His Story – Humorous – Scott R.

My name is Scott Redman. I'm an alcoholic. Hi, everybody. Can everybody hear me? All right? I can't thank you enough for inviting me and my wife down to your extraordinary function. We have been rarely treated as well with as much hospitality. What a great function you guys have. What an extraordinary, welcoming, beautiful group of people. Thank you so, so much. I can't tell you how much we appreciate it. I listened to my lovely wife give her talk this morning. It was a little upsetting to hear her pathological lying was a little difficult. If you heard her talk, I hope that I can repair some of the damage by the time this evening is through. If you're new, I'd like to welcome you to AA. Can I see the hands of people in their first year? Wow! Wow! Man, that is the best news in the room, I'm telling you. And if one of those hands went up near you, get them, gang-step them, grab them, and talk that endless unsolicited AA crap to them. Get up right in their nose. Make them wipe your spit off their glasses, okay? Go get them. Give them that gentle hand of AA. If you knew, I'd like to tell you I've got a great life today. If you know, I'm sure that just thrills the living crap out of you. I'm certain it just excites you because I know I was so happy for the people having a good time when I got here. I was just thrilled for him, you know. And I'd sit and I'd hear guys and gals talk about the new car and the new house and the new family. And I would sit in my seat and I would think, you now, maybe you'll go home tonight and maybe your house will blow up. Maybe you'll blow up and then we'll see how spiritual you are next week. I'd like to thank all the other speakers. my friend Brian's here and I love hearing him talk he reminds me of my family which is bad news for Brian I just want to let you know that because my family is just a bag of squirrels they're just nuttier than 10 pounds of Christmas fruitcake and my family is insane, they were insane they still are insane my wife never believed me about my family until she met them and my aunt came to an engagement party that had been thrown for us and she wore her wig backwards and it had a bun on it, you know. I had understated the problem. I had not exaggerated for once. I had understanded the problem and they were just crazy. 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 because, of course, your employer is going to give you a complimentary bale of steel wall on the way home. And my aunt took a decorating course and made throw pillows and filled all the throw pillows with the free steel wool because it was plentiful in the house and free. That stuff works its way through on you. So when you were at their house, if you looked at the room, everybody was moving a little bit you know the whole room was like a pulsing living breathing organism and they're still nuts a couple years ago my mother calls me and says honey I've got bad news for you I said oh mom what your aunt Lena died I said Oh No when 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 harasses me so I stopped picking up the phone but but Phyllis died a couple of weeks ago, so I started answering the phone again, and they finally reached me to let me know that Lena had met her maker. And these are the kind of communication skills that we have in my home. And there was chronic institutionalization and suicide attempts and mental and physical abuse. 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 to do with making me an alcoholic. alcoholic. I'm not telling you they weren't nuts. They were nuts. I went to my aunt's 90th birthday party the other day. She doesn't wear a wig. She let her hair go to its natural blue, and the whole cavalcade of nuts was there, you know? And instead of being an embarrassment to myself and my mom, I went there with a nice suit on and put my mom on my arm and and showed up, you know, to help her celebrate her birthday. And if you're new, this might sound really confusing to you because a lot of bad stuff might have happened to you. And I'm not saying it didn't happen. But, you see, by the time I got to Alcoholics Anonymous, I had been in psychotherapy for 18 years. I was going to be dead, but I was gonna understand it. And I got no beef with therapy. I'm NOT knocking therapy at all. Therapy is great stuff. I've used therapy a bunch of times in sobriety. Now, my colossal blunder is I was treating my alcoholism or trying to treat it with psychotherapy, which is like showing up at a gunfight with a knife once a week and just getting this colossal ass-pounding. But doing good work. I was going to be dead with no edible conflict, but really, really dead. And again, if you're new, this might be confusing when I say that my family had nothing to do with my alcoholics, but you see, if they had, and again, I'm not telling you you haven't been hurt. I'm not telling you they don't got stuff that needs to get taken care of. But if my family had made me an alcoholic, then I could have gone to therapy, I could've worked out my family problems, and I couldve had a drink like a gentleman. I wouldn't have to go to parties anymore and say, Oh no, no heroin for me, I'll have a Perrier. I couldn't, I coulda just been like the normal people. If you're a drug addict, I'd like to welcome you to Alcoholics Anonymous. us if you're a dope fiend, which is somehow worse than any of us. I'd like to welcome you to AA. I heard a while ago a guy identify as a crack monster. Ooh, that's scary. Crack monster. Whoa. I wonder, is it like a Halloween costume for crack monster? And there's a new group that's come to AA I'm very, very excited about. I like to Welcome all the tweakers here tonight. I'm just so excited you're here. They stay quick for a while, you know, and And I'm not making fun of you, although I'm coming pretty close. All I'm saying is catch alcoholism. We'd love to give it to you. I caught alcoholism at AA meetings. I was not an alcoholic when I got here. I'm Jewish. Jews don't drink. You know? Because it might dull the pain. You know. You know, you don't want to waste any agony opportunity, you know. So if you don'T have the dreaded alcoholism, welcome to Alcoholics Anonymous. We'D love to give it to you. I grew up in this nutty house in New York when I was a kid. I'm from the Bronx. Really? Anybody