Scott R. – The Cancer Of The Soul – 2025

Our speaker tonight is Scott R. from, I don't know, anyway, from Sherman Oaks. My name's Scott Redman. I'm an alcoholic. Thanks to Alcoholics Anonymous, the 12 Steps Good Sponsorship, and God, I've not had a drink since April 22nd, 1985. And for that, I am eternally grateful to you people. I'd like to thank the Secretary for asking me down to share tonight. I'd also like to welcome the new people to Alcoholic Anonymous. Can I see the hands of people in their first year? Great. Welcome. Welcome to Alcoholix Anonymous." I'd love to thank my friends Denny and Michael for coming down with me tonight. And it's an honor to be asked to do anything in Alcoholics Anonymous. It's an honour to be ask to share. It's a honour to ask to be a treasurer, to be the birthday lady, to be cookie person, to make coffee, to be greeter. It's and honour and none of those are any greater honour than to be aske to do any thing in Alcoholic Anonymous If you're new here I have a great life today and I'm sure that throws the shit out of you. if you are new I'm sure you're real happy for me I know I was so happy for the people who were having a good time in Alcoholics Anonymous when I got here and I would sit and I'd listen to people talk about their new house and their family and stuff and I'll be like and I used to sit in my seat when I was new and I said to myself geez you know maybe you go home tonight and maybe your new house will blow up you know maybe your family will blowup you know maybe you'll blowup alright then next week we'll see just how spiritual you are congratulations to the birthday people and the chip takers that's a big deal there are no big deals in Alcoholics Anonymous unless they're my big deals I've had a lot of big deals since I've been in AA taking a chip is a big deal, taking a birthday is a good deal I had a horrible journey to AlcoholicsAnonymous I was brought up in the Bronx in New York City anybody here from the Bronx? nobody here on the witness protection program? And I was brought up to a completely insane family My family was completely out of their minds My wife never believed me about my family Until she met him And my aunt My mom threw an engagement party for us And my Aunt wore her wig backwards And it had a bun on it Man And it wasn't a mistake It was the look she was going after What a bunch of nuts, man I mean, just nuts If you got something for free in my family It meant it was stolen This uncle of mine was a welder And he used to get free bales of steel wool And my aunt took a decorating course and made throw pillows and filled all the throw pillows with the steel wool and after you know when you sit on those after a while they kind of work its way through on you so when you go to their house everybody was moving you know kind of up and down the whole room had a little spin on it just so you don't think a lot has changed I uh some months ago my mother called me and said honey I have bad news for you I said what she said your uncle your uncle Izzy's dead I said, oh mom, that's terrible when did he die? a year ago I said what? she said, well you know were you hiding it from me? she said no, no, I just found out your aunt Phyllis is in the mental institution again and she calls me and harasses me so I haven't been picking up the phone but Phyllис died a couple of weeks ago so I've been answering calls and I finally found out that Izzy's dead if you're new here all I have is good news for you My family did not have one single solitary thing to do with making me an alcoholic. Not one thing to deal with it. I'm not saying they weren't nuts, they were nuts. A lot of damage got done to myself and my brother when we were growing up. But they didn't have one singular thing to me. They didn't make one single solitaire thing to make me an alcoholic. If my family and the damage they had done to me had made me an alcoholic, I could go to psychotherapy and work out my family problems and I could drink like a normal person. but I tried it. I went to psychotherapy for 18 years and worked on my family problems and never drank like a normal person. So if you're new here, the reason why I say I have good news is you've arrived. You've arrived at the place that treats alcoholism. And if you are not an alcoholic and you are new here I want to welcome you to Alcoholics Anonymous. If you are a drug addict I wantto welcome you at AlcoholicsAnonymous. If you're a dope fiend which is somehow worse than any of us I'd like to welcomeyou to AlcoholicAnonymous If you're the Bigfoot of dope addicts, if you're a dope juggernaut I'd like to welcome you to Alcoholics Anonymous And I'd also like to suggest that you stick around long enough To catch alcoholism You can have anything you want, you can be anything you wants All you have to do in addition to what you've got Is catch alcoholics And it took me a long time to catch alcohol I did not have alcoholics when I got here Number one, I'm Jewish and Jews don't drink because it might dull the pain you don't want that to happen you want to be completely available for any agony opportunity that presents itself in addition to being Jewish I had been in psychotherapy for 18 years so I was not an alcoholic I just had some very complicated and mysterious problems. And in addition to those two things, I was also not an alcoholic. I was a very complicated, adventurous artist. But I was not an alcoholic. I was an artistic Jewish patient, I guess, or something. I don't know quite what I was. So if you're new here and you don't have alcoholism, just stick around. Stick around long