He Treated Alcoholism With Psychotherapy and a Knife at a Gunfight – Scott R.

My name's Scott Redman. I'm an alcoholic. Oh, man. Before the meeting, I was telling Ruthie it's always great when you come to a function and our main speaker is so she took direction thanks so much for having me I can't tell you how much I appreciate it what a beautiful place and what a great fellowship you guys have this is really exciting to see the kind of stuff that starts happening when these things become part of people's sobriety all the people I've talked to have talked about how meaningful this weekend and how long they've been doing it how many years they've bene here and that's what Alcoholics Anonymous has been for me and I really appreciate you just letting me take a little peek at it I want to thank Bob who picked me up at the airport with 30 days he made my weekend when I had 30 days I looked like every part of my face was moving in a different direction I looked as if I had just walked out of the GM wind tunnel kind of. And Bob's stringing sentences together. He is, where are you, Bob? Stand up. Come on. There he is. You go, boy. Usually when you get a new guy to stand, it's like he's been voted most attractive man on his cell block, you know. It's like, is this good? Is it bad? Is it good? I don't know. If you knew I liked welcoming Alcoholics Anonymous, and if you knew and you're sitting in this room, boy, you have stumbled into a great AA meeting. I want to thank all the other speakers for the whole weekend, Anna. Really, the two speakers that spoke tonight just killed me. What great talks they both gave. I just love both the talks. And if you're new here, you're at a great AA meeting. I was welcomed. As a matter of fact, you're sort of cluster welcomed when you walk in here. There's kind of a welcoming frenzy that happens out there. And you want that alcohol, you know, you want sort of alcoholic repellent, you know when you come in. I'm welcomed and then there's prominently displayed AA literature and then the speakers talk about alcoholism. I mean, that's pretty remarkable. And sometimes I go to an AA meeting and not even hear a passing reference made to God, The Big Book, or The Steps, and I get very confused. If all I'm hearing about is issues and boundaries, I get Very, Very Confused. And I'm not putting the issues and boundaries down. They're fine. Issues and boundaries are great. But here's the deal. You have to not drink. you have to not drink and you'll have an issue and a boundary I guarantee you if you don't drink but it's that god damn not drinking thing as a moose if it was not for the not drinking thing we'd be a much bigger organization that I guarantee right right absolutely because a lot of people want our deal but it is that not drinking thing Screws a lot of people up If you're new here and you're wondering When you're going to get in touch with your feelings Stay sober, they'll get in Touch with you When you go to sleep at night and Satan Descends from the ceiling of your bedroom Those are your feelings getting In touch with you When your head hits The pillow and it becomes a rotisserie. Those are your feelings, but I'm sure that's not happening to you. 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 love to welcome YOU I'd also like to Welcome You to Alcoholics Anonymous and just suggest that you catch alcoholism. You can have anything else you want. Just catch the dreaded alcoholism! You can be... This friend of mine and I here knew in creative ways of people identifying at meetings we always get on the phone and share them with each other. He had recently heard a guy identify as a crack monster. Ooh, that scary crack monster, ooh! I wonder if they have like a Halloween costume for crack monster? You can... I don't care if you're like the Bigfoot of dope addicts, you know, like a dope Goliath. Just catch the dreaded alcoholism. Catch it. We'd love to give it to you. I caught alcoholism in Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. I wasn't an alcoholic when I got here. I did not have alcoholism when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. Number one, I'm Jewish and Jews don't drink. Because it might dull the pain. You don't want to waste any agony opportunity. And the funny thing is, when I was new in the program, a guy who saved my life, I was a couple of weeks sober and a guy next to me identified. He said, I am an ex-Catholic, which means that I do not believe in God and therefore I'm sure God's going to come kill my ass for feeling that way. And I said, I'm going and sitting down right next to him because that's exactly how I feel. I had an Old Testament God I would not be caught in a dark alley with. This guy got your ass no matter what. He got you. There was no hiding from you He got you, he killed your goat He turned your wife to salt and put a finger in your eye And he got your ass No matter what Man oh man oh man In addition to the Judaism I could not possibly have been an alcoholic Because I had been in psychotherapy for 18 years I was going to be dead, but I was going to understand it I'm not putting therapy down Therapy is great stuff. I would never say from a podium of Alcoholics Anonymous or one-on-one that people shouldn't go to therapy. I really don't believe that. I think our book says on page 133, if you need a doctor, go get one. Geez, what do they mean? There's so much mystery in that book But my colossal blunder is I was trying to treat alcoholism with psychotherapy Which is kind of like showing up at a gunfight with a knife once a week And just getting these colossal ass whoopings Just whooped, whooped not being able to figure out I was doing good work in psychotherapy dying from alcoholism I was going to be dead with no Oedipal conflict But really, really dead So I did not have alcoholism when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous I was brought up in the Bronx, in New York City. Nobody from the Bronx? Witness Protection Program? The guys from the Bronx usually have the biggest cowboy hat in the room, right? Yeah, right. Yeah, I love the West. Talking in Montana and I run into Vito in Montana. What's he doing there, right?" I love it. I love the prairie. It's beautiful. And my family was nuts, completely out of their mind. My wife never believed me about my family until she met him. And my mom threw an engagement party for me and my wife, and my aunt came and wore her wig backwards, and it had a bun on it. And it was not a mistake. It was a look she was going after. That bun was right out there, that sucker. It was just nuts, absolutely nuts. I had, if you got anything for free in my family, it meant