Still Fucked and Insane ft. Scott G

In this episode, originally released on April 22nd, 2022, Steve welcomes Scott to share their experience, strength, and hope with you, along with advice on getting and staying sober.

Follow Scott on Instagram @scotttgrasso and follow us while you are at it @gAyApodcast.

Also check out their website: https://www.scottgrasso.com/

Thank you for listening. Please rate and review if you have found this information helpful.

If you are interested in sharing your story, getting involved with the show, or just saying hi, please e-mail me at gayapodcast@gmail.com

Or Follow Us wherever you are listening so you can get new episodes when they come out every Monday and Thursday. Until that time, stay sober, friends!

Transcript

Steve: 0:00

Hello there super sober heroes and welcome to a brand new episode of gay a the queer sober hero show I'm your host sober steve the podcast guy here with 1294 days of sobriety and I am so grateful for another chance to dive deep Back into the vault, filled with amazing experience, strength, wisdom, and hope that we've gotten to listen to over the past 200 plus episodes. And since not all of you have been around since the beginning, this is a great chance to hear some great shares that have stuck with me years after I've heard them, including this episode with Scott from almost a thousand days ago, which I still think about regularly, it speaks for itself. So I'll let you enjoy it. hi everyone and welcome to Gay A, a podcast about sobriety for the LGBT plus community and our allies. I'm your host, Steve Bennett Martin. I am an alcoholic and I am grateful for my career where I get to help seniors. As of this recording, I am 330 days sober, and today we're welcoming a guest to share their experience, wisdom, and hope with you. Welcome to the show, Scott.

Scott: 1:13

Why? Thank you, Steve. I'm delighted to be here. Scott G, a recovering alcoholic, here with you today, and all the way from Queensland in the state in Australia, on the East Coast. Wow. Thank you, Steve. Very far away from where I got sober in Boston, but that's part of the sobriety journey.

Steve: 1:32

Excellent. Then to get started, why don't you tell us about what your sobriety journey was like?

