The Idiot Savant Logic of the High-Functioning Alcoholic – Russell S.

My name is Russell Spatz, I'm an alcoholic. I'm a member of the Carl Gables Group of Alcoholics Anonymous. I haven't found it necessary to have a drink since January 25th, 1981 and I'm tremendously grateful for that. It's a privilege and a great opportunity to be here and share with you. I've been coming out here for many years, 27, 30 years and I usually go to a little group, a Palisades group over there. You know, I love men's meetings. So I was remarking before I, you know, while I was sitting there that there's something about, you know in the big book it says we welcome everybody no matter how long they've gone to as long as they mean business. And as much as I love the ladies, there's nothing about a men's meeting where it seems like you really get down to business. I mean I don't know about you guys but I know I was probably before booze addicted to the broads and my sponsor used to say underneath every skirt is a slip, you Know, and I just love them women. I was sitting in a meeting one time when I first came in, and I said, look at that blonde in the front row. And he said, you know, Russell, what did you used to drink? And I said he used to drinks scotch. He said, what kind? I said J&B. He said you see that gal in the from row? I said yeah. He says, you now, that's a bottle of J&b with legs for you. And you know that made me, I sort of chuckled. But I'll tell you what happened with me. I so much didn't want to drink. I wanted to drink more than I wanted sex. I wanted to not drink so badly that after that, I swear to God, every time I would see a good-looking gal, I'd look at her for a moment or two and see how good-lookin' she was, and then all of a sudden a green bottle would form around her body. That thing sort of stuck to me even to today. I'm going to try to share with you just a few stories in the time we have. I'll just tell you two or three stories because that's what this is about. It's about our personal stories. I want to try and be as transparent as possible, so the best way to do it is just be honest about a couple things that have happened to me before, during and after and what's going on with me today I don't need any script for this or any notes because I was actually there when it happened most of the time I'll tell you a little bit about myself I'm 63 years old I told you I haven't had a drink for a while I've been married 31 years to the Queen of Al-Anon our lady is a perpetual revenge and I've got three daughters, a son and six grandkids and I was sober most if not all the time for those kids and they're all doing great and I have a little law office in Dade County and I started off in the Dade County State's Attorney's Office as a division chief there prosecuting major crimes and then I moved out but that's a little bit of part of my story I think I want to share with you I want to start off sort of like a little bit at the end. I came from an alcoholic family, which isn't really important for this talk. I mean, I don't blame my mother, father, anybody for being an alcoholic. I think if you come from an alcohol family where it's 3 o'clock in the morning and there's screaming that's going on, it probably hurts you a little more in the self-esteem category, although most alcoholics pretty much think they're pieces of shit, even though they'll tell you that they're fantastic and they don't care what other people think about them. We know that the only – I don'T know. The one thing I've learned is I used to think before I came here that nobody's like me. Nobody can understand me. I'm totally unique. After many, many years, I now know that everybody is like me, and they think the same thoughts I have, and chances are if I think them, you've thought them. And so I pretty much figure out the reason A works is because we're all a bunch of twins, even though we look kind of different. So chances are, if I had some feelings and thoughts going on, you had the same thing. So if I just honestly try to be transparent and share with you what's going on somebody's going to figure out something that we have in common and the bottom line is I think I'm going to start you know when I was 30 now I've got to tell you the truth my memory isn't that great so if the timing doesn't match up don't blame me I'm not going to get the dates and the times right but I can tell you this I graduated law school I married a beautiful beautiful gal non-alcoholic she was the one who would have a sip of wine and then I would finish off her glass because there are kids starving in China something like that. And I had a beautiful child, a son. Before I was like 25 years old, I was the division chief in the state's attorney's office in Dade County, one of the largest prosecution officers there. I had an beautiful son. I have a beautiful house on the golf course, LaGorce Golf Course. I mean, I had whatever you're supposed to have or gather up around yourself to make you feel okay. And of course, I thought I was okay and pretty much a legend in my own mind. One morning I came out, I was about 70 pounds lighter than I am now and she was just a wonderful gal. She really was. She is now. And I came out in my blue suit and my white shirt and my red tie and all set the driver across the causeway to go to work in the Dade County State Attorney's Office. And she looked at me and she said, I just want you to know if you come home drunk one more time, I'm leaving and it wasn't like she was starting a fight she wasn't a codependent she wasn' t going to hang around it was like she was