Resentment and Spiritual Illness – Workshop: Steps 1 – Part 5 of 11 – Local AA Speakers

Things got good, and I drifted away. And I just didn't want to be one of those people. I really heard it. I really hear it loud and clear. Things got good, and I drifted away. And so that's been a tremendous help to me. This description of how I experience resentment. Resentment's the great destroyer of all alcoholics, the source of all spiritual illness. It'll cut you off from the sunlight of the Spirit, drag your ass out and kill you dead, but don't be alarmed. i didn't understand it again when i was new i was able to understand it on a very primitive level but now that i've seen people i've seeing people stop drinking and i've seen him sit in the rooms there's a speaker in aa who tells the story it it's the whole story for me he's in an aa meeting in la woman comes in drunk has a seizure it's an aa meeting doesn't stop she's having a seizure she's flopping around like a boated fish. She turns blue. Somebody puts a wallet in her mouth and then she relaxes. The meeting goes on, you know, she wakes up probably going, oh, wallet mouth, you know, probably has the taste of wallet in her mouth most of the time, you know, and she's, you know, catching her breath and she's getting pink back into her. And he says he watched her this whole time. And she sat down in a chair. She's just had a seizure froth at the mouth or skirts over her head she's been a complete spectacle to this entire room and she sits down and then he says she looked up and looked around the room and saw the 12 steps and went like this and then got up and just walked out and he saw the whole story of alcoholism the seizure the realization the separation the grandiosity well i've had enough of this so they're not gonna be here i'll just wind up with a wallet in my mouth or something, you know. And when I finally got it, when I finally really got what resentment does, what it is, how it cuts me off. And, you know, again, as I've grown in Alcoholics Anonymous, as i've seen people walk in and Look, the AA drill, and I've seen it thousands of times now in 14 years. People come in, do the work and change, or people come in. They don't do the Work. They don' t change. They get sick. They get sicker. They get to the podium. They share their gift with us, and they share their ass right out of the door or sit here and become columns of human sewage and sexual predators, although I judge no man, and just become radioactive. And that's it. That's the drill. and I've seen it hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times. So, it was really clear to me when I reached the page, that opposite page you know I have to realize not that I'm wrong, not that I haven't been screwed. These people have screwed me on page 66. If we were to live, we had to be free of anger. That doesn't mean I'm never going to be angry. I didn't come here to be some brain-dead moony, but I can't be driven by it anymore. It can't be the centerpiece. You know, it's not, it doesn't say that I'm never going to be angry again. It says I have to be free of it. The grouch and the brainstorm were not for us. This was very confusing for me when I came in. I didn't understand in 30s parlance what brainstorm meant. I got scared about that because I'm creative. I want to have, you know, I wantto have a brainstorm. I wanna have creative active thinking. It's not what it meant in the 30s. In the 30's it meant a storm over your head. It meant a depression. And it was just important for me to find that out. The grouch and the brainstorm were not for us. They were the dubious luxury of normal men, but for alcoholics they were poison. I'm wasting all this time when I'm harboring such feelings. It says, the world and its people are often quite wrong, but if I continue to just stay there, I will experience this dislike in a way that again eats my heart in my brain and throws me out of my own life. I have to do something radical. I have put aside the wrongdoings of others. The big book never says they're right and you're wrong. It never says you haven't been hurt. It says you've been hurt and you are dead. You are right and your dead. We got to do some. And there it goes. Right from the bottom of 66 through 67, it says look, this is what we got to do. We have to start appreciating and admitting what is it in us that drives us into this argument in a way where we lose every time, where we experience this dislike in away that shuts us off from anything good in our lives. And it says the only thing that we have found that will do this is by taking a look in ourselves at what has cut us off and asking God for the removal. Let's say God's got a magic wand. He comes down and he touches in my head. what poison is it in me that if God would remove I would be able to live another day if you're bored I want to welcome you to AA I want to tell you my favorite story about being bored in Alcoholics Anonymous it happened to an old friend of mine, this guy named Jeff D who used to go to my old home group and he was brand new, he was shifting around his seat in a meeting, and his sponsor said to him, what's the matter? And Jeff said, I'm bored his sponsor says, well you know why you're board Jeff said, no, I don't. His sponsor said, you're bored because you're boring. That's why you're board. And for Jeff, it was like an acid moment. He went, wow, wow. Wow. He thought it was such a cool thing to say. He could hardly wait until a newcomer told him that they were bored. 13 years later, no newcomer had told him they were board. He's 13 years sober. He's at our home group again with a young lady who is new. she was shifting around in her seat and he said what's the matter and she said I'm bored he said well you know why you're bored she said yeah because I'm with you so now that I've talked for nine hours if you're board it's probably because you're with me and we're going to break for lunch and come back later and do some more of this. Okay? My name's Scott Redman. I'm an alcoholic. Could you please join me in the serenity prayer? God. Grant me serenety to accept the things that cannot change, courage to change the things that can, and wisdom to know I love that stuff with the cell phone. There's a meeting in my area that if your pager goes off during the meeting, you've got to throw a buck in the basket. If your cell phone rings, you've Got to Throw Five in the Basket. And the whole high-tech nature of sobriety now is fascinating to me. Cybersex is this whole new thing which comes up on inventories all the time. I didn't even know what the hell it was. But it's given me the opportunity now. I've actually got to give the following direction to a man. Go home, pray, and don't touch your mouse. So it's just a whole new area, Subra. I don't think our founders really ever saw this one coming. I was acting in a Broadway play. I was in my early 20s and just before that, about a year before that I had to catch alcoholism when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. I caught a mild case at first. I became mildly alcoholic. The disease tends to enter through the ear. The infection enters through the ears at the meetings then infects you and you start actually infecting other people. and the more I have worked these steps the more serious a case of alcoholism that I have developed and one of the things that I I'm going to talk about drugs a little bit here I don't mean to offend anybody I really do believe in the singleness of purpose of AA but the fact is I use drugs to avoid catching alcoholism and it almost killed me if you're a drug addict I'd like to welcome you to AA If you're a dope fiend, which is somehow worse than any of us, I'd like to welcome you to Alcoholics Anonymous. And just stick around. I want to strongly urge you to catch alcoholism. We'd love to give it to you. There's a new, very