The Common Solution and the Bondage of Self – Scott T.

It is my pleasure to introduce our main speaker, Scott T. from Utica, New York. Thank you. Thank you for coming. Hi, everybody. My name is Scott Tranner, and I am an alcoholic. I love the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I love The People, and I gotta start off and tell you it has not always been like that. It's a privilege and an honor to be here at this specific group. You know, I'd like to thank Bob for inviting me and the people that were involved in getting me here. It's been a couple of years since I've been here. You got a wonderful new facility. Last time I was here, I believe you were in the synagogue and now you're at St. Ann, the home of the Crusaders. And I was thinking about that when I was looking at it. You probably had people up here giving talks, talk about the home or the Crusader's. And so I'm going to give you a little bit of an overview of the home and the Crusades during the holiday time. And it's not like that today. Tom, thanks Thanks for opening this up. Tom just flew in from Panama City Beach, Florida, got off the plane and came right over to the little dinner we were having and came over here, and he felt, I'll tell you, he felt uncomfortable being up here without a suit and tie, okay? But it's okay because Bob said it was okay, so, you know, that's just a little inside joke. You know, Lori was going to try to lead the meeting and explain to everybody that I'm the only man alive that has ever slept with her husband with permission. Now, there's a story behind that, and I'll get to that later, but we do have pictures. You know, Ellen and I were talking just a little while ago about this past weekend we were just involved with up at State Line, and you guys have had one heck of a week here opening up last week with Sandy Beach then going through the State Line with all those wonderful people up there that we're imparting some knowledge. You know, I love it in AA when people say there's no teachers. And, you know, to be a teacher is just someone simply that imparts the knowledge from one person to another. And that's what I saw a lot of this weekend. I see a lot OF teachers in here too, you know, and it's what we do with each other is we impart knowledge from 1 person to another with our experience, strength, and hope. And that'S what we learn to do around here. You know? We learn to share our experience strength and hope on what it was like, what happened, and what it's like today. That's what Im going to try to do tonight. I love it when people get up there and they say, well, I don't know what I'm going to say. And when they say that, I say, Well, then sit down. You know, I mean, that's just my attitude because, see, one of the things about alcoholism is I thought I knew what alcoholism was and I thoughtI knew what it wasn't dealing with Alcoholics Anonymous. And I've got to tell you, I didn't have a clue. I didn' t understand that I was in an absolute fight for my life, that alcoholism wanted to kill me. It wanted to rob from me anything that was ever good in my life and just tear it down. You know, Tom mentioned Chapter 3 when it talks about through every form of the experimentation, the self-deception, we try to prove ourselves exception to the rule, therefore non-alcoholic. And I think that's what we do when we don't have an understanding or a clear knowledge of what we're dealing with, you know. I got introduced to Alcoholics Anonymous a little over 34 years ago. And I'm from back east. I'm von Boston. Anybody von Boston here? Yeah, we've got a few from Boston. I grew up in the projects place called Germantown in South Boston. I used to, you know, one of the things about the book is it talks about in the 12 and 12 that defiance is one of our chief character traits, and I was very defiant as a young man. And if a teacher or babysitter or whoever tried to tell me what to do, I would always rebel against it. You know, I didn't know, according to our book, that the alcoholic is like the tornado roaring through the lives of others. It talks about the warped lives of blameless wives, children, stuff like that, and my dad was that alcoholic. I didn't understand any of it. I just knew that I didn' t like him, you know? I know what it's like to stand in line and get those blocks of cheese and powdered milk and get hand-me-downs and the Salvation Army coming to pick me and my brothers up and take us out for Christmas. I just new I didn''t like the man. I didn ''t like police always at my house. You know, my friend Sean Mulkerin says that the type of neighborhood we grew up in, it was the type that if you had a heart condition and you went out and you told your friends they'd punch you in the chest just to see how bad your heart was, okay? So, yeah, you didn't learn to show feelings and emotions. You kept all that stuff inside because where I was raised, if you showed those feelings and emotions, you were weak. And if you were week, people took advantage of you. That's just the bottom line. You know, I started going to a program called Al-Anon, and it actually was at St. Anne's Church in North Quincy, in Quincy. Massachusetts. And my dad, do we got any Al-Annons here? A few. My dad was the type that would follow my mom and I to the Al-Anon meeting, sit down the street drinking in his van and then follow us home and beat my mom up and call her a whore and who was she meeting there because he knew that she was meeting somebody, you know, and she wasn't meeting anybody. She was just trying to find a better way for her boys and herself to learn about this disease of alcoholism. Make no mistake, it's a family disease, you Know. It is absolutely a family disease. When it talks about the tornado and the warped lives of blameless wives and children it affected us in ways that we didn't even have a clue alcoholism and that defiance I went to Allotine, I used to take the trains into Southie, into South Boston and I didn't get anything out of Allotine because I didn'y want anything out Of Allotine. It was a place for me to go and manipulate and get you to feel sorry for Scotty and the way I was being raised so I didn''t get anything Out Of Alloline Around this time I had my first arrest I was 12 years old and the drinking age was 18 in Massachusetts so I always hung around with older kids and being from the neighborhood of being Irish and Catholic. You grew up, that's what you did is you drank and you could drink in the pubs and stuff, Kelly's Pub and the Irish Pub, if you were 14 years old and you Could drink in those places and the drinking age was 18 and so my story is not the story of drinking out of that brown paper bag at the age of five but I drank whenever and how often I could and my first arrest came, it was for assault and battery on a police officer in drunken disorderly conduct and I got sentenced to Alcoholics Anonymous You know, and I walked into the meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. I talk a lot about customs. You know you heard Tom get up here and identify and say sobriety date and that came from Texas. We have customs all over the country. That particular custom came from Texas where people would get up and they would say their name and their sobriity date and this guy John got up and said My name's John and I haven't found it necessary