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Source: Tim T – From Cleveland, Ohio – Date Unknown.mp3 File: tim-t-from-cleveland-ohio-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 01:02:52
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Thank you. Do that again. That's one of my favorite parts, huh? I haven't done anything yet. Let's thank the people who have done something, the people who worked all year on the committee so we could be here today. Let's thank them. You know, a funny thing happened to me on the way to Founders Day this year. Dane called, and here I am. And I'm pretty sure what I'm going to say this morning, but I'm not pretty sure what you're going to hear.
And here's a story I like to tell. It's a story about a state trooper. And that state trooper, he's just doing what state troopers do, you know, sitting on the side of the road waiting for somebody to go by doing something wrong. And on that day, he's sitting there, and along comes this boy in a pickup truck. And the back of that pickup truck is full of penguins. And he knows there's something wrong with that. So he pulled him over. He said, boy, where are you going with all those penguins in the back of that pickup truck?
He said, well, officer, we're not going anywhere. We're just out for a ride. He said, well, you can't take penguins for a ride. You take those penguins to the zoo. He said, yes, sir. Next day, that trooper, he's in the same spot. Here comes that boy in a pickup truck one more time. Pickup truck still full of penguins. But on that day, all those penguins are wearing sunglasses. So he pulled him over again. He said, son, I thought I told you to take those penguins to the zoo. He said, yes, sir, I did, and today we're going to the beach.
My name's Tim Towsley. I'm an alcoholic. And I did not want to be an alcoholic. My daddy was an alcoholic. He was a member of this fellowship. He got sober in 1946. He passed away in 1980. He had 10 years of continuous sobriety put together at that time. And what that did for me at an early age was give me an opportunity to see what an alcoholic was all about, to see what alcoholism was all about, and also to see what Alcoholics Anonymous was all about.
I came from a family where I had six stepfathers and 13 stepmothers. I went to over 20 schools and I never got out of the eighth grade. I've been married three times and divorced twice. I left home when I was 14 years old. I've had an opportunity in my life to spend time in boys' homes and detention homes, city jails, county jails, workhouses, psych wards, treatment centers, and penitentiaries. I spent 12 years of my life either on parole, probation, or locked behind some kind of door somewhere.
And you know now one of those things I just mentioned are the reasons I came through the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous. Those were merely the situations that my disease of alcohol created in my life. But on June 23, 1982, I woke up at the bottom. And it's the bottom they talk about in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. It's when you know a loneliness such as few men know. You're at that jumping off place. You're wishing for the end. You can no longer imagine life with or life without alcohol. And that's the bottom.
And that's not a high bottom. But that's not a low bottom either, see. That's my bottom. That's the only bottom I ever need to concern myself with in the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous is my bottom. I don't ever want to be in a place in my sobriety where I can sit in a room of Alcoholics Anonymous, I can listen to a speaker speak, and I can start thinking things like, you know, maybe I wasn't that bad, huh? Or maybe I was worse.
Because as soon as I can sit out there and I can make myself believe I'm different in any way from anybody else that's sitting in a room of Alcoholics Anonymous, as soon as I can make myself believe I'm unique in any way from anybody else that's sitting in this room, then I have reservations.
[00:05:07]
And there was an old-timer in Berea, Ohio, used to tell me all the time, Tim, if you've got reservations, son, you must be going somewhere, huh? And I don't want to go anywhere today. I like it here. I had my first drink at 13, I got sick, I blacked out, I passed out, I woke up in the backyard of a lady's house in Rocky River, Ohio. I had my last drink at 30, and I got sick, and I blacked out, and I passed out, and I woke up at home in bed. And you know, that's the only difference in 17 years of use and abuse was where I woke up the next morning.
But I know one thing for sure today, I know God wants me in Alcoholics Anonymous. That lady came out of her back door, and she found me in her backyard. She took me in her house, she cleaned me up, she laid me down, she found out who I was, she called my mama, let my mama know I was okay. 17 years later, I came into the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. I was about two weeks sober, and I went to a meeting.
And that woman was speaking at that meeting. My very first drunk, I found myself in the arms of Alcoholics Anonymous. And that woman did for me that night, what she knew how to do. She was sober about three months when she found me in her backyard. And she did what they told her to do. She was sober about three months when she found me in her backyard. And she did what they told her to do at her home group.
And that was help a drunk. They told her to help a drunk. They didn't tell her only help the white drunks or the black drunks, the male drunks or the female drunks, the old drunks or the young drunks. They told her to help a drunk. Period. And that's what she did that night. You know, I still see that woman at meetings today. She's over 80 years old and 40 years sober. Now, there's two things I ran from most of my life, two things I'm not crazy about today.
