Step 4: the Resentment Is Yours Even When the Event Is Not – Scott R.

My name's Scott Redman. I'm an alcoholic. Hi, everybody. Can you hear me? Good. Let's start out with something annoying. My sponsor used to like to do this a lot. I like to give everybody a chance to identify. So on the count of three, please say your name and the nature of your disease. One, two, three. Okay, you all know each other now. We can move on. I want to thank you so much for asking me to come and talk today and talk about this process that has saved my life. I lived my whole life in New York until I was 28 years old and moved out to Los Angeles. A guy or a new woman at a meeting, and it's been the worst Alcoholics Anonymous meeting I have ever attended in my life. This person's never coming back. Nobody's coming back. The fellowship's going to disband now. This is how bad this has been. And the guy walks outside. He goes, wow, wow. It's like he dropped out. That's it. It's like, oh, man, it blew his mind. I don't know what he was listening to. He wasn't listening to what I was listening to. And what my sponsor was pointing out to me was everything that's said needs to be said. You just might not be on the list of people who needs to hear it. That's all. The second thing he shared with me was, remember, they're going to stop. And I love that. I really love that. Because there have been times where I've been sitting and listening to a talk and had to think, this is going to end. This is eventually going to end. Because when I'm in the middle of it, it has no end. There's no end at all. In my coffin, there's going to be a tape of this speaker. This is never, ever going to end. And the third thing, and this was the thing that really had the biggest impact on me, he said to me, would you be willing to take the following chance with your life, with any speaker, would you be willing to get up to a podium, tap a person on the shoulder and say, why don't you sit down and shut up because I'm going to talk now? Would you be willing to take that chance with your life? And so far, the answer is no. Not that I wouldn't like to, now and again, but the answer, thank God, is no. I'm going to talk about the inventory today. I'm going to talk about the inventory in two movements. The first movement I'm going to talk about is I'm going to talk about what my fourth step was, what the architecture of it was, and the effect that it had on me. And then I'm going to talk about the inventory as an ongoing tool in my life and how I've used that as a crowbar to pry open some of the terrible problems that have beset me in sobriety. And of those of you who have not experienced any problems in sobriety, it'll be a pretty boring section of the talk. We would like to kiss the hem of your robe later on, so if you would please make yourself available, that would be fabulous. It's an astounding thing for me to be in New York, the site of, you know, just so, so much of my wreckage. And I, the profound feeling, the benefit I've received from my relationship with God is just never clearer to me than when I'm in the city. The 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous are old ideas. It's not a new idea in the lot. The only idea that AA came up with as a result of the confluence of some incredible elements coming together at the same time, Carl Jung, James, the Oxford group, and some Emmet Fox in there. But when these elements all came together, in concert together, the alchemy that was created about it gave alcoholics a message that they could carry to each other for the first time in a way that had never been produced before. I mean, the things that alcoholics were saying to people really weren't that different. It wasn't really anything. It's the messenger, almost. It's the messenger and not the message. But if the messenger has the wrong message, it's a problem. But they were able to bring things together. They were able to bring alcoholics in a way and deliver it to them in a way that was unique and started the spark of Alcoholics Anonymous. And it was such a thrill for me to be at the Bill W. dinner last night. I've never attended one before. And it was just, boy, it was just great. Just remarkable. I heard this story about I spend a good deal amount of time in Al-Anon. I spend a lot of time with an Al-Anon. My wife and I just celebrated 25 years of marriage last June. We turned an eight-year suicide pact. We got married in a marriage, into a marriage. And I was reminded of it last night. One of my favorite Bill W. stories, the guy who wrote the screenplay for the Bill W. film spent a lot of time with Lois. And I had not realized this, but Bill had turned down the cover of Time magazine. He was offered the cover of Time magazine for his picture, and he turned it down. And the guy, the screenwriter said to Lois, this is an incredible, humble thing to do. I mean, just how remarkable. And Lois went, oh, humble? You think it was humble? And the guy said, yeah. And she said, how many people have been on the cover of Time magazine? A couple of thousand, right? How many people have turned down the cover of Time magazine? One. And he loved to tell that story. So I love it. I love anything that humanizes Alcoholics Anonymous. I love anything that humanizes Bill. I love anything that humanizes our old-timers. I love anything that humanizes me. Because entrenched power in Alcoholics Anonymous doesn't work. It doesn't work. Bleeding Deaconhood doesn't work. Entrenched power doesn't work. It doesn't work anywhere. It doesn't work on an organizational level. It doesn't work on a sponsorial level. It doesn't work in my house with my children or my wife. When I was early on in sobriety, Nancy and I were having an argument. And I said, well, I'm just trying to be of service to you. She said, this is a marriage, not a coffee commitment, you schmuck. Okay. So that wasn't going to work. That little thing wasn't going to work. If you know anything about Alcoholics Anonymous history, there was a group called the Washingtonians. Which a lot of people in AA talk about. Nobody else talks about them. They were huge because they were a precautionary tale. And if you don't know about them, it's really interesting. You ought to read a little bit about them if you can. Because they had no traditions and that's why they ceased to exist. They were immense. They were huge. They even had Abraham Lincoln speak at one of their commencements. They were a group that started out being all about sobriety. And then they started being about a lot of other stuff. And they were so big. Now we're 2 million worldwide. In order to duplicate in ratio the population of the Washingtonians in the United States, we would need 10 million members of AA just in the US. That's how huge they were. Gone. Nobody knows about them except a few people in AA. And the reason why is because they started getting involved in politics. They started using their success in helping people get sober as a crowbar and a leverage to do other things. I have absolutely no opinion on what happened on September 11th. Not as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. I have absolutely no opinion. I got a lot of feelings about it. And sometimes my feelings are overrated by me. But I got a lot of feelings about it. And one of the incredible freedoms as a member of AA is I know that. I know that if people are putting their thinking and their actions on a service plane, if they're members of AA, that I can come to Alcoholics Anonymous and be free of an opinion. I know that any time anything happens in the world, and I love it, I know what they're going to say, but I love to see it. So I always tune in. Anything happens, they go to GSO, they say, what's your opinion of AA? And they always say the same thing. We have absolutely no opinion. It's like music to me. I love it. They'll always find some putts to talk. I mean, they'll