AA Speaker – Tim T. – Edisto, SC – 2007
AA speaker Tim T. shares his journey from 12 years in and out of prison to 40+ years sober. A story about hitting bottom, working the steps, and finding purpose through service.
Tim T. from South Carolina spent 12 years of his life locked up, and came through the doors of AA on June 23rd, 1982, at a literal bottom—hepatitis, 112 pounds, unable to imagine life with or without alcohol. In this AA speaker tape, he walks through how Step One became “we” instead of “I,” how his sponsor pushed him to take action, and how decades of sobriety taught him that the program works through service to others and letting go of resentments.
Tim T. shares his 40-year sobriety story, detailing his journey from crime, prison, and multiple failed marriages to recovery through Alcoholics Anonymous. He emphasizes the power of Step One as a collective experience (“we” instead of “I”), the importance of sponsorship and taking action on the steps, and how acceptance and service became the foundation of his emotional sobriety. His talk includes lessons on responsibility, making amends, and finding purpose through caring for his aging mother—ultimately connecting personal recovery to the primary purpose of maximum service to God and others.
Episode Summary
Tim T. delivers one of the most complete recovery stories you’ll hear—a full arc from chaos to purpose, told with humor, honesty, and no minimizing of the wreckage. He came in on June 23rd, 1982, at absolute bottom: hepatitis, weighing 112 pounds, in a psychiatric ward on restraints, unable to imagine continuing with or without alcohol. But the real genius of this AA speaker tape is how he uses his entire story to illustrate recovery principles, not just survival.
His childhood reads like a case study in abandonment and resentment. Six stepfathers, thirteen stepmothers, thirteen different schools, left home at 14. His biological father got sober in AA with 10 years under his belt, but when Tim found him years later, his dad relapsed and ended up in detox. That moment—watching his father deteriorate—cemented something in him: he would not become an alcoholic. So he stopped drinking for four years and hitchhiked across America, living the hippie life with nothing but expectations small enough to fit in a backpack.
But expectations are inversely proportional to serenity. When he realized he wanted the things he saw on billboards and in other people’s yards—a house, a car, a family—he came back down. Married his first wife at 18 when she was 15. Seven years of mutual drinking and fighting. Then arrest after arrest—63 arrests, none of them for sophisticated crime. In 1975, a judge sentenced him to 20 to 40 years in the penitentiary, and Tim felt relief. He was ready to be locked away because he knew no prison could hurt him as much as he was already hurting himself.
The law changed. His sentence reduced to 1 to 10 years. When he came home after three years, everything was gone. His wife. His possessions. His identity. And he did what he’d always done when unbearable: he drank. For 30 or 40 days, he crawled into a bottle—not to hide from other people, but to hide from himself. He knew what he was: an ex-con, an ex-husband, an ex-son. He’d failed at everything.
His friend physically removed him from that chair and took him to a bar where his second wife was playing in a band. She had purity, honesty, love, and unselfishness. Four years later, the disease stripped every one of those things from her. Tim worked hard for two years, climbed the ladder at a company, attended trade school, never missed a day. Then one night, drunk in his living room, he realized he still didn’t have a house on the lake, two Lincolns, the right clothes. So he quit. Why work if he’d never get what he wanted anyway? The logic of active alcoholism.
The end of his drinking was a blackout where he came home and peed on his bedroom floor—and his own Doberman was angry at him for it. His wife left. By June 1982, he was done.
What makes this AA speaker talk so valuable is how Tim uses his sponsor’s actual instructions to illustrate how recovery works. His sponsor gave him one page of the Big Book per day. Don’t turn the page until tomorrow. Read it multiple times. In 164 days, maybe you’ll know something about it. He taught Tim that prayer isn’t complicated—just “please” in the morning and “thank you” at night, the magic words Tim’s mother taught him as a child.
On Step Three, Tim’s sponsor gave him a penny from 1918 (the year his mother was born). “In God we trust” on one side. “Liberty” on the other. The step isn’t about God’s will; it’s about willingness to trust God with Tim’s will. One day at a time.
For Step Four, Tim tried to read every book, talk to every old-timer. His sponsor let him work it his way, then hit him with the deadline: “It’ll get done in God’s time. God’s time is tomorrow at 9:00 a.m.” That sponsor understood that newcomers need structure and accountability, not endless debate.
Step Five and Eight came. Tim scratched names off his amends list because “he did that to me first—we’re even.” His sponsor stopped him cold: “You don’t understand this, Tim. You got to learn to forgive. Until you can learn to forgive, you can’t ask for forgiveness.” Before he was halfway through his amends, the promises started coming true—just like the book says.
The talk also covers responsibility and acceptance in ways that hit hard. Tim had spent his life running from responsibility and authority. When he couldn’t tell his wife he couldn’t play golf on Sunday because of his mother’s care, his friend asked: “Do you have to be with your mom on Sunday morning?” Tim reframed it: “No, I get to be with my mom. I get to be there.” That distinction—from obligation to opportunity—changed everything.
Years later, Tim married a woman from the fellowship. By his wedding day in 1993, he could invite 320 people, and 350 showed up. In 1975, in prison, he’d tried to call anyone on earth who’d accept a collect call from him. Not one person would. That’s the difference in a recovered life.
The emotional climax comes when Tim’s stepfather developed Alzheimer’s, the man he’d hated most on earth. He became his caregiver, took his mother to see him on weekends, later cared for his mother full-time despite wanting to play golf. One friend asked why he didn’t go. Tim said he’d be with his mom. The friend said, “Do you have to?” Tim said, “No, I get to.”
