Audio
Transcript
Source: Tim H – 2018 Man To Man Conference – Lake Brownwood, TX. – Speaker Talk – Date Unknown.mp3 File: tim-h-2018-man-to-man-conference-lake-brownwood-tx-speaker-talk-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 01:15:21
============================================================
Thanks, Mike. Hi, everybody. My name is Tim H.. I'm an alcoholic. It's April 12th of 1990. I haven't found it necessary to take a drink of alcohol or other mood-altering substances, and that's been absolutely, positively the best thing that's ever happened to me. And it's great to be here tonight, and like Mike said, the Kentucky Man to Man is exactly like this, and you know, it's like, why reinvent the wheel, right?
We just do it, and we have it the second week in December, and Palmer and some of the other guys here have been up here, and like I said, it's a carbon copy of this one, and you know, this was the first conference I was ever at where they actually had Al-9 and AA guys kind of blending together, and you just don't see that a lot of places, and it was, it's really neat. I saw it here, and we've carried it on up there, and you know, I appreciate that, and I guess I will say, you know, this is somewhat, you know, an emotional thing for me, but Mike didn't tell you, in 1999, a guy named Don Maloney, who's no longer with us, a lot of you knew Don.
He's the one that invited me here, because he knew somebody up there, and really, it was the first time I had been invited to go outside of Louisville very far, and in 1999, I had just gone through a divorce that had, the marriage had lasted eight months. I was living with my dad, the guys I was in partnership with in my business were pulling a coup, stealing all the major accounts, going to another company, and I was the Sunday morning spiritual speaker here, and I want to tell you, I got off that airplane, I was a mess, a mess, nine years sober, and I'm the speaker, and I'm just destroyed, and I say that because from this point, nine years sober, and I came to this conference, I found out what I think Alcoholics Anonymous is really all about, you know, it's about love, it's about the incredible power of love of one alcoholic helping another alcoholic, because by the time I left here on Sunday, you know, I didn't feel so bad about who I was again, because you guys reminded me that, you know, God loves us just the way we are, you know, and we go through ups and downs, and hills and valleys, but I come back to you guys, because you remind me that, you know, we are who we are, and we'll have ups and downs, but, you know, God loves you, and you guys love me just the way I am, and you know what I need to tell you, from that point forward, my life took an incredible, incredible turn, you know, they talk about the fourth dimension in the big book, and I don't know that that's what happened, but it certainly was close for me.
You know, I remember I was a Sunday morning speaker, and I was trying to be very sincere, and I said, you know, I've been here this weekend, and I met some really big men, and I heard all these guys griping down the front row, and I looked down, there had to be 2,000 pounds of men right across the day. I said, I'm sorry, guys, I didn't mean it that way, and some of those guys are gone, you know, and Big Al was one of them there, Mike was there, and then a number of other guys that are going on, you know, and that's the thing, you know, it's so neat to come back 19 years later, and see a lot of the same guys that were here, but then a lot of who aren't, but then there's all you new people who show up, and it reminds me what AA is about, right?
It'll always be about carrying this message, and passing it on to the next man. I'm really glad, as I said, we've been coming, my brother and I, over the years, and I don't know how many of these we've been to, maybe 10, 12 out of 15 out of the last 19 years. It's our kind of special pilgrimage together, he and I were the oldest two in our family, and thank God he got sober, because I was all by myself in that crazy family, but he and I have a great time coming down here and spending some time together.
Guys, my home group is called the Lampton Street Group, and it's in the inner city in downtown Louisville, okay? The reason I tell you that is kind of where I got sober, and my office was down that way, and as a direct result of my office being down, and my home group being in the inner city, probably 60% of the guys I sponsor are African American, they're black men. I don't think a lot about it, that's where I got sober, that's where I grew up in AA, but six or seven years ago, I was down that way around my home group, and they had changed this one-way street to a two-way street, and I'm going to get on the expressway one day, and all of a sudden I get hit in the rear end.
I get out, and the guy that hit me was an elderly black gentleman and his wife, so we're standing in the middle of the street waiting for the police to come. Now, keep in mind, we're only about three blocks from our home group. About that time, there come two guys down the side of the street. They ran over to me. They go, hey, Tim, man, you okay? You all right? I go, yeah, guys, I'm all right, go ahead.
[00:04:59]
About that time, two guys came down the other side of the street, both black.
[00:05:02]
They ran over and said, Tim, are you hurt? Can we help you, man? I said, no. About that time, a car came down the expressway. Five guys in there, all black. They stopped the car and jumped out. Tim, are you hurt? Can we help you? I said, guys, go ahead. Go ahead, I'm all right. I didn't think anything about it, right? I turned around. The elderly black man that hit me was standing there. He went, who are you anyway?
What can I tell that guy, right? I'm just a drunk, man. I'm just a drunk. You know, our book tells us that we are people who normally would not mix, right? But what grows up amongst us is a fellowship that's indescribably wonderful. You know, I'll tell you one other little story. My sponsors, a little guy named Don M. And Don sent me down to Cherokee, North Carolina, to speak at a Cherokee Indian Reservation AA conference.
And I was so nervous, man, when I got down there, because I had never really spoken too much outside of Louisville. And I got down there, and I'm the only non-Native American speaker. And I do not look like an Indian. And I got up there to speak, and there's the chief sitting there. There's a medicine man guy over here. And, man, I'm so nervous. I don't know what I'm going to say. The next thing I hear myself saying is, hey, you guys, you know what?
When I was a kid and I used to watch those cowboys in Indians movies. Vote for the Indians, man. That's what I did. And here's the thing. The chief laughed a little bit, and I thought, I'm in. After the meeting was over, he came up to me and said, hey, boy, we was kind of worried about you, but when you got up there and told those lies, we knew you was in the right place. Oh, man. You know, you got to love Alcoholics Anonymous, you know.
And I was so glad. You know, I love to laugh. You know, laughter is so healing, because I wasn't laughing about anything when I showed up April 12, 1990. And I was so glad that you guys were, because somehow I knew you had been in a bad situation, and now you weren't, and you were living a good, happy life. So thank you for your laughter, and thank you for your love when I showed up here. You know, the new people here, it's always great to see the countdown, and you very new people that are here this time.
This touches my heart, right? And I'll tell you what, though. When I was new, when I was sitting in the seats that you guys were sitting, listening to the speakers, what I would do, I would listen to what the speaker did that I didn't do. I was all about that, you know. I'd come to the meeting. I'd listen. I'd think, well, I did that. I did that. Nope, did not do that. Next night, next meeting. Did it, did it, did it.
Uh-uh, did not do that. Because I'm thinking if I get enough didn'ts, I am out of here, you know. And I met a meeting three weeks into this, and a lady of all things is speaking. Everything this woman did, I did. I'm thinking, oh, man, I did that. I did that. I'm screwed. I did that, too. It didn't right at the end of the talk. She said, you used to carry a half pint in her bra. I said, I did not do that.
And I told this old guy about it after the meeting. He said, it sounds like you're getting a little desperate there to me, Tim. And the deal was, I was kind of looking to see what an alcoholic looked like, and you guys said, kind of like you. I said, no, you know what I mean, dirty old man in a raincoat. And you guys said, no. And, you know, that night at that meeting, there were no dirty old men in raincoats.
Just like tonight, not a raincoat in place. Dirty old men everywhere. And then you guys started telling your stories, right, and your stories were all over the place, you know. And I love to listen to the stories in AA, right. They're crazy. But here's what happened to me, and it still is so important to me today. No matter what your stories were, you guys were talking about three things. You were talking about being restless, irritable, and discontent.
You were talking about being a part from, not a part of. And you were talking about progressive patterns of dishonesty in your life. And I'm going, oh, man, if that's got anything to do with what's wrong with me, I'm in trouble because those three things, you guys, have been part of my life from the get-go. Restless, irritable, and discontent, what is it? I don't know. The book talks about it. All I can tell you is I got it.
