The Aberdeen Wednesday Night Group's Soberstock Roundup in Aberdeen, SD

My name is Scott Redmond. I'm an alcoholic. I'm from the Bronx. Not a lot of cowbell activity in the Bronx. If your gang told you to wear a cowbell, it was a bad sign.

Just so I just wanna tell you that it really meant your days are numbered with that particular group. I haven't smoked a cigarette in, I'm 22 years sober since I'm 19 years sober. I it's a wonder to me. I just have to tell you, if I when I came in AA, if I couldn't have smoked, I think I would have blown my brains out. I just do.

And I'm telling and I can't I mean, I can't really be around it for especially kind of for health reasons right now, but I'm just amazed. I'm amazed that a newcomer can get through a meeting without I I was a 5 cigarette meeting guy. I mean, I just I used to drink scalding hot coffee, keep my throat open long enough to get a couple of cigarettes in. I just, so if you're new here and, God bless you. Just let you know, set fire to the person next to you and just suck in as much as you can before That's not against the traditions, igniting an alcoholic.

Thanks so much for asking me. Here I'd like to thank, my friends and, who are here and the rest of the speakers and, thanks for showing me so much, love and attention and care. I've been just treated so well since I got here. And thank you, Elliot, for treating me so good and spending your time with me today. I can't tell you how much I appreciate it.

I have a great life today. If you're new, I'm sure that thrills the shit out of you. I I, I, I just knew I couldn't hear enough about it, when I was new. I just wanted to hear more about your new car and your new, you know, skidoo and, you know, I just couldn't hear enough about it. New wife in a house, more, more.

Did you have you gotten a new spa? You know? And I'd sit in my chair at a lovely place called unit a, which Clancy's only too aware of. I was about 5 miles past any length, that particular clubhouse. And I would sit in my seat and just think that, you know, maybe you'll go home tonight, and maybe your new house will blow up.

And maybe your new skidoo will blow up while your whole new family is on it, you know. And then we'll see how spiritual you are next week, you know. God, I hated you. And AA, by the way. I I was brought up in the Bronx in New York City.

Always figured I'd wind up in South Dakota talking about alcoholism. I'm Jewish. I figured I'd be here for the Jew hunt. You know? Come on, Jaime.

Strap these antlers on. Always wanted to run a big buck Jew. It'll be fun. We'll knock his beanie off. When he bends over to pick it up, we'll push him over.

It'll be fun. It's good it's good exercise for the newcomers. I'd apologize, but I'm not sorry. But, yeah, my grandmother, if you wanna know where she's buried, go to the cemetery. Whoever looks like they've cemetery whoever looks like they've recently turned over in their grave, that's where she is.

And I grew up in the Bronx to a completely insane family. My wife never believed me about my family till she met him. And, my mom threw an engagement party for us. My aunt Rose came to the party and wore her wig backwards, and it had a bun on it. Had a bun on it, and the bun bounced off her forehead all night.

And And it was a look she was going after. It wasn't a mistake. She sort of wore it beret style. And that was the tip of the iceberg, believe me. Just absolutely insane.

And, if you got anything for free in my family, metal was stolen. And, I had an uncle who was a welder who used to get free bales of steel wool. You know, here's your paycheck and your complimentary bale of steel wool. And, his wife took a decorating course and made pillows and filled all the pillows with the steel wool. So that stuff works its way through on you after a while.

So when you went to their house, if you looked at the room, everybody was moving a little bit. You know, the whole room was like a pulsing living thing. They were insane. And and there was mental and physical abuse and chronic institutionalization and suicide attempts. Brutal.

And, if you're new here, all I've got is good news for you because my family had nothing to do with making me an alcoholic. I'm not telling you I didn't get hurt. I got hurt real bad. I'm not telling you I haven't had to do a lot of stuff about that. I have.

I'm telling you they didn't make me a drunk. I had very serious mental problems. I've had them all my life, and I still have them. And, and if it wasn't for you people, I'd be acting on them. But my problem is way worse than that.