delivering the mail she had something called self esteem even though she loved me she said that's it the bill has got to be paid you come home drunk one more time I'm leaving you that's 12, I counted it it's 12 words, you know there's no fat in that sentence there's don't like what do you take out, like the if I graduated with departmental honors in mathematics I was going for my PhD in algebraic topology I'm not a stupid guy I figure a statement like that that's like the statement when the judge says I see you one more time, you're going to jail and you walk out and say what the hell was that all about I think alcoholics are sort of idiots savant. I think we're sort of idiot savants, you know what I mean? We could be tremendous actors, lawyers, mathematicians. We could be great singers and just as a part of our lives, we're just fucking dumb, you know? And we just don't see it. And so that's what she said. You come home drunk one more time, I'm leaving you. I walked out the door, I drove to the first light and I remember thinking this, what the hell do you mean by that? Now here's my theory on that. My theory on that. My theory on that is if you don't get, you come home drunk one more time, I'm leaving you, what should be the most important person in your life. You know what I mean? You're probably going to wind up in trouble down the road. And many years after working with hundreds of men who I've said similar things to, if you do this one more times, it's like there's no light going on. I've now realized an alcohol axiom that comes from that and that is whenever an alcoholic hears, reads or is told something he doesn't like it confuses them they usually get mad and they cross you off the list and say screw you and go find somebody who tells them shit that makes them feel good and agrees with them so I understand that the messages are clear we just don't hear the messages or we X them out and of course I went to the bar and I told my best buddy you know, I've got to get home because Ronnie says come on Trump, one more time, I'm leaving you he put his arm around me and said, oh you're a great guy she's not going to do it all, that sort of stuff so I had one drink, I said no, I gotta go, it was 4.30 you know and I was right across the causeway 15 minutes away so I have one drink I said give me a double scotch it was years later before I realized I started with two and I whacked that down because I was a fast drinker I didn't drink because I wanted to get to that place that spot, you know what I mean I used to get a good feeling driving up to the bar you know like just getting there and the next thing I know it was 4 o'clock in the morning they drove me home and the next morning I was kicked out of my house and that was the end of a 5 year marriage, lost my house my wife, didn't lose it, just gave it away and you know for years I'd like to say I was in an alcohol coma I didn't know that alcohol had anything to do with my divorce because if you would have asked me why am I getting divorced I would have said we're going in different directions she doesn't understand me, she's trying to control me and believe that shit and I was basically running the law office trying first degree murder cases in charge of four or five attorneys in a division and I was basically doing a good job and I had no clue it wasn't until I was six months sober and alcoholics anonymous that I'm driving back from Palm Beach with my sponsor coming from a car auction and he started telling me how he got divorced, guess what it was the same thing, come home drunk one more time, I'm leaving you I said that's what happened to me and I realized for the first time that not only did alcohol have something to do with my divorce it was reason I got divorced she could have said a million things but she said come home drink one more times, I am leaving you and that's why I got divorce and I didn't realize it for years, all the things that happened because of that deal so ultimately I obviously got into Alcoholics Anonymous and I just want to tell you a few stories I've had three sponsors they're all wonderful, wonderful men unfortunately people ask me if we'd be a temporary sponsor I say I don't know how to make it permanent because we died two of them passed away with many years of sobriety you like that we died okay that gets a laugh in this Well, actually dying, you know, I've had cancer a couple times. Actually, and I don't want to really get too far off the subject. Being told you have cancer is a great way to get serious and cut out a lot of horse shit. And it's not that I wish cancer on every one of you, but a bunch of you are going to get it anyway. And you'll find that you stop worrying about the fucking car or the broads when you get it. You really will. You'll start, believe me, 9% of the bullshit. You know what I found out? 90% of the shit that I used to think about has absolutely nothing to do with me Of the 10% that it has to do with me, 95% of that I have no fucking control over And the 5% that's left over probably isn't worth thinking about anyway, and so I've cut it all out and I'll tell you, it helps a lot with the committee It helps a little bit It helps with the community because you don't have to think too much You just have to focus on him It doesn't say see what your relationship with him is A great event will come to pass you and countless others Anything you do to focus upon him will stop you from focusing on her, or it, or them. God knows they all make me nervous. So I just sort of think about him. I feel a lot better that way. So in any event, getting