8th Annual Capitol Jamboree in Olympia, WA

My name is Scott Redmond. I'm an alcoholic,

everybody. Can you hear me?

I've been sitting there. I'm thinking,

oh man, my sponsors here, I don't want to talk.

I didn't know anything about Alcoholics don't until I got here on April 22nd, 1985. And if you had shown me a picture of this

like in about 1969, if you just said this is where you're going to wind up, All right, lavender, lime green,

destiny, happy old guys, I would have even thought, am I in a play in a mental institution? Am I? Am I have I just got taken so much acid. This is where I'm going to wind up. I mean, I don't even

with two pictures like I found in the garbage of strange guys of like I, I wouldn't have even I couldn't have even computed

a SO

if you knew I like to welcome me to a A and I can't tell you how much I appreciate you asking me and my wife to come this weekend. And I can't tell you how much I appreciate all the great, wonderful hard work and how great the place looks. I just wouldn't have known what to make of it pretty much. And I'm going to hear some of my favorite people in Alcoholics Anonymous and in Al Anon

this weekend, including my wife who's going to talk tomorrow. I want to share with you one of the great Allen on slogans that my wife has shared with me in the past in our area. One of the things that's discussed in Allen on one of the particularly I guess with Nancy and her sponsor that for embroiled in a disagreement at times my wife would be encouraged to say you could be right,

you could be right and we'll go on with the business of life. One day we're in the car and we were having a particularly odious disagreement about something and my wife said you could be right.

But not today.

Not today, big guy. It might happen sometime in the future, but it ain't today.

And my sponsor and his wife are going to talk tomorrow. And Debbie, who I just adore, gives one of the best toxin AAS going to talk on Sunday. And if you're new, I'm sure this just throws the living crap at, you know, I'm sure.

But I'm real excited. And our son goes to school in in Olympia, so we haven't seen him since December. And we just got to Sam and

boy, our younger son, who still lives with us, It was his birthday a couple of weeks ago. We're all out for dinner. And just we started dinner and I looked at our son, Jesse, who was turning 18. And I said, you know, despite the the terrible circumstances of your birth and the awful place that we were when you were born, I was just looking at him. I said to him, I cannot believe where we have wound up as a family

and he he so appreciated it. He they still our son so appreciate the truth.

And I couldn't have said that to him nor discussed it if we weren't in the place that we were in. And he said, tell me what was it like what was going on? And we got to talk about it in an open and honest way.

Jesse just got his Sats back. He got 1540.

I'm no interest in bragging about him at all. If you don't understand what that means, please see me. I have some literature on it. After the meeting,

he sometimes some months ago, he said to me, Dad, can you help me with your my homework? I said yeah,

what do you want me to do? He said. Get me some to eat?

I have no idea. Absolutely not even the foggiest notion of what he's involved in in school.

And I do know that he lives in a in a home that's not a war zone in a home or a a kid could study, can get some work done. I don't think that he got 1540 on his Sats 'cause I'm sober. A lot of kids have faced a lot more difficult stuff than that and still achieved. I know that I'm sober and I'm able to enjoy it and I'm getting a brag about it a a lot

it. I want to thank Jennifer and Alan for picking us up at the airport. I controlled myself. I waited an hour before I even mentioned the SAT scores, which is a personal best for me so far. Didn't take me longer than 90 seconds up here tonight.

And if you knew, I'm sure you're thrilled for my son.

Can I see the hands of people in the first year?

Wow, welcome. Welcome to AX.

When I was new in Alcoholics Anonymous, I let those people get right up in my face and talk that endless unsolicited a, a crap to me. And the kind of guy I am, the kind of bully I am, is I'm a nice guy. I'm a sterling human being. That's the way I've tried to get to people to do what I wanted to do my whole life.