it was stolen. And I had an uncle who was a welder who used to get free bales of steel wool. And his wife took a decorating course and made throw pillows and filled all the throw pillows with the free steel wool And that stuff works its way through on you after a while So when When you'd go to their house If you looked at the room Everybody was moving a little bit The whole room was kind of A living, breathing, pulsing organism Nuts Nuts And there was mental and physical abuse And Chronic institutionalization and suicide attempts in my family, a lot of really crazy sick behavior. And if you're new here, all I've got is good news for you because my family did not have one single solitary thing. I said not one single solitaire thing to do with making me an alcoholic because, you see, if my family hadn't made me, I'm not telling you they weren't nuts, they were nuts. And I'm telling you some of the funny stuff. There was a lot OF really ugly stuff. And I'M TELLING YOU, IF THEY HAD MADE ME AN ALCOHOLIC, I could go to psychotherapy, I could work out my family problems and I could drink properly I wouldn't have to go to parties anymore and say oh no heroin for me I'll have a Perrier I wouldn' t have to do that I could just be like the normal people but it doesn' t matter how much therapy I take and I'm not saying don' t go to therapy I'm telling you and if you're new here it might be confusing because you might have had a lot of bad stuff happen to you Not for one second am I telling you it didn't. Not for once second am i telling you, you didn't get hurt. I'm telling you I know in me you can't make a drunk like that. Because if you can make a drink like that then you can cure a drunk like that but if you have a weird physical reaction to alcohol and it gets mixed with some fascinating thinking. Now if you know, I'll tell you why they're laughing They all have it It is the kind of thinking that will take a person To assume that they can succeed in something That they have without a doubt almost every time failed at. Failed at horribly, horribly, embarrassingly. Everyone knows they can't do it. They know they can't and yet they continue to come up ways they think they will at last succeed in doing it. I have a friend named Larry. The first time he ever read our book, he read the first page to the fourth chapter of our book which contains a sentence that says facing an alcoholic death or a spiritual life is not always an easy decision to make. And the first thing he thought when he read that sentence was, well, how bad an alcoholic death are we talking about here? That's not a normal reaction to that. You're going to die. How bad? How bad, man? That'S not a NORMAL reaction, isn't it? I love reasons to drink. And if you're new here, read the last paragraph of our third chapter. It says that if you don't do certain things to bring about a spiritual recovery, you're going to have no mental defense against this fascinating thinking, which drives you to take a drink that you can't stop taking because you're allergic to it. And if you're special and you're a drug addict, try some controlled crack smoking. My favorite reason to drink that I've ever heard, and I just love this, I was sponsoring this guy for about 15 minutes and he lived with his wife, he 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? I have an inquiring mind. I want to know. And he said, without missing a beat, he said I caught my wife cheating on me. You can't make that up. You can write that. Now, I want you to know I understand that he came up with that one of two ways. Either boom, boom. It was an occasional hunch or an inspiration. It was just a pearl, you know what I mean? It just, boom, he just came out with it. Or that was the product of weeks in the rat's maze, man. Weeks of cutting and pasting reality and just tweaking the world. Just, yeah, just a little bit. The bitch cheated on me. I know I'm a hooker, but she cheated on my life. She cheated on her life. Now, I get it. It's either, boom, I used to come up with stuff I couldn't believe no one else could either. Or I'd pound it out, work on it, work on it. Cut and paste reality, you know? So I grew up in this nutty family and was put in psychotherapy at a very young age. And the second thing I did to avoid alcoholism, something I want to talk about tonight that I have to talk about because it's my story. And I'm going to talk about drugs. And I want to apologize to anybody that offends. I do not mean to offend anybody here. I absolutely believe in unity in AA. And, uh... I use drugs to avoid catching alcoholism and it almost killed me. So I talk about it as part of my story. It's part of the story. It's a part of bottom. If it still really pisses you off, where's Tom? He asked me to talk. And he had already heard my story, so I was invited. What I did was, I thought that psychotherapy was really going to help me avoid this terrible alcoholic dilemma I was in almost from Jump Street. So I went to therapy and then what I started to do is I drank till I didn't want to be a drunk and I started smoking pot to overcome the drinking problem. I'd like to welcome all the pot smokers here tonight. You You remember wow, right? Wow. Wow. And right after wow usually came what? What? What? What? Wow! What? Wow! What? Wow! What? Wow! What? Watching a pot smoker is like watching a dog try to run on linoleum. a lot of activity, but no movement. But they're busy! They're biz-biz-busy! They just can't get a cloy in the rug and get that stuff on the road. I triumphed over marijuana with pills. I was victorious over pills with cocaine. Cocaine is an excellent drug. It's particularly good for sex if you enjoy sex from the Neolithic period. I kicked that cauldron cocaine with heroin. Heroin's a very complicated, dark artistic drug. Then you cross the line and become a vomiting pig. Then I drank until I didn't want to be a drunk, and I drank throughout. I didn t even start to catch alcoholism until I was almost dead from it at the age of 33. My wife was sick and dying, and both of our kids were sick and busted up and dying the warped lives of blameless children when I was in my early 20s my father had a massive stroke I had slammed some heroin that afternoon and I showed up at the hospital I couldn't be there for my my pop or my mom or my brother and I felt like a pig like an animal the sound of the heart machine wouldn't get through and I knew what the problem was and I know how to solve it that night I knew that the problem were needles and heroin and I swore I'd never put one in my arm again and never do them again and I didn't. I just drank to let him want to be a drunk over and over