exotic group of people who have just kind of shown up on the scene. I really love them, the tweakers. Love you, tweakers! Hand up in the back. Probably forgot why you put your hand up, didn't you? Wow, my hand's up. This is cool. and um i understand a is putting together a liaison group to try to contact the tweakers and develop a common language with them and stuff and and uh and i'm i i'm not making fun of you although boy i'm coming pretty close but the uh the fact is is i'm that making funny of the thing you know you might be a drug addict that's fine the fact is, is I use drugs to avoid catching alcoholism and man, it almost worked. It almost worked. And so I did something, I called it swapping addictions, but I never swapped anything. I was addicted. I'm addicted to alcohol. When I have a drink, it goes boom. Normal people's drink doesn't go boom. When normal people take a drink, they don't go down to the middle of their bone. They don't experience the kind of release and relief. They don' t care about 99. They do not care. I do because when I drink, when I see a smoky, brown short stout glass sweating into a cocktail napkin sitting on a bar that stinks from rotted yeast and there's some genius with a ribbon of drool coming out of his mouth sitting next to me ready to plan the future of the world I'm a happy man one moment of clarity I had when I was drinking, near the end during the holidays my wife would take the kids and just evacuate. Just get the hell out of town. Go to her parents house and I used to drink for free at this one place in Beverly Hills called the Ginger Man because all the guys who tend a bar there were my buddies from New York so they'd never charge me. So there I am Thanksgiving night eating Thanksgiving dinner at the bar with free drinks. This is what my life has become. Sitting there with the little paper couplet of cranberry sauce and you know having Thanksgiving. And in comes a guy, a dentist. Nothing? In comes a dentist loaded, just grilled, stewed. And he and I are drinking together. He says, oh, I love Thanksgiving. I love it. He said, Monday. Oh, it's a bonanza. All the old people break their bridge work on the bones, on the turkey bones. It's a gold mine. It's a bonanzah. Drool coming out of his mouth talking about old people breaking their bridge work on and i said how did this happen how did i wind up here how did this become thanksgiving it just was unbelievable how little your life can become and um i was uh in a cycle at that time when uh just just before i got into my 20s i was became an intravenous drug user uh i was shooting heroin and i shot some heroin. And my father had a massive stroke and I was taken to the hospital and I couldn't show up for my old man. I couldn'T be there. The curtain was down, you know, and sound of the heart machine couldn'T even get through because I was so numb. And there's a couple of times in a kid's life you ought to be there for a parent. This is probably one of them. And I couldn' t answer the call. And what happened to me was my father was lost to me. I could'nt talk about him. I couldn't look at pictures of him. And when I would think of him, this horrible black place would come up where I would just cringe and hold my breath. And it was like that black hole. And if you're new here, I don't know what that is for you. I don'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE COMING IN WITH. That's your really black place. I will tell you that 10 years ago, a man in a rehab looked at me in the eyes and said to me, you don't understand. I can't get this thing. I was stoned on heroin the night my father died. And I can tell you that I looked into that man's eyes and I told him the truth. I told Him what had happened to me. It says on the third page, I guess the second or the third page of the chapter to the family afterward, once we've placed our dark past in God's hands, we can help others avert death and misery. Not bad for a little, I'm grandiose. I like that on a business card. Scott Redmond helps others avert depth and misery? I'll buy that. And the first step of it was this inventory process. So my father was lost to me, and shortly after that I was acting in a Broadway play, and a new usherette walked in with long brown hair. And I took one look at this woman. I didn't even say hello to her. I walked back into the dressing room, stood up on a chair, and announced to the male members of this cast, who were a bunch of exuberant breeders, And I said, if anybody talks to the new usherette with long brown hair, I'll break all the bones in your hands and feet. And any time anybody would walk near Nancy, he'd kind of go, ah, and dash away. And the earth swallowed me up, and I fell absolutely in love with this woman. And we gave things a lot of time. A couple days later, we woke up together, and I saw that she had been awake and had been looking at me. And I said, what? And she said, you're trouble, aren't you? And I said, yeah. Oh, yeah And, you know, 23 years later and we became just tremendously, tremendously troubled and sick together We sold this car we had borrowed and she became very sick from prolonged exposure to me And we had our first son, Micah, and he was really welcomed into the world. We were surrounded by friends and family. There were a ton of phone calls and a lot of flowers. And two years and nine months later when Jesse was born, there were no phone calls, no flowers, nobody around. We were completely isolated by the disease of alcoholism. One of the great things, we have these pictures in the hospital when Micah was born. In every picture, she's standing up and I'm laying in the bed. You know, Al-Anon attention. I have an Al-Alanon approved Al-Alanon joke. It's approved by my wife and my sponsor's wife has been in Al-ALANON for 37 years. This Al- ALANON woman went to see Phantom of the Opera. It's a hard ticket to get and she's next to this normal woman and the normal woman sees that the Al-Anon woman's got an empty seat next to her. And the normal one says, Jesus, who's sitting there? And the woman said, well, I, you know, got the ticket for my husband, but he passed away, and so I'm here. And the women say, well � and this is a story about release. And the wife says, well couldn't you � it's a hard ticket to get. Couldn't you give it to a friend or a relative? And she said, oh, they're all at the funeral. It's Al-Anon approved. That's an Al-Alanon approved joke. In my wife's Al Anon family, this is not an uncommon thing. I've heard a lot of people do it, but she was always encouraged by her sponsor. Just to give you an idea how spiritual this woman is who I'm married to. When they're in the heat of something, some difficulty, that they're encouraged to say, you know, you could be right. You could be wrong. You could right, honey. You could me right. So about a year ago, we're in the car and we're tootling and we were in some really important fight about some ridiculous thing. And my wife goes, you know, honey, you could be right. But not today. No, no, no. Not today. Perhaps you'll be right in some future date that I can see. But you're out of luck right now. and um when jesse was born he had transitive tachypnea of the heart he was taken up to neonatal intensive care and my wife was all alone in the hospital and i don't got to tell you you know there's a couple of times when you should be in the middle of your community and one of those times is during the birth of a child that's exactly when it should be happening right then and there that's when the love should be right there and we were all alone the ice around our heart had become so thick, we had repelled everybody and everything around us. And it didn't, it wasn't because people didn't love us. It just hurt too damn much to be around us. And a doctor called me that night said, Mr. Redmond, your baby's in an incubator. Your