here? Witness protection program. And I had an uncle who was one of the top ten welterweights of the world during the 30s. His name was Izzy Redmond. He was concerned about anti-Semitism. He was fighting in Atlanta in 1939, and he had his name changed from Izzy Redmond to Izzy Goldberg so that no one would know he was Jewish. I came from a wily bunch. punch. And I grew up in this nutty family in the Bronx, and I had this allergy right from Jump Street. I was introduced to an Old Testament God when I was a kid. I was forced to go to Hebrew school, and this God got your ass no matter what. He got you. He turned your wife to salt and killed your goat and put a finger in your eye and got your ass no matter what. It didn't matter where you went, how old you lived to, it did not matter, it didn't not matter. He got your a**. And I was trying to get in with this group of guys in the Bronx, this gang that was stealing cars and I was being brought, sort of inducted into this group by this guy named George Rosenstein and the guys were around me in a circle and George explained, he said, look we do, we We steal Chevrolets, Biscaynes, and Fairlanes. That's the only car we steal because on the column, the ignition head, off, on, and lock. He said if it's on lock, shine it. Get another car. If it's off, just take your house key, put it in, start the car, and off. And I'm trying to make my bones, you know? So I look at him, and I said, what if it'S on, on? He said, someone's in the car. Are you a moron if it' s on, or not? So I failed Gang 101. And for me, it was like, you know, I got rejected by the resistance, so I joined the Nazis. You know,I just went across the street and there were the hippies and there was no test there. You know? They let me in and I was off and running. And from early on, you now, the drinking was something that was a little scary to me because I didn't want to be like one of those greasers. so I overcame my alcohol problem with marijuana. I'd like to welcome all the pot smokers here tonight. You remember wow, right? Wow. Wow. And then right after wow usually came... What? What? Wow, what, wow, what? Watching a pot smoker is like watching a dog try to run on linoleum. There's like a lot of activity, but no movement. I was victorious over marijuana with pills. I triumphed over pills with cocaine. Cocaine is an excellent drug. It's particularly good for sex if you enjoy sex from the Neolithic period. period. And I conquered that gall darn cocaine with heroin. Heroin is a very dark, complicated artistic drug. Then you cross a line and become a vomiting pig. It's just a little hop, skip and a jump. And then I drank until I didn't want to be a drunk. And alcohol was on the table every day. And I was in my early 20s. I had slammed some junk. And went to hitchhike down from the Bronx back down to Manhattan. And my aunt and uncle pulled up, put me in the car. My My father had had a massive stroke, and I was taken to the hospital, and I couldn't show up for my old man. The curtain was down. The sound of the heart machine couldn't even get through, and I failed and collapsed as a son and a man and a brother. And my father was lost to me. I couldn'T think about him. I couldn' t talk about him . . . I couldn''t even look at a picture of him. But I knew what was wrong. I knew it was wrong that day, and I knew exactly how to solve it. The problem had been heroin and needles, And as long as I never did it again, I'd be all right. And I never Did It Again, not for 13 years. I just drank until I didn't want to be a drunk and watched my life run out between my fingers like a handful of water over and over and over again. I never understood I had an allergy. I never misunderstood that this physical allergy was sparking a bizarre kind of cyclical thinking that would drive me to take a drink that would ignite the allergy, that would cause a spiritual tapeworm to become present in me that ate me up from the inside and left me hollow and insane and alone. And it did it... And you know, the funny thing is even as a young man and I was sort of vaulting myself into my history of chronic success that I didn't understand that this tapeworm could dry up and just go completely dormant for a while. It's like they've got this fish in Africa that can dry up and die, and then the rains come again and it becomes reinvigorated. Hi. You know, that's my insides. And I didn't know what alcoholism was, certainly didn't Know That I Had It. Shortly after my father's death, I reached one of my dreams. I reached One of My Dreams a lot in my life, and One ofMyDreams was to act on Broadway. I was a kid who grew up in the Bronx. I was very attracted to that world, and I'll be damned if I didn't get to do it. And I was acting at a Broadway play. A new usherette walked in with long brown hair. I took one look at her. I didn' t even talk to her. I walked back in the dressing room, stood up on a chair, and said, If anybody talks to the new usharette with long Brown hair, I' ll break all the tiny bones in your hands and feet. So Nancy kind of every time she'd walk near a guy, he'd kind of go, and dash away. way. And my wife and I just fell in love with this woman. She was exotic to me. She was from Detroit. And man, I thought there were like palm trees in Detroit. I had never been out of the Bronx, you know? And we just, the earth opened up beneath us. And we had a great time. We were living in arguably one of the most exciting places in the known universe us to live. I was acting on Broadway when we were in our early 20s. We didn't know that we were just a couple of dogs trying to run on linoleum. We were going nowhere fast, but we went there fast, you know? And Nancy became very ill from prolonged exposure to me. I remember one time we had these big 32-ounce tumblers in the house and I came home and I popped a cork on a bottle of wine and I emptied the entire bottle of line into one one of these cups. And I turned around and my wife was giving me the pre-Ellenon rat face. You know, this one. I said, what? She said, What are you doing? And I looked at her, you know, seriously. I'm having a glass of wine. Can a man have a glass of wine in his home? Are we civilized people? We became so sick together that at one point a guy lent us his car and we sold the car. I will never