and over again. Shortly after this, I met a woman I was...I had set some lofty goals for myself as a young man because my father never made more than $10,000 a year and I wasn't going to be a sap like him and make money and bring it home. my brother and I never missed a meal and never went to school with ripped clothing my last year out there I made $80,000 my kids went to school with whipped clothing all the time and missed meals all the same and I still thought my dad was a loser that's because a certain kind of thinking had become established in me that had placed me beyond human help oh always good news for the new man and I wasn't going to be a loser like my pop so I had set some lofty goals for myself as a young man, and by the time I got to Alcoholics Anonymous, I had reached or surpassed all of them. By the time i got to AA, I had had a book on the bestseller list, I had acted in a Broadway play, I had directed a television show, I directed a film, I'd had my own theater in New York. I had done all of these things a time. I never got to do any of them more than once, because when I'd move uh, well leave, they'd move the business so I couldn't find it again. And uh and And I, you know, if you're new, we've got a test. We've got an alcoholic test here. Other diseases, they've got blood tests and x-rays. We've Got an Inventory. It's the alcoholic test. It's a pass-pass situation. All you have to do is do it, and you'll pass. And if you do it. If you sit down, and YOU do it! And you read the whole miserable thing. I'm resentful at them. I'm resentment at me for resenting them. I'm presentable at them for watching me resent them. And I've had sex with all of them What does this have to do with alcoholism? It is alcoholism It's the sickness of the soul That will keep you in the cycle of spree and remorse Until you're traded out And there's nothing left And you're hollow and insane and alone It is a spiritual tapeworm That eats you up from the inside While you think you're having a life And eventually your hand just slips out between your fingers like a handful of water over and over and over again. That's what happens to your life. That is what happened to my life. I was acting in a Broadway play and a new usherette with long brown hair walked in and I took one look at this woman. I didn't even say a word to her. I walked back into the dressing room, stood up on a chair and said, if anybody talks to the new usherette with long Brown hair, I'll break all the bones in your hands and feet. I'm still married to her And Nancy and I fell deeply in love. I was acting on Broadway, we were in our early 20s, living in New York City, the world was our oyster and we were going nowhere fast. We were just a couple of dogs trying to run on linoleum. And we had a lot of good times, really, really good times. And Nancy became very, very sick from prolonged exposure to me. We had a son named Micah, and Micah was really welcomed into the world when he was born. We were surrounded by friends and family. There were a ton of phone calls, lots of flowers at the hospital. And when Jesse was born two years and nine months later, there were no visitors, no phone calls, no flowers. had been completely isolated by the disease of alcoholism in just two years and nine months. And it's not 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 had just repelled everybody. And that night that Jesse was born he wound up in neonatal intensive care. He had a problem with his heart at that time and I was at home with Micah and I got a call from a doctor that night, a doctor I had never met before. She said, Mr. Redmond, now you guys know there's no more wonderful place to be in a hospital and on the maternity ward when everything's okay. And there's no place worse to be in the world if things aren't okay, and you're alone, and you have no God in your life, and you don't have God in the room. You have no comfort. So she's surrounded by all of this celebration. No visitors. I can't come down. I said to the doctor, the doctor said, your wife's in real trouble. The baby's up in an incubator. She's all alone in the womb. We need you to come down here. And I said, I'd love to come downstairs, but the fact is I can find anybody to watch our two-year-old son. I can come down? And this doctor, who I did not know, said to me on the phone that night, I tell you what, let me give you my phone number. You call my husband. He's at home. Bring your kid over to my house and my husband will take care of him. What a remarkably generous offer. And I said no. There was no way I could accept this woman's generosity because I think that I would have had to take a moment to just look at, I would Have had to look at my own life somehow. I would have had to one of those horrible moments of how did this happen how did we want here we were in the community of people of artists of people of friends of family how the hell did this happened and I couldn't bear it I used to have this phrase I used to use with my wife all the time I used to say I can't fit the pain in my head I just couldn't fit it in it was too big And by the time I got to AA, Micah was six and Jesse was three. Micah's diagnosis was functionally retarded. He was making involuntary clicking noises with his throat that he couldn't stop making. He was reading and writing years below his grade level. His small motor skills were screwed up, and there was nothing physically wrong with him. It was just from being scared all the time. Jesse started to vanish. He just started to disappear. He got out on the edge where it was just safer because, you see, if you get in between me and the drink, you're going to disappear? If you get between me and the drank, you're either going to become something less than human, papier-mâché, some kind of mindless, personality-less figure, or you're gonna vanish because I'm gonna get to the drink. I'm going to think my way around you or through you and get to the drinking. I guarantee it. Might not be today. I might even wait a day, but I'll get there. And eventually, how much vanishing can a baby do before the baby believes what they're being taught, which is that they don't exist? And that's really what happened to our kids, and they became grievously sick, grievously ill. They were grievously weak from the disease of alcoholism, which we didn't even have. Nancy and I just became nuts. We became so sick that at one point, a guy lent us his car, and we sold his car. I will never forget this guy's voice on the phone as long as I live he said, you sold my car? that's like house sitting for someone and they come back and you're an escrow and the alcoholic life becomes the only normal one it was the end of the month, we didn't have the rent big duh, right? 