Sandy B. from Tampa, FL speaking in Palm Springs, CA

My name is Sandy Beach and I'm an alcoholic.

Hi.

For Chuck Benefit, I have to correct the anonymity break that I made in the program.

And so we'll just call Sandy Beach the location of the meeting

when this gets back to GSO and I'll start over again and say my name is Richard and welcome to Sandy Beach. And

I came into AA on Pearl Harbor Day in 1964, and I haven't been drunk since my first meeting.

And I've been to an awful lot of meetings since that first night. And I've done a lot of listening. And I'm convinced deep down in my heart that I owe it all to not drinking. That is

my opinion of why I haven't been drunk since my first meeting. Is, is that?

But that's really not a miracle because, you know, in jails and not houses, those places, there wasn't any booze and I wasn't drunk either. So

there took place of the real miracles. For me anyway, It was three or four months when one morning I got up and I was happy with not drinking.

And that's contrary to the definition of an alcoholic. I mean, that is where it was all about. So I think it's important to mention the not drinking part.

At least I think so.

Where I came in,

I had a very rough sponsor and, and he emphasized it quite a bit. But occasionally I get into some more intellectual meetings and we get to a higher plane and so on down. And, you know, there may be somebody new here

who hears about the spiritual awakening and Peace of Mind and all of those things. And I hate to break the news, but this not drinking part really fits in there. It's, it's,

I thought maybe in the beginning you could work the steps and then you'd have a spiritual awakening and you wouldn't have a problem with drinking anymore. And it's very difficult to have a spiritual awakening when you're throwing up in the toilet.

It's a a problem and so

he's been having trouble over the years. I, you know, check your drinking.

It's just a suggestion like the rest of the program.

Funny about those suggestions. You notice in the 12:00 and 12:00, it's very carefully hidden, but in almost every step there's a little sort of a cautionary flag, and it says something like failure to properly take Step 4

could be fatal.

There's those

and it's one in every step it says this. Little hints along the way as to the

thing. And I remember my sponsor telling me, what do you think that means when you see that alcoholism is fatal? And I've been sober about two months. And I said, well, I think what that really means, you see, is that there's a certain degree in the allergy and there's a certain type of reaction that can set in for for various people. And what you have,

they expire is what you have. And he said, I think you've missed the point is what that says in there is Sandy's going to die. That's what alcoholism is fatal. And he was always getting my name into the big book and getting getting me into the steps because I didn't want to be an Alcoholic Anonymous. And I sat around and approached this like a course on alcoholism. I mean, it didn't apply to me. I just was going to be able to

quiz in case there was one given later on, but I just didn't have enough evidence to support the fact I was a real alcoholic. I had, you know, running some difficulties along the way, but certainly none to, you know, put me down at the bottom of the list in Alcoholics Anonymous. I mean, that's that was quite a step down from the nut board

they come.

To come in here, but that's the way that it happens to some of us.

Before I forget it, I know I have a couple things that have happened to me out here. It's really been an amazing set of coincidences. Running into old friends, running into new friends. And I just, I have to tell you before, in case I forget at the end and I sometimes get it all mixed up. You will never know what I've already taken away from this meeting. I mean, from this weekend,

especially the meeting this afternoon that's going to help me with

my children and and some work I got to do. And I just have to thank you now. I'm going to take away much more than I'll ever give. And I want to thank you in advance. And running into my friend Rocky from Laguna, who some of you may know who was, is and always will be the world's greatest fighter pilot who had

AI. Remember 21 years ago when he put me on restriction for drinking?

Umm, even then he had a strange sign over his door as the case. There's any aviators around here? He didn't even have that sign, right? It said there are old pilots and there are bold pilots, but there's no humble pilots. You know, There was a strange way. I'm surprised any of us made the program.

The Pope has been extremely kind to

this convention weekend. He is the. You may think with the name Beach that you're free from any connection with bingo games and Italian and so on down, but my mother's name was Brennan

and my story had a childhood has really been touched on rather in detail. But I got to go through it again because it's a very important part. I

looked at Step 4. You know, Step 4 divides this into two categories and we are either the guilt oriented or the power drivers, as it says.