I have got it. I've had it as long as I can remember. It's the one thing I identify with another drunk almost immediately. You say, hey, Tim, how you doing, man? He goes, ah, shit, I don't know, man. I'm just not right. And you go, yeah, I know. I know. I know what you're talking about, buddy, because when I felt like that at 15 years old, I put alcohol on that, and it took it away, you know. And for the next 27 years, when restless, irritable, and discontent came, that's what I did.
I took a drink of alcohol, and I will tell you right now, I thought it was my solution. It was my solution through my teenage years, no doubt about it. It got me. It enabled me to live and get through things as a teenager that I simply didn't think I could do on my own.
[00:10:03]
You know, apart from, not apart of, you know, I don't, you hear so many of us talking about that. I don't know what that is either, but I tell you what. There's a little piece of me that always wants to separate from the pack. There's a little piece of me that always wants to make me different. I have been here how many times? Fifteen times. When my airplane's coming into DFW, that little voice will go, Tim, they'll know you're from Kentucky, you know.
You know. You are not one of them. You are different. You know, and it's crazy. It's always there, and it's been here, you know, my whole life. And I think that's the piece of my disease that I can't give in to. I think that's the piece that kills an alcoholic. We become different enough. We walk on the outside of the group, and sooner or later, you turn around one day, and I'm just not there. You know, this whole thing I'll share with you apart from, not apart of.
I got eight grandkids today. I love to watch old movies with them. Christmas time, we'd watch all these old movies, and my favorite movie of all time was E.T. the Extra Terrestrial. Remember that movie? And the reason I remember it, back in the 80s, I was out with this woman that I think I was engaged to, you know, one of those deals. But I'm drunk up, and I'm watching the movie, and E.T., the little Martian guy, if you remember, gets real sick, and he's dying.
He is dying. And I'm sitting there watching, and all of a sudden, he looks up in the sky, and he goes, home, home, E.T., home. Man, tears just started coming down my face. This girl asked me, I said, what is wrong with you? I said, I don't know just how he feels, man. And you know what? You tell that same story in church, nobody gets it. You tell it in LA meeting, oh yeah, man, you know, I want to get home, you know.
The last thing you all were talking about was progressive patterns of dishonesty in your life. And man, that really hit me, because immediately, I knew I was the type of guy who the truth, even the truth was never good enough. You know, I lied when the truth was good enough. And I can remember even as a kid, 10, 12 years old, was a pretty good athlete. So if I scored 20 points in a game, came home, you'd say, how many points did you score?
I'd say 24, you know. Got a B on the test, what'd you get? 10 B plus. I mean, and I can remember as 12 years old thinking, why do you do this, man? Why isn't the truth good enough for you? I really believe today, as a budding alcoholic, that I somehow intuitively knew that the truth could not be good enough. Somehow I knew I was going to have to get outside the truth if I wanted to live the way I wanted to live and drink the way I wanted to drink, you know.
Three months sober, I'll share this with you. Three months sober, I was back home with my family. I'm sitting up at 1 o'clock in the morning watching the Late Show with my 13-year-old daughter. She couldn't sleep because she was 13. I couldn't sleep because I was three months sober. So all of a sudden, she says, Dad, can I order a pizza? I said, oh, honey, no, don't do that. Your mother will go crazy.
She said, oh, come on, let me. I said, all right, go ahead. So she has the pizza, 1.15 in the morning, doorbell rings, hits the pizza man. Here comes her mother, flying out of the bedroom, screaming at my daughter, going, what in the hell are you doing getting a pizza at 1.15 in the morning? My daughter said, well, Dad said I could. My wife said, you said she could? I said, nope. My daughter said, Dad, you're lying.
I said, I know that. I've done it all the time, man. Oh, Lordy. And I say that to say this. Listen, restless, irritable discontent, apart from, not apart of, progressive patterns of dishonesty in my life. What I know today that I didn't know when I showed up here, what I just described is a physical, spiritual, and mental allergy called alcoholism, a threefold disease. You know, and it's real important for me to say that because, you know, our book clearly outlines what's wrong with us.
And it is physical, but it's also mental, and it's also spiritual. And we are provided the good news, if you're new here. AA has it all covered. It has it all covered. It has the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. Restless, irritable discontent. Instead of taking a drink, Tim, we're going to have a new relationship with a power that you can go to instead of drinking. Apart from, not apart of, Tim, we're going to give you the great fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous.
All you've got to do is drag your raggedy old butt in here every day. And this thing about lying, Tim, we're going to give you these 12 steps. And we promise you if you'll do those steps, you'll find out your truth, and you'll be able to accept your truth, and you'll be able to live happily ever after as a sober person. You know? And, Tim, by the way, you can't do any of that by yourself. And that's why we're here this weekend, right?
You know, my sponsor, Don, says you can throw them in the closet with a big book and say, get well. It ain't going to happen. I've got to have you because my problem centers in the mind. And the reason alcoholics… Center's in the Mind, and the reason Alcoholics Anonymous has worked and nothing else in the
[00:15:01]
history of mankind has worked is because there is the magic, and I've heard it all day today, the magic when one alcoholic gets eyeball to eyeball with another alcoholic, something very special happens, and I need to remember that, I need to remember that, and that's why, you know, I have a sponsor, and that's why I sponsor a lot of other people, that's why I have a home group, and I participate in the unity and service ends of Alcoholics Anonymous, you know, because you didn't promise me that I could do 50% of what's asked or 90% of what's asked, you said if you thoroughly will do everything we ask you, not only do you have a chance to stay sober, we're going to give you a life way beyond what you ever could have imagined, and so, you know, the bottom line is, you know, what I have to remember is are the steps in the program important?
You bet, but is the fellowship important? Absolutely, you know, because the only reason it works is because we do it with each other. You know, I grew up in an Irish Catholic family, it wasn't if you were going to drink, it was when and how good were you going to do it, right? I can honestly say, I had one of those, I forgot who I heard say this one time, he said I had one of those types of families that if anybody in my family turned down a drink, it's because they misunderstood the question, and that was kind of the environment I grew up in, right?