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 borrowing money. Let's do the right thing. Let's stand on our own two feet. Let's sell the car. Now, I want to tell you something. I understand how I came up with that. The same way that I used to get excited when I was told that I needed dental surgery. I always loved dental surgery, that's an uninterrupted source of narcotics for a period of time. There's heads going up and down there. You don't get that at the Lions Club, by the way. Only alcoholics go, ooh, dental surgery. Ooh, wow. I lucked out this time, man. And I'll tell you why. For the same reason that I was able to sell the car as a demonstration of my personal responsibility. I leave out the middle. I go to announcement of dental surgery to painkillers. I leave it out. I leave about the surgery. I leave out the cutting, the sutures, the blood and the pain. That's what I leave out. I go from let's do the right thing to having money. I leave out Grand Theft Auto. That's what I leave out. I leave out forging the name on the paint slip. This is what I leave out. If you're new here, welcome to the middle. We're real big on the middle here. Nets came home one day and I had an idea to cook some eggs And I died in the middle of the idea She came in, I was blue, I had a pan of eggs on my chest And there was an open vial next to me And an empty bottle of booze And she tapped me with her foot and she said, how are you? And I said, I'm exhausted And she called the doctor And explained the situation and the doctor said, there's a blue Jew on the floor of your kitchen. Call an ambulance. Why are you calling me? He's blue, there're empty. My wife tells this story, it always chills me a little because she always says, I hung up the phone and I thought about it. Then she called another doctor for a second opinion. Glad the doctor was not an untreated Al-Anon and repeated the first doctor's advice. My son Micah came to me when he was five years old and he looked at me in the eyes and he said, Dad, is there anything such as God? And I looked right back in the ears of my perfect five-year-old baby boy and I said, no, son, there isn't. And I swear to you, I thought I was doing him a favor. I swear you. I thought i was saving him some skin so he wouldn't be played like one of those saps or suckers out there. So you get the real existential deal. I didn't know I was lying to him. I didn'T know that I was doing something absolutely antithetical to what I thought I was doin'. I thoughtI was givin' him the real, brave deal. And what I was giving him was the most cowardly, mushiest thinking of all, the weakest thinking of alL. And even worse than that, even worse then lying to Him, what Iwas really doin', I was lookin' into the eyes of a five-year-old baby, and in essence, I was saying, You know, sweetheart, when it's dark at night and you're scared and you can't go to sleep, tough, because that's all there is. That's really what I was telling them. I don't think there's a more abusive thing that you can say to a child. On April 20th, 1985, I crossed the line I swore I would never cross again. By that time, the kids were just nuts. Nancy was a ranting lunatic. My careers were just gone. I crossed a line I swear I would ever cross again, I put a needle in my arm again. That was always the line. As long as I didn't do that, I was okay. It didn't matter whatever else happened, but I did it. I put a needle in my arm. I called my therapist of record, my first Jungian therapist, and I told him what I had done, and he got on the phone with me that morning, and he said, you know, there's absolutely nothing that I can do for you. 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. Thank God this guy was that humble. Thank God he did exactly the same thing that Carl Jung said to the man who 12-stepped Amanda, 12-step Bill Wilson. The exact same thing. Carl Jung says to Bill Wilson, he said to Roland Hazard, there's absolutely nothing that can be done for you. He could have said, come on up and let's talk about it. I've been talking about it for 18 years. I think the conversation was over. Now, why I went to that AA meeting and didn't go to the institution, I don't know. I really don't because on most other days I would have gladly chosen the Nuthouse. I don' t know why I w nt to AA but I did. I woke up at 5 o'clock in the morning put my best clothes on and went to a 7 a.m. meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. You know 7 a."m. meetings. People are barely hanging on by a thread. Most of them have their underwear on the outside of their clothing. I walk in there with my best clothes, a bad check to write you, looking to pee in a cup. No one did let me pee in their cup to join AA. And I walked into that clubhouse. And if you're new and you're anything like me, I looked around that club that morning and I said to myself, Alcoholics Anonymous, how did I wind up in Alcoholics Anonymous? How did this happen? How lame is this? This is beyond lame. This is Beyond Church, Beyond Synagogue. This is some plateau of lameness I never even imagined was available to me. Alcoholics Anonymous. Welcome. Welcome. You are now privy to an unending, unsolicited reservoir of information and advice They're going to get right up in your face And talk that endless, unsolicited AA crap to you You know the guy He's got one tooth with a cavity in it, right? You know him, you know him He's gotta belt buckle large enough to serve a whole fish on, right Do I want what you've got? No! No, but thanks for spitting on me. I hated every single thing about AA. I hated it. Everything was a miracle. Miracle, miracle, miracle I'm a miracle You're a miracle The coffee's a miracle The furniture's a miracle Miracle Miracle Miracle I said Where are we gonna Hook a rug? You know And I know The Jew hunt's gonna start Any minute You know Come on Jaime Strap these antlers on We're gonna count to ten Poke them with a sharp stick I couldn't believe it The only reason that I can imagine That I stuck around The only reasons is that I was out of plans If you're new here, I pray for you That you are out of plan If you are new here and you have a plan It's probably a beaut Don't use your plan Don't Grab one of us after the meeting and tell us your plan We want to know the plan That'd be a great book A collection of newcomer plans I guess I was out of plans I kept coming back I stuck around for six months and was losing my mind I was suffering from untreated alcoholism didn't even know I had alcoholism and in the six months I saw the AA drill hundreds