If it had just been my mental problem, I'd be in pretty good shape. There's lots of doctors, there's drugs they give you, there's all sorts of therapies, they work for millions of people. But my problem is way worse than that. I have a physical allergy to alcohol and I can't control or moderate. I have no governor on it once I start.

And if it was just a physical problem, again, I'd be in much better shape because allergies are treated doctors treat them really well. I mean, there's tons of allergists who would, you know, doctors who just deal with allergies. There's all sorts of drug therapies and all sorts of stuff but my problem is much much worse than that. Because of the alchemy of this physical and mental problems swirling together, I developed this cancer of the soul that very few people understand. And I say very few people in terms of the world population.

Very few people understand it. Very few people who actually have the disease understand it. They they say only a fraction of of the population of sufferers of this illness. And this this cancer of the soul, this this spiritual tapeworm ate me up from the inside and left me hollow and insane and alone and I didn't even know I had it. It plucked me beyond the possibility of being helped by well meaning clergy, members of the of the medical profession, well meaning therapists.

I was not alcoholic by the time I got to Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm, again, I'm Jewish and Jews don't drink. I know. Because it might build a pain. And, just come on, South Dakota.

Come on. You can do it. In addition in addition to the Judaism, I I had been in psychotherapy for 18 years by the time I got to AA. I was gonna be dead but I was gonna understand it. And, I'm not putting therapy down.

Therapy is great stuff. Works for millions of people. Big book says if you need a doctor, go get one. My colossal blunders, I was trying to treat my alcoholism with psychotherapy which is like showing up at a gunfight with a knife. It's a colossal mistake.

It's a horrible mistake because I was doing good work in therapy but I was dying from alcoholism. If you're a neurotic, I don't know if anybody here has ever been referred to as a neurotic, but the idea of a neurosis is you have anxiety anxiety and you come up with a resolution for it, a way out, and it's a terrible idea. It's a terrible resolution for the anxiety. It creates more anxiety. Case in point, this buddy of mine in the Midwest calls me a while ago.

He's working with a new guy, and he sees the guy's got a month or so. He sees this bruise on a guy's chest. He says, what's that? The guy opens his shirt. He's got these huge purple bruises all over his torso.

My friend says, what happened? I guess, well, when I hit my bottom a month ago, I was gonna kill myself. So I drank a bottle of vodka, got a vial of, nitroglycerin pills from a, heart patient. By the way, that's the last time the heart patient appears in the story. He's flopping around like a boated fish somewhere.

He's collateral damage. He doesn't come back. Okay? He's swallowing he swallows the entire vial and then starts slamming his body into the wall trying to blow himself up. You can't write this stuff.

You can't make this he raised the bar for all of us, I think, in that moment. I really do. And, you know, if this guy's nickname is not Nitro or Boom Boom or something, then his home group sucks as far as I'm concerned. This guy should have a jacket. It should be on his car.

It should be on a welcome mat to his house. His wife should say nitro's chick on her shirt. I mean, this guy should have nitro paraphernalia. You know, you're gonna hear some nutty stuff about alcoholism now that you're here. One of my personal favorites is that alcoholics don't like change.

Don't like change of any kind. I've never heard anybody get to a podium and say, oh, man. I I hit the lottery. I'm having sex with identical twins. It's killing me.

The change is ripping me up. I I just can't bear it for another minute. I don't like change I don't like. But I seem to have an endless appetite for change that titillates me. I'm just saying it's not a real anxiety producer for me.

But my personal favorite is that alcoholics are above average intelligence. I have only heard this at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. I I have never heard it at an Al Anon meeting ever, ever. And I have only heard it at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. And it's not the product of some sort of, you know, it's not data from a survey.