to take a drink since January 18th 1997 and I mean 1977. And this guy over across the room jumped up and said, wait a goddamn minute, John, I saw you drunk last week. He said, I know, but it wasn't necessary. Right? So it's all in how you look at it, right? These are customs. And, you know, I'm going in and out of these meetings. And you have a wonderful custom out here in Las Vegas, as they do in Southern California, where they read a portion of Chapter 5 from the big book on how it works, wherethey read a portion of chapter 3, where they read a vision for you. These are all customs, okay? And that's part of the fellowship that when you start a group or you have a meeting and you have an area, all over the country develop their own customs. And back in New England, they did not do any readings at all. This is the specific group and let's say you had the double-digit meeting. The double-digit meeting would come in and lead your meeting and you as a specific group wouldn't even be allowed to participate in it, okay. And this is how it worked back there and the meeting would start and the meaning would end with the Lord's Prayer just like that. And I would come into these meetings, and I wasn't getting anything. I was going back out the door. You couldn't even share. You couldn'T even talk unless you had 90 days. You know, andI was a 13-year-old kid, and l had a lot of good stuff to share, but I couldn'T. Yeah, right. I couldn't EVEN get 90 days, you know, because I noticed a few people here tonight identified as addict alcoholic, okay? And that was, to me, that's like saying I'm from Los Angeles and California, you Know. When I drank, I'm a garbage pail, and that opened the door for everything else for me. See, I show respect for the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. I show disrespect for the traditions in Tradition 3 and all those who suffer from alcoholism. See, people in N.A. that have drug addiction, they can go to N.E. You know, people that have cocaine addictions, they an go to C.A.. Alcoholics have one place to go, okay? We have here to go. It seems that people filter in from all other fellowships, and they come in here and they think it's okay to just try to take over our meetings and our fellowships. But I talked to the real alcoholic, and I'm not getting controversial here. Please don't take it that way because I am a garbage pill, and I did everything underneath the sun. But this is Alcoholics Anonymous, okay? And I show respect for the program that absolutely saved my life. I didn't know this at the time, though. I didn'T know this because people, drugs were an outside issue, okay, and people would come into the meetings, and they would get up, and they Would talk about drugs, and They would get pulled from the podium, okay. You did, that's an outside Issue. So some of my role models in Alcoholics Anonymous, I had a lot of misconceptions on what AA is. And just to give you a couple for instances, you know, you hear things like read the book or get a sponsor. And how they did it back then in New England is let's say Bob is my sponsor and I was going to take a birthday medallion tonight. Okay, they didn't sing happy birthday. You get a medallION. Bob would get up here and tell all of you about me. And he would tell you everything I've done in the last year, my community involvement, the steps I've taken, and what I'm doing now. And then I would get up and say a few words and sit down. And I had already been in and out of some of the detoxes at 14, eating out of dumpsters and trash cans and Skid Row at 16, and I'm trying to find a better way in Alcoholics Anonymous. I had never read the book. I had Never Gotten a Sponsor. And this guy was getting – he was one of the youngest young people in the group, and he was like 30 years old, and he Was taking a four-year medallion. His name was Fred, and I was sitting in the front row, and Fred's sponsor got up and said all this wonderful stuff about Fred. And I'll never forget it because I'm listening to him and the guy's young and I'm thinking, wow, just maybe, maybe this guy can be my sponsor. And then Fred got up and he took his medallion and he was looking at it and he says, you know, I was really nervous this morning when I woke up because I knew I was going to have to get up here in front of all you people. So I smoked a joint to take the edge off. Okay? And he went on. And I've got to tell you, I loved what Fred had to say. And when that meeting got over, I went right up to Fred and asked him to be my sponsor. So that was my first experience with sponsorship in Alcoholics Anonymous, you know. Now, make no mistakes, years later, when I finally read the book, when I finaly did the deal, Dr. Silkworth closes all those loopholes. When he talks about that we can't take alcohol in any form, okay, he's talking, any form means the marijuana, the cocaine, the heroin, for me, you now, the Prozac or the Xanax and all this other stuff, it means that, you kno what, I can't alcohol in an form, OK, that I have a prescription here, which are called the 12 steps that are outlined in the big book, that if I do that, it's a process of uncovering, discovering and discarding. I just might be able to live in my skin with a little simple dignity. OK,that's what it's about. OK,it's that common solution that you hear people get up here and talk about that they really don't know what they're talking about because everybody says, oh,it' s a common solution,we got a common solutio. Well,the common solution is the spiritual experience, the spiritual awakening,if you please, that when we go through this process,OK, We get to maybe with a little simple dignity walk through life. It doesn't mean I don't have anger or resentments or fears or frustrations. I have goals and dreams and aspirations. But what it is, okay, is that this thing is outlined so that I can live inside my skin just a little bit. Now do not get me wrong here. I am not saying if you're on psych meds to stop taking them. I am NOT telling you don't take them. I'm not a doctor. I'm NOT qualified to give that advice. Okay, that's why we have doctors and professionals. I would never do anything like that. My personal experience, as Tom said, it's not for people that want it or need it. It's for people to do it. My experience is when I was doing that because along this time, and I'm getting into my middle ages here as a teenager, they're strapping me to beds. They're pumping me full of Thorazine, Lithium, Chloral Hydrate, Haldol. They're running me through the mill because I'm homicidal, suicidal, manic depressive. And I've got to tell you, I was misdiagnosed. I'm an alcoholic. I'm An Alcoholic of the Hopeless Variety, okay? And these common manifestations, when they're trying to fill these things inside me and they're giving me all these medications and stuff, my bottom line for me is that I was just lazy. See, I wasn't willing to do this deal. I wasn'T willing to get the sponsor, to get The Commitments, to go through the big book, okay? And that's my experience in Alcoholics Anonymous. Ninety percent of the people are just lazy, okay, and that's an opinion off experience that I have. And the reason why I'm saying this is because We were talking a little earlier too I believe that words have the power to heal But I also believe words have The power to kill