and hundreds of times people came in, 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 door or stayed here and became columns of human sewage and sexual predators although I judge no man. Because I'm just too darn spiritually developed to judge people. So I knew I was going to drink. My wife had reached out to the Al-Anon family groups and I saw the miracle happening in her life and our sons had become a little less frightened. And I stood at the turning point and in my own way asked for his care with complete abandon by, in my demonstration was I asked a guy to sponsor me. And I did something I had rarely done in my life. I asked that guy to do it for me. I asked him to do something he had. And that's not something I was in the habit of doing. I was asking drowning people for swimming lessons. And when all they'd say is glub, glub. glove, I'd get pissed off at him. Right? Oh, you can't do that? Tell me how! You know? And the guy made sure I'd done some reading from the big book of AA and invited me to his apartment and he spent hours with me for fun and for free that day and I couldn't figure out why he was doing it. He read chapter five to me and on the way through he took me through the first two steps we reached step three and said a prayer together and he finished chapter five and he went back and gave me instructions on how to do a fourth step from the big book of AA, and I stopped feeling like I was stealing someone's seat here. I can honestly tell you that. I didn't have a burning bush experience, but I know that I stopped feelin' like I were stealin' someone's seed. You guys have been talkin' about the work, and I was experiencing the gift of step none at that time. And then all of a sudden, I started doin' the work. It took me three months to do my inventory. I went back and read it to my sponsor, nine months of sobriety. Now, I know for some people, I knew it's true, and it's true for some of the men I sponsor, that they mostly resented themselves. And I believe that's true for them. I also know that it's absolutely not true for me. I hated myself but nothing compared to how much I hated you. I hated you so much more than I hated me it's difficult to describe. I'm not a suicide person. I'm a homicide person. That's just where I go. I vastly prefer your death to mine. I always have. You first. Now, again, I don't want to annoy anybody. I'm not knocking the suicide people. This is not a put-down. It's just kind of a flip side of the same coin. You first, as far as I'm concerned. So I had a lot of work to do on this inventory. I had an awful lot of time. A lot, a lot, of work. I read it to my sponsor. It came time to do Step 6 and 7, which have become my working template. That's really where I've developed my relationship with God and continue to see it grow is in the heart of Step 6 and 7. And then it came time to do my 8-step list. I try to share this any time I talk because it's, for me, the single greatest reading of Step 8 I have ever heard. If you're new here, I'd like to share it with you. It happened in my old home group years ago. I was just a couple months over, and a guy named Nino was there who I had never seen before this night and never seen him since. I hope never to forget him. he had never read chapter 5 before he was there with the hospital group he had hospital plastic he had a heavy New York accent and he was reading chapter 5 for the first time and he got up to step 8 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 man it was so beautiful it was so pure. It was the purest reading of the step I had ever heard because it's all I saw when I got sober. I didn't see anything else on the list that said, no, 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. If you're new, don't worry about it. It's eight steps from where you are anyway for God's sake. And it's not even eight that's the really annoying one. It's nine. Really want to get pissed off, take a look at nine. Right on my eight-step list, my pop was down there, my kids and my wife were down there and I didn't know what the hell I was going to do about any of it. I just didn't. I just thought of sitting down and apologizing to my wife and kids was a joke. The words I'm sorry had been rendered absolutely useless. And my dad was dead, and I didn't know what to do. And my sponsor, I don't know if he had done this with other men. I don' t much care, but he just did something with me that has led to shaping my sobriety. He refused to tell me how to make the amends. I said, What am I going to do? He said, I d'on't know. I d'don't knoW. Do your job in AA. What can I do? My dad's dead. He said ,I d'n't knOw. Let's see. Do your job. Maybe he knew that if I had been given a task, I would have gotten it out of the way and moved on with the business of dying. I don't know. But he wouldn't do it for me, and it's turned into a great blessing for me. It turned into me finding out what my work in Alcoholics Anonymous has been. So I started doing a lot of lame crap. Lame, lame, lame. Lame. Lame football. Little League. Lame lame lame lame. I had to stop sending my kid into school and letting him take the bullet because he was so sick. I had go in the school and sit down with the teachers and say, my son is making these noises with his throat. My son can't read or write because he's been terrified all the time. He's very sick because he has been living with me and I've been very sick and we're trying very hard and we need your help. And both boys got tested and they got special ed and they started making a beginning. I didn't want to do any of that. It was very embarrassing, and I didn't want to do it, and I did it. And going to Little League, I go to my first Little League game, my wife comes to the game. She looks over at the first base stands and falls down laughing. There's everyone in the first-base stands, and there's me alone in the sun pissed off. I'm here, I'm doing my job. I'm Here, I am here, you know? I'm going up and down two hat sizes, just psychotic. The kids were really pleased to see me. Mr. Redmond's going to blow up, man. Look at him. Look at them. I was insane. It took a couple of years for the voices to diminish in number and volume for me to go and sit with the people in the first base stands, to just be with the People in the Stands, to stop being radioactive, to just have fun. To just be at my sobriety station. And a couple years later, my son Jesse received what I believe is one of the great compliments a human being can receive on the planet. he was intentionally walked. Doesn't get any better than that, folks. Doesn't get any better than that. Doesn't. Just doesn't. For any of you who