It's usually said by a guy wearing depends, you know. So I go to therapy if I'm a neurotic and I I free associate, I delve into my past also it's a different techniques to unravel and discard and come up with shine someone and come up with a better resolution for my anxiety, but I have alcoholism. So I go to therapy. How are you? I'm terrible.

Why? Well, yesterday, I was so drunk. I was too drunk to walk, so I drove. Well, what are we gonna do about that? Let's talk about it.

What were you thinking just before you did it? Nothing. Nothing. I wasn't thinking anything. My mouth filled with saliva.

My brain got too big for my cranium. The room spun. I went out for cigarettes and wound up in Baltimore. And I was driving. I have no more idea than you do.

This strange mental twist coupled with a allergy that I cannot stop drinking once I begin and the subsequent development of this horrible soul sickness and the landscape of it, the the the interior, the anatomy of the soul sickness is resentment, fears, and sexual misconduct. And once I'm in the grip of that, once a certain kind of thinking becomes established in someone who with alcoholic tendencies, they've probably and they're very gentle in the book probably They've probably placed themselves beyond human help. So if you're new here, I I wanna put forward to you that probably, I'm not saying definitely, your problem is probably way worse than you even imagine. And that if you could really grasp the full magnitude of it, you'd look like an outtake from scanners and your head would blow up. If you could really get it in because I'm telling you, I didn't get it when I first came in.

It took me and I'm that I didn't get the full extent of the seriousness of my problem on one hand. On the other hand, I'm really glad that I really understood on a certain level the enormity of the opportunity that was being presented to me here. And if you're new, I pray for you that you get on some level the enormity of the opportunity. That's the opportunity that's being presented to you here. This way out, you know, which actually leaves the sufferer in better condition than they were in before they contracted the disease.

That's a hell of a thing. I grew up in this family. It was late sixties. I, drank till I didn't wanna be a drunk. I overcame my alcohol problem with marijuana.

I'd like to welcome, all the drug addicts here. I'd I'd like to welcome any tweakers. If there are any tweakers here, I'd like to welcome there you go. Someone had a leak in their head. What the hell happened over there?

We're so glad you're here. You're special, special, and we love you, and and we're glad you're here. If you've ever licked all the features off your own face, welcome to Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm not making fun of you. I'm coming awfully close.

But but I'm really not. I don't care what you've got. I don't care if you're a dope fiend, which is somehow worse than any of us. I don't care if you're a dope Goliath, a the Bigfoot of dope addicts. Just catch alcoholism.

We'd love to give it to you. And, and I caught I caught alcoholism in Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. That's where I caught it. I caught a very mild case at first. It got progressively worse.

And now it's really bad. Really, really bad. I shot some heroin one day and was hitching, hiking from the Bronx down in Manhattan. I got picked up by my aunt and uncle and taken to the hospital. My father had had a massive stroke, and I couldn't show up for my old man the night that he died.

I couldn't even go into the room and touch him on a cheek, give him a kiss, and watch him take his light into another room. I felt like a a pig, an animal. I had holes in my arms. The, the sound of the heart machine couldn't even get in. And I you know, there a couple of times maybe a boy ought to show up for his pop.

It was that night and I couldn't answer the bell. And, it was one of those days where I, where I got it. I I got it. I somehow was able to get, you know, appreciate the agony. And I had to do some really fast work.

I couldn't bear being that guy. The the this worthless piece of crap. And what I came up with as quick as possible was it was heroin and needles and all I had to do was never put a needle in my arm again and I wouldn't be the piece of junk that couldn't show up for his old man the night that he died. And I didn't. I didn't put a needle in my arm not for 13 years.

I just drank till I didn't wanna be a drunk and smoke pot till I don't wanna be a pothead and overcame my marijuana problem with cocaine and I'd like to welcome all the cocaine users here. Cocaine is particularly good for sex if you enjoy sex from the neolithic period. And, and again, I hope you catch alcoholism because if you don't catch alcoholism, it's gonna be tough being a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. It's gonna be really tough. And without the identification, this incredible gift of identification, I'm afraid we're lost.