I really believe that Because I've seen it, I've been in Alcoholics long enough And around long enough to see it happen So I'm very careful with words That I use in Alcoholic Synonymous And what I say and what I don't say Because I want you To see what Alcoholic synonymous means to me and what it has done to me and for me by doing this deal. See, at the time I didn't know any of these things. I didn' t know that I was a taker. I didn''t know thatI was selfish and self-centered and self seeking and self pitying driven by those hundred forms of fear and self delusion. I didn ''t knowthat I was making decisions based on me which kept placing me in the position to be hurt by you. I didn?'t know anyof these things and I didn'T have the man that was properly armed with the facts about themself as our book says to teach me this stuff. See, Bill Wilson, one of our founders, talked about that alcoholism is like a cave. And in that cave of alcoholism is the jails and the institutions and all these things. They called them asylums back then. But in that grave is Scotty and I'm drowning in alcoholism. And see, when those psychiatrists or the priests or the moms and they come to the mouth of the cave and they say, Scotty, come on out. They don't understand that I really want to come out. Scotty really wants to come up. I just don't know how. And see, none of them were properly armed with the facts to come in and get me. The magic of Alcoholics Anonymous, the magic of one alcoholic talking to another alcoholic, the man that's been properly armed with the fact about themselves, not about the disease of alcoholism and everything. See, make no mistake, I am not an expert on alcoholism. What I'm well versed at, though, is a 12-step program of recovery that gives us through that process that we can get properly armed with the effects and we can go into the cave. See, that's what happened to me eventually If someone came into the cave and they took me by the hand, they said, come on, Scotty, this is what I did. This is what you do. This is how we get out of it. That's the magic of Alcoholics Anonymous is that one alcoholic talking to another, okay? See, so make no mistake that I'm not this expert in alcoholism because I'm not. I've just been well-versed by doing the deal, following the steps, doing the prescription that's outlined in the book that has put me in a position where I became properly on with the facts about me through the steps, okay, And I didn't know this at the time, and so consequently, the bottom line is it caused me a lot of heartache. I was in and out of jails, institutions, halfway houses, recovery homes, the type to shave your head and made you wear dunce caps. I ended up getting a girl pregnant. That didn't work out. Those of you from Boston, I found myself in a combat zone, and a few buddies of mine, we were rolling prostitutes in the Red Light District, and I had been through all those scared straight programs of the 70s where you'd go into Walpole and Bill Ricker and all these state prisons and the convicts would come up to you and, give me your shoes. This is what I'm going to do to you when I bend you over. And they'd tell you all this stuff that they're going to do to trying to scare you straight. And I was smuggling drugs into them. I became a mule. And it was a joke to me. It was just a joke because I was always smarter than, other than, better than. But I wasn't a part of. And it Was all a game to me And all of a sudden now I'm arrested as an adult and I'm in the Charles Street Jail, which is the oldest jail in New England, five tiers. I walked in there like that Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder movie, Stir Crazy. That's right, we bad. And I walked into it, and this guy got thrown off the fifth tier, and he got killed, and it scared me to death. And I had heard all the things that they do to cute little punks in these adult facilities, and I was cute, andI had long hair, and Iwas scared. And I made the decision. The big book talks about the jumping-off point. There will be those of us that choose to make the supreme sacrifice and to continue the fight, andit's talking about suicide. And I decided, you know what? I couldn't do this. I couldn't picture life with alcohol or without alcohol. I had tried all these different things, and I just decided I was going to check out and I was gonna kill myself, and I ended up getting bailed out, and I went to my little apartment, and I filled up the bathtub, and I cut my wrists all the way down, 110 stitches in each arm, and I bled out and that's how they found me. And I came to five days later on the critical list, and I had all those feelings that you hear people say, I couldn'T even do that right, okay? I was so flawed and ashamed and defective and unlovable, and all these feelings that we get, I don't care if you're a man or you're a woman they're basically the their human emotions and that's what we deal with in alcoholics anonymous is the basic human instincts of the security the sex and the social and what i'm doing and i'm looking for i'm working with and i just i'm all caught up in me and um you know i ended up beating that case and i got put in medfield state hospital twice and this woman came to see me and she told me about this guy named jesus christ said if i accepted him as my personal savior that behold everything would be new and i was you know born and raised irish and catholic and my god was a judging god and a condemning god and i was being cast in the lake of fire and um you know she told me about this loving god and I said why not and I alcoholics like us we go from one extreme to the next and I quit smoking swearing watching tv listening to rock and roll I um went into the ministry I went to a place called teen challenge and I started going to bible studies five hours a day church seven days a week giving my testimony how christ that saved my life and i come into halls uh not this big but halls like this and in the born again christians would be talking in tongues and passing out and you know i was that square peg just trying to fit in you know and i'm just want to fit i want they had something in the eyes sort of like the old timers have they had Something in the Eyes that i wanted i didn't know what it was but i wanted to be a part of and so i decided well i'm going to pass out like these guys and so i'd get filled up with the spirit and i'd fall back and i hurt my neck and my back and these people weren't getting hurt so i figured i'm not going to do that and i'd start i know i did and so i figure well i'll start talking in tongues and so i'd stop making this stuff up talking in tongues and old alan over here would start interpreting what the spirit was telling him i was saying so i know he's full of crap because he's a hypocrite because i'm making it up right so you got to follow me bob talks about the throne of judgment but that's what it is and i'm on this throne of punishment now because now he's an hypocrite i'm taking it up you're all hypocrites. You're all full of crap. This whole thing's full of crap. And what I had done, the way the big book is outlined and written is from the doctor's opinion to page 63 deal with a couple things in their conclusions of the mind that I'm alcoholic. My life's unmanageable and manageability simply means not achieving one's