wife's here all alone in really serious psychological duress. We need you down here. And I said, look, I want to come down. The fact is, is I can't find anybody to watch my two-year-old son. And a doctor who I had never met before said to me on the phone that night, well, I'll tell you what, I will give you my number and my address. Why don't you bring your kid over to my house? My husband will take care of him. I mean, what an extraordinary offer to make, a doctor making it to a stranger. And I said no. There was no way that I could accept this woman's generosity. AndI think one of the reasons why, in retrospect, is I would have had to have taken a look at my life. To have gone through the mechanics of putting the baby in the car, taking him over to this guy I didn't know. I would have had to somehow go, how did this happen? How do you get here? How did you get this isolated? And that's where we were by the time I got to AA on April 22nd, 1985. See, I knew what the problem was the night my father died and I knew how to solve it. The problem was needles and heroin. And as long as I didn�t put one in my arm, I was okay. I just drank till I didn't want to be a drunk. I overcame my alcohol problem with marijuana. I'd like to welcome all the pot smokers here today. You remember wow, right? Wow. Wow. And right after wow usually came what? What? Wow, what, wow, what? Wow, watching a pot smoker is like watching a dog try to run on linoleum. There's a lot of activity, but no movement. They cannot get a claw in the carpet. They can't get their stuff moving forward. I triumphed over marijuana with pills. I was triumphant over pills with cocaine. Cocaine is an excellent drug. It's particularly good for sex if you enjoy sex from the Neolithic period. And then I kicked that gall darn cocaine with heroin. It's a very dark, complicated, artistic drug. Then you cross a line and become a vomiting pig. It's just a little hop, skip, and a jump. And then I drank until I didn't want to be a drunk. And the night my father died, I knew that if I never put a needle in my arm again, I would never have to be the man I was the night that my dad died. And you know what? The fact is, I thought I was a free man making that free choice. I did whatever alcoholism told me to do. I did it for just as long as it told me to do it for, and I did it every time and whenever it told me to. It owned me. I was driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity, and I fancied myself a free man in the whole point of the big book of AA. It does nowhere in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous does it say the road gets narrower, and I understand what people are saying when they say that. I just don't subscribe to it. book says is life is going to get bigger. The road is going to get, it says, join us on the broad highway. Become part of the great reality, the big idea. It talks about life getting bigger and bigger, more inclusive, not exclusive. It says, Join us on The Firing Line of Life. Help us to pack things in the mainstream of life. There's even instructions on how to go to parties. Think about it. Do you have a reason to be there? If you do, go. Reason over, go again, leave. You know, when Jonah got out of the belly of the whale, he didn't go back in to get his hat. He stayed out. I love when a newcomer says, oh, it's okay. I'm around guys who use drugs, but I'm comfortable. It's illegal, you moron. Tell the police you're comfortable as they're arresting you. Remember the illegal part? And when Michael was five years old, he came to me and he said, Dad, is there anything such as God? And I looked into the eyes of my perfect baby boy, my perfect, gorgeous little boy. And I said, son, there is not. There is not, and I wish I could tell you different. And I thought I was giving him the straight stuff. I thought i was giving the straight existential deal so he wouldn't have to be played like one of those saps and suckers I don't think there is a more abusive thing that you can do to a child. I mean, in essence, what I'm saying to the kid is, you know when it's dark and you're all alone and it's scary at night and you can't go to sleep? Tough, because that's all there is. I mean that's basically what you're telling them. What a lie. I mean on top of being just mean and abusive, it's a lie If you read the fourth chapter of our book, if you're new, It speaks to this much more eloquently than I would ever be able to. It says that that is not the bravest, it is the mushiest, weakest thinking you can possibly have. That if you live in this world, if you look at immutable law, if you looks at the abundance around you, that it is actually the most cowardly, weakest, mushiests, easiest thinking of all. And it says you already have what is necessary for this thing. You have faith. You have faithfulness. You have money, power, and prestige. You have Faith in alcohol. You have Faith in drugs. You have Faith. And all we're going to do, we're not going to imbue you perhaps with a faith you don't have. We're going to give you some spiritual tools, not spiritual weapons, spiritual tools that will help you move your faith from something that has been killing you to something that is not. Something that is going to save your life. Anytime an alcoholic, You might have a different experience than me. But usually when men I sponsor call themselves lazy, I go, no, no. You're not lazy. I know lazy people. You'renot on the list. You're industrious. You'reindustrious in your misery. You ferociously protect your misery, but lazy, no? You'renothelazylist. You might be on the, you know, I've been on the moron list. I'vebeen on that list, but not on the lazy list. I have found alcoholics. It's like drug dealing. Drug dealing is the worst job in the world, unless you're like, you know, own a country. If you break it down to an hourly wage, it sucks. You're working 24 hours a day. You're on call 24 hours of day. You can't get workman's comp. You can get any insurance. You know? This friend of mine's brother was out in the Bronx dealing drugs in the neighborhood, and his family confronted him. They had a, you now, what do they call those things? Intervention. And he looked at his family and he said, do you think I like being out there with these people? You know, I'm working, I'M working. I'm trying to make a living. So by the way, if you're new and you're in a recovery institution right now or if you were in a halfway house, we'll be talking about the 12-step later tonight. I just want to tell you, I have no opinion on recovery places. I have no opinion on halfway houses. I respect anything anybody's doing to get sober. The thing I do know for sure is that the minute that you have one penny and the work in the same place, it cannot be Alcoholics Anonymous. AlcoholicsAnonymous, when money becomes involved, evaporates. It disappears. It's like Clark Kent and Superman. They can't be in the sameplace at the same time. And I don't put these places down. I know plenty of people. Our book suggests a period of hospitalization to defog people, you know. And I � our family was just � by the time I got sober, Micah was six, Jesse was three. Micah Was making involuntary clicking noises with his throat that he couldn't stop making. He had tested in excess of 168 IQ. He could barely read or write. He had small motor skills that they called him kind of functionally retarded because his small motor schools were screwed up and there was nothing organically wrong with him. He just was scared all the time, and he was so distracted from being scared. What a beautiful description of fear in our book when it applies to us and our inventory. It seems to cause more trouble than stealing. The fabric of our lives is shot through with it. It had crippled my son. Jesse was playing these war games. He was three, and he was playing these war games. It