enough to get a diagnosis. stick around to find out what alcoholism is I caught alcoholism from you you gave me alcoholism I got alcoholism at these meetings at the meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous I have a lousy case of alcoholism today and it's a completely bizarre disease you don't catch it and you die from it or you can catch it and you can get better my father thought he was a real loser when I was a kid and I absolutely agreed with him I thought he Was a sap My father never made more than $10,000 a year My brother and I never went to school with ripped clothing And we never missed a meal My last year out there I made $80,000 My children did miss meals And my children did go to school With ripped clothing How had my father become a loser Take those two pictures and put them down next to each other How does that happen How could such a thing happen Such a thing can happen If a certain kind of thinking Becomes established in you Newcomers, I'm going to tell you exactly what we're going to do to you and then we're going to go and do it anyway. As a matter of fact I'm going to tell you and the you can go read about it you can pick up our big book and read chapter 7 this sadistic chapter in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous and what it says what we are going to talk to you and we are going to laugh with you and we're going to cry with you we're going to share with you exactly the way it's done in the chapter on alcoholism we're going to talk about the strange mental twist that precedes the first drink and we're going to get you to relate to us after we get you to identify with us then we're going to heap upon you evidence as to the hopelessness of your situation always good news for the new person and then after we do that it says then we stress the spiritual angle freely real good news for the New Man and it certainly was really bad news for me because as our book explains it's a subject that I thought I had neatly evaded I was brought up in the Bronx to a Jewish home I was sent and educated as a young Jewish boy I was introduced to an Old Testament God that I would not be caught in a dark alley with man this God got your ass no matter what he got you, he turned your wife to salt he killed your goat, he put a finger in your eye and he got your ask no matter what and there was no hiding for him and he might hang for a while but eventually believe me he got you and in addition plus my Hebrew name was Shlomo and I was a hip slick cool kid growing up in the Bronx and I wanted a Shlomoectomy immediately I mean I wanted out of Shloma and into James Dean as fast as I possibly could I dropped a Bible once in Hebrew school and a teacher said pick it up and kiss it and I said it never kissed me that was just about the end of my career in Hebrew school I set some really lofty goals for myself as a young man and I reached or surpassed all of them by the time I got to Alcoholics Anonymous by the Time I Got Sober I had a book on the best seller list I had acted in a Broadway play I had directed a film, I had direct a TV show I 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 people were horrible to me. They were just horrible to be. And if you stick around long enough to actually take the alcoholic test, we have an alcoholic test in our book. It's called an inventory. And other diseases, they have x-rays and blood tests and stuff. We have an inventory, and if you do it, it's a pass-pass situation. All you have to do is do it. And, you know, sometimes guys I sponsor, they'll do some writing on an inventory and they'll call me up and say, geez, you Know, I feel so bad. Can I come over and just read to you what I have? And I always say to them, You know, can you wait and do the whole thing? Can you wait, and come over, and read the whole thing, and see the whole mess? I'm resentful at them. I'm resentment at me for resenting them. I'm resented at them for watching me resent them. And I've had sex with all of them. I don't know how I got anything done. I don' t know how I got out of bed in the morning. And if you're new here, this is the disease of alcoholism. In our fifth chapter it describes the soul sickness of alcoholisim which is composed of resentments, fears and sexual problems. And if a person has a certain kind of thinking and it's mixed with this physical allergy that alcoholics have and those two things get mixed together they create a cancer of the soul. a soul sickness that eats alcoholics up from the inside like a tapeworm and leaves them insane and hollow and alone. And it started on me as a little kid, and I didn't even know it. And I still didn't know it when I got to Alcoholics Anonymous until I took the alcoholic test and passed it and then started doing the prescribed work, which was laid out for me when I took The Picture. When you take The Picture of the alcoholism in the inventory, if that picture is a nice big picture of that disease, then a sponsor can help you apply the rest of the work in the big book to really starting to appreciate what that picture is all about and start mending your way in the world when I take a drink I go normal people don't do that when they drink normal people don't experience the mental and physical release that I experience when I drink drink my drink goes boom normal people's drink doesn't go boom normal people don't have a drink and go out for a pack of cigarettes and wind up in Baltimore they don't I do I did I lived in New York at the time unfortunately but it did happen to me if you're dreaming about drinking and you're new here normal people don