AA - Alcoholics Anonymous
July 1, 2024
(0:10 – 4:26)
My name’s Scott Redman. I’m an alcoholic. Before the meeting, I was telling Ruthie, it’s
always great when you come to a function and our main speaker is… So she took
direction.
Thanks so much for having me. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it. What a beautiful
place and what a great fellowship you guys have.
I mean, this is really exciting to see the kind of stuff that starts happening when these
things become part of people’s sobriety. And all the people I’ve talked to have talked
about how meaningful this weekend and how long they’ve been doing it, how many
years they’ve been here. And that’s what Alcoholics Anonymous has been for me.
And I really appreciate you just let me take a little peek at it. I really appreciate it. I want
to thank Bob who picked me up at the airport with 30 Days.
He made my weekend. When I had 30 Days, I looked like… Every part of my face was
moving in a different direction. I looked like I had just walked out of the GM wind tunnel,
kind of.
And Bob’s stringing sentences together. He is… Where are you, Bob? Stand up. Come on.
There he is. You go, boy. Usually when you get a new guy to stand, it’s like he’s been
voted most attractive man on his cell block.
It’s like, is this good? Is it bad? Is it good? If you knew I like to welcome you to Alcoholics
Anonymous, and if you’re new and you’re sitting in this room, boy, you have stumbled
into a great AA meeting. I want to thank all the other speakers for the whole weekend.
And really, the two speakers that spoke tonight just killed me.
What great talks they both gave. I just love both the talks. And if you’re new here, you’re
at a great AA meeting.
I was welcomed. As a matter of fact, you’re sort of cluster welcomed when you walk in
here. There’s a kind of a welcoming frenzy that happens out there.
And you want that alcohol. You want sort of alcoholic repellent, you know, when you’re
coming. I’m welcomed.
And then there’s prominently displayed AA literature. And then the speakers talk about
alcoholism. I mean, that’s pretty remarkable.
And I can go… Sometimes I go to an AA meeting and not even hear a passing reference
made to God, the big book, or the steps. And I get very confused. If all I’m hearing about
is issues and boundaries, I get very, very confused.
And I’m not putting the issues and boundaries down. They’re fine. Issues and boundaries
are great.
But here’s the deal. You have to not drink. You have to not drink.
And you’ll have an issue and a boundary, I guarantee, if you don’t drink. But it’s that
goddamn not drinking thing as a moose. If it was not for the not drinking thing, we’d be a
much bigger organization.
That I guarantee. Right? Right? Absolutely. Because a lot of people want our deal, but it’s
that not drinking thing screws a lot of people up.
If you’re new here and you’re wondering when you’re going to get in touch with your
feelings, stay sober. They’ll get in touch with you. When you go to sleep at night and
Satan descends from the ceiling of your bedroom, those are your feelings getting in
touch with you.
When your head hits the pillow and it becomes a rotisserie, those are your feelings. But
I’m sure that’s not happening to you. If you’re a drug addict, I’d like to welcome you to
AA.
If you’re a dope fiend, which is somehow worse than any of us, I’d like to welcome you to
Alcoholics Anonymous. And just suggest that you catch alcoholism. You can have
anything else you want.
(4:26 – 4:43)
Just catch the dreaded alcoholism. You can be… This friend of mine and I hear new and
creative ways of people identifying and meetings. We always get on the phone and share
them with each other.
He had recently heard a guy identify as a crack monster. Ooh, that’s scary. Crack
monster.
(4:44 – 5:59)
Ooh. I wonder if they have like a Halloween costume for crack monster. I don’t care if
you’re like the big foot of dope addicts, you know, like a dope Goliath.
Just catch the dreaded alcoholism. Catch it. We’d love to give it to you.
I caught alcoholism in Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. I wasn’t an alcoholic when I got
here. I did not have alcoholism when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous.
Number one, I’m Jewish and Jews don’t drink. Because it might dull the pain. You don’t
want to waste any agony opportunity.
And the funny thing is when I was new in the program, a guy who saved my life. I was a
couple of weeks over and a guy next to me identified. He said, I am an ex-Catholic,
which means that I do not believe in God.
And therefore, I’m sure God’s going to come kill my ass for feeling that way. And I said,
I’m going and sitting down right next to him because that’s exactly how I feel. I had an
Old Testament God I would not be caught in a dark alley with.
(5:59 – 6:51)
This guy got your ass no matter what. He got you. There was no hiding from you.
He got you. He killed your goat. He turned your wife to salt and put a finger in your eye
and he got your ass no matter what.
Man, oh man, oh man. In addition to the Judaism, I could not possibly have been
alcoholic because I had been in psychotherapy for 18 years. I was going to be dead, but I
was going to understand it.
I’m not putting therapy down. Therapy is great stuff. I would never say from a alcoholic
anonymous or one-on-one that people shouldn’t go to therapy.
I really don’t believe that. I think our book says on page 133, if you need a doctor, go get
one. Jeez, what do they mean? There’s so much mystery in that book.
(6:57 – 7:39)
But my colossal blunder is I was trying to treat alcoholism with psychotherapy, which is
kind of like showing up at a gunfight with a knife once a week, you know, and just
getting these colossal ass whoopings, just whoop, whoop, whoop, not being able to
figure out I was doing good work in psychotherapy, dying from alcoholism. I was going to
be dead with no Oedipal conflict, but really, really dead. And so I did not have alcoholism
when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous.
I was brought up in the Bronx, in New York City. Nobody from the Bronx? Witness
Protection Program? Usually, the guys from the Bronx usually have the biggest cowboy
hat in the room, right? Yeah, right. Yeah, I love the West.
(7:42 – 8:38)
Talking in Montana, and I run into Vito in Montana. What’s he doing there, right? I love it.
I love the prairie.
It’s beautiful. And my family was nuts, completely out of their mind. My wife never
believed me about my family until she met him.
My mom threw an engagement party for me and my wife, and my aunt came and wore
her wig backwards, and it had a bun on it. And it was not a mistake, it was a look she
was going after. That bun was right out there, that sucker.