Scott: 1:37

Yeah. Absolutely. And please feel free to flash, time card signs at me. Look, I guess just for anybody listening, I just wanna, I used to work in marketing for, as my first career, and we always had to run everything past the legal department. So the legal department, for aa. I am not a spokesperson for aa. I'm just a garden variety drunk. So for anybody listening I don't represent AA or any, AA has no opinions on everything. I have lots of them, but, and so it's okay to disagree with me and it's okay to not like me. And don't, please don't hold it against any of the 12 step fellowships. I'm just this idiot sharing, to the best of my knowledge, and ability, the, my experience, strength, and hope. So look, I grew up in Western Massachusetts on the East Coast of, in Mass, on the States, really, and and a super gay kid. So for any, this idea for anybody who's listening, who lives, a queer lifestyle in any of its permutations, I was, the super queerest kid in the 1970s in a town, a very well affluent town where a lot of the leading families trace their lineage back to the Mayflower is that kind of uptight Protestant shit going down. And I was Catholic and I was Italian. So that was bad. My surname ended with a vowel when, everyone was like, had three hyphenated names, Smith to Cantor Jones, that kind of stuff. And And I wore bright green flare trousers when all the other boys wore blue jeans, like I wear pink shirts. I was really out there. And part of my recovery journey has been going back and spending time with that kid and saying, you were so fierce. Like you were fierce when that word didn't exist, but I got my ass whooped like for all through school, I was bullied and terrorized. And I had to seek outside help for that. Because what it did was it made me feel unsafe and not felt unsafe. Like I was unsafe. People would walk down the hallway and be like, I'm going to beat you up after school. Yeah. And I had this, if you, anyone, and you may be too young, the, in the wizard of Oz, Miss Gulch, who's the, becomes the wicked witch of the West has an old bicycle, an upright bicycle that she rides. And I had one of those in powder blue and it had chrome fenders. And I used to put colorful things in the spokes. I think I was so gay. I was like, satellites could see me from space. I was so gay, but I, and I had a chrome headlight that I was particularly obsessed with. And so somebody would say they're going to beat me up and I'd have to gather my books by 214 and 215. When the alarm went off, I'd run to my miss sculpt bike, get and pedal my ass off school grounds. And that fucks with you, like that's trauma. I didn't know the word trauma existed until I got sober, but that was traumatic. And I come from a long line of alcoholic, half of my family is Italian. And to the best of my knowledge, there's no alcoholism there. There's French Canadian, my family, there's no alcoholism there. I have some native American ancestry. That's a problem because native Americans, there's a belief that they can't metabolize alcohol. And I have one great grandparent who's Irish. Fitzgerald and all of the alcoholics come falling out of the closet. Over the centuries through the Fitzgerald line. So I believe very passionately that alcoholism is a disease and it's inherited genetically. My mom and her sisters are affected badly by the diseases, the, of alcoholism and addiction. My 59 from this disease. So it's deadly and it's. Killed a lot of members in my family, basically. So I was just the next in line. So I think that, there's always one of your questions was, what effect did my sexuality have on it? So absolutely. It was part of feeling different, but alcoholics, we now feel different anyway. So as I felt different times 20 and the trauma absolutely contributed to my need. To escape in whatever way that was. So when alcohol came along, I was the last of my friends to drink because I saw how stupid they were. But I vivid, and this is a sign of alcoholism. Alcoholics remember their first drink, right? So ordinary drinkers do not. So I remember it was a Miller highlife beer and I hated the taste, but my friends were all drinking and I drank it with one of my friends gave me a straw. So I drank a Miller High Life beer out of a straw and he said, drink it quickly. And I drank it quickly and hated the taste, but really liked the effect. Really liked it. And for a queer kid who felt on the outside of society, I never, alcohol never made me feel like I fit in, but it made me feel Like, I didn't care that I didn't fit in, if that made sense. It was just a relief. It was just a period of relief. And I'll tell you that I would still be drinking, Steve, if it still worked, if I got that relief. But alcohol stopped working relatively quickly. I had my first drink at maybe 15 and a half, and I was in AA at 29. Like Dunsky, like cooked, fried, so I believe that I'm addicted to alcohol. I, it triggers a compulsion in me and an obsession. I would, when I wasn't drinking about, I had a very complex, I'm a Virgo. My, my star sign is a Virgo and Virgos are very organized. We're the very organized and we're right about everything. It's just annoying. Virgos are annoying to know and let alone be in a relationship with. But I used to organize like who I was going to drink with when, and this was in my mid twenties. This is how bad I was. It's not like he saw me drunk last week. He can't see me. So I was organizing where I was going and who I was going with and who had seen me and which liquor store I had been in too often. And that's a lot of work. It's a lot of work. And as a blackout drinker, by my mid twenties, I would take drinks and then wake up. I take a drink in Boston and wake up in New Hampshire. No idea how I got over state lines and, once I was quasi kidnapped, in a blackout and woke up in a totally different town from where I'd been drinking and no idea where I was. And I thought that drama was living. I thought