don't understand, that means they're scared of you and they want to get to the weenie behind you. Doesn't get any better than that. And Jesse didn't want to be a geek. He didn't want to jump up and down and scream and yell. He just put his bat down and tried out the first base line and on the way up to first base line he turned to me at my sobriety station and he just shot me just that much stuff not too much it's the old man you don't want to spoil him don't be a geek just a little bit on his way up to first-base and I could have missed the whole thing I couldn't miss the whole thing and I'm not telling you Jesse got intentionally walk as I got sober I'm telling you I was out my sobrietty station because I was sober and I've gotten to tell guys who've been or drunk one more time on their kids birthday about the day that my kid got intentionally well because I was there. I've given my sons 13 appropriate birthday gifts on the day of their birthday. Not once in those 13 years have they received the day after radioactive guilt potted palm that I've written a hot check for. I also, on almost all of those birthdays, have asked them what they want before I've gone and bought them something. That's because of watching you guys, watching the Almanon family groups, watching my wife at work and listening to my sponsor. And our family made a strong beginning. I was a couple of years sober, and I was making the boys lunch, and my son Micah, who I told you was so devastated and so, you know, was functionally retarded as a result of alcoholism. I said, what do you want in your hot dog? And Mike said, I want mustard onions and lettuce. I says, lettuce? He said, oh, okay, I don't want lettuce. and he walked away and he came back about 45 minutes later he was 8 at this time I was 2 years sober and he looked at me in the eyes 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 About a year after that, Jesse broke his wrist in a growth plane out in the schoolyard. If you know anything about the way kids develop, a growth plan is some cartilage that's going to turn to bone and if it gets injured and it gets set, it cannot be disturbed. It's extremely important that it stays set. So he came home and the kids were beating the crap out of each other in about 15 seconds. They're boys and bear cubs and they just kind of went at it. I had to let Micah know that it wasn't okay and it wasn t acceptable, so I took him aside and chewed him out. I yelled at him, got right up in his face, and let him know he could not mess with his brother until his brother felt better. He walked away from me and slammed the door to his room. Now he slammed the doors of his room, so now I got the dad tick, you know, now I've got the thing. And I go to the door and I open the door, and before I can unload on him, he looks at me and says, hold a second, I didn't say you were wrong out there, you were right, but big guy just got right in my face and screamed and yelled at me. I didn't tell you, you were wrong. Don't tell me I can't be mad." What's that? What the hell is that? That's Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon. That's standing up for yourself and telling somebody what you need without without telling them what to do. That's what he's seen his parents do sometimes and fail at sometimes, but try a lot. That's why he's been surrounded by. Thanks, thanks for the boys. My wife and I, you told us not to get involved in our first year and we didn't. We released each other so thoroughly, We lost each other. We had to put an APB out for each other later on. We really just stayed the hell away from each other, we tried to work on ourselves and try to bring a better person to the deal. 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 Redman couples workshop, you just got it. Talk to them until their eyes roll back in their head and they keel over and on the way down they go, oh okay. it's just a war of attrition I had to shut up me personally I had to stop working on my marriage and start trying to act like a human being and bring that human being to the deal and and our family made a really good beginning and worked hard together and I just gotta tell you this is such a great thing because it's kind of come up again lately I in my first year of sobriety I I was sponsoring this guy named Roland, and Roland used to call my house every night, and he'd leave a tape on my machine every night. And the tape would say, Scott, it's Rolly. I'm sober. I love you. Good night. He'd hang up the phone. Five years later, when I was six years sober, my son Micah came to me, and he said, You know, Dad, I should tell you that when I Was a Little Boy, I couldn't fall asleep until I heard Roland's voice on the machine. Once I heard Ronald's voice On the Machine, I knew everything was okay and I could go to sleep. And the thing that killed me about that was I tried to rip God out of this kid's life. I told him there was no God, and you guys just came and got us. You came over the answering machine, you came through the back door, you came and you tucked my kid in every night. And Roland and my son Micah have such a powerful relationship today. I cannot fire Roland. Roland is sponsee for life. Even if I get grumpy with Roland, I get punished. Can't even do that. When I was about a year sober, I had a job writing for 20th Century Fox. And at the end of the year, I was up for a job directing a situation comedy. And atthe end of that year, I was sponsoring a lot of people and I really thought that if I got this job directing this situation comedy, that it would really benefit my sponsees. What? Well, they would see me prosper thusly and that it wouldn't be a problem. It would be good for them. So I didn't get the job and I almost drank because I was full of crap and out of my mind. I was humiliated. I went back to my sponsor and I told him what had happened and he said to me, I guess you have the show business God. I said, what? He said, well, what keeps you sober? I said God. He said so God keeps you sober. You didn't get a show business job so I guess you have the show business God and he has abandoned you utterly. When I came into AA I heard God getting people jobs. God getting people relationships. I heard God getting people parking spaces. Oh no. No, not the parking space God. And at the parking space God, what if you don't get a space? You know, it's really funny. I was in Montana talking and I shared about the parking place God and everybody looked at me like this because, you know, the huge parking problem in Montana. So they were really praying for them spaces. It looked like cows watching a passing train from the country. You're