always find somebody who is more than willing to hold forth and get that correct. And get that going. I was at a meeting recently where someone referred to the events of September 11th as a gift from God. And I said, well, you know, if that's a present, I don't want to open it. And that's your vision of God. If I perceive the intentional hand of God and the suffering of other people, not a world I'm going to live in. Not a world I even want to be even involved in. And the freedom of that. The freedom of that is absolutely remarkable. Some years ago, we got nailed in the Northridge earthquake in L.A. And it was really bad. We were at the epicenter. A guy died right near us. And I got a bad physical injury. Our house was just wrecked. And shortly after that, a woman, I was at an out-of-town conference, Alcoholics Anonymous conference. And this woman came up to me. She used to live in L.A. And she said, geez, I'm so glad God got us out of L.A. before the quake. I said, oh, so he likes you. He likes you. But I'm crap. But he likes you. That's so nice. And she said, I guess he just felt you had some lessons to learn. Out of here. There's no way, no way that I'm going to live in that world with a God that's saying, get him. Get the Redmond boy. Get him. Get him. No evacuation plan for you, Jew boy. Get him. Get him. Kill his goat. Turn his wife to salt. Kill his eye. Rip a hair out of his nose. Get him. I think you're due for a boil. Let's get a rash over there. Come on. Let's get something going. There's no way in heaven, in heaven. That is absolutely, to me, completely antithetical to the message of Alcoholics Anonymous. No way. And I know what people are saying when they say the road gets narrower. I understand what they're saying. My book says, join us on the broad highway. Become part of the great reality. Come and join the big idea. It says, help us join us on the firing line of life. Help us pack things into the mainstream of life. It talks about life getting bigger and bigger. More inclusive. Never more exclusive. And I love it. That's what I'm buying into. I want the whole thing. I know it's a shock. I want the whole thing. And without this inventory process, without the initial house cleaning, which I felt was unnecessary and annoying, and the follow-up 10-step work, which has been so rewarding and at times frightening and at times... You know, there are times... There's a lot of things you hear in AA. Some of them work for me. Some of them don't. None of the things that I've ever heard in AA that I find annoying can I find anywhere in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. I've heard that alcoholics don't like change. Well, I just don't like change I don't like. But I love change that I like. I mean, I'm nuts about change that I like. But I find change I don't like. Annoying. I don't... I've never complained about change I like. But I have... You know, so I don't... I mean, the notion that alcoholics don't like change is... Never worked for me. I've heard at meetings that alcoholics are above average intelligence. I have only heard this at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. I mean, I have... I have never, ever heard it anywhere else. I've never heard it at an Al-Anon meeting. Ever. Ever. And my favorite is that alcoholics are perfectionists. I'm not a perfectionist. I want you to be a perfectionist if you're one of my caregivers, as I refer to my family many times, my caregivers. But you know, these things work for some people and they won't work for some people. One thing that got me going pretty quick when I was new was I heard people talking about their brain in the third person as if it was some unwanted alien dashing around their house planning their death while they're home. I heard something so great at a meeting the other day. This woman said, my disease wants me dead, but it's happy if I'm just miserable. You know, this notion that my disease is constantly getting ready for, you know, for my demise. And actually the big book of AA, again, presents a landscape that's completely antithetical to that. It says that I'll know a new peace and a new freedom. It says sanity will have been restored. The alcohol problem will be restored. The alcohol problem will be removed. You know, it says I'll be able to deal with situations that used to baffle me. That the occasional hunch or inspiration will become a working part of the mind. Good news for all of you acid heads, you know. That that wow will actually be there a lot of the time. By the way, I'm very excited. I like to welcome all the drug addicts to AA. If you're a dope fiend, which is somehow... Hey, there he goes. Doesn't even remember why he's clapping. And... I like drug addicts who just like watching that. And I'm especially excited about the tweakers. I don't know if you guys are getting them here. We're getting them in LA. Big twe... Huh? No? No. They stay fast for a while. And every part of their face is moving in a different direction. And I'm not making fun of you. I'm coming pretty close, but I'm not making fun of you. And I... And the reason why is because I was a junkie, a dope fiend, a dope Goliath, a dope juggernaut before I came to Alcoholics Anonymous until I caught alcoholism. And that's really what I'm going to be talking today is how I caught it. How I caught it. I had to understand it. And one thing I'd like to do now with the help of one of my friends. Eric, will you come up? Is... Boy. Didn't know that was going to happen, did you? Step over here. What I'm going to do is I have a copy of the original manuscript of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous that was sent around to the groups before it was finalized. And what Eric's going to do is he's going to read chapter five as you guys know it. And I'm going to stop him every time there's a difference between the original text. This is the text that was changed into the text that you know today. And the reason why I'm doing it is I believe that they made the big movement at that point. I believe that they believed what was already in chapter five. Which is that if I... That this is about me. This is my resentment. I must change. I must ask God to enter my life and change what's in me. The thing was was that a lot of the chapter didn't really bear that out. They were still doing this. You know, which Bill talks a lot about. About that being the turn when he met Dr. Bob. Dr. Bob, of course, didn't get sober until he worked the ninth step. Which I'll talk about later. So, this is sort of important to me. And I want to... Eric is going to read chapter five as it's written today. And then I'm going to stop him every time there's a difference in the original text. Okay. How it works. Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Our directions. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program. Usually men and women who are constitutionally in cage. Or constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. There are such unfortunates. They are not at fault. They seem to have been born that way. They are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living. A way of life. Which demands rigorous honesty. Their chances are less than average. There are those two who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders. But many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest. Our stories disclose in a general way. What we used to be like. What happened. And what we are like now. If you have decided you want what we have. And are willing to go to any length to get it. Then you are ready to take certain steps. You are ready to follow directions. At some of these we balked. At some of these you may balk. We thought we could find an easier, softer way. You may think that you can find an easier, softer way. But we could not. We doubt if you can. With all the earnestness at our command. We beg of you to be fearless and thorough from the very start. Some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas. And the result was nil until we let go absolutely. Remember that we deal with alcohol. That you are dealing with alcohol. Cunning, baffling and powerful. Without help it is too much for us. It is too much for you. But there is one who has all power. That one is God. May you find him now. You must find him now. Half measures availed us nothing. We stood at the turning point. May you stand at the turning point. We asked his protection and care with complete abandon. Throw yourself under his protection and care with complete abandon. Here are the steps we took which are suggested as a program of recovery. Now we think you can take it. Here are the steps which are suggested as your program of recovery. One. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol. That our lives had become unmanageable. Two. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. Three. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him. Over to the care and direction of God as we understood him. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. Six. We are entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. We are entirely willing that God remove all these defects. Seven. Humbly asked him to remove our shortcomings. Humbly on our knees asked him to remove our shortcomings. Our shortcomings holding nothing back. Eight. Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all. Willing to make complete amends to them all. Nine. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible except when to do so would injure them or others. Ten. Continued to take personal inventory. When we were wrong promptly admitted it. Eleven. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood him. Praying only for the knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out. Twelve. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs. Having had a spiritual experience as the result of this course of action we tried to carry this message to others especially alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs. Many of us exclaimed. You may exclaim. What an order. I can't go through with it. Do not be discouraged. No one among us has been able to maintain anything like perfect integrity. Anything like perfect adherence to these principles. We are not saints. The point is that we are willing to grow along spiritual lines. The principles we have set down are guides to progress. We claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection. Our description of the alcoholic, the chapter to the agnostic, and our personal adventures before and after make clear three pertinent ideas. Our description of the alcoholic, the chapter to the agnostic, and our personal adventures before and after have been designed to sell you three pertinent ideas. A. That we were alcoholic and could not manage our own lives. A. That you are an alcoholic and cannot manage your own life. B. That probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism. Your alcoholism. And C. That God could and would if he were sought. That God can and will. And then there is a sentence that is completely omitted from the big book. The next sentence is if you are convinced. Correct? Being convinced. Being convinced. Before that the sentence was if you are not convinced on these vital issues you ought to reread the book. To this point. Or else throw it away. Thanks very much Eric. Thank you. Boy, you hear the salesman there. I mean the salesman are working. You know. They are selling car polish. And I love that. Either reread it or throw it away. They probably heard books hitting garbage cans all over the world. You know. I know that was the first thing I checked out with my book. It was the aerodynamics of the book. I wanted to check that out right away. So obviously they made a big turn. They put their money where their mouth was. So when I first read this and I went through it with my sponsor. He said being convinced you were at step three. And I said how the hell did that happen? Where did that happen? Was I out of the room when we did the first two steps? There are no written instructions on how to do the first two steps in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. A lot of people do a lot of different things on the steps. On the first two steps. They do prayer and meditation. They do writing. I can't see anything wrong with any of that. How could anything that anyone is doing to work the first two steps be wrong? The big book doesn't give any written instructions on how to take them. I thought about this for a long time. And the further on I moved with the work. The more it made sense to me. It made sense to me because I think these guys know. Why would they give written instructions on every other step? Really very specific stuff and specific actions. When they get to nine. Because they knew nine. I love nine so much. I mean they give so many examples of nine. And you know. The founding of our fellowship really dates from the day the doctor died. When Dr. Bob went and did the ninth step. And I love it because the real hero of AA was in my estimation not Bob or Bill. Bob went on a bender. He had been sober for a little bit. Went on a bender. Came off the bender. And he had to do a surgery. He was a proctologist. Which if you read Dr. Bob in the good old times. There were 12 steps in the sky in Cleveland. And when he found out that Dr. Bob was a proctologist. He said, well if that's the way they do it. I'm not going. And. And. And he had to do a surgery. And Bill nursed him because he was shaking. Bill nursed him. And there's got to be a statute of limitations. It has to be over on this. Because in the literature it says Bill gave Bob a goofball and a beer. And sent him in to do the surgery. Thinking they had successfully gotten him into good shape. The guy that gave more for AA than anybody was the guy he worked on that morning. As far as I'm concerned. That guy on the table. You know. There's no difference between what the chicken and what the pig give to a bacon and egg breakfast. That guy was. He was committed. Didn't know it though. So. What happened? How did I reach the third step? I think they knew from long and terrible experience. That the first two steps were intuitive. That if I didn't have some notion that I was an alcoholic. And that something was wrong. That they could piss into a gale force wind. That nothing was going to make it clear to them. Now my wife and I met. I was acting in a Broadway show. She was an usherette in the theater. I took a look at her. I fell in love the minute I looked at her. We've been together ever since. I just absolutely adore her. We started on Broadway. We were in our early 20s. Living on the Upper West Side. Man. It couldn't get any better than that. This is where we wound up. A couple of months before I got sober. I was in an industrial accident. I was in an industrial accident. And I was taken to the hospital. And they took my blood pressure. And the doctor said. Mr. Redman. You're going to have to lose some weight. You have high blood pressure. And I said. You know what. I'd like to do that. But I drink alcohol. And smoke marijuana. Before I go to bed every night. So I'm not going to be able to. And the doctor said. Why don't I prescribe some medication for you? And I said. What a country. And he prescribed for me. Chloral hydrate. Which has a fan. Chloral hydrate is a knockout drop. It's a Mickey. That's what it is. You know those 30s films. Where they pour a white powder. Into the drink of an unruly sailor. And he drinks it. And falls backwards. Like a piece of masonite. That's chloral hydrate. And I love these pills. I love my knockout drops. So Nancy comes home. And I'm standing in the hallway. Eating handfuls of knockout drops. And slamming my arms into the wall. To keep myself awake. To enjoy my knockout