was so great to see Morgan down there laughing. You know, she's three. And I know the shape that my son was in when he was that age. When he was at that age, he was playin' robot games that he couldn't stop playin', because it was just too scary to be a person. It hurt too much to be made out of flesh, so he pretended that he was made out o' steel all the time. He was playn' these wargames that the people at his preschool were so alarmed with, because not that he wasn't playin'. That's fine. He couldn't get out of it. He couldn't come back from it because it just was a better place to be. That's the condition that we were in by the time I got to AA. I had walked out with my wife and family and started living with a woman down in Texas, which was one of the last places I had directed a TV show at that time. Our family was destroyed. Infidelity, drunkenness, drug addiction. The kids were a wreck. Nancy was absolutely just, you know, at least I was drinking. She was just, You know, one of my... So if you've never heard an Al-Anon speaker named Winnie Eddy, please, I urge you to pick up some of her tape. She's really one of my favorite speakers in the whole universe. And one of My Favorite Stories that she tells is her husband gets locked up in jail. He gets a job in jail polishing the police cars at night. So during the day he's sunning himself. He's getting three meals a day, just healthy, bronze. He gets out of jail like this and she's like this. She's just nuts. She hasn't eaten in a week. She hasn'T dressed. She hasn't washed herself. If you took a picture of these two people, who's the drunk? She was psychotic. Also, she's got a great speaking story. She went to Germany with one of her nutty kids to visit another one of her nutTY kids. And she was in Germany, and Germany doesn't, I guess it's not a big Al-Anon country. She couldn't find an Al-Alanon, but I judge no man, couldn't finding an Al Anon meeting there. And all she's hearing is her own head. Her kids are driving her nuts. She finally finds an Al-Anon meeting, five-hour drive at a U.S. base. All I'm hearing is my own head when she's telling this story. I'm just hearing my own hand. I'm driving myself nuts. But I get to the Al-ANon meeting. I travel the five miles, the five hours. I walk in there and the secretary, just as it started, the secretary says, well, you know, we hear speaker tapes once a month. He pushes it. It was a tape of her. And she said, not me, not me. All I'm hearing is me. And she said to herself, maybe I said something that'll help me. Wasn't that great? Just great. And then I love at the end of her story her demonstration was she demonstrated her humility to herself and she didn't tell anybody it was a tape of her at the meeting. So that's what she got out of the meeting was that demonstration which I thought was great and probably something I would have been completely incapable of doing. So I didn't, when I started writing this inventory, these resentments against myself, I'm resentful at my father for dying. What a humiliating thing to have to write. What a pathetic, I couldn't even, it was one of those things I wrote it, I didn' t even know if I could read it to anybody. It just seemed so pathetic to me. I'm resentful at my father for dying. What does it affect? Self-esteem, pocketbook, ambition, personal relations and sex, a five bagger for sure. Now, what is it in me? What are the defects in me that if God would remove the resentment against my father for dying, what are the defects? I'm filled with self-pity. Self-pitty, if you could bottle it, would not crack off the market in two minutes it's a better drug it's more available when i feel self-pity i get a little lump in my throat i lean forward a little bit talk slow it's good dope that self-pitty i'm telling you filled with it filled with self-patty now this is a disease of self driven by a hundred forms of fear self-right selfishness self-centeredness now selfish is wanting it all for me. Self-centered is thinking it's all about me and self-seeking is trying to figure out what's in it for me. So they're the same, but they're different. They got their own little English on the ball there. Then I got self-pity, self-delusion. And when I talk to God, when I have these conversations with him, I just like to be as specific as I can. Again, I don't think there's any right or wrong way to do this. I'm just sharing you with you the way I do it. So I like to be real specific about what the individual resentment incites in me. Resentful against my father for dying. I am filled with self-pity. I'm self-centered. This is not about me. He died. It happened to him. I're an opportunist. I've used that as a weapon with other people to feel sorry for them. Boy, that emotional opportunism, what a dreadful thing that has been for me in my life. I m playing God. I' m deciding when people should die and when people shouldn't die. You know what? My dad died when I was 21. I was really lucky to have him for 21 years. A lot of people don't get that, you know? Ungrateful. I'm ungrateful for the 21 years that I had. So these are the defects that I had to write about that. With my wife, I had dozens and Dozens of resentments against her. I resented just about everything around her. And I am telling you that that night that I saw her in that play, and I saw that gorgeous girl in that theater, in that dimly lit theater, I looked at her and I went, oh man, isn't she just like the greatest thing you ever saw? And then I got to know her and I just loved her more and more. I really loved her. And that love, some people change and some people mutate. I had mutated. I had become, it was like a bad B movie called When Jews Collide. It was like, it had become this ugly, pathetic, diseased thing. And the root of it, what was underneath it all was a real genuine love and excitement and acceptance of one another which was hardly discernible. I had to stop working on my marriage. My idea of working on a relationship is to talk to you until you change your mind. That's the Scott Redmond couples workshop right there. Talk to you until your eyes roll back in your head, you keel over and on the way down you go, oh okay. Guess I won again. And I had these resentments against her for destroying my life, resentments agains her for withholding sex, resentments agaisnt her for giving sex, but just to other people. But I'm not taking her inventory today. But you know, it was a fun thing when I was new, and I just want to tell you if you are new and you are sitting here taking my inventory or other people, that's good. You get some practice in. When you take your own, you'll just zip through the sucker. You're just in the spiritual weight room, just, you know what I mean? Doing a little exercise there. I had a resentment against my kids for being sick. And a resentment against Micah for being so ill that affects myself as the pocketbook ambition person. What are the defects? I'm ashamed. I'm self-centered. I'm making this about me. I'm not living in today and I'm impatient because I don't know what's going to happen. I'm a people pleaser and a mind reader. No, no, no. I need no psychic hotline. Thank you very much. I'm an alcoholic, a member of the greatest class of mind readers in the known universe. The amount of failed mind reading that I have done in my life. And you know when you're really mind reading when that vein starts pumping like a garden hose on your forehead. When you really... I have predicated more pointless activity on what I think people are thinking than anything, anything, anything. And then when you finally tell them what they're thinking and they go, what are you talking about? And the other thing, self-fulfilling prophecy, I used to accuse people of thinking behind my back because that's the worst when they're thinking behind their back. So much that eventually they are