And I will tell you this, I was the oldest of seven kids, and alcohol actually worked for me before I ever tasted it, and what I mean is, my daddy was one of these drunks that if he didn't stop at the tavern before he got home, we knew it was coming through the door, right, restless, irritable, and discontent, and I'd be sitting at the kitchen table and I'd watch him come in there with that look on his face, but then he'd reach up and get that Yellowstone whiskey and he'd pop him a big old hit, and then he'd take a can of beer and pop it open and go, and his head would go, and I'd be sitting there going, man, that felt good, you know, I'm watching his face thinking, I don't know what happened there, but I'm in, I'm in, you know, I say that because it took me a while to understand that alcohol did something really different for me than it did for normal people, you know, I had no idea, it took me a long time to get a hold of that, you know, because as I grew forward and went forward with my drinking, I just hung around people like me is what we tend to do. You know, what I'll share with you is that my alcoholism would start to take from me everything that would mean anything to me by the time I was seventeen years old, and the reason I say it that way is I work with a lot of young guys today and I think about when I was their age, and you know, to be honest, I had hopes, I had dreams, I had aspirations, I mean, I didn't want to grow up and be a drunk, I didn't want to grow up and be an AA, you know, I wanted to grow up, in my case, and be a ball player, I wanted to go to college, I wanted to get married, have kids, coach the little league, live the American dream, you know, I mean, I wanted all that, I would have told you that, and what I know today, and a lot of you know in this room, is that if you're a budding alcoholic as I was, those things don't come very easily to you, and if you get them, they certainly don't stick around very long. In the state of Kentucky, my whole dream, my whole life, in the state of Kentucky, if you can shoot a basketball through a hoop, that's a big deal there, right? That's our deal in Kentucky, and that's all I ever wanted to do, was get a scholarship to Division I college, and be able to play college basketball, so from five years old on, that's all I ever did, that's all I ever concentrated on, and the reason I'm telling you that, and I did become very good, I was an All-State player, an All-City player, name was in the paper lot, picture was in the paper lot, it was my whole identity, because other than that, I was a 6'4", goofy, totally insecure, glasses wearing, pimply, you know, teenage kid who was just afraid of girls, afraid of the world, afraid of everything, and that's why alcohol was just going to be such a great remedy for me at 16 years old, you know? But my dream came true in 1966, I got that scholarship to St. Louis University, at that time played in the same league with Louisville, and Cincinnati, and Memphis State, and North Texas State, I mean, it was a big time deal, right? I was the first one to go to college in my family, much less go on a scholarship, so I left St. Louis in all my glory, and I mean, Louisville in all my glory to go to St. Louis, because my dream, you guys, had come true. What I'll share with you from this point forward, is alcohol would jump up in my life so quick, within the next, you know, two years, that it would actually bypass not only that dream, but everything else that I had hoped for was going to come my way. In those days, you couldn't play as a freshman, but by the first game of my sophomore year, I showed up to the game pretty drunk, and fortunately, the guys on the team knew what was going on, they hit me on the end of the bench so the coach wouldn't throw me out of school, and I looked at that day one time, here I am now, 18 years old, I showed up to Division I college basketball game drunk, and what happened that day was going to happen over and over again, you know? I was walking down the street after class, a guy said, hey,
[00:20:00]
want to get a drink? I said, well, yeah. I always said yeah, because I had a mind that I always said something like, yeah, we'll go have a couple beers, I'll come home, get a nap, get a shower, get up, go to the game, I'll probably be the hero, you know? That's what my mind would say. Eighteen years old, I don't know anything about a physical allergy or mental obsession, I don't know anything about phenomenal craving, I promise you. And I went for those two beers and drank right up into game time. And I say that because that was a pivotal day, because that was the day alcohol went right to the top spot in my life. Because the basketball, I would have told you, was the last holdout, was the only thing I really cared about. Well, that day alcohol raced right by it, and that was going to be the end of that, you know, my dream. You know, we have an old guy up in our area, he always talks about alcohol was his friend, it was his buddy, he'd throw it in the back seat, they'd drive around and have a good time. You know, he said one day he woke up, he was in the back seat, alcohol was driving, it was taking him wherever it wanted to go. So from eighteen years old on, alcohol would dictate on a daily basis what I did, who I did it with, and especially where I ended up on any given day. You know, it was driving the bus. Again, obviously I didn't know that then, you know, we never know, we're always the last to know. But as I look back on it, everything got put behind alcohol and that was going to stay that way for a long time. Alcohol was going to be ahead of that, it was going to be ahead of my marriage, it was going to be ahead of my kids, it was just going to stay in the top spot way too long. I was forty-two years old by the time I got here to Alcoholics Anonymous and recognized that I had the wrong thing in the wrong spot for a long, long time. You know, I share this with you, I did the basketball, I came to an end in my junior year, I played through my junior year, and then they really asked me if it might be better if I just sit out my senior year. The sad part about that is I didn't care, you know, the most important thing in my life. I didn't care anymore because I had found a new, exciting way of life that I thought, you know, was much better. And I let it go so easily. Now, I hung around there and I had to graduate in 1970. By that I mean, you know, my grades were terrible but I had enough credits and they said you got to leave. And I kind of wanted to stay and keep the party going if I could, you know.
And the other thing in 1970, you guys are a lot of my age, there was a thing called the Vietnam War going on, that wasn't going real great. You know, three of my buddies had been brought home in body bags and let me say to you vets, I mean, if I had to go, I was going to go but it wasn't on my top ten list. And they had a thing called the draft lottery where they drew your birthday out of a hat to see when you're going. I was number six, you know. I made like the top ten, right? And so I'm going, no ifs, ands, or buts. Now I'm 23 years old and it goes through, there were two ways you could get deferred from the draft back then. You could get married, I thought, man, that's awful drastic. Or you could go to grad school, you know. And I thought, that's it. I don't know if you remember when you made that first decision about how you're going to manage and control your life from here forward. God was laughing his butt off. But anyway, I said, that's it, I'm going to go to grad school. In fact, here's how the plan went through my head. And some of you are going to understand it, some of you are going to think I'm really nuts. But keep in mind, I was a political science major because we were all going to change the world in the late 60s. But I said, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to take the test to get into law school, Matt. I'm going to go pass that test. I'm going to get into law school. I'm going to graduate from law school. Then someday I'm going to run for Congress and someday President of the United States. Short trip for me from street drunk to President of the United States. I mean, that's how I think, you know. A couple guys out there nodding, they're going, yeah, we got it. Yeah, I got it, I got it. I went and took the test and as you may guess, I got a terrible score on the LSAT and the law school turned me down. Now, as meager as it may sound to you guys, I'm in a panic because I'm thinking, Tim, you better come up with a new plan, brother, or you're going to be overshooting them up pretty quick.
They asked me, Tim, stop drinking, man. Stop drinking, study for the test. You got the brains to get into the school. So the next five weeks, I don't drink a drop. I mean, it's terrible. You know, I've been a daily drinker now for four plus years for sure. I stopped drinking for these five weeks. I found this egghead guy down the hall. He tutors me every day on how to take this law test. Five weeks and it was awful. I had the shakes, you know, then I had to get over those. Everybody's out partying. I'm in studying with this smart guy. Five weeks, the best that God, I gave God the best that I had. Came down to the day before the second test. I made a little change of the plan. New plan was, I'm ready. I'm going to go out and have a couple beers so I can relax. Come back, get a good night's sleep, take that test, pass that test, get into law school, Congress, President of the United States. Same little plan, except that one upfront change. I went out for those two beers on a Friday. I didn't get back to the campus to the following Tuesday. Found out later on, I rode
[00:25:04]
around St. Louis on a city bus about a day and a half of what I know today is called a blackout. And honestly, you know, Palmer was talking about brownouts last night. I did not know what a blackout was until I got to AA. I mean, I knew I used to start somewhere, end up somewhere else with a big old chunk of time going. I just didn't think a whole lot about it. If that's happening in your life, that ain't right, you know. And just in case you don't know, it ain't normal. But anyway, I'm out that Friday night about two in the morning. I realized I'm drunk, I'm not gonna take the test. But I did go back to the dormitory and I found the real smart guy. And I paid him 20 bucks to go take the test for me. And I'm not very proud of that. It bothers me to this day. But in those days, unfortunately, you could do that way too easy. So I stayed drunk for three and a half days. I even forgot the guy went and took the test. Three weeks later, I get the results of the test the guy took of my name. Guy got the highest score in the history of the law school. I don't know what the numbers were, but let's say 800 is perfect. He got like 799 or something. I got like 350 on the one I took. So now I got two scores over there, you know, 500 points apart, you know. And I'm a drunk, but I'm not stupid, you know. And I'm thinking I better get to them before they get to me. And I called the dean of the law school and I made an appointment to go see him. Now here's the hero child. Here's Mr. Allstate basketball player. Four short years later, in the dean's office of a major law school, lying through my teeth. Because I went there, I said, Dean, you're probably wondering about the difference in those two scores. I, hey, I decided I didn't want to be a lawyer. I let some other guy take the test. How did he do? You know, as if I didn't know. And you know, I knew he knew that I was lying, you know. Here's what I wanted to share. As I turned to leave the office that day, what went through my mind very clearly was, Tim, you know what the deal is. Man, it's the booze. The booze took the basketball. The booze took the law school. You should be doing both of them, and you know it. You know it. In that moment, it was that clear. It just didn't last very long, right.