purpose. Coming to believe came to believe that this power is power greater than me could restore me to sanity. It's talking about the sanity of the first drink or the insanity of the first drink. It'S not talking about the sanity of the world their conclusions of the mind you know making that decision the third step to turn my will in my life my thoughts and my actions over to this care of God I had done all this okay what I had never done though was a fearless and thorough moral inventory myself and that's what I was I was full of crap okay all inside me I was fully crap I'm coming into these things people trying to teach me good things sort of like a people come in they do one two three go out one two three go out one two three go out you know and that's what I was doing and I had never done that fearless and thorough moral inventory of myself it scared me okay but I just knew I was full of crap what it was like is a cup of coffee over there you know I I was trying to dump it I was try to get it out and I didn't realize that the way the steps were designed is it's like a cup o' coffee that you could take over to the sink and drip cool clear water into it come back an hour from now still dark and dirty on the inside you know what the steps were designed to do is for me to dump that stuff so that maybe i could start keeping some of this good stuff okay and i was just full of crap i was a vessel full of trap trying to fill good stuff in and it wasn't taken because i i had done a lot of bad things you know in aa you hear people say we're not bad people we're just sick people trying to get better and that's okay for some people but you know i did a lot of blackout drinker i would wake up with strange places with money and different things that I had done, wondering if I hurt anybody. I had down a lot of bad things. And it was time that I started doing some good things. Chuck C. used to talk about writing a record. My friend Jim Buckley talks about the ledger and that it's time we start doing good, that we were bad. And I'm not here to play word semantics with you, but I did bad things in the thing about the book is it talks about I love it because people say, oh, don't don't hurt my feelings because I'll drink. And the big book does give it a credit. It says that the alcoholic is sensitive. You know, in the chapter to the wives, it talks about that. But then the next sentence says, and it may take some of us a long time to overcome this serious handicap. It's a handicap. It's not an asset for me, you know. And, you Know, I or they say, you don't hurt. What it's like to me, the best way to describe it, OK, is I was as sensitive as a rhinoceros. When I drank, I would stick a gun in your face and take your money. I would burglarize your home. I'd do whatever I had to do, but then I'd come into AA and I'd say, please don't hurt my feelings. That's a bunch of crap if I'm honest about it. And so I'm talking to this director. The defiance came back out. I walked away from the program. I went back into the projects, the Weymouth projects this time with the same friends and acquaintances, and it wasn't long before that man took a drink, and then the drink took the drink, and then The Drink Took Me. And I had heard that saying way back in 1972. And I didn't quite understand it. I didn' t understand that I was trying to overcome an obsession that I had absolutely no control over and that I have this allergy in my body that when I put alcohol in my body, that alcohol demanded another drink, okay? And that's what set me off and running. And that led up to November 14th. I'm going to jump through real quick here. led up to November 14, 1979. I'm sitting up on a bridge called the Bourne Bridge in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, 169 feet up in the air, and, you know, I'm up there four and a half hours, and it's a big drama, and the state police blocked off the bridge, and the Corps of Engineers and Coast Guard were down below with spotlights on me, and the Good Samaritan Suicide Prevention League was there talking to me on bullhorns, trying to talk me down, and underneath is this campground, and the campers all came out and set up lawn chairs and stuff, and they're yelling at me, jump you motherfucker, jump, right? And they're yelling at us. They're yelling at me. I'm looking down at these guys going, oh my God, these guys are crazy. Don't they know if I jump I'm going to die? I'm up there and I got me on me and I can't get me off me and i'm thinking all this bad stuff throughout my life. I'm not thinking about being a Boy Scout and being trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent, right. I remember all that. So I remember good stuff that people tried to instill in me. I am not remembering getting honored by the House of Representatives and getting a plaque for saving this kid's life when I was nine years old. I'm remembering this stuff like coming home from school and having my dad meet me at the door and having a milk bottle with the top cut off and taking me to my room, and there was a lock on the outside of the door. And he puts me inside the room, and he locks it from the outside, and the room is so dark I can't see, and I find the light and turn it on, and my whole window had been sheet-mettled and riveted, you know, and he would let me out in the morning to go to school and lock me in at night. I'm remembering those things, you know. And I'm trying to think that there's got to be something, okay? There's gotto be something. And I made the decision to get down. I thought I had tried just about everything, and I made the decision there's gotta be something out here. And I decided to get done. And this is why I tell this story, to show the cunning, baffling, and powerfulness of this disease, the insidiousness of it. Because when I stood up to get down, I had another thought, and it was an honest thought and it was a real thought and that was simply you know what scotty if you get down you're going to look like a pussy to all these people that have waited all this time you got to jump okay and so i turned and i jumped you know i uh i don't remember hitting the water they say i died they say I was dead for almost 13 and a half minutes the only bone I broke was my sternum bone and chest cavity and that Was from them giving me the precardial thumbs bringing me back to life you know yeah they don't do that anymore because it gave you gave your chest in going to kill you. So I made it, as my friend Jim Buckley says, to another Holmes of the Bewildered, okay? Strapped to the bed. I tried the Army, my six-month Army career. They called me down for the Count Tranner. I was taking antabuse every morning in front of the CO. I was on the betting house program of alcoholism. I ended up getting a Chapter 5 honorable discharge and decided to come to California, the land of golden opportunity, Hollywood, Beverly Hills. I'm going to come out here, and I'm gonna get discovered, and, you know, I'm I'm going to be in a rock and roll band, all this stuff, you know, delusions of grandeur. And so I come out, and I ended up out on January 9th, 1981, January 16th, I came out of a blackout in L.A. County Jail. And I was out here a total of seven days. And before it was all over, you Know, I heard a saying real quick in California, and that's that you come on vacation