The Paramount Speaker group in Paramount, CA

My name is Scott Redmond. I'm an alcoholic. Hi everybody. I'd like to welcome the newcomers and congratulate the chip people and thank Josh for his great talk. And, and thank you so much for inviting me to come to your party tonight. This is a great Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. I love this meeting and I've loved every time I've I've gotten an opportunity to come down here.

I have a great life today. If you're, if you're new, I'm I'm sure that just thrills the crap out of you. I, I know how happy I was for people having a good time when I got here. I was just overwhelmed with joy for him. I was thrilled for him

and I would sit and you know, I listen to people go on, you know, I got sober, I got a new house, I got a new family and then I got driving a new car. I got a good job and I'd sit in my seat and I would think to myself,

maybe you'll go home tonight and maybe your house will blow up, you know, maybe it'll blow up. Maybe your new family will run down the street in flames and and we'll see how spiritual you are next week.

So welcome to welcome to Alcoholics Anonymous if you're new. Welcome if you're a drug addict. Welcome 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.

If you're like a crack monster, you know,

I'm very excited. Like to welcome all the tweakers here tonight. Welcome all the tweakers, All right?

I love you guys. You stay real fast for a while. You know we're out. You're closer. Me, if you know people I know can actually wear their clothes out from the inside, that's a really incredible thing. I like this one guy. There is these, all his parts of his face are moving in a different direction. That's really, it's very nice. So if you knew, if you're a tweaker, you've licked all the features off your face. Welcome to Alcoholics Anonymous.

I also hear. I love you guys. You have very nicely arranged wallets,

very, very neat wallets. I'm not making fun of you

coming close, but I'm not making fun of you and I'll tell you why I'm not making funnier. I don't care what you are. Just catch the disease that is outlined in our book. I don't care if you're the bigfooted dope addicts. If you're like a dope Goliath, I really don't care. I don't care. I did not have alcoholism when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. I caught alcoholism in AAI. It took me a long time to find out what alcoholism was. I didn't know what it was. I didn't know that when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous that I knew what my problem was.

I this is what I knew when I came to, I lost myself. I hated you. I had terrible crippling fear and sexual stuff that I was never going to admit to anybody, even though 99% of my sexual stuff involved me. Just me, you know? So if you've ever met, there's nothing wrong with masturbation unless you're masturbating till you're dehydrated. That's all that could be a problem. But not, not all of us did that much cocaine. But what can we do?

Man? Am I preaching to the choir tonight? Jesus Christ, I say this stuff. It's amazing. What? What? What do you what?

At any rate, I hated myself, but nothing compared to how much I hated you. I hated me, but I hate you so much more than I hate me that it's difficult to describe. I am not. I'm just not a suicide guy. That's just not who I am. I'm not. I'm a homicide guy. I I you first. I have always preferred your death to mine. Every time, dude, every time. I had this fantasy that the this headline I would see in my head. Scott Redmond kills wife, kills children and refuses to

suicide that that was the headline I saw. And I am not, I am not knocking the suicide people. This is not a put down. I'm not putting the suicide people down at all. I'm just a homicide guy and, and, and I think it's the flip side of the same coin,

but I didn't know that I knew what my problem was. I hated you. I hated myself. I was terrified and I had sexual misconduct. I was never going to admit to anybody. And in fact, if you read the big book of AA, they say that's exactly what your problem is. That's the bizarre that that's the alchemy, that's the landscape of the spiritual disease that is made it impossible for me to be helped by well meaning medical people, psychiatrists and members of the clergy

that that's in fact my problem. And once that bizarre spiritual sickness that and, and, and, and the composition of it is again, if you read the big book is resentments against your you, me fears and sexual misconduct.

If that's attended to, then I straight out straighten out mentally and physically. And that has been my experience. That's absolutely been my experience. I didn't know it at the time, you know, and I had tried, I had a terrible journey to Alcoholics Anonymous. I got here in April, on April 22nd, 1985. And at the age of 33, I had grown up in the Bronx in New York City. Anybody here from the Bronx you hear with the witness protection program?

