Sandy B. from Tampa, FL speaking in Savannah, GA

Thank you everybody. My name is Sandy Beach and I'm an alcoholic. How you all doing? Well, I want to thank the committee for inviting me up and Don for being such a great host, Clyde for taking me through the Air Museum out at the 8th Air Force, and Gary for taking us up in his plane and getting an air tour of the Savannah area and allowing me to make the first landing I've made in 40 years.

You should have been there

anyway. My sobriety date is December 7th, 1964 and I belong to the formal group in Tampa, FL. The only requirement for membership in that group is in desire to stop drinking. And you own a tuxedo.

So

anyway, it's really, I'm really happy to be here tonight. I've heard about this event. I think Keith was up here with. Did Keith speak here not too long ago? Yeah. And he was telling me how much fun he had,

um, when I got 40 years

not too long ago,

you know, that's when you're an old timer in the program. And so it caused me to reflect on things over the years and think about the old timers that were here before me and how important they were

that it it, it just seemed like

I never would have made it if they weren't standing up in front of me. There was a guy named Buck Doyle up in Northern Virginia and he just made

it was the Saturday night meeting at his group. And he just, his whole point was to put Saturday night back in our lives. You know, like you look forward to Saturday night to drink. I was looking forward to going to his meeting. And he always had a greeting at the end. They'd have two speakers and have all those things, and then he'd take about 60 seconds at the end of the meeting

to just welcome the newcomer. And he had that enthusiasm.

And I just knew that sobriety could be fun just from his energy. It made me realize this is not going to be a dull thing.

And

then I got inspiration from the guy who brought a A to Northern Virginia. It's an old guy named Bill Ames, and he knew Bill Wilson. And

there's a great commercial area called Rosalyn now up in Virginia, right across Key Bridge from Washington, DC

And when I first got sober, that very valuable property was the Bill Ames Lumber Yard. And he owned the lumber yard there. But he loved a A. And when he sold the property, one of the first buyers was a church. And he insisted in the sale of the church that they hold an, a, a meeting. There it was. It was actually in the contract

to the church that they had to have an A a meeting in that church.

Now, the church was on the side of a hill,

and so these clever real estate people wanted to use the the side of the hill as well as the church on the top. And they carved out underneath part of the church an Exxon gas station. And from that day forward, that church was known as St. Exons. And I just that's all we talked about. Hey, you're going to be over St. Exons at the meeting tonight. Yeah, I'll see you over saying Exxon say next time. I'm sure the

members of the church had no idea what we were talking about, but that's where the a a meeting was.

And I reflected on some of those things. And then I then there was more obscure things that have happened.

I, I've been sober about 25 years. I always like to tell this story because you never know the impact of what you're doing.

Maybe you'll never find out, but a lot of times you may find out later.

And I was living on Capitol Hill. I had a townhouse up in Washington, DC I had a good job. It was Sunday afternoon. I was getting ready to watch the Redskins. And that's a big deal when you live in Washington, you know, and you got, I had my popcorn and Cokes and I was just getting ready. Must have been about quarter two or quarter one. The game's coming on at 1:00

and out of the blue at about 12:45. I have a memory bubble

of 27 years earlier when I was a flight student in Pensacola, FL going through flight school and I had a very close drinking buddy named Bill Marseille. And God, we just partied and partied. I was married. He would be over our house and we'd be out doing all these things. And I always overspended. I just, I don't know if any of you had that problem, but I would,

I would overspend and then the rent would be due and I wouldn't be able to pay it until payday. And Bill was more cautious. So I would borrow the rent money from him,

then I'd get paid, I'd pay them back the rent money. And this kind of happened on a very regular basis. Now, back then, I think rent for a two-bedroom place was $90.00 a month, Very extravagant rents in Pensacola.

And it occurred to me 27 years later

that I had borrowed the $90.00 and then he had got transferred to advanced training and I was a couple weeks behind him and I never paid him. And then when I got there, I pretended like I forgot. I don't know if you've ever done that.

I mean, you knew that you owed it, but I pretended like I forgot.