It was just nuts, absolutely nuts. If you got anything for free in my family, it meant it was
stolen. And I had an uncle who was a welder who used to get free bales of steel wool.
(8:41 – 10:46)
And his wife took a decorating course and made throw pillows and filled all the throw
pillows with the free steel wool. And that stuff works its way through on you after a
while. So when you go to their house, if you looked at the room, everybody was moving
a little bit, but the whole room was kind of a living, breathing, pulsing organism.
Nuts, nuts. And there was mental and physical abuse, and chronic institutionalization
and suicide attempts in my family. A lot of really crazy, sick behavior.
And if you’re new here, all I’ve got is good news for you, because my family did not have
one single solitary thing. I said not one single solitary thing to do with making me an
alcoholic. Because you see, if my family hadn’t made… I’m not telling you they weren’t
nuts, they were nuts.
And I’m telling you some of the funny stuff, there was a lot of really ugly stuff. And I’m
telling you, if they had made me an alcoholic, I could go to psychotherapy, I could work
out my family problems, and I could drink properly. I wouldn’t have to go to parties
anymore and say, oh no, no heroin for me, I’ll have a Perrier.
I wouldn’t have to do that. I could just be like the normal people. But it doesn’t matter
how much therapy I take.
And I’m not saying don’t go to therapy. I’m not saying don’t… I’m not telling you, and if
you’re new here it might be confusing, because you might have had a lot of bad stuff
happen to you. Not for one second am I telling you it didn’t.
Not for one second am I telling you you didn’t get hurt. I’m telling you, I know in me you
can’t make a drunk like that. Because if you can make a drunk like that, then you can
cure a drunk like that.
But if you have a weird physical reaction to alcohol, and it gets mixed with some
fascinating thinking. Now if you know, I’ll tell you why they’re laughing. They all have it.
(10:55 – 13:10)
It is the kind of thinking that will take a person to assume that they can succeed in
something that they have, without a doubt, almost every time failed at. Failed at
horribly, horribly, embarrassingly. Everyone knows they can’t do it.
They know they can’t do it, and yet they continue to come up ways they think they will
at last succeed in doing it. I have a friend named Larry. The first time he ever read our
book, he read the first page to the fourth chapter of our book, which contains a sentence
that says, facing an alcoholic death or a spiritual life is not always an easy decision to
make.
And the first thing he thought when he read that sentence was, well, how bad an
alcoholic death are we talking about here? That’s not a normal reaction to that. You’re
going to die. How bad? How bad, man? That’s not a normal reaction to that.
I love reasons to drink. And if you’re new here, read the last paragraph of our third
chapter. It says that if you don’t do certain things to bring about a spiritual recovery,
you’re going to have no defense against this fascinating thinking, which drives you to
take a drink that you can’t stop taking because you’re allergic to it.
And if you’re special and you’re a drug addict, try some controlled crack smoking. My
favorite reason to drink that I’ve ever heard, and I just love this, I was sponsoring this
guy for about 15 minutes, and he lived with his wife, he was a male prostitute, and he
had a gay lover. And he called me to tell me that he drank.
And I said, oh, why? I have an inquiring mind, I want to know. And he said, without
missing a beat, he said, I caught my wife cheating on me. You can’t make that up.
You can’t write that. Now, I want to tell you something. I understand.
I understand that he came up with that one of two ways. Either boom, boom, it was an
occasional hunch or an inspiration. It was just a pearl.
(13:10 – 13:21)
You know what I mean? It just, boom, he just came out with it. Or that was the product of
weeks in the rat’s maze, man. Weeks of cutting and pasting reality and just tweaking the
world.
(13:21 – 13:31)
Just a little bit. The bitch cheated on me. I know I’m a hooker, but she cheated on me.
(13:36 – 15:26)
Now, I get it. It’s either boom, I used to come up with stuff I couldn’t believe. No one else
could either.
Or I’d pound it out, work on it, work on it, cut and paste reality, you know? So, I grew up
in this nutty family and was put in psychotherapy at a very young age. And the second
thing I did to avoid alcoholism, something I want to talk about tonight that I have to talk
about, because it’s my story. And I’m going to talk about drugs, and I want to apologize
to anybody that offends.
I do not mean to offend anybody here. I absolutely believe in unity in AA. And I use drugs
to avoid catching alcoholism, and it almost killed me.
So, I talk about it as part of my story. It’s part of my bottom. If it still really pisses you off,
where’s Tom? He asked me to talk.
And he had already heard my story, so I was invited. What I did was, I thought that
psychotherapy was really going to help me avoid this terrible alcoholic dilemma I was in,
almost from Jump Street. So, I went to therapy, and then what I started to do is I drank
until I didn’t want to be a drunk, and I started smoking pot to overcome the drinking
problem.
I’d like to welcome all the pot smokers here tonight. You remember Wow, right? Wow.
And right after Wow usually came, what? Wow, what? Wow, what? Wow, what? Wow,
what? Watching a pot smoker is like watching a dog try to run on linoleum.
(15:31 – 15:52)
There’s a lot of activity, but no movement. But they’re busy. They’re biz, biz, busy.
They just can’t get a claw in the rug and get that stuff on the road. I triumphed over
marijuana with pills. I was victorious over pills with cocaine.
(15:52 – 16:17)
Cocaine is an excellent drug. It’s particularly good for sex, if you enjoy sex from the
Neolithic period. And I kicked that cocaine with heroin.
Heroin is a very complicated, dark, artistic drug. And then you cross the line and become
a vomiting pig. And then I drank until I didn’t want to be a drunk, and I drank throughout.
(16:19 – 17:20)
And I didn’t even start to catch alcoholism until I was almost dead from it at the age of
33, and my wife was sick and dying, and both of our kids were sick and busted up and
dying. The warped lives of blameless children. When I was in my early 20s, my father
had a massive stroke.
I had slammed some heroin that afternoon, and I showed up at the hospital. I couldn’t be
there for my pop or my mom or my brother. And I felt like a pig, like an animal.
