Scott G. on Spiritual Malady, the Ism, and the 164 Pages

I would now like to introduce Scott G. from Laguna Niguel. Hi, I'm Scott G., Scott Gimbel, from the podium. I'm originally from Chicago by way of Lagunaiguel, California. and I'm a recovered alcoholic on top of all that and since I complied with the AA tradition of showing up in a suit and tie I'm going to kind of just do this right here let it all hang out I'm really humbled and grateful to be speaking here tonight and thank you for asking me Bob it's just an honor and a pleasure and it's about the top of my list on things that I want to be doing. Alcoholics Anonymous means everything to me. It saved my life, and the opportunity to share the message that I've learned just puts me on a real high, a real sober high, And I'll share a little bit about that with you. Yeah, I'm originally from Chicago. I was sharing with one of the young men over there earlier that I'm from Rush Street, Chicago as well. I grew up there in the Red Light District. And I got here in December of 1985. I was on geographical from Chicago to California because I thought you guys had clean living out here. You know, get away from the other substances, which I'll stick to alcoholism because you guys didn't, I didn't know that you had that kind of thing out here. I wouldn't have ordered all that stuff from back there then. And thank God for FedEx, you know. But, you Know, when I always go to new groups, I just visit, the old timers they look like newcomers and the newcomers they look like old timERS so I don't know who to buddy up with because I'm always chasing the newcomer down. I want to see the newcommer and I want to get their name and I wanna take names and see if I can carry the message Like I said, I got sober in December 1985 on a geographical My father introduced me to the program Alcoholics Anonymous when I was 11 years old, as he was a recovered alcoholic. So I kind of grew up with the program. I had 10 years of hard, hard drinking by the age of 21, and I was definitely done. And I wanted sobriety very much. my way didn't work and at that young age I'd already been I moved out of the house when I was 13, 14 years old and sold stereos for a living and aluminum siding and all kinds of stuff that I can incorporate into my drinking life When I got sober I heard messages that If I was to go to a lot of meetings, 90 meetings in 90 days, or in my case it ended up to be about 3,000 or so meetings, that I was going to be a success. And about year four or five of my sobriety, I wasn't feeling that. I suffer from alcoholism and although the alcohol wasn't in my body anymore I had gotten rid of that part of the problem the ism was and I didn't want to understand what that was because I thought that having a lot of time under my belt or at that time a lot if time was going to work and as things progressively rolled along I wasn't putting the booze in the belly anymore but I wanted to get more out of life than a bunch of AA meetings and I went out in the world and grew a big business into a big business and got away from the problems of not having any money and, you know, money, property, and prestige diverted me from my primary purpose. But I didn't know what my primary purpose was. And about year six or seven I had a very, very well-to-do guy and you know I had everything that money could buy but I didnít treat the ism in the alcoholism part and And I started to get a little bit full of myself. And all along, I didn't really pay attention to the steps. I didn' t pay attention to the basic text, the 164 pages. I thought those were for people that needed to learn more about how to stay sober. And I already knew how to say sober. I just didn't know how to state uncrazy. And I was still sick with untreated alcoholism. and in not treating my alcoholism eventually we do the thing that we're most apt to do which is what I did. Alcoholics do one thing well, drink and it didn't happen like that you know problems began to mount up seriously business lawsuits started to fly in the door just about on a daily basis I couldn't believe it I was just looking at that I had married a gal and that marriage was not a marriage at all. We were barely married a year and I promptly got a higher power in the program which was a newcomer. I worked the 13th step and I got her as my new higher power. So my mistress was my higher power, my business was failing, I had no God in my life, I never worked a step in continuity or, you know, I stayed stuck on the fourth step for 100 years. And I didn't want to drink again. I really didn't wanna drink again and I ended up in a mental institution because I had the classic nervous breakdown. I couldn't handle life without drinking but I wasn't willing to get myself through the steps to get to God in order to solve the ism I was in purgatory you know, I