drop. Because. I was in the hospital. I was in the hospital. I was in the hospital. I was in the hospital. I was in the hospital. To keep myself awake. To enjoy my knockout drop. Because. You don't want to waste. A perfectly good knockout drop. So. I keep doing it. And keep myself awake. Until I just short circuit. And keel over. And fall down. Now I'm going to bed. And I can't get up. To go to the bathroom. So I'm incontinent. Like the rest of the 32 year old. Men in America. I can't. I can't make it to the bathroom. So one night. I wake up. And wet the wall. And everyone was excited. The next morning. He wet the wall. He's headed towards the bathroom. It's progress. Not perfection. Things are really looking up. So that's what. We started on Broadway. And we wound up. Wetting the wall. And that was like a Wheaties morning. You know. It was like a good thing. If I didn't have some notion. That something was wrong. What was anyone going to do? What was any. What dance. Was anyone going to do. To convince me of that. So. I really think. That these guys got. That it was intuitive. So. They had brilliant ideas. It says. If we ask a guy. And I do. A on page 60. That we're alcoholic. And could I manage. Your own life. Are you. Are you an alcoholic. Yes I am. Are you an alcoholic. No I'm not. What do you want to do. You want lunch. You want to go. We go to a movie. Because I'm not going to sit here. And say. Oh really. What about that wet wall. I mean. The. The. Because here's the deal. And my sponsor talks about this. So beautifully. How do I. Manage. To do this. My alcoholism. Has been going. Below the horizon. It has not. Presented itself. As a real problem. To me. It. Presents itself. As a complaint. Not a real problem. How do I keep it. Above the horizon. How do I keep it. In clear sight. So I see it. As a real. And present danger. Why does this happen. Why does this happen. To people I see. Coming into AA. With bottoms. That will make your hair. Stand on end. Guy comes in. Goes out. Comes in no arm. You know. Within like. You know. Three months. But he keeps. It keeps. Going below the horizon. How can I keep it. As a real. Piece of business. I'm a grown man. I don't want to live. This way anymore. I can't live. This way anymore. How can I. Now. Not only. Does alcoholics. Not. Give me the ability. To keep it. Above the horizon. But I wind up. Not drinking. Even when. I'm not. Trying. To not drink. So. I cannot drink. That's. Absolutely. Remarkable. Even when. I'm not. Focused on it. Something keeps. This buoyed. Above the horizon. So it presents itself. As a real problem. Even when. I'm not thinking of it. As a real problem. Are you an alcoholic? Yes. Is your life unmanageable? Yeah. Do you believe. That no human power. Could relieve you. Of your alcoholism? Well. What does that mean? Do I think. That something. Can change for me. As a member of AA? Not only. A member of AA. But a member of the AA. To serve. So. To. To be. A part of me. Yeah. Okay. So. Now that. You have. Got. That. You're. Yeah. There's some good. Money. Somewhere. Yeah. Maybe. You know. Well. So. The. The. I. Tell. So she made the leap right there. She, you know, she made that transition right there. You know, you make the move when you make the move, you know. A friend of mine shares, and I just, it's one of the best things I've ever heard a sponsor say to somebody. This guy was a very angry guy, and he would rail against God, and he didn't believe in God. And his sponsor said to him, how can you hate something that you don't believe in so much? It really shook me up. What a remarkably wonderful, beautiful thing to share with somebody. So, have I come to believe that a power greater than myself can restore me to sanity? Could restore me to sanity. Not would, not should. I don't get to get an appointment, but that it's possible, okay? If I turn to page 24 of the Big Book of AA, on the last paragraph, last two paragraphs, it describes a certain kind of thinking. It won't burn me this time, so here's how. How did I ever get started again? I'll stop after the sixth drink, or my favorite, personal favorite, what's the use anyhow? Now, there's, further back in the book, there's another list of things people say about us. You'd think he'd get sober for her. The doctor said that if he drank again, he'd die. There he is, all lit up again. Why can't he stay off the hard stuff? People understand us as little as we understand us. And one of my extraordinary things that I first identified it with in the book, is that incredible sense where it says, if you ask an alcoholic why they have had another drink despite the attendant misery and suffering that follows every time, if they stick with you and they don't blow you off, odds are they have no more idea than you. Boy, I want to tell you, that bankruptcy of knowledge and ability, I was exercising good judgment in other areas of my life. They became precious few as time went on, but I still had a few. And in the area of alcohol, I had this strange mental blank spot. So, if you have, this fully, when this sort of thinking is fully established in an individual with alcoholic tendencies, alcoholic tendencies, for me, means I've got this allergy. And if you're a drug addict, try some controlled crack smoking. You know, just fill your mouth up with crack smoke and say, I'm not in the mood and blow it out. And hats will fill the air, I guarantee it. And, you know, they don't suggest controlled drinking. I'm glad they didn't. I'm glad they didn't. I'm glad they didn't. I'm glad no one suggested that to me. You know, sometimes you'll hear in AA, I've heard people say you can do anything in sobriety if you're willing to pay the price. And I can't tell you how much that doesn't work for me. And I'll just tell you why. The conceit there is this notion that I'll be able to pay the price. The conceit there is that I'll be able to do this and not have this real and present danger drop below the horizon again. You know? You know, that kind of bargain just, it doesn't make any sense to me because the one thing in the, I mean, so many things in the big book are driven home again and again, not the least of which is you don't know when people say, well, if I drank again, I would. I don't know. I don't know. So, once this thinking is established in someone with alcoholic tendencies, they probably place themselves beyond human help. Isn't that sweet? They're so nice to us. Probably place themselves beyond human help. They're very, very nice. And if I go to the first page of Chapter 4, it talks about, on that first page, actually the second page of Chapter 4, so if you are someone with alcoholic tendencies, you place yourself beyond human aid. It says in the second paragraph, lack of power was my dilemma. I had to find a power by which we could live, and it had to be a power greater than myself. So, my only hope for survival is a spiritual experience. That's exactly what this book is about. The spiritual experience is. It's pretty much clearly promised to me in Step 12, having had a spiritual awakening, a spiritual experience, and that's what I want to do. That's what I want to do. I want to wake up. I have woken up to my alcohol problem. I don't drink. I don't drink no matter what. I don't get loaded no matter what. But I do a lot of other things that are injurious to me, uncomfortable to me, nagging problems, and I want to wake up to those, too. I want to wake up to those, too. Some of them I won't wake up to. Some of them I probably never will wake up to. But how can I use these tools to keep them buoyed above the horizon, to keep them as a real and present problem instead of just a complaint? Because once they become a complaint, they become a grinding, constant, nagging, roiling complaint. And one more time, my head's hitting the pillow, and it's becoming a rotisserie. It's not a pillow anymore. And my brain becomes too big for my skull. It becomes a little psychological crockpot. And I start going, I'm mad. But that's the 10th step. So my sponsor said, are you an alcoholic? I said, yes. He said, is your life unmanageable? I said, yes. And he said, do you think things can change for you as a result of Alcoholics Anonymous? And I said, you know what? I really do. And he said, let's move on. And he read the rest of Chapter 5 to me. And we reach page 62. And on page 62, I believe, is the most concise, precise. Description of the psychological mindset of the savage, uncivilized alcoholic. It says in the second paragraph, selfishness, self-centeredness, that we think is the root of our troubles. Driven. Driven does not mean nudged or influenced. Driven means under the lash of, in slavery to. Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity. I don't know, is that a hundred? Is that like 25 of each, or a hundred of each? I don't know. It's a lot. Um. We step on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate. Sometimes they hurt us seemingly without provocation, but we invariably, invariably means without variation, every time with no loopholes. Invariably find that at some time in the past we have made decisions based on self, which later placed us in a position to be hurt. Invariably. All right. I got a problem with that. I got a big problem with that. I was resentful against the Nazis for slurring Jews during World War II. Huh. How do I put myself in a position to be hurt? How could I have possibly participated in this event? How could I apply this unbelievably powerful, powerful spiritual tool? This is the spiritual tool that the whole program turns on. It's the spiritual tool that we saw their rewrite of that chapter of the book turned on. It stopped saying you and it started saying I. I, I, I. What is it in me? God's got a magic wand, magic time. He comes and touches me in the head. What poison in me will remove this stuff? What did I do? I was resentful at my aunt for pinning my arms to my sides when I was about two, three years old so that I could be struck by my cousin. What did I do to place myself in a position to be hurt? Absolutely nothing. For me, and different people have different opinions on this, it's not okay to do that to a kid. It's absolutely, there's no excuse for somebody to leave a kid physically helpless so he could be struck. For me, that's not okay. I didn't get it. And what my sponsor did was he really pushed me from the boat to the shore. He said, Scott, they're talking about the resentment, not the event. The event's not your fault. The event's not always your fault. A lot of stuff has happened, and I'm going to share. I was talking with somebody earlier. It's something I love to do. I'm going to share with you what was for many years my favorite line in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. You can find it on the bottom of 65 and the top of 66. And when I was new, I just used to love to just read this. This is before I went to bed. It starts with, now, they're assuming that you're looking at a list of resentments, okay, that you've written, three columns of resentments. It says, the first thing apparent was that this world and its people were often quite wrong. That's enough for tonight, you know, and I go to sleep. I just, how fabulous. They didn't really have to write a whole book. They could have just written that sentence, put it on a pillow. And if you're new, don't read the next two pages because you're screwed. Because what they talk about is what I'm talking about right now. The difference between the resentment and the event. Was the event of the Nazis slaughtering? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Is the resentment my fault? Absolutely, without variation, and no loophole every time. And I'm going to talk about the interior of that resentment in a minute and how I managed to get. Free of it and how I've managed to get free of the stuff that's happened in the last couple of weeks and it keeps coming up. So I go back to the source and I get freedom again until I get pounded down by it and then I get it again and I get it again and I get it again. I'm just as tenacious about this about as I was about drinking. I went back again and again and again and again. And, the alcoholic mind, you know, it's a funny thing, the two you've heard, I mean, the, the, the, the phrase alcoholic thinking. Is the source of a lot of mirth at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. Everybody, I, I love newcomer plans. I love reasons to drink. They're my favorite things in the whole world. My, I have a friend, Larry, who the first time he ever read our book, he got to the first page of chapter four, which says basically facing an alcoholic death or a spiritual life is not always an easy decision to make. And he said to himself, well, how bad an alcoholic death are we talking about here? You know what, what are we, and. A normal person wouldn't think that, absolutely not, but I, I still have that kind of thinking and untreated, my problem will go below the horizon. A couple of years ago, I, I needed surgery on my hand and the doctor, I was with the doctor, he said, you know, Mr. Redmond, you're going to need a local, a general anesthetic. I said, general anesthetic, oh man, this is great. Normal people do not get excited about general anesthetic. There's no. Normal person that goes, oh, oh, oh, and I'll tell you why I love general anesthetic. I know that when they hit you with general anesthetic, they hit you with it. They say, count backwards from a hundred and you go a hundred 99. I love 99. I love 99. And it sounds like some of you love 99 too. The difference is, is I won't trade my life in for 99 anymore. I won't settle for a nickel. T. I won't settle for a dime today when I could have a quarter tomorrow, I won't, I won't live like a loser anymore. You know, one of the other things that never made sense to me, I heard in AA is one of the most misquoted lines in the big book of alcoholism is for me. Uh, so from the end of chapter three, I've heard people say my worst day in here is better than my best day out there. No, no. Well, let's see, I could pound a cocaine and an all female jazz band or a candlelight meeting at Bellevue. What, you know, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what. What, let's see, what, what, what, let's see, let's think. Let me try to figure this out. What, what the book says, what the guy says is I wouldn't trade my worst day in here for my best day out there because I won't live that way anymore. I won't do it because his alcoholism stayed above the horizon. He could appreciate it. He knew what's chasing that nickel was going to be, you know, that's an extraordinary thing. So to me, to me, one of the two great, and this is not good news, but the two, two of the most precise explanations or descriptions of alcoholic thinking I've ever heard was one from the description. It was from a Kurt Vonnegut book, and he was talking about the Nazi mind. And he said the Nazi mind, and I say the alcoholic mind, is like a perfectly tuned clock that keeps the most precise exact time in the universe and then skips a minute. It keeps the most precise. It keeps the most precise exact time in the universe for a second and then skips a century. When it works, it's beautiful. It's rhapsodic. And when it doesn't, it leaves gaps large enough to move an entire culture through. You know, how did it happen again? How did it, how did it, was I in the room when it happened? How did it happen again? And one of the other extraordinary descriptions of alcoholic thinking, unfortunately, came from a description of the Nazi mind. It came from a description of the Nazi mind. It came from a description of the Nazi mind. It came from a description of Ted Bundy, a famous serial killer. And it's a fascinating thing. When Bundy, if you know anything about his