When his mother died, Tim was there, holding her hand. He let go. Let God. And he understood, finally, why he’d done all that work: not because he was a great cook or had medical knowledge, but because he’d known loneliness such as few men know. And he never wanted another human being—especially someone elderly—to feel that alone.
The final message is devastating in its simplicity: “What you do between a serenity prayer and a Lord’s prayer will never be as important as what you’re doing between the Lord’s Prayer and a serenity prayer.” Meaning: the content of the meeting doesn’t change your life. Your actions between meetings do.
Notable Quotes
I’m powerless over alcohol. My life had become unmanageable. But as soon as he shared his story with me, it became we. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol. And that’s Step One. Without the we, I don’t have a chance.
My sponsor looked at me and 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.
I know without a doubt that God wants me in Alcoholics Anonymous. Seventeen years later, I came through those doors and there was the woman who found me in her backyard at 14. She’s still helping drunks. That’s what they told her to do: help a drunk. Period.
Do you know what I like to do on weekends? I like to play golf. But my friend asked me, ‘Do you have to be with your mom on Sunday morning?’ I said, ‘No, I get to be with my mom.’ That one word changed everything.
I’ve known a loneliness such as few men know. Is there somebody in your life you think you should call? Quit thinking about it. Do it. It’s really hard to make amends at the funeral home.
What you do between a serenity prayer and a Lord’s prayer will never be as important as what you’re doing between the Lord’s Prayer and a serenity prayer.
Step 3 – Surrender
Sponsorship
Making Amends
Hitting Bottom
Topics Covered in This Transcript
- Step 1 – Powerlessness
- Step 3 – Surrender
- Sponsorship
- Making Amends
- Hitting Bottom
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Full AA Speaker Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated and may contain minor errors. For the best experience, listen to the audio above.
Welcome to Sober Sunrise, a podcast bringing you AA speaker meetings with stories of experience, strength, and hope from around the world. We bring you several new speakers weekly, so be sure to subscribe. We hope to always remain an ad-free podcast, so if you'd like to help us remain self-supporting, please visit our website at sober-onrise.com.
Whether you join us in the morning or at night, there's nothing better than a sober sunrise. We hope that you enjoy today's speaker. Man, with that kind of greeting, I can't hardly wait to hear what I'm going to say.
I haven't done anything yet. Let's uh thank some people who have done something. The committee that puts this thing together, that worked hard all year to have us here tonight.
Let's thank them. You know, I come to these things a lot and I'm at a roundup. I always wondered why they called them roundups.
I don't know if anybody knows. I do. I looked it up.
And in a dictionary it says a roundup is a systematic gathering up of suspects by the police. They were right. I want to thank the speakers.
I've had the privilege of being with all of them before somewhere. Bobby and I go back probably 15 years. Deb and I have been different places around the country and and it's always a pleasure to be with them.
Lars scene, I don't think there's better speaker in any program than Larine. And the last time I was with Sister Maurice, her skirt fell off while she was talking. You might want to come to the Sunday morning meeting.
>> Yeah, they got me standing at a place. It's unbelievable. I got sunburn.
You probably didn't notice. I got a bathroom bigger than my house down here. I sat on the beach.
You know, everybody think, "Well, that stupid Yankee got sunburned down here." But let me just raise your hand if this morning you had women rubbing stuff all over your body for you this raise your hand. Anybody else? You know, it just makes me think in situations like this that uh you know, it was better to have drank and lost than never to have drank at all.
Now, I'm I'm pretty sure what I'm going to say up here tonight. I'm not pretty sure what you're going to hear, though. There's a story I like to tell you.
It's a story about a state trooper. And that state trooper, he's parked on the side of the road. He's just doing what state troopers do, waiting for somebody to do something wrong.
Along come this boy in a pickup truck. The back of that pickup truck is full of penguins. And that state trooper, smart as they are, he knew there's something wrong with that.
And he pulled that boy over. He said, "Son, where are you going with all those penguins in the back of that pickup truck?" He said, "Officer, we're not going anywhere. We're just out for a ride." He said, "Boy, you can't take penguins for a ride.
What's wrong with you? 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 that pickup truck again.
Back of that pickup truck, still full of penguins. But on that day, all those penguins got sunglasses on. So that trooper pulled them over again.
He said, "Son, I thought I told you take those penguins to the zoo." He said, "Yes, sir, I didn't. Today, we're going to the beach. >> My name's Tim Taly.
I'm an alcoholic >> and I approve this message. 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 in his life. And what that did for me at an early age, it gave 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. I had 13 stepmothers. I went to over 20 schools.
I never got out of the eighth grade. I left home when I was 14 years old. I've had an opportunity in my life to spend time in boy's homes, detention homes, city jails, county jails, workhouses, psych wards, treatment centers, and penitentiies.
I spent 12 years of my life either locked up somewhere or on probation or parole. I've been married three times and divorced twice. And you know, not one of those things I just talked about are the reason I came through the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Those were merely the situation that my disease of alcoholism created in my life. But on June 23rd, 1982, I woke up at the bottom. It's the bottom they talk about in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous.
That'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. That's not a high bottom, but it's not a low bottom either.
You see, that's my bottom. My bottom is the only bottom that I need to concern myself with in the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. I never want to be in a position in my sobriety to sit in a room of alcoholics, listen to a speaker speak and 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 the room, as soon as I can make myself believe I'm unique in any way from anybody else that's sitting in the room of Alcoholics Anonymous, then I have reservations. There was an old-timer in Brie, Ohio, where I got sober, used to tell me all the time, he said,"Tim, you know, if you got reservations, son, you must be going somewhere, huh?