So I'd stand there and listen to these guys with one tooth with a cavity in it, you know, tell me how great my life was going to be. Do I want what you've got? No. No. But thanks for spitting on me. I really appreciate it

and I listen to this endless crap and just grow and nod and pray that their face would burst into flame, you know, just go up in a column of smoke. I mean,

I'm here. I'm in Alcoholics Anonymous. Beyond any plateau of lameness I ever even imagined was possible. To me, I'm an AA. When do we hook a rug? You know,

about a year later, I came home, my wife had a big bail of ticking and a bolt of gingham, and I just figured that's it, we're done. Where we've become an arts and crafts family. Where my my worst nightmare and what she was doing was she her sponsor, who I just adore,

have always adored, had gotten Nancy in a service and she was it was her job to stuff gingham Swans with the ticking for the centerpieces for the Al Anon luncheon at our local function. Now, if you've ever been with Al Anon function, the centerpieces at an Al Anon function look kind of like floats at the Rose Parade there.

Some of them are mechanized that little waterfalls and they, they get very busy with this stuff.

Yeah. And,

and I just went, oh man, oh God, we're a hobby shop drunks, you know, and,

and the fact is now Nancy and I have one of the codes we use. If I ask about our newcomers getting it, she'll say to me that she has started the stuff salons that she's, she's getting it, you know, because I know what happened to my family as a result of stuff in Swans and I hated Alcoholics Anonymous when I got here. I have never hated anything as much as I hated a a I walked in that first meeting that first day and my, it was, do I bring my own bib overalls next week? You know, am I am I issued a pair.

Thank you, Clem. I mean, I, I just, I couldn't believe it and and everything was a miracle. America, America. I'm America. You're America.

The coffee and furniture are miracles too.

Oh my God. So I want to welcome all you new people.

Kind of like being voted most attractive man on your cellblock. Kind of

sort of an honor, but you don't know if you want to show up to pick up the award.

And I also want to thank you for having us up because there are so many people in this room. I have so many friends in this room, so many people I know and love and have known for a long time and have seen a lot of different places. I just came back a couple of weeks ago. I got to spend a weekend with a group of men out in Ellensburg. Ellensburg, right? Right. Some of them are here tonight. I had an incredible, incredible weekend

studying the steps with a group of guys. So I just, I can't tell you how much I appreciate your generosity and bringing us up. I, I come from the Bronx in New York City. I was brought up a completely insane family. My wife never believed me about my family until she met him. And

my mom threw an engagement party for us and my aunt came and wore her wig backwards and it, it, it had a bun on it.

These are my people. This is my genetic pool. You don't lie about that. You don't go down to the bartender and brag about this kind of deranged behavior and stupid. I mean, I had an uncle was one of the top ten welterweights of the world

during the 1930s, and he was, I'm Jewish, which I don't know even how I got alcoholism because Jews don't drink

because it might dull the pain.

And

I'm not self-control at all.

I love when you share that in Arkansas. What the hell?

What's happened about you? Hunt, honey. Hold on, Jaime, scrap these antlers on.

Where was I at any rate

and and my uncle was concerned about anti-Semitism. He was fighting down in Atlanta, GA was 1938. His name was Izzy Redmond and he changed his name because he was concerned about the anti-Semitism. He changed his name to Izzy Goldberg

so no one would know he was Jewish.

And they were stupid and although I judge no man, and dangerously deranged. And there was a chronic institutionalization and suicide attempts,

a lot of really bad stuff in my family. If you're new here, all I've got is good news for you, because my family had absolutely nothing to do with making me an alcoholic. I'm not telling you a lot of bad stuff didn't happen. It happened. And I'm not telling you I didn't have to do a lot of stuff to repair some of that stuff and take care of it.

I can't. You can't make me a drunk that way. If you could make me a drunk that way, if you really could make me an alcoholic through those family problems, those phobias, all those difficulties, because they did exist. But if those made me a drunk, then I could go to psychotherapy and work diligently and not be an alcoholic anymore.

It just stands to reason now again, I'm not. If you knew this might be sound really confusing because you might come from a really bad place. I'm not telling you for one minute that you don't. I used to poo poo something in a I don't poo poo anymore. I used to hear people say I drank because I'm straight. I drank because I'm gay. I'm drank 'cause I was abused. I'm I drank as I was sexually molested. I drank because I'm a depressive. And I used to say no, you don't. Well, you know what? I don't believe that anymore. I believe people tell when they tell me they drank because of that, I believe them. But this is what I also believe. You can't stay drunk

for that.

I don't, you know, I there was a real edge of cynicism and grandiosity in the music. Oh, no, that's not why you drank, Bull. I believe that you drank. But to stay drunk, you have to have an allergy. You have to have this bizarre alchemy of the physical, the mental and the spiritual.