t dream about drinking my mother has never dreamt about walking into a palace made of cocaine. She's never had that dream. My mother has never dreamt about drinking Thunderbird wine and shooting dope. She's ever had that dream. I've had those dreams. If you're new here and you're dreaming about drinking, it doesn't mean you're going to drink. It means you're bodily and mentally different from your fellows. Hold on to that dream! Let that help you take step one at a little deeper level, and maybe you can stick around here long enough to be one of those incredible people who actually does the work and stays in alcoholics and I've got good news the people who do the work and work the steps seem to not drink, and that not drinking part is a moose if it wasn't for the not drinking part we'd be a much bigger organization there's just no question about it that god darn not drinking deal screws a lot of people up and a lot of people want our deal they want what they see here and just that not drink thing is a problem so I started drinking as a young man and I started getting away from the religion of my parents and my relatives as fast as I possibly could I dropped out of school I started on a series of misadventures I got arrested for marijuana use I sold heroin to a New York City policeman oops, right and I dropped out of school at a young age it was on the street, in and out kind of on the streets and off the streets for about three and a half years and I continued in psychotherapy because this self-knowledge was going to help me stop making these bad mistakes like selling the heroin to the cop and doing this other stuff I was doing good work in therapy but I was dying I was goingto be dead with no Oedipal conflict at all I was gonna be a very well analyzed corpse by the time I got to Alcoholics Anonymous I'm not putting therapy down our book says if you need a doctor, go get one treating your alcoholism with psychotherapy man, that's a bear because you see, if alcoholism is a three-fold illness if it's mental and physical and then becomes spiritual and psychology would be mental, which would be one-fold then I'd be treating a threefold illness with one- fold which would put me two-fold short which sort of explains why I felt like I was showing up at a gunfight with a knife my whole life. Because I did, I was a free man, you know, dropped out of school and was a freeman, but I did whatever alcoholism told me to do every time it told me to do it and I did it for exactly as long as it told me to be able to do that. That's how free I was. And I tried this self-knowledge and at the same time I did something that kept me free of alcoholism for years. Wow. Does everybody get a mic in this meeting? Is that the way? Man, it's a real digital meeting, I guess. In addition to that, what I did was I drank until I didn't want to be a drunk and then I overcame my alcohol problem with marijuana. So I'd like to welcome all you pot smokers here tonight. You remember WOW, right? Wow. Wow. And then came, what? What? What? Wow. What? Watching a pot smoker is like watching a dog run on linoleum, you know? It's like... There's like a lot of activity but no movement. There's nothing... Nothing catches, you now? I was victorious over pot with pills. I triumphed over pills with cocaine Cocaine's a good drug It's particularly good for sex If you enjoy sex from the Neolithic period And I got rid of that cocaine problem With heroin Heroin is also very good It's a very dark artistic drug And then you cross the line and become a vomiting pig Just a little hop, skip and a jump there And then I drank Until I didn't want to be a drunk And I managed to not catch alcoholism This is an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, but I've been asked to share my story, so I'll go ahead and do it. I'm talking about the disease of alcoholism, and I'm talking about how I use drugs to avoid catching alcoholism. And that's one of the things I had to learn that you guys very patiently and lovingly taught me once I got here. When I was about 19, 20 years old, my father had a massive heart attack, and I was stoned on heroin the night that he died. And I swore that I would never put a needle in my arm again, and I didn't. Shortly after this, I met an extraordinary woman, a beautiful, intelligent woman. And we just were nuts over each other. I mean, it was absolutely love at first sight. I just loved this lady. And we got married shortly afterwards, and we had two children. You hear sometimes in the program people are attracted to damaged people, and I believed them. I never have been. I've always been attracted to normal people and then I screw them up, you know. My wife got sick from prolonged exposure to me. We became so sick together that 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? I lent you my car. How could you sell my car?" Well, I know how we sold this car. It was the end of the month. We didn't have the rent. I looked at my wife and I said, Sweetheart, I'm sick of acting like a kid, like an irresponsible kid. Let's stand on our own two feet. Let's not borrow money. Let's sell the car. And she looked at me with tears in her eyes and she said, Yes, sweetheart. Because Dr. Silkworth says the alcoholic life will become the only normal one. He talks about alcoholics whose problems pile up at a seemingly unsolvable rate. They make many resolutions but never a decision. They're crushed under the weight of them. They can't reach out and pull in any other resource, any other power and they're caught in the horrible cycle of spree remorse, spree, remorse and selling