So I just would talk, Bill, how you doing? How you doing? But in my mind, I knew. And then eventually we kind of went our separate ways. And that was the end of that. And it went, it went totally out of my memory system until I'd been sober, like I say, 25 years. And here it comes. Now, I don't know about you, but when I have things like that, there's two people. There's my conscience and then there's me.

And my conscience is going, you got to pay that money back. And I go, yeah, but not during the Redskin game.

It can wait. My conscience going, no, it can't wait. You got to do something about this. I said, come on. I said I only got 8 minutes. Well, I want you to do something. I said, how am I going to find this guy? It's a Sunday. I can't, you know, call a Marine Corps and see where he went and all that kind of stuff. And then my conscience would go, well, you know, he liked to ski. And I said, well, that doesn't help me that much. There's lots of ski places in the world. I got only got 5 minutes. Now till the game starts, you got to try and find him.

So I'm having this argument with myself

and I'm not enjoying it at all because I'm, you know, I got the stuff already and all of a sudden my conscience said they ski a lot in Vermont.

And I went, OK, I'll cut you a deal. I'm going to call the operator in Vermont and I'm going to ask her if there is a William P Marseille the Third. There's not going to be two of those in one state in Vermont. And if there isn't, then I'm not going to look for him until I can call Headquarters Marine Corps on Monday or something like that because we only got 3 minutes till the game starts. So I dialed government information. Hello, operator, do you have a William P Marseille the Third? You do?

God damn, now I only got 2 minutes.

What's the number till I get the number? Well, he won't be home.

Up. Ring. Ring. Hello. And I go. Bill. Yes. Sandy beach. Sandy. How are you, Bill? I'm in a hurry.

I know we haven't talked in a long time, Bill, but let me, let me just get to the point, Bill. And he's trying to tell me how he runs a gift shop at a ski resort up in Vermont and how happy and all this kind of stuff. And I said, Bill, you remember, we drank a lot. And he, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember that. And I said, well, I never paid you this $90.00. Then all of a sudden it came up and Bill, I joined a A about 25 years ago. You remember what a bad drunk I was? And he said, Oh, yeah, yeah.

I said turn my whole life around. I I can't tell you it's the greatest thing in the world. And one of the things we have to do, we have to make amends. And as soon as this came up with the 90 bucks, I got to send you that money. I'm going to add a lot of interest on it and give me the address and I'll send you $200.00. He said, you don't have to do that. And I said, yes, I do. I have to do that. The game is starting. Bill, give me

give me your address. So he gave me his address and

I mailed to check out that week. And probably about two weeks later, I get a big box from the gift shop. And there was probably $300 worth of gifts in there, wind chimes and all these things. And he called back, oh, I don't know, probably about four months later. And he said that we're moving down to North Carolina. I want to give you my phone number down there. We have to get together. And I said, yeah, yeah, we got to do that.

And I never did.

You know, I was almost going to call him. And I'm sure maybe he was almost going to call me. A whole bunch of years go by. I'm speaking at a convention in North Carolina. At the end of the talk, people are standing in line, and this woman comes up and says to me, you don't know me, but my name is Kathy Marseille. And I went, oh, my God. Are you Bill's wife

said no, I'm his widow. And I said, Oh my God. I said well what are you doing here? And I looked down. She had an al Anon bad John

and she said, oh, didn't he tell you? He said when you called him you were so excited about being an AA that he joined

and he had five years sobriety when he died.

So what was happening on that Sunday afternoon? I was being called upon to go on a 12 step call that I didn't know about and that was what was happening. But it didn't look like that was what was happening. You had this impatient guy who's very anxious to get the down and eating the popcorn and the Cokes for the football game. But I still managed to make that call. And I think back on that

and a number of years later, after I moved down to Tampa

and I went over to the Air Museum in Pensacola

and I was looking around, They have lots of displays of different airplanes. And they had the FJ4. Bill and I both flew those. And there was this squadron that was a sister squadron of the one I was in in the 50s. And they had all the pilots names on a plaque with raised metal letters. And I looked over there and there was William P Marseille the third,

and it just brought back all these feelings about how

much we influence one another. And you have no idea how your kindness on a given day or something you say can transform somebody elses life. And it was just such a nice memory because of all the things that I did in my life. I've had lots of, you know, I had a good career in Washington and all that, but my big love

was being a Marine pilot and my alcoholism took away that career. I lost the whole thing after about 14 years,

but I got thinking. But that's all right. It was, it was worth it just to have been part of that gang. There was such a lot of camaraderie and spite of all the drinking and that kind of stuff. I have these incredibly wonderful memories. And of all things, I hadn't thought about these two incidents in the longest time.

