Sober Sunrise – Sandy B. – Primm, NV – 2008
AA speaker Sandy B. shares 40 years of sobriety, from a harrowing bottom as a fighter pilot in crisis to finding spiritual connection through the program and the Big Book’s message on higher power.
Sandy B. from Nevada got sober in 1964 after hitting an almost unimaginable bottom—as a U.S. Marine fighter pilot struggling with alcoholic withdrawal in the cockpit, eventually institutionalized in a naval hospital where he experienced terrifying hallucinations and seizures. In this AA speaker tape from a 2008 convention in Primm, he walks through 40 years of recovery, explaining how the Big Book’s radical message about finding a power greater than himself became the foundation of not just staying sober, but experiencing genuine spiritual awakening and usefulness in life.
Sandy B. describes his descent from Yale and Marine service into life-threatening alcoholism, including flying military jets during withdrawal and a catastrophic psychiatric hospitalization. He explains the core AA principle from the Big Book—that a power greater than yourself will solve your problems, not just teach you how—and how surrendering the ego to access that power transforms recovery from white-knuckling sobriety into spiritual connection and joy. His talk centers on the paradox of becoming smaller so God can be everything, illustrated through the Prayer of St. Francis and practical examples of how an AA speaker learns to rely on that higher power daily rather than trying to manage life alone.
Episode Summary
Sandy B. opens with gratitude for the convention and the fellowship in Las Vegas, but quickly moves into his extraordinary story of alcoholism that nearly cost him his life. His bottom wasn’t a typical rock-bottom story—it was surreal and terrifying. As a U.S. Marine fighter pilot during his drinking years, he found himself attempting to fly high-performance F-8 Crusaders in the grip of alcoholic withdrawal. His hands shaking, vision blurred, and panic rising, he devised a desperate plan: grip the ejection seat with one hand and fly with the other, knowing if he passed out, the automatic ejection would save him. That smugness—figuring his way out of an impossible situation—masked a fatal illness progressing underneath.
After turning himself in to military doctors, Sandy experienced two and a half years of inability to fly. The military, in the 1960s, had no diagnosis for alcoholism, so doctors sent him through an absurd carousel of specialists. Then came his final assignment: air traffic control in Japan. Without the pre-flight 12-hour sobriety window, Sandy drank constantly. He lost 50 pounds, isolated from his drinking buddies, and subsisted on vodka and juice while bringing planes in during bad weather—a staggering responsibility for a man actively dying from alcoholism. Fellow officers later told him they knew he was dying but couldn’t intervene.
The story reaches its crisis point at a military career school in Virginia, where Sandy’s mind began to completely fracture. Hallucinating that buildings had vanished, convinced he was being framed for killing an admiral, terrified by memory tests he couldn’t pass, Sandy experienced a complete psychiatric break. The military put him in a straightjacket and locked him away for six months. That institutionalization, that moment of complete powerlessness, became his gateway to AA.
Sandy’s talk then pivots to the spiritual core of the program—the message that changed his life and kept him sober for 40 years. He walks through the agnostic chapter of the Big Book with remarkable clarity, unpacking a single sentence that he says will stay with every person in recovery: *The purpose of this book is to enable you to find a power greater than yourself which will solve your problems.* Not teach you how to solve them. **Solve them.** This distinction, he explains, is revolutionary. It means the power itself does the work.
He describes the spiritual dilemma faced by every alcoholic: we live in a material world telling us to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, be self-reliant, accomplish things through our own effort—and then an “outfit” called AA tells us we’re powerless and must rely on something beyond ourselves. The ego rebels. Sandy illustrates this brilliantly with an anecdote about athletes crediting God for their achievement while reporters visibly struggle to process an answer that gives credit outside the self.
Sandy explains the radical flip in Alcoholics Anonymous: instead of becoming a “big shot,” the highest rank in AA is **servant**. Becoming small so that God can be everything. He describes the blockages to this flow—what the program calls character defects—as neutral obstacles, not moral failures. The 12 steps are designed to remove these blockages, and when they do, spiritual energy flows through naturally.
He brings the Prayer of St. Francis to life, showing how the prayer isn’t about what *we* do but about what flows *through* us. We become a channel. The energy moves outward. Love, light, truth, peace—these aren’t things we manufacture; they come through us when we get ourselves out of the way. He uses a job interview example: if we go alone and pitch ourselves aggressively to land the job, we get the credit and the story. But if we take God with us, speak from genuine desire to serve rather than self-interest, something different happens—we become attractive, useful, and opportunities open. Then God gets the credit.
Sandy warns against the pattern so common in recovery: getting sober, doing the work, and then Tuesday morning deciding to “handle today alone,” leaving God out of it. By nightfall, everything’s falling apart. Meetings keep us connected. When we get disturbed—resentful, angry, frustrated—we’re in the ego-driven material world and disconnected from the now, where God actually exists.
He closes with a powerful story about a friend who died of cancer. Initially devastated, this man decided to be a good example to others in the program about handling serious illness with grace. He found a Noble Mission in the crisis. Later, when doctors said he might recover, he told Sandy something extraordinary: the reprieve was wonderful, but when he thought the end was near, he was much closer to God, and he missed that connection. Even facing death, because he was spiritually connected, there was dignity and nothing to worry about.
Sandy ends by reframing what it means to join AA: not just a place to stop drinking, but a place to embark on an epic personal journey to discover who you really are, what life means, and how to become remarkably useful. It’s like joining King Arthur’s Court—you don’t try to become something; you become **part of something**, and that makes all the difference.
