The Spiritual Tapeworm That Defies Every Treatment – Scott R.

My name is Scott Redman. I'm an alcoholic. Hi, everybody. I'd like to congratulate all the new people and welcome all the new AIA. Congratulations to the people who just won the sobriety countdown contest. I hope you never win again. And that last guy kind of didn't, couldn't, was this a good thing? A bad thing? It's sort of like being voted most attractive man on your cell block it's like an honor but you don't know if you want to show up to pick up the award you know kind of thing and uh and if you're new I'd like to tell you I'm having a great life and if your new I'm sure that just thrills the crap out of you I am sure you're just overjoyed for me and I know that because when I was new here I'd listen to people talk about the new house, the family, and I'd sit in my seat and I think maybe you'll go home after the meeting and maybe your house will blow up. Maybe your family will blow up and then we'll see how spiritual you are next week. So I like to welcome you to AA and especially if you're happy for me. If you're bored, I like to tell you my favorite story about being bored in AA. If your a newcomer this entire weekend is boring the crap out of you or if I'm on the brink of boring the crap out of you. It happened to this guy in my old home group, this guy Jeff D. He was brand new and he was at a meeting at my old group. He was shifting around in his seat and his sponsor said to him what's the matter? And he said I'm bored. And his sponsor says well you know why you're bored. And he says no. And his sponsors said you're board because you're boring. That's why you are bored. And it was like an acid moment for him. He went wow, wow. It just blew him away, you know. thought what a cool thing to say to a newcomer and he could hardly wait until a newcomers told him that they were bored 13 years later he was at that same home group with a newcomor and no newcomer had told him that they we're bored up to that point and he was with this young lady and she was shifting around in her seat and he said what's the matter and she said I'm bored and he stood well you know why you're bored She said, yeah, because I'm with you. That's what I mean. So if you're bored, welcome to Alcoholics Anonymous. If you're a drug addict, welcome the AA. If you are a dope fiend, which is some... You probably don't even remember why you're clapping. If you were a dope fiend which is somehow worse than any of us I'd like to welcome you to Alcoholic Anonymous and just suggest that you catch the dreaded alcoholism. There's a new group of people I'm particularly excited about right now. I'd like to welcome all the tweakers. Right, there you go. And you don't even know why you're raising your hand. They stay fast for a while, real fast. Every part of their face is moving in a different direction. I like them. I heard this guy at a meeting once qualified as a crack monster. Ooh, that's scary. They have like a Halloween costume at Thrifty for Crack Monster. I'm not making fun of you. I'm coming pretty damn close, but I'm not making funny of you, and what I'd like to suggest is that you catch the dreaded alcoholism, even if you're the Bigfoot of dope addicts, if you like a dope Goliath, just catch alcoholism. We don't have a book for dope juggernauts. We just have a books for alcoholics written by alcoholics, and again, you can have any disease that you want I hope you catch alcoholism. We'd love to give it to you. I was not an alcoholic when I got here. I did not have alcoholism I caught alcoholism in Alcoholics Anonymous meetings I caught a mild case at first and now I have a fatal, actual fatal case of it but it's taken me a long time and the longer I stay in AA the worse my alcoholism gets I could not possibly have been alcoholic I'm Jewish and Jews don't drink because it might dull the pain and uh you don't uh you don't want to squander any agony opportunity and the funny thing is is that one of the first guys that helped me that saved my life in alcoholics anonymous was a guy at the first meeting that i went to which was my first home group and he identified this guy identified i was like six days sober he said i'm an ex-catholic which means i don't believe in god and i'm therefore positive god is going to come kill my ass for feeling that way I said oh I'll sit near him because I had been introduced to an Old Testament God that got you, he got you got you got you he killed your goat and put a finger in your eye and turned your wife to salt and he gotyou no matter what I wouldn't have been caught in a dark alley with this God you had to speak a foreign language to talk to him and he was just pissed off and uh and this guy really helped me so um if you don't have alcoholism Welcome day one of the other reasons that I didn't have alcoholism is I had been in psychotherapy for 18 years by the time I got to a a I Was going to be dead, but I was going to understand it and I'm not putting therapy down therapies great stuff. It says on page 133 of our book if you need to help Get it. I've used therapy plenty in Sobriety my colossal blunder as I was trying to treat my alcoholism with psychotherapy which is like showing up at a gun fight with a knife once a week and just getting these colossal ass poundings because if you have alcoholism I love reasons to drink they're my favorite things in the entire world I have a friend named Larry who the first time he ever read our book the beginning of the fourth chapter of our book has a sentence on the first page which basically says facing an alcoholic death or a spiritual life is not always an easy decision to make Very tough. Spiritual life, die in a pool of my own urine. Very, very hard. And the first time that he ever read this, he said to himself, how bad an alcoholic death are we talking about here? That's not a normal reaction. That's something a normal person would think. My favorite reason to drink I have ever heard to date was from a guy, I've been sponsoring this guy for about 15 minutes, And he lived with his wife who was a male prostitute and he had a gay lover. And he called me to tell me that he drank, and I said, oh, why? And without missing a beat, he said, I caught my wife cheating on me. Now, I know that that was the product of one of two processes. That was either boom, an occasional hunter inspiration, boom, fully cut cloth, a gem. He had to come up with something. There it was. She cheated on me. Or that was weeks in the rat's maze. Weeks on the hamster wheel. Weeks and weeks of cutting and pasting reality, of turning the whole world, turning the entire universe so it can just drop in slot by slot. I know I'm married. I know a hooker with a beeper. I've got a gay lover. But the bitch cheated on me. I'm out of here. I want to tell you something. I understand both of those. Sometimes I just came up with it and sometimes it was a bit more work, but I always managed to rearrange my life to accommodate alcoholism that I thought I was a free man doing what I wanted to do when I wanted it. And the fact is, is I did whatever alcoholism told me to do. I did it for exactly how long it told me to do it, and I did it whenever it told me to doing. It owned me. I'd like to thank you so much for asking my wife and I. I'd also like to just for those of you who haven't met my wife, Nancy, could you please stand and just welcome, say hello to everybody. She's not wearing any shoes at all. Charlie, could you stand up so everybody can see? Just stand up for one second. Charlie's one of the other speakers. He has no jacuzzi in his room. I have a jacuzzi in my room Charlie sit down please please thank you very much I know that you assign the rooms after you heard our tapes so we're having just a great time this weekend and I'll tell you why because this is the kind of Alcoholics Anonymous I love this is kind of group of people I love I love celebrating sobriety when they throw us together and when they throw us together in this kind of group that's where people are just here to have a good time and just you know and that's why I got alcoholics Thomas my friend Jane's here and we got it in her house