crimes, did horrible stuff, unspeakable stuff, killed a lot of people. And he would represent himself. He was a law student, and he represented himself in court. And he was brilliant. He was really brilliant. And these shrinks and cops and lawyers who had been pursuing him all this time across many states were standing around talking about the guy. And they were going. They were starting to admit that when he was in court, they liked him. They found his arguments appealing and compelling. They were like, they found themselves sort of like going with it. And one of the shrinks, I think, was one of the shrinks, said, don't you understand? And they were saying, how does he do it? How does he do it? And this shrink said, to me, one of the great things about alcoholism. He said, don't you understand, when he's in that courtroom, the only thing that is real to him is his own agony. That is the only thing. That is the only thing that is real to him. And what an incredible statement about our self-centeredness. On page 62, the paragraph right after the one that I read says, we must be rid of this self-centeredness or it kills us. No big thing. We just get to die. They threaten us with death about five times in the fifth chapter. But they do it in such an adorable way. It's hard to pick those out. But the first threat of death is right there. And my sponsor read to me this section on step three. And then we. We reached, on page 63, the formal terms of surrender. And if you'd like to join me now on page 63, the second paragraph, why don't we all take the third step together. Okay? God. My sponsor did a very beautiful thing for me the day that he took me through the third step. He said, let's get on our knees like they used to do in the old days. And let's take this step. And he opened up his book. I didn't know the prayer. I was pretty new. And I hadn't been doing much. And I had been enjoying the gift of step none. And I was about to. And he did a beautiful thing for me. He read the prayer with me out of the book. And I kind of looked at him and went, this guy ought to know this. Maybe I didn't get the right guy. Don't you think he ought to know this already? I mean, is he. I mean, that's where my head is. And of course he knew it. What he was doing was. He didn't want to separate himself from me. He knew I had to read it. And he read it with me. What an incredibly beautiful thing. That he didn't have to be the expert. That he didn't have to be the authority. What a gorgeous thing. Right before he took that step, he read to me the sentence, which I believe is the point of Alcoholics Anonymous. It's on the last chapter of page 62. This is the how and the why of it. First of all, we had to quit playing God. I had to quit playing God. My favorite non-conference approved piece of literature, or certainly one of them, one of them I'll be talking about today, which is Emmet Fox's Sermon on the Mount. Certainly something that a Bronx Jew figured he would be doing eventually, talking about the Sermon on the Mount to a bunch of alcoholics. High on my list. If you're wondering where my grandmother is buried, go to the graveyard. Whoever looks like they've recently turned over in their grave, that's where she is. And it's a book called Not God. It's my favorite. It's my favorite history of AA. By a guy named Kurtz. And if you haven't read it, it's just a remarkable, remarkable book. And he came to AA to do a thesis and joined. I love those guys who come to write about us and find out more than maybe they wanted to know. And it's a remarkable book. There's some descriptions of events in Alcoholics Anonymous that are not in our literature. And I really like it a lot. And he called it Not God because he felt, as an academician, that the whole point, the whole, all of the structure of Alcoholics Anonymous turned on the notion that we weren't God, that we had been playing God, now we were not God, and that admission of not being God was going to project us into a way of life that we could succeed at. How can I stop playing God if I'm bossing you around, if I'm beating you up? You know, in the group that I went to initially, the 200 Years of Inbreeding group in the San Fernando Valley. Man, I walked into this group, I couldn't believe it. I looked around this room, I just, I was overwhelmed. It was like, it was, it looked like 200 Years of Inbreeding. He came up to me at that meeting. You know the guy. He's got one tooth with a cavity in it. And do I want what you've got? No. No. No. But thanks for spitting on me. I really appreciate it. All right. Do I bring my own bib overalls next week? Am I issued a pair? Do I hook a rug? And I'm waiting for the Jew hunt to start. I know that's going to break out any minute, you know. Strap these antlers on, Jaime, you know. Knock his beanie off. Let's have some fun. I hated everything about Alcoholics Anonymous when I came in. It was really funny too. One of the first guys who saved my life, there was a guy at that meeting who, he said, I'm an ex-Catholic, which means I don't believe in God and I'm therefore a positive God is going to come kill my ass for feeling that way. I said, I'm going to sit next to him. Because I had been brought up with this Old Testament God that I wouldn't be caught in a dark alley with. My Hebrew name was, I was stealing cars trying to be hip, slick, and cool, James Dean, and my Hebrew name was Shlomo, which is, I didn't want to be, I wanted a Shlomo-ectomy immediately. I wanted to get out of Shlomo. If there are any Shlomos here, I'm sorry. I know. I don't see anything endemically wrong with Shlomo now, but at the time, oh man, oh man. So I came to Alcoholics Anonymous with all of that baggage and I had rearranged my life to accommodate alcoholism. I didn't know it at the time, but I had rearranged my thinking about art, politics, spirituality, God, what it was okay to do to you, to me. It was a steady process of rearranging my life to accommodate the walk to the drink. And my, the process of sobriety has been a process of rearranging my life to accommodate my relationship with a higher power and Alcoholics Anonymous. So the first thing I had to do was quit playing God. I did this prayer with my sponsor and you know, it's a funny thing. Doing those first two steps with him, doing the third step sent me into step four. And it's a, it's a, a funny thing. I, if you just do the first three steps, it's a really interesting thing on the, uh, the page right after the prayer and, uh, at the bottom of the page. Next we launched out on a course of vigorous action. The first step of which is a personal house cleaning, which many of us had never attempted. They're so nice to us, which many of us have you, I've never like given the instructions and had a guy go, wow, you do that. I've been doing that for years. I have never, ever had, I had a guy say, you know, I'm in good shape here because I, all I have to do is continue doing it. I have to continue doing what I've been doing. Um, and the language, funny enough, the language in the chapters that are not written to us, like the chapter to the wife, to the employer and, and, uh, uh, and to the family afterward, they're not so nice to us in those chapters. The, the, the language is a little different. They're not quite as diplomatic. Um, though our decision had a vital and crucial step, it could have little permanent effect unless it once followed by a strenuous effort to face and be rid of the things in ourselves, which had been blocking us. So I had taken the first three steps and I thought I had gotten somewhere. I admitted I was an alcoholic, which is a fatal illness that my life was unmanageable. My life was a wreck that I've been restored to. I could be restored to sanity. You don't need to be restored to sanity unless you're nuts. So my life sucked. I was dying and I was out of my mind. How come I didn't feel any better? Why should I