had a lot of time under my belt and that's for whatever that meant but I had untreated alcoholism and I was, you know everyone would say ask Scott, go to Scott I had all the answers but I didn't know what the question was you know the booze is out of my belly and I'm no further along than the first day I was sober so I kind of make a long story short had gotten to the point where I had expressed to one person that I really loved and trusted and we were sober together and I just said I just want to kill myself I came to work one day, it was normal I couldn't handle it anymore I couldn' t deal anymore I didn' t want to drink and I didn't want to stand up as a newcomer my pride and ego were just so full of myself that I would rather die than drink again and report back that I'm taking a newcomership and I wasn't going to have it. So I ended up in a mental institution and the mistress came over about a week after that and said, I don't think this relationship is working out too well. Let me have it, I'm in a safe place. If you're going to break up with somebody, what safer place is there than a mental institute? They got all the treatment they can get. they're just safe as heck I'll just call the psychiatrist after she left and talk about it so you know I got out of there and I got home and I was still having nervous breakdown after nervous breakdown of anxiety every day I couldn't even get out of the house I remember one morning I was in the bathroom I wanted to drink so bad now that they had put some psychotic drugs into my body. I figured I just had kind of a mini slip and might as well go all the way. I just remember rocking myself with my knees to my chest on the floor of this bathroom to get the courage to get up and try and get out of the house. Eventually I drank again, and of course I would. I'm an alcoholic, and that's what we do. but I stayed out for 12 years and as an alcoholic that knows what he is and the type of drinking that I did it was a heavy 12 years it wasn't light eventually got a divorce so I was kind of free just to do whatever I wanted to do there wasn't too many people that cared about me anymore everybody in the program were kind of huddled in their masses of fellowship they had stopped reaching out to me and I didn't care anyway, I wanted to be drinking once I was stuck there I didnít know how to get back here anyway didnít want to getback here I thought if I came back I was headed for another 3,000 meetings and that wasnít going to do it I was scared you know, I was full of fear I'm going to go to another meeting and somebody's going to talk about their dead cat or their divorce and I'm not going to I'm gonna feel like I feel so eventually it really started to catch up with me too an implosion level of alcoholism and addiction as well I had met my wife in 1998 and I remember when we got together my wife's here with me tonight, my best friend and we had gotten together and she said, my sister's coming over today you're going to meet my sister, she's very Christian and I'm like, I'm getting all tight and I need a drink for that and she says, by the way I think we're drinking too much and I says here I love this girl and she's going to leave because now she's on to me now she's got my number but despite that I kept on going and you know I kind of toned it down the best I could you know before I'd see her I'd get after you know so amongst other things try to contain it the best we can while we're trying to, one of the slogans is fake it while I'm drinking and make it. Or I don't know what I was doing. I want the girl. I want it. I want all this booze. I want money. I want this stuff. And I can't have it all because I'm an alcoholic. What occurred is just a massive meltdown in about 2005. We had a beautiful daughter and we were very successful in our businesses and my wife wanted to have another baby. We went out to dinner on this conversation and I said, can't do it. I'm an alcoholic and I'm not going to stop drinking right now. Waitress brings over another double vodka to the table. I'm looking at this thing, I can't even pick it up. I am sick. I have been drinking all day. I Am sick. Now, selfish. Self-centered and selfish. Isn't that what we are when we are doing our thing? And even when we get a little bit sober because we haven't gotten through these steps yet. I had been working with a guy or talking to a guy that I grew up with from Dallas, Texas who today is my sponsor and I drank into another two years until 2007 October of 2007 when everything started to hit me hard and I was just tearing up everybody around me and I was in the bathroom at work one day and half my body seized up from being loaded on everything I said I'm going to die if I don't do something so in 2007 I started working with this guy he had 15 years of sobriety down in Dallas, Texas my sponsor