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 a backyard of a lady's house in Rocky River, Ohio. I had my last drink at 30. I got sick.
I blacked out. I passed out. And I woke up at home in bed.
17 years of use and abuse. The only difference in 17 years was where I woke up the next morning. Most of the days were pretty much the same.
But I know one thing for sure today. I know God wants me in Alcoholics Anonymous. See, that woman came out of her back door.
She found me laying in her backyard. She took me inside. She cleaned me up.
She laid me down. Found out who I was. Called my mom and let my mama know I was okay.
17 years later, I came in into the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. I was sober about two weeks. I went to a meeting.
That lady was speaking at the meeting. My very first drunk. I found myself in the arms of Alcoholics Anonymous.
And she did for me that night what she knew how to do. The people at her home group told her to help a drunk. And that's what she did.
When she found me in her backyard, she was sober 30, 60 days, something like that. And all she knew how to do was help a drunk. That's what they told her.
Help a drunk. They didn't tell her only help. The young drunks are the old drunks.
The black drunks are the white drunks. the male drunks or the female drunks. They told her to help a drunk.
Period. And that's what she did that night. Do you know I still see that woman at meetings today?
She's over 80 years old and 40 years sober. And you know what she's doing? She's helping drunks.
Man, there's two things I ran from most of my life. I got a lot of them today. Still, I'm not real crazy about them, but I got a lot of them.
I don't run from them today. I deal with them. Those two things are responsibility and authority.
I don't like being responsible. Huh? It's a lot of responsibility being responsible.
And I don't like people telling me I'm supposed to be responsible. It seemed like in my life there was always somebody had an idea about Tim's life. How long my hair was supposed to be, how tight my jeans were supposed to be, how high heels on my boots were supposed to be, smoke, don't smoke, drink, don't drink, come home, don't come home.
Everybody had an idea about Tim's life. No one asked me. 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 cuz I knew what my problem was.
It wasn't what I was doing or who I was doing it with. I didn't have my real father in my life. If I could get my real father in my life, everything would be okay.
And I made my way to New Orleans. I contact contacted Alcoholics Anonymous. They contacted my daddy and they put us together.
And all of a sudden, I had a father and he had a son. And we tried to be those two things, but neither one of us ever been either of those two things before. We did the best we could.
We just didn't know what we was doing. And we tried for about 3 months. And then my daddy started drinking again.
And I learned something. See, I used to come home drunk, pass out in my mother's living room at 13 or 14 years old, and next morning she'd scream at me, "Son, don't drink. Please don't drink.
You'll get what your father has." I never saw what she was trying to keep me from getting until I watched my daddy drink. And I watched him get drunk. And I watched him go into the DTS.
And I watched the people from Alcoholics Anonymous come into our little house and take him away and put him in Bridge House in New Orleans. 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 daddy 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 just hitchhiked all over this country. If I didn't like it in New Orleans, I went to Los Angeles. I didn't like Los Angeles, I went to Dallas.
I didn't like Dallas, I went to Miami. I just hitchhiked for four years cuz all of a sudden there I was. I got no responsibility.
I've got no authority. Got the rest of my life to do whatever it is I think I want to do. I'm in the city of New Orleans and it's 1966.
I guess I was a hippie. At least that's what folks called me. Unless I was like in northern Alabama or West Texas or something.
There's another word in front of hippie they always used. But 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. Now, the big book tells me that my expectations are inversely proportional to my serenity level. And I don't know about you, but I do know about me.
And I can tell you this about me. If I get exactly I mean exactly what I think I'm supposed to have exactly when I think I'm supposed to have it. I'm a pretty happy guy.
But as soon as I don't, my expectations aren't met. My serenity level goes down. All of a sudden, I don't want to play anymore.
I don't like what I'm doing anymore. All of a sudden, I want to go home. I want to settle down.
And I want some of the stuff I'm seeing on the other sides of the freeways. People in their backyard, they're playing, they're playing with their kids. They're mowing the grass or painting the garage.
I want some of the stuff from the billboards. You know, the billboards that tell us if we drive this kind of car, we're okay. We live in that kind of neighborhood, we're okay.
Or if we wear these kind of clothes, we're okay. All of a sudden, I thought I wanted some of that stuff. Cuz if I had the stuff, you'd see me with it.
I know you read the billboards, too. You knew if I had it, you'd know I was okay because the billboards told you you'd have to be okay if you had it. You'd tell me I was okay because I could never tell myself.
I'm outside Salt Lake City. I'm with a buddy of mine and we're coming home. I just don't want to do this anymore.
We got dropped off up in the mountains in the middle of Utah. There's nothing at this offramp. No gas station, no convenience store, no houses, no nothing.
This is a road that goes up into the mountains in the middle of Utah somewhere. And that's where we got dropped off. We slept there that night, woke up the next morning, about froze to death.
It's cold in the mountains in the morning. So we walked down the on-ramp, started hitchhiking home. At the bottom of that on-ramp in the middle of Utah, in the middle of the mountains at 6:00 in the morning, all by itself sits a six-pack of Olympia beer.
I know God wants me an Alcoholics Anonymous. And that was my next drink. I drank three beers.
He drank three beers. I told him, you know, if I ever get home alive, I'm settling down. I want to marry the first girl I see.
That's the American dream. You got to have a girl. I got back home.
My stepfather wasn't home, so I was allowed in the house. I changed my clothes. I took a shower.
Borrowed my mother's car. Drove to the corner to pick up a pack of cigarettes. Picked the young lady up hitchhiking.
And we got married. Oh, we didn't get married that day, but we might have. But in the state of Ohio, the male had to be 21 or have parental consent, and a 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. This was a it was a simple marriage.