the car. Fifteen years later when I called this guy to make amends his voice was exactly the same. He said, you're paying me back? He was a lot more shocked with the second call and I know I was. One day I took an entire vial of pills About 24 pills I took the whole thing And I had an idea to cook something And I died in the middle of the idea I went toxic, I turned blue I keeled over Nancy came home The stove was on And I was like And I said And I got a hot I had a warm skillet On my chest And I'm lying on the floor She came in and nudged me And said What's the matter And I say I'm tired And She called the doctor And described the situation To him And he said Well what are you calling me for Call a paramedic And she hung up the phone and called another doctor for a second opinion. She got a second opinion on a corpse, and we became grievously ill from alcoholism together. We had two children who became very, very sick from alcoholics. And by the time I got sober, my oldest son was making involuntary clicking noises with his throat that he couldn't stop making. He was reading and writing years below his grade level. He's diagnosed as functionally retarded by the special ed teacher in the school. He was crippled from the disease of alcoholism, crushed up and terrified. Fear ought to be classed with stealing. It seems to cause more trouble. The fabric of our lives is shot through with it and how terribly true for the young people who are exposed to alcoholism. If you get in between me and the drink, it doesn't matter what I say over here. It doesn't mater what I said over here If you're my kid and you get between me and the drunk, I either have to walk around you or I have to go through you. You either have vanish or you have to turn into a paper mache figure And if I've got to walk around you, I've gotta walk bigger and bigger circles because it hurts too much to see you. Children have such little ego strength to begin with. How many times can they vanish before they believe what they're being taught which is that they don't exist? And it doesn't matter what I say over here because the rent money is gonna go for something else if I need it. My kids never had the right stuff. They never had the right folder, the right jeans, the right lunchbox. Never. And the days they did have it, It was given to them with such insane exuberance and inappropriate excitement, it still felt dirty. It still felt marked, and they still felt apart from. Children of active alcoholics and untreated alcoholics, because as we know, just because you're not drinking doesn't mean you're treating your alcoholism. You can pick them out at the meetings pretty quick. They usually have a vein pumping like a garden hose on their forehead. enjoying the gift of step none in Alcoholics Anonymous but children of active alcoholics or untreated alcoholics live in a half-lit world again, it doesn't matter what I say over here it's a crapshoot it might work out, it might not work out and you have to start creating your own reality you haveと start developing things you can count on because you can't count on anything else around you my kids grew up in a psychological theme park they never knew who was going to come home which dad was goingto come home which mom was goingo come home because the families of alcoholics as our book said to some extent the entire family is sick and our entire family was suffering from alcoholism on April 20th 1985 I put another needle in my arm I crossed a line I swore I would never cross again I called my therapist of record at that time it was a Jungian therapist which was to prove important to me once I was to come here and read our book I called him, I told him what I had done and he said there's absolutely nothing that can be done for you I said what? He said there is nothing I can do for you the only thing I can does is suggest that you attend a meeting of Narcotics Anonymous Alcoholics Anonymous or we have you institutionalized I went to an AA meeting I don't know why but I did I went tot he AA meeting I told my wife I'm going and I came home and poured myself a glass of wine and I looked up and Nancy said, what are you doing? And I said, honey these people are not they're civilized. You have a glass of wine they don't stop drinking completely in Alcoholics Anonymous they're not off the deep end and the next day I went to another actually what happened the next day was I had already sent some money down to Texas for some drugs and they arrived and they were already paid for so it was incumbent upon me to take them It was a new drug called Ecstasy Ooh, a little moan just went up That doesn't happen at the Lions Club by the way You don't say ecstasy No one dabs at their eyes in the audiences And I took the ecstacy and it hit me man And it washed over me And I didn't even feel Jewish anymore I mean it just lifted everything Everything dark and painful Just kind of went away And I said to myself Man, I ain't going to need that AA thing And then it wore off Like it always did And on April 22, 1985 It was actually the day after that My first day of sobriety Is the last day I took a drink That's what my first sponsor In Alcoholics Anonymous told me what to do And I said well why And he said well on your natal birthday Were you alive all that day I said no He said you're going to count The day you sobered up as your first day Of sobrieting And that's what I have done I woke up at 5 o'clock in the morning I got into my best clothes I took a bad check to write you and I went down to Alcoholics Anonymous to pee in the cup and get on the mailing list and join