That's what makes alcoholism,

and if you're new here and if you don't have it, stick around. We'd love to give it to you.

A lot of people don't catch it and they die from it. A lot of people catch it. They get better. Mice sponsors fond of saying that the infection takes place at the meetings. It enters through the ear

and infects people and then they start spreading it to other people, and that's exactly what happened to me. So I was put in psychotherapy at a very young age. I was in therapy for 18 years. By the time I got to AA, I was going to be dead, but I was going to understand it.

And

as a young man, I didn't want to. I drank till I didn't want to be a drunk, but I didn't want to be an alcoholic. I, my father was a bartender. I heard a lot about people drinking with drinking problems and I overcame my alcohol problem with marijuana at a pretty young age. I'm going to talk about drugs now

for a minute because it's part of my story. I don't mean to offend anybody. I believe in in our triangle. I believe in unity.

If it really annoys you, Dave asked me to talk. He invited me up. And so David, you raise your hand,

talk to him. I didn't apply. I didn't apply for the job. And

I overcame my alcohol problem with marijuana. I like to welcome all the pot smokers here tonight. I like to welcome all. Do you remember why you're clapping?

Usually they go yeah. What? What

I

overcame my marijuana problem with pills. I conquered my pill problem with cocaine. Cocaine is an excellent drug. It's particularly good for sex if you enjoy sex from the Neolithic period.

When I kick that Galgorn cocaine with heroin, Heroin is a very dark, complicated, artistic drug. Then you cross the line and become a vomiting pig. It's just a little hop, skip and a jump. And I drank till I didn't want to be a drunk. And I, and I drank throughout.

And by the time I was,

I was in my, you know, it's a funny thing. I have a friend named Bobby Ruiz and he got sober on Skid Row in LA And he called me up one day and he said, Scott, I want you to come down. They're going to induct me into something called the Hall of Miracles down in the Salvation Army. Anybody who gets three years and more gets inducted into the Hall of Miracles on Skid Row. And it's an incredible thing to be there. You know, it's one of the only sad thing about it is there weren't 100 news cameras down there.

News cameras will show up for the bad stuff, but what an incredible thing to cover,

uh, fifty people with three years or more coming off Skid Row, coming off the Salvation Army, talk about success stories. And I used to get annoyed sometimes when I hear kids at AA meetings there. There's a point you can cross the line and you ask, you have to ask Damien to leave now and again. But what I just hear, just even the sound that that sound of that kid, which is not distracting to me at all. And

this Salvation Army guy, this current of the Salvation Army guy got up at this, at this function and he said to this crowd,

please don't let the sounds of the children because there were kids running around ripping away stuff. He said don't let the sounds of the children bother you because this should be music to our ears. It's the sounds of families that shouldn't exist. And man, anytime it's, it's it's a great, great thing.

Anytime I start getting, you know, approaching that edge, I just think of that line and it just what a gorgeous, what a true thing or a true thing. I just tell you my last of my I'm supposed to tell my story, but just finish up with Bobby story. Bobby made a deal with God when he was in rehab that he'd run a marathon for him. When he went down to sign up to run the LA Marathon,

he told them their story. They wanted to know I was running there and they printed it in the paper and the guys on Skid Row read it and they put together a cheering section for him when he's ran through Skid Row.

Just an incredible guy. Incredible. A a success story. He's got 14 years now. Great guy. Yeah,

and

I was in my early 20s. I had slammed some heroin. My father had a massive stroke. I was taken to the hospital and I couldn't be there for him or my mom,

and my father was lost to me. I felt so ashamed and horrified with my behavior. I had collapsed as a son, a man you know and I know what the problem was. The problem is heroin and needles, and I swore I would never put one in my arm again. And I didn't, not for 13 years. Shortly after that, I was acting in a Broadway play

and a new restaurant with long brown hair walked in. I took one look at her. I didn't even say hello to her. I walked back into the dressing room, got up on a chair and announced to the male members of this cast that if anyone talked to the new usher at with long brown hair I break all the bones in their hands and feet. So anytime a guy would walk near Nancy, he'd kind of go and dash away. And we, I, I, I, I fell in love with my wife of 23 years

at first sight. I fell in love with her at first sight. I've loved her ever since I met her,

and I love her more now, and that's only because of you guys. Because I used to sit up and look at her juggler vein pumping and think, can't we stop that? It's just such a little thing. What if I risk my finger on it? Would that kill her? I thought she was the source of not only what was wrong in my life, but probably yours too, if you thought about it.