I seem to have an awful lot of those two things in my life today, but I don't run from them anymore. I just handle them. And those two things are responsibility and authority. I don't like being responsible. There's a lot of responsibility involved with being responsible. And I certainly don't like people telling me I'm supposed to be responsible. I was 14 years old. I'm at a family gathering and I'm listening to people talk.
And I heard somebody say this. They said my daddy, my real daddy was in New Orleans and he was sober. And with that information, I left home the next day. Because I knew what my problem was. It wasn't what I was doing or who I was doing it with. It was that I didn't have my real father in my life. And if I could get my real father in my life, everything would be okay. I made my way to New Orleans. I contacted Alcoholics Anonymous.
They contacted my daddy and they put us together. And now all of a sudden, I had a father. And he had a son. And we both tried to be those two things. But neither one of us had ever been either of those two things before. We did the best we could, but we just didn't know what we were doing. And I found something else out. After about three months, my daddy started drinking again. And I can remember coming home at 13 and 14 years old, passing out in my mother's living room and having her wake me the next morning, screaming at me and saying, son, don't drink.
Please, don't drink. You'll get what your father has. But until I was 14 and I watched him drink, I never knew what she was trying to keep me from getting. But he started drinking again and I watched him drink. And I watched him get drunk and I watched him go into the DTs. And I watched the people from Alcoholics Anonymous in New Orleans come into our home and put him in Bridge House. And I made a decision on that day.
I'm not going to be an alcoholic. I'm not going to end up like my father ended up. And I didn't have another drink for the next four years. I didn't do much anything for the next four years. I traveled a lot. You see, all of a sudden, there I was. I'm in the city of New Orleans. I've got no responsibility. I've got no authority. I've got the rest of my life to go wherever it is I think I want to go.
And it's 1966. I guess I was a hippie.
[00:10:01]
At least that's what folks called me. Unless maybe I was in, you know, like East Texas or Northern Alabama. There was another word in front of hippie they used a lot. But I had four good years. I hitchhiked all over this country. If I woke up in Los Angeles and didn't like it there, I went to Miami. If I didn't like Miami, I'd go to Denver. If I didn't like Denver, I'd go to St. Louis. I just went wherever it is I wanted to go.
And I had four good years. My expectations were met. If I had a pack of cigarettes, a sleeping bag, and something to eat on that day, it was a good day. You see, the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous tells me this. That my expectations are inversely proportional to my serenity level. And I don't know about you. I can tell you this about me though. If I get exactly, now I mean exactly, what I think I'm supposed to have, exactly when I think I'm supposed to have it, do you know I'm a pretty happy guy?
But as soon as I don't, my expectations aren't met and my serenity level starts dropping down. I'm outside Salt Lake City. And I don't want to play anymore. All of a sudden I think I want some of the stuff from the billboards. The stuff from the magazine ads. You know, the signs that say, if you drive this kind of car, you're okay. If you live in that kind of neighborhood, you're okay. And if you wear these kind of clothes, you're okay.
All of a sudden I think I want some of that stuff. I'm seeing people on the other sides of the freeways and they have it. They're in their backyard mowing their grass, playing with their kids, painting their garage, and I want some of this American dream. I was hitchhiking back from Salt Lake City. We were at Salt Lake City. I'm coming home. I just don't want to do it anymore. And I'm with a friend of mine. He's out here with us today.
And this guy drops us off about six or eight exits east of Salt Lake City up in the mountains. I don't know where this road goes. There's nothing here. There's no gas station. There's no convenience store. There's no houses. There's no nothing. Just a road that goes up into the mountains in the middle of Utah. And that's where we got dropped off. We slept there that night. Froze to death. Ate some tuna.
Woke up the next morning. Knew if we didn't start moving that they were going to find us there someday. Just froze. Walked down to the bottom of the on-ramp. Sitting at the bottom of that on-ramp in the middle of Utah, in the middle of the mountains at six o'clock in the morning, is a six-pack of Olympia beer. I know God wants me in Alcoholics Anonymous. I drank three beers. He drank three beers. I looked at him. I said, you know, if I ever get back to Cleveland alive, I'm settling down.
I'm going to marry the first girl I see. You have to have a girl that's part of the American dream. I got back to Cleveland. I stopped at my parents' home. My stepfather wasn't there, so I was allowed in. I took a shower. I changed my clothes. Borrowed my mother's car. Drove to the corner to pick up a pack of cigarettes. Picked a young lady up, hitchhiked, and then we got married. We didn't get married that day.