Alcoholics Anonymous. And I sat down in the meeting and I looked around and I said, Alcoholics Anonymous, how lame is this? How did I wind up in Alcoholics Anonymous? This is beyond lame. This is beyond synagogue, beyond church. This is some plateau of lameness I never even imagined was available to me. Alcoholics Anonymous and I just couldn't believe I had wound up in AA and I hated you I hated the meetings, I hated everything about you and I don't know why I stuck around I think maybe because I was out of plans if you're new here I hope you're 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 share the plan with us. That's actually the book I've always wanted to see is The Collection of Newcomer Plans. I stuck around Alcoholics Anonymous for six months suffering from untreated alcoholism. I wouldn't have known a step if it had bit me on the face. I didn't even know I had alcoholism and after about six months my wife had reached out to the Al-Anon family groups and her miracle had begun and my kids stopped being as frightened as they had been. I saw Alcoholics Anonymous start to rear its head in my family and I asked a guy to sponsor me. And this guy took me to his apartment. He made sure that I had read the doctor's opinion, the chapter on alcoholism, the chapter through the agnostics and some personal adventures before and after, some of the adventures before sobriety, after sobriete and in the front of the book and in back of the back of the front end of the bottom of the back of it. And when he had made sure that I had done that reading, he brought me to his house. He read chapter 5 to me and on the way through he took the first two steps with me for the first time. Please turn it over. Chapter 5 to Me Chapter 5 To Me And on the Way Through He Took The First Two Steps With Me For The First Time We got on our knees and we prayed together and we made a decision and we took step 3 together. and then he went back and he gave me instructions in a fourth step of Alcoholics Anonymous and then all hell broke loose for me I started recovering from alcoholism for the first time I started recovery from alcohol if you're new here and you have not done the work in the big book of Alcoholic Anonymous and you're not feeling any better imagine my shock if your only hope for survival is to get into contact with a power greater than yourself and you haven't used the kit of spiritual tools laid out in our book to try to get that power into your life, I don't really see any reason why you would feel any better. It took me three months to complete my fourth step. At nine months of sobriety, I called my sponsor, I made an appointment and I read my fifth step to him. In the meantime, I started attending a meeting every week that my sponsor also attended. I started speaking to alcoholics every day. I started taking commitments at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, and I was a regular attendee at least five AlcoholicsAnonymous meetings a week. After reading my inventory to my sponsor at nine months sober, I did step six and seven for the first time, which had become my working template of my relationship with God, and then it came time to do my eighth step list. The best reading of the Eighth Step I've ever heard in my life took place in my old home group, and it was done by a guy named Nino. I had never met him, I'd never seen him since, and I had Never Seen Him Before. He was a newcomer, he had never read Chapter 5 before. He was there with a hospital group, he was a newbie, he had a hospital bracelet on, and he had heavy New York accent. And he was reading Chapter 5 for the first time, and when 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 down into the room as if to say have you seen this do you know what's in here man it was so beautiful man it was so pure it's all I saw on the steps it's the only thing I saw the first time I saw those steps no not those people not that money man I wouldn't have taken that much money no way not if I knew I had to give it back sigh So if you're new, don't worry about eight. It's eight steps from where you are. You don't have to worry about it. And it's really nine that you have to worry about. It's not eight. I did my eight-step list. I started working my ninth step and I continued to take inventory on step 10 and I started to pray. And I started to do my job in Alcoholics Anonymous. My wife and my children were on my eight-stepped list. What could I do? Could I sit down with my children and say, boys, you know, I know you've had no life, but I'm really sorry. Do you forgive me? I don't think so. Could I look at my wife and say Nancy, I'm very sorry. I'm a really, really sorry that we've brought in a disease into your life that we didn't even know I had. And I'm really, Really sorry about all these shattered years. I couldn't reasonably do it. One of the most hurtful and confusing things to me when I came in Alcoholics Anonymous was I heard people telling jokes about Al-Anon. I really love the fact that this meeting welcomes Al-Anal members. It's a great thing. It's an amazing thing. It's wonderful thing when they do that at Al-Al-Annon meetings and in Alcoholic Anonymous meetings. And the reason why I found it so hurtful and confusing is because my wife had reached out to Al-Among and I was very proud of her and very excited about what was happening to our family. and I was very proud of her for going out and starting to get honest about what was happening in her life and reaching out for her own miracle and I'd hear a few of these jokes being told and I go, hold it, isn't this a good