Notable Quotes
The purpose of this book is to enable you to find a power greater than yourself which will solve your problems. Not teach you how to solve your problems—the power will solve your problems.
Without something greater than yourself you’re going down for the last count. Mission accomplished. If you acknowledge you need something besides yourself, you’re now 99% spiritual.
Everything in the spiritual world is like a paradox. We get the obstacles out of the way and the peace comes out and is shared with others. The energy is going the exact opposite way of what we thought.
When you are close to this power that’s inside of you, there is a sense of joy that stays there while you go through sad things. You can have a death in the family and experience the pain and sadness but still be connected to a sense that everything is fine.
Rather than trying to become something, you become part of something, and there’s a big difference.
Anytime we get disturbed, we’re leaving the now and we’re on our own. So anytime we get disturbed, top priority: get undisturbed so you can have God with you again.
Spiritual Awakening
Hitting Bottom
Surrender & Acceptance
The Big Book Study
Topics Covered in This Transcript
- Step 2 – Higher Power
- Spiritual Awakening
- Hitting Bottom
- Surrender & Acceptance
- The Big Book Study
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Full AA Speaker Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated and may contain minor errors. For the best experience, listen to the audio above.
welcome to sober Sunrise a podcast bringing you AA speaker meetings with stories of experience strength and Hope from around the world we bring you several new speakers weekly so be sure to subscribe whether you join us in the morning or at night there’s nothing better than a sober Sunrise we hope that you enjoy today’s speaker appreciate that good morning everybody my name is Sandy Beach and I’m an alcoholic how you all doing well it’s a pleasure to be here this morning um having uh been part of this wonderful convention I’ve enjoyed all the speakers and sitting in the hospitality room just visiting with people who come up and share their stories and it’s just wonderful I we’re so lucky to have something like this and Las Vegas is uh I think I’ve been to three of these and they’re always very very high energy High spirituality and you can tell that it must be a lot of fun to live here and to go to AA and Las Vegas I mean it you can just tell it in the and that’s that’s great you know Clancy talks about there’s pockets of enthusiasm around the country and if you travel around you you’re going to know what I’m saying it ain’t all exciting there are still places where oldtimers get up and go sobriety is a very tough road I have been sober for 20 years and their teeth are gritting and you just go lighten up lighten up man but uh so that’s it’s just so nice and I’m very grateful and I was very moved by the um remembrance of those that have passed on you really hit the magic formula just have music and show the pictures it was so moving even if you didn’t know the people you could just sense that it was um wow it’s just it’s far superior to having somebody say something about each the music said it all I’m telling you that it’s just coming here watching and it was just wonderful I’m going to suggest to our Tampa fall Roundup that we do that never saw it before and I think you guys have hit on a great one um as a matter of fact it made me think of my friend Hal Marley who passed away about two and a half years ago he and I got sober the same year and I was up last week in uh Washington DC we’re still celebrating his anniversary because it’s a chance for the old-timers to get together in the National Cath Cathedral and uh where you know so it was his 40th anniversary there’s three of us got sober in 64 and I’m the baby I get I got my 40 years in a week and so he we just had more fun reminiscing and all the old-timers showed up so there is some value in preserving some of the memories and I’m glad we do that you know they say principles before personalities I agree with that but without the personalities we’ve had I don’t know where the heck we’d be I mean you go all the way around the country you’re going to find there are personalities that are really shaping the AA and the areas that you go to and you’re really glad for them and um at least I am I just think it’s wonderful to see that uh let’s see again I’m totally disjointed so don’t worry we’ll get through it I um I got sober on December 7th 1964 in um the Washington DC area I was in the United States Marine Corps I was making a career out of being a marine fighter pilot and I was uh on a little detour at the time I was in the uh nut ward of the Bethesda naval hospital and they hadn’t let me fly in uh two two and a half years because I turned myself in after trying to fly during alcoholic withdrawal for three or four years and it was very very frightening um because I would get in the plane and these were very high performance Jets and I would get in the plane and you know I hadn’t had a drink in 12 hours and you get near the end of your drinking and that’s a bad time to do anything is to cuz your shakes are coming on I mean everything is starting to get at its worst and you’re climbing into an airplane and so I got in there and I would just my heart’s racing and I’m sweating and can’t see too well and I’m trying to get all this stuff and things were happening fast and I remember flying a photo Mission and um was during the Cuban Missile Crisis we we we weren’t going down to Cuba but we were practicing in case they needed more of us down there and I’m out flying and I know I’m going to pass out because I’ve just have um I just know I am and there isn’t anything in the um chance VA who built the f8 Crusader they had a handbook and there was no paragraph of flying the Crusader during alcoholic blackouts and I mean withdrawals not blackouts withdrawals and so you’re left to your own devices and I’m sure there’s a lot of professions out here and you encountered problems that you weren’t trained for you know what I mean CU they never dreamed that anyone would be in that kind of a situation I remember hearing a speaker who was a doctor he came out of a blackout during surgery and didn’t know what procedure he was doing and was trying to have a conversation with the nurses and other doctors to draw it out of them as to what was going on and I’m sure that wasn’t covered in medical school and so my solution and the funny thing was I felt just terrified with this new problem that I had and then I started thinking and I said well I could fly this Mission with one hand all the controls are on the stick for the cameras and then I could have the other hand on the objection seat and um I would get a death grip on the ejection seat apply the mission and if I pass out I’ll pull the seat and I’ll go out and the shoot will open automatically at 10,000 ft and the plane will crash and I’ll be fine and there was um in the middle of all the Panic was this smugness you know what I mean like well they almost had the old Fox but he figured his way out of this one too you know it was sort of a it’s that sort of inferiority superiority all at the same time you know here I am it’s awful but I figured my way out of it so I must be all right and that led me um to go to the doctors and the doctors agreed I had a problem