The Rotisserie in His Head and Low Self-Esteem – Scott S.

What a bunch of deadbeats. Unbelievable. Nebraska. My name is Scott Redmond. I'm an alcoholic. Thanks to God, the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, the fellowship and good sponsorship, I haven't had a drink since April 22nd, 1985. Now I feel like a Nebraskan. It is so great to be back in Nebraska. I've got so many friends here tonight that I've met from all over the country. And my wife and I love the program in Nebraska. When we go to other states, and if we see a couple of you guys there, and we know when you're there, because if there's a couple people with their hands out and the other people in the room are looking at them like, who are these moonies, you know? Trying to create some kind of excitement or enthusiasm, you Know? We know there's some people from Nebraska there, and it makes us feel much, much more comfortable. And I'm just thrilled to death to be back here. I want to thank the committee and everybody involved with Pockets for having me out. It's a great honor to speak out here. My wife, Nancy, will be out here in a couple weeks at the state reunion, and she's really looking forward to that. We're kind of not leaving the house at the same time because we're concerned that if we both leave the house, will come back and our older son will be a mule for a drug cartel. So we're just trying to space it out a little right now. If you're new here, I'd like to welcome you to Alcoholics Anonymous. I have a great life and I'm sure that just throws the hell out of you. If you've heard my story before, I'm sorry, I only have the one. There are... I had some friends here who've heard my story somewhat and, you know, I'd love to do it different. You know, when I came in, I was a small Polynesian woman, you now. Now, I'm an overweight Jewish guy and a mere nine years later, but that would be fun though to go see somebody and their story's completely different, you know? I only have the one. If you're anything like me and you're new, you're looking around this room, this incredibly enthusiastic room, and you say to yourself, Alcoholics Anonymous, how did I wind up in Alcoholics Anonymous? How lame is this? This is beyond lame. This is behind the scenes. This is not beyond church, beyond synagogue. This is some plateau of lameness I never even imagined was available to me. Alcoholics Anonymous Welcome We're glad you're here And I know I was so, so very happy For the people who were having a good life In AlcoholicsAnonymous You know, when I was new I'd sit there and I'd listen And I'd think to myself Gee, you know Maybe you'll go home to that new house And it'll blow up, you Know and your family will blow up and maybe you'll blow up. If you're new here, you're now privy to an unending reservoir of unsolicited information and advice. They're going to get right up in your face and they're going talk that long AA crap to you, man. It's usually a guy with one tooth with a cavity in it with a belt buckle large enough to serve a whole fish on. You know this guy. You know the guy. You know him, right? Do I want what you've got? I think not. I think that, man. I'm here in Alcoholics Anonymous. My life is over. Now I've got to listen to this moron. I couldn't believe it. I just couldn't. Couldn't believe it. If you're new here, you might have a lot of problems. I had a great experience some months ago. I was talking to this new guy, and he was a couple weeks sober. I had just met him in a meeting, and He called me up, and He talked for an hour. And I said, uh-huh, about four times, just to let Him know I was alive. And He told me that He had been stalking a couple of women. He had a restraining order out against them. But that was a few weeks ago. It's all different now. He's got some sobriety under His belt. And at the end of the hour, he said, I feel so all alone. I said, well, I hardly even know you and I just listened to you for an hour without interrupting you. What do you mean you feel all alone? He said, oh, I mean, I don't have a woman. I said. Well, what what exactly are you bringing to a relationship right now besides stalking skills? What do you bring into the party, pal? But you see, our problem mainly rests in our mind. People two weeks in remission from leukemia are not having dating problems. people who are two weeks in remission from yellow fever or cholera aren't having relationship problems they're just trying to hold on our problem mainly rests in our mind so if you're new here and you feel like you're living in a psychological theme park you are but if your problems are piling up at a seemingly unsolvable rate and you're crushed under the weight of them and you seem like you can't solve these problems or get a handle or just get ahead of them a little bit with your own resources, we're going to suggest to you that your resources are insufficient. That you're in the throes of the grips of a fatal illness that's got you behind the eight ball and you'll never catch up. But the good news is we've got available here in Alcoholics Anonymous a substitute. We have a power here. It's the power that you hear in this room this incredibly enthusiastic room that you can cling on to that will get you out of that loop. It will get your out of the loop of