But you know, we might have. But back then in the state of Ohio, the male had to be 21 or have parental consent, and the female had to be 18 or have parental consent. And when I married my first wife, I was 18 and she was 15. And this was not a marriage that was made in heaven. We didn't know anything about being married. We didn't know anything about love. I can't tell you today if I loved her. I can tell you this, though.
I live in my brother's van in the driveway of my parents' home because I haven't been allowed in their house since I'm 14 years old. She lives wherever she can because there's stuff going on in her house she just doesn't want to go back to. And that was enough for us, see? We weren't alone anymore. And that was enough, just not to be alone anymore. And it was a simple marriage. I got up in the morning, I got drunk.
She got up in the morning, she got drunk. And then we beat each other up. We'd beat each other up. Now, we did that one day at a time for about seven years. But
[00:15:12]
out of that seven years, you know, I was away a lot. I traveled a lot. I still traveled a lot. I was just going places. I had other places to go and stuff. It was just different people were deciding where I was going. I'd walk into a room. There'd be a guy sitting in the front. He'd have a big desk, had a long black coat arm. And every time he did this, I went somewhere. I had a bad attitude. I was in trouble a lot. I just had a horrible attitude as a child in the 60s. I just kept getting arrested. I really only did two things for 12 years. I got ready to go to jail, and I got ready to come home from being in jail.
I just had a bad attitude. I got a report card at home from the third grade. Y'all remember your report cards? Teacher would write on the back, snitch on you. You'd have to take it home and show your mom, and she'd sign it and bring it home, bring it back. My third grade report card says, bad attitude. It says, Timothy does not play well with others. I'm eight years old, and I haven't had a drink yet, but they know I got a problem. I got arrested a lot, but I wasn't a violent criminal. I was a stupid criminal. I got arrested for stupid things. I got arrested for things like verbal abuse of a police officer. I was in a little town called Parma, Ohio. I got arrested for obscene finger language to the police officer. I always liked watching the signer when I'd say that.
I just got arrested a lot. I was at a meeting. I was about two years sober, and a friend of mine was speaking at the meeting that night. I don't know if this happens to anybody else. You go to a meeting, and you hear somebody say something. You know you've heard them say that a hundred times before, but now it makes sense, right? A friend of mine was talking that night, an old-timer. His name was Vic. I just liked being around Vic. Vic had a past a lot like mine, but it was like 30 years before mine. And I just liked listening to him talk. And he stood up one night, and he was speaking, and he said this. He said, I've been arrested 63 times. I wasn't a good criminal. I picked right up on that. I know I've been charged with 63 crimes. I wasn't a good criminal. People that did what I did and got caught as often as I got caught doing it weren't real good at what they were doing. The only thing I was really good at was getting caught. I found something else out in that verbal abuse case of a police officer. See, I decided to represent myself in that case. What's so funny? I just knew I saw enough Perry Mason Judd for the defense, you know. This is a municipal court. This is Parma, man. I went to court. I called witnesses. I cross-examined their witnesses. I gave my final arguments to the judge. You know what I found out? I'm not a very good attorney either, man. That's just the way my life was going. 1975, I stood in front of a judge in that old lakeside courthouse in downtown Cleveland, and he sentenced me to 20 to 40 years in the penitentiary. I took a big sigh of relief that day. I felt pretty good that day. I know something on that day. Now, I can hear my wife and my mother in the back of the court crying. They don't think I should go away, and they certainly
[00:20:03]
don't think I should go for that long. But they don't know what I know. I know this, that they can't send me anywhere that's going to hurt me as much as I've already hurt me. And I knew it. And that judge had no idea that there was no way on earth that he could punish me as much as I've already punished me. I was ready to go anywhere where I thought I might have a better chance against myself. Now, in 1976, the laws changed. My sentence went from a 20 to 40 to a 1 to 10, and three years later, they sent me home. But when I got home, all my stuff was gone. The stuff I had to have to fit into this world was gone.
The stuff that if I didn't have, you wouldn't let me be part of this world was gone. My wife was gone. My car was gone. My motorcycle was gone. My clothes were gone. My jewelry was gone. Everything was gone. And I didn't do anything for the next 30 or 40 days but drink. I crawled into a bottle every day, as many times that day as I needed to. I got blacked out and passed out. But not once in my life have I ever crawled into a bottle of alcohol to hide from you. I've never crawled into a bottle of alcohol to hide from them.