To a completely insane family. My family was and is very, very crazy and my wife never believed me until about my family until she met him and my mother threw an engagement party for us. And my aunt Rose came and wore her wig backwards. It had and it it had a bun on it. So the bun was on her forehead and

they're they're just insane. If you got anything for free and my family, I mean it was stolen

and I had an uncle who used to get, he was a welder and he used to get free bales of steel wool like his. You check in a complimentary Bale of steel wool. What the hell is that all about? And his wife took decorating course and made throw pillows and filled all the throw pillows with the free readily available steel wool. And and that that stuff works its way through on you after a while. So like when I was at their house, when you looked at the room,

everybody was moving like a little bit, you know, the whole room was like a pulsing living Organism.

And they're just psychotic. There was mental and physical abuse and, and, and chronic institutionalization and suicide attempts. And if you're new here, all I've got is good news for you because my family did not have one single thing to do with making me an alcoholic. I'm not telling you they weren't crazy and that I wasn't injured. I was injured terribly. And I'm not telling you I didn't have to do stuff about that. I had to do a lot of stuff about that. I'm telling you they didn't make me a drunk if they had made me a drunk. See, one of the reasons I was not

Pollock by the time I got here, as I had been in psychotherapy for 18 years, by the time I got to Alcoholics Anonymous, I was going to be dead, but I was going to understand it.

And if my family had made me a drunk, the therapy would have worked. I did good work in therapy and I got no beef against therapy. I got no malpractice insurance. I don't tell people where they couldn't go and what they can take and all of that stuff. You know, I, I just, and that's just me. That's my deal. It says on page 133 of our book, if you need a doctor, go get one. I got no beef against therapy.

Colossal mistake as I was trying to treat my alcoholism with psychotherapy, which is like showing up at a gunfight with a knife. It's insane. OK? The idea of therapy for those of you who might have been a therapy is to uncover, discover and unravel, to shine the light on things, to free associate, to share with a therapist and come up with a better resolution for your anxiety. OK, Has anybody here ever been told they're neurotic? That you've got neurosis, that you're neurotic? OK, what they mean

is is that you have a problem and your solution for the problem is not good. It's not good. It's a neurosis. In other words, your solutions are worse than your problems. This sound familiar at all? Okay

so I'm the radic, I got a problem. But my answers to the problem are never satisfying, they never make me feel better. So I go to therapy to uncover to discover and come up with a better answer for my anxiety. Does this make sense? OK here's my problem doctor. I feel terrible why

I was too. I was so drunk this afternoon. I was too drunk to walk, so I I drove.

Well, what are we going to do about that?

What are you going to do about that, Doctor? I feel terrible. Why

this afternoon I sharpened a hypodermic needle on the back of the matchbook striker and suck some heroin up through a fluffed up cigarette filter and injected it in my arm. I I just feel terrible.

What are we going to do about it? What are you going to do about that? What are you going to do? You're going to ask me, what were you thinking just before you did that? The big book of Alcoholics Anonymous says if you pursue me and you ask me why I've done this insane thing over and over again, why I have done it despite the attendant misery and suffering that follows every single time,

and I stay with you and I don't blow you off, odds are I'll have no more idea than you do. Because I have become so sick and the ice around my heart has become so thick and my thinking is so bizarre that I keep thinking myself into a drink I can't stop taking. And if you're special and a drug addict, try some controlled crack smoking. Just fill your mouth up with crack smoke and say, not in the mood. Blow it out and hats will fill the air.

But I didn't know what I was up against.

And I just had a real rough time of it growing up in the Bronx. And, you know, I had to hang out with the people who were doing what I wanted to do. And he stole cars for a while with this group of social climbers. And

then the 60s hit. And I, I didn't want to be a drunk. I, I really didn't, I didn't want to be an alcoholic. And I was in pretty deep by that time. I had been asked to leave the school I was attending. And I, I overcame my alcohol problem with marijuana. I like to welcome all the pot smokers here tonight.

You remember. Wow, right?

Wow,

Wow.

And right after wow usually came

what?

What? Wow, what? Wow, What, what, what? Wow, what

Watching a pot smoker is like watching a dog try to run on linoleum. There's, there's like a lot of activity, but no movement. They, they can't, they can't get a claw in the rug. They just can't get the deal. Moving forward. I conquered marijuana with pills and I I try after the pills with cocaine.