his name is Tom Pick and he won't mind me telling you his name from the podium we had a similar story because Tom had 15 years of subriety and he went out and drank and he was going to meetings and going to meetings and saying at these meetings, you know, guys, I don't know if it's going to be today. I don'T know if IT'S GOING TO BE TOMORROW. I DON'T KNOW WHEN IT'S GONNA BE, BUT I'M GONNNA DRINK AGAIN. AND THERE'S NOTHING GONNO COME BETWEEN ME AND THAT DRINK. THEN HE WENT OUT, AND I REMEMBER HE CALLED ME UP AND SAYS, YOU KNOW, I KIND OF WENT out. YOU KNOW? I KINDA DIDN'T. DO YOU THINK I'M A NEWCOMER? AND I HAD BEEN, YOU KNOW. DRINKING ALL DAY THAT DAY. AND I'M LIKE, YOU'RE ASKING ME? And he says, you know, if you're going to ask me, you're going to answer that question. Tommy called me up about a month after he got out of treatment, somewhere in 06, and he couldn't talk right. I said, are you sure you're sober? He says, yeah, I've been sober for like 40 days. I says, dude, you can't talk. You're slurring your words. You can't speak grammatical sentences. I'm really worried I'm worried that he did brain damage this time and a couple months after that we talked again and he was getting better quickly so kind of the seed was planted of who I could call if I decided to ever want this thing again and I did I'd been working with a leading psychologist a PhD well known in Southern California about drugs, alcohol and depression and I'd go to his office every week for a couple years and he'd say on one hand we can get sober and life will get better and on the other hand we can stay crazy and I said well if that's the question and I'll tell you next week the answer. And then I'd leave those sessions and go out and drink. I wasn't ready after all this stuff. I wasn'T ready after ALL this stuff, you know, and finally I saw myself kind of lose my family and my wife. I could tell she was getting a little bit healthier than as sick as I was. She was going to be healthier and she's about ready to take it out the door throw my ass out the door and that wasn't the reason I got sober though I knew that in my years of sobriety there was some semblance of peace and tranquility without alcohol but I was scared to come back, I tried to come back between 05 and 07 probably 3 or 4 different times in the mass periods of sobrietty that were meaningless I'm a quitting fool when it came to putting the drink down I just pick it up, I couldn't make the decision page 24 talks about we lost the power of choice in drinking I didn't understand the very basic thing in the first step of our book that I was incapable of making the decision to put alcohol down that I was incapable of having the choice the choice left me long before the alcoholism started the drinking alcoholism I had no choice I would swear off every day every day I swore off in the morning when I'd be in the shower I'd swear off today I'm not drinking and I'd get drunk by noon two o'clock sure as hell I'd come back into the office and everyone would just kind of part ways like the Red Sea because they knew, you know, here he is and he's drunk. I remember one of my employees, you know, we like to play God when we're drinking and I decided that I'm going to go back and fire her and she says, you can't fire me, you an alcoholic. And I said, I'm still the boss. It's crazy as it was, you You know, you could call it high-functioning, low-functionning. My bottom was deep and low. And I wasn't too sure about that bottom when I was 21, although the stories, the war stories, which I don't tell from the podium, I tell those one-on-one when I'm sponsoring somebody or somebody wants to hear about my experience with alcohol. It was deep enough. I am just amazed that I survived all these years with half a brain intact and so when I decided that I was done done for good and all they kind of formulated some kind of intervention on me which would have been the second one in my life and you know how they all have the letters waiting for you and you're going to enter the room like on TV and they're all going to read to you how they want you to be sober because you can't scare me into getting sober you can't scare me into sobriety it wasn't going to happen so I let him off the hook because I was done I came back from that psychologist session and he says where you're headed now is back to the office I said yeah, there's a group of people waiting for you over there I said great so they started in on it my wife was there too and she was in tears and of course she's always in tears, you can tell a funny joke she's going to laugh. There she is, she's crying right now and my partner says to me I smoke marijuana every day why can't you control this my best friend says tome hey, you need a 30 day treatment and I was like guys, I'm done, let's go take me to jail I needed a medical detox