I crawled into a bottle of alcohol as many times a day as I needed to to hide from me. You see, I knew what I was. I was an ex-con. I was an ex-husband. I was an ex-brother. And I was an ex-son. I failed at everything I ever tried to do in my life. And if I was drunk enough, I didn't have to look. Finally, a friend of mine came over, and he wasn't going to let me sit there anymore. He said, you're out of jail. It's time to start living again. You're coming with me. And he almost physically took me out of my house. He took me down to the flats in Cleveland. This is a long time ago. This is before they ruined the flats in Cleveland. This is when you used to go to the flats to get drunk. You didn't go down there with your boat. You didn't go down there to have dinner. You certainly didn't go down there to have something from a microbrewery. You went down there to get drunk. We drank things like Jim Beam bourbon and Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. All the bar room floors were flooded. Huh? I don't know with what. We walked into a little place called the Pirate's Cove. My cousin's band was playing that night. They were playing a Marshall Tucker song. I'm drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. I'm about half in the bag and this pretty little girl walked past me. She smiled at me. You know, I smiled right back at her.
And that was her. That was my future ex-wife. Who shall heretofore be known as the plaintiff. That's who that was. That's one of my goals in life, to become a plaintiff. I'm always the defendant. Let me tell you about my second wife. She had some stuff with her when she came into my home. She had stuff I think I used to have, I just don't know where it was. She brought things like honesty with her. She brought purity. She brought love. And she brought unselfishness. These are the things she had when she came into my house. And four years later she left. And there was only one thing left for her to take. And that was the disease of alcoholism. It stripped every decent thing that woman had. I'm not the only one I hurt when I pick up a drink. I touch a lot of lives and I know that today. I tried for a couple of years. I had a decent job. I was moving up in the company. My parole officer didn't bother me too much. I went to work every day. I never missed a day. I never called in sick. I was never late. Worked any overtime they wanted me to. For two years
[00:25:00]
I worked. Two years. You listening to me? I worked for two years. And after two years, I'm sitting in my living room one night and I'm surveying my dynasty. And you know after two years, I don't have a house on the lake. I don't have two Lincolns in the driveway. I'm not wearing the right kind of clothes. I'm not running around with the right kind of people and I don't belong to the right kind of clubs. After two years. So sitting there drunk, I came to a conclusion and I made a decision. Those things are for other people. And no matter how hard I work, I'm never supposed to have them anyway. So I woke up the next morning, called my boss and quit my job. There was no reason to work that hard if I'm never going to have them things anyway. And the last two years of my drinking aren't too exciting. I got up, I got drunk. If I got up again that day, I got drunk again that day. My wife lasted for about two years and she had to go. And the end of my drinking is not too exciting. This is my life at 30 years old. You know those family gatherings we have? Maybe it's Christmas or Thanksgiving, Mother's Day, Easter, something. We'll go somewhere. We'll sit around a big table. We'll hold hands with our family and we'll say grace.
We'll share a meal. And afterwards we'll sit around and we'll share with each other what's going on in our lives. This is the way it works at my house. I pull into my parents' driveway and I blow the horn. When they hear the horn inside, my little brother comes out of the back door. He's got a paper plate in his hand and it's wrapped in tinfoil. And he hands me my holiday meal. And I'm allowed to sit in my parents' driveway and eat my holiday meal off a paper plate with a plastic knife and a plastic fork. I can't sit at their table. I can't have a real knife and fork. I can't hold their hands and say grace. And they certainly don't want me to share anything with them that's going on in my life. But I don't want you to think they stopped loving me. Not even this much did their love diminish for me at that time in my life. They simply realized that every time they reached out and stopped me from hitting my bottom, every time they allowed me not to be responsible for my own actions, they were killing me. You see, my parents loved me so much, they let me go. I don't have any children. I don't have any children. So I could only imagine how much love that must take. June 23rd, 1982, I woke up at that bottom I told you about.
And I didn't know what to do, and I always do the same thing in my life when I don't know what to do. I make a phone call, and I don't know if I made that phone call a hundred times or a thousand times or ten thousand times. It's always the same phone call, though. It's mom, help. And my mom came. My mom always came. She walked into my house. I'm kneeling on the living room floor. I'm shaking uncontrollably, and I'm crying. I just can't stop crying.
I have hepatitis, and I weigh 112 pounds. And the first words out of my mother's mouth were, I'll kill her for doing this to you. Alcoholism, this is a family disease. Blaming others is a big part of this disease. My mother has it, too. We made some phone calls. I found myself in an emergency room. I'm laying on a table, and I'm vibrating. The doctor's playing with my liver. He says, son, you've got an alcohol problem. I said, oh, no, sir. No, not me. I just didn't want to be no alcoholic. Son, you've got an alcohol problem. I said, no. And he gives me a shot of thiamine to try to settle me down a little bit. And we're arguing back and forth about what I want to be, what I don't want to be. He says, I don't care. If you don't stop drinking, Tim, you're going to die.
If you don't stop drinking, Tim, you're going to die. And I heard him say that.