The sound of the heart machine wouldn’t get through. And I knew what the problem was,
and I knew how to solve it that night. I knew that the problem were needles and heroin,
and I swore I’d never put one in my arm again and never do them again, and I didn’t.
I just drank to let it want to be a drunk over and over and over again. Shortly after this, I
met a woman. I had set some lofty goals for myself as a young man, because my father
never made more than $10,000 a year, and I wasn’t going to be a sap like him and make
money and bring it home.
(17:25 – 18:48)
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. My kids went to school with ripped clothing all the
time and missed meals all the time, and I still thought my dad was a loser.
That’s because a certain kind of thinking had become established in me that had placed
me beyond human help. Oh, always good news for the new man. I wasn’t going to be a
loser like my pop, so I had set some lofty goals for myself as a young man, and by the
time I got to Alcoholics Anonymous, I had reached or surpassed all of them.
By the time I got to AA, I had had a book on the bestseller list. I had acted in a Broadway
play. I had directed a television show.
I had directed a film. I had had my own theater in New York. I had done all of these
things a time.
I never got to do any of them more than once, because when I’d leave, they’d move the
business, so I couldn’t find it again. If you’re new, we’ve got a test. We’ve got an
alcoholic test here.
Other diseases, they’ve got blood tests and x-rays. We’ve got an inventory. It’s the
alcoholic test.
It’s a pass-pass situation. All you have to do is do it, and you’ll pass. If you do it, if you sit
down and you do it, you read the whole miserable thing.
I’m resentful at them. I’m resentful at me for resenting them. I’m resentful at them for
watching me resent them, and I’ve had sex with all of them.
(18:53 – 19:53)
What does this have to do with alcoholism? It is alcoholism. It’s the sickness of the soul
that will keep you in the cycle of spree and remorse until you’re traded out and there’s
nothing left, and you’re hollow and insane and alone. It is a spiritual tapeworm that eats
you up from the inside while you think you’re having a life, and eventually your hand just
slips out between your fingers like a handful of water over and over and over again.
That’s what happens to your life. That’s what happened to my life. I was acting in a
Broadway play, and a new usherette with long brown hair walked in, and I took one look
at this woman.
I didn’t even say a word to her. I walked back into the dressing room, stood up on a
chair, and said, if anybody talks to the new usherette with long brown hair, I’ll break all
the bones in your hands and feet, and I’m still married to her. Nancy and I fell deeply in
love.
I was acting on Broadway. We were in our early 20s, living in New York City. The world
was our oyster, and we were going nowhere fast.
(19:53 – 22:15)
We were just a couple of dogs trying to run on linoleum, and we had a lot of good times,
really, really good times, and Nancy became very, very sick from prolonged exposure to
me. We had a son named Micah, and Micah was really welcomed into the world. When
he was born, we were surrounded by friends and family.
There were a ton of phone calls, lots of flowers at the hospital, and when Jesse was born
two years and nine months later, there were no visitors, no phone calls, no flowers. We
had been completely isolated by the disease of alcoholism in just two years and nine
months, and it’s not because people didn’t love us. It just hurt too much to be around us.
The ice around our heart had become so thick, it had just repelled everybody, and that
night that Jesse was born, he wound up in neonatal intensive care. He had a problem
with his heart at that time, and I was at home with Micah, and I got a call from a doctor
that night, a doctor I had never met before. She said, Mr. Redmond, now you guys know
there’s no more wonderful place to be in a hospital than on a maternity ward when
everything’s okay, and there’s no place worse to be in the world if things aren’t okay,
and you’re alone, and you have no God in your life, and you have no comfort.
So she’s surrounded by all of this celebration, no visitors. I can’t come down. I said to the
doctor, the doctor said, your wife’s in real trouble.
The baby’s up in an incubator. She’s all alone in the room. We need you to come down
here, and I said, I’d love to come down, but the fact is I can’t find anybody to watch our
two-year-old son.
I can’t come down, and this doctor who I did not know said to me on the phone that
night, I tell you what, let me give you my phone number. You call my husband. He’s at
home.
Bring your kid over to my house, and my husband will take care of him. What a
remarkably generous offer, and I said no. I had, there was no way I could accept this
woman’s generosity because I think that I would have had to take a moment to just look
at, I would have had to look at my own life somehow.
I would have had one of those horrible moments of how did this happen? How did we
wind here? We were in the community of people, of artists, of people, of friends, of
family. How the hell did this happen? And I couldn’t bear it. I used to have this phrase I
used to use with my wife all the time.
I used to say, I can’t fit the pain in my head. I just couldn’t fit it in. It was too big.
(22:16 – 22:54)
And by the time I got to AA, Micah was six and Jesse was three. Micah was diagnosed as
functionally retarded. He was making involuntary clicking noises with his throat that he
couldn’t stop making.
He was reading and writing years below his grade level. His small motor skills were
screwed up and there was nothing physically wrong with him. It was just from being
scared all the time.
Jesse started to vanish. He just started to disappear. He got out on the edge where it was
just safer because you see, if you get in between me and the drink, you’re going to
disappear.
(22:54 – 23:28)
If you get in between me and the drink, you’re either going to become something less
than human, papier-mâché, some kind of mindless, personality-less figure, or you’re
going to vanish because I’m going to get to the drink. I’m going to think my way around
you or through you and get to the drink. I guarantee it.
Might not be today. I might even wait a day, but I’ll get there. And eventually, how much
vanishing can a baby do before the baby believes what they’re being taught, which is
that they don’t exist.
And that’s really what happened to our kids. And they became grievously sick.
Grievously sick from the disease of alcoholism, which we didn’t even have.
(23:33 – 23:46)
Nancy and I just became nuts. We became so sick that at one point, a guy lent us his car
and we sold his car. I will never forget this guy’s voice on the phone as long as I live.
(23:47 – 24:20)
He said, you sold my car? I lent you? That’s like house-sitting for someone and they
come back and you’re an escrow. You know, and the alcoholic life becomes the only
normal one. It was the end of the month.