forget this guy's voice as long as I live. He said, you sold my car? That's like house-sitting for somebody and they come come back and you're an escrow. What do you mean? Well, what had happened was it was the end of the month. We didn't have rent. Big duh there. The alcoholic life becomes the only normal one. I looked into my wife's eyes. I said, honey, I am so sick of being a loser. I am så sick of bein a irresponsible punk kid. Right? That's it. Let's not borrow money. Let's do the right thing. Let'S sell the car. And my wife looked at me with tears in her eyes and said, let's do. That's where we wound up. When I called this guy 16 years later to pay him back, his voice was exactly the same. He said, you're paying me back? It was like he was frozen on that end of the phone the whole time. We were living in New York and our older son Michael was born and we were surrounded by friends and family. We had a ton of phone calls, lots of flowers. And two years and nine months later when Jesse Jesse was born. There were no flowers, no phone calls, no family. We had been completely isolated by the disease of alcoholism in just two years and nine months. And it wasn't because people didn't love us. The ice around our heart had become so thick it had just repelled everybody. And Jesse got sick. He had something wrong with his heart. And they put him up in an incubator, and my wife's all alone in the room. And a doctor who I had never met before called me on my house that night and said, Mr. Redmond, your wife's under tremendous psychological duress. the baby's sick. We need you down here. And I said to this doctor, look, I'd love to come down, but I can't find anybody to watch my two-year-old son. And the doctor, who I had never met before, said, I'll tell you what. I'll give you my address and my phone number in my husband's home. Why don't you take your son over to my house, and my husband will watch him for you? And I says no. There was no way that I could accept this woman's remarkable generosity. This is a doctor, somebody I didn't even know, who made that kind of personal offer it's pretty remarkable but I think what would happen is I would have had to take a moment to look at my life one more time how does this how do you have this is when you're supposed to be in the middle of your community now now and we were we've been completely isolated and what was worse of course we didn't know why I mean it says it in our book if you ask an alcoholic why they've taken that drink again no matter the attendant misery and suffering that follows every single time if they don't blow you off if they They don't slough you off. If they stick with you, odds are they have no more idea than you. And the same thing of the lifestyle. If you can take a minute of stopping blaming people, stopping being terrified, if you can have a moment of clarity, odds are you'll have no more idea of why this has happened than anybody else. And little or we didn't know, it was to continue for three more years. That horrible, horrible place that we had wound up. I love reasons to drink. I collect them. My favorite reason to drink, I have a friend named Larry. The first time he ever read our book, he read the first page of the fourth chapter which contains a sentence which says, facing an alcoholic death or a spiritual life is not always an easy decision to make. And the first time that Larry ever read that, he said to himself, well how bad an alcoholic death are we talking about here? That's not a normal thought. That's something a normal person would think. But that's where my thinking will go. That's where I think it will go today if I don't treat my alcoholism. Last year, I had surgery on my hand. I'm 15 years sober. The doctor says to me, Mr. Redmond, you're going to need to general anesthetic. I said, oh, general anesthetics, general anaesthetic. Oh, wow. Normal people don't get excited about general anesthesia. They don't. I'll tell you why. Why? You're generally anesthetized for general anesthetic. You're asleep. But you see, I know some and you know it too. When they give it to you, they say count backwards from 100. And you go 100, 99, and then you hit react. Right? I love 99. And apparently, you love 99 too. By the way, the huge gapping wound I just gave myself in the forehead, I did it for you newcomers. I just want to let you know. I gave my blood for you tonight. Actually, it's a screen-shaped scar, which will be coming out. Favorite reason to drink I've ever heard came from a guy. I've been 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? And he said, I caught my wife cheating on me. Now, I'm telling you, I completely understand that. I absolutely understand. That was the product of one of two processes. That was either, look, just boom. He needed to come up with something and there it was. A polished gem, fully cut cloth, back. Or that was the product of weeks in the rat's maze. Weeks on the hamster wheel. Weeks of cutting and pasting reality. Of shifting the whole universe so it can just slide in slot by slot. I know I'm married, I know i'm a hooker with a beeper, I know ive got a gay lover, but the bitch cheated on me! Im outta here! I get that absolutely and completely. It was the same reason I was able to sell that car to do the responsible thing. Okay? It's for the same reasons that I love dental surgery. Dental surgery is an uninterrupted source of narcotics for a period of time. The best thing in the world when I was drinking is for somebody to tell me I needed dental surgery, and I'll tell you why. I leave out the middle. I go from you're going to have dental surgery to painkiller. I leaveout the surgery. I leaveat the whole middle. I leave at the pain, the sutures, the blood. But I leave out the whole middle. So when I did the car, I left out Grand Theft Auto. I just went to let's be responsible, sell the car. I leave, I leave Outforged the pink slip, look behind you for weeks every day that the cops aren't watching you. I leave that the middle. If you're new here, welcome to the middle, all right? You're going to hear a lot of talk about the middle because they're obsessed with the middle and uh jesse came into our life and it was a real sad broken home by that time my careers had grinded to a halt i had a ghost writing job which was sort of befitted my