[00:30:03]
They sent me to the east side of Cleveland. I spent the next ten days in a psych ward on the east side of Cleveland. I'm powerless over alcohol. My life had become unmanageable. That sounded like step one, didn't it? A little bit, almost. I spent the first three days in restraints. They weren't four-point restraints or anything, just these straps across me. I tried to hurt myself the night before, and they were just trying to make it a little harder on me to move around, I think.
I got a psychiatrist in my psych ward. I got the happiest psychiatrist on earth in my psych ward. And he comes to see me every morning, six, seven o'clock in the morning. Tim, how you doing? Good to see you. Isn't it a wonderful day, huh? I don't know about the rest of y'all. Six o'clock in the morning? In a psych ward on the east side of Cleveland? Tied to a bed? I'm not real spiritual. I told him what I thought.
And he just did what psychiatrists do. You know what they do. They write in their charts, and they nod their heads. That's what they do. Then they make you take that test. You ever take that test? That MMPI test? Got 600 questions on that test. I'd like to have a nickel for every time I took that test. Every time they sent me somewhere, I had to take that test. There's only one question on that test I can't answer.
It's my favorite question on the whole MMPI test. It says, do you urinate more than most people? I don't know. Now, on the third day, that psychiatrist came into my room. I don't ever want to forget this. He put his chart in the window sill. He undid those straps. He sat on the edge of my bed. And he said this. He said, Tim, I can't make your wife come home. I don't have a job to give you. I'm not going to make a house payment for you.
But if you never want to take another drink as long as you live, I can tell you how to do that one day at a time. You see, this psychiatrist was a recovering member of the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. I know God wants me here. He sat on the edge of my bed, and he shared a little bit of his story with me. Then I shared a little bit of my story with him. And all of a sudden, it was no longer I'm powerless over alcohol, that my life had become unmanageable.
All of a sudden, it became we. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable. And that's step one. Because I know without the we, I don't have a chance, man. He gave me something. He gave me my prescription before I left. This is the most valuable thing anybody's ever given me in my life. He gave me a meeting schedule to Alcoholics Anonymous. He said, when you get home, I want you to do two things.
I want you to go to a meeting, and I want you to get a sponsor. And I got home, and I didn't know what to do. So I did what I always do when I don't know what to do. I called my mama. I said, Ma, I got to go to an AA meeting. She said, well, I'll come get you. My mom knows all about Alcoholics Anonymous. She used to go to meetings with my daddy in the 40s and the 50s. There's been a book in my house as long as I can remember.
And she took me to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. It was July 4th, and it was 1982. She dropped me on your doorstep, and she left me with some advice, and I want to share it with you. She said, I'm not coming back to get you. You go into the room, you tell the people at the front table you're new. You don't have a car. You don't have a driver's license. You need a ride home. And you stay away from the women in Alcoholics Anonymous.
[00:35:11]
And I paid attention to just about half of my mama's advice. But I got a sponsor that night. He gave me stuff to do that night. His wife was the chairperson. She handed me the traditions, asked me if I'd read, and I backed up. I said, I don't know, honey. You know, they just took the straps off me. You might want to find somebody else to do that. And he just looked at me. You know how they look at you.
He said, here's your first lesson in Alcoholics Anonymous, Tim. You never say no to AA. No matter what the request is, the answer is yes. That's all you're ever going to need to know about that. And then he gave me stuff to do. He said, if you sat in a chair, put it away. If you have an ashtray, empty it. If you have a cup, throw it away. He said, I want you to read one page in the big book every day.
Do not turn that page until tomorrow. Read that page as many times that day as you want to or think you need to, but do not turn that page until tomorrow. And just maybe in 164 days, you might know something about the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. He said, if you're not praying, this is the way you're going to start. You're going to use three words your mother taught you when you were a little boy.
You're going to get up in the morning, you're going to kneel down, and you're going to say, please. You're going to go about your day. And at the end of that day, you kneel back down and you say, thank you. Please and thank you. You know, my mama did teach me those words when I was a little boy. Do you know what she called them? Magic words. What's the magic word, Timmy? That's what she used to say.
What's the magic word? I had no idea how much magic those words really held until I came here and you showed me how to use them. And then my sponsor asked me that question. You know, I'm a firm believer. They say you come to AA and there's no stupid questions, right? And then your sponsor's going to ask you a whole bunch of them. He asked me that question. I know they asked you. He said, do you want what I have?
What do you got? What do you got? I didn't know what he wanted me to have. All I knew, my first sponsor, he had a brand new Tornado. He wore a Rolex watch. He had a stewardess for a wife, had the prettiest green eyes I ever saw in my life. Do I want what you have? Yeah, what page is that on, huh? You see, I don't believe the newcomer has to want anything to come through the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous.