When I signed up for flight school, you had to take these tests. I was I was an infantry officer in Quantico, VA,

and

I liked it. But I saw these pilot movies and I really wanted, I said, that looks exciting to me. So I knew I wanted to try that.

And you had to pass a very hard test in a physical. Now, when I was a little boy, I had polio and my I had paralysis in my right arm and leg and I couldn't move either one of them. But I was lucky that the Sister Kenny treatment worked. It didn't work on too many kids, but it worked on me. And I got back most of the use of everything. But in the back of my right arm some muscles atrophied and it left kind of a hole there.

So I have to give you that background because as I'm taking my physical,

this doctor is standing behind me. I have no idea who this doctor is. He's standing behind me and I can feel his fingers going across my back and he comes to the hole and then he pokes and he says to me, what's that?

And I said,

I don't know

because I knew if I told them that I'd probably be out because they're always looking for some reason to disqualify people. So I just said I don't know. And I felt his finger go in there and I heard him say.

And then he said OK,

and I moved on.

Now, if he hadn't said OK, then I never would have had this wonderful opportunity. And so I, I just had this feeling after all these years, wherever that doctor is. Thank you very much. I remember you all of a sudden, I don't know why, but I remember you. And then the other guy that I remember was AE three in the Navy

and he was in charge of the swimming tests rather Dilbert Dunker. Where you going crashing and you remember that, Gary, you go in the water and you have to get out underneath and all these things. And then you had a long distance swim in the pool. I think it was a half a mile.

And when I was a little boy I almost drowned. I was under a long time and they just, they had to do all this pumping and I came Outback and revived. But I was very frightened of the water. I was never comfortable in there. So even though I could be in great shape and run a marathon or something like that, when I got in the water, just the anxiety would wear me out. So I'm trying to pass this half mile swim and I'm not making it because I'm just

getting exhausted before I can finish.

So I have to go back every night to try and retake this and this E3, I'm the only one and I'm coming over. And he said, now Lieutenant, try this, try the side stroke. I think that'll be a way that you can conserve energy. And I go, thank you, thank you, thank you. And you know, and I'd go and I'd do the best that I could. I'd still come up several laps short. So I'd come back the next night and the next night and the next night,

and now I'm down to the last night because the class is moving on. And if you don't make it,

it's over. So I go over there, I'm already exhausted from doing it every night for like 2 weeks. And I'm swimming and I'm swimming and I'm swimming and I'm swimming and I look at the clock and I go, no way, you know what I mean? I only got another minute

and all of a sudden he goes nice going Lieutenant, you made it and he signed a thing and handed it to me

and I was probably 6 laps short

of doing it. But he decided that, umm,

I was going to go on. You know what I mean? I don't know why, I have no idea. And I just thought about that, that God, if these two people, I mean, these little things that happen along the way hadn't happened, I wouldn't have had the most amazing experience.

So I just wanted to acknowledge those because it was inside of me to say that

what I want to do tonight is to talk to those of you that are new. It was an honor to hand that book out to you, and we all do wish you the best of luck in here.

I like the sentence that says God's will for us is to be happy, joyous, and free.

So there's no problem of trying to figure out what God's will is happy, joyous, and free. So if I'm not doing that,

then I have obviously stepped out of God's will. I'm off on my own somewhere because if I'm close enough to my higher power, that is the awareness that I have. And that awareness comes from being close to the higher power. There's a sentence in that book that you just got in the

UMM, in the chapter of the Agnostic, and it says the main purpose of this book, this whole book, Alcoholics Anonymous, is to enable you to find a power greater than yourself which will solve your problems. Now that's a very important sentence

because sometimes we don't think about that sentence enough, it says. The main purpose of this book is to enable you to find a

power greater than yourself. And it doesn't say which will enable you to solve your problems. It says which will solve your problems. What solves your problems? Finding the power. The power is the solution. Now, that may sound like, well, what is that? Well, as you get close to this power, no problems can exist. That's what the solution means. It means they're removed. They just aren't problems anymore.