and you leave on probation. The only problem was they weren't letting me go. And before It was all Over, between L. A. County, San Bernardino County, In Riverside County, I had 22 years sentencing in the state penitentiary in California. I was, you know, just a young man, and I became an animal. You know, those of you that have been in prison know that prison is nothing but a human kennel that breathes violence, and I let it breathe the violence in me, andI became an absolute animal. And, you now, I got tattoos all over my body, and l rode really, really hard. This is when Governor Brown was the governor, Jerry Brown, under the old S.P. laws. And,you know, I went in there, and all those things that you hear happening in prisons happened to me and I did to other people, and it was just absolute. I had lost all hope. That's the best way to describe it. I had Lost All Hope. I made it up to an institution called Tehachapi, and I was told they had a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and was I interested in going. And I walked into the meeting, and I sat down, and I Sat in the Back with my Bonnaroo's on and my bandana, and the first thing I heard was Chapter 5 from the big book on how it worked, and I had never heard that before. You know, and then they read chapter 3, more about alcoholism. And I'm thinking, that's me. Now remember, I had never heard any. I'd been in AA 10 years. Never heard any of that. Never heard it. I'm hearing it for the first time in Alcoholics Anonymous, being in and out of AA for 10 years and I'm thinkin', that's powerful. Then this guy Eddie Miracle got up and he says, you know, if you're new, you've come home. He said, you need never be alone again. You're like the prodigal son who had to venture out there and now you're home. You know he started talkin' about our glasses as being half empty or half full. He started talking how we're all children of God, you know. And see, this is the honesty of it. I was very racial too, okay? I grew up in Boston, one of the most racial capitals in the country in the 70s. We had forced busing and stuff. And my attitude in the California penitentiaries were if you weren't white, you weren'T right, okay, because that's how I was raised. I believe that a lot of those hates and prejudices are taught us, and it's been a process for me of not so much learning new things as it's being unlearning a lot Of the old things, you Know. and this guy is sitting here and telling me the best you know he's he's telling me that there's no room for hypocrites in the program of alcoholics anonymous either we're all god's kids or none of us are you know my experiences from that time are simply i have a lot of kids and those of you that have children or nieces nephews or your own you take them you throw them up in the air they have complete faith hope trust love in the world then i'm going to catch him i'm not going to drop him on his head you know and i had to realize that i had that same faith hope truth and love at one time as we all did each and every one of us sitting here has had that same faith hope trust and love and then i grew up in the world to gimme gimme give me take take take first come first serve early bird gets the worm if i don't do it someone else is going to do it i learned all these hates and prejudices so here's a man that's been properly armed with the facts about himself up there talking about a program called alcoholics anonymous that could do for me what i was seeing it do for him you know and and and he was speaking these spiritual truths and i i believe that luck and chance was passing me by, and I reached up and I grabbed on to it. All my life people told me what a piece of crap I was and what I couldn't do and whatI couldn't become, and all of a sudden I'm sitting in rooms just like this with people just like you and you're telling me what I can do andwhat I can become if I'm willing to put forth the effort and work for it. And the bottom line here is I jumped into AA like my life depended on it. I got sober. I got four years of college behind me inside. I was a high school dropout. I went back to school, got my GED, got four year of college. I got a sponsor. I worked the steps. I was living the dream of Alcoholics Anonymous inside the walls, you know. I ended up, all the laws changed and I ended UP paroling and I was told that I didn't owe myself a weekend in the hotel with my girlfriend, I didn' t owe myself this, that or the other thing. If I wanted to make it, I owed myself a meeting of Alcoholic Anonymous. And the very first meeting I walked to is I walked up to the, it was a Friday night on March 21st, I walked Up to the Rafters in Newhall, California. And I met people like Tommy. I remember when Tom got sober. I remember When Tom met Lori, okay? I remember when Lori got sober. And, you know, I started living the dream of Alcoholics Anonymous. I started businesses. I had an attorney service in Los Angeles, an ex-con with an attorney service in Las Angeles, okay? I called it TNT Attorney Service, okay, because we were dynamite, right? You know, and just I bought a home in Valencia. I joined that rock and roll band that I always wanted to join, you know? I built a custom home on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Had a house in Valencia. Used to fly between L.A. and Boston four or five times a month getting picked up by limousines and chauffeured wherever I wanted. Making more money than you could shake a stick at. Had 13 cars, homes on coast to coast. Money, property, prestige. Had sponsored all sorts of people. Had commitments and panels in Tehachapi State Prison. Was a circuit speaker. Was traveling all over the country sharing with you what you too could become if you were willing to put forth the effort and work for it. I've got to put what I call on a pedestal of H&I, hospital and institution work, okay? And, you know, what happened to me, my story, the bottom line here, is not the story of unhappily ever after because if you look at these steps that are up here, the way they're outlying is working through the process, okay, and having had that spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message, okay. Now the spiritual experience or the spiritual awakening that I was talking about, the common solution is that spiritual experience through the steps where the message is the message of hope and the promise of the freedom and the bondage of self. And how we do that is intense work with others, trying to help others. And there's different things in the book that it talks about, even dealing with sex that quiets the urge when to yield to that would mean heartache. OK, and the intensive work with others I was still doing. But to me, it was that throne of judgment again. You know, when you hear people that get up here and talk and they talk so eloquently how we sit in rooms and we'll sit. Oh, God damn. Doesn't she got anything new to share? Is she going to share the same stuff? Oh, she's full of crap. She's cheating on her husband. Oh, no, Bill. Oh, man, can't you come up with anything new? He's going to get drunk. And I'm going into these rooms and I'm sitting in these meetings and I'M judging everybody. Character assassination, unconsciously, not overtly, you know, not overtly. But I'm talking, I've got double-digit sobriety and I'm Mr. AA and I started