I don't think that's their responsibility. But I do believe it's my responsibility to have something they want when they do get here. Because I'm pretty sure that when Bill went to see Bob, Bill didn't want what Bob had. But Bill knew for sure, just as most of us do when we get here, that we didn't want what we had either. And once we know that, then we can pick something else, huh? My sponsor got me started on those steps.
He got me into this program. I came to believe by watching you my life could change if I did what you did, so that's what I did. I knelt down with my sponsor and I said a third step prayer. I wasn't crazy about the third step prayer. I read it over and over. I read to 12 and 12. I looked at it. I tried to figure it out. You know, my biggest question with the third step was, what if it works? Then what happens?
You know what I mean? And my sponsor finally explained it to me simply enough even so I could understand. He said, I'm going to give this to you and you're going to understand a third step. And if you have one, you can understand it. I always have one with me. It's a penny. This is a special penny. This penny is from 1918. That's the year my mama was born. You know what happens if you look at the back of the penny?
[00:40:02]
It says one cent. And there's a picture of the Lincoln Memorial on it. But do you know what happens as soon as you turn it over? On the front of the penny it says, In God. That's the third step. That step's not about God's will. It's about mine. And am I willing to trust God with it today? I can tell you I am. And once you can do that, there's another word on the front of that penny a little farther down.
And that word is liberty. And that's the freedom you can have if you can trust God just one day at a time. I started on that fourth step, but you all know that's not one you want to rush right into, right? No, no, no. You've got to take your time with that fourth step. You've got to read all them books, because you know we've got books in Alcoholics Anonymous, man. We ain't got nothing. We've got books.
We've got blue books. We've got blue and blue books. We've got little blue books. We've got little red books, little green books, little red books. We've got guides. We've got lists. We've got everything in the world you can read about this fourth step. You've got to read all them books. Talk to every old-timer in the world. Or you're going to mess the fourth step up, aren't you? I think there's only one way to do the fourth step wrong.
Don't do it. That's the only way to do it wrong. More will be revealed, but do it. I read all them books. I talked to every old-timer in Cleveland. I'm sober 23 years. I'm still not sure what Mr. Jones' problem is. My phone rang one night. It's my sponsor. He said, how's that fourth step coming, Tim? I said, it's coming right along. And he gave me a little bit of information. You want to be careful what kind of information you give your new guy.
He said, it'll get done in God's time. You know, that's exactly when I thought that fourth step was going to get done, too, in God's time. So I hung the phone up. Five minutes later, the phone rang. It's my sponsor. How's that fourth step coming, Tim? But I got something now, right? I gave it right back to him. I said, oh, it's going to get done in God's time. He said, that's a good thing, because God's time is tomorrow morning at 9 o'clock.
I made an appointment for you to do your fifth. I did a fourth step, and I did a fifth step. I found out what was wrong and why it happened. Now I had to be entirely ready for it to go away. But I couldn't do that by myself. I had to ask for power greater than myself. Humbly ask God for help. And once I did that, I looked at my list for my ninth step. And I'm going through my list. And you know, my sponsor says, go through your list, and we'll make direct amends.
And I'm looking at my list, and I see this guy over here. But this guy, you know, he did me like this. So that's a push, right? I just scratched him right up off there. And I'm going down my list, and I'm just steady scratching names off, you know? By the time my sponsor gets to the house, there's nobody left on my list but my mama, and I'm really looking for a reason. He said, Tim, this step's about forgiveness.
You have to learn to forgive. Until you can forgive everybody that's ever wronged you, you will never have the right to ask anybody else for forgiveness. And that's what I had to learn to do in the eighth step. And once I could do that, I could go out, and I could make direct amends to the people I've wronged, and that's what I did. And you know, before I was halfway through, those promises started coming true.
I've got that Lincoln today. I've got that Lincoln today. I keep it disguised as a Ford, though, you know it?
[00:45:00]
That's just a no-dealer. You might see it, it's parked right over here. You might see it and you might think, that's no Lincoln, that's a Ford. But remember this, there's only one person, ever, that's looking out of your eyes. And that's the only person that's ever going to be responsible for what you see. You can see good, or you can see bad, but you're the one looking. Remember that. Because when I leave here today, I'm getting inside my car.
Alcoholics Anonymous is an inside job. I spent most of my life believing, if I could make the outside look good enough, the inside would feel better. And I was wrong. When I get inside, I don't see Ford. I see Lincoln. Town car. It's a 2006. It's triple black. Got a moonroof and a Bose CD system in it, with a 14 disc changer. And I get in that car and I hit that power window. And I drive to the job. You know the job that I didn't used to have when I was drinking?