life at that time we're living in los angeles by that Time and uh about a month before i got sober i put my arm around my wife and i think she felt my accelerated breathing and i heard it just come out of her like a breath. It wasn't deliberate or anything. I heard her say, you disgust me. And I didn't argue with her about it and I didnít get mad about it because I knew it was true and I knew I felt the same way. And Micah and Jesse were just a wreck. By the time we got to the program, Micah was making these involuntary clicking noises with his throat he couldnít stop making. He was reading and writing years below his grade level. His small motor skills were all screwed up. He couldn't focus on anything, and there was nothing organically wrong with him. He was just scared all the time. Jesse was in preschool, and his behavior was so alarming because he was playing these war games and these robot games that he just simply couldn't stop playing. He could not come back. I think it is because it was just safer to be made out of metal. It just hurt too much to be a person. His teachers were really alarmed about the way he was comporting himself. That kind of play is wonderful for a child, but when they can't control the war that's going on in their head, which for me was just an internalization of the horrible war that he was living in the middle of. And if you get in between me and the drink, if you're my child, if your my lover, if my bride, if are my dreams, eventually you will disappear or you will turn into papier-mâché. You will either evaporate or you'll turn I turn into something less than human because I either have to walk around you or I have to walk through you. And if I walk around, I'll have to go bigger and bigger circles because it hurts too much to see you and my life just becomes this completely circuitous mess. Sound and fury signifying nothing. And when you hit it, it makes a terrible hollow sound. And that's where I was by the time April 22nd 1985 rolled around when I crossed the line I swore I would never, ever cross again. I swored I would never put a needle in my arm again because if I did, I'd be the guy who couldn't show up the night his old man died and I hadn't done that for 13 years but I did it again. Why? Why not? And the gift to me, the touch of the Master's hand to me is that I just didn't move the world that day to make it okay to put a noodle in my arms again. I don't know why, I couldn't tell you but I didn't. I didn' t turn the the world again. I called my therapist of record in my 18th year of psychotherapy. I told him what I had done, and he said to me, he was a new therapist, he said to me—I didn't know this at the time—the exact same thing that the man who 12-stepped the man, who 12-estepped Bill Wilson, was told by Carl Jung. He said to me there's absolutely nothing that can be done for you. I can't help you. I said, what? He said, I can help you, there's nothing I can do. The only thing I can suggest is you attend a meeting of Narcotics Anonymous, Alcoholics Anonymous or we have you institutionalized. Now why I didn't go to the institution, I don't know. Most other days, fine with me. I'd be with my people, colorful and adventurous people, you know. Uninterrupted source of narcotics in the nut hut. They give you good dope there and lots of it. Just hush, hush. And uh, but I didnít. I went to one AA meeting. I came home, poured myself a glass of wine And my wife said, honey, are you supposed to drink in AA? I said, absolutely. They're not fanatics. They're civilized people. You just can't get drunk, but you can drink if it's a full-bodied chablis. and of course two days later I went to my first AA meeting and I put on my best clothes and got a bad check to write you and went to this place a little clubhouse in the San Fernando Valley in LA called Unit A and I walked into this clubhouse and took one look around and I just could not believe it It looked to me like a thousand years of inbreeding in this one room. I mean, it just was unbelievable. Everyone had one tooth with a cavity in it. And do I bring my own bib overalls next week? Am I issued a pair? What's the deal here? And it was just Clem and Martha, you know. And I just, oh my God, Alcoholics Anonymous. How did I wind up in AlcoholicsAnonymous? 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. Alcoholicsanonymous. And they get right up in your face. You know the guy they send over. He's usually got like a 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 really appreciate it. I'll come back next week. We'll hook a rug. When's the arts and crafts start? And I'm waiting for the Jew hunt to start. You know, I know that's going to come out every minute, you know, any minute. Come on, Jaime, strap these antlers on, you know. Let's poke them with a hot stick, you knows. Knock his beanie off. Let's see him run. And everything was in Miracle. Miracle, miracle, miracle. I'm a miracle. You're a miracle The furniture and coffee are miracles too. Oh my God in heaven. The only reason that I think I stayed the only reason that I can imagine that I stayed because I hated it was that I was out of plans If you're new here, I pray for you that you are out of plans. If 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, the single most utilized in my experience, is the one more dope deal to set myself up financially for a sobriety plan. That's out there. It's going to wind up on the soft literature rack eventually, I believe. And I stuck around the ANA. And I struck around for six months. My wife had reached out to the Al-Anon family groups and started pursuing her miracle. And we both say this. It's just incredible. I saw it in her and she saw it In me. I never saw it in myself. I saw a miracle in her, you know. She was talking about this this morning. It's just extraordinary. She was like a health food freak with our kids, and she'd give them granola and then put them in the car with Dr. Death, me. And we had these... Did I cut out? Is that an acid flashback? What happened? No, nothing? What do you want to do? You think it's this? What? What? Is that any better? Can we get the signing lady back up? Can you hear me? Nothing, right? Okay, talk amongst yourselves. I want you to do some 12-step work with each other now. Can we go to Dick Martin? Can you pass out