off the subject, in any eventuality, in any case, I was unfortunately poorly sponsored. Albert Einstein was apparently dead. Jesus wasn't around. I couldn't find anybody. So they hooked me up with this used car salesman from Chicago who didn't even graduate sixth grade. and I showed him all my diplomas and my degrees I showed them all my diploma's and degrees you know, and he looked at them on the watch and said look at all my degrees, he said you know Russ record thermometers have degrees and you know what they do with those that's the way I've been treated all my life so I'm sitting with my sponsor, I just want to tell you a couple of stories about a couple more sponsors because I learned a lot from these men you know and I'm just one of those guys they say you know in the 12 and 12 the way we get a new perspective by a hundred forms of humiliation and the final crushing of our self-sufficiency. And there's just something about, in order for me to eat the castor oil and learn a lesson, I just have to be cut down to size. Because I'm such an arrogant son of a bitch. You know what I mean? Part of my mind tells me I'm the greatest in the world and I'm entitled. The other part of my brain tells me that I'm a piece of shit. That sets up some sort of friction. I don't know what that is. And scotch usually helps that deal. It brings us all together. But when you're not drinking, you're sort of confused. and you're nervous. And I just had these guys, these sponsors that were wonderful men that knew how to play me and they knew how to be tough enough with me where they would hurt my feelings. You know, thank God because they were more interested. They were sober. They were not interested. They were more interesting in saving my soul than worrying about whether I liked them or not. And you know, if you're an alcoholic, please love me a holic. Why doesn't he like me aholic? You know why are they saying those bad things about me ahollic? What can I do to fit in aholics? And what was that line that Marlon Brando said? If I go to a party and there's 300 people and one doesn't like me, I have to leave. You know, I'm the guy, I'm The Alcoholic when they say invite me to a party, who's going to be there? Because I've got to know because if it's somebody that I don't like, you know, I'm not going. You know what I mean? At the same time, I'm telling you that I don' t worry about what people think about me. When my whole life is about what is he going to think of me? What is she going to think about? What am I going to do? What's going happen if I lose this, lose that? It's just a... Man, I spend more money that I d n't have buying things across when I was nine years sober, because apparently my sponsor explained to me, when you spend more money than you make, you go into something called debt. Did you know that? I didn't know that shit, you know, and so in any event, I'm sitting with my sponsor, Bob Sullivan, my first one, right before a meeting, and I'm doing what I was bar drinking. You know, what bar drinkers do is, I don't know how many bar drinkers we have in here, but you sit around and you talk shit about other people. You just talk bad shit about others behind their back. That's just what you do. I mean, you don't realize it's gossip or any of that stuff, and you just and then when you stop talking to somebody else he says yeah you're right let me tell you about this son of a bitch you can talk about your boss or your wife or whatever the hell it is so it was the most natural thing in the world for me because somehow when you feel shitty about yourself you can't talk bad shit about other people it makes you feel better about yourself and if you get people to agree to that then it just makes you go better it's sort of like drugs and narcotics I was also a self-pityaholic that's sortof like drinking booze once you get involved in self- pity you can stop so there was silence at the table And I couldn't stand silence because if there was silence, I felt uncomfortable. I used to think I loved people. It's this fear of people. Well, if you love people so much, how come you always have to be drunk around them? So obviously I was scared of people, scared of their judgment. So silence I didn't like because I figured they were thinking about me. And so I busted in when it was silent and I started talking. I said, you know that guy Bob? And I started saying something. And my sponsor, Bob Sullivan, turned to me and he said, You know, Russell, this is Alcoholics Anonymous. He said, you know, we don't talk badly about other people behind their back. So unless you have something nice to say about Bob, why don't you just shut up? And he said that in front of a bunch of people. He like humiliated me, you Know, and my mind went like on fire, you Know, because I didn't like being humiliated. I started thinking about raping his wife and killing his dog. You know, where's that love intolerance shit, you Know, with all that stuff. And, you Know, somebody ought to report him to AA. And I would have quit, except I had that one thing going for with, I wanted so much not to drink. I'll tell you what. What saved my ass in here is the incredible desire not to drinking. Believe me, if you're going to leave this place because things aren't going right or because people are going to tell you something you don't like or they're goingto hurt your feelings I would have been out of here. But I so much didn't want to drink that even though it hurt my feelings and it sort of crushed me, I somehow connected that one of the reasons I wasn't drinking was because he was my