Where I see my friends. Those would be the friends that I didn't used to have when I was drinking. I have a great life today. I know how to live resentment free today. I didn't say I did, I said I know how to. Here's another example of what we tell newcomers. You know what they told me? They said, my sponsor says, pray for your enemies. Yeah, that's what I'm going to do. Pray for my enemies. I don't know about anybody else, I had a couple of resentments when I got here.
You know, like my ex-wife. She took off with my dynasty. I still want to do something nice for her though. You know, maybe buy her a new car. Like a 72 Pinot with no brake lights. You know, something like that. And you're telling me to pray for my enemies. I went and I saw my little brother, he's a born again Christian. I said, you know these guys in AA say I'm supposed to pray for my enemies. He said, that's true Tim, you should.
He said, it tells us to in the Bible. I said, no it don't. He said, yes it does and he showed me. Now, I don't know who has your message or how you're supposed to hear it. All I know is how I'm supposed to hear mine. Do you know what it says in the Bible? It says, praying for your enemies is like heaping hot coals upon their heads. Something like that. And that's the way God knew I needed to hear it in order for me to kneel down.
Mention my enemies to my God. And you know once I kneel down, my God doesn't care what I say. Once I take the action, He doesn't care what I say once I kneel down. If I kneel down tonight and I say, dear God, please, please let all my enemies go to heaven. Tomorrow. God don't care. I don't know who has your message, do you? Are you waiting for somebody with 70 years? Maybe it's the person that isn't even going to get sober for 70 minutes.
I don't know who has your message. I know this today. That if somebody's talking and I can hear them, God wants me listening. I got a message on the first step. It's about 13 years ago. I was invited to speak in Indiana. And my wife couldn't go with me that weekend, so I took one of my new guys with me. And I didn't want to take my car, so I took my wife's car. I didn't think my car would make it. So I took my wife's car. She was driving a Honda Civic.
And you know in a Honda Civic, what do you get in a Honda Civic? Three, four hundred miles to a gallon maybe in a Honda Civic?
[00:50:01]
No, really, you know, you drive a Honda Civic just about from now on. Never had to put gas in. Me and my new guy, we're going across Indiana. We went underneath the sign that said my exit was about five miles. Five exits away. And I looked down at the gas gauge. The gas gauge said empty. And I thought, well yeah, you know, empty like in a real car, empty. You know what I mean? But a Honda Civic empty, you've got to have a hundred miles, right?
There's only 50 left in Indiana. There's only 50 left in Indiana. I never give it another thought. Until… We went underneath the sign that said my exit was two miles. And I ran out of gas. If you've got a Honda Civic, and it says empty, you know they're dead serious about that. That's exactly what they mean. Now I coasted for another mile. And pulled over to the side of the road. Now here I am on the side of the road.
Middle of Indiana. Out of gas. Got a new guy sitting next to me. You know I don't even want to turn and look at him. I just spent the better part about four hours telling him all about responsibility and stuff like that, you know. I had to do something. I couldn't sit in Indiana the rest of my life. I couldn't sit in Indiana the rest of my life. So I just turned and I looked at him. He just grinned. You know how they are.
They'll wait a long time for you to mess something up. And they'll be right there to point it out for you too, you know. And he looked up at me and he said, we're powerless, ain't we? I said, yeah, you bet we are. So what do you think we ought to do about it? He said, I think we better admit it. He said, I think we better admit it. You know, I could have sat there the rest of my life going vroom, vroom, vroom, vroom, vroom.
If I never admit there's a problem, I'm never going to get anywhere. I don't know who has your message. Are you listening? I live my life this way today. I take one word out of each of the last three steps. Continued. Improve. And practice. Now each one of those words is an action word. You got to do something if you want something. My big book tells me half measures avail me nothing. It does not say half measures avail me half.
It says nothing. I don't know about anybody else. I don't know about anybody else. I've had more nothing in my life than I want. I don't want any more nothing. I want everything my God wants me to have. You know, I don't even know what that is. But if he wants me to have it, I'm wanting to. There's a difference in my life today. I want to share that with you. I used to get to the prisons quite often and talk to the guys in the joints.
I was never crazy about going. I didn't like prison when I was in prison. And now they've got this thing in Ohio. You've got to go to jail. You've got to go to jail. You've got to go to jail. Now they've got this thing in Ohio. You've got to fill an application out to get into penitentiary. Man, I never had to fill an application out. I was pre-approved every time I got there, you know. I haven't been in a while. There's a number of reasons for that.
But I used to go quite a bit. I was in the Allen Correction Institute over in Lima. And one of the guys over there came to me after the meeting. He said, hey, can I call you? I said, sure. You can call me. I forgot that when you call somebody from the penitentiary, you've got to call Collect.
