Tim shares his journey of realizing he was an alcoholic in rehab in 1987. Meeting a fellow alcoholic, Joe, helped him have a moment of clarity. He discusses his struggles with alcohol, getting sober, attending AA meetings, and finding support from old-timers. Tim shares experiences from different meetings he attended, emphasizing the importance of sobriety. He reflects on the impact of AA in his life and his decision to share his story through podcasts and a potential book.
All right, we're recording. All right, this is the initial As Tim Sees It podcast. I am glad I know I'm an alcoholic. So, in January 1987, I found myself in rehab of a local hospital that was in Erie, Pennsylvania. I was hiding from an angry wife. She had discovered that I'd been spending a lot of money on cocaine. And, well, I spent 23 days in this rehab. But the interesting thing about it, the day after I arrived, they brought in a fellow named Joe.
And Joe had the same drug and alcohol use history as I did. And after an hour of conversation, I realized I was alcoholic. So I had that moment of clarity that I believe is crucial to getting sober. I recognized that I had this problem. And at the same time, I recognized that Joe and others had a solution. So it wasn't, I mean, to know you're alcoholic, that's scary. You know, it's fucking scary. Am I allowed to say fuck? Absolutely.
The reason I'm looking over here, I have an engineer over here who is keeping me straight. Anyway, Joe and I talked, and I became alcoholic. I had never really attempted to quit drinking a drug, and even though there were plenty of times I knew I should. But it wasn't until I got caught, and then I did it. And since then, it still bothers me. I still don't understand it. There's no empathy for me. When someone comes into AA and realizes, admits they're alcoholic and drinks again, it's hard for me to understand that.
Because this process is really just kind of cut and dried. But then again, it isn't. Because I'm atheist, and that was a problem for me. But I just ignored it. I'd been ignoring religion all my life, well, since I was 15 years old anyway. Anyway, as time goes by, I'll tell more about that time and rehab and all that stuff. Because if this works, I'll do more podcasts. Well, even if it doesn't work, I'm going to do some more podcasts, and we'll find out what happens, okay? And I actually decided to write a book about AA called As Tim Sees It.
When I first moved up here to Rochester, I met a wonderful woman, and I've been living up here since I met her back in 07. And so this is where I decided to write a book, and now I've decided to do this instead. And Tom tells me that I might end up writing a book anyway. So we'll talk about how this whole thing happened, you know. Like I say, I got sober in Erie, Pennsylvania, and I moved up here to Rochester, actually Fairport, a little town outside of Rochester.
And when I was in Erie and told a friend of mine that I was coming up here, she said, well, you've got to go to the Yellow House. And I said, okay. And I found myself at the Yellow House for an early bird meeting, and that's a 7.30 a.m. meeting. There are earlier birds, but that's the one I went to. And at the end of the meeting, I walked out onto the porch. And I walked out because since I first got sober, I actually never stayed for the Lord's Prayer.
I found it appalling that an organization that purported to allow you to have whatever higher power you want would close with a particular religious prayer, the Lord's Prayer. So I just didn't ever participate. And sometimes I got some shit for that, but other times. Anyway, this day, I walk out, and this old-timer who turned out to be as long sober as I was at the time, which was 20 years, he said, where are you going? I said, I'm not going anywhere.
I'm just not participating in the Lord's Prayer. He says, we don't do that here. So that's how the early birds became my first home group up in Rochester, New York. Many years later, we have another meeting up here called the Freethinkers that I helped found that is another home group. I don't know how you can have so many home groups, but I've always done that. Anyway, the Yellow House had a porch. And I can't tell you how many times people are tossing in the meeting.
And they mentioned that they had a chat with Tim on the porch and were told what they ought to do, what they ought to do. So I've been doing this kind of thing for a long time. But I'm a very lucky guy. You know, the fact is, when I got here, I fell in with a bunch of old timers. I was told to talk to people that knew what they were doing. And that association with old timers, particularly a guy named Obie O'Brien, who, when I met him in 87, was 45 years sober.
He actually got sober after his wife read the Jack Alexander article that appeared in the Saturday Evening Post back in 1941. And this guy was the seventh guy in the EPA to get sober in Alcoholics Anonymous. And he was one of the cooler guys who went back and forth to Akron regularly. Because Akron was like the Mecca for AA in the world, or in the US. And if you were getting sober, you had to go there and meet Bob and meet Bill.
And they did that regularly. At least a couple times a month, he and the crew drove down to Akron. And so this was the guy that gave me the most information on how simple getting sober in AA really is. And he, like I have turned out to be, regular attendance at AA is something I do with my life. It's an avocation. I got sober with the generosity of men and women who were there when I got here.