spree, remorse, spree and remorse. I grew up in New York City, in the Bronx, in New York City. Yay! She's probably here with the Witness Protection Program. Yeah, how do we get out here, you know? And I was brought up in a completely insane family. My family was completely out of their minds. My wife never believed me about my family until she met him. My mom threw an engagement party for us and my aunt came and wore her wig backwards and it had a bun on it. And it wasn't a mistake, it was the look she was going after. She even wore it sort of jauntily askew, sort of beret style. Nancy walked around the room as if she had been hit by a wrecking ball. I mean, my family is really unbelievable. I had an uncle who was one of the top ten welterweights in the world and I wish I was lying about this because this is my genetic pool. His name was Izzy Redman and he was a boxer who was going to fight down south and he Was concerned about anti-Semitism and he asked his manager to change his name to Izzy Goldberg so no one would know he was Jewish. Oh, man. And when his manager said, Well, what? What? He explained that he thought that they'd think he was German. It was 1939. The Germans were pulling in a lot of fans around that particular time. Just so you don't think, a lot has changed. A couple of months ago, my mom called me and said, Honey, I've got bad news for you. Your Uncle Izzy's dead. This is her brother-in-law. I said, Oh, no, Mom. When did he die? A year ago. I said what? She said a year ago I said well, did you not know? Have you known? She said, well, sweetheart, your Aunt Phyllis is in the mental institution again and she calls me and harasses me so I haven't been picking up the phone. But it's okay, Phyllис died a couple of weeks ago so I've been picking off the phone again and I found out Dizzy's dead. If you're new here, all I have is good news. my family did not have one single solitary thing to do with making me an alcoholic they're nuttier than fruitcakes believe me i'm only giving you the tip of the iceberg nuts and not one single thing to deal with making an alcoholic so if you're new here you don't go you don' get to go to psychotherapy and work out your family problems and then drink like a normal person. You'll still have to go to parties and say, no, no heroin for me, I'll have a Perrier for the rest of your life. I'm not telling you not to go to therapy, that's an outside issue. I have no idea what you need to do about that. I'm telling you, I didn't need to clean up some stuff and repair some stuff and take a look at some stuff. But treating my alcoholism was a completely different notion. And I thought, I personally thought because I had been in psychotherapy for 18 years by the time I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. If you're new here and you're not an alcoholic, I would like to welcome you to Alcoholic Anonymous I was not an alcoholic when I got here. I was Jewish, number one, and I was taught pretty young that Jews don't drink because it might dull the pain. you don't want to miss out on any agony opportunities you want to be clear, crystal clear and ready and in addition to being Jewish I was in psychotherapy for 18 years and in addiction to that I was not an alcoholic I was an interesting complicated artist so I was non-alcoholic I was a artistic Jewish patient, I guess is what I was. So if you're new here, if you are not an alcoholic, if your a drug addict, I'd like to welcome you to AA. If you're a dope fiend, which is somehow worse than all of us, I would like to welcoming to AA if you are the big foot of dope addicts, you know, a dope Goliath, you know, I like to welcomed me to AA and suggest you can be anything you want. You might want to catch alcoholism, though. I don't care what you've got. You can have all that stuff. But we've got a book for alcoholism. We don't have a book for artistic Jewish patients. We don'T have a look for dope fiends. We don' t have a boOk for any of that stuff We have a bOok for alcoholics. And I want to tell you it took me a long time to catch alcoholism in Alcoholics Anonymous. A long time. I caught it from you. You gave me alcoholism I did not have it when I got here. I have a lousy case of it today and I caught it at the meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. So I grew up in this crazy family in the Bronx and my dad thought that he was a real failure and I completely agreed with him. I just thought he was sap, you know. My dad never made more than $10,000 a year and my brother and I never missed a meal and never went to school with ripped clothing. My last year out there, I made $80,000 and my children did go to school with ripped clothing and they did miss meals. How does that happen? How did my father become a loser? Put those two pictures down right next to each other and take a look at them just like I did. How does my dad come out a loser My dad had come out of losing because a certain kind of thinking had become established in me that had placed me beyond human health. Our book is pretty remarkable and in our book, in the first couple of chapters in chapter 2 and 3 there's a list of things people say about us The doctor says if he drank again, he'd die. There he is, all lit up again. You'd think he'd get sober for her. Why can't he