some of my tapes? What do you want to do, Morris? Boy, do I know how to clear a room or what. Look at this. Thank you. I'm Scott, I'm an alcoholic. A couple of Al-Anons up front when it went dead that said that's because he was lying. Can you hear me now? No? Can you here me now ? Is that all right? All right. Hi, guys. I was born in the Bronx. Wouldn't it be great now if I just told a completely different story? I was a small Polynesian woman when I got sober, and now I'm an overweight Jewish guy, and this is what sobriety's done for me. Had to be the Midtown group doing in that way had to be right that's an anabolic a group all right I love you you guys. Um, man. Wow. That's a problem in our marriage. I hated Alcoholics Anonymous. I hated it, man, I wasn't having any fun at all. I'd sit in meetings looking like I had I had a dental drill on each tooth, you know. I just, hey, you don't have to do that. You know those people who come just, they come pissed off, they stay pissed off they leave pissed off and I just was part of the frozen chosen, man I was not having a good time, you now and because I thought that maybe maybe it would not require this obnoxious abstinence thing that you read about tonight that total abstinance idea what is that, you kno it seemed crazy and unnecessary to me And my wife had reached out to the Al-Anon family group. She had this extraordinary sponsor named Ruby with a great husband named Milton, and we used to go to parties at their house, man. And there'd just be 50, 60 Al-Ans and AAs having a great time, yucking it up, eating a lot of food, and I'd stand off by the side, still felt just radioactive, you know? And our kids had all these terrible rules because when you can't control anything, you've got to control something. And the kids get these insane rules in the middle of Armageddon. Armageddon, you're saying, don't lose your mittens. You know, it's just absolutely bananas, you know? And Milton, pardon my French, Milton called the boys over one day. Micah was six and Jesse was three. Milton called them over and bent down and said, boys, your parents don't know shit. And the boys went, oh, thank God! You know? We suspected, but we didn't confirm it, you known? They had a confirmation and they loved it. They loved to hear that, You know, that we didn't know. We didn't know, you know. And Nancy and I just wanted to get away from each other. I used to sit up at night and she'd be asleep and I'd look at her juggler vein pulsing and I think, can't I just hold my finger down on it? What can we just do to end this misery? We really had become so sick and loathed each other so much that we And one of my first friends in AA was this woman, Jean, who Nancy was talking about this morning. And we loved her so much and she was so excited about our recovery. Neither one of us had the heart to tell Jean that we were getting divorced. So we'd go, you tell her, I'm not going to tell her. And neither one of US was, I think we stayed together for five months because we were too scared to let Jean down. And Jean is a friend of ours today. And I stayed sober for six months and I knew I was going to drink. I had seen the AA drill happen hundreds of times in just six months. People came in, they did the work, they changed and they stayed sober. People came out, they didn't do the work. They got sicker, they got sick, and then really sick. Then they 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 spiritually developed to judge anybody. everybody. And so I knew I was going to drink because I was receiving... Drinking got a round of applause? Oh, the sound went off. Wow. That was a flashback. Are we online? line? Everybody on the line now? Start over. I was brought up in the Bronx. And I saw the miracle of the program present itself in the fact that my children had become a little little less frightened. And Nancy really was, something was happening to her, you know? And so I asked the guy to sponsor me. He was a good guy, happy a lot of the time, and sponsored a lot guys. I found this guy very attractive. I asked him to sponsor me. And he made sure I had done some reading from the Big Book of AA. He invited me over to his house and he spent hours with me for fun and for free. He took me through, he read He read chapter 5 with me, and he took me through the first two steps. We reached step 3. We said a prayer together on our knees. We went back, and He gave me instructions on how to do a fourth step for the big book of AA. And I'm not telling you I had a burning bush experience, but I will tell you I stopped feeling like I was stealing someone's chair here. I've been going to step studies, you know. Whenever I go to a step study and someone chairs and they say, well, I've never worked this step, but I always think, but what in God's name will you be talking about then? I don't quite understand. It's like saying, well, I'm not a doctor, but I'd like to tell you all about your rash. I just, I don' t quite get it, but again, I judge no man, and you know that because I keep repeating it. So I did my inventory. It took me three months. I went back and I read it to him when I was nine months sober. I did steps six and seven for the first time, which have become sort of my working template, my operating sort of device for my relationship with God, and then I had to do my eight-step list. I try to share this any time I talk because it's the best reading of Step 8 I've ever heard. And I heard it from a guy at my old home group. His name was Nino. I've never seen him since. This was over 13 years ago, and I had never seen Him before. He had a heavy New York accent. He was there with a recovery group from a hospital. He had hospital plastic on, and he had never read Chapter 5 before. 