I'm afraid we're completely lost. And I have been blessed. I don't know how it happened. I think it I don't know how it happened where I could I could find a way through my drug addiction to my real honest alcoholism and engage in the identification process. And it's been it's been the triumphant arch through which I walk to freedom.

It's the biggest gift that I've received in Alcoholics Anonymous. Because as long as I stay in the middle of AA and continue to take the, you know, faith without works is dead and works without faith are dead. And as I continue to balance those two things together, and make sure that I'm doing both, then I can appreciate my alcoholism. And as long as I have identification, I'm fine. I'm fine.

Shortly after that, I was acting in a Broadway play and a new ushererette walked in with long brown hair and I took one look at her. I didn't even say hi to her. I went back into the dressing room of this show and stood up on a chair and announced to the male members of this cast that if anybody talked to the new Ayesharette, I'd break all the bones in their hands and feet. And we've been married 31 years. And I You know, in part because we've never wanted to get divorced at the same time.

You know, there's there's there's timing involved in this. There's timing and serendipity, I would say. One of the biggest problems I've had and continue to have is the the defective character of mind reading has been a big problem for me. I I, my wife's once commented to me that I wasn't she said, you're not a mind reader, you're barely a mind user, which hurt hurt my feelings. And, and I I think that I know what people are thinking and they're never thinking anything good.

I never catch people thinking good stuff. I never catch them thinking, hey, you're a pimp. You know? I catch them thinking you're a pointless hose bag. And, I don't know why that came up.

But we didn't. We had our younger son, our beautiful son, Micah. And we were surrounded by friends and family, got a ton of phone calls and he was really welcomed into our community. And 2 years 9 months later, when our son Jesse was born, nobody even showed up at the hospital. It just was too hard to be around us.

It just it just hurt too much. We pressed ourselves on the people that loved us like a thumb upon a bruise. Something was always wrong. We always needed something. It just didn't work, you know.

And, Jesse was sick. He wound up in neonatal intensive care. My wife is all alone in the maternity ward. And this, this is Cedars Sinai Hospital. It's a big hospital in LA.

And this doctor I didn't know called me from ICU and said, where are you? Your family is in big trouble here at Pal. There's nobody here. There's no there ain't a balloon in the room and your kid's sick. And I said, you know what?

I can't find anybody to watch my 3 year old. I can't come down. And this doctor who I'd never met before said a pretty remarkable thing, certainly in today's age of, kind of the impersonal medical stuff that we see going. She said, why don't you I'll give you my phone number and my address. You can bring your son over to my house and my husband will watch him.

And I said, no. I had no way to accept this woman's generosity. And it was another horrible night. It was the this is a terrible thing. It's hard for me to say it but it's just true.

It was the terrible night my son was born. Because now my older kid was trapped in the house with this crazy man wracked with guilt. I would have done better for Micah if I had taken to the waiting room and left him alone with a coloring book. At least he could have got the hell away from me for a while. And little were we to know that this was gonna continue for 3 more years from this tiny little paper cut.

You know sometimes I've heard it a lot and I believe people, you know when they talk about how furious they were when they came into AA. And that is not my overwhelming memory. My overwhelming memory is of being terrified and brokenhearted. And, the shame and guilt I felt, about what miserable father I was, what a miserable son, what an embarrassment I was as an employee. I was the kind of employee where they'd start, you know, accusing each other of having hired me after like 3 months, you know.

You no. You you brought them. No. And on April 22, 1985 my show business career was gone. My wife was a tongue chewing babbling idiot from prolonged exposure to me.

And, our sons were 6 and 3. They could barely read or write. Their small motor skills were screwed up, and there was nothing organically wrong with them. They were cut off from the society of other children. They were just scared all the time, and they couldn't put small tasks together.

And, they were very sick. And, I crossed the line. I swore I would never cross again. I put a needle in my arm, and I called my therapist of record in my 18th year of psychotherapy, and I got him on the phone. It was my first Jungian therapist.