and they uh sent me down to be examined I was there for two weeks this is in the early 60s and they um Navy did not have alcoholism as something anybody could have so you had to be mentally or something but there was no such thing as alcoholism as a diagnosis so now with all these doctors and they’re looking at me and going well what’s wrong with this guy and so I’m going to the dentist to see if my teeth could be affecting and then I’m going to the heart doctor I’m going to all the different doctors and you know when I look back on it it really is hysterical that the medical profession could be doing this charade but they were and they’re just looking at me and going well let’s see the guy’s hands are shaking his eyes are bloodshot he’s very disoriented high blood pressure lost a lot of weight and very confused and disoriented and he reeks of alcohol all the time let’s see this is um what could it be what could it be we got to and uh God I would come in terrified every morning I get drunk as hell at night to just get through this and then I’d come in in the morning and i’ be sitting there like a guinea pig sweating just sweating remember just wet my uniform just would be soaked and one day I went in and they had gotten an old ad Skyraider it’s a propeller plane and they had taken a chair just like the ones you’re sitting on and bolted it into this thing and they had hooked up all these machines and wires and then they put me in it and hooked up all this stuff and then took the plane up and went through all these things and see if they could recreate what was causing my problems so that’s shows you that it was the Dark Ages in terms of military medicine um and I got down and um I don’t know why I’m starting this part of my story but I like it and at the end of the two weeks they left it up to the psychiatrist to write the evaluation and he wrote the evaluation that this uh man who’s been flying for 12 and A2 years should no longer fly because he has childhood fear of flying that that just showed up um and I knew that wasn’t true but I didn’t know how to fight it you know when there’s nothing left inside you you just don’t have any way of dealing with anything so I just well okay you know God and it killed me that’s who I was is my whole identity and I went back to Cherry Point North Carolina and waited took about three months because I had gotten a regular commission and this was my career I had joined during the Korean War draft thing the war ended but I wanted to make a career I loved it and I had six kids I gotten married I had six little kids and we had been all over the country and I’d been to Japan and uh so the Marine Corps had to give me a new specialty and it took about 3 months and I got orders to become an air traffic controll and so you could see that the um Insanity was everywhere not just the medical profession but the headquarters and so somehow I made it through Air Traffic Control school which is a very hard school and my last year drinking I went back to Japan in charge of an air traffic control unit bringing planes in in bad weather when they can’t see the runway so this is um the insanity of the whole situation and I was very lucky when I checked in over there the senior um enlisted man they run everything anyway uh took one look at me and said Captain good to have you here in that iuni and here’s the tents and this is there’s all the thing and there’s your chair and coffee sir don’t you personally control any planes and I went you got my word on that and so now without the 12 hours uh without drinking prior to Flying I just drank all the time and in in during that year I lost 50 pounds due to malnutrition I stopped hanging out with my drinking buddies I mean they’re all going over to just get drunk and I didn’t want to go with them I just stayed alone I don’t you know this weird stuff is setting in and I couldn’t eat so I drank a lot of bodka and one of the guys in my um quantit Hut was the special weapons guy and they used a lot of grain alcohol in making these and he brought a five gallon Canon one time to the Quan Hut area and we all said let’s try drinking grain alcohol it just made everybody so drunk and sick that nobody else drank it and the can sat in his room and when I would run out of vodka I would go over and just sip a little and at the end of that year that can was empty you know what I mean just sipping just when you’re out of b or whatever I just going to take a little bit well I must have been taken more than I thought but I know that whole thing was gone and I try to subsist on soup or juice so meals were like um vodka juice and that was the thing so I’m getting thin I got a photo of myself I just look like turned sideways you can’t even see me and um I’m trying to go to work I mean you know it’s like everybody’s pretending that I’m okay yeah here he is oh oh yeah yeah and later on I had uh friends of mine fellow officers in the Squadron I was in after I got sober in AA and I was in Washington DC and God we got to reunite there was four of them and they all said they said we knew you were dying but there was anything we could do and I remember thinking about that what a strange disease I mean Marines go back into hostile territory to make sure a dead Marine doesn’t stay there I mean that’s their code and there’s these three guys are saying we knew you were dying but there wasn’t anything we could do about it that’s what alcoholism had done and that’s how powerful a disease it was we’ve come a long way in society in making sure that in most instances that doesn’t happen but um that was what was going on and I somehow made it back to U quano to go to a career School in Virginia to get promoted to some higher rank I mean all this illusion was going on and yet anybody close to me knew that this man was not long for the world and um I lived off the base and this is getting right near the end and I drove in the gate went up to the school complex which was probably four large brick buildings and they were gone I said my God the school is gone so I went back down to the main gate to report this I was hallucinating so I go down and I go Corporal Junior School is gone said sir I said Junior School is gone I just was up there oh my God so he got this uh car with the siren and the thing said follow me Captain and so I went up in my car it was back and he came over you know and I could still see the look on his face when I said to him it’s back you know wouldn’t you have like to be in that guard house when he got back to tell his fellow Marines about this captain that just took him up to Junior school and in that school um I just stood up one day to asked a question and had a ground mouth seizure and bit my tongue and they got an ambulance and then I went to the hospital and I was there for 5 days while they’re studying what could have caused this seizure and 5 days without alcohol I’d never gone 5 days without alcohol in years and years and years and I went to the DTs and saw things that were very very frightening they thought I had killed this Admiral in the next room and they were trying to get me and they were going to put me away forever because my memory was gone this is all I’m imagining but it’s incredibly real and I even took notes during this because I saw they were framing me and I wanted to have um evidence I could see a court Marshal coming and I was getting stuff from my Council and um it all seemed to