thinking about it. They're thinking if he accuses me of thinking beyond my back, I'm going to kill him one more time. And what are the defects? Resentful of my kids for being sick. That people pleasing. How's it making me look? And I wrote it all down. Resentment against myself for being loaded the night my father died. How was that ever even going to go away? What are the effects? I'm a grudge holder. I've been holding this grudge against myself for 15 years. I'm ashamed. I'm playing God. and I am unwilling to accept the fact that Scott Redmond is another child of God who is spiritually sick. It says right there on page 66, I believe, we remember that these people, it says on the previous page in the discussion of resentment, if you're an alcoholic, you have been mentally and physically and spiritually sick God save me from being angry, thy will be done, not mine. This is a sick man. So part of my resentments against other people, part of it, one of the defects is I am unwilling to accept the fact that my wife Nancy is another child of God who could be spiritually sick like me. It's possible. I'm going to quit playing God so I'll say could be, although I know she really is. Or the guy really is, or they really are. But I'm gonna exercise, exercise. Perhaps spiritually sick. The only person I can say for sure is spiritually sick is me. I was resentful at the kids. I was resentment myself for being a crappy father. You know, you guys told me when I came in here, I'm not a bad guy getting good. I'm a sick guy getting well. What am I? Not being a bad boy. I'm being a good guy, but I sure did a good imitation of a bad guy. And I really felt like a bad guy. Why? Because I kept doing bad stuff. So the notion, and I don't know if you hear it here, but we hear it in Southern California many times. People say, you can do anything in sobriety as long as you're willing to pay the price. i don't buy it the assumption is that you'll be able to how the hell do you know if you'll be able pay that price once the strange mental twist starts once you get busy once that alcoholism gets busy so i understand the spirit of the thing you can do x y and z as long as you're able to accept responsibility but again how why would you possibly think that you could tell whether or not that was a price that you'd be able to pay. So when I got into AA and I started doing this fourth step work, I really gravitated to guys who were doing good stuff, who were acting in a respectful way. And part of the thing that happened to me later in sobriety, which I, and it's when I had to change sponsors and change home group 10 years into my sobrietry, is in terms of my home group, what I was coming up against was, I'll womanize, I'll gamble, you overeat, you do this, but it's okay, we're sober. And for me what it became was you know what, it ain't okay for me anymore because I don't know if I can do this. And I knew for me and this is not true for other people adultery equaled drinking. There was no buffer zone that was just my deal that's the way I acted out there. I could not act in a way that I felt guilty about without the anesthesia of drink. I couldn't do it. So I knew in sobriety that I wouldn't be able to pull it off sober. Maybe had I known that, I would have been sick enough to try it. Bill talks about it in his story, that his fidelity was schooled by the fact that he was too loaded to do anything else. He doesn't really take credit for it. He talks aboutit in that realm. And that's the way it was for me too. So I did this list, the three columns and then the list of defects. and the way I do it is I number those resentments I'm resentful of my father for being dead on a separate piece of paper I go number one and do a separate defect list for each resentment so that when I go to guidance six and seven I can lay the resentments aside and just take the defects and discuss those with my higher power we're asked to write four times on the fourth step there are three sections the first section's on resentments I'm asked to right the three columns and the list of defects the second time I'm ask to write is on fears and it's in a very interesting way It talks about fear so beautifully on page 67 and 68. And it talks about our lives being shot through with it, of us being riddled with it. And it says something that for me was just so true. Self-reliance. We asked ourselves why we had these fears. Wasn't it because self-reiliance failed us? Self-reliance was as good as far as it went, but it didn't go far enough. Some of us had great self-confidence, but it did not fully solve the fear problem or any others when it made us cocky, it was worse. And that's when I was at my worst. I'm not scared. Watch this. That's when I was absolutely down the toilet and I did it over and over again. And it says something on the top of page 68 which I found quite interesting and really molded this section of the inventory for me. It says we reviewed our fears thoroughly. We put them on paper even though we had no resentment in connection with them. What does that mean? I'm scared of police, but I'm resentful at myself for robbing banks. So that's kind of a fear in connection with personal resentment. Fear is always in the future. There is no fear. I defy anybody to produce one fear that is either in yesterday or today. It's always in the future." I'm not scared that you have just hit me. I'm scared that you're going to hit me again. When you're like this, I'm not scared of anything but that I might be about to get hit. I'm not scared of my father because he was mean to me in the past, I'm still scared now. For me, fear is always in the future and when I stay in fear, when I live in it, it's a real clear indication for me that I'm really blocking God out on some level. Not that I don't get scared, I get scared all the time. I also have found, and thank God it's not in the book, I have always found it to be a fallacious statement for me when people have said you can't be frightened and have faith at the same time. I have been frightened and I've had faith simultaneously many times. Sometimes I have faith that I'll stop being frightened. I don't find one to be exclusive of the other. I think that if I didn't have faith when I was scared, I don'T know that I would have stayed sober this amount of time. So it's an interesting thing to me. If you sit and you take a look at a pure fearless, not in connection with personal resentment. I've heard many of them. I've never heard a hundred fears. I've read a lot, but not a hundred. Not even the 22-hour guy had a hundred fears. I'm frightened of living. I'm frightened of dying. I'M FRIGHTENED OF BEING ALONE. I AM FRIIGHTENED OF BEIING WITH PEOPLE. I am FRIGHTENED OF SUCCESS. I AM Friightened OF FAILURE. I AM FRIGHTENed. I don't think I've heard an inventory in the last 10 years that didn't have a fear of AIDS on it, just general fear. There's something heartbreaking about that litany of fears. You hear it and you write it and you must look at it at some point if you can and say, how could a person live like this? How can you live in this state of being just scared of everything, of being scared of one direction, of being afraid of the other direction. Now, you hear stuff about alcoholism, and I heard a lot of stuff when I came into AA that I heard. Some of it worked for me, and some of it didn't. You hear sometimes that alcoholics don't like change. I just don't want to be a part of it. I don't dislike change I don' t like. But I love change that I like. But change I do not like, I really do not Like. So I don't just dislike all change, but the change I don' like tends to piss me off. You hear sometimes that alcoholics are perfectionists. Not. I'm a pig. I like when you're a perfectionist if you're taking care of me. I'm an perfectionist about your perfectionism. But I'm not a perfectionism about my