STICK WITH THE WINNERS! –
June 3, 2025 – Neil Scott is producer/host of Recovery-Coast to Coast, the National Podcast, featuring interviews with many prominent people in recovery, including Betty Ford, Judy Collins, Buzz Aldrin, Bonnie Raitt, and others, as well as everyday people in long-term recovery. Neil has been in the field of addiction for 50 years.
Q. If you are in recovery, what was your drug(s) of choice and when is your sobriety date?
A. I am not in personal recovery, however I have spent the last 50 years in the field of addiction. I attend open AA meetings monthly and always have. I have dedicated my life to carrying the message of hope and the promise of recovery. AA is the true heartbeat of long-term recovery!
Q. What do you like most about 12-step meetings?
A. The availability, openness, honesty, and vulnerability of a caring community focused on achieving and maintaining long-term recovery.
Q. Do you think addiction is an illness, disease, a choice, or a wicked twist of fate?
A. It is clearly and unequivocally a disease; a treatable disease from which men and women can and do recover! Alcoholism was first recognized as a disease by the American Medical Association, not in the mid-50s, as many suggest, but in 1967. A year prior, at the Mental Health committee meeting, during the AMA’s 20th Clinical Convention in Las Vegas, Nevada, the committee stated that “it ranks closely behind heart disease, cancer, and mental illness as one of the nation’s major health problems.” The report concluded, “Alcoholism is a disease that merits the serious concern of all members of the health professions.” And it was in 1967 at the 21st Clinical Convention in Houston, Texas, November 26-29, 1967, that the official resolution was introduced by the Colorado delegation and adopted by the AMA, stating that alcoholism is “a complex disease and as such recognizes that the medical components are medicine’s responsibility.”