We didn’t have the rent. Big duh, right? And I looked into my wife’s eyes and I said, I am
so sick of being a punk, irresponsible kid. I am so sick of borrowing money.
Let’s do the right thing. Let’s stand on our own two feet. Let’s sell the car.
(24:21 – 25:28)
Now, I want to tell you something. I understand how I came up with that. The same way
that I used to get excited when I was told that I needed dental surgery.
I always looked. Dental surgery, that’s an uninterrupted source of narcotics for a period
of time. There’s heads going up and down there.
You don’t get that at the Lions Club, by the way. Only alcoholics go, ooh, dental surgery.
Ooh.
Wow. I lucked out this time, man. And I’ll tell you why.
For the same reason that I was able to sell the car as a demonstration of my personal
responsibility. I leave out the middle. I go to announcement of dental surgery to
painkillers.
I leave out the surgery. I leave out the cutting, the sutures, the blood, and the pain.
That’s what I leave out.
I go from let’s do the right thing to having money. I leave out Grand Theft Auto. That’s
what I leave out.
I leave out forging the name on the paint slip. This is what I leave out. If you’re new here,
welcome to the middle.
(25:30 – 26:43)
We’re real big on the middle here. Nets came home one day, and I had an idea to cook
some eggs, and I died in the middle of the idea. She came in.
I was blue. I had a pan of eggs on my chest, and there was an open vial next to me and
an empty bottle of booze. And she tapped me with her foot, and she said, how are you?
And I said, I’m exhausted.
And she called the doctor and said, you know, explain the situation. The doctor said,
there’s a blue Jew on the floor of your kitchen. Call an ambulance.
Why are you calling me? He’s blue. There’s empty. My wife tells a story.
It always chills me a little because she says, I hung up the phone, and I thought about it.
Then she called another doctor for a second opinion. I’m glad the doctor was not an
untreated Al-Anon and repeated the first doctor’s advice.
(26:45 – 28:50)
My son Micah came to me when he was five years old, and he looked at me in the eyes,
and he said, dad, is there anything such as God? And I looked right back in the eyes of
my perfect five-year-old baby boy, and I said, no, son, there isn’t. And I swear to you, I
thought I was doing him a favor. I swear to you, I thought I was saving him some skin so
he wouldn’t be played like one of those saps or suckers out there.
So you get the real existential deal. I didn’t know I was lying to him. I didn’t know that I
was doing something absolutely antithetical to what I thought I was doing.
I thought I was giving him the real brave deal. And what I was giving him was the most
cowardly, mushiest thinking of all, the weakest thinking of all. And even worse than that,
even worse than lying to him, what I was really doing was I was looking into the eyes of a
five-year-old baby.
And in essence, I was saying, you know, sweetheart, when it’s dark at night and you’re
scared and you can’t go to sleep, tough, because that’s all there is. That’s really what I
was telling him. I don’t really think there’s a piece of, I don’t think there’s a more abusive
thing that you can say to a child.
On April 20th, 1985, I crossed the line I swore I would never cross again. By that time,
the kids were just nuts. Nancy was a ranting lunatic.
My careers were just gone. And I crossed the line I swore I would never cross again. I put
a needle in my arm again.
That was always the line. As long as I didn’t do that, I was okay. It didn’t matter whatever
else happened, but I did it.
I put a needle in my arm. I called my therapist of record, my first Jungian therapist, and I
told him what I had done. And he got on the phone with me that morning and he said,
you know, there’s absolutely nothing that I can do for you.
I said, what? He said, I can’t help you. The only thing I can suggest is you attend a
meeting of Narcotics Anonymous, Alcoholics Anonymous, or we have you
institutionalized. Thank God this guy was that humble.
Thank God he did exactly the same thing that Carl Jung said to the man who 12-stepped
the man who 12-stepped Bill Wilson. The exact same thing. Carl Jung said to Roland
Hazard, there’s absolutely nothing that can be done for you.
(28:51 – 29:31)
He could have said, come on up and let’s talk about it. I’ve been talking about it for 18
years. I think the conversation was over.
Now why I went to that AA meeting and didn’t go to the institution, I don’t know. I really
don’t because on most other days I would have gladly chosen the nuthouse. I don’t know
why I went to AA, but I did.
I woke up at five o’clock in the morning, put my best clothes on and went to a 7 a.m.
meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, you know, 7 a.m. meetings, people are
barely hanging on by a thread. You know, most of them have their underwear on the
outside of their clothing.
(29:32 – 31:10)
You know, I walk in there with my best clothes, a bad check to write you, looking to pee
in a cup and you know, no one did let me pee in their cup. And to join AA and I walked in,
I walked into that clubhouse and if you’re new and you’re anything like me, I looked
around that club that morning and I said to myself, Alcoholics Anonymous, how did I
wind up in Alcoholics Anonymous? How did this happen? How lame is this? This is beyond
lame. This is beyond church, beyond synagogue.
This is some plateau of lameness I never even imagined was available to me. Alcoholics
Anonymous. Welcome.
Welcome. You are now privy to an unending unsolicited reservoir of information and
advice. They’re going to get right up in your face and talk that endless unsolicited AA
crap to you.
You know the guy. He’s got one tooth with a cavity in it, right? You know him. You know
him.
He’s got a belt buckle large enough to serve a whole fish on, right? Do I want what
you’ve got? No! No, but thanks for spitting on me! I hated every single thing about AA. I
hated it. Everything was a miracle.
(31:11 – 31:16)
Miracle. Miracle. Miracle.
I’m a miracle. You’re a miracle. The coffee’s a miracle.
(31:16 – 31:58)
The furniture’s a miracle. Miracle. Miracle.
Miracle. I said, when are we going to hook a rug? You know, and I know the Jew hunt’s
going to start any minute, you know. Come on, Jaime, strap these antlers on.
We’re going to count to ten. Poke them with a sharp stick. I couldn’t believe it.
The only reason that I can imagine that I stuck around, the only reason is that I was out
of plans. If you’re new here, I pray for you that you are out of plans. If you’re new here
and you have a plan, it’s probably a butte.