and when I was there I had talked to my sponsor who's still my sponsor today and he says you just go along with this deal you get the medical detox that you need because I was going to shake I was gonna shake and bake there were other substances that I was doing it was gonna be a madness and I was ready because I got to treatment and my six year old daughter you know her father had never been away it was the same little angel that i week before i got into treatment i got down on my hands and knees in front of her bed because she was the closest thing to god and i said please god help me because i want to be done i just don't know how i don't know how to do it. I tried 3,000 meetings. I'm not knocking meetings. I am not knocking meeting. But my sponsor told me some very important things. He said, buddy, we have a spiritual malady that requires a spiritual solution. That's the bottom line. The steps are going to get us to the spiritual solution they're going to get you spiritually awake I was putting spirits in my body for all those years now I needed to replace the power of alcohol with the power of God and he explained it that way he didn't use higher power with me we had known each other for many years I knew there was a God and I knew that I was about as far away from him as I could ever be and if I wanted to have him back at me that I I was going to have to ask him. But I said, what do I need to do? What do I needs to do that I haven't done before? And he says, well, I'm glad you asked that. And he says, when you get out of that treatment center, you're going to get on a plane, you are going to fly to Dallas and we're going go through the steps rapidly, quickly, lightning and we're going to show you how to recover and get recovered book says 13 times in this book today I'm a self claimed big book thumper guys without this book I'm dead man I got to this place that Tom had taken me to here we go again another AA meeting But this time I walk in the room and I see 250 people, the happiest, healthiest-looking guys and gals I'd ever seen in my life. I mean, I didn't think I was in an AA meeting. I thought, you know, this is a pit stop. Where are we? You know, these people are really happy. I mean – and I'm like, you Know, they're taking something, you know. They're on something. And I said to Tom, I says, This is cool, man. what's up you know and he told me he says you know what God's up all these people here have had a spiritual awakening they study the book we don't talk about our problems in meetings we don'T talk about anything in a meeting except the solution and we go out and we take this work to hospitals we takethis work to institutions and we carry the message to the little sick guy that's still suffering that needs to hear the solution and not what the problem is and the problem is not alcohol how long have you been sober now Scott? I said well about three weeks he says alcohol is not your problem alcoholism is your problem untreated alcoholism is your exact problem and we're going to treat the malady we're gonna treat the spiritual condition the internal condition that I've carried around since I can ever remember that restless irritable discontent internal condition that my father had before me, and I just come to learn the other day that his father had it before him, and my great-grandfather before him stuck his head in an oven because he couldn't support the family. And you know, I'd learned a little bit more about alcoholism since I've been sober, and you know it's a genetic deal most of this stuff. It's genetic, you know. Not far from your family tree was some guy up there that was drinking away and treating his ism with alcohol. I was scared about the God thing. I was terrified because what if he had done his time with me and I ran out of God energy focus on me what if he's going to take the other guy I didn't know I was just full of fear we worked the steps fast one to nine three days it was night and day really it was easy The first two steps were questions for me. They were easy questions to answer. Am I powerless over alcohol? Heck yeah. Is my life unmanageable? Absolutely. When I put the bottle, when I put the stuff into my gut, I change. I don't drink normal. I don'T understand normies. Half a glass and they can be done. That is just insanity to me. Some of you are laughing, it's insanity to you too. You're going to finish that glass and you're going to finish somebody else's glass. I know it. I did it a thousand times. You ain't going to finish that drink? What are you doing? I came to believe power greater than myself could restore me to sanity. And Tom explained that it's not the insanity that after you put the drink in your body, the behavior that I did. It's the insanity the definite obsession that I couldn't get rid of. The over and over obsession. Nobody obsesses