perfectionism Now some people are. These are general statements about alcoholism that work for some people and they don't work for others. I've never found any of them in the big book, which has been a relief for me. I've ever found anything that has annoyed me at an AA meeting that I have found in the Big Book of AA. Now, if my sharing is annoying you today, I'd like to just give you a couple of helpful hints on how to get through it. And there are helpful hints when I call my sponsor and go, you know what he said? You know what you did? And he'd say, look, he taught me three things about listening to sharing that drove me nuts in AA. He said, number one, everything in an AA meeting that is said needs to be said. It just, you might not be on the list of people who needed to hear it. But everything, there's somebody out there that needs to, how many times have I taken a newcomer to a meeting and gone, okay, this is the worst meeting. If they sat down and wrote the worst meaning, we just attended the worst reading. And you go outside and the guy goes, oh man, that was great. That changed my life. You're going, what, what? you just never know. You just never know how people are going to be affected, you know? So he said, that was the first thing he said to me. The second thing he said to me was, they have to stop. It's going to end. Remember, it's going to end. And it went, oh yeah, they have to stop, it's going to end. So sometimes I'll be sitting there and go, It's going to end. And it's true, right? It's true. It always ends. It just doesn't feel that way when you're in the middle of it. I hate when you are talking and people are throwing nooses over the beams. That is really a drag. And then the third thing, and this really annoyed the crap out of me. He asked me, and I am glad he didn't ask me this today. I am Glad he asked me when I was new. He said, Are you willing to take the following chance with your life? I said, What? He said, is there anybody in there, no matter what they're saying, who you're willing to get up to that podium, tap them on the shoulder and say, why don't you shut up and sit the hell down because I'm going to talk now. Would you be willing to gamble to throw those dice with your life? And at the time I said no. And boy, those have been three helpful things. So perhaps those will help you get through the rest of my talk. At any rate. So I wrote those fears down. The third section of the inventory, starting on page 69. What a sense of humor. The section on sex and the instructions in my estimation are in the second paragraph on page sixty nine. And it says we reviewed our own conduct over the years past. Where had we been selfish, dishonest or inconsiderate? Unjustifiably aroused jealousy, suspicion or bitterness. Where are we at fault and what should we have done instead? Seven clear points to me. Selfish, dishonest, inconsiderate, unjustifiably aroused, jealousy, suspicion, and bitterness. What should I have done instead? Now what could I have gone? I could have left when I realized they were dead. What should have I done? I shouldn't have even been there. I shouldn' t have been in the state. I shouldn''t have even talked to them. That's what I should have done, not what could have done. Because in the next two paragraphs it says, In this way I try to shape a sound ideal for my future life. my ideal. I actually get to write down what I want to be instead of what I've been acting like. And then I ask God to help mold me and walk toward him. That's six and seven. That is for later on, but it is an extraordinary thing and it is set up here. So I had left Nancy and the kids for this other woman where I had been selfish. I wanted Nancy. And it says write it all down. We wrote this all down, not a list. So now I have got to write the story of how I've done these six things and the seventh thing which I should have been doing. Now, they don't care. They don't want me to write a story. They don't let me write, you know, it was a full moon. The Chablis had a blush on it. They don't give a crap about that. They want to know what I did. I was selfish. I wanted the woman. I want my wife. I won it all for myself. I took advantage of a work situation to do this and I write a little about it. Selfish. Dishonest. I lied to myself. A lie to the woman. A light to my life. I like to my employer. I lie to my employees. I tell a story about that. Selfish, dishonest, inconsiderate. I really wasn't considerate of anybody. I was so filled with self-pity and self-promotion that I just didn't consider anybody else rather than my own needs. I write about that, about the different situations of cheating people out of money to serve that need. Selfist, dishonent, inconsidere, unjustifiably aroused jealousy. I created jealousy in my wife and the other woman, lying that I'd be with both at the same time. You know what? Ultimately, I became jealous of people who I thought were living a normal life. Even jealousy of myself, jealousy, suspicion. I was suspicious. I created suspicions in my kids. Was I going to be there? In my employer, in my wife or the other woman. I tell a little story about that, what I did to get that moving. And I became suspicious of my own sanity. Jealousy, suspicion, bitterness created bitterness in everybody. I talked about how my, you know, I wrote a little bit about how our kids became even sicker in school, about how my wife just cut herself off from other people. She had this one friend, the only friend that she would talk to. I wrote about it. What should I have done instead? Now, the answer to what I should have done is not that I should have missionary-style sex with one woman until the year 7089. That is not the answer. I want to have an exciting life. I want a love life. I want an exciting sex life. I want be in this world, man. I want the whole thing. The answer is what I should have done instead is I either should have committed to this woman and told the truth and done it or committed to my family and developed that. That was the answer. That was an answer that when I wrote at the time, I could say, OK, I feel like I'm telling the truth here, but I never should have done both things at the same time. People get divorced. It happens. You know, my wife and I haven't. We're having a great time, we're having a great romance now but just if you knew I'm really being completely honest with you about how I had to endeavor to get involved in this work in a way where I really felt that I was going to be in a life that I wasn't I was really interested in being in and then after I wrote that I wrote a very involved inventory. The inventory I did took 11 hours to read and I'm sure my sponsor going, oh, 11 hours. Oh my God. And just to show you how really sick I was, I thought I was going to give it to him and he was going to read it and then we would have a commentary and a discussion afterwards. And when I brought it over to his house and he went reading, I went, and the first thing I told him was, do you want me to read all this crap? Are you daft? And I mean, to have to go through it. And he insisted that every time I read a resentment, I said, I'm resentful at. So I had to say, I'm resentful at 300 times. And you know what? After you get through that, you can't, you know that you've been resentful. You've said it goes off like a gum over and over and over again. I think these guys knew when they wrote this, they didn't say write a little, read a little. If you can sit down and write the whole thing down, even if it's an hour, if it's a half hour, I don't care. It doesn't matter about like... If you can tell somebody the whole mess, I'm resentful at them. I'm resentment at me for resenting them. I'm respectful at them for watching me resent them. Right? And I've had sex with all of them. Right? Now, at the end of this process, whether or not the newcomer knows