(32:06 – 32:15)
Don’t use your plan. Don’t. Grab one of us after the meeting and tell us your plan.
(32:15 – 35:45)
We want to know the plan. That’d be a great book, a collection of newcomer plans. I
guess I was out of plans.
I kept coming back. I stuck around for six months and was losing my mind. I was
suffering from untreated alcoholism.
Didn’t even know I had alcoholism. And in the six months, I saw the AA drill hundreds
and hundreds of times. People came in, did the work, and changed.
People came in, didn’t do the work, didn’t change, got sick, got sicker, got to the podium,
shared their gift with us, and shared their ass right out of the door. Or stayed here and
became columns of human sewage and sexual predators, although I judge no man.
Because I’m just too darn spiritually developed to judge people.
So I knew I was going to drink. My wife had reached out to the Al-Anon family groups,
and I saw the miracle happening in her life, and our sons had become a little less
frightened. And I stood at the turning point and in my own way asked for his care with
complete abandon by, in my demonstration, was I asked a guy to sponsor me.
And I did something I had rarely done in my life. I asked a good guy for something he
had. And that’s not something I was in the habit of doing.
I was in the habit of asking drowning people for swimming lessons. And when they, when
all they’d say is, glub, glub, glub, I’d get pissed off at them. Right? Oh, you can’t do that?
Tell me how, you know.
And the guy made sure I’d done some reading from the big book of AA, and invited me to
his apartment. And he spent hours with me for fun and for free that day, and I couldn’t
figure out why he was doing it. He read chapter five to me, and on the way through, he
took me through the first two steps.
We reached step three and said a prayer together. He finished chapter five and he went
back and gave me instructions on how to do a fourth step from the big book of AA. And I
stopped feeling like I was stealing someone’s seat here.
I can honestly tell you that. I didn’t have a burning bush experience, but I know that I
stopped feeling like I was stealing someone’s seat. You guys have been talking about the
work, and I had, I was experiencing the gift of step none at that time.
And then all of a sudden I started doing the work. It took me three months to do my
inventory. I went back and read it to my sponsor, nine months of sobriety.
Now I know that for some people, I know it’s true, and it’s true for some of the men I
sponsor, that they mostly resented themselves. And I believe that’s true for them. I also
know that it’s absolutely not true for me.
I hated myself, but nothing compared to how much I hated you. I hated you so much
more than I hated me, it’s difficult to describe. I’m not a suicide person.
I’m a homicide person. That’s just where I go. I vastly prefer your death to mine.
I always have. You first. Again, I don’t want to annoy anybody.
I’m not knocking the suicide people. This is not a put down. It’s just a kind of a flip side of
the same coin.
You first, as far as I’m concerned. So I had a lot of work to do on this inventory. I had a
lot, a lot of work.
(35:47 – 42:17)
I read it to my sponsor. It came time to do step six and seven, which would become my
working template. That’s really where I’ve developed my relationship with God and
continue to see it grow is in the heart of step six and seven.
And then it came time to do my eighth step list. I try to share this anytime I talk, because
it’s the, for me, the single greatest reading of step eight I have ever heard. If you’re new
here, I’d like to share it with you.
It happened in my old home group years ago. I was just a couple of months over and a
guy named Nino was there who I’d never seen before this night. I, and never seen him
since.
I hope never to forget him. He had never read chapter five before he was there with the
hospital group. He had hospital plastic.
He had a heavy New York accent and he was reading chapter five for the first time. And
he got up to step eight and he read, made a list of all those we had harmed and became
willing to make amends to them Jesus Christ. And he looked out into the room as if to
say, have you seen this? Did you know what’s in here, man? It was so beautiful.
It was so pure. It was the purest reading of the step I had ever heard because it’s all I
saw when I got sober. I didn’t see anything else on the list.
No, not those people, not that money. I would not have taken that much money if I knew
I had to give it back. No way.
If you’re new, don’t worry about it. It’s eight steps from where you are anyway, for God’s
sake. And it’s not even eight.
That’s the really annoying one. It’s nine. Really want to get pissed off.
Take a look at nine. I wrote up my eight step list. My pop was down there.
My kids and my wife were down there and I didn’t know what the hell I was going to do
about any of it. I just didn’t know. I mean, this thought of sitting down and apologizing to
my wife and kids was a joke.
The words, I’m sorry, had been rendered absolutely useless. And my dad was dead and I
didn’t know what to do. And my sponsor, I don’t know if he had done this with other men.
I don’t much care, but he just did something with me that has led to shaping my
sobriety. He refused to tell me how to make the amends. I said, what am I going to do?
He said, I don’t know.
I don’t know. Do your job in AA. What can I do? My dad’s dead.
He said, I don’t know. Let’s see. Do your job.
Maybe he knew that if I had been given a task, I would have gotten it out of the way and
moved on with the business of dying. I don’t know. But he wouldn’t do it for me and it’s
turned into a great blessing for me.
It turned into me finding out what my work in Alcoholics Anonymous has been. So I
started doing a lot of lame crap. Lame, lame, lame, lame, lame, lame.
Flag football, Little League, lame, lame, lame, lame, lame. Had to stop sending my kid
into school and letting him take the bullet because he was so sick. I had to go into school
and sit down with the teachers and say, my son is making these noises with his throat.
My son can’t read or write because he’s been terrified all the time. He’s very sick
because he’s been living with me and I’ve been very sick and we’re trying very hard and
we need your help. And both boys got tested and they got special ed and they started
making a beginning.
I didn’t want to do any of that. It was very embarrassing and I didn’t want to do it and I
did it. And going to Little League, I go to my first Little League game.
My wife comes to the game. She looks over at the first base stands and falls down
laughing. There’s everyone in the first base stands and there’s me alone in the sun,
pissed off, right? I’m here.
I’m doing my job. I’m here. I’m here.
I’m here. You know, I’m going up and down two hat sizes, just psychotic. You know, the
kids were really pleased to see me.
Mr. Redman’s going to blow up, man. Look at him. I was insane.