about alcohol except, my book says, the real alcoholic. You know, the book talks about the moderate drinker, the guy gets, you know, he can put it down. Wife says quit drinking or, you know no nookie. He's putting that drink down but he's, you know cool. And the hard drinker who gets, you know maybe he's got some problems headed at him, DUI and stuff. And, you know, he drinks hard. But he can put it down. He can stop given sufficient reason. He can start drinking. And then there's the real alcoholic. That guy was me. It doesn't matter what the reason is. I can't have a reason because it's not going to work out. I can'T make the decision. I can' t decide today I'm not going to drink because that doesn't work out It doesn't matter if my wife's going to leave me or my child is headed to grow up in another alcoholic household. That's not going to work out. The real alcoholic, which I am, has one solution, which was the spiritual malady and the spiritual solution to the malady. So we went through these steps and it was easy. It was easy, you know? I didn't have a lot of stuff that was unburied. I wanted to get it all done. You know, 10 and 11 and 12 are the bitch, you know. Staying sober and taking personal inventory every day, you know, I sit on the edge of the bed or when my wife is kind of fading out, I'll pick up my mental handbook and go, okay, who did you harm today? How angry did you get? And who do you owe amends to? But my primary purpose is like the fifth tradition, to carry the message to the alcoholic who still suffers. Without that in my life today, I'm done. I can't stay sober. Not for a minute. My intention isn't to find the alcoholic who wants help. I'm not doing the work that I'm supposed to be doing in the 12th step. having had a spiritual awakening and I was awake because I had lost the obsession to drink after I went through those steps the obsession left me I don't know when it was I know it was about 10-15 days after I got back from Dallas totally I wasn't thinking about drinking anymore I wasn' t thinking about anything anymore other than following directions these men and women And there's a lineage in Dallas. My home group is the primary purpose group of Laguna Niguel, and there's a strong lineage that exists in the primary focus group of my sponsor and then his sponsor Myers and his sponsor Cliff and Cliff to Joe McHugh, and then somewhere right there is Dr. Bob, one or two away. And these guys are all staying sober and they're happy, joyous, and free. And I wanted that. I don't want to be obsessed about alcohol anymore. I don' t want to think about alcohol any more. I want to be free. I want to happy without alcohol. Can it be possible? And it was. You know, my business started to fail badly when I got sober, guys. I mean, it was like downhill. I'm like, okay, I get sober and you punish me. Here we go down. I'm going to lose everything. And I'm taking new guys into the office and I'm shutting my door. I'm getting them out of meetings and I'M SHUTTING MY DOOR AND I'M GOING OVER STEPS. Boom. One, two, three, four. Let's go. That fast. Because my sponsor says, I'll call him up and say, I got this going, I got that going. And he'll say to me, did you talk to God about it before you called me? I'll lie. Yeah. Yeah. Sure did, you know. God didn't tell me anything. What do you got, you know? And okay, next, here's what I want you to do. Go down to that treatment center. It's about four blocks from your house and find out, go upstairs and get a newcomer to work with. You know, I earmarked this page. I carry this book everywhere with me, the basic text. And, you know, page 14. Bottom paragraph. Particularly it was imperative to work with others as he had worked with me. Faith without works was dead, he said. And how appallingly true for the alcoholic. For an alcoholic failed to perfect and enlarge his spiritual life through work and self-sacrifice for others. He could not survive the certain trials and low spots ahead. For me, that means life. The alcohol's gone. I'm not going to survive the ups and downs of life if I'm out working with the other guys. You know, in Dallas, they get to work with women. First of all, in California, A, my wife wouldn't allow that, and B, it's not customary out here. But I wouldn't be telling the truth if I was. If he did not work, he would surely drink again, and if he drank, he would surely die. That's me. This guy they're talking about in this book is me. Then faith would be dead indeed. With us, it is just like that. My book tells me things about must. My book tells me things about rapid. My book tells me that I'm recovered 13 times. It talks about recovering one time in the book. I don't have a drinking problem today. I'm still dealing with the ism. If I didn't have a spiritual awakening, and I didn't do this work, and I did not get close to a