stem out of the fact anybody that’s gone into a mental institution almost universally in order to see how well you’re doing they ask you a very simple question they go would you mind counting backwards from 100 by sevens oh I see heads nodding all over the room yeah and uh you go 93 and you can’t go any further you just you’re you your mind is incapable of doing that advanced math and they can tell that you’re really so I thought that was they were testing me on that and I couldn’t do it you know they’d come in I I’d go you know I try to do it on my fingers you know 93 92 91 91 or 93 93 it was way beyond anything I could do so they had me and I was trapped and so the memory tests were they’d asked me what was out in the hall I wanted a different test I don’t want to do that seven test that’s I I don’t want a different test all right all right so there they got three more doctors and they came and this is all as real as you are today and uh they said what’s out in the hall here so I went out and there was um the Corman down at the end there was three elevators there was chairs magazine racks there was nine rooms for patients and they said we’ll be back in 10 minutes so I sat on my bed memorizing Corman elevator you know and then they came back and they said what’s out there and I told them I had it down pat and they were all shaking their head and I ran out the door it was a photo lab they had moved the walls somehow like on like on Mission Impossible you know those things where they drive people crazy and and I’m going how’d you do that and they said how do we do what this is a photo lab and I so they started with the handcuffs and I said one more test they said well memorize the photo lab so I went out and I okay I was in a photo Squadron and they had all these big equipment that we use for great big long rolls of film so I had all that memorized and they came back 10 minutes later I told them exactly what was was out there and they shook their heads they opened the door it was a flight line I just walked right out of a hanger on this planes taxi and by the sun is out and evidently I started screaming and they put me in a straight jacket and locked me up for six months so that was my um Grand Finale um it’s hard to call that social drinking that would be the so that started me in AA and I certainly didn’t start out to have a life like that I mean you know I didn’t start out to have that kind of a terrible terrible experience I started out to be to have a drink in college that’s all I was doing I was going to have a drink the drink had such a powerful effect on me that I saw it as the greatest single of EV that had ever happened in my life that’s how powerful it was I was 19 years old I had been brought up in the Catholic church my sister’s got um 28 years in AA and she was sitting right next to me in that same church she saw the friendliest place in the world and still goes there she thought it was the greatest thing she thought the nuns were so cool she thought all of the doctrine was just so flexible and wonderful and I sat over there in Stark Terror sitting right next to her so it’s just a question of perception I saw these nuns is like Nazis and they were out and whack whack whack and you know just finding everything that was wrong with me and then I I read the doctrine and the catechism and it was like whoa you know it’s like mind comp and um it just was ah ah you know petrified me and when I was about 9 years old all on my own I had an insight into God that no one else in the church had I had it all by myself just sitting on the front Pew I was staring at the crucifix it was 20 feet across it was huge just hanging right there and the more I looked at the more I looked at it was almost like it spoke to me and it just said little boy do you see this yeah well this is what God did to his only son that he loved guess what he’s going to do to you and um and I just I think I fell off the Pew in a faint just and later on I said oh I had some bad food for breakfast and I wouldn’t tell anybody because you don’t want to tell anybody your secrets cuz they could laugh at you and think you’re not cool so anything you learn that’s scary or hard to deal with just keep it just keep it inside that’s what everybody does I didn’t know everybody was doing that I thought everybody else really was cool then I got here and wow you guys were just pretending weren’t you just like me you didn’t have a clue either but that’s that was the problem and so I had there was no peace in God that was Terror all I wanted to do was live forever cuz I knew when you died it’s over bad things start happening so that was my little Comfort level inside as I’m walking around and so when I got I grew up in New Haven Connecticut and I went through a little prep school there very nice I enjoyed it and it pipelined right into Yale University which was my hometown school got famous guys from all over the country are there soon as I got there I realized I didn’t belong there what AM I doing in this place what I mean look at all these real people I just felt so uncomfortable and I knew during the freshman year that the dean was going to come out one night and call us all out in the old campus going to go gentlemen we have discovered that there’s an impostor in our midst and he’s right there and they were going to point at me and get me out of there that was how comfortable I felt there and my roommates were saying you ought to have a drink you ought to have a drink you no no no not going to drink I’m going to get high grades Athletics all that and one night I was at a event where you had to go around and meet all the guys and I talk about this in about every talk maybe 25 30 guys and I I had the hardest time going up and just introducing myself and making small talk it was just impossible and so I tried that night and I never made it I went up to each group and they turned people can talk with their eyes you know that your the eyes can really tell you a lot and I walk up and there six guys put their eyes right on me and they just very clearly they went up to a sort of an advanced glare and they just went we don’t want to know you stay away from our group you’re the last guy in the world we want to know I mean I you know you got to take a hint and so I would back off and go over there and then each group looked right at me and said the same thing so I never did meet anybody that night I just saw those messages and said okay but I did take a drink there was a bar there and I had a drink and my roommate said it make me feel good I had another one nothing happened I had a third one I was halfway through the third drink I decided to leave but when I turned around those guys I don’t know what they did but they changed their mind about me and I looked over and every group was begging me to join them they were going we would give anything if you would be our friend really and and their eyes just kept going yes yes yes please join our group please join and I went wow it’s just like the world I lived in became incredibly friendly I just said this is remarkable I like this atmosphere what a great room this is and then as I walked over to the first group I felt different there I had sort of a spring in my step and I’m just I’m coming over there and I’m going these guys are right it would be great to know me you know it’s like a whole new Dynamics in the world and I just walked over there and you know