that was, wow, look at me being out there. I'm a suburban boy. Look at me in New Hampshire, waking up in a, in a woodpile. I, one of my friends when I got sober told me that he saved my life. Because on a ski trip in New Hampshire, I went outside and passed out face down in a snow pile. And if they hadn't found me, I could have died of hypothermia. So that was just, that's how I drank. I drank like a pig. And my people say, what's your drug of choice? My drug of choice? More. And back when I was drinking in the 80s and 90s, I had a real thing about drugs. Drugs are for dirty people. I was from the nice suburbs until I got drunk. And then you offered me something for free. And then it was like, sure. And then I judge you, I wouldn't pay for it. I'd smoke your pot. I do your coke. I'd never pay you for it. And then I'd scorn you the next day for your drug addiction problem. Just a little smug bastard I was. And look, the bottom line is I got into dangerous situations with dangerous people. I ended up dating a bartender in a gay bar because I figured out, this is a very good strategy, by the way, if you are having sex with a bartender, you never have to wait for drinks. That's a bit anybody who's still drinking. If you want to get out there, like date the bartender. So trays used to come around. I never had to wait because part of my alcoholism was once I started drinking, I had to feed the monster and there was no waiting in lines. So that was the scariest thing. I didn't go out on New Year's. I'm an alcoholic. I didn't go out on New Year's because it was amateur night. And you had to wait. It was about being social. It was about I had to feed the disease. So two things happened when I was 29. One was I was dating a super hot Frenchman. He was an interior designer. He met me at the gym and he was like 16 leagues out of my data. It was just I don't know where he came from. And his name is Ned. And he was sober three years. And I went to his house one night for dinner and I brought a six pack with me and Ned opened the door and he looked at me in horror and said, Scott, remember I told you I'm a recovering alcoholic. And my response was, Yeah, I know. That's why I only brought one six pack, right? That's how inconsiderate and selfish and self seeking. I was that was just for me. I brought what I needed on this date with this hot Frenchman and he broke up with me. We didn't date very long, but he anybody said something that was super important to me. He said, you're dangerous to my recovery. And it was the first time I'd ever heard. I knew my drinking was dangerous for me, but I couldn't stop. I now I heard that it was a problem for someone else. So that was the 1st signpost and the 2nd was my best friend growing up, had a beautiful partner named Tim and Tim got sober and we used to drink together and take drugs together and all of a sudden Tim was bright and shiny on Sunday mornings. And he wasn't spending his rent money, at whatever it was club cafe. I think it was in Boston at that time. I don't even know if it's still around, but he got, and I watched the quality of light change in it. And he looked shiny and happy and I had crippling hangovers and often tell the story about how my closet in my little apartment in the South end of Boston had Louvre doors on it, for air circulation and I would, my bed was close to the group. The closet doors and I would, I was particularly allergic to red wine and I would projectile vomit red wine from my bed into my closet. I would vomit through the louvers and it would end up all over my work clothes and all of that. So I'd open up the next morning, there'd be stripes of red wine and vomit on my clothing. That's the kind of messy drinker I was. And it just, and I got sick and tired of being sick and tired. There's, and the epic moment, What for me was on Sunday, usually I vomited a lot because I was so allergic to alcohol and I would, when I would go out for a night, I would put three extra Tylenol along my kitchen counter and three glasses of water before I went out. That's how much planning had to go into my alcoholism. And when I come home, hopefully I'd see some water and take the extra Tylenol. But at the end of my drinking, I decided that projectile vomiting from my bed was becoming a problem. Not to mention wetting my bed. And I had friends that were shitting themselves and I knew I was not interested in that narrative at all. So I took to sleeping in my bathroom on Sunday nights and I would, I had this really expensive Polo Ralph Lauren comforter. It was very important that you knew that it was Polo Ralph Lauren too, right? I was all about labels. I wore Brooks Brothers suits and I was very ripped and I did step aerobics. It was all about looking good on the outside and having a God sized hole on the inside. And so I was sleeping, I used to sleep sideways on the toilet. And my rationale was if I vomited, at least some of it would get in the toilet and the rest of it, the toilet, the linoleum came up around the sides in the bathroom so that it created like a natural catchment for the rest of the vomit. And I thought that was completely normal sleeping on your toilet wrapped in your Polo Ralph Lauren comforter. I thought that was perfectly fine strategy. On this particular Sunday morning I think it was something like December 1st, 1992. I had an out of body experience. I saw myself. I woke up on the toilet and I was floating above myself and I saw, and the only word is depravity. I saw the depravity of my life. I saw that it wasn't normal. And I believe, and I'm, it was a very angry agnostic for my first 10 years in recovery. And I fought by words, G O D and higher power. But I had a moment, this is a total moment of clarity that was not for me. So whatever we ascribe that to, I now talk about having a goddess of my misunderstanding. But I saw that and I cried out and this is, I have, I find this in most people's recovery. There's a moment of truth