thing? Isn't this like a goal? Isn't it like what the whole deal is about? And of course it is and I used to find out after working the steps and sticking around Alcoholics Anonymous that the people who were making those jokes were ignorant they didn't know what they were talking about They had no functioning knowledge of the work that's being done in the Al-Anon family groups and what it's all about. And it's kind of a people-pleasing thing, whatever it is. If you're doing it on a public level, then I guess you've got to vote. Your vote is that it's okay. I used to have all the votes, and I only have one, and my vote isthat it's not okay. My vote is it'snotokay because it's confusing to newcomers. and if you are fortunate enough and you're fortunate enough to be associated in your family or your friends with someone who's involved in the Al-Anon Family Groups, God bless you have a great journey I have learned some incredible lessons about alcoholism from the Al Anon Family groups that I have been able to use in my work in Alcoholics Anonymous My wife and I have Been Married for 18 years and we're excited about our marriage. We're excited about our partnership. 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. My idea of working in a relationship was to talk you until your eyes roll back in your head and you keel over and on the way down you go, okay. I just start working on myself and trying to bring a better human to the deal. So what I had start doing was I had to start acting like a dad. I had to start showing up at Little League games. I had to coach flag football. I had to, instead of saying to my kids, go do your homework, I had to say, do you need any help doing your homework? Can I help you? What can I do to help you? I had to start spending heroin money on bicycles. I had to start spending cocaine money on clothing and lunch boxes. You know, they tell us something when we come here, and it's, they tell us because it's true, that we're not bad people getting good, we're sick people getting well. That's true, but you know what? I might not have been a bad guy, but I did a really good imitation of one, and I felt like one when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. I felt Like a Bad Guy. You know why? I acted like one. And I wanted to start feeling like a good guy. And you know What? In order to start feeling like A good guy, I had to start acting like a Good guy. Two men came down here with me tonight. If you've stuck around with Alcoholics Anonymous long enough For a fellowship to start springing up around you To start becoming part of an enthusiastic, committed AA family I just came back from two and a half weeks on vacation One of the men I came down here tonight Called my wife every day to see if she was okay Another man I came downstairs with tonight Is my son's teacher And somebody who he absolutely adores And the three of us together are part of a bigger AA family, which is an incredible thing. On January 17th at 4.31 in the morning, I woke up. I live in Sherman Oaks, and my wife claims that I left a footprint on her forehead when I got out of bed. The house was shaken apart. We were right in the middle of it. Forty percent of the buildings on my block were destroyed during the quake, and we really thought we were dead. And Nancy and I and the boys held on to each other. The house was wrecked up pretty good. The shaking stopped. We waited until the sun came up, and we walked a couple of blocks away where one of the men I sponsored lives with his five-month-old baby and his wife. Their place was destroyed. We moved them into our place. Walked a couple more blocks away where my sponsor lives. A guy had just died in his arms. Don had tried to do CPR with the guy. The guy had been electrocuted. His place was destroyed, and the AA family just started operating, just kicked in. And this swarm, this kind of like this sober locusts started descending on apartments, moving people in and out, coming together, living in each other's apartments. Food started getting made and swapped. And I know other people were doing it, but I know what my AA family was doing. We were at this one place getting this guy out, and this other woman, this other neighbor was looking at, you know, 20 kind of happy, dopey drunks moving stuff out. Nobody's ordering anybody around. It's all getting done. And she said to me, how do you get them? Can I get them, you know? And I said, you've got to almost die, you now. Vomit a lot. We might come over. I don't know. When our older son was born in New York, we were surrounded by friends and family and phone calls and flowers in the hospital. Two years and nine months later, our younger son was born, there was nobody at the hospital. There were no phone calls, no flowers. There was nobody there. In two years and nine months, the ice around our heart had become so thick that we had either repelled everyone or some of the people who really loved us, it was just too painful to be around us anymore. We couldn't get anybody to stay with our older son so I could go to the hospital and be with Nancy because we were completely isolated from the disease of alcoholism. And on the day of the earthquake, we're right in the pocket, right in God's pocket, enjoying this wealth, this incredible demonstration of the power of God and Alcoholics Anonymous which you guys have bestowed on us. And I'm talking about alcoholic brothers and sisters, Al-Anon brothers and sisterhoods. I'm taking a look at I'm just talking about the whole incredible fellowship and sister hood that you've laid on us One of the men I sponsor is named