lay off the hard stuff? And then there's a list of things we say to ourselves, like I'll stop after the sixth one. How did this happen again? And in both of those lists, there's an understanding of alcoholism. There's a world of misunderstanding about alcoholism and there's also a world of misunderstanding about the people who are observing our behavior and there is a world of misunderstanding about us about our own behavior Because it goes on to say in that chapter that if you ask an alcoholic why he or she has had a drink, considering the attendant's suffering and misery that follow every time they have the first drink. If you ask them and they stick with you and they don't slough you off, odds are they have no more idea than you do. So I grew up in this family and I set some really lofty goals for myself. By the time I got sober, I had reached or surpassed these goals. By the time I got sober, I had a book on the bestseller list. I had acted in a Broadway play. I had directed a film. I had directe d a television show. I had had my own theater in New York. I had done all of these things a ton. 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 the reason was people were horrible to me. Boy, man, they turn like that. Unbelievable. Horrible to me. When I took the picture of my alcoholism, if you knew we have an alcoholic test, it's called an inventory. It's a pass-pass situation. All you have to do is do one and you pass. Other diseases have blood tests, x-rays. We have an inventory and it's the alcoholic test. And if you take it and then you read it all to somebody, you get to see a picture of your alcoholism. And when I did mine and I got to see a picture of my alcoholism, I saw that early on people were doing things behind my back. A little later on they started talking behind my back. And in the last few years, they started thinking behind my back. And that's horrible. That's a horrible thing. You can catch them. You've got to accuse them of it all the time. And you'll get them eventually. And that was happening, that happened to me for a long, long time. The other thing I did through this period of time besides psychotherapy was I drank until I didn't want to be a drunk. I overcame my drinking problem with marijuana. Do you remember wow? Do you remember wow and then what? What? Wow. What? It's like watching, watching people smoke pot is like watching a dog try to run on linoleum, you know? There's a lot of activity but it never catches, you You know, there's just no forward movement, you know. I triumphed over marijuana with pills. I was victorious over pills with cocaine. Cocaine is a good drug. It's particularly good for sex if you enjoy sex from the Neolithic period. And I kicked that lousy cocaine habit with heroin. Heroin is also a great drug. It starts out as a dark, fascinating, kind of artistic, adventurous drug, and then you cross a line and become a vomiting pig. And you don't want to do that too long, and then I would drink until I didn't want To Be a Drunk. And I've been asked to share my story tonight, so what the heck, I'm going to go ahead and do it. We are at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, and it wasn't until I was in Alcoholics Anonymous for a period of time and read some of the stories, some of our personal adventures before and after, before I realized that my swapping my addictions was my method of avoiding alcoholism. Neatly evading it. We thought we had neatly evaded it. By the time I was 21 years old, my father had a massive heart attack and I was stoned on heroin the night that he died. I had holes in my arm. I couldn't be there for him or my mother or my brother and I felt like an animal, like a pig. cut off from the society of other people, cut off for my family, and I failed my father probably during the moment where a son is really supposed to be there. Really supposed to be there, and I swore I would never put a needle in my arm again, and I didn't. Shortly after this, I met a remarkable woman. This woman, gorgeous, fascinating, exotic woman. She was from Detroit. You know, that was so exotic to me. I had never been out of the Bronx. Detroit seemed so, you know, incredible. And she didn't seem to have this horrible weight around her. And some people here at the program, and I know it's true for them that they're attracted to damaged people. And I have never, I've always been attracted to healthy people and then I screwed them up. And my wife got sick from prolonged exposure to me. I mean, that's really what happened to her. And Nancy and I became so sick together that a guy lent us his car and we sold his car. We sold this guy's car. I will never in my life forget this guy voice on the phone when I call him up. He said, you sold my car? How could you sell my car, I lent you my car you sold my car. When I called this guy 15 years later to make amends, his voice was exactly the same. He said, you're paying me back? It was like he was frozen at the other end of the phone, you know, all that time. And he was certainly more surprised with the second call. I was certainly most surprised with a second call, I know that. If you wrote everything I did down in eight years of marriage in a book and you gave it this woman and she read it and you said would you live with this she said