It took a couple of years for the voices to diminish in number and volume for me to go
and sit with the people in the first base stands, to just be with the people in the stands,
to stop being radioactive, to just be at my sobriety station. And a couple of years later,
my son Jesse received what I believe is one of the great compliments a human being can
receive on the planet. He was intentionally walked.
Doesn’t get any better than that, folks. Doesn’t get any better than that. Doesn’t.
Just doesn’t. For any of you who don’t understand, that means they’re scared of you and
they want to get to the weenie behind you. Doesn’t get any better than that.
And Jesse didn’t want to be a geek. He didn’t want to jump up and down and scream and
yell. He just put his bat down and he trotted up the first base line and on the way up the
first base line, he turned to me at my sobriety station and he just shot me just that much
stuff.
Not too much. It’s the old man. You don’t want to spoil him.
Don’t be a geek. Just a little bit on his way up to first base. And I could have missed the
whole thing.
I could have missed the whole thing. And I’m not telling you Jesse got intentionally
walked because I got sober. I’m telling you I was at my sobriety station because I was
sober.
And I’ve gotten to tell guys who have been or drunk one more time on their kid’s
birthday about the day that my kid got intentionally walked because I was there. I’ve
given my sons 13 appropriate birthday gifts on the day of their birthday. Not once in
those 13 years have they received the day after radioactive guilt potted palm that I’ve
written a hot check for.
I also on almost all of those birthdays have asked them what they want before I’ve gone
and bought them something. That’s because of watching you guys, watching the Al-Anon
family groups, watching my wife at work and listening to my sponsor. And our family
made a strong beginning.
I was a couple of years sober and I was making the boys lunch and my son Micah who I
told you was so devastated and so, you know, was functionally retarded as a result of
alcoholism. I said, what do you want in your hot dog? And Mike said, I want mustard
onions and lettuce. I said, lettuce? He said, oh, okay, I don’t want lettuce.
And he walked away and he came back about 45 minutes later. He was eight at this
time. I was two years sober.
(42:17 – 42:42)
And he looked at me in the eyes, directly in the eyes, and I’m not altering one syllable.
He said to me, I will never again allow your opinion of what I want affect what I ask for.
So I asked him to sponsor me at that point.
(42:48 – 43:27)
About a year after that, Jesse broke his wrist in a growth plane out in the schoolyard. If
you know anything about the way kids develop, a growth plane is some cartilage that’s
going to turn to bone. And if it gets injured and it gets set, it cannot be disturbed.
It’s extremely important that it stays set. So he came home and the kids were beating
the crap out of each other in about 15 seconds. They’re boys and bear cubs and, you
know, they just kind of went at it.
And I had to let Mike and know that it wasn’t okay and it wasn’t acceptable. So I took him
aside and I chewed him out. I yelled at him, got right up in his face and let him know he
could not mess with his brother until his brother felt better.
He walked away from me and he slammed the door to his room. Now he slammed the
door to his room. So now I got the dad tick, you know, now I got the thing.
(43:29 – 47:13)
And I go to the door and I open the door. And before I can unload on him, he looks at me,
he says, hold it a second. I didn’t say you were wrong out there.
You were right. But a big guy just got right in my face and screamed and yelled at me. I
didn’t tell you you were wrong.
Don’t tell me I can’t be mad. What’s that? What the hell is that? That’s Alcoholics
Anonymous and Al-Anon. That’s standing up for yourself and telling somebody what you
need without telling them what to do.
That’s what he’s seen his parents do sometimes and fail at sometimes, but try a lot.
That’s what he’s been surrounded by. And thanks.
Thanks for the boys. My wife and I, you told us not to get involved in our first year and
we didn’t. We released each other so thoroughly, we lost each other.
We had to put an APB out for each other later on. We really just really stayed the hell
away from each other. We try to work on ourselves and try to bring a better person to
the deal.
I had to stop working on my marriage. My idea of working on a relationship is to talk to
you until you change your mind. That’s it.
That’s the Scott Redman couple’s workshop. You just got it. Talk to them until their eyes
roll back in their head and they keel over and all the way down they go, oh, okay.
It’s just a war of attrition. I had to shut up. Me personally, I had to stop working on my
marriage and start trying to act like a human being and bring that human being to the
deal.
Our family made a really good beginning and worked hard together. I just got to tell you,
this is such a great thing because it’s kind of come up again lately. In my first year of
sobriety, I was sponsoring this guy named Roland.
Roland used to call my house every night and he’d leave a tape on my machine every
night and the tape would say, Scott, it’s Rolly. I’m sober. I love you.
Good night. He’d hang up the phone. Five years later, when I was six years sober, my
son Micah came to me and he said, you know, dad, I should tell you that when I was a
little boy, I couldn’t fall asleep until I heard Roland’s voice on the machine.
Once I heard Roland’s voice on the machine, I knew everything was okay and I could go
to sleep. The thing that killed me about that was I tried to rip God out of this kid’s life. I
told him there was no God.
You guys just, you came and got us. You came over the answering machine. You came
through the back door.
You came and you tucked my kid in every night. Roland and my son Micah have such a
powerful relationship today. I cannot fire Roland.
Roland is sponsy for life. Even if I get grumpy with Roland, I get punished. Can’t even do
that.
When I was about a year sober, I had a job writing for 20th Century Fox. At the end of
the year, I was up for a job directing a situation comedy. At the end of that year, I was
sponsoring a lot of people and I really thought that if I got this job directing this situation
comedy, that it would really benefit my sponsys.
What? Well, they would see me prosper thusly and that it would be good for them. So I
didn’t get the job and I almost drank because I was full of crap and out of my mind. I was
humiliated.
(47:13 – 48:10)
I went back to my sponsor and I told him what had happened and he said to me, I guess
you have the show business God. I said, what? He said, well, what keeps you sober? I
said, God. He said, so God keeps you sober.
You didn’t get a show business job. So I guess you have the show business God and he
has abandoned you utterly. When I came into AA, I heard God getting people jobs, God
getting people relationships.