And he said to me and I didn't know this until I came in and was fortunate enough to stick around here long enough to read our literature and read our history. And if you haven't done it yet you have a great gift in store for you. And if you haven't done it yet you have the gift of really getting to understand alcoholics Anonymous and how important, how primary, how I can't talk enough about this idea of of identification because it's everything. It's everything that we have. It's the reason why Bill and Bob talk for 5 hours instead of 15 minutes.

It's the whole shooting match, you know. And, God, I've always identify with drunks. That's why I spent a lot of time in bars. I mean, I I but identifying with at any rate, and, that therapist that day said there's absolutely nothing that could be done for you. He said basically what Carl Jung said to the man who 12 stepped the man who 12 stepped Bill Wilson.

And I didn't know that until I came in and read our literature, and it made me feel really a lot more part of AA because I had that experience. He said, I can't help you. And I had looked to therapy as the only thing that resolved anything for me and my world split in half. And he I said, what? He said, the only thing I can suggest is we have you institutionalized.

And that's again what Jung said to Roland Hazard. And then he said the thing that Carl couldn't say. He said, or you attend a meeting of of Alcoholics Anonymous or or Narcotics Anonymous. He said this to me instead of saying what Young said eventually which is he told Hazard that since time in memorial they were recorded cases of of big big personality displacements and and spiritual experiences not just being a deacon, not just going to church a little bit. We're talking about big grassroots, conversion experiences really, You know, probably conversion is not the most popular word to use, meaning, but that's really what it boils down.

To have a surrender that that where you have a subsequent conversion. And, why I went to the AA meeting is a complete mystery to me. I have no idea. It's not because I thought it was a good idea. I didn't even know what the hell it was.

I woke up at 5 o'clock in the morning, got a bad check to write you, got my best clothes on, and went to unit day at 7 o'clock in the morning, which is, believe me, 5 miles past any length. And I I walked into this room, I took one look around and I said, oh my god. Oh my god. How did I wind up in Alcoholics Anonymous? 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. And everything was a miracle.

I'm in miracle. You're in miracle. It's America. You're in miracle. The coffee is a miracle.

The furniture is a miracle. It's a miracle. Then the AA unsolicited advice guy, he got me. You know. Do I want what you've got?

No. No. But thanks, Clem. I appreciate. Am I issued my own bib overalls next week?

Do I bring my own pair? What what's the deal? Are we gonna hook a rug? I I just I I my skin crawled. I couldn't even believe it.

I hated everything about it. And, I went back to that meeting every morning for a year. Milton Merrill was sitting in that meeting and Rosemary Williams and, you know, some incredible people were sitting in that meeting that day that it got to meet Extraordinary. Mal Marine, guys like that. Unbelievable.

And and, I was out of plans. I mean, that's the only reason I can imagine I, you know, I didn't have a good plan like boom boom, you know. But he was above average intelligence, and I was not. And I was out of plans. If you're new here, I pray for you that you're out of plans.

If you're new here and you have a plan, it's probably a beaut. Don't use your plan. Grab one of us after the meeting and tell us your plan. We wanna know the plan. And in South Dakota, I guess you're probably close enough to do a little run over the border or something like that.

One more run that, you know, set yourself up financially for sobriety, something like that, old plan. And I stuck around Alcoholics Anonymous, and I consider myself to be very fortunate that I I fell in with a bunch of extremely active people out of the out of my home group, which was a strange group. It was a group, one of the oldest groups in in LA that had not made contribution to central office in 30 years. It was just they thought that the traditions were a theme park somewhere. They it just and I judge no man because I'm too spiritually developed.

But, it was, it was an interesting lot, a bunch. And, but I was very fortunate. I I was blessed with a sponsor who, just didn't say no, and, he had me out on panels right away to Acton and downtown. And I just was very fortunate. And by the time I was 6 months, I knew I was gonna drink.