I can't tell you today if I loved her. I really can't. But I can tell you this that I live in the van, my brother's van, in the driveway of his par my parents' home.
She lives wherever she can because she just doesn't want to go home. And it brought us together and we weren't alone anymore. And just not being alone was enough for us to get married at that time in our lives.
Just not being alone. And it was a simple marriage. I got up in the morning, I got drunk.
She got up in the morning, she got drunk. Then we beat each other up. And we did that one day at a time for about seven years.
But out that seven years, I was away a lot. I traveled a lot. I like to travel.
I it just then I was traveling different places and other people were deciding where I was traveling to. It's the funniest thing. I'd walk into a room like this.
There'd be a guy sitting in the front of the room and he have a long black coat on and every time he did this, I went somewhere. I just always in trouble, man. I had a bad attitude.
I was a child of the 60s. I I just had a horrible attitude. I got a report card home from the third grade.
Y'all remember your report cards? You'd have to take them home. Teacher would snitch on you on the back.
You'd have to give it to your mom and have your mom sign it. My third grade report card says this bad attitude. Says Timothy does not play well with others.
I'm eight years old. I haven't had a drink yet, but they know I got a problem. I was just always in trouble.
Well, I got arrested. Seemed like for 12 years of my life, I really only did two things. I got ready to go to jail and I got ready to come home from being in jail.
I wasn't a violent criminal. I was a stupid criminal. I got arrested for stupid stuff, you know.
I got arrested for stuff like verbal abuse of a police officer. That was in a little town called Parma, Ohio. I got arrested for obscene finger language to a police officer.
And that was in Parm, Ohio. And if y'all ain't never been to Parm, Ohio, I'm going to tell you this about Parm, Ohio. They got no sense of humor in Parm, Ohio.
I was at a meeting one night. I was about two years sober. And I don't know about anybody else.
I was two years sober. I was pretty close to the smartest person in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I got to a meeting.
I made sure y'all knew just how smart I was and how much I knew about Alcoholics Anonymous. When I was at a meeting about two years sober, and there was a speaker talking, an old friend of mine. He was an old-timer.
And he was just one of those guys. He I just like being by him. He didn't even have to be talking to me.
I just wanted to be by him and listen to what he was saying. He had a past a lot like mine, only it was like 30 years before mine. You know, I was in jail with all my heroes.
Machine Gun Kelly and, you know, all those guys. You know, I always thought I'd be the next Al Capone. I didn't wind up being anything but alcoholic.
And you know how you go to a meeting and you hear somebody say something? You know, you've heard them say that exact thing 50 times. Now it makes sense.
Right now it makes sense. Vic was speaking that night and and he stood up here and I'd heard Vic 50 times anyway and he was standing up here and he said, "I've been arrested 63 times. I wasn't a good criminal." Man, 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 weren't real good at what they was doing.
You know what I was good at? getting caught. Now, in that verbal abuse case of a police officer in Parma, I learned something.
I learned something else. You see, I decided to represent myself in that case. So funny.
I know. I saw enough judge for the defense. Perry Mason, I can handle this.
And I went to court and I called witnesses and I cross-examined witnesses. I gave my final arguments to the judge. Y'all 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 an old lakeside courthouse in downtown Cleveland.
He sentenced me to 20 to 40 years in the penitentiary. And I took a big sigh of relief that day. I felt good that day.
I felt better than I had in a long time that day because I knew something. I can hear my wife and my mother in the back of the courtroom. They're crying.
They don't think I should go away. And they certainly don't think I should go away for that long. But they don't know what I know.
You see, 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 on that day. That judge had no idea that there was no way on earth for him to punish me as much as I punish me.
And I was ready to just go anywhere where I might have a better chance against myself. Now, in 1976, the laws in Ohio changed. My sentence changed.
Went from a 20 to 40 to a 1 to 10. And 3 years later, they sent me home. When I came home, all my stuff was gone.
All the stuff I had to have to prove I was part of this society to you so you'd know I was okay 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 that just left me. And I didn't do anything for the next 30 or 40 days but drink.
I crawled into a bottle. I got as blacked out, passed out as many times that day as I needed to. I crawled into that bottle.
But not once in my life have I ever crawled into a bottle of alcohol to hide from you. I have never crawled into a bottle of alcohol to hide from them. I got as drunk as I could, blacked out as I could, passed out as I could.
As many times that day as I needed to, I crawled into that bottle 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-ro. And I was an ex-son.
And I failed at every one of those things. But if I was drunk enough, I didn't have to look. Finally, a friend of mine came over and he just wasn't going to let me stay there anymore.
Almost physically took me out of my house. He said, "I'm not going to let you sit in that chair and drink yourself to death. You're out of jail.
It's time to start living again. You're coming with me." He took me down to the flats in Cleveland. This is a long time ago.
This is before they ruined the flats in Cleveland. What Bobby say Thursday night? They yuppied it all up.
You know, used to be a place where you went to get drunk. You rode your motorcycle down there and you went down there to get drunk. You didn't go down there to have dinner.
You didn't go down there to with your boat. You certainly didn't go down there to drink anything from something called a micro brewery for Christ's sake. Huh?
You drank Jim Bean bourbon and pass blue ribbon beer and you got drunk and that's what you did in the flats. All the bar room floors were flooded. I'm not sure with what.
I got an idea. But and we walked into a little bar called the Pirates Cove. My cousin's band was playing that night.
They were playing a Marshall Tucker song. I'm drinking past Blue Ribbon Beer. I'm about half in the bag.
And this pretty little girl walked past me and she smiled at me. You know, I smiled right back at her. I was in jail a long time.