hey ho hi ho ho you know and I I intuitively knew how to handle situations that used to baffle me fear of people left me I I just was something was doing for me what I couldn’t do for myself and so there it was and I was now in one of the greatest world you could live in and I just said this is the greatest and I realized that alcohol was the power that put you in this world and I just was so grateful I thought I should have started in grammar school you know this would have been wonderful so if three drinks were that wonderful what would 20 be like so then you know what happens that first night and one two 3 four 5 so the next morning after throwing up all night and spending the night next to the toilet on that nice cold marble which I Learned was a very good thing to know all about and be right near the toilet and I got up and U made it back to my room and I sat on the bed dying and and the thought occurred to me are you going to drink again tonight and the answer it took two seconds I went of course I am my decision was based on the fact that what happened last night was worth anything this dying and throwing up and muscles aching and and head splitting wide open was a small price to pay for what I had last night now what I had last night wasn’t what the other guys who drank at that University they didn’t have that they wouldn’t stand for what I was going through and so I’ve without knowing it made a deal if somebody had come up to me and said okay you’re starting down the drinking path and I want to I want to just make sure we understand what’s going to happen Okay so I’ll explain the whole deal to you uh would you be willing to give up your high grades for drinking yes y be glad to do that that’ll be fine yep how about Athletics yeah that’s fine ath you know that’s fine yeah I’ll be glad to give that up how about your family yeah yeah I’m not that close to them anyway your friends I can make new friends I go yeah that would be fine you know they could have gone all the way how about your soul and I say yeah get rid of that that thing isn’t doing me any good anyway and they’re going to kill it later on so it was like it was like I didn’t want anything but drinking because it held the power to my future and I’ve only been drinking a half a day you know what I mean this is not like years of thinking about it it was this all transpired now this you know I never thought it through that way I thought I was another so social Drinker like the other guy just having a party and haaha well of course there went the Athletics there went the grades now I’m getting a fights now I’m getting my teeth knocked out now I’m in jail now my parents are upset I mean just going right on down and I’m going yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah there’s a few glitches in my life but but boy it’s life great I mean that’s just the way I saw it it’s so wonderful to live in this world of three drinks you remember the world of three drinks you just walked into the bar and got all those problems and you got all those terrible things happening and and just go one two and then three and then you look look around you go hey man what was that problem I was worried about when I came in here and all right let’s start living man here we go we’re now here we’re all present now Life Starts so that was my new world I just loved it in there like aliceon Wonderland I hated going back into the sober world but you had to go there there was some thing you have to have a job you have to do things but that was not important it was being in this new world now I had no idea that was was going on but that’s what was going on I was shifting my priorities and this was so important well as I said the draft was going on had to join the Marine Corps became a pilot got married we had all these children and I did a reasonably good job considering I was about ready to crash and burn and die I think I tried as hard as I could I used to beat myself up of being not a good father not a good husband and all that and I put all that to rest but I never could put the fact that I wasn’t a good marine and uh that always bothered me somehow I should have been able to finish that career because I lost my career and everything there’s something Marine car really brainwashes you and and I I was expressing this at a conference a couple years ago and a Master Gunnery Sergeant came up after he said you still feel bad about the Marine Corps and I said yeah I do he said do you know how many Marines have listened to your tapes over the years do you know how many marines you’ve helped in the last 30 years your debt has been paid and you know the guy really fixed the last little glitch that I had in there it was a it was a wonderful feeling when he came up and told me that because I just wasn’t able to put that deal to rest there was something sentimental and all that and I have since then had reunions with the guys that I flew with and most of them thought I had died of drinking and uh God I showed up at this reunion at Cherry Point and they were happy to see me and I was happy to see them and it was like um everything got fixed it all got put in perspective and it wasn’t um Loose Ends sitting out there anymore and it was very nice and I was showing a picture around a couple of you may have seen it but I got a new pigeon this year these are the hardest you know multi-millionaires I don’t think I could have got sober if I had $18 left you know it’s like anyway he has all these planes and then he was talking with another guy who had planes and they were swapping stories you know sober guys and um he said what’ you fly and I told him all those things well did you ever fly civilian planes I said no I got out I went up in p c had a little steering wheel I I just didn’t get in interested and then for some unknown reason I said to him but if they somebody had a restored T28 which is a trainer plane but it’s like a World War II fighter and they would let me get in the back seat and do acrobatics for about 20 minutes I would kill for that and he said there’s one in my hanger and it was over in Lakeland and the guy had brought it up for an air show it was it was like brand new I mean this thing is 50-year old plane and it was totally brand new and the guy agreed to let me get in the back seat and we went up and so for about 20 minutes I was back it had been 44 years since i’ flown one of those things and I was back it was really sloppy and um pulling G’s and all that I felt a little queasy but I wouldn’t trade that 20 minutes for that was the highlight of 2004 with uh doing that and so God was good to me this year and giving me um various things that made closure or make the circle complete and all that so now we’re back to the program and um I know there’s new people here today and one of the deals that we have in the in AA you know I come in and I here’s the crucifix so I get to AA and they go now you got to rely on God and I’m looking at at that crucifix in my head and I’m going I don’t think so I said I I think I’ll leave that part out so you know a lot of us are new and that’s one of the great struggles you have in here is to put to rest the old ideas we had about a higher power and and the and there it just has to be done somehow so we have to find ways to get around the blockages that we have because this is the one thing that is going to ensure that we have long-term sobriety is this something Beyond