McCain is an excellent drug. It's particularly good for sex if you enjoy sex from the Neolithic period

couple. You didn't hear that because you were going.

Could you wipe the foam out of the corner of your mouth there? And

I,

I and I overcame that terrible cocaine problem 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 then I tried to I don't want to be a drunk and I went to therapy and

swift swapped substances and started to die.

It was 21 and I was hitchhiking down from the Bronx down in Manhattan. I have slammed some dope and my aunt and uncle pulled me, pulled up on the West Side Highway and threw me in the back of the car. My father had had a massive stroke. It was in the hospital and I couldn't show up for him the night that he died. Shortly after that, I I'm I was acting in a Broadway play and this usher at with long brown hair walked in and I took one look at her and didn't even say hello to her. I just fell in love with her. I told the other guys

and the show to leave her alone and we started a life together in New York and we had a great time. A great time. One of the most misused and misquoted lines in the big book of A A for me. As I've heard people say,

my worst day in here is better than my best day out there.

No,

no, no, no. I had a great time out there. Let's see, let's see, a pound of cocaine in an all female jazz band or a candlelight at the cider house. What do I want to do?

What do I want to do? What do I want to do? What will be more fun?

What the book says is I wouldn't trade my worst day in here for my best day out there because I won't live like a loser anymore. I won't trade this way of life. It doesn't say that that one was better than the other because for me it just wasn't. You can hear some wacky stuff about alcoholism. If you're new, you're going to hear some wacky stuff about it. Some little excess, yes. Some of it won't. The stuff that I've heard, and when people say Alcoholics are or Alcoholics do this, not once have I heard anything like that that has pissed me off. Have I found in the big book of A A ever

And a lot of it, some of it really works for some people and doesn't work for others. I've heard in a A that Alcoholics don't like change, don't like it. Not true for me. I just don't like change. I don't like. But I, I, I, I seem to have an aboundless facility to enjoy change. I like, I'm nuts about change. I like. I've heard Alcoholics are perfectionists.

I'm a pig. I'm not. I The only time I become a perfectionist is when my wife is taking care of me. Then my perfectionism

explodes. It seems to be endless, but my favorite

is that Alcoholics are above average intelligence. I have only heard this at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. I have. I have never ever heard it. I've never heard it at an ele Anon meaning ever.

Nancy and I had a beautiful son named Micah and he was really welcomed into the world.

Two years and nine months later, our son Jesse was born and he was not welcomed into the world. Nobody even came to the hospital. Nobody called, nobody sent a flower. It just hurt too much to be around us. And my sons became very, very sick from prolonged exposure to me. My wife became insane. She became a tongue chewing, babbling idiot. My children

was became so terribly ill. One day I came home and I we had these 30 tail oz iced tea tumblers in the house and I came home and I popped a cork on a bottle of wine and I emptied the entire bottle of wine into this cup. And I turned around and my wife was giving me her pre al Anon rat face.

I said what? She said what are you doing? And I looked at her and I said I'm having a glass of wine. Can a man have a glass of wine in his own home?

When my son Michael was five, he came up to me, 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, no, I lied to him. You know, I lied to him. And I, I, I, I don't know if there's a worse thing you can tell a kid. I mean, basically what you're telling the kid is, you know, when it's late at night and it's dark and you can't go to sleep and you're scared tough because that's all there is. I mean, that's really what you're telling the child.

And I thought I was giving him the real deal so he wouldn't have to be played like a SAP and a sucker. And I didn't know what I had done. I had rearranged my life to accommodate the walk to the drink because I want to get to the drink.

And if you're my wife, my lover, my buddy, my bride, my child, my dreams, my career, if you get in between me and the drink, you will either become something less than human, I'll objectify it, you'll become paper mache, you'll become something less than human, or you'll vanish. And how much vanishing can a baby bear before the baby believes they just they don't exist. And in our alcoholic home, the kids were locked into two basic choices to either became come blindly aggressive and crazy on route to a goal that never

got attained, or to just throw the towel in and say what's he use? What's he use? That's the paradigm. That's the template of alcoholic thinking. That's what it is in us. But I didn't know that my kids had alcoholism. I didn't know my wife had it. I didn't hadn't read there's a solution. I didn't know about the warped lives of blameless wives and children. I didn't know it. I didn't even have alcoholism yet. And I was dying from it. And I was, I was killing my wife and my kids.