And I remember the first time I heard that I said that sounds like mumbo jumbo to me.

What are you talking about? You get a life full of problems and suddenly some power makes the mall go away? That sounds preposterous. And then my sponsor said, well, what happened to you when you went to the bar?

You were, did you walk in there with a lot of problems? Oh yeah, I always had a lot of problems when I walked into the bar. What happened after about 3 drinks? I don't know. But I didn't have any problems anymore, I can tell you that.

I just looked around and I said, man, I like this world.

And he said, well, where'd the problems go? I said I don't know where they went, but they came back when I got sober.

But after three or four drinks, there weren't any problems. Oh, that's a pretty miraculous thing. I was completely in a new world. I was given, as Chuck Chamberlain says, a new pair of glasses. It wasn't that anything changed. It just looked different, you know what I mean? I I walked in there and the world was awful.

And I went 123 and I went, man, what a great world this is. Looking around this is awesome. And I just loved it. I can remember one time I was drinking in a bar in the Midwest. It was a dump. I mean, I mean, this place was awful. And I went in there and I sort of said, God, what am I doing in this rat hole? But after about 3 drinks I started looking around

at this place

and I said this place is magnificent. This is

they really, they really ought to do a painting of this place that is Norman Rockwell should come out here and, and, and, and capture this place. And then I started feeling some tears coming down and the bartender said, what's the matter? I said I'm sorry, but I'm overcome by the beauty of the people that are drinking in here.

My heart is touched. These are these are possibly the greatest people in America.

Now, about 8 drinks later and they were all jerks and we were in a fight, but there was a

there was a transition there when it was like a spiritual awakening. I just felt the love of the planet and it was flowing through me. So I think we're all familiar with the effects of a power that can transform the world into a very comfortable place to live. And that's exactly what that sentence says.

The main purpose of this book is that to enable you to find a power greater than yourselves which will solve your problems.

To me, that's the crucial part of understanding that

it just means that if it isn't solving them now, we're not close enough. And you can find it all throughout the big book. So we have to do more spiritual growth, more spiritual growth. You're almost there. You're almost at the miracle point. And so never stop until that thing happens. Now, when I arrived here, I had no interest in spiritual awakenings, sobriety, A, a, or you.

I was not interested in that. I was trying to get people off my back. That was why I was here. I'm sure no one else has done that, but I was here to get people off my back. And the people I was trying to get off my back were the doctors in the nut ward. These were the guys that were trying to get me

and I had through some gross mistake. I was a patient in the nut ward

and had been there for six months

and they said it was something about a grand Mal seizure and the DTS where I freaked out and saw a lot of scary things. Ran around screaming at people and they put me in a straight jacket.

And so I was in this place and they said we're going to return you to duty,

but you're going to be an outpatient for a month or so while we figure out and get your orders ready and all that to go back to the Marine Corps down in Quantico, VA.

So we're going to allow you to go home during the day and come back. I mean, go home at night and come back during the day and you can be home on weekends.

And so this was in late 1964. And the Redskins, again, they were playing. It was the football season. And I had a rule in my house. I don't know if you have a rule in your house, but the rule is you cannot watch a Redskin game without a beer. I mean, you know, some of you come over to my house, have a beer, have a beer. And if you weren't having a beer, we had a problem. Come on, come on. Because I had that rule. Never trust a guy that won't drink with you.

You know, there's something suspicious about them.

So I remember going home that weekend

and I said to myself, uh oh. The Marine Corps told me if I ever had another drink, my career would be over. But the Redskin game is on and I have a rule that you have to have a beer. And I remember actually thinking, Gee, I hate to sit here with the set off

because of my rule.