And in either case, we use one of those two excuses not to take that inventory. Either we're so frightened of what we're going to find that we don't dare look. Or on the other side of the coin, we simply say all of my problems were caused by alcoholism, so the mere stopping of drinking will suffice and I will return to my normal charming self that I was before I started drinking.

And in my case, I really couldn't say that about myself,

say that I'm very glad that I'm an alcoholic because I wasn't going anywhere before I started drinking. I had

I, you know, I was sort of a loser then and alcohol just speed the thing along. It was just picked up momentum because I, it was brought up in New England and I in Connecticut and my parents, I think were like a lot of people up in, in New England. They were trying to teach me to be the proper snob.

That feeling of that section of the country, which sort of looks down on the rest of the country. It's the way it's located up there. And,

and I was sort of skinny and nervous and I was running around going, God, it's hard to be a snob when you're not as good as the rest of the people. And

I was,

but I didn't want to tell him that I was having a problem with this. And so I was going around with a little Lord Punt Leroy suits and during these little schools and all that. And if that wasn't problem enough, then I was sent down to have my first encounter with the nuns,

and I'm sure that the receiver was just as broken as the transmitter. And maybe all the other little kids didn't hear what I did. But boy, I'll tell you that was a strange encounter, because my memory tells me that it went something like this. Hello little boy. Boy, are you in trouble.

You're in serious trouble. And sit down. We're going to tell you all about it. It's about time you found out about the world and in the universe and where you fit in and where you're going.

And I found out about original sin

and I found out about what happens to people who aren't perfect. And I found out that I was having a terrible problem. And I picked up a buddy right about that time. It was a companion that I brought into Alcoholics Anonymous. And it took me 7 years to finally release this wonderful friend that stood by me all through the years. It was called guilt. I had this guilt thing. It was sort of an innate guilt. It was a guilt that was I was born with primordial guilt. I mean

guilty. I felt guilty about not knowing what God wanted me to do. I felt guilty about having done whatever I did that caused God to not let me know what He wanted me to do. And then I felt guilty about running to get rid of the guilt

because I didn't deserve to get rid of the guilt because I really was guilty of all the things that made me feel guilty.

Other than that, things were going pretty good. There was

a

until I heard about purgatory.

And I and I got a store card and I got a pad and a pencil and I started adding up and by the time I was 12 years old, I had around 8586 thousand years to do in purgatory on, on just the things I had thought about doing. I hadn't even, I hadn't even done them

and and I kept telling my brain, you got to stop thinking that stuff. You've got to be good now, you know, And my brain said the only way I do that is if you keep your eyes shut. And had the same problem around a pool today,

racked up around 25,000 years.

Oh,

anyway,

what I had to do with all this was keep it a secret

and never tell anybody and never share. Because I really believe, truly believe that nobody else had this problem. I really believe that all the other kids growing up and the other teenagers, as I got a little older, had life

in their hands and they were just living it. And if they ever found out what was really going on inside of Maine and what kind of a person I really was and what God thought about me and what was the real truth about me, it would be awful. And I had to be very careful to never share anything about myself with anybody. So I've always tried to be sort of the snob and

off away from people, mostly because they frighten me.

If I was in a strange city and standing on a sidewalk and somebody came up and said, pardon me, that's my spot, I wouldn't argue with him. I would say fine, probably is his spot. You know, the way they do it in this city. What do I know? I would.

I had to do better than anyone in order to feel equal.

It was a strange set of things and people frightened me. Mostly people frightened me. I was afraid to make eye contact with people. And of course when I got drinking it became even worse. But I just had that problem that the secret, the truth was going to come out. So I had a problem with the truth, had a problem with God, had a problem with people. But other than that,

had a pretty happy childhood.

I have to say that in case my mother's in the audience.

Anyway, I ended up at the local university in New Haven. I thought, I thought that was a local place at Yale until I got out of there and everybody said, oh, that's a nice place. So I'll I got there and went into a large reception room one night and had the normal feeling that I had when I walk into a room. There's about 50 guys in there from all over the country and all dressed up.