And that was her. That was my future ex-wife. That's who that was.
Let me tell you about my second wife cuz she has some stuff with her when she came. She came into my home and she has some stuff I'm sure I must have had at some point in my life. I just don't know where it went.
She brought things with her like purity. She brought honesty. She brought love.
And she brought unselfishness. These are the things she had when she came. And four years later, she left.
And all she had to take with her was a disease of alcoholism. It stripped every decent thing she had. I'm not the only one I hurt when I pick up a drink.
And I know that today. I touch a lot of lives. I tried for a couple years.
I had a decent parole officer. He didn't bother me too much. He's more interested in playing with my Doberman and wondering what I was doing.
And and I got a job and I was moving up in the company. And I went to their little trade school to learn more. And I never missed a day.
And I never called in sick. And I worked any overtime they wanted me to for two years. Two years I worked.
Are you paying attention to me? Two years. After doing that for two years, working that hard, I'm sitting in my living room one night drunk, surveying my dynasty.
Huh? You know, after 2 years, I don't have a house on the lake. There's not two Lincoln sitting in my driveway.
I'm not wearing the right kind of clothes. Don't belong to the right kind of clothes. And I'm certainly not running around with the right kind of people.
So, I came to a conclusion that those things are for other people. No matter what I did, I was just never supposed to have them anyway. It just didn't make any difference what I did.
So, I got up the next morning, called my boss, and quit my job. There was really no reason to work that hard if I was never going to have them things anyway. The last two years of my drinking aren't too exciting.
I got up, I got drunk. I got up again, I got drunk again that day. It's just what I did.
My wife lasted for a couple years and then she had to go. She did the best she could, but then she had to go. The end of my drinking's like this.
I got a Doberman at this time in my life. I got a dumb Doberman at this time in my life. I said that at a meeting once in Cleveland.
A guy came up to me after the meeting. He said, "Dumb Doberman is redundant." You know, I went home, looked up redundant, and he's right. See, I'd come home and I'd get that dog and I'd take that dog out in the yard, tie him to the tree, and about 20 minutes later, I'd go back out and get the dog.
Soon as he walked in the house, he peed on the floor. I don't know what he thought I put him on that tree for. He probably stood out there the whole time wondering that himself.
I came home one night in a blackout and uh I got up the next morning. I called my wife just like I did every morning to see if she left me any wine money or cigarette money laying around the house and she was frantic that morning. She said, "Where's the dog?" I said, "The dog's laying next to the bed right where he always is.
What's wrong?" She goes, "The dog was going to hurt you last night." Dog was mad. The dog was showing his teeth. I was really afraid.
I said, "What do you mean? That's I'm that dog's best friend. and that dog wouldn't hurt me.
I said, "What happened?" Well, apparently I came home that night in a blackout and I walked into the bedroom and I peed on the bedroom floor. You know that dog's probably thinking that dirty sob's kicked my ass a 100 times for doing that. You know, even my dogs got a resentment, man.
You know, you know those family gatherings we have, maybe it's Christmas or Easter, Thanksgiving, whatever it is. We'll all go somewhere. We'll sit at a table.
We'll hold hands with our family and say, "Grace." We'll share a meal with each other. And then afterwards, we'll sit around and we'll share what's going on in each other's lives. This is what happens at my house.
I pull into my parents' driveway and I blow the horn. When they hear the horn inside, my little brother will come out of the back door. He'll have a paper plate in his hand and it'll be wrapped in tin foil.
And he'll hand me my holiday meal. and I'm permitted to sit in my car 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 or a napkin. I can't hold their hands and say grace. And they certainly don't want me to share anything with them that is 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 down and stopped me from hitting my bottom.
Every time they allowed me not to be responsible for my own actions, they were killing me. See, my parents loved me so much they let me go. I don't have any children.
I can 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 when I didn't know what to do in my life. I always did the same thing.
I made a phone call. It's always to the same person. I don't know if I made it a 100, a thousand, or 10,000 times, but it's always the same call.
It was, "Mom, help." And my mom came. I couldn't go to her, but she'd come to me. She walked into my little house.
I'm kneeling on the living room floor. I'm crying uncontrollably. I'm shaking apart.
I have hepatitis and I weigh 112bs. 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." And my mother has it, too. We made some phone calls and I found myself in an emergency room.
I got a doctor playing with my liver. He says, "Son, you got an alcohol problem." I said, "No, sir. Not me.
I'm vibrating on the table." Not me. And we're arguing back and forth. He said, "Son, you got alcohol problem." And I just I told y'all before I didn't want to be an alcoholic.
And I told him I'd be whatever he wanted me to be, but I'm just not going to be an alcoholic. He said, "I don't care what you want to be or don't want to be. Call yourself or don't want to call yourself.
you don't stop drinking, you're going to die. And I heard him say that and he sent me to a psych ward on the east side of Cleveland. I spent 10 days in that psych ward.
Three days in restraints. I'm powerless over alcohol. My life had become unmanageable.
That sounded a little bit like step one, didn't it? Just a little bit. They got me in restraints.
just straps, not four-point restraints or anything. I tried to hurt myself the night before and I think they were just going to make it a little hard on me if I thought I wanted to go somewhere. I got a psychiatrist in my psych ward.
I got the happiest psychiatrist on earth in my psych ward and he comes to visit me every morning. Happy Tim, how you doing? Good to see you.
Isn't it a wonderful day? Huh? Now, I don't know about the rest of y'all.
6:00 in the morning in a psychord on the east side of Cleveland tied to a bed. I'm not real spiritual, man. You know, I told him what I thought and he just did what psychiatrists do.