and whether they literally cry out, I'm quite dramatic, right? So I always go for a Jean Paul Sartre moment, but I cried out and said, dear God, if you're out there, help me or kill me. And I came to some hours later in a meeting of AA, all right, and my first year, like this year, like everything was happening. And I was going, oh, that's mysterious. I wouldn't, I was just like, how's that? So I came to a meeting of AA in Boston, and it was in the High Holy Catholic Cathedral, Boston, in the South end and I was not very happy with the Archbishop and the Cardinal at that time. They were saying some awful things, but the, and I knew this was, So much of my recovery is about ego deflation at depth, and I think my ego needs deflating. So my first meeting was in the High Holy Catholic Cathedral, and I was an angry agnostic. Recovering Catholic, you could say. It was in the basement of this church, and it was next to the crypt where the dead priests were buried. That was my first meeting of AA, and I thought, oh, honey, you've really arrived. Oh you've home run type, great work. But I saw men, gay, it was a gay meeting, gay men who were clean and sober clean physically, and happy. And what I got in my first meeting was hope and they said to me, keep coming back and they surrounded me and they gave me their phone numbers, which I thought meant they wanted to have sex with me. So it's very, I was like, and I scorned and judgment. You're too fat. You wear inappropriate clothing. There's you're wearing polyester. I was like, reasons that I wasn't going to be part of this group but I kept coming, I went to, and I only went to a meeting a week for my first four months, because that's all I knew. I was so insane. I can't describe to you how insane I was at the end of my drinking. So I went to one meeting a week. Didn't get a sponsor, didn't touch the literature, didn't have a service commitment. And after four months, I went to South Beach on holiday and I drank because that's what alcoholics do. And when I drank in South Beach, I was astonished because I'd been to AA. But I know the words. I know there are steps. I know I could pair it to you what it meant, but I got drunk and one of those phone numbers that was in my wallet. I, and this is how long ago it was in 1993. I had to go to a pay phone at news cafe in South Beach, Miami, and I had to go to the bartender and get. Coins had to get quarters and put them in a payphone. Now, my nieces who are in the early 20s don't know the sound that quarters make when they go in a payphone. And, they're astonished by the rotary dial kind of concept. But I rang this guy in Boston, which would have cost a buttload of money back then. And I got this guy. His name is Hebert. And I called him and I said, Hebert, I'm drunk and I don't know how this happened. And he said, this is, I hope everyone has comedic sponsorship. He said to me, honey, did you put alcohol in your mouth? And I was like, yes, I did. How did you know that? Oh my God, you're so wise. And he said something that I needed to hear in my first step, honey. If you don't put alcohol in your mouth, you can't get drunk. And I thought, this is the wisest man I have ever met in my life. Ever. And he became my sponsor. I went back to Boston and we began to work the steps. And I'm so grateful to that man because he didn't, I was so fucked. My step one is I'm fucked. My step two is I'm insane. And so if I'm fucked and insane, I better look for wisdom outside of myself, right? That's step three. I better look for God group of drunks or great outdoors or good orderly direction. And I've tried not to forget that. And my sobriety date is the 12th of May, 1993. And so that's 28 and a half years and how could a drunk hopeless drunk like me stay sober? Remembering that I'm fucked and I'm insane. That's my resting state. And I know people listening to this might be really insulted by that. But I say that with great compassion for myself and others. It's just if you're fucked and you're insane, don't try to solve your alcohol problem by yourselves. That's not going to go so good. Crazy plus crazy is going to equal crazy, right? So this man started taking me through the steps and he didn't say to me, step one, he didn't say, Are you powerless over alcohol and is your life unmanageable by you? That would have been Mandarin to me. He said, Honey, have you had enough? And that continues to serve me. Whenever I'm struggling in recovery, I've struggled with credit card debt. I've straddled struggles with sex behavior with food and my sponsor. I've had the same sponsor now for 24 years. And he just says, I'll be off. I'll be up to something because I'm always up to something, by the way, even here, and I'll call him and say, oh, God, I'm in the cookies again. Whatever it is. We have Tim Tams in Australia. They're wonderful. But in whatever it is in America, Fig Newtons, Mallow Puffs, whatever you're, but, I'll find my face in, an entire box of those. And I'll call my sponsor and be like, I'm in the cookies again. The journey to recovery starts with just have you had enough? All right. He'll say, have you had enough of the compulsive spending? Have you had enough of the credit card debt? If you had enough of the cookies and when I say, yes, then I can start to make progress in recovery. So for me, working the steps has been. An entire new way of looking at life because I was so focused on outwardly. The last thing I want to do is look at my own shit. And we're in the fourth month of now. And it's the fourth step. The fourth step changed my life. That fourth and fifth steps are the game fucking changes. So I realized I was fucked. I was insane. I was going to look for wisdom. So I got a sponsor, started working the steps, got a home group, got a service commitment. And in step four. I learned about the instincts so the most important, I think the most important thing of things I've learned, I have a progressive fatal