And I had the feeling they all turned and looked at me and said

what's that guy doing in here? That's normal feeling I had. I could see in their eyes that hostility. I could see rejection. I could just see what they were thinking. And I was terrified. I said, what if these guys find out about me? And they were passing some drinks around and I had been keeping some kind of a pledge. I don't remember what it was for, probably to cut the sentence in half or.

And

there was tremendous peer pressure to just conform. I said, I'm just, I've decided that's my thing, conforming. I finally have accepted that as a way of life. And you know, I learned that in a, that's how you succeed in AA. You can form, you can smell the original thinkers in Alcoholics.

They really can.

So

I would, I always conformed and that's how I started smoking and I got a crew cut and then I had white ties this way and and I got all these teenage kids and that's what they do. And then they come home and tell me about this is how they display their individualism. And there's a strange paradox in that. I haven't figured it out yet. It's but the drinks came around and I took a drink

and whiskey off the tray and I drank it and I sat around waiting for this thing to happen that happens. I had heard people talk about alcohol, how great it made you feel and alcohol had no effect on me. I can remember waiting for this to happen. And I stood in the room and I was waiting and waiting and there was nothing happening to me at all. But the room was changing and, and the people in the room were changing.

And I sat there with this whiskey in my stomach and I started looking back into the eyeballs around the room.

And it was amazing how the hostility disappeared out of those eyes and it was replaced with kind of a warm look and another drink. And the people became immensely friendly. And some people were saying hello, come over and talk to us. And I just couldn't believe what was happening to the world

just because I had a few drinks. The world became what it should be. The world became sort of the brotherhood of man. And there was this warm, friendly feeling. And I was at ease with myself, with the people, with God, with the universe. And it was just marvelous. And I had this Peace of Mind for about an hour. And I never forget that hour. And that hour is very important in my story

because it's the end of the hour. I

started throwing up

and during the night I practiced throwing up. And the next day in in class, I sat in the classroom with a couple 100 people and there a teacher was given a lecture and I was sitting on my chair and all I was trying to do was stay on the chair. I wasn't trying to take notes. I wasn't trying to listen to the teacher because I figured if I broke my concentration, I might lose my balance off of the chair. And I got a smorgasbord of alcoholism. I cannot say that I wasn't warned. I got a little flavor of

everything that I was going to get in the years ahead. I got a little taste of the chills. I got some of the itchy skin. You know how to get itch and it goes all around and it comes back down here and you're doing this little jiggling around. I got a couple of little spasms and some cold flashes. Then I had some nausea. Gas came through the room and I felt that doing that with my mouth. I just sort of a little smattering of

of everything I was going to get. It's like God was going to say, here it is buddy. This is what you help you make your decision

which way you're going to go. And I made that decision that night. The crowd got back together and they said, Sandy, we're going to go out drinking again. Do you want to go with it? And my body, especially my stomach, said wrong. No veto out, out. No, no, no.

All of us vote against it. However,

the brain was in charge of the

package at that particular point in time,

soon to be overthrown.

But the brain was in charge and it said, wait a minute, fellows, we're going to have to consider this. Wait a minute, we're grown here now. We're going to think this over. We're going to be objective about it. Let's analyze it. Let's take a close look at it from where I stand,

all this little being sick and a few of these minor things that have happened to you, when you really calculate it, it's a rather small price to pay for that hour that you had last night. And I thought about that and I thought about that and I said, boy, you're damn right. And I went back out and started drinking with the boys. And you know, that's the same story I told myself until I got into Alcoholics Anonymous. That's a small price to pay for all the fun that.

From drinking. And of course, as the years went on, the hour got shorter and the trouble got worse

and the equation still balanced.