ourselves and we have our book The Big Book I’m just going to quote one sentence out of it there’s a sentence that says um the purpose of this book so if you’re getting a book you know you might want to know what is the purpose of this book so I’ll tell you what that sentence says and it’s a fascinating sentence and it’ll stick with you for your entire sobriety so the purpose of this book is to enable you to find a power greater than yourself and here’s the most important part which will solve your problems now see this is revolutionary thinking now what does that sentence say it does not say this power will en enable you to find a power which will teach you how to solve your problems he said the power will solve your problems and so that means that it’s very important to have access to this power because that is the solution it is the power that is moving through us is the solution and um that was very hard for somebody with an ego nobody in this room but um we don’t want a power to solve our problems we want to be the person I want to do it myself you know what I mean and and the longer you’re in the program you keep your ego is going hey Fred how long you going to rely on a power when are you going to get in there you see what I’m saying I mean you could be sober 20 years and your ego is going hey man aren’t you tired of being dependent on God don’t you think it’s time you grew up huh when are you going to be able to stand up for yourself when are you going to get out there you know and that’s the so we end up with what you have to call the god dilemma because we’re see here’s the Dilemma is we’re we’re living in a spiritual world and a material world and the two of them are pulling at us in two different directions because everything you see on television and movies and all that is telling you how you pull yourself up by your own bootstraps you go out and you suck it in and you go out and you accomplish it and then when you do that then you stand up and go yay for me I did it you know what I mean and then you got this wimpy AA outfit and they’re telling you you’re powerless over alcohol you’re like a little wimo there you got to rely on some higher power you don’t want that label do you come on over here to the ego school yeah yeah so then we watch one of our buddies go over to the ego School Wham alcohol takes him out he’s in the nut Ward and we go whoa whoa maybe I don’t want to go over there maybe I’d rather be a sober wimp you see the struggles that are going on every so often I’ll see on television uh an athlete sometimes to be a white athlete most often it’s a black athlete And the reporter will be saying my God that was a remarkable thing you just did to what do you owe that and you’ll say I owe it all to God and the reporter will go what kind of an answer is that no I don’t want to hear that tell me what you really owe it to and the young man will go I really owe it to God and they go well I guess that’s the end of that interview and he hasn’t got a clue how to handle it you know what I’m saying what do you mean that’s stupid you know and he goes back probably goes back to his producer and don’t get people on the with God anymore I don’t know how to handle them that’s obviously not true what is that all about and you can see the the struggle and you know and sometimes you know our literature talks about when you start talking about God sometimes you’re going to get a cool reception in the outer World there and we just have to get used to it um so now we’re back and you’re the new person and you had the same experience I did so what is going to convince you to change your mind because that’s all it takes now for an alcoholic to changes his or her mind it’s kind of like the Queen Mary being turned around in Baltimore Harbor takes about 75 tugboats what’s going on Mary’s changing her mind oh doesn’t happen easily right first time my sponsor got me to admit I was wrong I said to him Bill you’re right he said no you’re wrong and I went hey it’s the same thing he said well say it it wouldn’t come out I mean it just wouldn’t come out it it’s almost like wrong how could you be wrong that that could be the end of the world you can’t be wrong so how does AA how do we do that now if we were a church we would um we’d have statues of our higher power we would have books that told about the history we would uh talk about the Miracles and we’d go oh 4,000 years ago there didn’t used to be a mountain here now there’s this sacred place what do you think of that and you’d go well that’s pretty impressive but it was be you know what would we we just don’t have anything like that in AA you don’t see any statue you don’t see anybody up if we’ve got I don’t know how many people are in this room 2,000 or something there’s 2,000 different higher powers in here so what are you supposed to do if you’re new well how can we possibly talk you into considering the existence of a higher power and if you don’t do that you haven’t got a chance well look at our literature boy did we figure out a way to do it it is so wonderful and it’s contained of all places in the chapter to the agnostic and I’ve done this in a lot of talks and I just love it because it is the closer anybody that’s been in sales they go okay you’re leading up now when do we close the guy well this is the close are you ready it’s in the chapter of the agnostic and I suppose we were were all agnostic at least when we got here and when I saw that chapter in The Big Book my sponsor gave me the big book so everything you need to know is in this book you know all that junk and um so I looked in there I didn’t see any loan application so I knew that book wasn’t going to be any help to me cuz that was the central thing of my problem was lack of money it was not lack of power but I think I glanced at the chapter and I saw that this is obviously where the agnostic stay sober you know what I mean then the spiritual people are over in on chapter five and all that stuff but so I knew eventually this would be the chapter that I would reside in the chapters the agnostic but I didn’t actually read it I just knew that without reading it some of us know we there’s a few here this morning you can tell without reading what it says and a lot of times you can tell what the speaker’s going to say before he says it and you kind of know things ahead of time so you don’t have to listen we’re all there right well then came a time to read this thing and it turns out that if you’re new this is what that chapter said okay you’re an agnostic okay here’s the the deal change your mind that’s the deal right there I want you to change your mind very bad thing being an agnostic and an alcoholic oh really yeah it is it’s very bad you don’t you do not want to be an agnostic and an alcoholic why oh I’ll tell you why I’m glad you asked first of all let’s agree on the definition of an alcoholic it’s right in that chapter are you ready follow me here it is if when you drink you have little control over the amount you drink right right okay everybody on board yeah I’m there and if we when you stop you can’t stay stopped okay still on board fine sign here that’s you now if that be the case are you ready boom here it comes you’re suffering from a fatal illness that only a spiritual experience can conquer uh would you repeat that yeah I’ll be glad to repeat that you’re suffering from was illness a fatal illness that only a spiritual experience can