a little more cosmopolitan. So I was resentful of myself for almost drinking, and resentful at the company for not giving me the job. And I read the inventory to my sponsor, and my sponsor said, you know, you've got to take it to the wall this time. If you're going to do six and seven, and you're going to ask God for some help here. Humbly ask him to remove these shortcomings. Take him if you can, big guy. Humbling is pop. I'm done. Can you help me out here? What's your work? I draw close to him. He reveals himself to me. What can I do? He said, and I realized I had to find a God big enough, bigger than the little show business God big enough so a lot of stuff could happen in his universe and I didn't get to drink so I did step six and seven after I read that inventory and I said uh pop I'll do anything you got it take show business I'll doing anything for a living anything just keep me sober and within three months I was working as a cook on a catering truck and I I looked up to God and I said, I didn't mean this. We've had a grotesque misunderstanding. I did not mean this now in LA when they make a TV show or a movie, they hire a caterer. The caterer follows the company around and makes some food. It's a great job. You make more money than I've ever made as a cook in my life. It seems to do you're on a vehicle on a movie set, but I'm Scott Redmond. the first movie that I catered the executive producer and star of the movie is a guy who I've worked with in the business so that first morning he sticks his head on the truck and he says can I have a burrito Scott and I said what's happening babe he said is this your truck I said no but it's my spatula I got home, I called my sponsor and I said we're getting the gift now it's beautiful he said sounds like you've got a resentment what are they? they go to workshops for this? I'm resembling Scott for working on a kitchen truck It affects my self-esteem, pocketbook ambition Personal relations and sex A five bagger for sure Now what am I going to ask God to take away Resentment's no 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 biggie I'm going to die This is going to blot out everything good in my life It is going to put a shadow on my heart, and I'm going to come up with a reason to drink eventually because it just snowballs. The more I let just slip in, the more it snowballs The third step will have little permanent or lasting effect unless followed by an inventory And it has been my experience that the inventory will have little permanent nor lasting effect, the fourth step, if it's not supported and nurtured by a tenth step What are the defects? What is it in me right now? Blue skies, God's got a magic wand. He comes down and he touches me on the head What poison is it in me that if he removed, I'd be able to live another day? What am I going to ask him to take away? The burrito? The guy? The truck? That ain't going to do it. The spatula? Thank you. I'll talk to you later. I'm ashamed. I'm playing God. Things aren't going according to the Scott Redman program, a fabulous program. I'm impatient. Things aren'T moving along. I'm ungrateful, I'm working, I have false pride, I am grandiose. And the list went on. This is the list I had to go to my father and say, Pop please, please help me. And I started getting well. Sometimes you hear in meetings, don't get well. My book says tell a man he can get well, wife or no wife, job or no job, tell a men he can get well if he simply starts depending on this power. I don't want to get cured, because then I'll die. But I have every intention of getting well. And I used to come back. I wound up serving people who I had directed in shows, serving people who had been my assistant stage managers and assistant directors. I used the same thing. I used it to come to my home group with a new tale of humiliation every week. The guys would just... tears streaming down, you know. And I just worked the hell out of that 10-step and showed up and tried to give them a dime for their nickel and be proud, you Know. And it worked. It worked. I started being able to help some people who thought they had fallen from a height in AA. They came in, they had not reached the top rank in AA, which I believe is child of God, and once you reach that height, you got no place you can fall from. I had a friend named Paul who felt he had fallen from a height in AA, and I got to help him out. He used to say this prayer. He used say, Father, I'm willing to do anything for a living, just keep me sober, but please don't let it be as bad as what you did to Scott. I was so glad to help him out, and ... I cooked for a couple of years, and I got real good at it. At the end of the couple of year, I got offered this big time writing job I was being considered for with a company called Ketchum Public Relations, and I thought by this time, you know, I was sponsoring even more guys, and at this point, this would be good for my sponsees because they had seen me deal with all this adversity and now prosper thusly, and this would in in fact be good for them. So my brain blew up and the old brain fever, you know when we get that stuff, you got that vein pumping like a garden hose on your forehead when you're really thinking up a storm there. I didn't even hear about the job. I crashed and burned, wrote about it, read it, released it, I was fine. A couple of weeks after that I got a call from Ketchum saying I did not get the job and I was fined with that. Then Then I got a call from my catering company asking me to cater some commercials. So I went to the, I got in the truck and got over to this commercial shoot and I grabbed 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'm feedin' them. And I looked down at the end of the truck, and there's a guy videotaping me cooking. I said, what are you doing? He said, we're taping the making of the commercial. He's taping my humiliation. So he's tapin' my humiliations, gonna go back to New York and show it to the guys in New York, and the guys from New York are gonna go, is that Scott Redman with the meatloaf? Oh. I got off work and I called my sponsor and I said, we are really getting the gift now. We really are. We really are. Really. It's a miracle. Miracle, miracle, miracle. He said, he said sounds like God had enough writers today and he needed a few cooks then he said you know you told God you wanted to work for Ketchum and you forgot to tell him what you wanted to do Our son, Michael, will be 20 in a couple of weeks. Son Jesse is 17. My wife and I have experienced a tremendous... We had to work very hard to bring our marriage back together after releasing each other as thoroughly as we did. I'm