We started. I was acting on Broadway when Nancy and I met.

This is where we wound up.

Eight years later we had a eight-year suicide pact. Recall the marriage

couple of months before I got sober, I got into an accident and I went to the doctor said, you know, Mr. Edmond, you have a high blood pressure, you're going to have to lose some weight. And I said, you know, I would really like to do that, but I, I drink alcohol and I smoke marijuana before I go to bed every night, so I'm not going to be able to. And I,

and the doctor said, why don't I prescribe some medication for you? And I said what a country.

And he prescribed for me chloral hydrate.

You know, You know what you say chlorohydrate in most groups of people and they don't go, ah, like they're looking at a puppy.

Chlorohydrate is a knockout drop. It's a fast acting sedative. It's like getting hit by a SAP. It's a it's, it's a Mickey. And I love my knockout drops. I love them. And Nancy comes home, I'm eating handfuls of knockout drops, standing in the hallway, slamming body parts into the wall to keep myself awake so I can enjoy my knockout drops. Because you don't want to waste a perfectly good knockout drop. So I keep eating pills, slamming body parts into the wall until I just seize

keel over and I'm going to bed

and I can't get out of bed to go to the bathroom because I got so much Mickey in me. So now I'm incontinent like the rest of the 33 year old men in America. And I, I, and, and one night I got up and wet the wall instead, instead of the bed. And the next morning, Nancy was excited. He wet the wall. He's headed towards the bathroom. Things are looking good. You know it's progress, not perfection, right? Go, Dad, go.

The night my father died, I I knew what was wrong. I

and I knew how to change it. I couldn't possibly deal with the fact that I couldn't show up for my old man the night that he died. I couldn't even go in and give him a kiss and tell him I love him and say goodbye. Because when the ice around your heart's that thick and you're that spiritually sick for me, my father wasn't carrying his light into another room. He was dying and dead is dead and riding his rotting. And that's what it is. And I collapsed as a son, a man.

That's OK. Thank you so much. And I knew what was wrong that night. And I knew I couldn't be the guy who couldn't show up for the his old man the night he died. So I swore to myself that night

that I'd never put a needle in my arm again. And I didn't. Not for 13 years. And by the time I did put a needle in my arm again,

my sons were six and three. Micah, my older son, was making involuntary clicking noises with his throat that he couldn't stop making. He could barely read or write. He was diagnosed as functionally retarded because his small motor skills were all screwed up. Jesse was playing a war game and pretending that he was a robot, but he couldn't stop. And the feeling that the people who were trying to help him was that it would hurt so much to be a person.

It just hurt too much and being a robot was just better. And this war game that he was playing, at least he could control the war in his head instead of the war he was in. And I didn't even know we had alcoholism. And I'm describing alcoholism. I'm describing the impact of alcoholism on a child and my son Michael was diagnosed as as functionally retarded with the small motor stuff. And there was nothing wrong with him. He was so disrupted from being scared all the time and interrupted of things never coming out the way they were said they were going to be coming out. He was just totally distracted and

corrupted all the time, and that's how it manifested himself in him. And on April 22, 1985, I crossed the line. I swear I would never cross again. I put a needle in my arm

and I called my therapist

and I told him what I had done. And he said to me that morning the exact same thing to call Young told the man who 12 step, the man who 12 Step, Bill Wilson. I didn't know it at the time, but I found that out after I read our literature and it made me feel really good. Carl Young said to that guy, I can't help you. And that therapist that morning said, you know what? There's absolutely nothing that could be done for you. You either have to go to a mental institution or go to a meeting of Narcotics Anonymous or Alcoholics Anonymous. Now, why? Why would today a meeting? I don't know. I really don't know most.

I would have gone to the nut house. I'm a guy.

I was told I needed surgery on my hand while I was drinking. He said I had knee surgery on my head. And the doctor said, you know, Mr. Redmond, you're going to need general anesthetic. And I said, oh, general anesthetic, That's great.

Normal people don't get excited about general anesthetic. There's no normal person who goes, oh man, this is great. But I know something about general anesthetic. I know that when they hit you with it they say count backwards from 100 and you go 199,

right?