playing Trivial Pursuit with a bunch of other drunks I got it at her house she threw me my first year AA birthday I'll never forget it I got into Charlie's house playing cards we used to play cards and laugh until we had to change dependence I mean we just would go just there were some of the great nights of my life you know that's That's where I got Alcoholics Anonymous. I got alcoholics anonymous in the front seat of a car, driving to meetings with my sponsor. I got alcoholic anonymous. The ice around our heart had become so thick we just didn't know. We had become uncivilized. We didn't it. I just thought you had just become stupid wastes of time. I didn't that I had become an uncivilized human being. I was brought up in the Bronx in New York City. Anybody? Bronx? No? Nobody here? No? No witness protection program? Nobody? Vito's there. I love that. Yeah, I love it. I love the prairie. I grew up here. I love wearing enough turquoise to sink a ship. You know, I don't know. I love to a completely insane family. My wife never believed me about my family until she met him. My mom threw an engagement party for us and my aunt Rose came and wore her wig backwards and it had a bun on it. But it was right out here. And I had not exaggerated. exaggerated, I had understated the problem. Because it was worse. Way, way, way worse than I had told my wife. They were completely insane. If you got anything for free in my family, it meant it was stolen. I had an uncle who was a welder who said they gave him free bales of steel wool. Here's a check, here's your paycheck, and a bale of steel wool. He had free bales of steel. My aunt took a decorating course and made throw pillows and filled all the pillows with the available plentiful free steel wool. So that stuff works its way through on you after a while. So when you were at their house, if you looked at the room, everybody was moving like a little bit. The whole room was like a living, pulsing, breathing thing. My uncle Izzy Redmond was one of the top 10 welterweights of the world during the 30s. In 1939, he was fighting in Atlanta, Georgia. Concerned about anti-Semitism, he had his name changed to Izzy Goldberg so that no one would know he was Jewish. Now, I just want to tell you, you don't lie about this. You don't go down to the bar and say, hey, I'm a moron. I'm from a long line of morons. We often at family gatherings stare up into the rain until people have to save us. Unless you think a lot has changed. Recently, in the last year or two, my mother calls me says, honey, bad news. What, Ma? Your Aunt Lena is dead. Oh no. When, Ma, a year and a half ago. I said, what? She said, well you know your Aunt Phyllis is back in the mental institution and she calls me and harasses me so I haven't been picking up the phone but Phylls died a couple of days ago so I'm taking calls again and they finally reach me to tell me Lena's dead. These are the kind of communication skills that were imbued in me as a child and if you're new if you knew there was like men there was mental and physical abuse and suicide attempts and chronic institutionalization and I want to tell you if you know one thing I know for sure today is that my family had absolutely nothing to do with making me an alcoholic nothing to do with it and I'm telling you if your new that might be confusing because you might have had a lot of really bad stuff happen here and I'll tell you not for one second am I telling you that you didn't have it happen to you but I'm telling you is that you can't make this guy a drunk that way otherwise the therapy would have worked I did good work in therapy I could have gone in there and worked out my family problems and drunk like a normal person I wouldn't had to go to parties and say oh no no heroin for me I'll have a Perrier I wouldn't have had to do that I could it could have just been a normal guy and And that was a relief for me. That was a belief for me because the therapy didn't treat the alcoholism. The alcoholism got worse and worse. So when I was a young man growing up in the Bronx, I had this alcoholic dilemma right away. I started getting asked to leave school. You know, when I took the picture of my alcoholism, which I believe is a fourth step, and if you do it and write down the whole thing, the whole things, I'm resentful at them. I'm resentment with me for resenting them. resentful at them for watching me resent them and I've had sex with all of them and I'm scared of all what does that have to do with alcoholism it is alcoholism it's actually the spiritual tapeworm that will place an alcoholic outside the possibility of being helped by the medical profession, even clergy or psychiatry it's this sickness of the soul this unique property of alcoholism that defies the vast majority of treatments. Alcoholics Anonymous has the biggest aggregate of recoveries of any treatment ever used for alcoholism. So I didn't want to be an alcoholic, and I started drinking really young, and I had no control over how much I drank once I began. So 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 watching a pot smoker is like watching the dog try to run on linoleum there's like this all there's a lot of activity but no movement they think they can't get a claw in the rug they just can't hit the thing moving forward I um I conquered my marijuana a problem with pills. I was victorious over pills with cocaine. Cocaine is a fabulous drug. It's particularly good for sex, if you enjoy sex from the Neolithic period. And then I kicked that annoying cocaine with heroin. Heroin's a very dark, complicated artistic drug. Then you cross a line and become a vomiting pig. It just a little hop, skip and a jump. And I drank until I didn't want to be a drunk. And I don't mean to offend anybody by talking about drugs in my pitch. Is Dan Sosa here? Then could you raise your hand Dan asked me to talk so if I it really pisses you off, please see Dan I I didn't I didn' make a call. I didn''t solicit he called me I'm glad to be here, but please if this is annoying, please get him um Because I believe in the unity of Alcoholics Anonymous I believe In the unity AA, but I've been asked to share my story so what the hell call me a nut I'm gonna tell it and uh I almost died from alcoholism and didn't even know I had it. And I was in my early 20s, and I slammed some dope one day, and I went to hitchhike. I was on the Bronx, and we hitchhiked down the West Side Highway. It was the 60s, and we hitchhiked everywhere. And I WAS HITCHHIKING BACK DOWN TO MANHATTAN, AND MY AUNT AND UNCLE PULLED UP IN A CAR AND PUT ME IN THE BACK. MY FATHER HAD HAD A MASSIVE STROKE, AND I WAS TAKEN TO THE HOSPITAL, AND I COULDN'T SHOW UP FOR HIM THE NIGHT THAT HE DIED. I COOULDN'T. the curtain was down and I couldn't be there for him or my mother or my or my brother and I you know there's a couple of times in a kid's life you ought to be there for his old man this was one of them and I could not answer the bell and I just felt like a pig I had holes in my arms I was you know puffy face from being loaded I was I you knowing why I went back to the house my father was laying and he had taken his light into another room but you see I didn't know that to me he was just dead I didnít know he had taking out a light it was other room because I had no light in my life and I couldn't even go to him and give him a kiss and hold his hand and touch his cheek and be with him because I didn't deserve it you know and my father was lost to me I couldn t think about him I couldn' talk about him, I couldn he look at a picture of him the sound of a heart machine if I heard it sounded like a personal indictment of my collapse as a man a son or a brother and I knew what I had to do to make that okay I knew what the problem was the problem was obviously needles and heroin and all I had to do was never put a needle in my arm again and I wouldn't be the guy who couldn't show up the night his old man died and I didn't not for 13 years I didn't touch it I just drank till I don't want to be a drunk smoke pot till I don' t wanna be a pothead and shortly after that I was I've suffered from chronic success my whole life