And besides, I think those doctors overstated it. They didn't mean if you have a beer, they meant if you ever get drunk again. That's what they meant. They said if you just have a drink. But what they meant to say is if you get drunk, I can understand that, but certainly one beer. Now, I had heard all this stuff from some people that the first drink gets you drunk

if you're an alcoholic. So I had a beer during that Redskin game. It was probably in late November of 1964. And here is the most amazing thing.

I drank that beer and nothing happened. I didn't crave another beer. I watched the game. I behaved myself. I went to bed that night. I slept like a baby. I got up the next morning. If you go back to the nut ward,

I'm driving along in my car and I'm evaluating what happened the day before.

And I said, hmm, I must be a former alcoholic

because I had that drink and nothing happened to me. Nothing. I was peaceful, no obsession, no compulsion to take another drink. I slept like a baby. This is the best news I've ever. As a matter of fact, that's all I could think of on the way up was being free from alcohol.

I was so excited that I couldn't eat lunch. You know, I just was down there. I was dying to tell some of the other patients, but I figured they wouldn't understand and they might tell the doctors. So I kept this new freedom a secret to myself. And I got home that night. I couldn't sleep this night because I'm free from alcohol. And I thought about that beer and how nothing happened

and how free I was that God is so wonderful being a former alcoholic. It just

I obsessed about that beer the entire week. I don't think I ate or slept because I'm now free from alcohol. It was wonderful to be totally free from the clutches of alcohol as I obsessed about the beer.

So on that Friday night, I'm coming back and and I tell people, if you had, I went to the liquor store

with this new freedom now that I'm no longer an alcoholic, but know how to handle my alcohol and can drink socially now since I had that beer

and I knew that the best drink for me was vodka anyway.

And I went into that store and if I had had a lie detector on my arm and you asked me, what are you doing? I said I'm buying a year's supply,

a quart

that I would have passed the test because I honestly believed I was buying a year's supply. I mean, you know, now that I know how to just have one.

Unfortunately, the bottle ran out Saturday

and I had to get another one, and then I had to smuggle 1 back into the nut ward on Monday

because now I'm drinking around the clock, just like it was six months earlier when I had the seizure that cut me in there and I knew they were watching me. Remember when you it's funny, as soon as that disease kicks in again, you get paranoid and everybody's watching you.

Oh, I guess they can tell from my eyes that there's a bottle of vodka in my car in the parking lot, so I won't look at anybody. So now we're looking down like this, you know,

and I'm sure everybody's going what's wrong with that guy? And I'm going, they really are looking at me. I know they're going to get me. And so the next weekend, I joined a A and my plan when I called, made this great phone call

and ended up with my sponsor, who was another marine captain. And I still have the same sponsor. I've had the same sponsor for 40 years. And that's hard to do because you both have to stay alive. And

it's been wonderful to have this guy, Bill, in my life all this time. And I wish he could travel. He has emphysema. He didn't stop smoking. I stopped right about eight years and he didn't. So he's limited in going to the local meetings in Virginia. But anyway, my thinking on that particular day, Sunday, December 7th, I call the intergroup was I'm going to join

a A and then when they catch me in the nut ward,

I'm going to tell him I joined AA and this is what happened.

And then they could blame AA from me drinking again. And I thought that that would save my career. So when I came to AA, it had nothing to do with staying sober or any of those things.

Anyway, he came to my house after I called the inner group and I got a couple drinks to stay down and I called the inner group back. I said we actually we don't need him. I feel OK now. Well, he was already on his way and he came to my house and knocked on the door. And he was a big infantry Marine. His specialty was explosive ordnance disposal

and he said it was the perfect job for an alcoholic because no one's looking over your shoulder while you're working. And I thought he had a good point.

And he came into my living room and it felt like he blocked the entire door frame, you know what I mean? Like that with a shaved head. And it's sort of a mean look on his face. And he just said, my name is Bill. This is a 12 step call. I talk, you listen.

And then he I said, OK, well, let me explain. And he just said I don't want to talk to you. And he went in to talk to my kids and my wife. What kind of a father is he and all six kids? Terrible, rotten. We hate him. We hate him. We hate him

and my wife. I wish he'd leave. He's the worst husband in the world and he's drunk all the time. He's terrible. And then I said, now Bill, that's just their side,

don't you want to hear my side? And he said no get in the car.