sponsor. and so I came back and I did what alcoholics do, I blended that's what we do I wanted to fit in so I stopped talking for the most part I watched my mouth and I stopped talk about other people behind their backs there's a very interesting thing that happened I got so insane about it I became like the AA police force I'd say hey we don't sue that in Alcoholics Anonymous but I'll tell you what happens what happens is very interesting an interesting deal. When you start policing your mind and start policing your mouth and all of a sudden you're about to say you know that guy Richard and you know you can't say it so what happens is you sort of stop yourself from saying it and since I like to talk so you start figuring well what can I say that's nice so I found myself policing my mind stopping myself from saying things in front of my sponsor and other people you know and I started saying good things and all the sudden And so the next thing you know, as you start policing your mind like that, you start thinking good things about other people instead of bad things about other people. And three months later I start feeling a lot better about myself. Now, you know what? My sponsor had told me, you don't know what to do. If you stop talking shit about other people, maybe you'll stop thinking shit about other people and you might feel better about yourself. I would have said, what is this bullshit? You know what I mean? Because all my life, because I'm like an alcoholic, my alcoholic life, which includes my thinking, seems the only normal one. But he didn't say that to me. What he said to me, he says, why don't you just shut up and it hurt my feelings and so I stopped doing it anyway and I reaped the benefits I reeked the benefits anyway just two more fast things stories when I was about 10 or 11 years sober something else I learned that was real important I had a sponsor named Joe Snyder my other sponsor died of cancer and I was on the phone with him one day for about 10 minutes talking about how my wife had done something I don't know how many people are married but they do shit. They do shit to piss you off. They just don't listen. My wife has always been willful. She spends money, she does shit, she doesn't ask me, she doesn'T value my opinion, she disrespects me, all that stuff. What was that? She disrespects me so I turn to I'm on the phone with her and I'm telling her she did this, she did that and then she did this and then She did that. So after I'm done, you know, whining and crying because I was a member of, you know, that other fellowship, the Fellowship of the Thumb-Sucking Crybabies. You probably don't have them out here in California. We have them in droves in Dade County. So I'm talking to him, and he says, do you know why you're upset? I said, what do you mean? He says, well, doyou know whyyou're upset ? I said ,what do youmean do I know? Of course I know whyI'm upset. He says ,why are you upset? I said . What do you mea? Why am I upset? He says, why are you upset? I said, Joe, I just spent the last 10, 50 minutes telling you verbatim in detail exactly what she did. And then there was silence and then all of a sudden he said this, he says, you know, Russ, that's not why you're upset. Then he shut up. He didn't like volunteer, you-know-why or anything. So I said that's, not why I'm upset. He said, no, that' s not why your upset. Shut up. I said. That's, that is not why. He says, no. So he made me ask, because he knew if he had volunteered it, I would have pissed all over him. So he asked, well, are you going to tell me why I'm upset? And then he said, well do you really want to know? I said, of course I want to now, why am I upset? He said, listen stupid, he says you're upset because you're obsettable. What is this like, NAA or something like that? And what I found is that's true. That's part of the spiritual axiom, whenever you disturb no matter what the cause there's something wrong with me there's nothing wrong with you and my wife probably hasn't changed that much I think she probably has but she probably hasnít there's a lot of stuff going on but you want to know something most of the time it doesn't bother me anymore and I have one I don't want to go past it it's 25 I've got one last story can I have your permission we have to have a group conscience laughter laughter laughter laughter I want to finally tell you just one story because this is sort of like where I'm at right now even though it happened about 10 years ago when I was about 15 years sober I got tapped on the shoulder and nobody does this thing perfectly and we all balk and do things but I was taking a pretty good swing at the ball in this one sponsoring people, going to meetings doing all the service stuff sometimes you do all that stuff you know what happens you run into people if you keep on walking in the direction you're walking you'll wind up where you're headed and you'll be heading in a certain direction for a long period of time and somebody will tap you on the shoulder and all of a sudden you move like a centimeter to the right they say why don't you try this and then you go in a whole different direction I ran into a guy who came up to me he says Russ have you ever gone to a bible study I said no I'm a Jewish kid from New York I don't do that stuff my aunt Molly might disown me And, of course, she'd been dead for 10 years. But I worry about shit like that, what you've got to think about me. But I went anyway because I somehow learned at that time that anything done out of fear probably isn't a good thing. Don't make any decisions out of your