I by the time I got to Alcoholics Anonymous I had acted in a Broadway play I directed a TV show I directed film it had a book on the bestseller list I had done all of these things a time I never got to do any of them more than once because when I believe they'd move the business so I couldn't find it again and um and I again I realized once I took the picture of my alcoholism my fourth step I saw that early on people were doing things behind my back a little later on they started you know talking behind my back and then in the horrible last few years they started thinking behind my which is horrible it's hard to catch him you have to uh you have two a king you have to accuse them of it all the time and I have my sponsor claimed that it was a defective character I thought it was skill I have a capacity for mind reading that's absolutely extraordinary you know when your mind readings the best when that vein is pumping like a garden hose on your forehead that's really when you really do your best work. You know when your head hits the pillow and it becomes a rotisserie, you know what I'm talking about. And I was acting in a Broadway play. I was in my early 20s and this gorgeous usherette with long brown hair walked in and I took one look at her. I didn't even say hello. I walked back into the dressing room, stood up on top of a chair and announced to the male chorus, the male members of this cast, I said, if anybody talks to the new usherette with long brown hair, I will break all the bones in your hands and feet. So anytime anybody would walk near Nancy, kind of go and dash away. And she, we just, I'm telling you, the earth opened up beneath us. We just fell in love. It was absolutely love at first sight. And we had a great time. I mean, we just we had a great time you know one of the most I think really misquoted for me lines in the big book of AA you know here you hear sometimes people say I wouldn't trade my they say my worst day in here was better than my best day out there no no I had a great time out there what it says in the book is I wouldn't trade my worst a in here for my best a out there not because it wasn't better but because I won't settle for a nickel today when I could have a quarter tomorrow. I won't live like a loser anymore. I won't trade this way of life in anymore, you know? And we had a great time living in New York City, one of the most exciting places in the world, having a great times together, very much in love, building a family together and we didn't know we were a couple of dogs running on linoleum ultimately, you know, ultimately. And our son Micah was born. He was really welcomed into this world. Nancy became very, very ill from prolonged exposure to me. One time we had these 32 ounce tumblers in the house and I came home and I popped a cork on a bottle of wine and emptied the entire bottle of one into one of these tumblers and I turned around and she was giving me her pre-Alanon rat face. This one. I said I said what she said what are you doing and I said I'm having a glass of wine can't a man have a glass wine in his own home we became so sick that at one point a guy lent us his car and we sold his car I will never forget that now there's people going like this you don't get that in the Lions Club no in the line oh you sold the car yeah sure I house sat for a guy and put it into escrow before he came home you know you don't get that but you get it at AA meetings people go like this now I understand how I was able to do that we didn't have any money didn't ever rent no and I looked into my wife's eyes and I said I am so sick of being a punk irresponsible kid I am so sick of not standing in our own two feet let's do the right thing let's sell the car and she looked at me with tears in her eyes and said let's dude now I have that exact same kind of thinking if I I'm an enthusiastic committed member of a I do more in a now than I did when I came in much more because without it But a year and a half ago, I had a surgery on my hand. And the doctor said to me, Mr. Edmund, you're going to need general anesthetic. And I said, oh, general anesthetics? Oh, man. Oh, God. Normal people don't get excited about general anesthesia. No normal person goes, oh. I'll tell you why. You're asleep for it. You're generally anesthetized for general anesthetic, but you see, I know something. I know that they hit you with the general anestetic and they say, count backwards from 100. And you go, 199. You hit that, right? I love 99. And it sounds like you love 99 too. You love just thinking about 99. A little froth in the corner of her mouth there. is just slumping forward it's just nice to think about I leave out the middle you see I leaveout the surgery okay I go it's like why I love dental surgery when I was drinking that's an uninterrupted source of narcotics for a period of time normal people don't get excited about dental surgery normal people to go Oh, dental surgery. But I go from announcement of dental surgery to painkillers. I leave out the surgery. I leave about the sutures. I leave at the blood and I leave that the pain I go to let's do the right thing. Pay the rent. I leave our grand theft auto. I leave how high leave out forging the pink slip looking for the cops behind me. I like that the whole thing if you're new here, welcome to the middle. Welcome. Welcome, welcome to the middle. They're obsessed with the middle, it's annoying how much they like the middle here. Our son Michael was born and we were surrounded by friends and family. We had a ton of phone calls and lots of flowers. He was really right in the middle of our community. And two years and nine months later when Jesse was born there were no flowers, no phone calls, no family. We had become completely isolated by the disease of alcoholism, and it wasn't because people didn't love us. It just hurt too much to be around us. The ice around our heart had become so thick, it just had repelled everybody, and the night that he was born, he got sick. He had to go into neonatal intensive care, and that night I got a call from the doctor at home, a doctor who I didn't know, I had never met, and she said, you know, Mr. Redman, your wife's all alone in the hospital now you guys know as well as I do there's no more wonderful place to be in a hospital than the maternity ward when everything's okay and there's no worse place to beat than the Maternity Ward one stuff's not okay if you're really alone if you've got no God if you have no community if you got alcoholism you know and this doctor said you know she's in a lot of psychological duress the baby's up at an incubator who he need you to come down here and I said you know what I'd love to but the fact is is that I can't find anybody to watch my two-year-old son so I can come down and this doctor who I had never met before said to me I'll tell you what I'll give you up my name and number my husband's home right now this is a doctor who i've never met in a huge hospital in Los Angeles she said why don't you bring your kid over to my house and my husband will watch him so that you can come down to the hospital and be with your family and I said no there was absolutely no way that I could accept her generosity. I think it would have just been another moment where I would have had to go, what? What's this? How do you wind up here? My wife's one of her favorite portions of the Big Book of AA and her focus on this and The resonance this has for her has created a real resonance for me, for our lives, really. Bill Wilson talks about getting himself into a real jam. He's in a state in his life where his life has become infinitesimal. He drags his mattress down from an upper floor in his house to a lower floor so he won't pitch himself out through the window. He stands and actually stares at poison in his medicine cabinet over and over again and curses himself for not having the courage to drink it. He has no money and no industry in his life, so all he can do is wait for his exhausted wife to come home and while she's not looking, steal from her purse. He talks about a grotesque life rearranged to accommodate alcoholism. And then he says at the end of