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? and I'm just telling you that's the only thing I saw on the list when I looked at the steps I didn't see anything else. No, no, not that money. Look, I would not have taken that much money if I knew I had to give it back. Right? No way. No way if you had said to me at that time, not the car. And my wife and my kids and my dad had to go on the list, and I didn'T know what I was going to do about any of that because I couldn'T apologize to my dad the way a lot of people do, and it works for them. People go to the grave and they have a talk. People write a letter, and it works for a lot of people. It works for all the guys I sponsor, and it didn't work for me, I didn't get it, and I didn t know what I was going to do. I didn d know what to do with Nancy and the boys. What the hell am I gonna do? Sit down with my wife and say, sorry about this eight year journey to Hades, okay? Or say to the boys, sorry you've got no life. I didn' t know I was gonna do, and my sponsor, God bless him. I don't know if he did this with all the guys he sponsored, but it was the perfect thing for me. He would not tell me how to make amends. He said, do your job. Do your job in Alcoholics Anonymous and see what happens. And as a result, I had to wind up doing a lot of really lame crap. I had go to be a classroom dad and show up and run reading groups for my kids' second grade class. I had show up for flag football in Little League. I had to do a lot of lame, lame, lame, lame, lame stuff. And I had to do some really embarrassing stuff. We had to go into school and talk about the shape our kids were in and say, you know, he's really ill because we've been really ill and we're getting better and we need help. Can you help us? You know, never once as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous have I ever gone to anybody in the program or outside of the program, genuinely asked for help. Not to bully people, but to ask for help not once have I've been told no. People really want to help you. They really do when you go with that spirit, and they wanted to help us, and our kids, they cut loose all sorts of resources for our sons. You know, they said, get him into music, because the small motor skill stuff was so screwed up. Get him involved in sports, and we did. You Know, I spent 40 bucks of cocaine money on the Little League registration. I spent $20 of alcohol money money on some equipment. You know, I went and I bought Jesse a drum pad. I was so proud of myself. I took ten bucks of booze money and spent it on this. He wanted to play drums. I bought him this little rubber pad made out of wood and rubber and a pair of sticks. And I went to my own group and I bragged about it because that's what I'm supposed to do. And the guys, you know, like within two weeks the A8 drum set showed up, you know. There were a lot of burnout drummers in my group at that time. So guys are like showing up with cymbals going, dude. And like within two weeks, Jesse had a drum set so big that when he sat behind it, you couldn't even see him. And Micah, the AA keyboard showed up. And last February, my sons played the House of Blues together and burnt the dump to the ground. Burnt it up, you know? And over on the side was the obligatory group group of over 40 alcoholics crying. You know, there's this room packed with hip-hop, a hip-pop audience just flipping out going, what is it with those old crying guys, man? What is that all about? But it's guys that have known and loved our sons forever. And Nancy and I released each other with love so thoroughly that we needed an APB to find one another And we really, really left each other alone. And about five years into sobriety we really had to start coming together again and start finding a way to let each other know how we felt and what we wanted without telling each other what to do. And as always, you see my children have been great teachers for me. They've been great mirrors. And if you're new here I don't put a premium on that. I don't care if your houseplant or your pet was the thing that mirrored your disease and brought you closer to a higher power. It doesn't matter what the instrument is. That was the instrument and has always been the instrument for me, you know? I was sober a couple of years, and I was making my son's lunch, and I said to Micah, what do you want on your hot dog? And he said, I want mustard, onions, and lettuce. And I went, lettuce? And he says, oh, okay, I don' t want lettuce. And he walked away, and he came back about 45 minutes later, and he looked at me directly in the eyes, and he said, 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. What's that? What the hell is that? What is that?" A couple years after that, Jesse broke his wrist in a schoolyard accident it. And he broke it in a growth plane, which the way kids develop, that's cartilage that'll turn to bone and once it's set, it can't be disturbed. It's real serious, you know. But they're brothers so they're beating the crap out of each other, you know, two minutes after I get them home. And I had to get right up into Micah's face and let him know that this was something I couldn't repeat ten times. Had to not happen. I yelled at him. I said, you can't do this. You can't mess with your brother. That's it. Well, what if he don't? It doesn't matter. And And he walked away from me, and he slammed the door to his room. Slammed the door through. I got the dead tick going now. You know, he slammed it. Slam the door. Let's go see about that slam door. So I go to the door, and I open the door before I can unload on him. He says, hold it, 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, You were wrong. Don't tell me that I can't be mad. What's that? What the hell is that? That's what he has watched his mother and I try to do with varying degrees of success and failure with the help of a higher power. To try to tell somebody how we feel without telling them what to do. What does this have to do mit sobriety? Absolutely nothing unless you're going through it. Absolutely nothing until you're in a house where you realize that you're scared of the person who should be the closest human being to you in your whole life. Nothing except if I don't stay comfortable, if this does not continue to be a pleasurable experience for me despite the problems, if I do not talk about having problems in my 15th year of sobriety, if I did not do that, I cannot possibly elicit the help that I need from you guys. And if I cannot elicit the help, then I am going to stop allowing myself to be sponsored and then I can become a circuit drinker and I'll live happily ever after. But the people that have been so useful to me in Alcoholics Anonymous are the people who have hit those dead ends with their relationships, the fear with their kids, this crushing feeling of not being able to breathe