disease. That's incurable. I can get a daily reprieve contingent on my maintenance of a spiritual condition and to look at my fears and instincts. So my partner, Steve, and I just bought a beautiful 3 acre property in Australia. It's he describes it as we've bought an abandoned boy scout camp. It's in Really rough shape. And so I'm as a, as a perfectionist Virgo suburban boy, I'm triggered as fuck because the gardens are messy and the houses are falling down. And I have to really, what I was taught in the 4 step bar, I have instincts for security, self esteem, personal relations, money and sex. And whenever any of those instincts are triggered, I behave badly or I go into panic. And then, and I also have fears that I'm going to lose what I have that I'm not going to get what I want. Or both and I learned that in the fourth step that when I'm triggered, it's not about you. It's not about what you're doing, but it's about my instinct. So moving into this house has affected my instincts for security. There were big gaps in the fall. We have six foot pythons that live in the forest where we are in Australia. Like we have big monitor lizards. Like, All kinds of poisonous spiders and there are gaps everywhere and doors and shit. So my instincts for security are triggered as fuck right now. And then, but when I realized that and call my sponsor and tell him it dials back the anxiety, right? So in four and five, I realized I'm riddled with character defects, all of my resentments. I have the character defects of pride and anger, every single resentment. I'm the character defect. Pride is. I know how you should act. I know how the president should behave. I know the weather. I know, and nothing separates me from my goddess, from my spiritual self and my fellows faster than me knowing what's best for you. And I spent so many years minding your business. Oh my God. And I was full of helpful advice, but what he taught me is that while I had lots of opinions, I had very little experience, right? So I used to give my friends relationship advice. I'd never been in a relationship. My sponsor started saying, do you have experience in this area? And I would say, no. And he'd say, okay, restraint of tongue and pen. Let's not give advice where we don't have experience. And when I got to be about 15 or probably more likely 20 years sober, it occurred to me that most people are not interested in my wisdom and my experience. And so nowadays, even with my sponsors, I've got five sponsors at the moment. I will, they'll be called, they'll call me and they'll be talking about it. I was going to say crapping on about something. That's really what I meant. I was going to, but, and I'll say, would you like my experience on this? Or are you just venting? And 99 percent of the time they're like, no, I'm just venting. I'm not actually interested in your wisdom. I'm like, okay, saves me so many words. I don't have to solve your problems today. So look, when I did my fourth and fifth step and finished it in Boston, my sponsor said to me, Scott, you've, you're an alcoholic. You've got these resentments. You've got these character defects, pride, anger, lust, sloth, gluttony, greed. He said, first of all, congratulations. You're a member of AA. You've done your fifth step. And he asked me a question. He said, what do you want your life to look like? And I was astonished by the question. And I was a frightened kid. I was never going to be 10, more than 10 miles from my parents. My sister lived in Boston. I was never going to leave my friends. I had a great home group and I thought about it for a minute. And I said to him, I want a great adventure. And my sponsor, who was probably 12 years sober at that point, almost fell off the chair because he knew what a frightened kid I was, and he said, be careful, the universe is listening. What do you choose for your life? And I was as astonished as he was. And I said, Yeah, I want a big adventure and be careful. Be careful when your higher power is there and you're listening. So I've my life took off this frightened kid from Boston when I was four years sober. I moved to San Francisco. One of my sponsees moved out there and all they had to do is say to me, we don't shovel snow. That's what he said. I'm in San Francisco. Great recovery. We don't shovel snow. Wham. Four years sober, I was in San Francisco, and I met a guy from New Zealand when I was living in San Francisco, and we were together for nine years, and we moved to, he wanted to move home to New Zealand initially, and I was like, nah, I didn't even know where New Zealand was on the map, by the way, I had to look it up. I thought it was somewhere near Denmark and we moved to Australia in 2000, and I've lived for five years, ended up living in New Zealand for five years. I've been in Australia on and off since 2000. So I've been out of the United States for the most part for 22 years. So how did a recovering alcoholic, a fall down, queer, drunk kid, From Longmeadow, Massachusetts end up in the hinterlands on a in a rainforest in Australia. I asked for it. I asked for a big adventure and I kept doing the work. I continue to do the work in recovery. I have a service commitment. I have a home group. I continue to do the work and my life continues to grow and change in unbelievable ways and the work for me today is in my 11th step, continuing to try to continue to improve my conscious connection with whatever the spirits of the universe are, which for me is love, right? Get out of fear. And get into love and to examine through daily meditation and prayer. Where am I? Take my own temperature. I've taken your temperature for decades. I know you're flawed. I don't have as much experience in focusing on all my flaws. So keeping the focus on me and trying to be the most loving and kind person that I can be today. is shaping up to be a very rewarding and busy life. So yeah, so thank you for having the opportunity to share that story with you.