it, little were we to know that this was to continue for three more years. And the incredible thing is I got sober when Jesse was three. so from that night from that horrible tiny little place that we wound up with little was I to know that it was to continue for three more years and how many times have we seen people come in here with bottoms that will make your hair stand on end and you say well he's done he's gone how could she ever drink with what's happened this time and if they don't apply the program of action outlined in our book after some amount of time It will not be their bottom anymore. They will get on with the business of dying, and it's an extraordinary thing to watch. Three years later, I crossed the line that I swore I would never cross again. You know, when my son Michael was five, he came to me and he said, Dad, is there anything such as God? And I got sober a year after I told him this. And I said, Son, you know what? There isn't. I told a five-year-old baby ostensibly, you know when you're scared and it's dark and you can't fall asleep? Tough because that's all there is. That's really what I said to him. I can't even imagine a more grotesque and horrifying lie that you could tell a child but that's how thick the ice had become around my heart and by the time I got sober Micah and Jesse were just a wreck. Jesse was playing war games he couldn't stop playing. He was so distracted from playing with other kids because he couldn''t stop this war he had architected in his head. He couldn'''t stop pretending he was a robot. I think it's because it just hurt too much to be a person. Micah was so distract, I think, from being scared all the time that his small motor skills were all screwed up. He couldn't stopped grinding his teeth. He was reading below his grade level, and he was in excess of 145 IQ. He was cut off from the society of other children. His teachers told me they just wanted to grab him and shake him. And that's the condition that we came to AA on April 22, 1985. Because on April 2, 1985, I crossed the line that I swore I would never cross again. I put a needle in my arm, and my world just collapsed around me. Now, I want to tell you something. Why didn't I move the world that morning to make the needle in my arm okay? I don't know. Could have done it. Moved the world a million times. Why didnít I move it that time, that time? Cut and paste it, just move it at that time or come up with that quick answer that would make it okay. I donít know. But all I know is that I called my therapist of record in my 18th year of psychotherapy, my first Jungian therapist. I wasnít to know until I came into AA and read our literature that he said to me that morning the exact same thing that Carl Jung told the man who 12-stepped the man, who 12 stepped Bill Wilson. I didn't know it, but I'll tell you once I came in here and I read it, it made me feel great. He said to me, there's absolutely nothing that can be done for you. And I said, what? He said, I can't help you. The only thing I can suggest is you attend a meeting of Narcotics Anonymous, Alcoholics Anonymous or we have you institutionalized. Why I went to AA, I don't know. Most other days I would have gladly gone to the institution, been with my people, colorful and adventurous people. That's an uninterrupted source of narcotics for a period of time. That's good dope and good company, you know? And I don't know why I didn't go. I don' t know. I went to an AA meeting. My wife told this story this afternoon. I came home and a friend poured a glass of wine for me and I drank it and Nancy said, Honey, do you drink in AA? And I said, Yeah, yeah. They're civilized people. You can have a glass of wine, you just can't get drunk. The next day I woke up at 5 o'clock in the morning, put my best clothes on, got a bad check to write you and went to sign up for the ANA. I walked into a clubhouse in the deep San Fernando Valley called Unit A. It was right next door to a Polynesian-themed restaurant called the Tanga Hut. You ever have those drinks? Never drink anything bigger than your head. It should be a rule, you know. And they've got these big wooden carved heads, these big tiki gods there, which when you're drunk, God. And I walked in to this room and I took one look around this room and I said to myself, Alcoholics Anonymous. How did I wind up in Alcoholics Anonymous? How lame is this? This is beyond lame. This is behind church, beyond synagogue. This is some plateau of lameness I never even imagined was available to me. Alcoholics anonymous. And the room looked to me to be the product of 200 years of inbreeding. It was unbelievable. They had like identical twins carving their initials on each other's feet and everything was a miracle. Miracle, I'm a miracle, you're a miracle the furniture and coffee are miracles too and then the guy they send the guy the unsolicited AA guy they send him to you you know that guy he's got one tooth with a cavity in it he's wearing a belt buckle large enough to serve an entire fish on do I want what you've got? no but thanks for spitting on me i really appreciate it do i bring my own bib overalls next week am i issued a pair when do we hook a rug i know the arts and crafts are coming right and i know the jew hunt is going to start any minute i know that's going to happen here strap these antlers on jaime poke him with a stick knock his beanie off always wanted to run a big buck jew love a big bug jew It's a miracle, miracle. I hated AA, I hated everything about AA. Just remembering it, I feel like my DNA is unraveling. My skin crawled, crawled. It was every nightmare I had ever had about this, and the only reason that I can imagine that I came back is I was out of plans. If you're new here, I pray for you that you are out of plan. If you're a new here and you have a plan, it's probably a beaut. 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 is the single most utilized newcomer plan I know of, is the One More Dope Deal to Set Myself Up Financially for Sobriety plan. Yeah, that's out there. It's going to wind up on the soft literature rack eventually, I believe. I kept coming back and my wife reached out to the Al-Anon family groups and she had this incredible sponsor named Ruby who I ... You know, I turned 15 last year and I called her up to thank her I just love her so much you know and our kids started like you know they have this saying in Allen I just loved so much that just keep it light and polite and we just needed lightening up our lives were so hard we you know in Milton was sober Ruby's husband over about 20 years at the time And one day he called our sons over and said, boys, boys, your parents don't know shit. And the kids went, oh, thank God, we suspected, but it's never been confirmed. Oh, what a relief. And they just flipped out, just flipped out. They used to come, they came to Charlie's house where we played poker. They'd come to Jane's house. They always, and it was OK. It was OK, we'd go to these places. There were never fights. We'd come in happy, we'd leave happy. Not like our life, not like our life you know and Alcoholics Anonymous started prying our jaws open and spitting life back into us and you told Nancy and I not to get involved in our first year and we didn't. We stayed the hell away from each other and I stuck around AA for six months and uh enjoyed the gift of step none and uh did nothing received nothing and uh i knew i was going to drink uh i had seen the aa drill hundreds of times people came in and did the work and changed people came and didn't do the work didn't change got sick got sicker got to the podium shared their gift with us and shared their ass right out of the room or stayed here and became columns of human sewage and sexual predators although i judged no men and um so because I'm too spiritually developed and I I knew I was going to drink so I asked the guy to sponsor me great guy it was a great guy still is a great guy and he made sure I did some reading from the big book of AA and he invited me over to his house and he spent hours with me for fun and for free and I couldn't figure out why and he read chapter 5 to me and