no who would live with this but spread it out over eight years throwing chronic success throwing a best-selling book throwing a bouquet of roses now and again throw in the fact that quite often i was telling the truth over here all right they know the end of this story got a little murky over here that was quite an out and out lie by the time i got to the drink it was quite often the truth over here you know they made this film about bill uh w a couple years ago i didn't much like like to film, but there was one thing I loved. Every time Bill did something that he didn't understand, he looked into the camera and went, I get that. I get that fully. Nancy and I became so sick together. I had this idea to cook something, and I died in the middle of the idea. I just went down. I got, I went toxic. I'd overdosed, but I had this idea. She came home, and the stove was on. I had a frying pan in my hand, and I was laying on the floor. And I was blue. I mean, I was going. And she called the doctor and described the situation in an empty vial. The doctor said, call an ambulance. And she hung the phone up and got another opinion. She called another doctor to get a second opinion on a corpse. Man. We became very, very sick together. We had two children who became grievously ill from alcoholism. Fear ought to be classed with stealing. It seems to cause more trouble. The fabric of our lives is shot through with it and how horribly true for the young people who are exposed to alcoholism because you see it doesn't matter what I say over here. If you're in between me and the drink, you're going to turn into a papier-mâché figure or you're gonna disappear. I'm either gonna walk around you or I'm gonna walk through you and if I gotta walk around you, I gotta walk bigger and bigger circles because it hurts too much to look at you at all. And if you're a little baby, and children have such little ego strength to begin with, how much disappearing can you bear? How many times can your needs, wants, and desires vanish no matter what I say over here? It doesn't matter because I'm answering a call beyond my control. How long until the child believes what they're being taught? Not what's being said to them, what is being taught to them which is you don't exist. You don't matter, you don' t exist, you're not here no matter what I say and that's what happened to our boys and they became grievously sick from alcoholism. By the time I got sober our older son was making involuntary clicking noises with his throat that he couldn't stop making in school. He was reading and writing years below his grade level. He tested in excess of 168 IQ, and he could hardly write. He was cut off from the society of other children, crushed up like a Dixie cup from being terrified. This is the family that came to Alcoholics Anonymous on April 22nd, 1985. Because at that time, I crossed a line that I swore that I would never cross again. I put a needle in my arm and did something I swore I would never do. I called my therapist of record and I told him what I had done and he said, there's absolutely nothing that can be done for you. I said, what? He said, there's nothing I can do for you the only thing I can suggest is you attend a meeting of Narcotics Anonymous Alcoholics Anonymous or we have you institutionalized. Now on most other days I would have gladly chosen the institution make no mistake the last few years I was out there I got excited when they told me I needed dental surgery, all right? That doesn't get even a titter at the Lions Club, by the way. But you know that's an uninterrupted source of narcotics for a period of time. There's heads going up and down here. That doesn'T happen anywhere but in AA meetings, all Right? No normal people go, hmm, dental surgery. Normal people don't do that. If you're new here and I said dental surgery And you got a little shot of adrenaline Welcome to Alcoholics Anonymous Man If you are new here And you are dreaming about drinking Welcome to alcoholics anonymous Normal people don't dream about drinking My mother has never dreamt About walking into a palace Made of cocaine Ever Ever And it doesn't mean you are going to drink it means you might be bodily and mentally different from your fellows. If you're dreaming about drinking, hold on to that dream. Help that let you take this first step maybe a little deeper. So I don't know why but I went to an AA meeting. I went through an AA meeting I came home and poured myself a glass of wine I turn around and Nancy's giving me the rat face you know I said what? She said what are you doing? I said honey these people are civilized people. They're not fanatics. You don't stop drinking completely. You have a glass of wine like a civilized, sophisticated person. Then I went to another meeting and I had already sent some money down to Texas for some drugs they were already paid for. It was incumbent upon me to take the drugs. It was a new drug called ecstasy. Unbelievable. I saw tears come to people's eyes. I took this drug. I didn't even feel Jewish anymore. I mean, this drug hit me, man. I made it washed over me. I couldn't believe it. I said, I don't need that AA thing. that. I'm not going to need that AA thing. It wears off. It always wears off, and I woke up at 5 a.m. the next day. I put on my best