I turned and left that law office, and there were three guys that I know. They said, hey, you want to get a drink? I said, you bet. I need a drink, you know. That was 1970, you guys. It was going to be 20 years until I showed up into the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. But what I can tell you for sure, in those four short years, alcohol and alcoholism took from me the very things that I would fight you about today. Took my dignity. Took my sense of security. Took my integrity. Took all those things, I think, that deep down inside, we all want so bad as human beings, right. Does it take our money? Yeah. Does it take our relationships? Yeah. But it takes that moral fiber. And by four short years, I was going to come back to Louisville having lost all of that stuff. My confidence in myself, my security within myself. So I came on back to Louisville, and I took the draft physical, as it turned out. I ended up flunking the draft physical in a congenital birth defect. I said, man, that would have saved me a lot of trouble. Anyway, I came back. I got into teaching and coaching because I played God. I had a degree. And the first job I got, I was the dean of students at an all-boys Catholic high school. Yeah, somebody got it. That meant they put a drunk in charge of discipline at their school is what they did. And my job was to check all these kids that they're all boys, all boys in in the morning, right. And this is back in the 70s. I'll tell you about this one particular day. There was a lot of moments. There's one particular day I was sitting there, big old tomato head, you know, hung over just trying to get to nine o'clock. And this is back in the 70s, right, where all the kids were out in the parking lot hitting a few doobies to get ready for class. And I woke up, and this kid standing up over me had that long hair we had back in the 70s. His eyes were all glazed over, and he's kind of floating over the top of the desk like this. And all of a sudden, he looked down and went, hey, Mr. Highland, you're looking bad, dude. And I think I said something like, hey, by God, I'm in charge here. Don't you forget that. Let me tell you why I tell you that particular story. That kid that said that to me that day, this past July, celebrated 37 years in Alcoholics Anonymous. He's pretty much a multimillionaire, lives down in Destin, Florida, and is a great member of AA. I went down there to speak several years back, and he met me at the airplane, and he had his kids with him. And he runs over and goes, hey, coach, coach, come here. He said, look, I ain't ever told my kids now how it was. He said, I'll make you a deal. You don't say anything about me, I won't say anything about you. And let me tell you this, one of the great gifts of my sobriety I'll tell you this, one of the great gifts of my sobriety, guess what's happened, especially in the last ten years, a lot of those boys I tried to teach and coach in the seventies, guess where they're showing up?
[00:30:05]
Right in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous in Louisville, and I've gotten to sponsor some of the same guys I tried to teach and coach back in the seventies. In the south end of Louisville, where that school was, I very seldom, if I go into a meeting in that area, one of them will be there every time, and they'll jump up and go, we knew you'd be here, and I go, yeah, I knew you'd be here too, you little shit, you know.
But you know, it's one of those special things that happens in our world, and you know, God, my journey has been, God's given me an opportunity to kind of remake and redo every area of my life that I screwed up so bad, you know, and that's been one of the special ones in there. Also, when I came back to Louisville, I got married to my high school sweetheart. We had met when we were seniors in high school, dated for six months, I went off to St. Louis, she stayed in Louisville in college, and for the next four years, you know, it was on and off type of thing, you know, love the one you're with type of deal for me, and by the time, you know, it came to the end of my college career and my law school debacle, we hadn't dated for six months, eight months, I hadn't seen her.
So I'm back home living with mom and dad, I have no job, I have no car, and I'm out one night and I run into my old high school girlfriend. Man, she looked good. Secondly, she had this great little sports car she was driving, telling me about this great job she had, this super apartment she had, and I thought, damn, I think I'm in love, you know. That was August of 1970, we got married in October of 1970.
Hang on here. We got married in November of 1970, we got divorced for the first time in 1983. We got back together in 1985, divorced again in 1987, but back together in 1990 when I got sober. But then we got divorced in 1995. You jumped the gun. All right, Al-Anon, what is that all about? That's all about alcohol, alcoholism, and everything that goes with it. I love him, I hate him, I hate him, I love him, he's good, he's bad, he's bad, he's good.
If you don't know, there's a thing called alcoholism in the middle of any relationship, pretty much an impossible deal, right, Jack? And that's what you had there, two people that actually cared for each other, had no idea what we were dealing with for a long time, drunk or sober. You know, I can honestly say that it was what it was. We had three beautiful children in that marriage, and if you're a daddy, how about having your oldest son born on Christmas morning?
1971, 9 a.m., that was God's gift to us. I was supposed to be there for that gift that morning in the delivery room. The best I could do, I was in the hospital in the men's room with my head in the toilet bowl spitting up whiskey, and all I could think about was I got to get out of here and I got to get a drink, you know. I missed the gift that morning of that Christmas baby. I need to share this with you, as other men, is that I really missed my oldest son growing up.
Because by the time I got sober in 1990, he was ready to go off to college, and I had not been a good dad for him. I had just not been there, as simple as that. But I was six months sober in Alcoholics Anonymous, and he comes to me and says, Dad, can I talk to you before I go off to school? I thought, well, you sure can. And I immediately thought, I bet he wants to tell me how proud he is of me that I'm six months sober.
So we have our little meeting. I said, son, what is it you'd like to say? And he said, Dad, I only have one thing to say to you, man. I said, what's that? He said, Dad, I hate you. I hate you, Dad. Let me tell you why. I hate you because all you think about is you. Even since you stopped drinking, Dad, all you think about is you. Bye. Man, I think I'm six months sober, and I have to take a hit like this?
This ain't right. I made a bad mistake, Al. I took his story out to a bunch of old-timers in AA. They were not kind, buddy. The first guy says, you drank for 27 years. You think you're getting credibility back in six months? I was like, well, yeah. I mean, my idea was, hey, everybody, let's call it even, you know? I've since learned it wasn't even because it wasn't even. And you know what? It's still not even.
And you know what? It'll never be even. It's always going to be my job to add to the lives of those people that I stole from. Then an old-timer told me, an old guy in our area named Jack Sullivan. And Jack said, Tim, you want credibility back in your life? I said, yes, I do. He said, I'm going to tell you something. Here's how you're going to get it. Tim, you will get credibility in Alcoholics Anonymous by not drinking and doing the next right thing one day at a time.
That doesn't even sound good to me now. One day at a time. I mean, I need to tell you, you know, if you're new, I know you want it all to be okay now.
[00:35:04]
It doesn't work that way, but I will tell you. Eight years of being sober one day at a time, my credibility had gotten good enough with my Christmas baby that he called me from Seattle, Washington. His butt was on fire, and he called his old man. He said, Dad, can I come home, and can I stay with you? Because he knew I was different. He knew I actually listened to him when he talked. He knew I was helping other men in AA, and he said, Dad, can I come home?
And for eight months he lived with me when I was eight years sober. And that credibility was finally good enough. And now here we are 20 years down the road, and I've helped him start his own business. He's got three beautiful daughters who are my granddaughters, and he loves every minute, every second that I get to be with those little girls. Now don't get me wrong, he's still got a lot of alcohol-related things, a lot of damage that was done, but it's come so far.
Two Christmases ago, he's a kid who grew up in an alcoholic home. He doesn't know how to say the word love. I had never heard him use the word love. Two years ago, he trapped me at Christmas and basically stumbled and said, Dad, I do need to tell you I do love you, and I am so glad that my little girls have never had to see you the way I had to see you. Now again, that might be the only time he ever says that, but I need to tell you that's good enough, you know, because I understood two things.
One, there was a lot of damage caused. But two, after 28 years of doing one day at a time of trying to learn how to be a father, and I've learned it from you guys. Let me say that real quickly. I got here 42 years old. I had no skills for living. Everything I've learned about being a man I have learned since I've been 42, and I've learned it from guys like you. I learned it from guys that used to be here that are no longer here, guys like Mike Brewster, Jerry Jones.
I mean, I could go on and on and on. How to be a husband, how to be a dad, how to be an employer. You know, I didn't know how to do any of that stuff until I basically said to you guys, I don't know, and you said good. Well, we can tell you. We can give you our experiences, you know, and I want to thank you because there's a lot of you in this room that were part of that. You know, Mike and I have had a 19-year relationship.
You know, even Big Al here, after that year in 1999 when I was so devastated, he gave me a dollar bill and said, you know, this will be the basis of you starting over, and I still have that dollar bill, you know. Things like that, you know, as I sit here and ponder that, you know, you've given me the life that I have today at almost 70 years old. Anyway, I'll share it to you. I did the teaching and coaching to hang up through the 70s, and that was pressure was on, and I think also I didn't feel like I was getting the respect a man of my stature should be getting, you know.