So the only thing that was improving was my ability to rationalize that was getting better. That's the one thing that alcohol seems to sharpen up and hone and get down to perfection. So that it came to one thing I got through in down here in

Nuevo Laredo. Oh boy, over the border, gone for three days and blackout and got it. Woke up in jail down there and had to be back on a base. I don't remember the weekend, but my teeth had been knocked out again. I'm have an Owen 10 fight record

for

and so I had all this money gone. I had to face my wife and come back where I've been for three days. It was just, you know, and my conscience, which was always there when my wife wasn't, would say, well, what do you got to say about that? I'm not saying anything on Sunday morning. I got to get back. I need a beer and I've got all this. And I can remember getting back. And I told my conscience, wait till I find the guys I was with

and will let them decide whether I had a good time or not because I have didn't remember the whole weekend. And I got together with them. And you know how you lead people through when you don't want to tell them you don't remember. Hey, you remember Friday night? And they said, yeah, yeah. And I said, yeah, we were here and there. And then I found I was dancing on a table. And I did some of these other tricks. And I said, well, in your opinion, I had a good time. And they said, yeah, oh, you had a marvelous time. And secretly I thought to myself, well, thank God, because I paid a hell of a price for that good time,

and I was now willing to balance the equation with a rumor that I had had a good time.

And I had a terrible problem with the second step. What do you mean return to sanity? I've always thought very logically and carefully,

terrible problem with that step. I somehow one Saturday up at Yale, the guys were sitting around drinking and they said, let's join the Marines. And I said, all right, I don't have anything else to do. We're out of beer

and six of us went down, ha ha ha.

And

I was 14 years later, I got thrown out.

I got thrown out of the Marine Corps after I got into Alcoholics Anonymous,

which is a strange story that two year sobriety and got passed over for the second time and all of a sudden I'm a civilian and I had six children and I didn't have a job and I was resenting it and I sat around my house and self pity came in the window. I, I don't know how it got there. I was working the program perfectly and

and I said I got cheated and I started talking to God. I take what is, you know, what kind of a deal is this

direct, you know, doesn't seem right, doesn't seem fair. Remember how all these thoughts were creeping through? And I guess I had been out about

two months and I was reading the newspaper and it was a small article in there about a plane crash. And it was a team of officers in the Marine Corps that went around the country given instruction. And that was a team that I was on, and they were all killed. And if I had had my wish, of course, I would have been on the plane. And I can remember sitting there feeling rather foolish. That was the first thing that came over me. And I remember and I tried to make a joke out of it and I said,

listen, God, if you had just told me. I mean, if

I really didn't like the Marine Corps at all anyway, and I just disregard all of the what you've been hearing this morning and the and the past few days. And it's funny because things do happen to us

and then we have to stay sober and let some time go by. And then all of a sudden the reason for it happening

hits us, but only if we're not drinking. Only if we're not drinking. I look back on that incident and I go, Gee, suppose I started drinking. I would have been down with the at the bar, with the other losers who wouldn't be reading the paper either. And we'd all be going, isn't it unfair how these things happen to us? And so it is a good lesson for me that that incident did happen. But anyway, this crowd got into Marine Corps and it was a terrible ordeal,

and I soon found that I was not fit

physically or mentally to carry on the duties of an infantry officer. And so I signed up for flight school. That looked like the only logical alternative to my dilemma, and I spent the next 1213 years flying around in various kinds of jets. And I don't know, I really don't remember a lot of it, but the

I do remember this that

Marine Corps was kind of my hobby.

I see a hobby is something that you give about two hours a day to. And then the rest of it was being an alcoholic because this disease was progressing right on schedule. When I met Red Marty Mann primer on alcoholism after I got sober, I thought she had been following me around because I just fit the page by page description of her book to a tee and it ruined my uniqueness. It was a terrible set back to read that book, but I

I did spend

time various spaces around here. I was in Southern California for a year or two and overseas and so on now. But all those things are kind of background music to being an alcoholic. Those parts of our stories are interesting and and so on down. But to me, what I like to remember is what was going on inside of me. What was I thinking about when all this was happening? Mostly what I was thinking about was being afraid.

Mostly what I was thinking about was that somebody going to find out about me, somebody going to find out about the real me. And I loved alcohol because it sort of quieted these fears and it gave me a chance to be somebody else. And I would be loud and laughing and carry on and pretend. I always pretended that everything was all right. It was critical to pretend that everything was all right. I had been taught growing up that it was a sign of weakness to ask for help,

that that would be a very vulnerable thing to do because it's a dog eat dog world.