And we started this incredible life together. We were young. We were in our early 20s. I was acting on Broadway, where, you know,

we're living in what's arguably that one of the most exciting places in the universe to live. The world was at our feet. And we had alcoholism, man. We were going nowhere. But down we got, we went down and just spread out, you know, and then they went down and it spread out more, you know, and,

and it happened slowly over a period of time. And we had a lot of good times. Our son Micah was born and, and a couple of years after we got married and he was really welcomed into this world. There were lots of friends around and flowers and phone calls where, you know, that we were right in our community of people. And two years and nine months later, when Jesse was born, there were no flowers, no phone calls, there was no buddy around. We had been completely isolated by the disease of alcoholism in just two years and nine months. And it wasn't because people didn't love us. It really just hurt too much to be around us.

And I really understand what that's like today. We pressed ourselves on our family like a thumb on a bruise. It just was. It just was too hard and

Jesse got sick. He had to go to neonatal intensive care. And a doctor called me that night from the hospital and said, Mr. Redmond, your wifes all alone down here, she's in a tremendous duress and we need you. And I said I, I can't, I can't, I can't come down. I can't find anybody to watch my two year old son. And this doctor whom I had never met before, a complete stranger and a doctor to boot, said to me, I'll tell you what, my husband's home, I'll give you our phone number. You can go to our house, bring your kid over there and my husband will watch your son so you can come down here.

What a remarkably

generous gesture from somebody I, you know, I'd never met before. I said no. I had no way that I could accept her generosity. I think if I had said yes, then I would have had a probably take a look at where we had wound up. How did this happen? How do you want? This is when you're supposed to be right in the middle of it, right in the middle of love. This is when you're supposed to be right in the middle of your community and, and get, you know what I'm talking about. You know that. Please. Look, there's no better place in the world to be in a hospital than a maternity ward.

They're just it doesn't get any better than that. When everything is OK and when everything is not, there's no worse place to be in the world. And when you got no God and you're all alone and completely isolated and the ice around your heart has gotten so thick it's repelled everybody around you, there's really no worse place to be. And that's where we wound up.

One of my wife's favorite lines in the big book, One of the moments she and I have shared a lot about is when Bill talks about having a life that you can't, that it's so bad he can't sleep upstairs because he might kill himself. He's dragged, he's dragged his bedding down to the ground floor. He's stealing from his wife every day when she comes home. He's unwanted by his friends. He cannot stop drinking. He he paints a picture so bleak you can't imagine that anyone could even live there. And then he says,

little were we to know this was to continue.

I don't know if he says two or three more years. And that's what exactly what happened to us from that bottom that day in that hospital. We were to continue that way for three more years until Jesse was a little over three years old. And on April 20th, 1985, I crossed the line that I swore I would never cross again. And this was shortly after my older son Micah had come to me. He was about 5 at the time. And he said, Dad, is there anything such as God? And I looked into the eyes of my perfect

five year old baby boy and I said no, there isn't.

I lied to him.

I think worse than lying to him, what I said in essence to him was, you know, honey, when it's dark and it's late at night, you're all alone and you're scared and you can't go to sleep tough because that's all there is. That's really what I said to him. I don't think there's really a worst piece of information that you can give a kid and it's completely diametrically opposed to what I thought I was doing. What I thought I was doing was saving him some time and some trouble so he wouldn't have to be played like ASAP or a sucker so he could get the real existential deal. And what I was doing was,

and our book points it out so gorgeously in the 4th chapter, I was giving him the weakest, mushiest, most baseless, hard to defend the position of all. And

on April 20th, 1985, I crossed the line. I swear I would never cross again. I put a needle in my arm. And you see, the night my dad died, I knew what the problem was. I knew why I had wound up in that place. It's because it was because of heroin and because of needles. And as long as I didn't use needles, I was fine. But on April 20th, 1985, thirteen years later, I crossed the line I swore I would never cross again,

and my world came crashing down around me. Now, why did I go to an AAA meeting? My call my therapist, I told him what I had done. He said the only thing I can suggest is we either institutionalized you or send you to a A. Why did I go to AI? Have no idea. On most other days I would have gone to the institution. There's no way I would have gone Alcoholic Anonymous. Absolutely. I love reasons to drink. I collect them.