conquer and my sponsor made me read it three times and I looked him in the eyes and I said bill I don’t believe in spiritual experiences oh you’re screwed that was the end of the we don’t have any non-spiritual cures what yeah read on next paragraph you ready yeah what it say there says you now have a dilemma you have two choices you got to make one of them are you ready yes okay Choice number one die in alcoholic death oh Choice number two live on a spiritual basis oh oh oh we’re in the world of two crappy choices oh oh so then we go to a million doctors are you sure I’m an alcoholic are you sure I’m an alcoholic it’s there is there some other thing yeah there was this program of rational recovery with the ladies in jail for drunk driving oh well um Oh you mean a spiritual thing is the only way out whoa whoa oh so this is how we get spiritual okay what’s the spiritual stuff nobody convinced you of the existence of a higher power nobody even mentioned the existence of a higher power what did we convince you of the need for a higher power mission accomplished the game is over if you would simply open your mind enough up to the facts that without something greater than yourself you’re going down for the last count then this program becomes easy the debate is over you are now 99% spiritual because you just acknowledged that you need something besid yourself and now you’re ready to go and then we just explain okay here’s here’s the deal this power is already inside you it was there when you were born this power is the part of you that wants to be loving kind giving caring it’s been there you’ve kept it down you listen to the rules out there you’re supposed to crush people and take and all that don’t listen to that anymore we’re going to take what’s inside of you and draw it out it’s blocked right now this energy this spiritual part of you is the most beautiful thing you will ever see in your life and your whole program is uncovering this beautiful treasure and what we do we have these 12 steps and all they’re designed is to open this package for you it’s totally blocked and What’s blocking it we gave them the name Character defects we could have called them character blockages because they’re very neutral they’re not good they’re not bad bad they’re just there so don’t feel guilty that they’re there and don’t feel prideful that you shouldn’t have them they are there and this energy cannot flow so if you will follow the instructions and get a guide a sponsor will get these blockages out of the way when they are out of the way something will start flowing through you that you will interpret you will then say this is what I’m in touch with but trust us it is guaranted gued if you do the work you will feel the flow you will know for certain that whatever that you want to name this has entered your heart and is doing things for you that you could not do for yourselves this is the reward of Alcoholics Anonymous this is the point of doing all of this this is what is meant when we say find a power that is the solution to your problems and so only one question that you have to ask and that is what do I do next what do I do next and we come in here and everybody is a big shot and our egos fill this room and when your ego fills this room everything that happens in the universe bothers you you know what I’m talking about when when your ego is out there there’s something happening happening in the Ukraine which you don’t even know where it is and it seemed they’ve rigged an election over there and you go God I can’t believe they rigged the election in the Ukraine I can’t even sleep give me a drink what are they doing over there that’s when we’re our Eagles are out there so instead of being a big shot we want to go to the highest pay grade in Alcoholics Anonymous which is servant you if now you got to work real hard to get up to Servant cuz your ego does not want you to have the label servant Hey There Goes Harry servant nice seeing you Harry hey hi servant what if your friends see you being called servant well you come in here and you find this is the goal it’s the exact opposite of that Material World this the the real deal is to Simply become small and allow God to be everything I’m just an instrument I am now just the point of all the power there is so we suddenly have access to power beyond our own dreams but it’s all being directed towards being useful it’s all being directed outward and so this you know it’s everything in the spiritual world is like a paradox I remember the first time I read the Prayer of St Francis which is my favorite prayer it’s in the 11th step on the 12 and 12 12 it is awesome you can think about it for years and just think about it and just look at the words and it starts out with Lord Make Me A Channel Of thy peace I don’t know about you but when I saw those words I pictured what they meant and I pictured working these steps and getting all this self-centered stuff out of the way and now this peace floods in and I just sit there enjoying it turns out that’s not what happens at all we get the obstacles out of the way and the peace comes out and is shared with others the energy is going the exact opposite way everything we need we already have we already have it’s already there it just needs to get out and so the whole prayer talks about that that where there is hatred let me bring love that where there is Darkness let me bring light that where there is error let me bring Truth where there’s misunderstanding let me understand and it just goes all the way through where I am to be The Peacemaker the comforter the whatever and it changes my Outlook upon the day but it’s not anything that I can do intellectually this I I swear this the hardest part of Alcoholics Anonymous is understanding that these tools that we have when it says in the um there is a solution we pick up this kit of spiritual tools these are power tools they have to be plugged in they aren’t things that you you they have to be plugged in the power does the work and so it’s so hard for me to understand that and so if I’m going on a job interview and I’m frightened and and so I go to my higher power and I go God please give me the courage and the strength to go on this job interview and do well now if God could talk to me he’d go why don’t you just take me with you why are you going on the interview alone I don’t know I just do things on my own God that’s all well go ahead but it’s a lot more fun if you take me yeah I guess it is well would you actually come yeah I’d be glad to come oh so we go to the interview and Mr Brown secret you tell Mr Brown we’re here you know what I mean and maybe the words that come out of your mouth during the interview will be entirely different instead of going in there and going listen Mr Brown what’s the maximum salary that you can pay me now how many damn days do you get off what are C La things in here what you know let’s get a few things straight Mr Brown I don’t I’m tired of getting shoved around no we go in there and we go we say who what are you looking for oh God Mr Brown I’d be glad to devote every ounce of energy I have to your company I would like to contribute everything that I have into making your company a better company that’s what I’d like to do and you walk out and your where the hell did those words come from but guess who gets the job you become an individual program of Attraction people are attracted to unselfishness they