it. They have read and shared the whole point. They have read and shared the spiritual, the odious spiritual disease that keeps alcoholics in the loop of spree and remorse. It is the thing that makes it impossible for doctors to treat us, psychologists to treat us, pills to treat us. It makes it impossible in some cases for the clergy to treat us. It makes it impossible in many cases for psychologists to treat us. If you sit down and you do this, you will actually have shared what I believe is really the disease of alcoholism. This third element, this wild card that has frustrated people about alcoholism since the first time that grapes were crushed. It is the sickness of the soul, the cancer of the soul that keeps alcoholics beyond human health. And I just love it. They're so kind to us in this book, in these chapters that are written to us. In the chapters that aren't written to us. They're not that kind. The chapters to the wife and family afterward in the employee, they're a little gruffer. But I love on the bottom of page 63, it says, next we launched out on a course of vigorous action, the first step of which is personal house cleaning, which many of us had never attempted. I love that. I've never sat down and given these instructions and had a guy go, wow, you guys do that too? Wow. Cool. Man, I've been doing this for years. This is great. I had one guy, one of my favorite fifth steps. I got a guy I sponsor. And I'm telling you, I gave him the instructions like I give everybody else the instructions. And he came back to me. By the way, I hear one fifth step for every 10 times I give the instructions, I get about a 10% return on my dollar. And just about every guy I've ever told that to has said to me, and I'm that guy. And they are one out of 10 times. Um, I had a guy come back to me and read me a fifth step and he had two defected character lists on each resentment, one for him and one for the person that he was resentful. And he had just turned that corner and that's the way he wrote the whole inventory. And I said, I told him anyone and I might see the air go out of them. What I'm taking it on the chin for this whole thing? Are you insane? And you know what? It was funny, and at the same time I saw his heart break. And God bless him, he stayed sober and he stayed with it. He stayed with her. So I did that inventory, and then at nine months of sobriety I went back to my sponsor and I read him my fifth step. It's a very interesting thing. All through the big book of AA there are little spiritual hits. It says in the third step, you know, it says in the twelfth step, we'll have that spiritual experience. But they're very good at keeping us coming back and throwing us kind of spiritual bones and keeping it interesting. In step three, it's sometimes a great effect is felt at once. In step five it says we will now really start to have a spiritual experience. In the middle of eight and nine you know it says, we will know a new peace and new freedom. We'll be able to deal with situations used to baffle us. We will be able to deal mit fear of financial insecurity. We'll know all that stuff. And then in the 10th step, it says sanity will actually have been restored. The alcohol problem will be removed. 11 says the occasional hunch or inspiration will actually become a working part of the mind. Great news for pot smokers. That means wow stays. And then 12, it's having had a spiritual experience as a result of these steps. So it's kind of interesting all through the whole process, you're given these spiritual hits. And for me, step five was a strange and a huge thing. I had to tell somebody the whole rotten mess. And my wife tells something about her sponsor, which I'll share with you, which I've always loved. Nancy was at her home group. She was going to one Al-Anon meeting a week and just staying nuts. And she heard a woman share that she was moving to Mexico that Monday. And Nancy asked her to be her sponsor. And shortly after that, she heard a woman share. You know how we'll share many times you'll hear at meetings that I told my sponsor this and my sponsor said oh, I did that and I did more. And it's a comforting thing. Well, she heard this woman share that she had read her sponsor who was sort of an older, very reserved woman. She had read out her inventory and the woman at the end was looking at her like this. She said, oh my God. I've never done anything like that. And then she put her arms around Ruby and gave her a big hug and kiss and said, I just love you to pieces. I just think you're the greatest thing and I just want to be with you. I just, instead of, I guess some of it was sounding like one-upsmanship to Nancy. She was still very ill at that time but she was so relieved to hear that from Ruby and it really helped her to ask Ruby to be her sponsor. Ruby's her sponsor today. We just spent the weekend And around this time, we used to go to their house and they'd have a troop of AAs and Al-Anons eating and hanging out. And their two kids were in great shape. And I'd sit and I'd look around that place and I go, this is great, but our boys are just too busted up. I really don't think that this is available to us, but I just think it's great. And we were real Nazis with our kids. If my wife was to share this thing, she had this thing to have to eat health food. I'm sitting there while she's talking to us, right? She says, so I'd eat health Food. And now go into the car with Dr. Death. You've eaten health food, now go die. But it's the disease. You know, you can't control all this stuff, so you'll pick a couple of areas that this is the way it'll be. So the boys were not allowed to watch TV. Who needed to watch tv in our house? It was like a psychological theme park, for God's sake. They weren't allowed to watch TV and they could only eat certain foods. So they go over to Ruby's house and Ruby had one refrigerator with just crap in it. And she'd say to the boys, have anything you want, it's yours. And my wife would be like this and she'd sit him down in front of the TV and turn on the love boat and say, eat crap, watch the love book. And the boys would just go, oh, oh my God. And then, you know, and Ruby never argued with her. Nancy would call her and say, no, you don't know what they're doing. And Ruby would go, yeah, they're morons. Come on over. Come on Over. And she taught Nancy how to cook. And come on Over, we're cooking. We got the girls. She never argued. Yeah, they were idiots. Come on, Over. And Milton, her husband, who's now sober over 30 years, called my sons over one day and bent down. You'll excuse my language. Michael was seven at the time. And he said, boys, your parents don't know shit. And Michael went, oh, I knew it! I knew something was wrong and I didn't know what it was. And they were like, you could see them just go, oh, this is... And Ruby would say to him, boys, if you say thank you, You get more crap. And they just loved it. They loved hearing somebody curse. You weren't allowed to curse in our house. Just lay on the floor dying with a pan of eggs, but not curse. Boy, that mania for control, you know what I mean? Your life's out of control. It's turning head over heels. So you just pick these couple little areas. Language. We'll have good language here. Oh, man. And I had to admit all of this odious stuff to this guy about the infidelity, about the brutalization of my children. My son Michael was six months old and I had never told anybody this. I had not told anybody. I had ever admitted it to another human being. I was hungover. He was a little baby, about six months. It was on my watch. And he pushed off me. Now babies like that leg motion. And he pushed off me, dumped himself off the bed, fell face first on a rotary phone turned his head and the hook on the phone slid right underneath his eye and he almost lost his eye and it happened on my