Steve: 25:03

Yeah, it was a great story to listen to. And with that, out of all the positive changes in your life since finding sobriety, what's one or two that have surprised you the most?

Scott: 25:11

As a gay kid, I had so much shame. I was a sinner. I was going to hell and my church confirmed that for me, by the way, losing shame that having shame wash out like the tide by doing esteemable acts by becoming a person that I was proud of instead of, I was experiencing so much shame. And then I'd go out drinking and shame myself. It was this repetitive cycle. So not having shame dominate my life has been the relief from that has been. Completely game changing. I'm no longer ashamed of who and what I am. I can say I'm a recovering alcoholic without being embarrassed by that today. It's just oh, yeah, I've got hazel eyes and I'm recovering alcoholic and somehow along the, that, that shame going away. I could tell you now that I'm a gay man of dignity and work and I don't bow before anyone else in the way everything was like, hi, I'm Scott. I'm gay. Is that okay with you? And today it's just Here I am, and it's okay for you not to like me. So just finding humility as my sponsor talks to me about a lot is the definition of it is. It's an honest understanding of who and what we are followed by an earnest desire to be all that we can be and I think that's a beautiful roadmap. I know who I am today. I'm an alcoholic. I'm a gay man. I'm a member of society and I'm pretty happy about that. So definitely the shame going away was a big thing. And the other thing was I. I got sober in gay meetings, and so for my first maybe three years, I was only going to gay meetings. So I thought, only gay, GLB, LBGTIQ I only thought we had feelings and fears. And then I needed to start going to morning meetings at about three years sober, because I was blind. Crazy again and couldn't make it through a work day until the night meeting. So with my sponsor, I started going to a morning meeting in Boston and there were straight people there. And I was sitting next to these gigantic firemen and policemen and football players, and they were sitting next to me and they were talking about their alcoholism and they were talking about being afraid and being unsure and not knowing what to do. And it was just, this wall came down Straight guys are afraid too? I had built this narrative that I'm the Sissy Mary who's afraid of everything and everyone, and I'm the only one who's afraid. So going, mixing more broadly in society, I've realized that I'm just a human being. I'm just another bozo on the bus, that my sexuality doesn't define me. It's much more inclusive for me to think about my alcoholism because I can go into a meeting and I've been all over the world going into meetings. It doesn't matter if you're a Buddhist monk or a sex worker. It's just Hey, I know who you are. And that feeling of community blossoming around me has been probably the other super great gift.

Steve: 28:05

Yeah, that's amazing. I definitely need to expand my meetings a little bit more. So that's a good kick in the butt for that. I needed to hear it. And you share on your Instagram page how you are an energy healer, psychic and mentor. Can you share how those gifts have impacted your sobriety?

Scott: 28:23

I would say that they've come about entirely because of my recovery. So in, in doing, in the third step, I acknowledged, I was, I acknowledged that I was insane and fucked totally. And my spot, I wouldn't get a higher power and my sponsor who busted me on everything. I could never get away with anything. He just said to me Scott, let me ask you a question. Do you believe that? I believe. And I was like, yes, I do believe that you believe in something. And he said, great, why don't you borrow my higher power? And I was so busted that I couldn't debate him. I was like, all right. And he said, get on your knees in the morning, get on your knees for two seconds and say, please help. And at the end of the day, get on your knees and say, thank you. And I was like, there is no fucking way because it was just what triggered me and my, my, my religion of upbringing there's no way I'm getting on my knees. And he said to me, I'll never forget this. He said to me, Oh, honey, you've been on your knees for far less than prayer. And I laughed and was like, touche motherfucker. And but I did it and, first thing, my boyfriend wasn't around. I got on my knees and I was like, please help. And at the end of the day, I got on my knees and I was like, thank you, and ran. And within a couple of weeks, I couldn't wait, right? So my spiritual press, I've practiced having a spiritual connection to whatever is out there. It's led me to be curious about lots of things. So I joined the Unitarian Universalist Church when I was about a year sober, and lots of recovering people and lots of people in the queer community were there. And that was amazing for me. And we had a lesbian was our Minister. And that was amazing coming from the religion I came from. And so I continue to get curious. And then I had friends, my sister had spiritual experiences in meditation and she was doing astral travel at one of our best mates became a shaman and she started doing energy healing. And again, I always have to tell you, it's never about virtue with me. It's always competition or desperation that gets me to do work, but I wasn't going to let my little sister be more spiritual than me. Was I right? So I followed her into meditation. I followed her into. Investigating shamanic practice and I joined groups and I started getting training. And a teacher told me, Hey, Scott, you've got intuitive abilities. And I didn't know that I was 20, what 23 years sober. And I didn't know, he said, those things, about people that's not normal. And I thought it was just being a good sponsor. I'd be doing this. I'd be hearing somebody's fifth step and I would tell them stuff about their life. And they'd be like, how do you know that? I haven't told you that. And I'd be like, Oh, it's just a and with some training, I was like, Oh, it's a something it's the thing. So look at being a psychic and a medium and an energy healer. It's just a skill. I'm a carpenter or an electrician. I just happen to have skills. That I can read people's energy. I know what's going on for people and I can help them with that. But that's from practicing the 11th step continuously, consciously, repetitively being curious about how I'm connected to the universe. And I still do. I work with the elderly. I do elder care. That's part of my career. And I work with people, great, wonderful people, supporting them. People with disabilities. So I've left the corporate sector altogether and I'm loving these people, these elders. And when you come from where I come from, I know surrendering my corporate life because it wasn't feeding my soul was very difficult. It was a death of ego. That was very painful. And my partner had to support me in, in doing that because it was really hard. I had to get retraining. I make a fraction of what I used to make, but I'm so happy because I grew up on the East coast thinking, I can't do work that I enjoy. That's not an option for me. My Italian family, my grandmother used to say, life is a battagli, Scottie Tomasi. Life is a battle. You're going to suffer and then you're going to die. That's the wisdom from, six generations of new Englanders. Pull your bootstraps up. If you sever your artery, you put a bandaid on it and you go to work, and so all these years later, I'm doing work that I love with souls, That I adore and doing healing work that I can't believe I get paid to do, but it took me far out 25 years to believe that I was worth doing, having work that I enjoyed that it was a possibility for me. So it's all from AA and the continuous work of step 11 and just dropping, 1 of your questions is what a 3, what's the greatest thing I've learned is my sponsor gave me 3 statements that have changed my life. One is I give up. The second is I don't know. And the third is it's none of my business. That's my God, that's my spiritual program. I give up knowing. It's none of my business what you're doing in your life. It's none of my business, what's going on in the world. I just have to be the best person I can be. And just, if I keep the focus on me, if I keep tending my own garden, amazing things happen. I keep saying this to you, but I'm a drunk from Boston. I'm in Australia. I've been overseas for 20 years. How did that happen? Like, how is that possible for a drunk who used to projectile vomit into his closet? That was my life and look at it now. Hell yes, I'm incredibly grateful for recovery and it's a journey that I can't outgrow, every, I have, We say, I don't know, this is something the American say as much, but I have problems in areas where I didn't have areas before, like I have home. I own a home. I have a beautiful partner. I, none of that was possible for me. It's so it's an extraordinary journey.