And I thought getting the car was AAS first step.

If he said it every time I had something to say, shut up, get in the car.

And then I got to the meeting. I love to talk about. My first meeting. It was in the Odd Fellows Hall in Manassas, VA. And the Odd Fellows Hall was old. I'm talking, I mean old. It's in December. It's freezing, and they have a space heater hanging from the ceiling. You remember those things that hang down? And when they cut on, they just went whoa, You could hardly hear anything. And it just blew hot air. And he made me sit in the front row. It's like.

And the toilet was a non flushing type and it stunk in there. You have to take a deep breath outside and then run in and get through and come back out.

And the, the meeting was the group anniversary and they had ham and Turkey and chicken and blah, blah, blah. And I'm, I hadn't eaten in months. I just had a liquid diet. You know, I just food was very hard to even look at And people are running around. Isn't sobriety wonderful? Isn't sobriety wonder? I'm going no, it's not wonderful

because I don't even sober 4 hours and

and the meeting lasted 4 1/2 hours with the celebration. They had square dancing afterwards, they had speakers and all this and fiddle playing and it was real country

and I was trying to run away, you know what I mean? I would go outside and look and it was by itself down some little dead end road and it was sort of freezing sleet or you know, it's just out there. And I stood out there

and here comes another lady that it was like those other people I was talking about. An Al Anon lady came out,

Betsy Lynch, and she put her hand on my shoulder and I turned around to see who it was. And it was this kind Irish lady. And she said, everything's going to be fine.

And it was almost like the energy of those words went right through me and I just went, oh, good. And I went back in and sat down. It was almost like I just was given a signal that everything was going to be all right. And it came from that touch from that Al Anon lady. And so that started my sobriety. And I haven't had a drink since. And my sponsor took me to meeting every night and we had all the great

beginnings in a A which is go to meetings, don't drink, go to meetings, don't drink. And we're running all over. And at that time there were probably 7 speaker meetings for every discussion meeting

and there were two speakers that all these meetings. So everybody had a talk at least 10 * a year just to fill up all its

speakers that were needed. And so the three of us, there were three military guys and we would show up at all these different groups and oh, here comes a as military advisory group. And the three of us would come in and tell our little stories. And it was a lot of fun. And things are going along and I got sober for two years

and it came time to get promoted. We were both captains. If you don't get promoted to major, then you have to leave. So the first year we neither one of us got promoted. The second year my sponsor got promoted and I didn't. So that meant my 14 years of service are wasted and me and my wife and six kids are out. Now that caused me a resentment. I know you would have handled it very easily, but I thought

going to a meeting every night for two years would entitle you to something other than

getting crapped on.

And so I figured that one person to blame was God. And I was having a hard time with this God thing. Anyway, everybody's talking about God, God, loving God, loving God, loving God. And then I'm going thank you, loving God. We're going to starve to death. And I really appreciate it. God, I

I certainly understand what a loving God is. And I went back to my old God. I said, see, I knew I was right when I was about eight or nine years old. I've been brought up in the Catholic Church with the nuns and the Latin and the incense. Now my sister was sitting next to me. She's got 28 years in a a now. She thought the Catholic Church was the friendliest place in the world and still thinks so. And I was terrified.

So you can see it's all in the perception.

So anyway, I was sitting and this is my first spiritual awakening. I was probably nine years old. I'm sitting in the front Pew. My parents always sit right there

and I'm staring at the crucifix. Couldn't miss it. It's 20 feet high.

It's just there

and all of a sudden it was like the true meaning of this hit me all by myself. This is just a secret message between me and God. And it was almost like a voice said, little boy, do you see that crucifixion? Yes, Sir, can't miss it. It's there, boy, it's there. Well, that's what God did to his only Son that he loved.

Guess what he's going to do to you?

And I fainted right on the hoop

because of this inner awareness that I had. And God, I just was.

So here I am now, I'm 35, and I'm having the same feeling. I was right when I saw that crucifix. This is that guy is out to get me and he's getting me. So I had this resentment for a couple months and

I was reading the Washington Post a couple months later and there's a little story on page 10 about a paragraph and it said Marine Corps instruction team from Quantico killed in plane crash in Denver.