on the way through he took me through the first two steps we reached step 3 and got on our knees and said a prayer, which I thought was embarrassing and unnecessary. And then he read chapter 5 and went back and gave me instructions on how to do a fourth step from the big book of AA. And I tell you, I stopped feeling like I was stealing someone's chair here. I've been going to step studies. You know, anytime I'm at a step study and anybody sharing begins with the following sentence. Well, I've never worked this step, but I always think, but then what in God's name will you be talking about right now? Because it's sort of like going to a doctor and showing him a broken arm and the doctor going, wow, what the hell is that? Let me get a book. But again, I judged no man. But I had been going to step studies and book studies and I had nothing to talk about because I was doing nothing. And you know what? Now I was done with it. I was just doing something. I was dealing with something in Alcoholics Anonymous. And it took me three months and I did my inventory and I went back and I read it to him. And I did steps six and seven for the first time which have become sort of the centerpiece for my working relationship with God. and then it came time to do my eight-step list. I try to share this any time I talk because it's simply the greatest reading of step eight I've ever heard. And it happened in my old home group when my home group became the men's meeting at the North Hollywood Group and I was really early in sobriety, it was a long time ago and a guy named Nino was there. Nino had a heavy New York accent, he had never read chapter five before he was there with a hospital group, he got a hospital wristband on and he got up in front of his men's group and he read made a list of all those we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all. Jesus Christ! And he looked out into the room as if to say, have you seen this? Do you know what's in here? It was so beautiful. It was such a beautiful place. It was pure because it's the only thing I saw when I saw the steps. I didn't see anything else. Not those people. Not that money. I would not have taken that much money if I knew I had to give it back. No way, no way. You think I'm a moron? If you're new, don't worry about it. It's eight steps from where you are anyway. And eight's not really the annoying one. Nine, nine's really the annoyance. And I had write up my eight-step list. Everyone who I'd ever worked for was on there because I was the kind of guy when people hired me in about two weeks they started blaming each other for having hired me, which really hurt my feelings. It's terrible when they start going, no, you brought him, I distinctly remember you bringing him. And my wife and my kids had to go down there and my pop had to do it. My dad had to come down there and I didn't know what I was going to do about any of it. Let's see, I'll sit down with Nancy and I'll go, geez hon, sorry about this eight year journey to Hades. Okay? What was I going to say to my son? Sorry? What was я going to saying to my father? I didn't know what I was going to do. And a lot of stuff that works for other people didn't work for me. I couldn't go to the grave and talk to them, I couldn'T write a letter. And I know that works for a lot OF people. It works for guys I sponsor. Didn't work FOR me. I didn'T get any relief, which terrified me. You know, if you're new here, you're going to hear a lot of stuff about alcoholism and Alcoholics Anonymous. Some of it's going to work for you and some of it isn't. Nothing I have ever heard that hasn't worked for me have I found in the big book of AA. And it's different strokes for different folks. You hear that alcoholics in general don't like change. Not true for me. I just don't Like Change I Don't Like. But I love change that I like. I'm a huge fan of change I like, and I detest change that's annoying to me personally. So I don't dislike all change. Some alcoholics do. I don' t. It's not in the big book, but I understand why people say it. I've even heard that alcoholists are above average intelligence. I have only heard this at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. I've never heard it at an Al-Anon meeting. I have never heard any other place but at AA meetings. So some of that stuff might work for you and some of it might not. And working the eighth step in that area and the ninth step didn't work for me. I didn't know what I was going to do, and my sponsor said, You know, man, just do your job. Just do your jobs at Alcoholic Anonymous. And I had to start doing a lot of lame crap. A lot of stuff I didn't want to do. I had started taking a few dope bucks and spending it on registering my kid for the Little League. I mean, I wanted to do some dramatic stuff. I didn' t want to this. I had start showing up at flag football. We had to go into the boys school and say, You know what? They've been very ill and they've been ill because they've living with us and we've been sick. Can you help us? And not once, since I've been a member of AA, have I gone to truly ask for help without bullying, without manipulating, to ask for health and have had someone say no. They said sure, let's test the boys. And the boys got tested and they had some serious problems. And they suggested get them into sports, get them in to music, let's see what we can do about this small motor stuff and the attention and stuff. So I went down and I bought, Jesse wanted to play drums so I went play drums. So I went down to the music store and I took a couple of booze bucks and I did the right thing. I bought him a drum pad with sticks. It's just a piece of wood with a piece of rubber on it, but I did the right thing. And I went back and I, you know, my sons have received 15 appropriate birthday gifts on the day of their birthday. Not once in 15 years that they wanted. Not once In 15 years have they received the day after radioactive guilt gift from the only place that would still take a hot check from me. You know, here boys, here's some drywall. All the kids are loving the drywall, it's Pokemon drywall I've exercised the birthday muscle 15 times I don't feel guilty on my kid's birthday It's not a woo-woo, strange, lofty concept It's practice, it' s the spiritual gym If you're new here, your drinking muscle is stronger than mine My not drinking muscle is stronger than yours It is Because I've not drunken more than you Considerably more Judging from some of you who stood up All we're asking to do Is to accept the craving And stop treating your own alcoholism When the craving comes up Stop answering the craving with a drink accept the craving, and ask for the obsession to be removed and become available for this extraordinary bounty. Extraordinary experience of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I went and I bragged to my home group about buying my kid this thing because I did the right thing. I bought him a drum pad, and within two, three weeks, the AA drum set showed up at our house. I had like a lot of burnt-out drummers in my home groups at that time, so guys are showing up with these mega death drums saying dude and Jesse went up with this drum set then when he'd sit behind it he'd disappear you couldn't even see him and Michael lined up with a piano and uh and uh they went to Little League I went to my first little league game my wife came over to the game and looked over near the stands that just started laughing because there's all the people standing in the first base stands and there's me alone in the Sun pissed off just psycho you know I'm here I'm doing job. I'm here, I'm making amends, I make amends. The kids were thrilled to see me. Mr. Redmond's going to blow up, man. Look at him. Going up and down two hat sizes in the sun. Just wacko, you know? And it took me a couple of years for the voices to diminish in volume and number to just go and sit in the stands, to just be at my sobriety station, to be in the stands with the other people. And I did that for a while, and my son Jesse one day received one of, I think, one of the single greatest compliments any human being can receive. He was