watch and I didn't tell anybody and I pulled him off it ripped his skin he had to have a general anesthetic at six months old very dangerous, a kid can die he had stitches under his eye and I never told anybody I never admitted it to anybody and I admitted it that day and I told them everything and it says in our book many of us or some of us held certain facts about ourselves and there's such a beautiful thing in the description of step 5 it talks about something that I've never seen an alcoholic, any alcoholic that I know I've always seen it be I think it's one of the most important parts of the book, it talks specifically and directly about the double life that we lead it talks abut waking up having remorse and crushing it back down, it says this made for more drinking. It doesn't make for drinking. Because if that made for drinking, then I could go to therapy and solve the things I feel guilty about and drink properly. What makes for drinking is the threefold illness of alcoholism and there's no cure for that. It makes for more drink and for drinking it keeps me in the cycle of spree and remorse. And that made sense to me in the double life what I present to my fellows and what I'm really living in my heart. And the stuff that I was living in my art, the way my children had been harmed, what I had told them about God, the way they had been damaged physically, the way that they had wound up in school, cut off from the society of other children. And I want to tell you, if you've stopped drinking, I just can't tell you how much my heart goes out for you. I can't say how happy I am for you and I've never done anything this hard in my entire life. It's easy to stay sober now. I'm having a great time with it but I will tell you to stop drinking and take the whooping to stop drinking and deal with cravings and stopping treating your craving with a drink, starting to accept your craving and become available to what's here, which is slower. If you're an intravenous drug user, you're probably a very impatient person because they're right now kind of people. But so is the drinker. It says in our book, You know, the feeling of peace and ease I would get immediately upon knowing that I was going to have a drink. Let alone having the drink. So this is the stuff I had to come into it at nine months of sobriety. I sat down and finally read it to another person. In Dr. Silkworth's opinion, another thing I love about the original draft of the big book is if you take a look in the first edition, Dr. Silkworth did not sign his story it says signed Dr. Anonymous yes he was hedging his bet and I forget I don't know what printing of the first edition that he finally started writing it on but it was not the first one I guess you know whatever he was concerned about jeopardizing the reputation of town hospital or whatever was going on but it wasn't until a little further into the deal that he actually put his name to it but at any rate in the doctor's opinion and he talks about something that has been tremendously meaningful to me among many things. He talks about alcoholics whose problems pile up at a seemingly unsolvable rate. They're crushed under the weight of them and they drink again. How many times have we seen a newcomer say, yeah, but, yeah, but, yeah, but, but the money, but her, but this, but the kids, but this put this, but this with this, but this they can't, they don't have any tools, spiritual tools yet to encounter any other power that can get them out from underneath this heap because you know what? And this is one of my, my favorite Al-Anon reading says, alcoholism is just too much for one person to deal with. You know what? My alcoholism istoo much for me to deal wit. I can't deal with it. I can't do with yours. I need God. I cant do it. You cannot stack anything up in the face of alcoholism. Alcoholism wins. It's like fighting with an adolescent. The adolescent wins because they don't care if they die. They don'tcare. They're willing to die for what they believe in because they're immortal. You cannot win in an argument with an adolescent. You lose, lose, lose, loose, loose. If you have any life expectancy, you lose. My darling son Jesse who just got 1540 on his SATs and I want to tell you I've been here hours and haven't announced that for the podium. That is self-control. he says to me last year dad can you help me with my homework I said sure son what would you like me to do he said get me something to eat but before he laid me out he took me all the way down the lane he let me go yeah what can I do for you son put more sixes in your math homework I mean, I don't know what the hell I'm doing. I don' t understand what he's doing. And I believe that if you do this fifth step, and I didn't know this at the time, I just knew that I found reading the fifth step I didn' t have a burning bush experience I didn''t feel like I had accomplished a great thing I felt like I was in deep trouble That I was looking in the face of something What are you going to do about this? Say I'm sorry? I don't think so. I'm sorry were the two most empty, useless words in my vocabulary. It was like a mouthful of ashes. I had said I'm surprised that like the sobriety police would even let me have them in my vocabulary. Just stop saying it. And so for me, the fifth step was a really debilitating thing and I got to tell you, I think that was really good for me. I was out of plans. If you're new here and you have a plan, God bless you. I hope you're out of plans because if you're new here and you have a plan, it's probably a butte. Don't use your plan. Grab one of us after the meeting and tell us your plan We want to know the plan. My favorite newcomer plan, which I'm sure is going to wind up on the soft literature rack eventually, is the one more dope deal to set myself up financially for sobriety plan. I want to tell you one little story about my friend Howard and we're going to take a five minute break you just never know where and when you're going to get the message of Alcoholics Anonymous my friend Howard who I told you about before who was a Skid Row bum he was a couple years sober and he was asked to go down to a Sked Row hotel to kind of revisit his past do a 12 step call on this guy named Sullivan and he went down there and this guy Sullivan was in bed, he went downstairs with another guy and they tried to 12 step this guy he didn't listen, the guy died from alcoholism 10 years later Howard was about 12 years sober he was at a meeting and a guy walked up to him and said I want to tell you, you saved my life and Howard said, I really don't know you but you're welcome the guy said, well you remember a guy named Sullivan And Howard said, yeah. He said, well, the night you went to 12-step, I was hiding under the bed and I heard every word that you said. And that guy never had another drink. You just never know. You just Never Know. I have a brother-in-law who's an alcoholic and he came to visit us and I thought that I was talking that night and I figured I'd bring him to hear me talk and he would of course never drink again after hearing me and I'd look pretty damn good to the family, right? So I think he drank during my talk and about three years later I get a call from a guy this guy says my name's Bob you don't know me but three years ago I was released from a mental institution I stole a gun in a car and I was going to go to one more AA meeting before I blew my brains out it was that meeting that night he heard me talk and he never drank again so I asked God to help get you know to get a guy sober I just never tell him the right guy you know the guy that's going to make me look good because I'm just I ain't nothing I'm just another drunk let's take five now we'll come on back and wrap up the afternoon thanks folks you you you you you you you you you you Transcription by CastingWords Thank you very much.