I have a friend named Larry. The first time he ever read our book, he read the first page of the 4th chapter which contains a sentence which basically says facing

a spiritual life or an alcoholic death is not always an easy decision to make. And in it it's tough die in a pool of my own urine. Spiritual life, very, very tough decision to make. And the first time he had ever read that sentence, he said to himself,

well, how bad an alcoholic death are we talking about here?

My favorite reason to drink I've ever heard

happened a couple of years ago. I was sponsoring this guy for about 15 minutes

and he he lived with his wife who's a male prostitute and he had a gay lover. And he called me to tell me that he drank and I said oh why?

And he said I caught my wife cheating on me.

You can't make that up.

You can't write that, and I understand that. I completely understand that because that's either the product of just a gem. He just he had to come up with something. Bam, It was just an occasional hunter inspiration. Boom, boom. It just it came out. It was fully cut cloth. It was just a little Pearl or that was the product of weeks in the rats maze, weeks on the hamster wheel, weeks of cutting and pasting, reality of turning the whole world so I can drink.

All right, OK, I know and live with my wife. I know I'm a hooker with a beeper. I know I've got a gay lover, but she take it on me.

You've got to turn the whole universe. And I understand it completely because I did it over and over and over again. If you're my kid, if you're my wife, if you're my dream, if you're what I want to do in my life and you get in between me and the drink, you're either going to disappear or you're going to become invisible or you're going to become something less than human because I'm going to either walk through your or I'm going to walk around you. But I'll get there. And if you're my child, how much vanishing can you bear until you believe what you're being taught, which is that you don't exist?

And by the time I got to AAA on April 22nd, 1985, our children were a wreck.

There were a wreck. They were cut off from the Society of other children. They were had serious learning problems,

serious problems with small motor skills, all sorts of really terrible manifestations of being scared all the time. And my wife had become very ill from prolonged exposure to me and

she had the nerve on my last overdose to call the police and embarrass me with paramedics and life saving techniques.

And

why I went to that a, a meeting, I don't know, but I did. I went to that Alcoholics Anonymous meeting instead of the mental institution. And I hated everything about Alcoholics Anonymous. I just, I just couldn't believe that that's where I had had wound up. And the only reason that I, I can imagine that I stayed

is that 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 beauty.

Don't use your plan. Grab one of us after the meeting and tell us your plan. We want to know the plan

and I started the boring trail of Alcoholics Anonymous if you're boring here, and I like to tell you my favorite story about being bored in a A. It happened to an old friend of mine named Jeff D who used to go to my Home group

and he was a couple of weeks sober and he was shifting around in the sea to his at a meeting with his sponsor. And his sponsor said, what's the matter? And Jeff said, I'm bored. And the sponsor said, well, you know why you're bored, don't you? And Jeff said, no. And the sponsor said, you're bored because you're boring, that's why you're bored. And Jeff, it was like an acid moment for me went wow, wow, wow. It just freaked him out. He thought, what a cool thing to say to a newcomer, you know? And he he could hardly wait till the newcomer told him that they were

13 years later, it hasn't happened. And Jeff was at the North Hollywood group, at our old Home group, and he's with this young lady who was new. And she was shifting around in her seat. And he said, what's the matter? She said I'm bored,

he said. Well, you know why you're bored, she said. Yeah, because I'm with you.

So if your boy, welcome to alcoholism.

I stuck around a A for six months and got the gift of step none.

You know, the gift of step none, nothing. I had done nothing and was receiving nothing. And I thought I'd taken the first three steps. Now it says in our book the first step will have a little, little permanent or lasting effect unless it once followed by a four step. So I guess I could take the third step, but unless I've done the rest of the work, which I hadn't, it's going to kind of come and go. So I, I guess I had taken the 1st 2 steps, which is I admitted I was powerless over alcohol. I was an alcoholic, which is a fatal illness.