worry about it. So I went away and I found all these guys, about 30 guys in the study. A lot of them were in AA that I loved. And that's where I met my last sponsor who's got 57 years. He's a Baptist preacher. And so what happened was I started going to this deal. and they were just doing all they were doing was studying all the shit that we were studying between 1935 and 1939, I mean you guys know this book was written in 1939, it started in 1935, when they said really I haven't seen a person who has thoroughly followed our path they were talking about the path they were following between 35 and 39 read Dr. Bob's Good Old Times he'll tell you the whole deal, so all they Were doing was studying the material that they were doing between 35-39 so it helped me out tremendously, but the story is this I'm driving my car and there's a place called Pierre's Cleaners right by my house. You can see my house from Pierre's Cleaners. And I drive out and my car has big books and 12 and 12s and Dr. Bob and the good old timers and Bibles. It's just loaded with all sorts of stuff and crap on the windshield and all sorts OF stuff. And, I drive up to this driving thing to put my clothes in there. And, there's this kid that comes out and he's like I don't know. He looks like he's maybe 16, 17 years old. And, he's wearing... I can't explain this. You guys thought, I don't know whether you call them gangbangers. He's wearing his pants down to his knees. I mean, I swear, I didn't even know what's holding these things up. And he's talking to me like this with his hands like, you know, like this. And just a young kid. And he looks at me and I hand him my stuff and he says, you know I got one of those. I don'T know where he's pointing it at. He's going like this, I got One of Those. I said, One of What? One of those is a bunch of, I said. You mean a Bible? He says, Yeah, I Got One of Thos. I said Do You Ever Read It? He says Yeah, Yeah I Read It. He says, you understand? He says no, not really. I said, well, sometimes you need people to sort of explain it to you. A group of men. I said I'll tell you what. I said every Thursday morning at 730 I go to a men's Bible study. My house is that house right across the street over there. I said if you're at my house at 7 30 if you were there at 7 3 I'll take you over to the Bible study and you can hang out and experience what it's like. He says you know really? I said yeah. And then I left. I did my stuff. I forgot all about this kid. His name was Leo. Forgot all about him. The next morning I get up around 7 15 and I'm walking out of my house. Who do you think's standing by my car? Leo with a Bible in his hand. So he gets in the car, I take him over to the Bible study. We go through the study and everything like that and we go around the room and it's a pretty cool thing. God's pretty cool. It's non-denominational. He said one thing at the end of the Bible he says, I think Jesus was an alien. But those guys were like AA guys. They said, hey, keep coming back here. Everything's cool. We're driving away and he says they loved you kid. You were great and everything. So he says to me this He says, could you do me a favor? Instead of taking me to your house, could you take me directly to my house? I said, sure, no problem. I said how do I get there? So he says, well drive back to your house and I drove back there. And we got there and he says okay now drive down to the stop sign. So I drove down to this stop sign and he said now make a right. So I make a left and go down to 186th Street. So I went down to 180th Street and he goes now you've got to make a left and then go over to 33rd and I made a left one up third. Seven miles later, we wind up at his house. And I learned a little bit about him while I was driving with him. He's a young kid. He's like 16, 17 years old. Never had a father. His mother's with another guy now. He's got a little three-year-old daughter that she had from another guy. You know, he's just a 16, 16, 70-year old kid just trying to figure out who the hell he is, just trying make his way through life. There's no male figure in his life or anything like that. Just a young child, you know? just trying to figure out the deal and so I drive and it's like 6 or 7 miles away and so i asked him how did you get to my house he was there at 7.15 and it turns out he woke up at 3.30 in the morning and read his bible and he walked the 6 miles to my home and he got there actually earlier he waited for me for about an hour so he could go to the bible study and I do step series in Miami in Dade County and Broward County. I'll get in my car, I'll drive 50 miles and once a week with a step series, you don't have them here where I'll do 12 weeks each step each week and I'll ride around 50 miles. It takes about an hour with a bunch of guys or something like that and I'm talking and I will do a little step series and a guy will come up to me after the step series and he says, I really like what you have to say can I hang out? And I say, sure. I said, why don't you come down Saturday drive down Saturday, we have a little group that meets in Dade County and they'll invariably look at me and say, well that's pretty far. That's a far way. I said, yeah it is far. It is far, you know. And so people ask me what does it take to get this thing? And I think you've got to hunger and thirst for this thing so much, sort of like Leo hungered I learned a lot from that kid the way he hungered and thirsted for this sobriety thing. It's just a wonderful thing and I really appreciate being here. Sorry about going over. God bless. Thank you.