Y'all know what they do, right? They write in their charts. They nod their heads.
It's what they do. And they go away. Then they make you take that test.
Did you ever take that test? Man, I'd like to have a nickel for every time I took the test. Every time I went somewhere, they made me take that test.
The MMPI test got 600 questions on it, man. You know, there's only one question on an MMPI test I can't answer. It's my favorite question on the whole test.
It says, "Do you urinate more than most people? I don't know. I'm the one supposed to be crazy.
Right now, on the third day, that psychiatrist came into my room. He undid the straps. I never want to forget this day.
He sat on the edge of my bed. He put his chart in the window sill. 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 Alcoholics Anonymous.
I know God wants me here. And 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. And I know without the Wii, I don't have a chance, man. 7 days later, he sent me home.
He gave my prescription. I think it's the most valuable thing anybody's ever given me. 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. I told y'all what I do when I don't know what to do.
I called my mama. Mom, I got to go to a AA meeting. She said, well, I'll come get you.
See, my mom knows all about Alcoholics Anonymous. She went to meetings with my daddy in the 40s and the 50s. There's been a big 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 at your doorstep.
She left me with some advice I want to share with you. She said, "I'm not coming back to get you. You go to the front table.
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. 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 a chairperson.
She came up, asked me if I'd read the traditions. 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 my sponsor 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 going to need to know about that.
Then he said, "If you sat in a chair, you put it away. If you had a coffee cup, you throw it away. If you dirted an ashtray, you empty it." He said, "I want you to read one page of the big book every day.
Don't turn the page until tomorrow. Read that page as many times that day as you think you want to or need to. Do not turn the page until tomorrow." And maybe, just maybe, in 164 days, you might know something about the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous.
You see, 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 and 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 when you haven't had a drink, you're going to kneel back down and you're going to 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. Whenever I wanted anything, she'd say, "What's the magic word, Timmy?" I had no idea how much magic those words held till I came here to you. My sponsor asked me that question.
You know, I'm a firm believer in this. Newcomers come in here, we tell them there's no such thing as a stupid question. Then we ask him 10 stupid questions.
And my sponsor, he asked me that question. I know your sponsor asked you. He said, "Do you want what I have?" I don't know, man.
What do you got? Do I want what you have? I had no idea what he was trying to give me.
All I know is my first sponsor sponsor had a brand new tornado, wore a Rolex watch, had a steward, his four wife, had the prettiest green eyes I ever saw in my life. Do I want what you got? What page is that on, pal?
Huh? That's what I want to know. I had no idea what he was trying to give me.
You know, when I knew what it was, what he wanted me to have was the first time I gave it away. That's all he wanted. He wanted that feeling of uselessness and self-pity to leave.
That's all he wanted for me. And I didn't know what he was trying to ask me. Cuz when I came here, I did not want what you had.
And I don't think it's the newcomer's responsibility to want anything to come through that door. That's not his responsibility. But it is my responsibility as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous to have something for him when he gets here.
Something attractive. Cuz all I knew for sure when I got here, I didn't want what you had. But what I knew for sure is I didn't want what I had either.
That I knew for sure. I came to believe by watching you that my life could change if I do what you do and that's what I did. Then I knelt down with my sponsor and I said a third-step prayer.
I didn't like the third step. Wasn't crazy about third step prayer for a long time. Argued with him about it all the time.
So I don't know about anybody else. First time you looked at the third step and read the third step prayer. You know what went through my mind first?
What if it works? Then what? I don't know what that means.
You know, you're going to have to tell me what's coming next before I kneel down with you. And he gave me something. He said, "If you have one, you'll understand the third step." And I always have one with me.
That's a penny. This a special penny. This penny is from 1918.
That's the year my mama was born. And if you look at the back of that penny, you're going to see the Lincoln memorial and it's going to say 1 cent. But you know what happens as soon as you turn it over on the front of the penny.
It says, "In God we trust." That's the third step. The step's not about God's will. It's about my will.
Am I willing to trust God with it? I can tell you that today I am. And once I can do that, there's another word down that penny a little ways.
That word's liberty. And that's the freedom I can have if I can just trust God a day at a time. I started on that fourth step, but that's not one you want to start right into, right?
You got to take your time with that four step, man. You really do. Cuz you got to read all them books.
If we ain't got nothing at Alcoholics Anonymous, man, we got books, don't we? We got blue books. We got blue and blue books.
Little blue books, little red books, little green books. We got books. We got lists.
We got guides. We got experts now in Alcoholics Anonymous. And you got to read all them books.
Talk to every old-timer in the world. Well, you're going to mess four step up, aren't you? Nope.
There's only one way to do the four step wrong. Don't do it. That's the only way to do it wrong.
Don't do it. I read all them books. I talked to every old-timer in Ohio.
I'm almost 25 years sober today. And I still don't know what Mr. Jones's problem is.
I picked the phone up one night. It's my sponsor. He said, "How's that forep coming, Tim?" I said, "So, it's coming right along." He said, "Good, good." And then he gave me some information.
You don't want to give your newcomer too much of this. He said, "It'll get done in God's time." And you know, that's exactly what I was thinking, too, about that poor step. You know, and I hung the phone up.
About 5 minutes later, my phone rang again. It's my sponsor. He said, "How's that forep coming, Tim?" I said, "It's coming right along, but I got information now, right?" I said, "It'll get done in God's time." He said, "That's a good thing, cuz God's time is tomorrow morning at 9:00." That's just kind of guy my sponsor was.
He's always helping. You know what I mean? He'd sit behind you at the meeting.