I love 99,

I love 99 and it, and from the heads going up down, it looks like some of you love 99 too.

But just like I said before, I won't, I won't trade my life in for it. I won't live like a SAP anymore. And so I don't know why I didn't go to that mental institution, but I didn't. And you know what I don't know? I, I probably never will know because God is absolute and complete mystery. You know, I believe that's what the Mystics say. That's what the canonized Saints say. And that's what our book says. No one can fully comprehend or define that power, which is God. I don't know why, but I went to that a a meeting.

I went to a place called Unit A in the deep San Fernando Valley and I took,

I walked into that room that morning and I took one look around and I said, Oh my God, Alcoholics Anonymous. 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 the room looked like it was the product of like, 200 years of inbreeding to me. I swear about, I swear, man, They were like identical twins, carving their initials on each other's feet in the back of the room, you know,

and everything was a miracle. I'm America. You're America.

The furniture and coffee are miracles too.

And then the AA unsolicited advice guy. He came up to me after me. You know him, right? He's got a belt buckle large enough to serve an entire fish on.

Do I want what you've got? No. No. But thanks for spitting on me. I really appreciate it. See you next week. Do we do arts and crafts next week? I'm going to hook a rug. You know, what's the deal?

And the kind of bully I am, You see, I'm a nice guy. I'm a sterling human being, you know? So as the guys talking to me, I was laughing and nodding and praying that his face just burst into flame, you know? But he just goes up in a tower of smoke. I'm here. Isn't it bad enough that I'm here? It's over. I'm in Alcoholics Anonymous now. I got to listen to you. I just. I just couldn't believe it. And

I went back there every day for a year and, and I, I, you know, the only reason that I can imagine

that I went back is because 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 Butte.

Don't use your plan.

Grab one of us and after the meeting and tell us your plan. We want to know the plan.

My favorite newcomer plan and it's the most utilized one I've seen over the years. Seriously is the one more dope deal to set myself up financially for sobriety plan.

Dude, it is out there and it gets it's you. Seems closer you get the lemon Grove the more it's used kinda. I don't know that's it's gonna wind up on the soft literature rack.

I came back to a A for six months, enjoyed the gift of step none

and I knew I was going to drink. My wife had reached out to the Al Anon family groups and I saw some incredible stuff start happening to her in her life and I wanted what she had and she said she saw it in me and I saw it in her and I knew I was going to drink. I had hung around here for six months and I had seen the A A drill hundreds and hundreds of times in just six months. People came in and 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 the rest right out of the door. Or stayed here and became columns of human sewage and sexual predators. Although I I judge, I judge no man. I judge, I judge no man. Don't turn on me now

because I'm too spiritually developed

and I asked this guy to sponsor me.

Why I do that? Great guy, wasn't afraid of being a a goody. Goody talked about the work

and he was a great guy. He made sure I'd done some reading from the Big Book of A A and he invited me to his house and he read Chapter 5 to me

and he took me through the 1st 2 steps and we reached step three and got on our knees and said a prayer which I felt was unnecessary and embarrassing but I did it anyway. And then he went back and he gave me instructions on how to do a fourth step from the Big Book of A A and, and I stopped feeling like I was stealing somebody's chair here.

I came back and read on my inventory when I was nine months sober. I did step six and seven for the first time, which have really become the centerpiece of my relationship with God. And then it came down to do my eight step list. And I, I try to share this anytime I talk because it's simply the best reading of step eight I've ever heard. And I heard it when I was really newly sober. I was a couple weeks sober and I was at my first Home group, which was the men's group Monday night men's group at the North Hollywood group on Radford Street. And there was a guy there had never read Chapter 5 before. His name was Nino. He had a heavy New York accent.

Ever seen the cat again? I just saw him this one time was a couple of weeks sober and he had hospital plastic on it. He came in the hospital group reading chapter 5 for the first time and and he 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. Jeez, Christ.

And he looked out in a room as if to say, have you seen this?

I mean, do you know what the hell is in here,

dude?

Which I totally identify with because eight was the only thing I saw on the list. Didn't see any other step. 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. No way we think I'm a moron.

You know, if you knew 8 don't worry about it. It's eight steps from where you are and

and it's not even really the annoying one. It's 9.