clothes. I got a bad check to write you, and I went to report to Alcoholics Anonymous. I walked into that room, 7 a.am. meeting. You know, people are just hanging out by a thread. You know those 7 a.'m. meetings. Most of them were in their underwear on the outside of their clothing, for God's sake. I am there in my best clothes to report to Alcoholics Anonymous. I couldn't believe it, man. I just kept looking around the room. But you see, the kind of bully I am, I'm a nice guy. I'm an astounding human being. And then if you don't do what I want you to do, you should die in a flaming car crash. But my first shot is to bully people by being a nice person. So I'd grin and yell and listen to them and pray that their face would burst into flame. Go up in a column of smoke, man. And I have no idea why I stuck around. I couldn't tell you why I struck around. If you're new here, I hope you're out of plans. If you are new here and you have a plan, it's probably abuse. Don't use your plan. grab one of us after the meeting and tell us your plan we want to know your plan that's actually the book I've always wanted to see is the collection of newcomer plans it would have a lot of diagrams in it man but I don't know why I stuck around I stuck round here six months and enjoyed the gift of step none. Absolutely, completely out of my mind. I didn't know that I was suffering from untreated alcoholism. I didn'T even have alcoholism yet. Drinking works. That's a treatment for alcoholism that works. It works. It kills you, but it works. If you're not drinking and you're NOT using the program of action outline in our book, ooh, man, what a bear. Untreated alcohol is, in my find, particularly unattractive in those who are not drinking. You can pick them up out of the meetings pretty quick, you know, they usually have a vein pumping like a garden hose on their forehead. They're a happy lot, you can count all the ligaments in their neck, you know. They're always real anxious to talk to a new guy, you know. And I was suffering from untreated alcoholism. I mean, the kids were starting not to get so scared of me and Nancy was kind to, you know, starting to go to Al-Anon family group meetings and, you know, I was six months sober. I was completely out of my mind and I got, I asked a guy to sponsor me. This guy, I knew he had been a bad guy and I just knew it from looking at him. You know, you looked into his eyes and saw those little bunny rabbits and antelope hopping around, you know. I knew this guy had been an animal and he wasn't anymore and he talked about God and he didn't sound like a sap to me. And I asked him to sponsor to me and he took me to his apartment. And he spent hours with me, a man who I hardly knew spent hours and hours with him. And addressed every problem I have ever had or ever will have that afternoon in his apartment, he addressed my resentments against myself, my resentents against you, my unsolvable sexual problems and my overwhelming fears because this is the architecture of alcoholism. This is the soul sickness, the cancer of the soul that It leaves alcoholics eaten up from the inside like a tapeworm has gotten to them and leaves them insane and empty and alone. Now, I hear from some people, and I know it's absolutely true for them that they mostly resented themselves. And I know its truth for them, and also not true for me. I hated you way more than I hated me. I mean, I hated ME, but I REALLY hated you. I am NOT a suicide guy. I'm a homicide guy, you know? And I'm not putting the suicide people down. I'm just saying, I'm sorry, I'm done. Don't take this as a knock. I think they're really the flip side of the same coin, you know, in a way. But I have vastly, always, vastly preferred your death to mine. It's just, you know where I come from. So I really had some resentments I needed to put down against you. And my sponsor sat me down and he said, I'm going to read chapter 5 to you and we're going to work the first three steps together, and now I'm going to give you instructions of this inventory. And by the time I was nine months sober, I finished this fifth step. I came and I read it to him, and our book says now we really begin to have a spiritual experience. And I really did begin at that point. Because it's important to take step one, but just for me, I took step one on a pretty primitive level compared to step one after an inventory. I mean, you want to take stop one? Do an inventory! story. I'm resentful at them. I am resentful me for resenting them, I'm resentful with them for watching me resent them and I've had sex with all of them. How did I get out of bed in the morning? How did they do anything? How did I function? My life is unmanageable? Yes my life is... I mean I was willing to give you a little bit when I first came in and did the first step. I was willing to tell you some things were unmanageable. But once I did that inventory, man, the web is so thick. This sickness is so thick. It's absolutely remarkable. So I did the fifth step with my sponsor and I did six and seven for the first time. And then it came time to do my eighth step list. I try to share this every time I share because it's just one of the greatest things that ever happened to me in Alcoholics Anonymous. The best reading of the eighth step I've ever