I'd seen the drill hundreds of times. People come in, did the work and change. 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 the door or stayed here and became columns of sewage and sexual predators, although I judge no man again because because of this spiritual development. So it's and, my sponsor took me to his house and he read me chapter 5. And on the way through, he took me through the first three steps and showed me how to do an inventory.

And I felt like I've stopped stealing somebody's chair here because I had done a lot of activity and a lot of action and all of that was really positive. And now I needed for me to for I needed to be anchored to a to a personal, spiritual endeavor. And that's what I got out of it. It was it it lit me up. And it it it breathed new life into a lot of the action that I was taking.

And, it was great. It's it's just like when you have a baby. I'm I'm convinced of this. Just as the baby is crying and now you've you're done. You're done.

So you're walking toward the baby to flip the baby into oncoming traffic. And what God has done is then the baby does something fabulous. They they plan that. They just they turn over or say your name or they sing it probably or something that makes it all worthwhile and you're willing to go on for 3 or 4 months before you walk toward the baby again. And and my sobriety has been a similar thing to that, you know, just as I'm running out of gas and I'm going, is this all there is?

Isn't anybody else doing anything here? And then something extraordinary will happen. And, and I I started doing the work in the in the rooms and and following the steps. I I I was lucky enough to start, sponsoring some people early on. And I've, it's been my work that I've done since I'm a year sober.

And, and, I did step 6 and 7 after I read my inventory. And then I I wrote up my 8 step list. And I try to share this anytime I talk because it's simply the best reading of step 8 I ever heard. I heard it from this guy. I was at my old home group, the, North Hollywood, men's stag meeting, Monday night men's stag.

I was a couple of months sober and this guy's name was Nino. He had a heavy New York accent and he had never read chapter 5 before. He was there with a hospital group. He had hospital plastic on. And he was reading chapter 5 in this men's group for the first time and he got up to step 8 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 us? Do you know what the hell is in here? And it's exactly how I felt about it. I just couldn't believe it.

Not those people, not that money. I would not have taken that much money if I knew I had to give it back. You think I'm a moron? I'm above average intelligence for God's sake. And you know, if you're new, don't worry about it.

It's 8 steps from where you are anyway. And 8 8 is not even the annoying one. It's 9 is really the annoying one. There was a extraordinary handsome woman named Alabama Crothers, who was, I called her the secretary general of my group. She was, extraordinary woman.

If you ever get a chance to hear, one of her talks, she really this is a woman to talk like this. She's trying to talk like Louis Armstrong and used to talk about she'd say, you young girls don't remember this, but I used to hide my gin in my douchebag. Wow. But that was before your time. She was an extraordinary extraordinary woman, and I went to her.

I didn't like my, sponsor's plan about, step 9. And I went to her for the secret. And she said, you have to pay the money back. Okay. Damn.

I thought there was gonna be some other thing, some other ritual we could go through, but it was the same thing my sponsor said. It was the paying back part that really annoyed me. And, I, I didn't know how I was gonna make a bunch of amends. I didn't know how gonna make amends to my children or my wife or my dad, and my sponsor wouldn't tell me what to do. He said, just do your job in Alcoholics Anonymous and see what happens.

You know? And a couple years after that, I wound up holding 1 of the men I sponsor while he took his light into another room, and my father came back into my life. I didn't plan it that way. That's just what happened. You know?

And I realized that my sons had no relationship with my father because I had no pictures of him in the house because I couldn't stand to see him. It was too hard. It was too painful. So I got a bunch of pictures of my pop, put them up in the house, and then I got to tell his grandsons about him. What a sweet guy he was.

And they started having a relationship with their grandfather. I didn't know what I was gonna do about my kids. I didn't know how I possibly I couldn't sit down with these little boys and say, I'm sorry. It would have been awful. What a terrible, miserable thing to saddle them with some frothy emotional appeal to them.