And if you ever ask for help, then the people out there would know that there was a chink in your armor, that there was a crack in the wall, and then would attack this weakness and would come right in. And so it'd be very dangerous to ask for help. And a real man solves his own problems. A real man in the American dream pulls himself up by his bootstraps. None of this stuff going around

sharing and all of these things this, you know, and I, I learned this, I don't know where from books. I learned it from movies. I learned it from why I thought other people were saying and you know, the cowboy movies are kind of like that. You have a Western hero. He lives out in the desert alone with his horse.

And whenever there's trouble in town, they call on him and he comes in. He has those black gloves on. He goes into the bar, has a couple of drinks. He says where's the trouble? They point out the trouble. He walks over, he shoots the guy and the townspeople go, we love you, we love you. And he runs back out in the desert with his horse and and now there's a real man. That's a real man

and you know, I think about that now and I want. It's really weird to live alone in a desert with a horse. It's

the whole thing about that is, um,

that was a strange thing to want to be, you know, to be like that. And I never understood

things. I would hear songs. There's a song out now that I think Alcoholics could well use as a theme song. It's called I did it My Way.

Be popular. People who need people are lucky. People who need people are weak.

It's, it just didn't fit into my lifestyle, you know, being a real man. Mostly I was afraid.

That was what I remember about being an alcoholic, was being afraid, terrified of the truth, terrified of the very thing that could set me free from all these fears. But I didn't know that. So I just went along doing the best I could. I feel I like the word victim for an alcoholic. I really do. It's a science, appears in a Grapevine occasionally. I think it's in, I don't know, step four or five. We're victims and we really are victims of my character defects, victims of the way I was put together

and all of these underlying problems that displayed themselves in alcohol and all of these patterns that had me going off in a self-destructive manner. I didn't know how I got that way. And, you know, I just, that's the way I was and I had to live with it. And I used alcohol and that seemed to be the best way out. I can remember before I got into daily drinking

what a terrible problem it was to get through a day and how I got into daily drinking. You know, we don't intellectually,

I don't think the morning drink. I don't think we're reading the New York Times and we go, hey, look at there, everybody drinks in the morning. I think I'll get some vodka and join the high society. I don't think it happens that way. I think it happens maybe the way it happened to me, which was I was sitting around Squadron somewhere in the middle of the afternoon having my usual problem, which was time. The clock has stopped on the wall. I had looked up there and it was 3:00 and my body was saying,

hey, it's time to leave.

There's raw nerve endings down here. There's a stomach that's on fire. We have problems. We have an emergency down here in the brain is going, forget it, man. We got another hour and a half. We're going to stay here. We got work to do. There's a kernel standing over there. You can't just get up and walk out and then the body's going. You're going to have to reconsider.

The body was sending things up. Finally one day the body and all the nerve endings said, listen, we've taken a boat down here

and

we vote that you leave now right now, not 430 right now. And I'm going, can't do it. I'm sorry. I'd like to accommodate you guys, but we got us hang in here. And the body said wrong. Take a look at your right arm. And I remember looking out at my right arm and like a big spasm went like that. It was just and there was a message.

A message came up. It was like a warning and it said that's just a warning. You not get the hell out of here.

We don't care if you have to lie. We don't care if you have to change. We don't care what you have to do. But you're in trouble if you don't get out of here.

And so I said, well, I'll think it over. And I thought it over, and I came up with some reason and left a little bit early. You know, a compromise. Put the time in half. But I was getting out of there because I had to have a drink. There was no two ways. I saw the trembling start. I saw some of the things that were going to happen,

and yet I had to pretend that it wasn't happening. I had to pretend that everything was all right. I remember going into the bar after driving over there, just shaking and sweating. And I'm just knowing that the booze was almost here. And I walked up to the bar and the bartender said, yes, Sir. And I said, oh, I'm not in a hurry. Why don't you wait on him? And

and all of these components of my body are going. What is wrong with that man? What,

what is he doing? Because my eyes were had given the show away, my eyes could see the alcohol right over here on the bar about 6 feet away. And they had sent the word down to all of these parts that needed the alcohol. And it was like the dog on the Alco commercial. You ever seen Ed McMahon? They don't let that dog eat for about 3 days and they hold that bowl of alcohol up there and,

and The thing is shaking and they go, man, I could hardly wait. He knows in just a second that everything's going to be hard. And that's what was going on inside of me. And here's this guy saying, oh, that's all right, wait on him, I'm not in a hurry.