giving these steps back one at a time. I wasn't carrying this message anymore. I was carrying Scotty's message. Look at me. Look at where I came from. Look at where I am now, okay? Seeking through the prayer and meditation. I wasn't seeking through prayer and meditation anymore, you I wasn't continuing to take personal inventory. As far as the character defects, I believe we lose a lot of people in Alcoholics Anonymous on Steps 6 and 7. They're probably two of the least understood steps in the whole program. There's only two paragraphs in the book, and we breeze right through them. Okay, shortcoming, character defects. They're the same thing, and really they're not. Bill was very eloquent with words. He had a great command of the English language, and I didn't understand it at the time, but I breezed right through him, And I believe we lose a lot of people on Step 6 and 7 because I still had those character defects and those shortcomings, and they're back in force. And they say in AA that we only become as sick as our secrets, and I started having a lotof secrets, okay, even in Alcoholics Anonymous. I was up here professing a belief in a system and a God and a way out that absolutely brings us back from the gates of insanity and death and then walking out the door and doing something totally different, okay? And I would use the big book as a weapon. Who are you to judge me? The book says it, our sex conduct, God alone is our judge, right? Who are you to judge me? So I was using it like people use the Bible sort of, okay, to justify and rationalize my behavior. Because as long as I didn't drink, it's okay, okay? And what it was was I was just killing myself, okay. And my spirit was going because I was running the show now. The service recovery and the unity that we talk about, the legacies were no longer there because it was me, me, me, be, me. Me, me, me. All about me. What's your name? Jim. All right. Me,me,me. Enough about me, let's talk about you. What do you think about me Jim? See, because that's what I was doing. Really, that's why I'm here. That's what i was doing, okay? It was all about me and then I'd ask you what you're... But really, I want to know about me! What do You think about Me? Money, property, prestige, okay. Now make no mistake that the big book, when it talks about us becoming... When I talk about us becoming as sick as our secrets, the book says that we have no defense against the first drink, next sentence, except in a few rare occasions. That's willpower, willpower. And I believe in Alcoholics Anonymous, you go one of two ways. You're either going towards a drink or you're going away from a drink. There's no middle-of-the-road solution for people like me and if you're an alcoholic, for people likes you. And for a long time, I was going towards the drink. I didn't know I was coming towards the drinking. If you would have asked me the week before I drank If I was ever going to drink again, I would have told you in all honesty and sincerity, no. I'm never going to drinking again. But when it says we have no defense, it means we have not defense. I liken it now to, you know, we just ate dinner at Tony Roma's and let's just pretend here we are at St. Anne's, the home of the Crusaders. Let's just pretends now that Genghis Khan and the Mongols are at Tony Romo's and they're coming here right now. OK, and that's what happened to me. They're coming on me. And what I said is, oh, shit, I got to go get some wood at Home Depot. I got start building my defenses. Right. And I'm trying to build all this stuff when it came on me and no defense against the first drink. God was nowhere. As my friend says, it's hard for one guy to recognize another guy. OK. And the bottom line. And yeah, no, really, because that's where we get like. And the bottle line is that's why I did. And then I picked up a drink, not thinking that it was different, not thinking that I was an alcoholic, not thinking that I could control and manage it. I just didn't want to feel what I was feeling anymore. And because of my ego and my pride and my arrogance, okay, it would not allow me to open up to another human being the exact natures of my wrongs, the character defects, and the things that I wasn't doing playing this game, okay? And I ended up drinking. My sponsor, Eddie Miracle, before he died, he had told me, he says, Scott, you know what? He goes, I'm going to tell you something. He says, you're a sharp person. He goes, but your problem is not that you're sharp. Your problem is that you are double sharp. And I looked at him and I said, what do you mean I'm double sharp? He said, the problem with people that are double sharps is they usually end up cutting their own throats. Okay. And I never forgot that. When I drank, I remembered what he said to me. Because see, I had never gotten another sponsor. Okay. I was listening to myself. And in short order, I lost absolutely everything. Absolutely everything. my wife, my kids, my businesses I lost absolutely everything I was sucked up I was 129 pounds 100 pounds shorter less than I am right now locked up in a little crap hole in Lancaster, California doing all those outside issues drinking every day could not stop drinking see I know what it's like when people come in here and they got 10 or 11 days and they make a decision they don't want to drink anymore and then they walk out the door and they get drunk anyway you know the big book refers to this as this type of thinking that when it's fully established in the alcoholic, he's probably beyond human aid. And then unless locked up, he may die or go permanently insane. See, because I would come in here and I would make the decision I don't want to drink anymore and I Would Walk Out and Get Drunk. Well-meaning, well-intentioned people would come up to me that I had known for years. Are you done now? You got enough arrows in your butt now? Some of the sick ones, because iSponsored people who are 20 years sober, come up, oh, can I be your sponsor now? Oh, that would tick me off, you know, but I wouldn't show it. I'd smile, and I wouldn't change. And I'd walk out the door and get drunk. You know, and the bottom line here is 10 years ago, because we're in December now, 10 years go, Christmas night, I took a .25 automatic, and I shot myself in the head. And the bullet went in the side, and it came off the top. And, you know, that loneliness deep down that nothing could touch. You know, in A Vision for You, when it talks about waking up to the terror, the bewilderment, the frustration, the despair. When it's talking about that, it's not talking while I'm drinking and I'm running and gunning. It's talking About when I'm trying to get sober and I've got a heart attack. And I'm coming out of it and I'M realizing the havoc and the hearts that are broken and the things that I have done. When people say I didn't hurt anybody, just myself, I used to say that too. I tore everybody's heart out. I tore people in Alcoholics Anonymous' hearts out. I tore my wife and my kids' hearts out. I came out of it four days later on full life support systems and I still didn't stop. I still continued to drink. The state of California stepped in and they pressed charges on me. They charged me with ex-felon with a gun. And that's a true story. And before that ordeal was over, they remanded me into custody and I was