of them. And my son had one on the wall and my grandchildren could see it.

They went out there and they said, yeah. If you look up in the left hand corner, then whoop, it's 3 d and you'll see it. And I'm out there and I I would be eating dinner and I'd say, I'll be right back. And I'd go back out in the hall and I'd stand out there staring at this thing. Okay, relax.

Just have your eyes, just that. You'll it's going to pop in any second. I never saw it. So you know, I was thinking about this and an awakening in AA. You know what I mean?

It happens sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. It'll always happen if you go back and stare at that damn thing long enough. So how could you shortcut all that? How could you write a book about how to see a hologram? You so this is what we say in here.

Don't give up on seeking. Don't think just because another 6 months has gone by and that you can't see it yet, that you're not going to see it tomorrow or maybe in the next minute. Theory. And personal I see it. I see it.

That is, that human beings could have that, and what's that happens. You're a seeker for more of it. I want to I want more to be revealed. Bill talks about that. I want more to be revealed.

I want more I want to see the whole picture. Organization wherein society that we belong to enables us to continue this journey us. Want to tell you how happy I am to have spent my anniversary here with all of you, and god bless. Thanks.