Steve: 33:46

Yeah. And part of your journey and another thing we have in common is podcasting. Would you like to share a little bit more about your Fierce Conversations podcast?

Scott: 33:54

Thank you. I had a girlfriend. Part of the spiritual work, I started meeting extraordinary souls who were curious like me and my girlfriend started a spiritual magazine a couple years ago called Fierce Truths Magazine. And part of recovery for me is I used to say no to everything. There's a story my parents used to tell when I was first going to kindergarten. My parents sat me down and said, whatever, four or five, you're going to go to kindergarten and you're going to make friends. It's going to be wonderful. And I said to them, no, thank you. And my poor parents were very young when they had me and they were like, what the fuck, what do you do with no, thank you. That was my, I didn't want anything to do with life. I wanted to sit on the sidelines. I didn't want to play. And over time that no thank you, which was my knee jerk reaction to every opportunity has become not know, right? That's 28 years of recovery is someone will post something to me. It'll be like, I'm not going to reject you right now. I'm going to go talk to my sponsor. So when I started working. Supporting my friend in the magazine, it was, ah, fuck it. Why not? And that's tremendous freedom. So I was at her editor for two years, 18 months, maybe 18 months editing spiritual articles, and we started doing podcasts and had great fun with it. And then it was time for me to move on. So I've moved on from that and thinking about my own podcasts and thinking about what's next for me in terms of. I'm trying to express my gratitude for 28 years of recovery and the profound changes like I'm a big talker, as you probably figured out, but I'm so undone by. The thousands and thousands of hours that I was going to say alcoholics, but human beings have spent with me throughout my recovery, guiding me and offering me helpful experience that how am I ever going to pay that back? How am I ever going to do that? I try to, I've got my sponsors, but I go to regular meetings, but man, I got so much to be grateful for. And so many thank yous to give that, I think it's time. That I step out on my own and I've been shit scared about that. That's why I'm so proud of you doing your own thing, because that old gay, that gay kid on the playground with the flare covered pants, stands next to me and goes, it's unsafe. It's unsafe to step out. Don't step out from your comfort zone. For me, I've had to come out a number of times. I came out as gay at 26, came out as a recovering alcoholic at 30, came out as a psychic and medium at. What 55 age 55 and now it's, coming out again as, as somebody who wants to be more connected to my spirituality and more open publicly about that. 1 of the things they taught me is I thought growing up that courage was the absence of fear and. A is taught me that courage is real. Courage is being scared, shitless and still taking the action, taking the healthy action, not stupid action, not step in front of a train action, but well considered action with your sponsors input, blah, blah, blah. And that to me is. Another gift right being scared shitless like I recognized the scared gay kid says don't put yourself out there But it's in conflict with wanting to say Thank you for the incredible life that I've been given and wanting to help other people have their best life So

Steve: 37:08

yeah,

Scott: 37:08

so

Steve: 37:08

it

Scott: 37:08

continues to unfold.