And I started to take a cigarette out and I saw somebody looking at me and I said, suddenly realized I couldn't like that cigarette. And then I said, well, I guess my friend was going to be a little late, so why don't you go ahead and give me a triple vodka martini on a rock spot while I'm waiting for my friend. And then everything inside knew it wasn't going to be long now. And I got both hands on that thing and took three big swallows and put the glass back down and then stepped back from the bar and waited and waited for that magic that happened for waited for my

power to go around. And it always started in my legs, which had been so rubbery. And they worked out all night. I used to get up in the morning like I'd been in a marathon. I don't know what my legs were doing. They just went muscle spasm tightening all night. And suddenly this alcohol vodka went down through those legs and I was standing there just as solid and comfortable. I remember feeling how that felt when it came up through there. Then it came into the stomach and it was like a cold foam that puts out fires and it just came racing through that stomach

and I just went, oh God, that feel good. And then it was moving out towards those fingertips with the speed of light. It just went down out and all of a sudden I just felt and I looked over

and I looked over at the guy who had been looking at me when I was reaching for my cigarette

and I looked him back in the eye and I took a cigarette out and I said he thinks I got a problem lighting this cigarette. Then I took a match and very slowly brought the match in myself. Hello there. And,

and I thought, oh, I felt good. I felt good because I was almost there. I was almost there. There was just one last little thing to be taken care of. And that was the brain. That was the last thing that got taken care of by this vodka. And this was a brain that had been so distorted and was so confused, didn't go this way, that way and couldn't make decisions. And the day was so confusing and terrifying. And all of a sudden the vodka just rushed up my neck into my head and it just went peace.

And I was like,

and I, I took another look in the mirror and here was a guy standing there without a problem in the world, looking around. And I remember standing there and I would say to myself, wonder what had me so upset when I came in here.

I must really have a high pressure job. I must really be into, you know, wow, isn't it lucky that I have alcohol?

Isn't it lucky that I have this to help me through what I have to go through every day?

Isn't that lucky? And little did I know who was what and what was who. I look now about alcohol. You know, alcohol is kind of like reverse insurance. If there's any insurance salesman here, this is a new policy that we could create for Alcoholics. Reverse insurance, this is a concept works like this.

A guy works very hard for his money and then he takes some of the money each day and he goes into a liquor store and he hands the money over to the guy in return for a guarantee that his tomorrow will stink. And that's,

that's the option that we purchased here. I was in there every day, gone. Is this the right stuff? Oh, yeah. You're going to be rotten tomorrow. This is it. That's a good. And as long as I drank that, I would have to be back to buy another bottle. As long as I drank that, I had finally gotten to the point where the reason that I was drinking was because I'd been drinking.

That was the reason that I was drinking. I needed the booze to calm down the thing. I needed a booze to settle down the nerves. I needed it. Needed it, and there was no choice. And so I had to become a daily drinker.

I did it kind of a strange way. I started having withdrawals and airplanes.

I started flying around in jets out of Cherry Point, and I can remember several times getting in Crusaders and I probably hadn't eaten in three or four days. And I would get in there and I couldn't remember how to start it. I would just sit in there and I said you shouldn't fly. I mean, you know,

so if that thought occurred to me

and I realize now why I thought that

I didn't trust the pilot of the plane that I was in, which was me, I had the feeling I was too valuable to go up with what was left.