at work and have brought it to the table with their higher power, developed new spiritual tools, worked the steps, never stopped sponsoring, never stop allowing themselves to be sponsored and their lives get bigger and bigger and bigger and it's funny if I continue doing 12 and I stop doing this other stuff the basic what are the first five propositions in the book they're the doorway to love how can I continue working the first three steps in my life in the area of work of relationship of love of sex of all this stuff because otherwise the foundation shrivels the top gets real big there's nothing holding up and it just cracks and smashes how did he drink? he was talking every week how did HE drink? He was sponsoring all of Minnesota. How did he drink? It was working for everybody except for him. My sponsor passed away a few months ago, an extraordinarily remarkable man. And I made amends to my father years ago when it started the day that I showed up for a guy who I was sponsoring when he died. And a couple of months ago, when my sponsor was in the hospital and I went to visit him, and the nurse took his blood pressure and it went a little up, and he pointed to me and he said, he excites me. And we sat in that room together and we told each other how much pleasure we got from our relationship, how much pressure we got. How much pleasure. We got from challenging each other spiritually and growing together. And I felt the presence of my dad as powerfully as I've ever felt it. A bunch of years ago, I realized that my sons had no relationship with my father because I was so ashamed of him and so ashamed myself that I wouldn't even allow a picture of him in my house. So I started having pictures of him and telling stories about him and I got free. If you're new here, I don't know what your black hole is. I don'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE WALKING IN HERE WITH. IF YOU STRANGLED A PUPPY, WE GOT A GUY WHO HAS STRANGLED TWO PUPPIES. I GUARANTEE YOU. WE GOTA BIGGER PUPPIE STRANGLER THAN YOU, OKAY? WE'RE NOT GONNA PLAY CAN YA BOTTOM THIS? BUT WE CAN. IT'S REALLY A WASTE OF TIME. IF WE NEED TO DO IT SO THAT YOU'LL IDENTIFY, WE'LL DO IT. WE'LL GET THE GUY OUT. GET AL THE PUPPYE STRANGLER. GET HIM OUT HERE. WE NEET HIM AGAIN. There's somebody who's too horrifying for AA. And if you knew, welcome. You know, we've gone from 2 to 2 million in 65 years. We're 2 million, we're in 150 countries, we have 128,000 groups, but I'm sure this isn't going to work for you. Our sons have had a lot of problems, just like us. We've had a ton of problems. We've got a lot more problems, too. One of my sons could be an alcoholic. alcoholic. A bunch of years ago, I came home from, I talked at an AA meeting, I think I saved everyone in Covina that particular evening, and I came home and he was having a bad acid trip, and I threw my arms around him and told him it was a pill that was going to wear off and I wouldn't leave him, and I called a member of AA who was a psychiatrist who got some medication for him, and another member of AAA went and got the medication and brought it back, and I said to the psychiatrist, thanks for your help, good night, And he said, oh no, I'm not going to sleep until Micah goes to sleep. And he stayed up until MicAH went to bed. You guys never told me my kids wouldn't have problems. You told me I'd never be alone again. I couldn't find anybody to watch him the night that his brother was sick in the hospital. But the night MicAH was sick and needed help, Alcoholics Anonymous was all over him. Two years ago, one of the guys I sponsor called me up and said, we're going to have our second baby, can you watch my two-year-old son? and Jesse was with me and me and Jesse took care of him and Jesse wasn't a child who I couldn't go down to the hospital and take care of you put my hand in my son's pocket and you put his hand in God's pocket and that's the way it's worked in our house Nancy and I if we stay together a couple more months we'll celebrate 25 years of sobriety 25 years in marriage sobrieting know. And if you're new, I'm sure you're thrilled for us. And I just want to tell you, I don't believe that God likes us more than the people who got divorced. That's just what's happening in my house. That is just what is happening in our house. My God expects me to do my job in Alcoholics Anonymous if Nancy and I stayed married or if we had gotten divorced. It's better for a lot of people to get divorced. That's just what happened in our our house. You know, our kids are doing okay right now. Some kids are dead or dying from alcoholism or are in prison. That's not because God likes us better. It's just what's happening in our house, you know? We got creamed in the Northridge earthquake, just whacked. We were right in the epicenter, and it hit that night. Nancy claims that I left a footprint on her forehead getting out of bed, but she's got this problem with the truth. It was terrible, Terrible, absolutely terrible. Shortly after we were at this function, this AA function out of town and this woman comes up to me and says, she used to live in L.A., she says, I'm so glad God got us out of L.E. before the quake. I said, so he likes you but we're crap but he likes it. And she said to me, I guess he just felt you had some lessons to learn. I just got to tell you right now I'm out of here if I got a God up there like get the Redmond boy get him no evacuation plan for you Jew boy get him I'm at it I'm not out of there I don't want to have anything to do with that world I couldn't stay sober in that world that world that God is keeping her sober it wouldn't do anything for me I would like to see her after her next lesson but I I had to get a God, for me, big enough so that a lot of things got to take place in his world and I didn't get to drink. And a lot OF the stuff on my inventory, a lot Of stuff about persecution, a lotOf stuff about bigotry was the kind OF stuff that could have kept me apart and special and kept me drunk and dead. I was talking down in Greenville, Mississippi a couple of years ago. And I witnessed down there something that I've witnessed many, many times in Alcoholics Anonymous. This particular time it had a profound effect on me. My host down for this function that I was at was a guy who was a child of the 60s, much like