higher power that I call God, I would not be sober today. Because I am going through so much crap. I am telling you that I have a thousand reasons I could drink right now. And I don't have the obsession to. I got the reason, but not the obsession. My dog is dying of cancer. My father just got out of a coma for the second time. My business is failing. We don't know what we are going to do. These are great reasons to drink, aren't they? They're wonderful. I could have gone out on that. I can't afford resentment, so I can do the anger drink and drink at you. This program, the steps, are a miracle that saved my bacon because I finally found after 3,000 meetings that it wasn't the meetings that were going to keep me sober. The fellowship is wonderful. I love you guys. But the book talks about we trust in infinite God, not finite self. If I'm going to call you up and expect you to keep me sober, that's a tall order to put on you. I don't care if you have 30, 40, 50 years of sobriety. Because my mental condition is I'm an alcoholic. And without a spiritual awakening and without working these steps, I'm doomed. It is just bad news for me. Alcohol is, you know, it's killing more people than cancer and AIDS combined every year in the U.S., and we come around these meetings, and we try and get the slogans, fake it till you make it, and one day at a time, and I can't do it one day a time for myself. That's just me talking. It's my opinion, my experience. I'm done. I'm gone for good and all. I was done when I got here. I'm done for good and all. And I am responsible to keep spiritually fit in order to maintain that doneness. I am responsibility to maintain that connection with God. Even if it's just getting on my knees and don't even know what I'm saying. I'll use a third step prayer and I'll get into the book. But sometimes I can get so jammed up I can't even recall page 24 says we can't recall the incomprehensible demoralization of even a week or a month ago that last bad drunk the further away I got from the drink in sobriety when I was dry, the closer I got to drinking without the steps with the steps I'm about as further away from the drinks as I'll ever be with God I do not think about alcohol that is the miracle of the program and I'm the real alcoholic I even look like one with this hat and everything you know the miracle for me is the fact that I can come home today and the dog is happy to see me and the kids are happy to see me and my wife is happy to see other than storming through the door when I was a drunk, and no one wants to be around that, and they're scared of dad. The miracle for me today is the fact that I can get a hold of new guys and get them through the steps rapidly and watch them recover. The first 100 worked these steps in rapid fashion, and they didn't even have most of them. They had six of them, you know, Bill failed miserably in his first six months trying to get guys sober. Bob had better successes. This was a trial and error. Many people came before us that died from this, whether they died sober or they died drunk. I keep a list of 31 people in the front of my big book that died for alcoholism that I met in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. Most of them went out and drank again. these were people that had been sober either short or long amounts of time up to 25 years in one case without the psychic change guys and without the program Alcoholics Anonymous and without The Steps and without a higher power there is no solution the book says we have to live the spiritual life it's not a theory i try and do that to the best of my capability every day putting god first and foremost in front of me in my morning my prayer i can't wake up very good you know i still need four cups of coffee to get going but if it's just a prayer that says god who can i help today another cup of coffee boom I can get into some real prayer sometimes I don't have enough time to get into that prayer but I make time I put everything aside for the guy that needs help if I get a call it doesn't matter what time you know if I got to run out I do panels I do I've been speaking more and more about this stuff I don't do a lot of discussion meetings we do a great big book study in Laguna Niguel it's out of Dallas, it's the primary purpose groups they've been around 22-23 years now right Ange? and the bottom line for me is that without that work I'm done I'm dead man So I will sacrifice anything and everything I can in order to get to carry this message to the alcoholic who still suffers, and to those that want to get through the steps and not stay in the meetings, and those that think that they don't have a connection where God can have one or higher power can have on to work in the steps. I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to speak tonight, and God bless you. Thank you.