feel any better? Why should I feel any better until I started on this strenuous effort to face and be rid of the things in me. And then my sponsor read to me the next pages. I'm asked to write four times in three sections of the inventory. I went to a talk in Houston, Texas a couple of weeks ago. And I've had a lot of people say a lot of strange things to me in AA. You've already met Ava. If you don't like my talk today, please tell her. Don't tell me. Okay? I didn't come 3,000 miles thinking, oh, I think I can really piss some people off in New York. And... Everybody's got their own thing. And I've had people line up to thank you sometimes and I've had people line up to... Some questions will be like, why don't you die? Which is a question. Not really what I'm looking for right now. So I went to talk in Houston and this guy picked me up at the airport and he's driving me to the function I'm talking at and he says to me, I'd like to talk to you after your talk tonight. And I heard something in his voice. I said, why? It sounds like you want to teach me something. Which I don't mind learning unless... And I... He said, no, no, no. He lied to me. He did. And what he wanted to do was he wanted to debate the inventory process. That's what he wanted to do. Now, I don't mind ideas. I don't mind sharing ideas. I'm not interested in that. That's not a compelling, appealing thing to me. And that's not what I'm trying here to do today. Yeah. I guarantee you. Yeah. You've heard me express about the inventory. You've heard a lot of different things. You've done different things. You might even find yourself going, but what about you missed? I probably have. I probably have. Again, I don't know how you should do this. I just know how I have. Okay? So I want to talk about the first section first, the section on resentments. Let's go back to the Nazis because I just can't get away from them. I'm resentful at the Nazis. It asked me to write three columns. I'm resentful. It says, on the Nazis, for slaughtering Jews, what does it affect? Self-esteem, pocketbook, ambition, personal relations, and sex. S-P-A-P-S. And what I do, what my AA family does is, if it affects self-esteem in the third column, I put S. If it doesn't affect pocketbook, I put a dash. If it affects my ambition, I put an A. When it affects something, I put the initial. When it doesn't affect something, I put a dash. So when I read it back, it's kind of a shorthand, kind of a nice thing. Okay? I'm resentful at Nazis for slaughtering Jews. It affects my self-esteem, pocketbook, ambition, personal relations, and sex. A five-bagger for sure. And what I like to ask myself is two questions. I like to ask myself, is the resentment my fault? Yeah. I haven't come up with one that isn't. But originally when I did my inventory, very few of them were my fault. And then another thing which I love to ask myself is, do I have any resentment against myself in connection with this resentment? I'm resentful at my wife for being adulterous. It affects my self-esteem, pocketbook, ambition, personal relations, and sex. Do I have any resentment against myself in connection with it? I'm resentful at Scott for being adulterous. It affects my self-esteem, pocketbook, ambition, personal relations, and sex. We had a really broken mess of a marriage for eight years before we came into the program. And by the time I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, I had been loaded on heroin. One night my father died when I was 21 years old. My father was absolutely lost to me. I couldn't think about him, talk about him, couldn't look at a picture of him. It was just too much. It was more than I could bear. I had two sons, six and three. Micah was making involuntary clicking noises with his throat. He could barely read or write. He was diagnosed in school as functionally retarded because his small motor skills were all screwed up. There was nothing organically wrong with him. He was so scared all the time that he was so distracted he couldn't put tasks together. Jesse was three. He couldn't get, he was playing this war game and these games about being a robot, which are fine, but he couldn't stop. He couldn't pull out of it. And the conceit with these games, the feeling of the people in his preschool, because my kids were in a very, very expensive preschool that they were being asked to leave every week for nonpayment. But I had to have him there because, if the middle's rotten, you've got to try to, you've just got to try to dress everything, you know. And, um, he, uh, the conceit there was that it hurt too much to be a person. That he, uh, that being a robot was much safer than being made out of flesh. Being made out of iron was better. And he couldn't stop playing this war game. And the feeling again was that the war that he was fashioning in his head was vastly preferable to the war that he was caught in the middle of. Because if you get in between me and the drink, you're going to vanish. You're going to vanish, or you're going to become paper mache. I don't care if you're my wife, my lover, my buddy, my bride, my dreams, my job, my father laying dead. When my father died, I couldn't go in and give him a kiss, and say, Daivii, I love you, goodbye. I couldn't, because I was so self-centered and so radioactive that my father's corpse was just an emblem of my failure, and my disgusting behavior, and a lot of bad breaks and misunderstandings. Couldn't even go and give him a kiss. kiss and um if you get in between me and the drink you will disappear or you will become something less than human because i'm going to get to the drink i might have to walk through you and then you're going to have to vanish or i might have to walk around you and if i got to walk around you i got to walk bigger and bigger circles because it hurts too much to see you even later in sobriety with these other problems nagging problems i got to walk bigger and bigger circles around them because they don't present themselves as a real problem they're a complaint a terrible grinding gnashing complaint and how much disappearing how much vanishing can a baby bear until the baby believes what they're being taught which is that they don't exist and i want to tell you something but i don't put any premium on children as a learning tool i've heard people hit their bottoms and have that moment of clarity because they let their favorite house plant die i've heard it where people have been abusive to their pets and that was when it became clear to them that they had gone completely over the top i put no premium on children in that way i don't care it doesn't matter who carries the message and um that's the condition i was in when i came to alcoholics anonymous on on april 22nd 1985 i knew what the problem was when my dad died my problem was heroin and needles i had been loaded on heroin that night i knew that was a problem and i knew that the solution was all i had to do was never put a needle in my arm again and i wouldn't be the guy who couldn't show up that night for his old man and on april 22nd 1985 i put a needle in my arm again why why not it didn't present itself as a real problem it was just a complaint you know and i called my uh therapist in my 18th year of psychotherapy i was going to be dead but i was going to understand it uh and i'm not putting therapy down therapy is great stuff except as a as a treatment for alcoholism was a complete disaster I was like showing up at a gunfight with a knife once a week. Just getting these colossal ass poundings, just getting killed, you know. And I called my therapist that morning, and he said to me, you know what, there's absolutely nothing that can be done for you. He said to me the exact same thing that Carl Jung said to the man who 12-stepped the man who 12-stepped Bill Wilson. He said, I can't help you. The only thing I can suggest is you attend a meeting of Narcotics