I heard God getting people parking spaces. Oh no, no, not the parking space God, not
the parking space. God, what if you don’t get a space? You know, it’s really funny.
I was in Montana talking and I shared about the parking space God and everybody
looked at me like this because you know the huge parking problem in Montana. So they
were really praying for them spaces. It was like cows watching a passing train from the
country.
(48:15 – 49:11)
You’re a little more cosmopolitan. I was resentful of myself for almost drinking. I was
resentful at the company for not giving me the job and my, I read the inventory to my
sponsor and my sponsor said, you know, when you, you, you got to take it to the wall
this time.
If you’re going to do six and seven and you’re going to ask God for some help here,
humbly ask him to remove these shortcomings. Humbly isn’t, take him if you can, big
guy. Humbly isn’t, take him you rotten son of a, humbly is pop.
I’m, I’m done. Can you help me out here? What’s your work? I want to, I draw close to
him. He reveals himself to me.
What can I do? He said, you, and I realized I had to find a God big enough, bigger than
the little show business God. Big enough so a lot of stuff could happen in his universe
and I didn’t get to drink. So I did step six and seven after I read that inventory and I said,
pop, I’ll do anything.
(49:11 – 50:56)
You got it. Take show business. I’ll do anything for a living.
Anything. Just keep me sober. And within three months I was working as a cook on a
catering truck.
And I, I, I looked up to God and I said, I didn’t mean this. We’ve had a grotesque
misunderstanding. I did not mean this.
Now in LA when they make a TV show or a movie, they hire a caterer. The caterer follows
the company around and makes the food. It’s a great job.
You make more money than I’ve ever made as a cook in my life. It’s teamster dough.
You’re on a vehicle on a movie set, but I’m Scott Redman.
The first movie that I cater, the executive producer and star of the movie is a guy who
I’ve worked with in the business. So that first morning he sticks his head on the truck and
he says, 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 got home.
I called my sponsor and I said, oh, we’re getting the gift now. Yeah. It’s beautiful.
He said, sounds like you’ve got a resentment. What are they, they go to workshops for
this? I’m an example of Scott for working on a kitchen truck. It affects my self-esteem,
pocketbook, ambition, personal relations, and sex, a five bagger for sure.
(50:59 – 51:59)
Now, what am I going to ask God to take away? Resentment’s no big deal. It’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, drag your ass out and kill you dead, but
don’t be alarmed. No biggie. I’m going to die.
I’m going to die. This is going to blot out everything good in my life. It is going to put a
shadow in my heart and I’m going to come up with a reason to drink eventually because
it just snowballs.
The more I let just slip in, the more it snowballs. The third step will have a little
permanent or lasting effect unless followed by an inventory. And it has been my
experience that the inventory will have little permanent or lasting effect, the fourth step,
if it’s not supported and nurtured by a 10th step.
What are the defects? What is it in me right now? Blue skies. God’s got a magic wand. He
comes down and he touches me on the head.
What poison is it in me that if he removed, I’d be able to live another day? What am I
going to ask him to take away? The burrito? The guy? The truck? That ain’t going to do it.
The spatula? Thank you. I’ll talk to you later.
(52:03 – 52:35)
I’m ashamed. I’m playing God. Things aren’t going according to the Scott Redman
program, a fabulous program.
I’m impatient. Things aren’t moving along. I’m ungrateful.
I’m working. I’m making dough. I have false pride.
I’m grandiose. And the list went on. And this is the list I had to go to my father to and
say, Pop, please, please help me.
And I started getting well. Sometimes you hear in meetings, don’t get well. Well, my
book says tell a man he can get well.
(52:36 – 52:45)
Wife or no wife, job or no job, tell a man he can get well if he simply starts depending on
this power. I don’t want to get cured because then I’ll die. But I have every intention of
getting well.
(52:47 – 56:48)
And I used to come back. I wound up serving people who I had directed in shows, serving
people who had been my assistant stage managers and assistant directors. I used to
come back to my home group with a new tale of humiliation every week.
The guys would just, tears streaming down, you know. And I just worked the hell out of
that 10 step and showed up and tried to give them a dime for their nickel and be proud.
And it worked.
It worked. I started being able to help some people who thought they had fallen from a
height in AA. They came in, they had not reached the top rank in AA, which I believe is
child of God.
And once you reach that height, you got no place you can fall from. I had a friend named
Paul who felt he had fallen from a height in AA and I got to help him out. And he used to
say this prayer.
He used to say, Father, I’m willing to do anything for a living. Just keep me sober, but
please don’t let it be as bad as what you did to Scott. I was so glad to help him out.
And I cooked for a couple of years and I got real good at it. And at the end of the couple
of years, I got offered this big time writing job. I was being considered for with a
company called Ketcham Public Relations.
And I thought by this time, I was sponsoring even more guys. And I thought at this point,
this would be good for my sponsees because they had seen me deal with all this
adversity and now prosper thusly. And this would, in fact, be good for them.
So my brain blew up. And the old brain fever, you know, when we get that stuff, you get
that vein pumping like a garden hose on your forehead when you’re really thinking up a
storm there. And I didn’t even hear about the job.
I crashed and burned, wrote about it, read it, released it. I was fine. A couple of weeks
after that, I got a call from Ketcham saying I did not get the job and I was fine with that.
Then I got a call from my catering company asking me to cater some commercials. So I
got in the truck and got over to this commercial shoot and I grabbed the call sheet,
which is a piece of paper that gives you all the information about the job. And I see that
the commercials are for Ketcham Public Relations.
I’m feeding them now. Now I’m feeding them. And I look down at the end of the truck
and there’s a guy videotaping me cooking.
I said, what are you doing? He said, we’re taping the making of the commercial. He’s
taping my humiliation. So he’s taping my humiliation.
He’s going to go back to New York and show it to the guys in New York who are going to
go, is that Scott Redman with the meatloaf? I got off work and I called my sponsor and I
said, we are really getting the gift now. We really are. We really are.
Really. It’s a miracle. Miracle, miracle, miracle.