intentionally walked. Now if you don't understand the game, that means they're scared of you and they want to get to the weenie behind you. That's basically how it works. So he didn't wanna be a geek, gotta be cool, so he just laid his bat down, didn't want to jump up and down and he trucked up the first baseline and on the way up the first baseline. He turned to me at my sobriety station and just shot me the stuff. It's the old man, don't be lame, you don't want to spoil him. And he went up to first base. And I could have missed the whole thing. And I'm not telling you that Jesse got intentionally walked because I'm sober. I'm telling you I was there because I am sober. Kids have come from much worse circumstances than our family and have wound up with lives, putting lives together for themselves. I am telling you, I was here. So the next time that I was with a guy who was drunk on his kid's birthday again crying about it again I told him about the day that my kid got walked because I was there that I went into school that I did that embarrassing thing that I copped to it then I ran a reading group for seven-year-olds because that's what I was supposed to do and we started making a family and I was sober a couple years and I I was making the boys lunch and I said to Michael, what do you want on your hot dog? He said, well, I want mustard, onions, and lettuce. And I said, lettuce? He said yeah, yeah, I don't want lettuce. And he walked away from me and he came back about 45 minutes later and he looked at me directly in the eye and I'm not altering one syllable. He said to me, I will never again allow your opinion of what I want affect what I ask for. So I asked him to sponsor me at that point, thought that would be good, seemed much wiser than I. What's that? A couple of years after that, Jesse broke his wrist in a schoolyard accident and it was in a growth plane. And the way kids develop, they have growth planes where there are cartilage that will turn to bone the older they get. And if one of them has been disturbed, it's very important that once it's set, it doesn't get messed with because some, they could really, it could wind up bad. they're brothers so you know ten minutes after I bring Jesse home from the hospital they've beaten the crap out of each other and I had to let Micah know that this was something I couldn't repeat eleven times so I got up in his face and I screamed at him I said you can't do this you got to stay away from your brother now don't do it he went to his room and he slammed the door I got got the dead tick going now we slam the door so I go to the door open the door before I can unload on him he said to me hold it I didn't say you were wrong out there you were right but a big guy just got in my face and screamed and yelled at me I didn tell you you were wrong don't tell me I I can't be mad. What's that? What is that? That's something that he had been watching his mother and I trying to do with varying degrees of success and failure. That's standing up for yourself and telling someone how you feel without telling them what to do. That is overcoming a fear of confrontation because, you see, I never felt like a grown man my my whole life. I never acted like one. I used to stand next to guys 10 years younger than me and say, I wonder what it's like to be grown up. What a crappy way to live. You're a dollar short and a day late all the time. Of course, I didn't feel like a man the night my father died. I didn' t know what a man was until I came to AA. I did'nt know how to fight. Didn't know how to fight with my wife. Didn' t have to overcome a fear of confrontation. I knew how to scream until you shut up or I'd cry until you'd shut up. Either one's fine with me. Scream or use the tyranny of helplessness and weep. Either ones fine. Also I like to loom. I'm a loomer. I like the loom with a light behind me. I like it to get her in a shadow. It's like total eclipse of the Jew. I like getting her right in there. If I can work a scream, a cry and a loom, that's a hat trick. In one fight, that's trifecta. You really can't do much better than that. So these are my tools. This is my blueprint for life. And I don't know how to do anything. I don' even know how clean my house like a grown man. I can't even make a bed. I think somewhere in the back of my twisted noodle that a certain amount of housework should equal a certain amount of sex. So I don't even know how to clean the house, right? I think there should be like conversion tables on the back cleaning products of house work to sex. Um I'm never cleaning the house to live in a clean house. I'm cleaning house and going I'm done baby She says yes, you are done more done than you could possibly know and I addressed what was on the inventory. I was resentful at my wife for telling me I was a pig, and I was resentment at myself for being a pig. Funny how those two things just fell out there. And as long as I continued to address the inventory as my spiritual task, my life kept moving forward and getting better and better and Nancy and I really started making a marriage, and we had really tough times, you know, and we have been incredibly blessed with people in sobriety who have been around for a while who talk to us about having problems in sobrietty. People who don't have problems in subrietty, that's great, but not very helpful to me. People who have said to me, you know, at 10 years, my wife and I were ready to get divorced. For me, at five years of sobrieté, I was driving home. I was driving a brand-new car home, and I had my dream job. And I sponsored a lot of people, respected member of AA. And I realized I was terrified of my wife on the way home. I didn't want to go home. And I didn'T know what to do. And I sat down, andI wrote the inventory about it. And my sponsor said, well, what are you going to do? And I said, let's have a talk with God. And I worked six and seven. And what my higher power said is, do what your son did that day that he overcame a fear of confrontation. Tell her you're scared. and I told her I was scared but I didn't tell her what to do and I started a dialogue for myself that has continued to today that eventually for me led to me to be willing to pray with my wife which, you know, I'll pray with a known puppy strangling felon in a public place on my knees but pray with my wife? I mean it's insane this is supposed to be my wife my lover, my buddy, my bride, my confidant, and yet to pray with her was the most difficult thing. We went to therapy for a while, did good in therapy, came home, and threw a Buick at each other. I mean, just, you know, we had no application, no moral application for the stuff we were finding out until we started holding hands and saying, please, higher power, please help us to stop taking everything personally. Please help us remember that we are lovers and not adversaries please put once we put him in the middle of that once we started that triangle again we really started getting some relief some profound relief we're having a great time now a really great time our kids are doing great now and it's not because god likes us more than the people whose marriages are falling apart or whose kids are having a tough time i just don't buy that our kids have had plenty of tough times our son has had drinking and using problems. Micah graduated high school and decided to go to Chiapas, Mexico and work with the Zapatista revolutionaries. Why? Because he's a valiant, remarkable young man who put himself in harm's way for something that he believed. During the 60s I smoked dope and couldn't get out of the kitchen. I mean, you know, I talked a lot of long crap and never did anything. And like his politics or not, he was out there. He was out there. And it's an amazing thing, you know, from that AA drum set and that AA keyboard that showed up at our house recently, last year both of our sons were in a band that played the House of Blues in L.A. You know, and they burnt the dump down. Burnt it down. They're playing hip-hop music in front of this hip-pop crowd packed elbow to elbow in the House of Blues. And then there's this group of middle-aged weeping alcoholics