And it was my outfit. We were a team that went around to other service organizations with a big dog and pony show about the future of the Marine Corps headed by a general. And I was the operations officer on that team and they were all dead.

And I knew that if I had had my way and been promoted that I would be on the plane. So I had a little different feeling,

but I also knew that God knew. I just read that newspaper story

and I've been just letting him have it something fierce.

So I mumbled around and I think I said something like, well, if you just told me this was going to happen, I would not have been

complaining so much about what happened to me.

And I think I learned a big lesson that

you just don't know what some things, when they happen in life, what they mean.

There's a lot of paradoxes as we move from the material world into the spiritual world. And I'm sure for almost all of us, when somebody ordered us to Alcoholics Anonymous, we felt like the worst thing in the world was happening in our lives. Come back a few years later and we asked some the same people, what's the best thing that ever happened in your life? Getting in a, a, no doubt about it, best thing that ever happened. I thought you at one time categorized that as the worst thing, that I was wrong.

I was wrong. The magic words in sobriety.

I'm wrong.

First time that came up, my sponsor is hammering a point home. You know how we like to be intellectually self-sufficient. We don't need help in making up our mind. And he finally convinced me that his point of view was probably right. And I said to him, Bill,

I agree. I concede. You're right, he said. No, Sandy, you're wrong,

I said. Hey, same thing, Bill.

Well, let me hear you say it. It was like a toothpick was stuck at my throat. I'm going.

I could not get out the words I'm wrong.

For the alcoholic self-centered in the extreme to admit that he or she is wrong is very similar to tugboats turning the Queen Mary around in a small harbor

and and finally I'm wrong.

I mean, it's like a major effort. And then we find out this is the ticket to freedom for the rest of our lives and we just go, God, what else am I wrong about? Get rid of it, get rid of it, get rid of it. It's just like freedom to find all the things that I might be wrong about because they're burdening me down. And where did I get these ideas? You know, they talk about old ideas availis nothing. What are they talking about?

They're talking about

your view of the world, which most of us put together by the time we were eight. You know what I mean? We just assembled all these ideas about who you can trust, who you can't, who's good, who's bad. Here's my little rule. Here's my rule. I learned a lot of secret information about life off of bathroom walls,

and I'd be in there sitting down. I'd read that and I'd go, whoa, yay,

you think that's really true? And I go, it must be. It's up there.

Well, that's pretty scary information. Yeah, I know. Why don't you check it out with the other guys? Oh, no, I don't want them to know that. I don't know everything.

I never checked anything out with anybody. I just had all of my information that I had collected, and that was my reference point. And God, you know, Chuck Chamberlain's book says it all. We come in here, we get a new pair of glasses, and we start seeing everything different. And it's wonderful to be wrong. Why we want to be right about all that stuff. I'm no good. You're no good. Don't trust anybody.

The world's a bad place. Everybody's basically evil. Forget it. You're a loser. You can't win.

Would you like to get rid of any of that? No, it's mine. I'm going to keep it.

I thought this crap up, man, and I'm sticking to it. You know, you got to have convictions. Yeah, I know You spent a lot of time in jail with convictions.

It's just amazing how we hold on to this stuff. Pride of authorship. Yeah, I know it's stupid, but I thought it up.

You don't see me changing my mind. Yeah, I know. We can tell. You look awful.

I don't know what that is, but I had it in spades. I just love to be right, boy. If I got in an argument with you at the bar and you wanted to stop the argument, OK, OK, OK, that's enough. Well, I'm not through,

right? And furthermore and furthermore, and then you might go home and go to sleep. I'd wake up at 3:00 in the morning. I thought of one more point. I dialed the phone. Sorry to wake you up, Joe, but I just thought of one more point.

Lee, did I mess up your connection? OK,

I got to keep my hands quiet

and I'd wake you up at 3:00 to tell you one more point about something. So it was very important for me to be right. And I remember the first time somebody in AA said, OK, Sandy, which would you rather be happy or right?

And I really thought long and hard about that.

Happy or right?

I know that's a close call.