heard. It happened in my old home group by a guy who I had never seen before and I've never seen him since. His name was Nino. He had a heavy New York accent. He had never been to New York. He'd never seen Chapter 5 before. He was there with a hospital group and he had a hospital plastic bracelet on his hand. He got up to the eighth step and he read, made a list of all those we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all. Jesus Christ! And he looked out into the room as if to say, Have you seen this? Do you know what's in here, man? It was so beautiful. It was so... It's exactly what happened to me when I saw the steps and all that. I thought, no, no. Not those people. Not that money. I wouldn't have taken that much money, man. No way. oh man not the car it's exactly what happened to me when I saw the steps if you're new here don't worry about it it's eight steps from where you are you don't have to worry and it's not eight that's going to get you nine nine and that's nine steps from where your heart even better news, right? So I did my eight-step list and I said, geez, what am I going to put my dad down there for? He's dead. There's nothing I can do about that. My sponsor said, do you owe him an amend? I said absolutely. He said, you put him down there. I said but what am i going to do? And Don said, I don't know Scott. I don' t know what you're going to d But I know that if you find the right kind of service that God will God is performing this miracle in the middle of your life. You don't drink and you don't use drugs. You don' t drink, man. You don´t drink. There´s a miracle in the middle of your life that will make all other miracles possible if you work on that miracle. And it´s the not drinking part. If you´re new here, don´T drink. It´ll screw your sobriety up. And sometimes we get real diffuse in Alcoholics Anonymous. You go to some meetings and you hear a lot about boundaries and issues and I´m not putting it down but you got to not drink in order to have a boundary or an issue. Stick around here, you'll have boundaries and issues. If it wasn't for the not drinking part, we'd be a bigger organization. Our ranks would swell if it weren't for the not-drinking part, because a lot of people want what we've got, but it's that not-Drinking thing, you know? Messes them up. So I put my dad on the list, I put my children on the list. I put Nancy, my wife, on the lift. And just for me, this is just for you, I said to my sponsor, well, shouldn't I put me on the life? He said, oh, the promises aren't enough for you. They're not enough for your life. Geez, well, we should have had a longer list of promises maybe. And I know some people need to be on their nine-step list. Listen, I'm not putting them down. I'm just saying for me. My sponsor heard. He knew my story. He heard my inventory. and he knew the last place I needed to be was on my A-step list. Because I had been, and I didn't need to do a character asset list either. I had worked on a character asset list for 33 years. I didn' t believe a god damn word of it anyway. You know? And you know, if you've been, and that's one of the reasons I love being in Nebraska is I get to hear and I getto say as a result of good sponsorship. You know, And I love this man. I love the man who is my sponsor and has become my friend and has given me this incredible gift that I've been able to pass on to other people. He's a piece of work, too. I mean, this man, a couple of weeks before he came to AA planning on committing suicide, right before he planned on committing suicides, he stopped smoking. I mean I heard this, and then I asked him to sponsor me, right? He was going to kill himself. He had one steak knife in the house. He was gonna kill himself with a steak knife and he was trying to figure out a way to cut below the tie line so he'd look good in the coffin. So who's nuts? I run up to the guy and say, will you sponsor me? Be my spiritual guide, right? Unbelievable. So I did that eight step list and I started doing my job at Alcoholics Anonymous. I couldn't really sit down with my children and say, gee boys, so sorry you've had no life. It would have been a really... I mean, I'm sorry were the two emptiest words in my vocabulary. They were meaningless for me by the time I got to Alcoholics Nibs. With my kids, I had to show up to a lot of Little League games. I had coach some flag football. I had spent some heroin money on clothes. I had spend some cocaine money on new bicycles. I'm not talking about a lot money. I'm talking about the money, you know. I had to help with some homework assignments. When my kid asked me how to ask a girl how to dance, I had try to show him. I had do the things that you showed me how to do in Alcoholics Anonymous because I didn't know how to do them. And the boys started getting better. They started recovering from alcoholism. My wife reached out to the Al-Anon family groups and I was just so proud of her and a really remarkable woman and she started a... We don't work on our relationship anymore. My idea of working on a relationship is to talk to you until you change your mind. Talk to you until your eyes roll back in your head and you keel over and on the way down you go, okay. Man. We had to try to work on ourselves and try to bring something besides