I had to stop acting that way. I had to start going into their school and doing this embarrassing stuff, sitting down with teachers and saying my sons have been difficult and they're a problem and you're angry at them because they seem to be willfully squandering a great mental resource that they have. And you're seeing kids that don't have it and are working hard and these kids seem to be flippantly throwing this thing away and it pisses teachers off. And it's that's not what it is. They're sick.

They're very sick because they've been living with me and I've been very sick. And we're trying to make a new beginning. Can you help us? And no one ever said no. Never.

They cut resources loose for the boys. They got tested. We got special ed for them. The teachers said get them into sports. Let's see if it affects the small motor stuff.

Get him in a music. Jesse wanted to play drums. I didn't have any dough, you know? And, but I went to the store and got him a drum pad. It's a piece of wood with a piece of rubber and a couple of sticks.

It's all the money I had. But it was a big deal to me. My kid had expressed an interest something and I had gone and backed him up and it got home. And I told the guys at my home group about it. And if you got a home group like I had, you'll know why.

Because they were interested. They wanted to know about my family. They wanted to know that we were doing good. They were spending a lot of time with me. I need to tell them the good stuff that I'm doing.

They want a little bang for their buck, you know. I don't blame them, man. I wanna know what the the payoff. I like hearing that stuff. And, within a there were a lot of burnout drummers in our group at that time and, like in a couple of months, the AA drum set showed up at our house.

There's, like, these guys showing them up with these mega death drums, you know, dude and and a couple years after that I got to go to the house of blues and hear both my sons play the house of blues on the sunset strip and burnt the dump down. Burn it down. Just obliterated the place. And off to the side, there's this group of weeping middle aged alcoholics, you know. The kids are going, what is with the crying old people, man?

What the hell is that all about? They don't look like backup singers. On, May 13th this year, I was diagnosed with liver cancer. Oh, 3 months ago. And, on May 29th, I had surgery.

They removed part of my liver and I'm cancer free. And, I had My prognosis was really dark for the first 6 weeks. I could have been gone in a couple of weeks. And, you know, the AA Army shows up. It was my turn in the barrel.

You know, I don't like that. I don't like being on that end of the deal at all. I don't like it. I like being one of the scout leaders. You know?

And, both my sons were with me. And, my oldest son comes to my hospital room one night and he says, you know, dad, I get that you're okay. I get you're I'm watching you. I get you're, you know, I get you're okay dying. I get you're okay.

But I'm not okay. And I need to know that you're gonna go after this thing. And we had this extraordinary talk where I got to talk to him about the fact that my the fact that I wasn't scared and I wasn't grinding this was actually gonna free me up to pursue my recovery in a really robust way. That I was gonna be able to navigate my way through this very difficult maze of doctors and and hospitals and and all of the stuff that goes with that. That I was gonna be able to do it like a gentleman.

And I was gonna treat and be treated well by other people. And I got to tell him the thing that you told me when I came in here. You basically said, what do you want? And I said, well, I like to write well, I like some, I like romance, I like good sex, I like some money. And basically what you said to me was, okay you can have all that.

You might even get it. You can work toward it. But I wanna ask you a question. Do you have to be miserable until you get it? Well, yeah.

Well, yeah. I mean, if I'm not miserable about it, who the hell is gonna be? And if and and how is it ever gonna come to be? Here's the terrible idea there. The idea is that my my suffering is going to purchase the thing that I crave.

That's the rotten idea. Great design for living. If I just really focus on this and stay miserable about it, it's gonna manifest somehow. It's a nutty idea. Also, there's very little oxygen there and very little room to do service in there.

It's very distracting. So, what you asked me to do or suggested that I do is that I act like somebody who somebody would be want to act like and be a good example of Alcoholics Anonymous and extend my hand and do the work here and work diligently and have my dreams and work diligently on my dreams as long as they were subordinate to the big deal. And the big deal is I have had an experience of identification and conversion and I am trying to have that experience with other men. That's the big deal, you know. And, what a talk for me to have with the kid who I was locked in a room with and couldn't even go to the hospital to see his brother the night that he was born.