hardly ever see it they just go God this is wonderful bring him in maybe we’ll promote him he could teach other people how to do this doors are opening things are happening and we’re not in charge we didn’t plan that we didn’t plan any of it why don’t we just bring God along they ought to be a slogan you know I’m going to be God’s manager and be something like this God don’t leave home without him you know something like that why would we ever be out there alone you know why because if you go out there with God you have to give God the credit if you handle it on your own and you can start talking about it later on yeah I went in stared him right in the eye I said hey Brown you want a good guy I’m the guy I’m the guy I’m the guy now doesn’t that make a much better story than well I took God’s hand and I went in yeah I got the job and I got all the money but God get the credit and I’m sick and tired of that so I get out of bed next Tuesday morning they go God thanks for all the help you’ve been but I’m going to handle today alone and then we see you at the meeting that night we go Harry what’s wrong oh had the worst day I’ve ever had God everywhere I went they were picking on me everywhere I went I oh my God felt like drinking the worst y day I’ve ever had really what do you think it was I don’t know just bad day bad day what was the day we’re out there alone did anybody have to remind you to drink every day hey I think I go out today without the alcohol I’m going to be alone we come in here and we want to keep doing it alone we want to leave God out of it leave God out of it boy is that Insanity so that’s why we have meetings that’s why we keep getting together the answer is right in that sentence the purpose of the entire program is enable you to find a power greater than yourself which will solve your problems and when it solves them it doesn’t solve them in the traditional sense it takes away Financial insecurity without giving you any money it takes away loneliness with no one showing up Suddenly you are absolutely comfortable with everything just the way it is and you have entered step 10 the world of the spirit where is the world of the spirit in the now that’s the only place that God exists is in the now so anytime we get Disturbed we’re leaving the now and we’re on our own so anytime we get Disturbed top priority get undisturbed so that you can have god with you again so that’s what the whole last three steps as far as I’m concerned concern themselves with is letting go of this hand of God because we got angry resentful or whatever hit us during the day and take years to to go okay I got to stop do not proceed you have this big resentment somebody in the office just said this why that money you know and we go whoops do not proceed it’s like we need a referee sorry Harry time out you’re disturbed get over here call your sponsor explain the situation to him because you cannot see it clearly when you’re disturbed do not try to figure the thing out on your own Wrong five more yards call your sponsor uh okay Joe listen this is what happened Harry came in Harry’s right iom amand all right Harry I’m sorry the day goes on you see what I’m saying it is this is the process of staying connected to a higher power otherwise we’re on our own so the the whole deal is to somehow ease the ego out and that’s the rest of our journey and sobriety is doing that in the beginning we think we made this big progress and we’ve gone about this far and then we just keep going going I think you know I’ve been here 40 years I think I’ve gotten one tenth of the ego out of the way you know what I mean but it’s so much better than it was um in closing I want to say something to those of you that are new that um there’s a lot of fun in spirituality it is there is a joy I reserve joy as a adjective that I only use with spiritual things so far as I’m concerned Joy only comes from my higher power happiness and all other things I’ll I’ll allow that to come from other places but the joy of living that’s what Bill talks about in the 12 step what that means is when you are close to this power that’s inside of you you so that it can flow there is a sense of joy that stays there while you go through sad things you can have a death in the family and experience the pain and sadness of this event but still be connected to a sense that everything is fine and joyful at the same time it is a marvelous thing now you some of you are going that sounds pretty hard how many of if have gone to a funeral and gone out and gotten drunk hey whoa what a great guy he was and we’re partying all over the place there when we have access to this there is a sense of well-being in spite of the evidence out here there is a sense that no matter what is going on everything’s fine in God’s world and that connection can enable us to handle things very gracefully I once have had a friend in Tampa he died of cancer and when he first got it it he was a professor real smart guy and all that when he first got it he was totally whacked out and depressed and then he said God I was thinking last night what I could do with this cancer is I could be a good example to other people in the program about how to handle this suddenly he had a very Noble Mission instead of a bad deal he had this Noble Mission and he just came to the meetings and told everybody if this happens to you you don’t have to really get that frightened it’s something that’ll just be manageable just you know God we’re all looking at him and then it went along and now it was down where there just didn’t seem to be that much time and he had some last minute tests and all that and the doctor said my God we don’t know we can’t explain this but it appears that you’re doing better and I had dinner with him the next night after the doctors told him that and I said that make you feel wonderful he said it does but when I thought the end was this close I was much closer to God than I am now and I missed where I was when I didn’t have this good news now that’s a remarkable thing to hear that the reprieve is wonderful but it took away the connection that I had and then later on it it turned out that it didn’t work out and and he just had this great dignity about him and you could tell that while going through all of this he had the connection and so there wasn’t anything to really worry about I found it one of the most powerful things that I have experienced and that was about three years ago just watching this we have such great teachers in Alcoholics Anonymous and we we can just allow that to come into ourselves so if you’re new you haven’t just come into a place to get so so that there’s no alcohol in your system you’ve come into the place where you will go on your personal epic journey to discover who you really are what the world is all about how to make sense out of life and how to end up being remarkably useful as you go through the rest of your life that it’s almost like joining King Arthur’s Court or something I mean it is it is such a Noble and worthwhile effort to be a member of Alcoholics Anonymous because in the final analysis rather than trying to become something you become part of something and there’s a big difference and I hope you find it soon God bless you all thank you thank you for listening to sober Sunrise if you enjoyed today’s episode please give it a thumbs up as it will help share the message until next time have a great day thank you s