somebody with stalking skills, you know, back to the deal. And the kids really started going through some remarkable things. They found an entire class of grown-up who was terrified of them. Those were the new guys who came to my house. When Jesse was about 80, he walked up to this guy, brought the guy in, and Jesse walked upto him and said, What's that beyond, pal? The guy went, four, four. I'm here to do four. I said, he's eight years old, man, for God's sake. Last year, this guy had him over to do a fifth step on Wednesday night. He came over to finish it Thursday night. Jesse's sitting in the living room and was doing his homework. He doesn't even look up. Doesn't have dope. Won't even give the guy enough of a break to look up from his work. He goes, what's the matter, dude? Blew it last night? Got to do it again? It's a tough room. It's a tough room. I fancied myself a show business big shot when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, my first year of sobriety, I had some good writing jobs and I was up to direct a situation comedy and I was about a year sober. I was becoming sort of a spiritual Goliath. And and I didn't get the job, and I almost drank. And my sponsor said, you got that show business guide, pal. You got that Show Business Guide. I heard a lot about God when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, and some of it I liked, and someof it scared me. I heard God getting people into relationships, getting them out of relationships, God getting People parking spaces, taking parking. I said, no, no. Not the parking God. Not the Parking God. Oh man, what do you do if you don't get a space? What happens, right? And I said man, you have got to get a God not involved in parking on any level. You've got to get a god big enough so that you can get the TV job or not get the TV job so that a lot of stuff can happen in his universe and you don't get to drink and it scared the hell out of me and I had to sit down and write that 10th step the resentments against the people who hadn't given me the job the resentment against myself for almost drinking and Don said to me he said you go do steps 6 and 7 and you ask God what you're going have to do to stay sober? And I did. And I said, as part of my sixth and seventh step, I said Father, I am willing to do anything. I will do anything, just don't let me drink. And within three months I was working as a cook on a catering truck and I looked up to God and I said I didn't mean this. I didn' t mean this, we've had a grotesque misunderstanding And you see, in Los Angeles, when they make a TV show or a movie, they have a catering truck that goes on location to feed the people. And it's a good paying job. And the first movie that I catered, the executive producer and star of the movie was a guy who I had worked with in the business. And he stuck his head on that truck that morning and he said, Can I have a burrito, Scott? And I said, what's happening, man? He said, is this your truck? I said no, but it's my spatula. I called my sponsor and said, we're getting the gift now, pal. We're really getting the Gift of Sobriety now, bud. This is great. He said, sounds like you've got a resentment. Well, they go to sponsor school, right? Come up with stuff like that. Said, sounds like you gotta sit down and write yourself a ten-step. That's how we do it in my AA family. One of the reasons, again, that I love being out here so much is I'm a member of a very enthusiastic and committed AA family and I love being part of it. In my AA family, not because it's better or worse, it's just because of the way we do it. We all have different things that we do that help us walk closer to God and make us feel part of a group. We write our 10 steps down. And I sat down and I wrote, I am resentful at Scott for working on a kitchen truck. It affects my self-esteem, pocketbook, ambition, personal relations, and sex. A five bagger for sure. Man. Now, what do I ask God to take away? This is a resentment. No big deal. Resentment's just the source of all spiritual illness, the great destroyer of all alcoholics. It'll cut you off from the sunlight of the spirit, take your ass out and kill your dead, but don't be alarmed right now. No, no, no. big deal, work a step a year. This is life and death. What am I going to do, man? What am I gonna ask God to remove? The guy, the burrito, the truck? What am i gonna ask him to take away? I'm dying! Blue skies, God's got a magic wand. He comes and touches me on the head. What poison in me if it was removed? What are the defects of character in me that if God would remove the resentment, we'd be gone. False pride. Grandiose. How dare a man of my caliber work on a kitchen truck, make a living, and bring money home? Unheard of. I'm impatient. Things aren't moving along. I'm playing God. Things aren'T going according to the Scott Redmond program, a fabulous program. I have low self-esteem. I'm judgmental and a retaliator. I never have to open my mouth to judge and retaliate, right? that happens when my head hits the pillow and it becomes a rotisserie. I was resentful at the guy for what? Being hungry? I mean, the guy was a sweet guy. He didn't rub it in, but I was resentment at him and I was respectful at God for putting me in a situation where I was being a fool.