sitting in Chino State Prison one more time and they ruled it with my fourth strike and they were giving me 25 to life. And I had another thought and I had an honest thought then. And that was I want to be sober now. I'll work the steps now, right? You know, I'll get a sponsor now. We get spiritual real quick when we go into those places, and I am no different. And I'm back in there, and, you know, I got my head shaved, and I'm playing the game one more time. They say we don't regret the past, and we're supposed to shut the door on it. I was very racial and very violent, and your jacket carries with you, and I found myself in a jackpot, andI found myselfin the hole for 28 days. And I got a hold of a piece of paper and a pencil, and I wrote this thing because I knew how hard it was going to be for someone like me to come back to Alcoholics Anonymous because those chips and those medallions were going to absolutely kill me. And I wrote this thing that when one who has wandered far into selfishness and self-centeredness seek to return to the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous, he will encounter criticism and distrust. There will be those that whisper he's a newcomer again. I don't think he'll make it this time either. These wicked ones are doing not the work or the program of Alcoholic Anonymous or of their higher power but of their own selfish, self-centred interest. They seek to drive the returning member still farther from hope and from sobriety. You know, let the returning member contemplate the rejoicing in heaven over the return of the one that was lost. Let him in no way be disheartened by the suspicion and scorn of others. He can again walk in the sunlight of the Spirit. See, because that's what I felt. That's what this program was founded off of. It was foundedoff of love and tolerance, okay? One of the things about Dr. Bob when he, in one of his last addresses before he died, he talked about boiling everything down to love and service. He talked about not getting caught up in all the Freudian philosophies of the day that detract us and have little to really do with our actual work. And the actual work is the one alcoholic helping another until we're strong enough to stand on our own, and then we get to keep it by giving it back away. These little, little things, he talked about the stick-to-itiveness of it and that when he got down, his constant work with others brought him back up for the boys on the ward at St. Thomas. And so I started doing some work inside prison and not never thinking that this was all going to work out. And I was ever going to have the privilege and the honor to get back up here, never with the thought that I was going to get my wife and my kids back. You know, there's those hopes that we have. But I knew that I Was gone for a long time. And through a letter campaign that my wife had started with a relationship that was so damaged, it was so damage. She had said to me one time, you know, Scotty, I don't even think God can fix this relationship. And I looked at her, and I said, well, it just shows how little faith you have. And I didn't really mean that, but it sounded good, right? It did. It made her think, right. And she started a letter campaign, and people all over the country wrote this Judge Chelsea McKay in the Lancaster Superior Court letters. And on October 7th, 1997, he pulled me out of state prison, and he stood me in front of him. And he had his bench full of papers, and the gallery was full. And he's looking at the papers, and he's look at me, and he is looking at me. and he says, you know, I don't understand this. He said, you seem to have helped a lot of people in your life. He goes, I didn't understand how you could do this to yourself. See, he didn't understanding the disease of alcoholism, how we can build this wonderful picture to our wives, our family, our friends, and we can tell them, no, no no, this time is different. Please give me one more chance. No, I'm going to do it this time. Please, you don't understant. And then we tear the house down, we drink. And usually if you ask them, they don't know why. I mean, if you asked them, if we're honest about it, we don't now why. And for some reason, though, you know, through God's grace, if you ever read the Bible or Daniel in the lion's den or Peter sitting there and the light coming and the chain falling off and the gate opening, that's basically my story because on that day he struck two of my strikes. He released me the next day. He released мне with a five-year tail. And I got out and I jumped back into Alcoholics Anonymous like my life depended on it because it did. See, I believe what the surrender comes to release. I believe with the absolute surrender comes the release of the obsession. And for me, it was a question of doing it again. It was a questions of waking up in the morning and praying that God removed everything I thought I knew about Alcoholics Anonymous, everything I though I knew abut you people, about life, so that he could open me up for new experiences, so that I could become teachable again. I had to become teach able again. And through a circumstance of events, through hard work, through the steps, through sponsorship and everything, I reassembled that family. OK, I you know, I had another little boy, a little Tommy. He's eight now. I got five kids, you know. And through no great act of me, but they're all doing quite well. My daughter, I just became a grandparent last week. My daughter gave birth to a little baby boy. And and so I'm a grand parent. They named him Scott after me, you Know, and you know her husband's in the Air Force. My son, Michael, who a few years ago got caught stealing a couple six packs of Pepsi out of Bob's house. He's in the Army now. He's into human intelligence down in Fort Huachuca, Arizona, and he's doing well. You know, I am overpaid in Alcoholics Anonymous, absolutely overpaid. You know I said one time to my sponsor, you know, I deserve this, and it was some issue that I was probably a relationship issue with my wife, but he said, Scotty, don't ever think that you deserve anything. He says, because what we came in here for is mercy, not justice. And if you got justice, you would not be here. And he told me this story about the devil having a yard sale. And the devil was having ayard sale and all the tools of his trade were laid out in the yard. Everything from the adultery to the murder to the dishonesty and theft. And over in the corner, in a distinction all by itself, was this little wedge. And this little ledge had a higher price than everything else combined. And the little wedge was called discouragement. And when asked from the devil why this was so high, the devil simply replied, When none of this other stuff works, let me get the wedge of discouragement into a man's consciousness, and it opens the door for everything else. And so I had to watch for those little discouragements. and I've never thought of it I've ever felt from that day on several years ago that I deserve anything I am overpaid in Alcoholics Anonymous and consequently life is good I've been all over the world I took my 5th anniversary over at St. Paul's Cathedral right outside the Vatican I gave a talk there on my 5nd anniversary I've done cruises and spoke on sober cruises with some of these guys here from Alaska to the