They say, "We need coffee help next week." And he raised my hand. I did a fourth step and I did a fifth step. And I understand those today.
Then I had to let it go. Now I knew what I did. I knew why I did it.
And now I had to be ready for it to go away. But I couldn't do that on my own. I had to humbly ask a power greater than myself.
Because we're all like TVs, don't you think? Y'all got TVs at home? They're a little different now.
You know them buttons on the back of your TV, the ones you're not supposed to mess with, >> y'all mess with them. >> And no matter how much more you mess with those buttons, you're never going to get them back to where they're supposed to be. And you're going to sooner or later have to call in a power greater than yourself, the TV repair man, to come over and put those buttons back in order.
My God sent me to the eighth step and told me to look at my list. And I did. And I'm looking at the list of the people I need to make amends to.
But you know this guy over here, I did that to him, but he did this to me. That's a push, right? Oh, we're even now.
And I just scratched his name right off of there. And I'm just steady scratching names off my list, waiting for my sponsor to come to the house. And by the time he gets there, there's nobody left but my mama.
He says, "You don't understand this, Tim. You got to learn to forgive. Until you can learn to forgive, you can't ask for forgiveness.
First, you have to be able to forgive everybody that ever wronged you. And then and only then do you get to make amends and ask for forgiveness from other people." And that's what I did. And I went out and I made direct amends to the people I've wronged.
And you know, before I was halfway through, those promises started coming true. Just like the book tells me. I got that Lincoln at the house today.
I keep it disguised as a Mercury, though. That's just so no one will steal it. You might see it if you ever come to Cleveland and you might think that's no Lincoln.
That's a Mercury. But remember this, there's only one person here right now that's looking out of your eyes. 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 that's looking. I don't know who has your message today. Do you?
Are you waiting for somebody with 50 years? Maybe the person that God sent with your message today isn't even going to get sober for 50 more minutes. I don't know who has your message.
I know this today. I know that if somebody's talking and I can hear them that God wants me to listen. I got a message on the first step about 15 years ago.
I was invited to speak in Indiana. And I and I didn't want to drive my car cuz my car probably wouldn't have made it to Indiana really. But and my wife couldn't come with me that weekend.
So I took one of my new guys with me and I took my wife's car. She had a Honda Civic then. You know, in a Honda Civic, what what do you get in a Honda Civic?
Three, 400 miles to a gallon in a Honda Civic, right? You drive a Honda Civic pretty much from now on, never had to put gas in it. I'm cruising through Indiana.
I went past the sign said my exit was about six exits away. And I looked down and the gas said empty. And I'm thinking, well, yeah, empty like in a real car.
Empty. You know what I mean? Honda Civic, you've got to have a 100 miles left when it says empty and there's only 50 left in Indiana.
I'm fine. I didn't give it another thought until I went underneath the sign said my exit was 2 miles and as soon as I went underneath that sign, I ran out of gas. I coasted for another mile and I pulled over to the side of the road.
So there I am in the middle of Indiana, out of gas, side of the road, 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 of about four hours telling him all about responsibility and stuff like that, you know, but I had to do something. I couldn't sit in Indiana the rest of my life.
So I turned and I looked at him. He just looked at me and grinned. You know how they are.
He said, "We're powerless, ain't we? I said, "Yeah, what do you think we ought to do about it?" He said, "I think we better admit it." And he was right, cuz if I don't admit there's a problem, I'm never going to get anywhere. I could have sat there the rest of my life and gone, and I never would have got anywhere.
I don't know who has your message today. Do you? Are you listening?
I live my life this way. I take one word out of the last three steps. Continue, improve, and practice.
Now, each one of those words is an action word. You got to do something if you want something. My book tells me half measures a veil mean nothing.
Doesn't say half measures avail. It says nothing. I don't know about you.
I don't want any more nothing. I've had more nothing in my life than I want. I want everything my God wants me to have.
And you know, I don't even know what that is. But if he wants it for me, I want it, too. There's a difference in my life today.
I want to share that with you. I go to the prisons a lot. Haven't been re I just started back going real regular recently.
I hadn't gone for a little while. I was sick. I couldn't go.
But years ago, I was at a pen penitentiary and a guy came up to me after I talked and he said, "Hey, can I call you?" I said, "Sure, you can call me. I forgot when you call somebody from a penitentiary, you got to call collect." But I'll accept a collect phone call in my life today. And I want to tell you why.
April 10th, 1989, I went to a meeting. There was a young lady speaking at the meeting that night. And I don't know what your sponsor told me, but my sponsor told me this on numerous occasions.
He said, "Tim, if you go to a meeting and you hear something you like, take it home. And on October 16th, 1993, we got married. I married a young lady in the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous.
I married a very intelligent woman in the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous, a very educated woman in the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. Now, a lot of her friends didn't think she's so smart when she said she'd marry me, but my wife is very, very educated. My wife got more letters after her name is just unbelievable.
She got a a BA, she got an MA, she got an MACT, she was ABD, then she got a PhD, and then she got what is become my favorite, and that's a J O. Now, 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?" I had to stop and think about that for a minute because I never had before. And I thought, "No, no, don't intimidate me.
Not even a little bit. I'm proud as hell of my wife's accomplishments. Because 19 years ago, when she came through those doors, 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 in her home group that told her, "Once you come in here, you can be anything you want to be if you're willing to do the work." I can't be intimidated by that.
I can only be proud. Proud that I can even belong to an organization that can make something like that happen. I'm so proud I got new license plates.
You know those vanity plates? Aren't those stupid? I got some.
You know what my license plates say? They say PhD GE D. I got letters after my name, too.