over to the side, you know. And the kids in the room are going, what is with the crying old people? What is that? You know, usually they bring a dancer or something, but there's crying old People. And it was their AA aunts and uncles who have been following them around, you now, all this time. when I was about a year sober I started sponsoring a guy named Roland and I still sponsor him today he's got 14 years I've got 15 and I love this guy and early in my sobriety he used to call our house every night and he'd leave a message on the machine every night and he would say Scott it's Roley I'm sober I love you goodnight he'd hang up. And five years later, when I was six years sober, our son Micah came to me and he said, you know dad, when i was a little boy, I couldn't fall asleep until I heard Roland's voice on the machine. And when I heard roland's voice on the machine, I knew everything was okay and I could go to bed. And this is the kid I told there was no God to. I tried to rip God out of his life and Roly came over the machine every night and tucked him in. You never know what you're doing, you know? You don't know what your doing when you're, when youre doing it. And they love each other. They have a very, intimate relationship my son and rolling I had a friend named named Howard who's no longer with us he died 22 years sober is a great member of the North Hollywood group men's meeting an extraordinary guy oh and and I love telling this story because I loved him and he was a skid row bum and he was thrown out of the harbor lights which is the Salvation Army downtown in LA and he was a bad drunk and he got sober and this guy asked him to go 12 step this guy Sullivan in a skid row hotel and he went down with another member of AA and they talked to this guy's Sullivan and subsequently Sullivan drank himself to death ten years later when Howard was in the meeting about 11 years of sobriety this guy came up to him and said you know you saved my life and howard said you have to forgive me but I don't know who you are and the guy said do you remember this guy sullivan and Howard said yeah he's dead and the guy said to him, the night you 12-stepped him, I was hiding under the bed and I heard every word that you said and I never had another drink. You just don't know what you're doing when you do it sometimes. In my first year of sobriety, I had a writing job for 20th Century Fox and around the end of that year, I was becoming sort of a spiritual Goliath and I was sponsoring a lot of guys, and I got offered this. I was a candidate to have this job to direct a situation comedy. And I thought that if I got this particular job, that it would really benefit the guys I sponsor, because they'd see me prospering. It would be good for them. Show them how AA works. And I did not get the job, and I almost drank. And I was humiliated. And I went to my sponsor, and I told him what happened, and he said to me, well, I guess you have the show business god. I said, what? He said, well, what keeps you sober? I said God. Okay, God keeps you sober and you didn't get a show business job and you almost drank. So I guess you have the show business God and he has abandoned you utterly. Now when I came in AA I heard God getting people into relationships. I heard god getting people jobs. I heard got getting people parking spaces. I said oh no, not the parking space god. Not the parking space god! What if you don't get a space? And I knew that that's the situation that I was in, you know. And I asked him what I should do and he said, I guess you have to sit down and you have to write a 10-step. I'm resentful at these people for not giving me this job. It affects my self esteem, pocketbook ambition, personal relations and sex and I am resentful at Scott for not getting the job. Now what is it in me that if God would remove the resentments would be gone? big deal. It's just the source of all spiritual illness, the great destroyer of all alcoholics. It'll cut you off from the sunlight of the spirit, drag your ass out and kill you dead. But don't be alarmed. No big thing. I'm going to die because you see, I don't dislike this guy. I don'T dislike him. I resent him.I re-experience this hatred. I hate him. I hate with a hatred that I wake up and I water this hatred like a little flower. I care for it. I nurture it. If I realize that I've forgotten to hate him for a while I'm ashamed and shocked. I have to redouble my hate time to make sure that I make up for the lost hate time. I hate him in a way that eats my brain and my heart and turns my life black and throws me out of my own life. I cannot live one day at a time. I have no day. Because life will only be okay when they apologize, when they straighten out, when I get even, when I show them. Who knows? Who knows. So I'm going to die. I'm gonna die. Blue skies. God's got a magic wand. He touches me on the head. What is it in me that if God were to remove the resentment would be gone? I'm ashamed. I'm ashamed. I have low self-esteem. I'm not trusting in God. I'm playing God and I wrote up this list and my sponsor said, you know what? When you do six and seven this time, humbly ask him to remove these shortcomings. Humbly asked him isn't take him if you can big guy. HumbLY isn't taking him miserable. HUMBLY is Pop, I can't bear this. Can you help me? I can not bear this I will do your work Please do my work When I drew close to him He revealed himself to me And this is how I draw close to Him It is not some woo-woo idea It is really a method And I said Look I will give you I will get you I will take you I will put anything you want for a living You got it You got show business I was ready to put show business before this Take it I will keep you I will make you I will be able to do anything you need Just keep me sober and within three months I was working as a cook on a catering truck and I looked up to God and I said I did not mean this we've had a grotesque misunderstanding in L.A. when they make a TV show or a movie they hire a caterer the caterer follows the company around and makes them food it's a great job, you make a lot of dough it's Teamster dough, you're on a vehicle on a movie set but I'm Scott Redman and the first movie that I catered the executive producer and star was a guy who I had worked with in the industry and he stuck his head on the truck that morning and he said can I have a burrito Scott and I said what's happening babe and he he said is this your truck I said no but it's my spatula and I went home that night and I called my sponsor and I said yeah we're getting the gift now yeah beautiful sobriety and he said to me I guess you have a resentment and I'm resentful it's got it affects them for working on a kitchen truck it affects myself esteem pocketbook ambition personal relations and sex say five beggar for sure and I wrote them defects out and I prayed about it and I try to show up the next day and give him a dime for their nickel and I worked the tenth step and I wound up serving people who had been my my assistant directors and stage managers actors who I had directed in shows and I and you know what and I learned how to be a good cook and I worked the hell out of that 10-step and I took action based on the 10th step and i go back to my home group and tell them the weekly tale of personal humiliation and the guys would go ha ha ha tears streaming down their face you know and I got to help some guys who thought they had fallen from a height when they came into AA. They hadn't reached the top rank, which is child of God. There's no head drunk. And if you reach the top rank, you can't fall. There is no place to fall to. There is no other rank. I have a friend of mine named Paul who thought he had fallen form a height in AA and he used to say this prayer, he'd say, Father, I'm willing to do anything for a living but please don't let it be as bad as what you did to Scott. I was so happy to help him. And I cooked for about three years, and this company in New York named Ketchum Public Relations made an overture to me about this big-time comedy writing job. And you know what? At this point, with all I had been through, I