myself, who had fought in the civil rights movement down south for years. And the civil arts movement in his community was, in fact, a failure. It had not worked. The institutionalized segregation had turned into personal and private segregation. There was white flight from the public schools, then the school board started voting money away from the schools. It was a disaster. We have no opinion on outside interests. The reason why I'm telling you this tonight is because that guy who told me about this nightmare in his life walked into his first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in Greenville, Mississippi and for the first time in his life saw African-Americans and white Americans loving each other, hugging each other sponsoring each other waking up in the middle of the night for each other and this was a community that was completely virtually at least on a public level devoid of this kind of behavior What a deal What a deal! What a healing of the soul, this perfection of imperfection. Because this is the spirituality of imperfections. This is a perfect spiritual message being delivered by imperfect people. My hand's up in the air. And you've never asked me to do anything more if I was in the mood and I wanted to to return the extraordinary favor that was started that day that our friend Jean came over to our house and made a little place for herself in the filth on that table and showed us some kindness and love. Boy, you're strict. If you knew, I'd like to welcome you to Alcoholics Anonymous, and I'd like to tell you the good news and the bad news. The good news is that our problem mainly It only rests in our mind, because if not, then that wonderful line in our text. You see, our text says we absolutely insist on enjoying life. There's no sentence in any other book about recovery from a fatal illness that says we Absolutely Insist on Enjoying Life. There's No Book About Cholera That Says Choleras Are Hoot. You'll Love Cholora. It's Fabulous. You'll Meet Other People With Cholara. Oh, you'll meet people who just caught cholera. It doesn't get any better than that. Got some water? Is there any water? And the bad news is, is the problem mainly rests in our mind. Because alcoholics are having problems that people with other fatal illnesses are not having. A bunch of years ago I met a guy at a meeting and I met him. I hung out with him a little bit. I went home and he called me and he talked to me for an hour and during the hour he explained to me that he had been stalking several women and he had a restraining order taken out against him but it's all different because he's two weeks sober now and it's not true. It's all good. And then at the end of the hour he said to me I feel so alone and I said to him I hardly even know you and I just listened to you for an hours without interrupting. What do you mean you feel alone? And 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 exactly are you bringing to the table right now? People two weeks into remission from leukemia are not having dating problems. Alcoholics are. A couple of years ago, our son Michael was babysitting for a couple on the program. And this guy said to my son, what do you think of hearing your dad talk in AA? And Michael said, I don't really care much about it. I'm not a member of the program and I really don't have any opinion on it. He said, all I can tell you is since I'm a very, very little boy, the men and women of Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon have taken very, very, very good care of me. And never once has any of them demanded that I believe what they believe. What an extraordinary thing. Yeah, and that's for you. That's a compliment for Alcoholics Anonymous in Al-Anon. If we did what Dr. Bob suggested that we do, which is boil down all the 12 principles, he said you will wind up with their essence, which is love and service. What a extraordinarily perfect expression of it, especially in this In this time of spiritual propriety, of bullying, how many times have we seen spiritual principles used as spiritual weapons? I'm convinced that the main way that the big book of AA is much like the Bible is that you can take any sentence from it and use it to prove virtually any point you want to make. It's all in the eyes and the hands of the beholder. And that beautiful expression, that beautiful compliment for you was expressed by our son based on his practical knowledge, his practical experience of being a member of AA and Al-Anon. If you're new, I can't keep you sober for two seconds. There's absolutely nothing I can do for you. The only thing I can do for you is tell you my story and share some spiritual tools with you that can do an extraordinary thing. If you've been experiencing the cycle of spree and remorse, it can actually avail you of the cycle we have here, which is the cycle OF SURRENDER AND COMMITMENT, where a little surrender can create an opportunity for a little commitment, and that little commitment can grow and create the opportunity for A BIGGER SURRENDER, And it gets bigger and stronger, and it's just as strong as the horrible cycle of spree and remorse. A couple of years ago, my wife was walking through our bedroom, and I was talking to a newcomer on the phone, and she heard me say into the phone let's say the aliens are coming. She stopped short. She doesn't want to miss a second of this. I said look, that's an outside interest. I'm not telling you that the aliens aren't coming. They might very well be coming, but I have one question. Why you? Why have they come for you? Why have THEY traversed an entire universe for your sorry ass? You have no life, you're 11 days sober, don't you think they'll call a cop, go to a post office, something, right? Plus, he's sleeping with a Bible on his chest to ward them off. So they're going to traverse the universe, walk into his house and go, Oh no, the Bible, let's go home. A couple of years ago, I'm telling this story at a meeting and the guy in the story walks into the meeting and I'm watching the guy. I'm watchin' him while I'm tellin' the story and he starts laughing and he goes, Oh no! I saw the horrible memory come through to him. If you're new and the aliens are comin' for you, welcome to AA, welcome home. Thanks so much for letting me talk more than once tonight. Thank you.