So I left, and I did what every good drunk does sooner or later, right? I started my own business in 1980. And let me tell you about the 80s, not necessarily a good decade for me. I already told you, got divorced in 83, remarried in 85, divorced in 87, remarried in 90. I was engaged to two other women in between time. I was in a nut house five different times. I was in three major car accidents. I lived 14 different places.
I had 12 different business partners. I got shot at twice. I got cut with a beer bottle, and I lost a quarter of a million dollars. But I was thinking, this is going okay, you know. We're always the last to know, man, always the last to know, you know. So from 1982 to 1985, I went through five psychiatrists. That was a simple deal. I kept until he started talking about alcohol. He started talking about alcohol, fired him, got me a new guy.
I was taking every antidepressant they ever made, drinking whiskey and beer every day. If you're using that recipe, it didn't work real great for me as I look back on it. Anyway, New Year's Eve, 1985, living with Mom and Dad again, right? I used to run into guys I went to high school with. They'd say, hey, man, what are you doing? I'd say, I'm president of my own company. They'd say, no kidding? Where are you living?
I'd say, Mom and Dad. New Year's Eve, 1985, living with Mom and Dad. Couldn't live drunk, couldn't live sober. I think some of you understand what I just said. No matter how much whiskey I drank that day, the thrill was gone. And it was scary because I knew it was never, ever going to be like I remembered it when I was 15 years old. And that's a scary moment because the book even talks about it. When we can't live with it, we can't live without it.
And I was as suicidal as I'd ever been. I didn't know what to do. My brother Tommy, who's sitting in the back, drove me over to Our Lady of Peace, which is our little local nuthouse which sits up on a hill down in Louisville. And they checked me in that night, and I'm going to tell you how I remember this because I think this is my alcoholism in a bucket. They sent me back in this little room. And keep in mind, I'm as suicidal as I've ever been, but I don't even know how to do that.
This nurse sits down beside me, and I heard her say, Honey, tell me about it. I said, All right, I will tell you about it. Two years ago, my first wife left me for no reason that I can think of.
[00:40:03]
Then I got engaged to this other woman. Damn it, she took off with the ring, and I haven't paid for it. And, oh, yeah, did I tell you, my daddy went to prison when I was 12. And I don't know where this stuff was coming from, but the more I shared, the better I felt. Looked at the nurse after a while. She didn't look so good, you know. But maybe I'm there an hour and a half, and she looks me right in the eye.
She says, Honey, you certainly have a right to feel the way you do. I thought, God, lady, you are so right. What the hell was I thinking? If people messed over you like they messed over me by God, you drink and be depressed too. I spent the next 16 days in there trying to help everybody else. I swear, I thought God sent me there on a mission. You know, they made me head of the stress class. I got a blue ribbon for this cradle I made in woodworking.
You know, I mean, I was all over it. Tell you how crazy it was. Halfway through that stay, a nurse says to me one day, Would you like a pass out tonight? I must have thought she said, You want a pass out tonight? I said, She said, No, you're doing great. If you want to go out for a couple hours, as long as you're back by curfew. I said, Thank you very much. And I'm thinking they're finally recognizing who they're dealing with here.
So I called my best buddy. He picks me up at the nut house. Slam down six, eight beers, you know, get a couple of shots. I bought this big old bottle of wine. I'm telling about all the people I'm helping back the hospital. We just got trashed. You know, quarter 11. I said, Hey, we got curfew at the nut house. I got to be back. We go racing back there, and I'm getting ready to stumble out the passenger side.
I look back at him. He's got tears coming down his face. I said, What is wrong with you? He said, Tim, you don't belong in there. I do. I think I said, You know what? I think you're right. And when I get out of here, I will help you. And, you guys, I went in there, and I did what I always did. I came out, and I started over. I was always starting over. I got me a new girlfriend. I got me a new business partner.
I got me a new place to live. I was always starting over. And you listen to our stories in here? We're the best starter-overs in the world. Can't finish much of anything, baby, but we can flat start over. Got back with my most frequent wife, as I call her. When I came out of there, and, you know, we tried some stuff. We bought a new different house. We moved around. You know, we tried to change the scenery on the outside.
But, as you've heard, wherever you go, there you are. And the drunk was still in the middle of the room. In late 1989, she threw me out, and I ended up last six months of my drinking, I lived in a guy's basement in the south end of Louisville. I can't tell you anything spectacular happened there. I mean, it was embarrassing. I'd lost everything again. My house, my kids, my wife. April 12th of 1990, I came in about 1 in the morning.
That family I was living with was already in bed. I sat on the edge of the bed. He had three Miller Lights left in the refrigerator, and I drank those and sat there and watched ESPN go off the air. And I had the strangest feeling I've ever had. I've never had it since. And I thought I was having a heart attack. I really did. I was just tingling all over the place. But, evidently, I passed out of my clothes and woke up about 5 the next morning, sat up on the edge of the bed, and I had the same feeling.
I had that tingle going on. I was so confused. I didn't know whether to go to the hospital or what. But I ended up, I got a shower, and I sat on the end of that bed, and I just said, God, I am so tired. I've lost my wife again, my house again, my kids again. Please help me. And I didn't even know what that meant. I didn't even know who I was talking to or who I was asking. But I was tired. I was tired.
And I got up and I got dressed, and I went into my office. And I sat down, you guys, at quarter to 8 in the morning on April 12th. I didn't move a muscle until noon, 4 hours, 15 minutes. And I'm in an office that's really busy. The phone rings all the time. People are in and out of the office all the time. That day, for 4 hours and 15 minutes, the phone never rang one time. Nobody came in the office that day.
And the book talks about a moment of clarity, and I guess that's what happened, you know, because I reached in my desk drawer, and there was a meeting directory of Alcoholics Anonymous. That guy had given me 2 1⁄2 years before right there all the time. And I stumbled my way that day. It was a Thursday to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. And what I'll tell you is from that Thursday until tonight, 28-plus years, you guys.
In all honesty, I have laughed sometimes so hard in these rooms, I think my guts are going to come out. But I need to quickly tell you I have cried more tears in the last 28 years. I have felt sadness and grief and anxiety like I didn't think I could ever handle. And the reason I tell you that, you all have heard our friend Bob, who's not here this weekend, say this. I was the same way. I was kind of hoping sobriety was going to be about the absence of problems in little Timmy's life.
You guys said, oh, no, little Timmy. You guys said, oh no, little Timmy, who told you that? It's not about the absence of problems in your life. Tim, here's what sobriety's about.
[00:45:00]
It's about being part of life and everything that goes with it. And here's the hit. Tim, you're going to get to be part of life in body, mind, and in spirit. And when you said that, the buzzer went off because my wife used to say to me all the time, Tim, you're not even here when you're here. I said, what do you mean? I get so mad. I'm here. If you read our book, what does it tell you about a threefold disease of body, mind, and spirit?
When I'm physically under the disease of alcohol, when I physically have alcohol in me, you certainly can understand that. What you don't see, what I didn't understand is my disease was really this. I was either drinking, thinking about drinking, or thinking about me. And that doesn't leave any room for anybody else. That's alcoholism in its full force. And I never realized how destructive alcoholism was even when I didn't have the alcohol in me because you know why?
I couldn't be present as a father. I couldn't be present as a husband. You know, if you can only bring your body and you can't bring your mind and you can't bring your spirit, you're just a body in a room. You're just a body in the room. Thank God. That's why we have 12 steps and not three. Thank God. I understood that, Tim, when you stop drinking, you're going to still be dealing with this obsession of mind and this hole in your soul.
And if you don't continue the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. And my story is you'll hear nine years sober, I showed up here pretty much broken. I hadn't had alcohol in nine years. But my self-centeredness had continued to cause tremendous consequences in my personal life, in my business life. And it took what it took for the first nine years. Romance and finance liked about have killed me until I understood that the constant surrender to my character defects, to the total disease of alcoholism, was going to be the only way that long term I was going to have a peace of mind.