very fortunate to be married to someone who's so intensely involved in the Al-Anon family groups and works such a great program. And we went through a lot of frustration and a lot of difficulties. I realized how really scared I was of my wife. I realized that when I heard her car coming up the drive, I was switching the television channels and make sure the kids weren't watching something they shouldn't be watching or that it was clean. It was like living with a drinking drunk, not because of her behavior, but because of how much fear I had embedded in me. And I had to sit down and tell my wife I was scared of her and started working on our relationship in a way that was different this time because it involved God, and we started praying together. I don't do 1, 2, 3, 7, and 11 with my wife. I'll do that no matter who I'm with or where I am. That's for me to stay alive, my relationship with God. What Nancy and I pray about is, I ask God to help us have a, not us, I say help me have a sense of humor. Help me not sweat the small stuff to remember that my wife's not my adversary, that she's my partner. And what wonderful truths these things are. And these truths get watered down and they get murky from bad communication and self. and we have been so successful experiencing so much love and success after some periods of real difficulty and really feeling like adversaries it's really been great for us really tremendously satisfying our older son Micah after he graduated high school took a year off and went down to Chiapas, Mexico to work with the Zapatista revolutionaries for a year because he didn't feel I was terrified enough. For about a year, I'd raise my hand at meetings and they'd call on me and I'd go and put my hand down. He announced to me that he had become a communist and I called him over and said, Son, have you called the main office? Hopefully things are working out. At any rate, And he's just great. He's like, during the 60s I smoked a lot of dope and talked a lot of long shit and didn't do anything. And for better or worse or whatever, he's doing it. He's in college and he's just having a great time. I want to share with you a great thing that my kid said. It's one of the greatest compliments for Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon that I've ever heard in my life. After he came back from Chiapas and before he went to college he was babysitting for two people in the program and this guy in this program couple said to Micah what do you think of your dad talking in AA and Micah said to him I don't really think much about it at all I don' t really give much of a you know they don't really care much about all I can tell you is that since I'm a very little boy the men and women of Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon have taken very very good care of me and never once has any of them demanded that I believe what they believe. What an incredible thing to say about a group of people, about a group of involved in a spiritual pursuit. That isn't promotion, it's not bullying, it's blackmail, it is pure service and love. And this is based on 13 years of his own practical experience in AA. This kid who was so broken and terrified and really done with his life at six years old. If you're new here I want to welcome you today I want to tell you that I think you're in a very dangerous situation we're basically asking you to not drink and we're saying that you probably don't have what is necessary to not we're asking you we're basically saying that what's required here is a spiritual experience we know you probably haven't had one please don't drink till you have one every craving has a beginning a middle and an end stop treating your craving with alcohol stop treating you're craving with a drink when it comes up become available for our treatment every craving has the beginning of middle and end. You can feel it break over you like a wave. Stand and take the whooping. You won't have to do it alone. That's what we're telling you. You want to do it alone, but if you keep treating your craving for alcohol with a drink, we can't get in. We can't the crowbar in. This is the hardest thing I have ever done in my life, and it's the best investment I ever made. The good news is our problem mainly rests in our mind, and the bad news is, our problem mainly rest in our mind. The big book of AA is the only text I know about a 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. It's it's a hooot you'll love cholera, you'll meet other people with cholera and then you'll be people who just caught cholera it It doesn't get any better than that. Alcoholics Anonymous is the only recovery I know of from a fatal illness that actually leaves the patient in better condition than they were in before they contracted the disease. Our problem mainly rests on our mind. I met this newcomer at a meeting some years ago, and I came home and he talked to me for an hour. I said, uh-huh, four times so he'd know I wasn't dead. And he explained to me that he had been stalking several women, he had a restraining order taken out against him, but he's two weeks sober now and it's all different. And then at the end of the hour, he said to me, geez, I feel so alone. And I said... I hardly know you. I just listened to you for an hour without interrupting you. What do you mean you feel all alone? He said, well, I mean, I don't have a woman. And I said, what exactly would you be bringing to a relationship right now besides stalking skills? What are you bringing to the party? But our problem mainly rests in our mind. Good news and the bad news. Some years ago, my wife was walking through our bedroom and I was talking to a newcomer on the phone. And all she heard me say was, let's say the aliens are coming. She freezes. She ain't missing a word of this. This is just going to be too darn entertaining. I said, look, I'm not telling you the aliens aren't coming. That's an outside interest. They could very well be coming. I only have one question for you. Why are they coming for you? why have they traversed the universe for your sorry ass you're a 11 day sober you have no life why have we come for you plus he's sleeping he's sleepin' with a bible on his chest so they're gonna come across the universe walk into his bedroom and go oh no the bible let's go home years ago I was sharing this story at a group and the guy who was the guy in the story is sitting in the crowd and I'm watching him and as I'm telling the story he went like this oh shit and I saw the horrible realization if you're new and the aliens are coming for you welcome to Alcoholics Anonymous welcome home thanks so much for having me folks