What a talk for me to have when I couldn't even show up for my old man the night that he died. And my my and my son said to me, I have I I have a vision of you playing with my children. He just got married a couple of weeks ago. And I said, Micah, I vote yes. I vote yes for playing with the kids.

I'm in. I'm in. And, and you know, I'm cancer free and I've got all this other stuff going. It's for the kind of cancer I had. It's extraordinary.

And one of the reasons is is because I was what I was taught in AA. I took immediate action on this. You know, most people a lot of people suffer with this. I'm not saying all, but a lot of people because people get into vapor lock. And, man, this happened really quickly and my AA brothers and sisters just, you know, there was a ground swell.

You know, you know, if you've been here long enough, you've seen this incredible mechanism, this incredible thing. Some years ago, I, I was, had a really kinda hot show business career going and and, I, was being considered to direct this situation comedy. I was in my 1st year of sobriety around the end of it. And I really thought that if I got this job as the staff director on this sitcom, that it would really benefit the guys I sponsor. It'd be very good for them.

They'd see the program in action and they'd, they'd see really Alcoholics Anonymous manifest itself in my income. And, and I I directed one episode, and I didn't get the job. And I almost drank. And I was humiliated. I went to my sponsor just so ashamed of myself.

And, Don said to me, well, I guess you have the show business guide. I said, what? He said, well, what keeps you sober? I said, god. He said, god keeps you sober.

You didn't get a show business job and you almost drank. So I guess you have the show business god and he has abandoned you utterly. Now when I came into AA, I heard about God getting people jobs, getting people into relationships, God getting people parking spaces. Not a big issue in South Dakota. I understand.

But in other but in other municipalities, it's a bone of contention. Okay? And and it sounded really wrong to me. You know, really, really wrong to me. Some years ago, we got nailed in the Northridge earthquake.

We got hurt really bad. Our house got squashed, and I got a physical injury. And shortly after that, I was at an AA function out of town. And there was a woman who used to live in LA and she walked up to me after I gave a talk and said, oh, I'm so glad God got us out of LA before the quake. I said, oh, so he likes you.

He likes you. We're crap, but he likes you. And she said, well, I guess he just felt you had some lessons to learn. I'm out of here, man. I can't stay sober in that world for 2 minutes.

I don't wanna. With a god saying get him, get the Redmond boy, get him. No evacuation plan for you Jew boy. Get him. Get him.

Turn his wife to salt, kill his goat, put a finger in his eye, get him. Him. Smote him. Smote his ass. Smote anyone he talks to.

We'll sort him out later. It's like God is some deranged game show host, you know. We'll key your car, it's it's boils for you, you're due for a rash, and you'll figure it out later. There's a reason for that rash. If I saw the deliberate hand of God in the suffering of other people, it's not a world that I'm particularly interested in being around and this is just me.

I've been asked to tell my story so what the hell I will. My god expects me to do my job in Alcoholics Anonymous if it's to if I'm living in the house on the hill or in a refrigerator box. My god's not giving me refrigerator boxes. My god's not handing out cancer. There's no for me, there's no reason why there's people and there's cancer and sometimes people get cancer.

And, you know, it's a funny thing. It's not funny, but what it's interesting when I found out I had cancer, there was nothing for me to do. I had no outstanding business. I didn't feel any tug. I didn't have to well, I gotta call him or her, dude.

There was nothing. There was just doing my job. The guys came up. We had some meetings. I had the new guys I'm working with.

I told them if they really wanted to hurt me, they could stop calling. That would be the thing. If they're concerned about my health, call. If you if you if you'd wanna see me suffer, isolate me. They don't get to do that anyway because, you know, you do you you you can, you know, you the fellowship that you crave will you you build that up around you.