And but I remember a couple of times flying around and I would have heart palpitations and then I'd lose my vision. I would just have just enough to see the instrument panel. And I would say that vision has to come back. It has to come back. And I would fly around up there waiting for it. Flew around a couple times with my hand on the ejection seat. I said by God, if I go out

pass out, I'm just going to pull it thing and fly out of this and you know, you just can't keep that up very long. So I finally did, went to the doctors and that I do only when I realized the mortissener is waiting out there is the only reason I would go to a doctor. That's the last place that I want to go. But I did. And to make a Long story short, after two weeks in Pensacola, FL, after I had went through or gone through a very extensive physical, they left it up to the psychiatrist to decide what was wrong

because they couldn't find anything physically wrong. And of course, I had lied, and I had told a few stories, and the psychiatrist said,

this man is suffering from a childhood fear of airplanes, and

we recommend that he no longer fly. And I had my wings taken away. And, boy, that was worth getting drunk over for years. I mean, it's a terrible experience to go through. And so the Marine Corps had to decide what to do with a guy in this shape. And I was amazed when I got a set of orders to go to the Federal Aviation Agencies School in Glencoe, Georgia, to become an air traffic controller.

And now I was in.

Now I was in charge of bringing planes in in bad weather when they couldn't.

When they couldn't see the runways. And

so that was, as I feel very grateful that nobody died and things like that. And I was into my last year drinking and now I was drinking around the clock. I was overseas and I was in charge of one of these units. So I passed on the real controlling to other people. And I just sat around and drank and didn't eat. And I lost about 35 lbs that year from malnutrition and just sort of stayed in the Quonset Hut

and sat around and didn't really go out much and didn't talk to people.

And life was a very terrifying year to just be alone. And I can remember one time I still had to rationalize. And I had passed out on a Saturday noon and the package store closed around 3:00 for inventory. And I woke up and it was about four minutes to three and I was out of booze and I needed to drink desperately. And I'd left a little message to myself. Don't run out of booze. I remember seeing that little note and I said a lot of good that did. And my hands were shaking and I went to put

shoes on, and I had taken them off with a knot still in them. And I had run through what you run through over in Japan. You're always stepping in those Benjo dishes. And the knots that the leather had shrunk when it dried. And I had a fork in my hand and it was trembling. It was like an Alfred Hitchcock movie. It had 90 seconds to go. And I'm working with a fork in my just as I thought I was going to have a heart attack on a Saturday afternoon, a little Quonset Hut trying to get the shoelaces off of these things.

And finally I got on my bicycle and rode over. The guy was just locking up. And I got a bottle of vodka and came back and poured it down and it calmed down things a little bit. And I went, oh boy, am I glad that problems over. But my conscience had to talk to me. And my conscience said, wait a minute, because you're a grown man, you're 33 years old, captain of the Marine Corps, you got six kids, you're from New Haven, you're a wonderful guy and all that. And you're standing around on Saturday afternoon with a fork in your hand trying to undo knots. And your life is a mess. You've got to do something about remember I I couldn't get this out

my mind. I had to take action. I was being forced into action. So I sat down and I honestly tried to see my way out of that and I think I did. I went over the PX and bought a pair of loafers

and

and came back and then really thought I had made progress. I thought I had solved the problem and it felt good about it. It was strange,

but I was sent back from there to Quantico to become the next command on the Marine Corps. I was in one of these career school, Junior School, stepping stone, moving right up the ladder, and I was at Junior School one day when my body stood up as if to ask a question. I had no intention of standing up that day and

I went into a grand mile seizure and that caused a lot of consternation. People looking, who is that guy? What's his name? And everybody's going, let's see. Well, I just moved up the ladder. You know, people were moving up in seniority. And there's a lot of Marines right now who are Lieutenant colonels and colonels who never would have made it without me.

They only look good because they were standing next to me.

Ah, on their own they had nothing going, but next to me they looked so great. They would say, God almighty, are we fortunate? So I ended up at the Bethesda Naval Hospital and I was sent up to the tower where all of VIP's go to find out what could have caused this convulsion. I was there about 24 hours when I went into the DTS,

which explained what caused the convulsion. And I was immediately removed from that section of the hospital,

came to, I don't know, a week or two later, back in that place where there's no doorknobs and they take away all the sharp objects. And I came to in a bed with the sides on it like a crib, and someone wet the bed that I was in. And