It's the give it back one. It's not to give it back. It's the list and the willingness 1.

So I did my A step list and I didn't know what I was going to do about it. I didn't know what I was going to do about the boys and Nancy and my dad and just didn't know what I was going to do. And I was blessed with a sponsor who refused to tell me. He said do your job. Do your job in alcohol extent. See what happens. I couldn't sit down with my wife and kids and apologize. I'm sorry. With the two most useless words in my vocabulary, I couldn't even get them out of my mouth. I'm sorry you're retarded, son.

What insanity, you know,

So what I did was my sponsor said address your your inventory as your spiritual task.

See what you can do. So because I had all these resentments against myself for being a terrible father. I,

you know, and I didn't understand the biggest thing, the biggest thing, the thing that if there was anything my sponsor showed me, which was the, the arm, the, the triumphant arch through which I passed, the freedom we're working on my inventory. And I, you know, I grew up in a Jewish Home. I was resentful against Nazis for slaughtering Jews. I was resentful of one of my aunts for when I was a little boy, she she pinned my arms down so I could get hit.

And you know, it says on page 62 that selfishness, self centeredness that we think is the root of arbitrable driven by a driven isn't nudged or influenced driven is under the lash of in slavery to driven by 100 forms of fear,

self delusion, self seeking and self pity. We step on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate seemingly without provocation, but invariably, which means without variation every time, no loopholes. We find that we've made decisions based on self which later placed us in a position to be hurt. Bullshit.

Can't be. I'm as if what Nazis for slaughtering Jews? What have I done to make that happen? What's my part? Nothing. I got no part. My part is not even a phrase in the book. It's not even in the book. I don't know where it came from. My parts, not in the book. Faults and defects are What's my part with my aunt pinning me? I'm sorry, man. Nothing. That's not OK to do to a kid. To hold a kid down so another kid can beat him up. It ain't OK. So might. People might think it isn't, but this is my inventory, so I'll share about it.

And I said to that to my sponsor and he said, Scott, you don't get it.

They're not asking you if the event is your fault. They're asking you if the resentment is your fault.

With no exception and no loophole,

I'm resentful at Nazis for slaughtering Jews. What are the defects of character? What is it that God would remove from me? The resentment would be gone.

I'm not living in today. I'm a grudge holder. I'm a character assassin. I hear somebody's got a German accent. I don't even want to know him. So I'm a bigot, a hypocrite and a racist, Ugly, ugly to look at. But if I didn't, I wouldn't be free today. What would a reasonable person do? They wouldn't like Nazis. And they might give, they might work politically against Nazis, act like a citizen, give money to to people who are fighting Nazis, do something. But I didn't do that. I just felt sorry for myself self.

If you could bottle self pity, you would not crack off the market in a week.

And armed with that, I, I, I started building a life. I was able to get rid of my resentments and, and, and examine them because sometimes the event was my fault and sometimes it wasn't. And I got to show up at my kids school and say to the teachers, you know, you know, when kids got a lot of potential and he doesn't use it to teach, some teachers get very pissed off. And I'd sit down to teachers and say, you know what? My son's just been, he's been terribly ill because he's been living with me and I've been very sick. And we we've started a new thing in our family and we're getting better.

Can you help us? Not once has anyone said no. Not once. They said yeah, We'll test the boys. Let's see what's going on. They tested them. They needed help. They got special Ed. Special Ed teacher said get them into music, get them in the sports. Let's see if some big motor stuff will help the little motor stuff. So I did the right thing. I started doing the right thing. My sons have received 17 appropriate birthday gifts on the day of their birthday. Not once in 17 years

have they received the Day After radioactive Guilt gift

from the only place that would take a hot check from me. Here's some drywall, boys.

Oh, the kids are loving the drywall. It's Pokémon drywall,

so Jesse wanted to play drums. I went to the store and got him a drum pad. That's a piece of wood with a piece of rubber and two sticks. It's a couple of bucks, but I did the right thing. We didn't have any money. I did the right thing. My son asked me for something and I did the best I could and I went back to my Home group and

and I told the guys what I did. I'll tell you why. It wasn't to brag. It's because they wanted to know.