[00:55:00]
But I'll accept the Collect phone call today in my life, and I want to tell you why. On April 10, 1989, I went to a meeting. There was a young lady speaking at that meeting that night. And I don't know what your sponsor told you. My sponsor used to tell me this quite a bit. He said, if you go to a meeting and you hear something you like, take it home. And on October 16, 1993, we got married. I married a young lady in the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous, a very intelligent woman in the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous, a very educated woman in the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Now, my wife has been in school just about as long as you can go to school. My wife got more letters after her name. It's unbelievable. She's got an MA or a BA. She got an MA. She got an MACT. She was ABD. Now she's got a PhD. And then she got something I truly wanted her to have, and that's a J-O-B. One of my new guys asked me this once. He said, doesn't that intimidate you that your wife is so intelligent, that your wife is so educated?
Doesn't that intimidate you? And I had to think about that for a minute because I never had before. And I thought, no. No, that doesn't intimidate me. That makes me proud as hell. I'm proud as hell of my wife's accomplishments. Because when my wife came through the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous almost 19 years ago, she didn't have any letters after her name. But because of a book called Alcoholics Anonymous, a god of her understanding, and the women of her home group that told her, once you come through that door, if you're willing to do the work, you can be anything you want to be.
She believed them. She worked hard. She accomplished it. I cannot be intimidated by that. I can only be proud that I'm even allowed to be a member of something that can make that happen. We had a wedding. You know, I was reminded, we had a wedding. It was an AA wedding. It started with the Serenity Prayer and it ended with the Lord's Prayer. I had a reading from the 12 and 12 in between. And I was reminded that day of that phone call.
And the phone call I got to make from Mansfield, that old reformatory in Mansfield, they walked me up into that bullpen and they said, you call anybody you want, you can talk this long. But you've got to call Collect. You know I couldn't find one person on earth that would accept a Collect phone call from me. Not one. But on October 16, 1993, we invited 320 people to that wedding. Do you know how many came?
About 350, man. That's the difference. That's the difference from then to now. That's the difference in my life. But there's a difference in me. About seven years ago, I had to start taking care of my stepfather. He got Alzheimer's. And I had to become his caregiver. And there weren't two people on this earth that hated each other more than me and my stepfather. But I had to become his caregiver. If you're out there and you're wondering, you know, you think you hear people talking and this AA is just working miracles in their life, but it's not working fast enough for you, let me tell you this.
I was sober nine and a half years before I was allowed to drive in the state of Ohio. I was sober 16 years before I was allowed back into my parents' home. These things will happen. Please don't leave before they do. I guarantee it. We finally had to put my stepfather in a nursing home out in Sandusky, and then a big part of my life became taking care of my mom. Mom was 82, and on the weekends we'd go to Sandusky.
Mom was 82, and on the weekends we'd go to Sandusky and we'd spend the weekends with my stepfather. And she continued to grow old, and we continued to do our thing, and then, you know, Mom broke her hip three times and had three strokes, and it just took up a big part of my life
[01:00:04]
taking care of my mom. I had a woman that took care of her during the day, and on the evenings after work I'd go over there and I'd make her her dinner. I'd walk her dog and feed her dog and give her her pills, put her pajamas on and get her in bed. And on the weekends what I'd do is go over to my mom's and I'd spend the day with my mom on the weekends and just help her do what she needed done. That was what I did on the weekends.
You know what I like to do on the weekends? When it's nice, I like to play golf. I got a lot of friends that play golf. And they used to call me and ask me if I want to play with them on the weekends. And I said, one guy called me and he said, I said, no, you know, I'll be with my mom on this weekend. And he said, do you have to be with your mom? I said, no, no, I don't have to be with my mom. I get to be with my mom.
I get to be there. That's the difference. I don't have to be there. There's a lot of words when I went to school they taught me were nouns. And I came to AA and I found out they're verbs. Things like friend, husband, brother, son. They're verbs. They're action words. You got to do something. On June 1st last year at 4.45 p.m. after 76 hours in hospice, I knelt next to my mom's bed. God came down and took her away.
And I was able, because of you, to let go and trust God one more time, knowing she's going to be all right. We've got a lot of purposes in this program. We've got a main purpose. We've got a primary purpose. We've got a singleness of purpose. I like the main purpose. My main purpose is to become of maximum service to God and those about me. Not just here. Everywhere. Everywhere. I want to say one thing.
Remember this. This might be the most important thing I say. Remember that what you do between the serenity prayer and the Lord's prayer is never going to be as important as what you're doing between the Lord's prayer and the serenity prayer. Thank you very, very much.