And I say that because if you're new, is not drinking important? Yeah, you bet. My sponsor, Don, says he's powerless over alcohol. We're not powerless over our elbow. My job is to keep that stuff out of me. And then I have a chance to deal with the disease of the mental obsession and the spiritual deficiency that goes along with this disease. You know, I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, and I need to tell you I did not do it right for the first 14 months.
I didn't have a sponsor. I didn't have a home group. So I certainly hadn't gotten near a step. And I was about as angry as you could possibly imagine, right? And I remember I was kind of doing it. I heard this last night. I think Palmer said they're doing an audit on Alcoholics Anonymous, right? I'd kind of pop in your meeting, pop out of your meeting. Didn't want to get trapped in the middle, for God's sakes.
You know, I mean, that would be terrible. I was so angry, and I ran into a little guy one night, and I was telling him I couldn't even go to sleep at night, you know, because I was so jacked up. And he said, Tim, just lay there and go, God is love, God is love. And that's how I went to sleep in early sobriety. Fourteen months dry on the bone, God is love was not getting it done. I thought if I call that little sucker, he tells me that one more time, I'm going to drill him.
I'm going to knock him out. Sure enough, I called him, and sure enough, he said, Tim, just remember, God is love. I said, damn it, I know that, man. But I'm so angry, and I'm so depressed. And he said, ah, good, good, good, good, good, good. Don't you hate old-timers, man? I said, what do you mean, good? He said, Tim, listen to this. In Alcoholics Anonymous, God is love, but love is action. God is love, steps one, two, and three, your powerlessness, his power.
Steps four through nine, you clean up your responsibility. Step ten is to refresh your course every day. Step eleven hooks you up with God. Step twelve hooks you up with us. What do you say, buddy, you ready? I said, yes, sir. I said, yes, sir, I'm ready, because I'm going to kill myself, I'm going to kill you, you know. And that was the day he sent me down to Lampton Baptist Church, and I became the coffee maker there on Wednesday morning.
And that was the day he put me into a men's big book group that meets on Wednesday night to this very day in my own office. And that was the day, you guys, I found out the greatest secret in Alcoholics Anonymous. You know what that is? I found out where the fun is. Fun's in the middle, right? Fun's in the middle of AA with people like you who come to things like this. It's in the middle where people make commitments to be on committees.
They make commitments to be at their home group a couple hours early. They make commitments to pick up other drunks and take them. That's where the fun is. Those guys are having a blast. The miserable ones are on the outside with one foot in and one foot out. And I tell you, once I got into the middle and found out where the fun was, I've never, ever wanted to get out again. You know, so if you don't hear anything and you're new tonight, you know, stay in the middle of this thing.
Hang around these guys. These are the guys. These are the guys who come to this year after year after year because they know the value of commitment in their life.
[00:50:02]
You know, build those commitments of sobriety in your life. Make the commitment now that you'll be here next year, and it'll be there. You know, those things today, as I look back, were the things that put my sobriety in place. Those are the stables that everything else is built around. And, you know, this is one of the places where that happened, by the way, for me. And a lot of change, as I said, when I left here in 1999.
You know, also, when I got sober, as you heard it in my story there through the 80s, when I got here, I owed a quarter of a million dollars to people who really wanted it back. And I thought that was very mean of them, actually. And I was trying to get sober, and all they could think about was money, money, money. And I thought, man, this is awful. But it was serious, you guys. I'd go to my office every day and shuffle papers from one side of the desk to others.
I'm trying to think of one big deal, Al, to come up with a quarter of a million dollars. Well, that self-centered fear would start to set in about 10 o'clock. About 10.30, I'd be back in my apartment, crawled up in a ball. This was happening almost every day. That self-centered fear was shutting me down, shutting me down. So finally, I'm at a meeting one night, whining to this old guy about what's going on with my business.
He said, see me after the meeting. So I see him. He says, tell me about this business that's going bankrupt. Well, okay. I said, what do you want to know? He said, well, just tell me about anything. I said, okay, well, it opens at 8 o'clock. He said, good, Tim, you be there at 8 o'clock. Tim, not 8.05, not 8.10, 8 o'clock, okay? What's next? I said, well, I'll go on sales calls. He said, Tim, good, go on sales calls.
What's next? I said, well, I'll go to lunch. He said, good, Tim, go to lunch. Tim, come back from lunch. Good point, good point. What's next? What's next? Tim, come back to the office. I'll do my paperwork. He says, what's next? I said, well, it's 4.45. We go home. He said, good, Tim, go home. Have dinner with your family. Go to a meeting. Come home. Say your prayers. And then he hit me with a really big one.
He said, Tim, do the same thing the next day. I was like, wow, what a concept. Like you do that every day, huh? And see, what that old guy was telling me, and my sponsor has since given it a name, what he was asking me, Tim, is it's your job to do the stitches and leave the patterns up to God. Tim, you just do the stitches and leave the patterns up to God. And the problem with that, guys, is I start stitching, and I start thinking, man, what's this going to be, a hat, shirt, pants?
And when's it going to be done? And they say, no, no, no, you just stitch. And we promise you that God's patterns will be so much greater and grander than you would ever design in the first place. And I thought, all right, I'll do it. So I start getting there at 8. I go on sales calls. I come back from sales. I'm doing it. I'm hating it. It ain't working. I'm six weeks into this. I look at my bank account.
I still owe $249,730. I mean, this is a slow deal, right? But I really didn't have any choice, and I kept doing it, and I kept doing it. Let me tell you the sequel to the story. Five years later, I came in from my home group one morning. There were six phone messages. Five of them were AA guys. The last one was from a business reporter at our business paper in Louisville. So I called by AA guys, and I called her.
And the lady says to me, Mr. Howard, we'd like to do an article on your business. It's one of the fastest growing of its kind in the Louisville area. And I was like, oh, man, thank you. That is so nice. I appreciate that. So I said to her, what is it you'd like to know? She said, sir, I would like to know what was it that you did that really turned your business around? Now, I want to tell you, I had this one story, and I came up with this incredible idea, pulled myself up on my bootstraps, and rocketed this company to success.
I didn't say that. I said, lady, here's the deal. My office opens at 8. I get there at 8. I go on sales calls. I come back from sales calls. And by the time I'm finished, there's like silence on the other end of the phone. And she goes, thank you, sir. We'll see what we can do. And you know what, you guys? I knew there wasn't going to be an article, but I also knew that I had told her the exact truth.
You know, my sponsor, Don, says, Tim, what we do every day is ask God for the divine inspiration. What is the next step stitch in my personal life? What's the next stitch in my business life? What's the next stitch in AA? And you know what? It's always right there. The trouble with the stitches with me is I'm a big deal guy. I like big deals, and the stitches aren't, are they? They're little bitty things that we do every day consistently and persistently.
And you know what? When I'm stitching and not worrying about the pattern, it's the best I ever am because I'm living in the moment. You know, I'm being part present in my own life, you know, and that's such a good feeling. I wish I could stay there all the time. You know, we laugh about this whole relationship situation in our programs, you know, I don't know that we're any worse in these programs of Al-Anon and AA than normal people.
[00:55:01]
Yeah, we are. We're a lot worse, you know. Yeah, we are. Papa, we're a lot worse. And I want to tell you this. There was nothing funny about those divorces. You know, it's bad enough getting divorced when you're drunk. Losing your marriage in sobriety, not much fun, right? When I lost my marriage at five years sober, I was devastated, right? I was devastated because I thought I'm trying to do everything that, you know, I'm supposed to do.
I'm helping drunks. But anyway, it just wasn't going to happen. But so, you know, when I came to you guys when I lost that marriage, you guys said, Well, Tim, we don't know, buddy, but, you know, just, hey, Tim, just keep helping drunks. Helping drunks, you know, and I kept helping drunks. So I kept helping drunks for a couple years. Keep in mind now we're coming up to nine years sober when I show up here.