It's because I had a Home group like this where fifty people have commitments and people are hanging out and people are urging each other forward. Listen to the chips here. People are like screaming for each other. They're down, they're into it. They're on the, they're in the game, man. That's why that's what my Home group was like. The guys flipped. They loved it, you know, And a couple of weeks later, the, a, a drum set showed up at my house. There were like a lot of lot of burnout drummers in my group at that time.

And

so guys are showing up with these mega death drums, you know,

dude. And

Jesse had this drum set that when he sat behind, he just disappeared. He couldn't even sue. And Josh knows my kids. They're both monster musicians now. Monster musicians. A couple of years ago, they played the House of Blues on Sunset and burnt the dump down. Burn it down. They're playing hip hop music to this packed room. 8-9 hundred kids elbow to elbow and over on the side of this group of weeping middle-aged Alcoholics. And

the kids are kind of going, what is with the crying old people, man? What is, you know, usually they bring backup singers, but

these cats look like they've been around the block. You know,

another one of my kids on tour right now is going to be playing the House of Blues again. He's been, I mean, and I want to tell you if you're new,

that's just what's happening in my house. I don't think that's because God likes us more than the people whose kids are being annihilated. That's just what's happening in my house. We got nailed in the Northridge earthquake real bad, really bad. A guy died right near us. Our house got wrecked up. I got a bad physical injury. And shortly after I was at an A, A function out of town

and in other country, as a matter of fact. And this woman came up to me at that a A function and said, oh, she used to live in LA. And she said, oh, I'm so glad God got us out of LA before the quake. And I said, oh, so he likes you. He likes you, but we're crap, but he likes you. And she, she said to me, she said to me, I guess he just felt you had some lessons to learn.

Dude,

I'm out of here. I am out of here. If I had that God, that God's keeping our sober, that God wouldn't keep me sober for two seconds.

If I had a God up there saying get him, get the Redmond boy, get him. Get him. Turn his wife to salt, Kill his goat, put a finger in his eye. Get him

no evacuation plan for you, fat boy.

I'm out of here. I can't stay sober in that world. I

cannot stay sober in a world where I see the deliberate hand of God and people suffering. That's not the world I live in. God is absolute mystery, complete mystery. And when I say he does this or does this, then I'm prescribing some sort of job for him. You know, my God expects me to do my job in Alcoholics Anonymous if it's the show, a guy how to stay sober with this incredible thing I'm going through with my kids, or how to show a guy how to stay sober if my kids get injured or killed. And a God man, I know a lot of people and Alcoholics Anonymous who have gone through that tragedy and stayed,

showed me how to do it. I don't think God Nancy and I are married 26 years. It's like the longest marriage outside of Appalachia of anybody our age in the United States, I think. But there are other people I'm sure have been married as long. You know you don't get 26 years for murder. At any rate,

don't tell her,

but we we have a great time together. That's not because my God loves us more than the people who are getting divorced. If my job is to show a guy had to go through a sober divorce or have a sober loving marriage, that's my job.

My God's not. I can't live in a world where my God's going, let's key your car. It's boils for you. I think you do full ash, don't you think? I can't, I, I can't live in that world.

You know,

I would like to see her after our next lesson. But

at any rate,

if you're new, welcome to AA. The good news is, is our problem mainly rests in our mind.

The big book of A A, as far as I know, is the only book of the text about a, a recovery from a fatal illness that contains the sentence we absolutely insist on enjoying life. There's no book about cholera or malaria that says, oh, malaria is a hoot. You're going to love malaria. You'll meet other people with malaria, it's great. And then you'll meet people who just caught malaria. Just doesn't get any better than that.

My sponsor used to say that Alcoholics Anonymous was the only recovery from a failed illness he knew of that left the sufferer in better condition than they were in before they contracted the disease.

Wow, pretty great deal. The bad news is, is our problem mainly rests in our mind.

Some years ago, I met a guy at a meeting, a new guy, And I went home, and he called me and he talked to me for an hour. And I said, uh-huh, four times. So, you know, I wasn't dead. And he told me he had been stalking several women, and he had a restraining order out against him, But he's two weeks sober, and it's different now. And at the end of the hour, he said to me, I feel so alone. And I said, what are you talking about? I don't even know you. And I just listened to you for an hour without interrupting.