>> We had a wedding. It was an AA wedding. It started with the serenity prayer.
It ended with the Lord's prayer. It was a reading from the 12 and 12 in between. I was reminded on that day of the time when I was in the penitentiary in 1975 and they walked me into the bullpen and up to the phone for the first time and said, "You can make a phone call.
You can call anybody in the world you want to. You can talk for this long, but you have to call collect." And I stood there and I dialed and I dialed and I dialed until I didn't have any time left. You know, I couldn't find one person on this earth that would accept to collect phone call from me at that time in my life.
Not one. But we invited 320 people to that wedding. Do you know how many came?
About 350. That's the difference. Huh?
That's the difference from then to now. That's the difference in my life. But there's a difference in me.
About seven or eight years ago, my stepfather got sick and I had to become his caregiver. And there weren't two people on this earth that hated each other more than me and him. If you're out there and you're new and you're you hear people talk from the podium, you hear people you see people with stuff and you're thinking, man, they getting this and this is happening in their life and that's happening in their life.
Why isn't it happening fast enough for me? Listen to me when I tell you this. I was sober 9 and a half years before I was permitted to drive in the state of Ohio.
I was sober 16 and 12 years before I was permitted back into my parents' home. These things will happen. I promise you they will if you don't leave.
I promise. My stepfather got Alzheimer's disease and it's a terrible thing. And Alanon once told me, "It's a lot like watching us deteriorate." And it was.
And me and my mother, we tried for a long time to take care of him, but it just got too hard. He was escaping from the house and the police were bringing him home and he was taking doors off of hinges and it just got too dangerous for both of them. So, we found a nice place for him.
They have a VA hospital, a VA nursing home in uh Sanduski, Ohio. That's just a wonderful, wonderful place. They've got three Alzheimer's units up there and and everyone is wonderful.
So, we had them out there and Sanduski is about an hour from my house. So, on the weekends, my life became taking my mother to Sanduski and spending the weekend with her and my stepfather. And that's just what we did on weekends.
He was out there about a year and a half and he passed away. That left me with an 83-year-old mother at home. And my job became taking care of my mother.
And mom wanted to stay at home. She wasn't doing too bad. And she told me once, we're talking about nursing homes and the like.
And I said, "Mom, don't worry about it. I won't put you in a nursing home." first couple years of my life, you changed my diaper and cleaned up my messes. If I got to do that for you the last couple of years of your life, I'd be happy to." And her response to me, as only a mother could say, was, "The first few years of your life, but I was able to do that.
I was in a position where I was able to do that. And I got a a woman to come in during the day to take care of her. In the evenings, I'd go over there and I'd make her dinner." walk her dog, write her checks, whatever she needed to do, get the TV set up for her, get her into bed with her, put her pajamas on, and that's what I did.
Mom broke her hip and had a couple of strokes, and she was getting slower and moving slow, but she still was pretty clear. And that's what I did during the week. Now, on the weekends, I spent the whole weekend with my mom and I'd cook her three meals and do whatever else she needed to do.
And we'd just sit and chat and she'd tell me the story that she told me yesterday a lot of the times. But I'd sit and I'd listen and we'd talk and we'd watch Regis reruns. She didn't know they were reruns, but we watched them.
She just thought she was getting smarter. She knew more of the answers, you know. And that's what I did on weekends.
is I took care of my mom. Do you know what I like to do on weekends? I like to play golf.
That's what I like to do. I haven't been able to in a long time. I I partly because of my mom.
And then I got hepatitis C and I went through interferon treatment for that. And that stuff would just suck the life out of you. You can hardly, you know, get to your car, let alone go play 18 holes of golf.
And uh so I haven't been able to golf in a long time, but I have friends that still still do. and they'd call me on occasion and invite me to go with them on a Sunday morning or something. And one of them called me one day and said this.
He said, 'We have an opening in a forsome this Sunday morning. Would you like to come with us? I said, well, you know, I'd like to, but I'll be with my mom on Sunday morning.
And he said, "Do you have to be with your mom on Sunday morning?" I said, "No, no, I don't. I get to be with my mom. I get to be there.
I don't have to be there. My mom got pretty sick a couple years ago and on June 1st, 2005, we're in a hospice and I was kneeling next to my mother's bed holding her hand. And at 4:45 on that day, the angels came.
God took her hand out of mine. And I was able to do something. Something I learned to do here and I was let go and let God.
You know, we got a lot of purposes in Alcoholics Anonymous. We've got a primary purpose, got a singleness of purpose, but my favorite is our real purpose. And that's to become of maximum service to my God and those about me.
And I don't know why you think I took care of my mom. Maybe you think it was because I such a great cook. That wasn't it.
If she was alive, she'd tell you that. Maybe you think it's because I was in prison three years and she never missed a visit. Maybe you think that's why.
Maybe you think it was because of my vast medical knowledge that if there was an emergency, I could help. Now, I have written some prescriptions in my time, but that wasn't it. I want to tell you why I think I took care of my mother.
Because I've known a loneliness such as few men know. Loneliness is a disease of the elderly. Is there somebody in your life every now and again you think, you know, I should call them.
I should see how they're doing. Quit thinking about it. Do it.
It's really hard to make amends at the funeral home. So, I'm going to leave you with what Ben started you with, and I think it's the most important thing I say. What you do between a serenity prayer and a Lord's prayer will never ever be as important as what you're doing between the Lord's Prayer and a serenity prayer.
Thank you very much, Edisto, for having me. >> Thank you for listening to Sober Sunrise. If you enjoyed today's episode, please give it a thumbs up as it will help share the message.
Until next time, have a great day.