So for the next two years, six and seven years, I help drunks. I did about seven years sober, and I'm thinking, I don't mind helping drunks, God, but, God, I'd certainly like to have a companion to help drunks with, right? Boom, there she was, man, right in the middle of Alcoholics Anonymous. I mean, five years more sober than me. She was on the path to happy destiny just like me. You know, we did.
We got together. We spent the mandatory three months dating, and we got married. And I need to tell you, I need to tell you, I thought this was the most perfect thing in the world. I mean, I thought Bill Wilson was looking down and going, Whoa, that's a beautiful match there. You know, wow. It lasted eight months. Now, this is right before I come to you guys, and I'm really devastated now because here I'm almost ten years sober, nine years sober.
I'm in the middle of Alcoholics Anonymous, and it was awful. You know, those are awful, awful things. And people were choosing sides and saying things that weren't true. And I'm getting on my knees now saying, God, what's wrong with me? What's so broken in me that I can't have a decent relationship? And you guys, I came to you guys. You guys said, Oh, Tim, we don't know, man. But just keep helping drunks.
Keep helping drunks. By the way, it is what our book says. It's the one thing, the one thing that got me through all of this every time. So never discount that. I won't ever discount that. You know, so I ended up back living with my dad again. And here's a part of the story I wanted to share with you guys that I've never shared. I was thinking about this. My dad and I, I was the oldest of seven kids.
And like many relationships, my dad was an alcoholic and untreated. And he and I had always had a little rub. I was the oldest son, and it kind of got between he and my mom a lot. And, oh, there was just this friction between us. There was just this uneasiness about it. And it goes into a lot of different things. You heard early on that he went to prison when I was 12. And there was a lot of emotional scoring due to that whole thing.
And so the bottom line was we had a real tenuous relationship. Plus, when I stopped drinking, that really scared him because, you know, you're an alcoholic and somebody around you stops drinking. It's a scary thing. So I had to move back in with him. And when my mom was dying five years previous to that, he'd thrown me out of the house two different times, right? He was sitting over there drunk, and I'd come in from the hospital seeing my mom and basically tell him, Dad, you should be over at the hospital.
And he'd call me all kinds of names and say, Get out of here, you son of a bitch. You think you're better than me just because you're sober. And it was awful. You know, it was awful. And then something funny happened. Not funny, but as God would have it, my dad had a stroke. And he had a stroke just severe enough. This is honest God truth, that he forgot that he drank. He forgot that he drank. And for the last two years of his life, it was the best he ever was.
He lost his total obsession for alcohol. I mean, he had a little speech impediment, a few things, but he forgot that he drank, and he became a very understanding, listening, and gentle man. But for the nine years that I'd been sober, I tried to make amends. He really wouldn't acknowledge that I was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, that my brother Tommy was a member. I was asked to come to the Man to Man conference.
And that Friday or Thursday, I'll never forget it, I went home to my dad's house where I was living with him, and I went in the bedroom, and he had ironed all my clothes. He had all my clothes set out on the bed and my suitcase ready packed. And I turned around and looked, and he was standing in the doorway. And he looked at me, and I said, Dad, thanks. And he said, Timmy, I just want to tell you that I'm so proud of you, that you and Tommy both have gotten sober.
He said, I wish I could have gotten sober like you guys did. It certainly would have saved your mother and a lot of harm. You know, it certainly would have saved your mother and a lot of you a lot of harm, a lot of peace. He said, I love you. You know, and I, we hugged and I cried and, phew, I got on the airplane and I came to Brownwood, Texas.
[01:00:02]
And that was the beginning of an incredible weekend of healing that moved me from what was the worst spot that I've ever known as a sober person to by the time I got home Sunday night to the best spot I've ever been. Now, here's an interesting thing. The only reason I was at my dad's house was why? Because that marriage had gone kapoo in eight months and I had nowhere else to go. So sometimes God works in strange and mysterious ways.
Because here's what happened. If I hadn't had that marriage go bad, I wouldn't have ended up with dad. And that moment of healing would have never happened because he died several months later. You know, so I say to you, what I've learned, I heard a lady say one time, Tim, I listened to your stories. It seems like you always thought you came to a period in your life. And she said, Tim, God doesn't use periods.
He only uses commas. And you know the thing about it, though? He doesn't tell us what's behind the comma. Our job is to continue on the journey. You know, and thank God for that. Because I thought that divorce in the program was absolutely positively the most painful and worst thing that could have happened to me. But it gave me that moment with my dad. And I would trade those two things today, you know.
I would just trade them. So, you know, I say that to you. I've never really gotten to tell you all that. And that special moment happened as a direct result of this. You know, and what I will tell you also is, you know, as sad, as alone as I felt with that, a strange thing did happen on my way to long-term celibacy in Alcoholics Anonymous. You remember that most frequent wife and mother of my children I was telling you about?
Well, not too long after I got back from here again, she called me from South Carolina. She had the kids and grandkids down there. And she said, Tim, I heard what happened with your marriage. And will you want to come down and spend some time with the kids? I said, yeah, thank you. And I went down to South Carolina. I got a condo, a separate condo from what they had. And keep in mind, here's two people who have known each other since they were 17, been married and divorced three times at this point in time.
And I go down there, and on that weekend, for the first time ever, we became friends. For the first time ever, you know, we agreed to be parents and co-parents. For the first time ever, the walls that were always so high just didn't seem as high. There was an ease and comfort all of a sudden in our conversation. Something was different. I don't know what to tell you. Came back to Louisville, still living with Dad, but I started to date her.
We never dated. We just married, basically. And so every Friday night, I would take her out on a date. And we did that for about six months. And then finally, you know, I sold the condo that I had lost. And I moved in with her. And I guess now about, what is this, 2000, about 17 years ago now, we were sitting in the house one day. And she kind of looked at me, and I looked at her. I said, well, what do you think?
This coming November 28th, you guys, will be our 48th gross wedding anniversary. I have no idea what the net is, none. You got to love this. We just went to our 50th high school reunion. We walked in, and they were like, oh, look, they're still together. Let me say this. Let me say this. You know, I said to Don, my sponsor, I said, you know, is this crazy? And he said, yeah, it's crazy. But he said, Timmy, maybe not.
He said, you know what, because if our program's about anything, it's about transformation. You know the thing about transformation? We don't know how it's going to look. We don't know when it's going to happen. We don't know who's going to be involved. You know why? We don't transform. God does. You know, again, my friend Bob talks about we plant the seed. We water it. We keep the weeds away. But we don't grow it.
That's what the whole program's about. It's about God's transformation. And I need to tell you, that's what has to have happened here. We are the best friends today. I miss her so much. We don't hardly do anything without each other. The story I just told you, I have to say it out loud because I don't believe it happens some days because we're so close today. But it took what it took. It took every pain.
It took that marriage that I had in the program that didn't work. It took it all. You know, and I know that today. You know, it wasn't that if I'd have done this better or that better, that's just where I was. You know, and I'll be forever grateful when I came here broken at nine years sober. You guys understood that. And you said, we don't care, Tim. We love you for just who you are. We don't care if you're married.
You know, we're living in a rough time right now. You know, we just had another 10 kids killed in a high school in Texas again.
[01:05:05]
It's the most contentious world I've ever seen. And that's why I love coming to Alcoholics Anonymous, because you know what? We don't care. We don't care if you're Democrat or Republican. We don't care if you're black or white. We don't care if you're male or female, if you're gay or straight. If you want to be sober, you're welcome and you're one of us. And we put all of that aside. You know, and I'm so grateful that we can come to the rooms of AA, and we do not have to deal with what the world's having to deal with now.
And I don't know about you guys, but I am so grateful for that. I think it's such a gift to be able to come down here and share our lives with each other, irregardless of anything else that any of us happen to believe. You know, because we have a common malady and we have a common solution, and that's all that matters. You know, that's a special, special gift. I'll share this with you real quick, because we have a lot of Al-Anon people.