Roland I've sponsored him for a long time And This is just one of the other ways That you've healed my family And it's in a way That Roland never knew about And that I never even dreamed of It's just one Of the other incredible things That happens in Alcoholics Anonymous We don't even know What we're doing when we do it He used to call me every night And leave a message On my tape machine saying It's Roland I love you and I'm sober And hang up And this was just his deal Every night he would call in And do that Years later, my oldest son Micah told me that in the beginning, when I first started getting sober, he couldn't fall asleep until he heard Roland's voice on a tape. Because once he heard Ronald's voice on the tape, he knew things hadn't changed, that everything was okay. That was the demonstration. He couldn't believe anything I said anymore. All he could believe is what he saw and what he heard and what his face looked like. What he smelled and what tasted, what was there. And what was their was a demonstration of love through this guy Roland Doles. If you're new here and you're drinking at exactly the wrong time, if you're building up a bright outlook for yourself and your family and ripping it down around your ears in a senseless series of sprees, if you fail to recall with sufficient force the memory of the pain and humiliation of a day, a week, a second ago and repeat the same insane behavior over and over again, you could have alcoholism. If you don't have alcoholismo, what is wrong with you? What is your problem? Consider the alternatives. You might want to stick around long enough to catch alcoholism. I want to urge you, if you could, to pick up our book and read The Doctor's Opinion. In it, this guy, Dr. Silkworth, who's a non-alcoholic, describes a class of people who are separated from their fellows and they're separated from them by something called the phenomenon of craving. They don't drink because they want to, they drink because there is a need for it. They have to. They drink to overcome a craving that is beyond their control. And in this section, this guy who's an non- alcoholic says, you might not get it. You might not understand. Why would I, a medical man, sponsor an altruistic spiritual society that I don't make dollar one on? We all know that medicine is an industry. We know it probably more acutely right now because there's so much discussion about it. And in it, he's one of the administrators of one of most prestigious institutions dedicated to the treatment of alcoholism and drug addiction in the United States. And he says, why would I do this? Why would i sponsor this program? And then he goes on to say, if you don't get it, come work with me. Come hear the sound of a man who wants to get sober and who can't. Come see the destroyed wives, the warped children, the wrecked up families. Let it become part of your waking hours and your sleeping hours. I guess he was dreaming about it. And he says, you won't ask me why I'm doing this. You'll know. And after you read that section, which is about this bizarre physical relationship that we seem to have to alcohol, I want to urge you to read the second and third chapters of our book. They describe a certain kind of thinking. The kind of thinking I just listed off. It also has two great lists in it, the second and third chapters. It has a list of things that people say about us. Geez, you know, the doctor told him if he drank, he'd die, and there he is all lit up again. You'd think he'd get sober for her. Why can't he just lay off the hard stuff? And then there's just a list of stuff that we say to ourselves. You know, I've had a couple. What the hell? How did it happen again? I'll stop after the sixth. And in both of these lists, things we say about ourselves and things other people say about us, there's a world of misunderstanding. It also says that we wouldn't be angry at people with cancer, yet we get angry at people who have alcoholism. And if you have this bizarre thinking and your great obsession, it says the great obsession of every abnormal drinker is that someday he or she will drink like a normal person. If you have these bizarre mental twists and it creates this yearning for you to have the first drink, and once you have the fist drink, if you had this bizarre physical reaction which condemns you to continue drinking because you have little or no control after you take the first drink and then you have to rearrange your entire life to accommodate this bizarre twisted kind of lie and this weird kind of physical reaction and you start lying to people and spending wrong money on wrong things and and doing weird things to people you care about your kid starts disappearing and he can't show up at work and you're positive that people are talking behind your back doing stuff behind yourback and thinking behind your back when that starts happening it creates this cancer of the soul this bizarre soul sickness that alcoholics have once they are in the throes of that they seem to be beyond human help and if you read our fourth chapter it describes it's incredible it talks about the fact that you have the necessary ingredient to get better that you've always had faith you have faith in power and money property and prestige and drugs and alcohol and that all we're going to do is give you a kit of spiritual tools that's going to take your focus and turn it away from that and turn into something that can save your life. That the people that you have seen as saps and suckers, the religious people, the spiritual people, the people who seem to be at peace in this world, the