Anonymous, Alcoholics Anonymous, or we have you institutionalized. And why I didn't go to the institution at that, I don't know. Why I went to AA that day, I don't know. Most of the days I would have gladly gone to the institution. Would have been a chance to be with my people, colorful and adventurous people. And I don't know why I went to the AA meeting, but I did. And my wife had become completely insane from prolonged exposure to me. Besides, you know, the excitement of wetting the wall, the other joys that I brought into her life, we had become sociopaths. We were so sick that at one point a guy lent us his car, and we sold his car. I will never forget this guy's voice on the phone as long as I live. He said, you sold my car? That's like house-sitting for someone, and they come back and you're in escrow. You know, and the alcoholic life becomes the only normal one. I will never forget that guy's voice when I called to pay him back. He said, you're paying me back? It's like he was frozen on the phone for 16 years. And this is the baggage that... And I had suffered from chronic success. I had failed upwards for years. By the time I got to AA, I had a book on the bestseller list. I had acted in a Broadway show. I had had my own theater in New York for a while. I directed a TV show and a film. I did all of these things a time. I never got to do any of them more than once, because when I'd leave, they'd move the business so I couldn't find it again. And when I took the alcoholic test, the test that I'm talking about now, the inventory, it's pass, pass, everybody passes, all you have to do is do it. I saw that early on, because you get a picture of your alcoholism. Sometimes when guys are working on their inventory, they'll call me and say, Scott, you know, can I just read you what I got? This hurts so much. And you know what, nowhere in the book does it say, write a little, read a little, write a little, read a little. These guys had an idea of what it was going to take to be deflated the ego at such depth, because your alcoholism is so resilient and so powerful and has kept you drinking and self-obsessed and moving through all odds, all odds. Alcoholism, you can't treat alcoholism with therapy. Therapy is wonderful. I've used it for a lot of things in sobriety. The conceit of therapy, which is not a pejorative term, it's just the technique, is to examine something until it unravels. That's what most therapy is based on. To free associate, shine the light, uncover, discover, and unravel. It works. But with alcoholism, now, let's say a neurosis is an unfortunate and unsatisfactory resolution for anxiety. Let's say that's, for our purposes today, that's a good definition of neurosis. In other words, your solutions are worse than your problems. Familiar? And if you're new, very familiar. Do you know your plan? Maybe one more dope deal to set yourself up financially for sobriety? Could be. Who knows? But here's the deal. I could treat that with therapy, but alcoholism is too efficient. Alcoholism produces anxiety and problems at such an, it's so efficient, it produces it at such an unbelievable rate that there's no way for the therapy to keep up with it. The therapy is not as efficient and doesn't work as concisely or quickly as the alcoholism. So for me, treating alcoholism with therapy was a disaster. Because I had good therapy. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. Absolutely doesn't matter. You know, that's like going to a doctor, and the doctor, and I say to the doctor, this is what's wrong, he says, fine, I'm going to give medicine to your neighbor. Thank you. Just, you're putting it in the wrong place. Just doesn't work. So that's what I came to Alcoholics Anonymous with on April 22, 1985. My children were destroyed. My wife was a wreck. And when I took the alcoholic test, when I took the inventory, I saw, and to get back to why I don't write a little, read a little, write a little, read a little, if you can write the whole thing down, if you can read the whole thing, I'm resentful at them. I'm resentful at me for resenting them. I'm resentful at them for watching me resent them. And I've had sex with all of them. And I'm scared of all of them. What does that have to do with alcoholism? It is alcoholism. That is the spiritual malady that plucks us away from any opportunity to really and truly be profoundly helped by conventional means. That is the bizarre third element, the spiritual agony, the spiritual tapeworm, the cancer of the soul, the thing that I didn't understand, that plucks us away from being helped by a lot of very well-meaning people, members of the clergy, psychologists, psychiatrists, and medical people. And so what does it have to do with alcoholism? If you're new here, it is alcoholism. It's what I understand is alcoholism. And it's the thing, if you don't want to stay here and become part of the frozen chosen, although I judge no man, but people can be around for a long time and stay pretty pissed off. And that's okay. When I came to Alcoholics Anonymous and people said, shut up, you're a moron, sit down, don't say anything, I said, oh, just like home. I... I... I just, I knew, instinctually knew that that's what I didn't, I didn't need that. I really didn't need that. It reminded me, you know, if you take the list of, the two lists of the kinds of thinking that I described earlier, you know, if a certain kind of thinking becomes established, what's the use anyhow? That's the kind of thinking my children had. They had alcoholism. My wife had alcoholism. What's the use of anyhow? My kids either gave up or they became pointlessly aggressive on route to a goal that was unattainable because everything would fall apart. No matter what was said, everything would fall apart. In chapter two, it talks about the warped lives of blameless wives and children. And I'm not just talking about wives and children, I'm talking about lovers, I'm talking about friends, I'm talking about family. And you can see that thinking, that alcoholic thinking modeled in all those people. What's the use anyhow? It doesn't work out anyhow. What's the use? Not even going to get up to bat, you know? I didn't know this. If I had appreciated the seriousness of my situation when I came in here, as to what it was, I would have looked like an outtake from scanners. My brain would have blown up. I guarantee it. There's no way. I used to have this phrase I'd say to my wife, I can't fit the pain in my head. I can't talk about this now. My wife would always choose, the minute my head would hit the pillow, we'd start talking about money. I never really appreciated my wife's disease until she, we were talking about something, about something about alcoholism, versus Al-Anonism. She says, you don't understand. You don't know what it's like to wake up in the morning and get an alcoholic going. Start pushing his buttons. You know, push that button, push that button. Get him going, you know? Until like 5 or 6 o'clock, they're like this. They're like this. She says, then it's time to get into their face. Once they're properly primed, then get right up in there. And she said, you can feel the spray as they're screaming. It's like being on the prow of a luxury liner. It's a beautiful feeling. It's like that moment in Titanic, you know? And I said, this is a troubled woman. And I, we have a phrase in our Al-Anon family, in our area, people, one of the nice ways to deal in a relationship is to, in the midst of some heated exchange, one could say, you could be right. It's just, you know, we're encouraging, you know what, you could be right. So Nancy and I was early on in the program, and we're into something in the car, and she said, honey, you could be right. But not today. Maybe sometime in the future, I know, but today's not your day. So it's time for our first ten minute break. We're going to come back and charge into resentments.