And Palmer had alluded to that, to be careful about, you know, who you get your help from in early sobriety. When I was having communications problems with everybody, you know, my wife, people at work, and so I got two other guys two years sober, and the three, two other geniuses, and the three of us were going to work on communication skills. And so we get together, the three of us, and we came up with this.
One guy says to me, Tim, what you need to say to people, instead of screw you, I'm out of here, is how can I help? How can I help? You know, because that transfers the ball to them. So I was going around, well, Tim, how can I help? Hey, how can I help? Didn't take long, though, before I found people who didn't want my help. So I got back with the geniuses. I said, what do you do if they don't want your help?
And they said, you just tell them, I'm sorry you feel that way. So I go, how can you help? Sorry you feel that way. And the last genius goes, Tim, validate people and tell them that they may be right. So now I got my tools for living, right? How can I help? Sorry you feel that way. Hey, you might be right. And I'm, like any drunk, I'm killing it. I'm overusing it everywhere. I'm using it at work. I'm using it at home.
I'm killing people with it, right? One Tuesday night, I came in from the men's group, you know, just spiritually up there. I kind of came in on my wings, I think, you know, kind of sailed into the kitchen. And I sat down, all hell was breaking loose in there. My wife was yelling at my daughter. My daughter was yelling at my son. My wife comes in the kitchen. I was getting ready to say my thing. And she said, don't give me that how can you help shit.
And I said, honey, I'm sorry you feel that way. She said, you asshole. I said, yep, you might be right. Here's what I'll say about that. Usually, there's a couple young guys that come up and go, hey, man, what were those three things? If you use them, you're on your own, brother, I'll tell you that. Let me finish with this. You know, I had three beautiful kids. And this crosses over to why I love this meeting.
And I love the combined programs of AA and Allen. I had three kids, two older sons, and then I had a little baby girl. And my baby girl was her daddy's daughter from the get-go. As a toddler, her first little phrase was, I'll do it myself. Her second little phrase was, is you're not the boss to me. Oh, man, and I knew she's going to be the one. And sure enough, by the time she's 12 years old, I'm finding half-pints in her backpack, six-packs in her car.
I'm getting her out of jail from shoplifting, you know, games on. She drinks just like her old man. She acts just like me. And let me tell you about her, though. Beautiful kid, beautiful kid, tall, blonde, blue-eyed, gifted, gifted athlete, gifted artist. Gifted in just about anything she wanted to do except she loved to drink. She loved to party. I guess about 16 years ago, 17 years ago, she got a scholarship to the Chicago Art Institute for her art.
She went up there. And I knew she was well heavy into her disease and into her drinking. And I talked to her periodically. She'd come home. But then she left there. She got into Second City in Chicago and then went to Los Angeles to get into Second City performance thing out there. And she was a comedian and did skit comedy and things like that. But she got into L.A., and her drinking got so heavy.
And also, in addition to her drinking, she had an eating disorder. Not a good combination. Because basically, she was living in her car in the streets of Los Angeles on a liquid diet, period. But about 16 years ago, she came home, and we hadn't seen her in about two or three years. I need to tell you what the vision was. You know, here's my beautiful, beautiful girl. And her eyes were caved in. Cheeks were collapsed.
Teeth were rotten out of her head. She was so thin, you could count her ribs through her T-shirt. She was dying. She was dying because the lack of nutrition, in addition to her drinking, was absolutely eating her body up. But I'll never forget saying to her, honey, is there anything that I can do for you? And I'll never forget those steely eyes of an alcoholic looking right back at me and saying,
[01:10:01]
Dad, if I need your help, I'll call you. And she got in that car. I know how powerful is the disease of alcoholism. And a lot of you know this. A lot of you have had children and loved ones. And she got back in the car, and she went back to L.A., and I knew it was going to be just a matter of time, right? A matter of time before either, you know, she made a call or we got the call that was, you know, time to come out there and get her.
And about five weeks later, I got a call. Good news, it was her. The bad news is she was so weak by this time, she was whispering. And she's whispering on the phone saying, Daddy, what should I do? And I know a lot of you are daddies. And the only thing I could think of is I got to get on the airplane, and I got to go out there and bring this child home. And what went through my mind is, hey, Tim, what do you think about the ANA now, brother?
Is it good enough for her? And hey, Tim, what about those 12 steps you're popping off to all these guys about? Is it good enough for your little girl? And the last one was, Tim, what about this God you think is so great? Is it good enough for your little girl? And I need to tell you guys, it wasn't. It just wasn't. But for some reason, I said, honey, here's a man's phone number in Alcoholics Anonymous in Los Angeles.
I pray and hope that you will make a call to him and ask him for help. And I hung up the phone, and I cried, and I cried and sobbed, because I'm thinking, hell, it's 50-50 whether she makes a call or we go home and bring her. Or we go out there and bring her home in a box. But here's what I wanted to share with you. Somehow in my heart, I also knew I had given her the only thing that I know that consistently and persistently has worked for guys like you and me.
The only thing in the history of mankind that consistently and persistently has saved the lives of alcoholics is Alcoholics Anonymous. And as it says, it's one alcoholic reaching out the hand to another alcoholic in need and being responsible to do that. And I knew somewhere in my heart, as much as I wanted to get on an airplane, that I wasn't going to be the solution. And either she was going to make a call or she wasn't going to make that call.
And I knew that from my own experience, and I knew that from working for so many other people. And, you know, I'm very, very, very happy and grateful to tell you that, you know, this coming July, you know, she'll celebrate her 16th anniversary in Alcoholics Anonymous. She's doing real well now. She's got her health back. She's sponsoring some girls. She's real active in the program. She's gotten back with her career.
She's actually getting married this year. And I can't tell you what a joy it is. And I also want to share this piece with you, and I'll leave us all with this, is that the man's phone number I gave her, some of you are going to know him. I know one guy knows him for sure. It was a man named Scott Redman. And I think this is how AA is, right? Scott Redman was a Jewish man from New York living in Los Angeles.
And he's going to be the one that God uses to save this little dying Catholic girl from Kentucky. And she called Scott, and Scott somehow knew. And the reason I'm using his full name, as a lot of you know, Scott passed away a number of years ago now from pancreatic cancer. But Scott knew when he got the call that she needed help. He knew. He didn't tell her, honey, I'll have some woman call you tomorrow, or honey, come to this meeting next week.
He said, where are you and where can I meet you? And he got in his car and he got to her. And I really believe today if he hadn't have done that, you guys, I have a whole different story to tell. I really believe that. And I'll be ever grateful that Scott Redman, I think he was 26 years sober, didn't think he was too sober. That he couldn't, you know, recall getting in his car and respond to a call from a little girl in a car.
Because again, if he hadn't done that, I have a different story. And you know, I say that because isn't that the deal? The only thing we're asked for this gift we've been given is that anytime, anywhere somebody's reaching out at the hand of AA, which should always be that, for that we are all responsible. And we're all going to go home, you know, to our home groups. And what I know, someday each one of us are going to get a call like he got.
And are we going to be ready, you know, to suit up, show up and deliver Alcoholics Anonymous one-on-one to a person in need? And all of you know, God, is there ever a need out there right now? I don't know about your all's areas, but our area, it's epidemic and young people needing that hand of AA. So if you don't hear anything here this weekend, I hope you all go back just like I try to go back and get at my sobriety station, as he used to talk about, and be ready.
Because it's going to be somebody else's kid, somebody else's grandkid. It's my responsibility for the gift that you've given me to give it back. And again, I want to thank, you know. to give it back. And again, I want to thank, you know, this particular group, because I need to tell you from that, from 1999 to now, my business has gone in a direction which is unbelievable. You know, I have eight grandkids and two great-grandchildren.
[01:15:01]
You know, I'm living a life which is absolutely unbelievable, and for some reason, all that started to head upward when I left Brownwood, Texas in 1999, and for that, I'll be ever grateful. Thank you. Thank you.