people you've looked at and say they're taking the easy way out, that's mushy thinking. That's horse shit. Only weak people depend on that. What our fourth chapter points out is that our thinking is the mushy thing. To assume somehow that we're this bizarre world that all melts down to a cipher that's aimlessly traipsing through the universe that it's all about nothing that in order to see the world that way you have to be ignoring all of the incredible laws of nature and all this other stuff. And then we have chapter 5 and it says at the end of chapter 4 the last line is if we draw close to him he will reveal himself to us and then it gives us the work starting in chapter 5 where we can draw closer to him. I've done that work, and I'm just another drunk. I'm a guy who hasn't had a drink for a while, if you're new here, and I don't speak better than other people. I just probably speak a little more than some, but this is not about one drunk talking to 100 or 150. This is about one drug talking to another. Once I took a look at my resentments and I took a look at my fears, and I took a look in my sexual problems. My sponsor gave me a bunch of stuff to do to start getting God involved in this sickness that had been created in me. Our sexual inventory, we're asked to write about seven different things. We're asked right about where we've been selfish, dishonest or inconsiderate, where have we unjustifiably aroused jealousy, suspicion, and bitterness and then what should we have done instead? Now what could I have done? What should I have gone instead? And I don't use this as a template for my sex life. I use it as a template for marriage. Or am I selfish? I want what I want when I want it. Or, am I dishonest? Well, I can be dishonest in a million ways in my marriage. I might clean the house and you might think it's because I like a clean house, but no. You tell me in the back of my head I think that a certain amount of housework should equal a certain amount of sex. There should be a conversion table on the back cleaning products that a certain amount of house work should equal a certain amount of sex. I'm not cleaning the house because a man should live in a clean house and live like an adult. No, I should be rewarded somehow for participating in something an adult should know how to do. And considerate, I don't much care how you feel about it. Where have I unjustifiably aroused jealousy? Well, if you don't do it my way, I might just look at somebody or talk about somebody in a way that will be harmful to you. Suspicion, I may just freeze you out and not tell you how I feel at all to get your mind reading skills going. Bitterness, all the other five produce the bitterness. What should I have done instead? This is the gift you've given me. I get to write about the man I always wanted to be. I wanted to being a certain kind of father whose kids would be proud of him. I wanted to be a certain type of husband who could be loyal and loving and understanding to his wife and could get her respect. I wanted it to have the respect of my peers. My whole life, I stood next to men 10 years younger than me and looked at them and said, I wonder what it feels like to be grown up. I have found a way with these 12 steps to give my life over to the care of God, as I understand it. And he has given me back a Scott Redman I can take anywhere. And there was almost no place I could go left in my life. It says on the bottom of page 69 after the sexual inventory, it says the right answers will come if we want them. It doesn't say the right answer will come. If I like them, it says, the right ancestors will come if I want them and I've gotten to write about the guy that I've wanted to be. And I don't always act like it, but it says in this way, we try to shape a sound ideal for our life and ask God to help us walk toward it. And that's all I've asked you to help me do. If you're new here, I want to tell you that nine and a half years ago I came to Alcoholics Anonymous an isolated, lonely man whose children were terrified of him and whose marriage was over. I felt like a broken, ugly little boy and today I feel like a handsome, grown man whose kids love him and want him around whose wife is happy to see him when he gets home and who has the love and fellowship of friends that were lost to us, absolutely lost to us. I want to tell you, nowhere in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous does it say the road will get narrower. Nowhere in the first 164 pages. It says come join us in the great reality. Come join us on the broad highway. Learn how to start packing things back into the mainstream of life. Get back on the firing line. It talks about life getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And if you're new here, I want you to join us on that Broadway Highway tonight. Thanks for having me down the shed. I want to thank Scott. Would you give him a hand, please? I would like to thank those who participated tonight, Margaret for the 5th chapter, Jeannie for the 12 traditions and let's have another round of applause for our speaker Scott. I want to remind you that we need help in cleaning up the kitchen. I would like to thank the Secretary, Debbie, for asking me to lead tonight's meeting. And next week our meeting will be led by another sober alcoholic. After a moment's meditation, I would like to ask Rosie to lead us in a closing prayer. Amen. This is recorded October the 6th, 1994 at a Lakewood Speakers meeting. This is a Caskey recording. For copies of this and other tapes, write PO Box 15818, Long Beach, California, 90815. Thank you.