My life is unmanageable, my life is a mess. And that I come to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity. Not would, not should, but that it was possible. You don't, of course, need to get restored to sanity unless you're nuts. So I had admitted my livestock that was dying and I was out of my mind. Gee, how come I didn't feel any better after it

after a period of time? Why should I feel better? Really? Because I haven't taken done a few simple things and I I had seen the AA drill hundreds of times in just the six months I was in. I saw people come in, do the work, and change. People come 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 spiritually developed.

So I knew I was going to drink and I asked the guy to sponsor me and he was a good guy and he invited me to his apartment. He had made sure I'd done some reading from the big book of A A and he invited me over and he took me through the 1st 2 steps. We got the step three and we said a prayer together

and he went back and gave me instructions on how to do a fourth step from the big book of A A

and I stopped feeling like I was stealing someones chair here. I know that for sure I didn't have a burning Bush experience, but I just I've been going to step studies and I didn't have much to talk about it. I was not working any steps. Anytime I'm in a step study and I hear anybody sharing begin with the following sentence. Well, I haven't actually done this step, but

I always think, but what the hell will you be talking about if you haven't done the thing you're about to talk about? Why? Why are we hearing from you right now? But again, I judge no man.

My sponsor gave me 3 mantras to do early on in sobriety.

Someone, you know, when someone's sharing and the, your DNA is unraveling, they're kind of, you know, you see people throwing ropes over beams to kill themselves. That that kind of thing.

And he gave me 3 things to say to myself and I have used them to this day. They have been so helpful and you might be have to use them for the rest of my talk.

One is, remember, they're going to stop.

Great. Isn't that great? Because when I'm in the middle of it, I don't think it's ever going to end, he said. Remember, they got to stop. Some new guy is going to hit him or some. I mean, they're going to stop.

Second, everything in an AA meeting needs to be said.

You just might not need to hear it, but it needs everything said needs to be said. There's somebody who is going to glean something from this. Why does everything that said have to be for you? And the third thing, and this really annoyed me, you said, are you willing to take the following chance with your life at any meeting that you've ever heard anybody talk? Would you be willing to take this chance with your life? Would you be willing to get up to the podium, tap that person on the shoulder and say, why don't you shut up and sit the hell down? Because I'm going to talk now.

And you know what? So far the answer is no. Not that I wouldn't want to a couple of times, but am I willing to take that chance with my life? Not so far.

And uh,

I, I did my 4th step. I went back to my sponsor at nine months of sobriety and read my fifth step. I did step step six and seven for the first time, which have kind of become my working template for my relationship with God. And then it came time to do my 8th step list. I try to share this anytime I talk because it's simply the best reading to this date I have ever heard of step eight. It happened at my old Home group and I heard it from a guy who I had never seen before this night and never seen him since. His name was Nino.

He had a heavy New York accent and he had never LED chapter 5 before. He had never seen it. And he got up in front of this group for the first time. He had hospital plastic on. He was there with a hospital group and he and he was reading chapter 5 and he got up to the 8th step and he read,

made a list of all those we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all. Jesus Christ.

And he looked out into the room as if to say, have you seen this?

Do you know what's in here?

It wasn't like a such horror. I'm such revulsion. You know, it says in our book, you know, that people are men and women are approached by something. They thought they had neatly evaded this issue of spirituality.

He thought he had neatly evaded some of these things. And I, I did too. And, and I share that because if you're new, it's the only thing I saw on the list of steps. When I saw the list of steps, it's, it's the only thing I saw. Not those people, not that money. I would not have taken that much money if I knew I had to give it back. Please, I'm not a moron.

If you're new, don't worry. It's eight steps from where you are, for God's sake. And it's not eight that's the annoying one. It's 9,

which is 9 steps from where you are. Even better news,

I had to put my wife and my kids and my pop

stand on a list. My mother and my grandmother who went to an old age home and who I never went to visit.

Every time I'd see some a senior citizen, I'd get this horrible, that horrible hit in the side of the face with a brick feeling. And anytime I couldn't talk about my dad, I couldn't look at pictures of him. I couldn't

talk about him or think about him because every time I did that, just that rush of personal revulsion and horror would come up. I just, I feel like I just got slapped and I didn't know what I was going to do. I didn't know what was I going to do with Nancy? Let's see. I'll sit you down, honey. And I'll say, jeez, Hun,

sorry about this eight-year journey to hates, okay.