really thought that if I had gotten this particular comedy writing job, I felt that the men I sponsor would benefit from it. I felt that they would see how I had suffered and now they would see me prosper thusly. So I had to do a videotape for these guys, and my brain blew up. I just did a complete Yosemite Sam. And I had to write about it before I even heard about the job. I did the 10 steps, I read it to my sponsor, I prayed and meditated, I got back to work, I did my thing And then a couple of weeks later, I find out I do not have the job. And shortly after that, I get a call to cater some commercials up in Lake Arrowhead near L.A., and I hop into the truck, I go up there, and I pick up the call sheet, which is a piece of paper that gives you all the information about the job, and I see that the commercials are for Ketchum Public Relations. I'm feeding them now. Now I'mfeeding them. And I see down at the end of the truck there's a guy videotaping me. I said, what are you doing? He said, I'm taping the making of the commercial. He's taping my humiliation. So he's tapING my humilation. He's going to go back to New York with it, and they're going to look at it, and they'll go, is that Scott Redman with the meatloaf? Oh, my God, that poor son of a bitch. So I get off work, and I call my sponsor. I said, yeah, we're really, really getting the gift now. It's a miracle. It's just a miracle now. And he said to me, I guess God had enough writers and he needed a few cooks today. And then he said, you know, you told God you wanted to work for Ketchum and you forgot to tell him what you wanted him to do. We got nailed in the Northridge earthquake really bad. And I got injured, and our house really got messed up. And shortly after the Northridge earthquake, we were at this AA function out of town, and this woman who was an LA expatriate came up to me and said, I'm so glad God got us out of LA before the quake. And I said, oh, oh. So he likes you, but we're crap. But he likes it. He likes you. And she said to me, I guess he just felt you had some lessons to learn. I just got to tell you I'm out of here If I had a God like that Get him, get the Redmond boy No evacuation plan for you Jew boy Get him I'm at it I can't live in that world I couldn't stay sober in that World for 10 seconds I know it's keeping her sober I know It wouldn't keep me sober I would like to see her after her next lesson But I judge no man I had to get a World big enough where a lot of things could happen in God's world, my higher power does not care what I do for a living. My higher power doesn't care if I'm living in the house on the hill or in a box. My higherpower doesn't care if my wife and I stay together or if my kids are okay. My higherpower just expects me, me personally, to do my job in Alcoholics Anonymous and if my job is to show a guy how to go through a sober divorce, that's my job. And if my work is to show a man how to have a romantic exciting marriage of 24 almost 25 years then that's my job in aa i don't have a higher power there dealing out the crap anymore anymore i can't live in that world and i'm telling you what a relief what an extraordinary relief and that's just my higher power again i've been asked to tell my story if you're new here i want to welcome you to aaa and you know Well, the good news is our problem mainly rests in our mind. This is to the best of my knowledge the only fatal illness where the treatment for it actually leaves the sufferer in better condition than they were in before they contracted the disease. I don't know of any other illness that can lay claim to that. As far as I know there's no other text about recovery from a fatal illness that contains the sentence, we absolutely insist on enjoying life. There's no book about cholera that says cholera is a hoot. You'll love cholera. You will meet other people who caught cholera, it's great. Then you will meet people who just caught choler. It doesn't get any better than that. The bad news is our problem mainly rests in our mind. Some years ago I was at Some years ago, I was at an AA meeting, and I talked to this new guy. And I went home, and he called me, and we talked for an hour. And I said, uh-huh, four times so he'd know that I was not dead. And he explained to me that he had been stalking several women. He had a restraining order taken out against him, but it's all different now. He's two weeks sober, and it's different. And at the end of the hour, he said to me, I feel so alone. And I says, what are you talking about? What do you mean you feel alone? I hardly even know you, and I just listened to you for an hour without interrupting. And he said to me, oh, I mean, I don't have a woman. And I said to him, what exactly would you be bringing to a relationship right now besides stalking skills? What are you bringing to the party right now? People two weeks into remission from leukemia are not having dating problems. Alcoholics are because our problem mainly rests in our mind because we trivialize it. I also have to tell you that I wound up making amends to my father. I wound being able to show up for a guy when he was dying, when I couldn't be there for my father, and my father came back into my life. Not in a hot flash and not with a burning bush, but over a period of time I felt his presence again and I was able to put a picture of him up in our house and tell his grandsons about him. And I don't know what you're coming in here with, you know? I don' t know what your black hole is. If you've strangled a puppy, we got a guy who has strangled two puppies. puppies. I know that for sure. We're not going to play can you bottom this, but we can. I will also tell you that it has been my experience that once I put my dark past in God's hands, I become uniquely ... I'm given this unique ability. It's a funny thing. One of the things that was most difficult for me when I was new in AA because I felt so guilty about my kids as I heard sometimes people get up to podiums and say we just had a kid in sobriety and he'll never have to see me drunk isn't that great you know it is great but it ain't any better than the families where the kids saw the guy drunk because of what my job here is all right that guy's not going to be able to help a guy who's come in whose kids did see him drunk who thinks that there's never gonna be any hope for his family I'm not saying that guy can't help them but you know what I really got I got a story I got story to tell and that's not saying that I'm the guy that's gonna help that other guy might wind up being his sponsor for the rest of his life but you can't put a premium on it you can be it put a pre on the message that we that we have to carry I believe that if you examine the inventory you'll find out what your job here is going to be and the problem mainly rests in our mind some time ago Nancy was walking through a room and she knew that I was talking to a new guy on the phone, and she heard me say, let's say the aliens are coming. She stopped short she ain't missing a word of this. So I said to the guy look they might be coming but as per our traditions that's an outside interest they might be coming that's fine well but I have a question why you? Why have they come for you? why have they traversed the galaxy for your sorry ass? You have 11 days sober You live in North Hollywood. You have no life. Why you? Plus, he's sleeping. Don't you think they'll call a cop or go to a mailman or something? He's sleeping with a Bible on his chest to ward them off. They're going to traverse the universe, come into his room and go, Oh no, the Bible, let's go home. Years later, when I was telling this story at a meeting at the North Hollywood group, strangely enough, this guy walks into the room from the start. I'm looking at the guy and I'm telling the story and I watch the guy go like this. Oh, shit. You see the horrible memory of it coming. If you're new here, I want to urge you as strongly and powerfully as I can to take this thing incredibly seriously and then go out there and have the time of your life. If the aliens are coming for you, welcome to AA. Welcome home. I love you. Thanks for having me.