Caribbean. I led a meeting at Congress in the Capitol, and my wife and I got invited by the Speaker of the House down to breakfast in the private dining in Congress in The Capitol. I'm not telling you that stuff to impress you. I'm really not. I'm simply telling you to impress upon you that I don't care where you come from, that there's hope in this program. I was walking through The Capitol on parole, and through the Capitol with generals and senators and all this other stuff and they're saying hi to me, hi sir and they don't even know me they never asked me if I was on parole I never volunteered it and I've done the conventions but I also do the hospital and institution work my home group is a central group in Utica, New York I have a panel at the rescue mission once a month I also go into the food pantry some of my most memorable meetings And I share this any time I get the opportunity because it just hit me between the eyes at this food pantry. And what it was was this white woman, she was like 85 years old. She was taking a 30-year medallion and she talked about what it wasn't. It was in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and she was talking about growing up in the South and what it was like. And there was this big black woman called Mammy and everybody would go and sit on Mammy's lap. And she remembered when she was five years old sitting on Mamdy's lap and rubbing Mammy his arm and mammy looked down at her and said child child my skin is as dark as the night but my soul is as white as snow just like yours you know and then fast forward 50 years later in the grips of this disease she could not stop and the book talks about women going to pieces a lot quicker than men she couldn't stop wanted to stop she looked down into her skin and she had that moment of clarity and she remembered mammy when she was five years old and when she looked at her skin she remembered it all and she cried out to god as we can and that surrender and that desperation and she said my god my god my skin is as white as the snow but my soul is as dark as the night help me father and he did you know and she was taking a 30 year medallion now God doesn't make too hard of terms on us okay he's there it says each and every one of us is the fundamental idea of God deep down in us it may be obscured by the calamity the pomp the worship of other things but it's there and it's only there that he may be found It says in the final analysis, it was so with us. It talks about stepping from the bridge of reason to the desired shore of faith. It talks that it doesn't matter your race, your creed, your color, that each and every one of us is able to build this relationship with a loving God as long as we're honest and willing enough to try. And that's really my story as I became honest and willy enough to do it. I hope that's your story. I hope you become honest and wiling enough to tried. We just came from a great retreat. You know, you had a lot of great information, a lot of people that were imparting this knowledge that they had that just helped fill us up, okay? The spirit, we were talking the spirit you could cut with a knife. Now I happened to get rushed to the hospital that day again. Last time I was here two years ago I got real sick. I was with Tom at a convention in Erie, Pennsylvania a couple years ago and I ended up getting rushed tothe hospital. Had colon surgery and all that other stuff. Was in 18 days, almost died a couple times and I hadn't had a bout until I came out here this last weekend and I was at State Line and yeah. Yeah, and because Tom was going to speak, right? No. You know, the thing is here, guys, you know, you hear a lot of stuff and you hear all kinds of people talking about alcoholism. You hear a whole lot of talkers get up here or speakers, whatever your preference is. I was taught that there are no speakers. We're just talkers, one alcoholic talking to another. You hear all kind of people get up there with their opinions, okay? And that's what you've heard a lot in my opinions tonight. But I base them off this book right here, okay, it's called Alcoholics Anonymous. And my suggestion, if you're new and you raised your hand, is get into the book. Find someone that's properly armed with the facts about themselves that can take you through this process, okay? That's literally going to open up your whole world. See, a lot of us did a lot Of The Dying we were ever going to do out there, okay, and we come in here, and this is a program for the living. And I mean that, okay. And the miracle is not so much that we're sober. The miracle is that we are alive to even be here right now. You know, St. Francis said to preach the gospel wherever you go and when necessary use words, okay? And that's what we do when we get up here. We try to use words. To try to express what AA has done for us, to us, and for us and can do for you too with this common solution. I can literally talk for hours and hours and horas about the history, about the steps, about what Alcoholics Anonymous is and what Alcoholic Anonymous isn't. And how I did that was becoming a student of Alcoholics Anonymous by opening myself up to people so that I could gain some of this knowledge that would better equip me so that I can help another human being. I'll leave you with this. I was in prison, and I read this book called Man's Search for Meaning. And in the book it was about a Nazi concentration camp and all the death and the destruction and everything going around. And this guy, I got one little sentence out of the whole book, and he said that man need not be ashamed of tears, for tears bear witness that man has the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer. Our book says that all men of faith have courage. See, we don't apologize for our God here, okay? How can we, okay ? Father Ed Dowling said that if he ever gets to heaven, it's not going to be for any of his great works. It's just going to быть simply because he backed away from the gates of hell. And I think that's what a lot of us have done here, not for our great works, okay, but it's simply that we backed away from the gates of hell. I'll leave you with this, that when you get what you want in your struggle for self and the world makes you king for a day, just go to a mirror and look at yourself and see what that man has to say. For it isn't your father or mother or wife whose judgment upon you must pass. The fellow whose verdict that counts most in your life is the one staring back from the glass. He's the fellow to please, never mind all the rest, for he's with you clear up till the end. and you've passed your most dangerous difficult test if the man in the glass is your friend. Some people may call you a straight-shooting chum and call you a wonderful guy, but the man-in-the-glass says you're only a bum if you can't look him straight in the eye. You may fool the whole world down the pathway of life and get pats on your back as you pass, but your final reward will be heartaches and tears if you've cheated the man on the glass. I cheated myself for a long time, both in and out of Alcoholics Anonymous. And like my booze watered down, what do I want this program watered now for? This is the real deal, okay? And if you're an alcoholic, we have the common solution. And I'd like to welcome you to Alcoholics Anonymous. Thank you.