And what was I going to do to the boys? Say boys, I'm sorry you've had no life. I'm really so sorry. I couldn't I, I could, I couldn't even get the words I'm sorry out of my mouth. And the guys who I was hanging out with an AA, they didn't suggest that I do that. They suggested that I start doing my job. Do your job in Alcoholics Anonymous and see what happens. I just start doing a lot of lame crap. I had to start like showing up at Little League games, coaching flag football, going in and showing and running a reading group at my kids and my kids second grade class, being a class dad.

I had to start doing a lame, lame, lame crap

and

first time I went to a ball game, my wife, I go to the ball game, the little game. My wife goes over and sees, she comes out of the field and just starts laughing because there's all the people in the first base stands and there's me alone in the sun, pissed off, just psychotic. I'm here, I'm doing my job. I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here. Going up and down to hat sizes, just completely off my nut. The kids are thrilled to see me. Mr. Redmond is going to blow up, man. We're going to. I'm telling you, he's going to explode,

the vein on his forehead pumping like a garden nose.

And I had it took a while for the voices to diminish in volume and number for me to just go and sit with the people in

understands that just be in the first base stance to just be at my sobriety station.

And I've been doing it a couple of years. And my son Jesse received to be what I considered to be the only thing better. It might be 1540 on your Sats.

He was intentionally walked.

It doesn't get any better than that, I really don't think. If you're not a baseball fan, that means they're scared of you and they want to get to the weenie behind you. And

he didn't want to jump up and down yelling, you don't want to be lame, you want to be lame. So just lay the bat down and wrap the first baseline. And on the way up the first baseline, he turned to me at my sobriety station and he just shot me

little bit of stuff. It's the old man. You don't want to spoil him. Don't be lame. It's a little bit of stuff. And I could have missed the whole thing. I could have missed it. And I'm not telling you my son got intentionally walk because I'm sober. I'm telling you I was at my sobriety station because I'm sober. And I went back and bragged about that for a while. And I've been with enough guys who have been drunk one more day on their kids birthday who I've told about the day that my kid got intentionally walked. And I know about it because I was there.

Our kids have received pretty much 13 appropriate birthday gifts on the day of their birthday. Not once have they gotten the day after radioactive guilt gift. You know, usually

the only place that would still take a hot check for me, like the you know, I bring home some drywall form or something

and a box of nails done

and paper goods. I got the paper goods in the car

and we started making a family recovery. I'd love to share this because there's just true. My wife and I had to stop working on our marriage. We had to stop working on our relationship. My idea of working on a relationship is to talk to you until you change your mind. That's the Scott Redmond Couples Workshop. You just got it there in 11 seconds to talk to you until your eyes rollback in your head, you keel over and on the way down you go. Oh, OK,

anything to stop and stop the drone. Just stop the deal.

Only that baby is so adorable and we had to work on ourselves and try to bring a better person to the deal. And that's what we did for our first years in sobriety. And,

and then after some time, we really lost track of each other. We had released each other so thoroughly and with so much love, we didn't know where the hell each other were. And

around the time that I started working with my present sponsor, I, I,

we really had a,

I was just driving home one day I was driving home. I had the, the, the dream I'd always dreamed of. I was driving a brand new car. I had the, the respect and love of my fellows. And I realized I was scared of my wife, that my, when my wife would come home and I'd hear a car come up the driveway, I'd make sure the kids were watching the right TV show, that the house was clean.

Not that I would take care of this stuff. I just try to see what kind of, you know what, where we were. And I realized and I, I, I had to go to my wife and say, you know, honey, I'm scared. Yeah. And

and it wasn't her fault. She wasn't trying to make me scared of her. She wasn't coming home,

you know, with a white glove and checking stuff out. I, I was still dealing with so much guilt and so much shame and poor communication with my wife and an inability to fight well because I didn't have a fight. And my wife taught me how to fight by helping our children learn how to fight. I felt so guilty about the boys and had such few tools. They start to fight and I pull them apart and Nancy would say, let them finish. You never let them finish.