He said, it sounds like God had enough writers today and he needed a few cooks. Then
he said, you know, you told God you wanted to work for Ketcham and you forgot to tell
him what you wanted to do. Our son, Michael will be 20 in a couple of weeks.
(56:49 – 1:01:51)
Son Jesse’s 17. My wife and I have experienced a tremendous, we had to work very hard
to bring our marriage back together after releasing each other as thoroughly as we did.
I’m very fortunate to be married to someone who’s so intensely involved in the Al-Anon
family groups and such a great program.
We went through a lot of frustration and a lot of difficulties. I realized how really scared I
was of my wife. I realized that when I heard her car coming up the drive, I was switching
the television channels to make sure the kids weren’t watching something they shouldn’t
be watching.
It was like living with a drunken drunk. Not because of her behavior, because of how
much fear I had embedded in me. I had to sit down and tell my wife I was scared of her.
And started working on our relationship in a way that was different this time because it
involved God and we started praying together. I don’t do 1, 2, 3, 7 and 11 with my wife.
I’ll do that no matter who I’m with or where I am.
That’s for me to stay alive, my relationship with God. What Nancy and I pray about is I
ask God to help us have a, not us, I say help me have a sense of humor. Help me not
sweat the small stuff to remember that my wife’s not my adversary, that she’s my
partner.
And what a wonderful, what wonderful truths these things are. And these truths get
watered down and they get murky from bad communication and self. And we have been
so successful experiencing so much love and success after some periods of real difficulty
and really feeling like adversaries.
It’s really been great for us, really tremendously satisfying. Our oldest son Micah after he
graduated high school took a year off and went down to Chiapas, Mexico to work with
the Zapatista revolutionaries for a year because he didn’t feel I was terrified enough. For
about a year I’d raise my hand at meetings and they’d call on me and I’d go and put my
hand down.
He announced to me that he had become a communist and I called him out and I said,
son have you called the main office? I don’t think things are working out. At any rate he’s
just great. He’s like, during the 60s I smoked a lot of dope and talked a lot of long shit
and didn’t do anything.
And for better or worse or whatever he’s doing it. He’s in college and he’s just having a
great time. I want to share with you a great thing that my kid said.
It’s one of the greatest compliments for Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon that I’ve ever
heard in my life. After he came back from Chiapas and before he went to college he was
babysitting for two people in the program. And this guy, this program couple said to
Micah, what do you think of your dad talking in AA? And Micah said to him, I don’t really
think much about it at all.
I don’t really care much about it. All I can tell you is that since I’m a very little boy the
men and women of Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon have taken very, very good care
of me and never once has any of them demanded that I believe what they believe. What
an incredible thing to say about a group of people.
About a group of people involved in a spiritual pursuit. That isn’t promotion, it’s not
bullying, it’s not blackmail, it’s pure service and love. And this is based on 13 years of his
own practical experience in AA.
This kid who was so broken and terrified and really done with his life at six years old. If
you’re new here I want to welcome you to AA. I want to tell you that I think you’re in a
very dangerous situation.
We’re basically asking you to not drink and we’re saying that you probably don’t have
what is necessary to not drink. We’re asking you, we’re basically saying that what’s
required here is a spiritual experience. We know you probably haven’t had one.
Please don’t drink until you have one. Every craving has a beginning, a middle, and an
end. Stop treating your craving with alcohol.
Stop treating your craving with a drink when it comes up. Become available for our
treatment. Every craving has a beginning, a middle, and an end.
You can feel it break over you like a wave. Stand and take the whooping. You won’t have
to do it alone.
That’s what we’re telling you. You won’t have to do it alone. But if you keep treating your
craving for alcohol with a drink, we can’t get in.
We can’t get the crowbar in. This is the hardest thing I have ever done in my life and it’s
the best investment I ever made. The good news is our problem mainly rests in our mind
and the bad news is our problem mainly rests in our mind.
The big book of AA is the only text I know about a recovery from a fatal illness that
contains the sentence, we absolutely insist on enjoying life. There’s no book about
cholera that says cholera is a hoot. It’s a hoot.
You’ll love cholera. You’ll meet other people with cholera and then you’ll meet people
who just caught cholera. It doesn’t get any better than that.
(1:01:56 – 1:04:27)
Alcoholics Anonymous is the only recovery I know from a fatal illness that actually leaves
the patient in better condition than they were in before they contracted the disease. Our
problem mainly rests in our mind. I met this newcomer at a meeting some years ago and
I came home and he talked, he called me, he talked to me for an hour.
I said uh-huh four times so he’d know I wasn’t dead and he explained to me that he had
been stalking several women. He had a restraining order taken out against him but he’s
two weeks sober now and it’s all different. And then at the end of the hour he said to me,
jeez I feel so alone.
And I said, I don’t want to I hardly know you. I just listened to you for an hour without
interrupting you. What do you mean you feel all alone? He said, well I mean I don’t have
a woman.
I said, what exactly would you be bringing to a relationship right now besides stalking
skills? What do you bring into the party? But our problem mainly rests in our mind. Good
news and the bad news. Some years ago my wife was walking through our bedroom and
I was talking to a newcomer on the phone and all she heard me say was, let’s say the
aliens are coming.
She freezes. She ain’t missing a word of this. This is just going to be too darn
entertaining.
I said, look I’m not telling you the aliens aren’t coming. That’s an outside interest. They
could very well be coming.
I only have one question for you. Why are they coming for you? Why have they traversed
the universe for your sorry ass? You’re 11 days sober. You have no life.
Why have they come for you? Plus he’s sleeping. He’s sleeping with a bible on his chest.
So they’re going to come across the universe, walk into his bedroom and go, oh no the
bible.
Let’s go home. Years ago I was sharing this story at a group and the guy who is the guy
in the story is sitting in the crowd and I’m watching him and as I’m telling the story he
went like this. And I saw the horrible realization.
If you’re new and the aliens are coming for you, welcome to Alcoholics Anonymous.
Welcome home. Thanks so much for having me folks.
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