Steve: 37:10

Yeah, and you mentioned, you know how you're helping other people I mean if you can give one piece of advice to someone who's sober curious or newly sober What would that be

Scott: 37:21

If you think if someone, if you think you have a problem with alcohol, you probably do people that don't have a problem with alcohol, rarely think about whether they have a problem with alcohol, so I would say to somebody, alcoholism is a disease. It's nothing to be ashamed of. And I had so much, I was like, Oh, fuck. I'm a sissy Mary. And now I can't drink like a man. Oh, God damn it. And I talked about Phyllis. I have the voice of my addict. I call Phyllis. She's a 70 year old woman who lives in a dirty caravan in Scottsdale, Arizona. And she smokes unfiltered, cool cigarettes and her hair's always in curlers, but that's Phyllis, is, Oh, I don't know what this is all hell. You suck. I suck. And it's But there's no shame to being an alcoholic. If you have a progressive faith, if you, my sister had double breast cancer, my sister did not have to work through toxic shame about cancer. She was like, it's cancer. So for somebody who's thinking about alcoholism, if you have a problem with alcohol, there's no shame in that just means you can't metabolize alcohol like other people. My partner It's allergic to strawberry jam as an example, he doesn't spend years going on. Maybe it's not strawberry jam. Maybe it should be blueberry jam. I'll try blueberry jam. He had an allergic reaction to strawberry jam. He doesn't eat strawberries anymore. You know what I mean? If you have an allergy, it's just think about that. Come give us a red hot go. And I used to think this was a cult. And I said to my first sponsor, oh, this is a cult. And he's interesting. It's a cult that you can come and go and you never have to come back here. And, that's fine. And I said, oh, you want to get all my money. And he said, no, it's just a suggestion. You can contribute or not, but we're glad you're here. And I said to him, I think you're trying to brainwash me. And he said, Oh honey, your brain could use a wash, so just come here and check it out with an open mind. Look for the similarities. I'm always looking for the differences. He's tall. She's this, and it's just come listen. Is there something here that resonates in your soul, in our messages about Our disease and having found a way out. If something resonates with your heart, give yourself the gift of checking it out.

Steve: 39:27

Yeah. And speaking of things resonating with your heart in recovery, us addicts typically love our steps, traditions, and sayings. Do you have a favorite mantra or quote to live by?

Scott: 39:40

Look I've spent time in Al Anon and Debtor's Anonymous too. So there's so much wisdom in all the affiliated 12 step programs. But I think the thing my sponsors told me, I give up, I don't know, and it's none of my business. That's the thing that saves my ass and probably. Close behind that is when it says in the big book, practicing restraint of tongue and pen carries a top priority for us, like keeping my mouth shut or not. Don't send that text. Don't tell that person when you're triggered in your instincts for security, self esteem, personal relations, pocketbook and sex, when you're triggered, don't do anything, pause and breathe. That moment of. Grace, we call it in recovery, between my reaction, my triggered reaction and my response that golden moment of don't count to 10 has saved my life more times than I can tell you. So that's probably that I use that on a daily basis.

Steve: 40:33

Yeah. Excellent. Thank you so much. And thank you so much for being on. Tell our listeners a little bit more about how they can find you if they want more Scott.

Scott: 40:42

Contact me, I'm in meetings hopefully, and we're all remaining anonymous with each other, but you can find me. I've got a website Scott Grasso, Scott dot Grasso, where you can talk about my services. I do stuff online as well as in person and I'm on Insta, Scott T. Grasso. And so yeah, and Facebook. So I'm happy to connect with people and happy to support them in their recovery journey. So what a joy. Thank you. What a joy seeing you. What a joy that you're excited. I'm excited that you're excited about your recovery and yeah, I look forward to the dialogue continuing.

Steve: 41:13

Yeah. Excellent. Thank you so much again, and thank you listeners for listening to another episode of GA. Please rate and review. If you found this information helpful, if you're interested in sharing your story, like Scott here, getting involved with the show or just saying, hi, always love to hear from you. You can email me at gay, a podcast at gmail. com or find me on Instagram at gay, a podcast. And be sure to follow us wherever you're listening so you can get new episodes when they come out every Monday and Thursday. And until next time, stay sober, friends.