And so I'm the same way. But that doesn't mean that you have to keep going to AA meetings the rest of your life to stay sober. That's another podcast. We're talking about what you need to do. One of the other things that I did from early on that I think has affected my, not just my sobriety, but my ability to be effective in AA is when I first got here, I had to travel back and forth to Chicago quite a bit.
And so I was up there every other week for four days a week. So I ended up with a sponsor up there and going to meetings with him every week. And that started a lifelong, and I still, because I'm still alive, I still go to meetings when I travel. There's a great meeting on Long Island in Bethpage. They call themselves the Bobblehead, which I think is the best AA meeting name I've ever heard. Because any meeting you ever go to, you'll see somebody going like this.
It happens everywhere. Visual note for our listeners that are only listening, Tim is bobbling his head like a bobblehead. Oh, that's right. And it's a great little meeting. But I've been to meetings all over because there's a lot of things you can learn, not just about Alcoholics Anonymous. If you're traveling and you don't know anybody in a particular city, you can find good restaurants. You can find places to go, things to do, as well as have a group of people as friends.
Well, here's a story. I had a brother, youngest brother. I still have Tom. He's alive. He was living in a little town in California called Tracy. And it was about an hour east of San Francisco up in the hills. And I mean, it's like they were growing windmills out there at the time. And I was only a year sober maybe. And so I'm in this town. And so I'm going to meetings, you know, staying with Tom for the first night.
But I couldn't stand his daybed. So I went to a hotel after that. So I went to a couple of meetings. And then he and I were downtown. Well, it's not a big downtown. We were downtown at a hardware store. And going to the hardware store, we ran into a guy I had met. Hi, Tim. How you doing? And in the hardware store, another person that I'd met at this meeting. Now, my brother had lived there for two months already.
And he didn't know anybody except the people that his work. And he thought that was kind of weird. But what I found in that meeting was something that has, again, meetings affect me. There was a guy that came in. He was totally drunk, just trashed. And he sat at the table. And there was a guy on either side of him who literally kept him from falling out of his chair for the whole meeting. And that meant something to me.
I saw AA at work in AA in a way I hadn't seen before. I told a story the other day. I went to a meeting when I was probably two years in, taking my wife and kids on vacation. Well, my wife wouldn't go on vacation with me before I got sober. But we drove out to Colorado Springs where I had been in the service site. I was an air traffic controller and worked in a tower out there.
I wanted to show it to my kids and stuff. Anyway, I went to a meeting while they were sleeping in one morning. And it was kind of a biker meeting up in Manitou Springs. And there was a guy that told his story. And he had been in a fatal automobile accident, which is a bad thing. Imagine. Well, imagine killing somebody in your car. But imagine then having to be your whole family that died. It was insane.
But just another nail in the coffin about drinking again. You just can't drink. It's too damn dangerous to drink. So again, going to meetings wherever you are, I found great. I've been to meetings in Scotland. I remember I went to a meeting in Scotland. I had been in Europe for the month with my kids. I had been divorced by then. But my kids and I and a girlfriend were traveling around Europe. I never went to a meeting for the month until it's just Ann and I again.
And we said, well, we'll go to a meeting because we're in Scotland. I can understand the people in Scotland. They speak English, right? I didn't understand anything they said, except when they were reading the steps and the traditions, I understood that stuff. And when other Americans that were there, tourists, spoke. But I never understood a word the Scottish guys spoke or gals. Anyway, so what else should I, I guess, keep talking about? Or why I'm doing this.
I better put a little bit more emphasis on why I'm doing this. As it might seem obvious, I've been around. I'm sober almost 39 years now. I haven't had a drink since I got here. I had a couple of millers on the way into the rehab. It's the last time I drank. I had no idea because I can't see the future at all. Like this afternoon, I'm not quite sure what's going to happen. But I haven't had a drink.
And I'm pretty sure now that I won't ever drink again because it just, it would hurt too many people. But I know stuff. I know simple ways to get sober. I know that being atheist in AA is a difficult thing for a lot of people. It's never been that way for me. I've never had an issue with saying I'm atheist or being atheist or not praying. That stuff. Even though at the very beginning, I have to admit, I did attempt to find a higher power.
Now, I went to see the priest after I got out of rehab. I went to see my priest. We had a conversation. I became a lector. I did everything I could to believe again. But my problem was that when I was a kid, I was raised Catholic. And the mass when I was a kid, because I'm old, was said in Latin. And I was okay with being a Catholic when they said the mass in Latin, because obviously I didn't speak Latin.
But as soon as they switched to the vernacular, started saying stuff that I understood, I remember as a 12-year-old looking left and looking right, do you guys actually believe this stuff? Because I couldn't. And then a couple years later, my mother is an English teacher, or was. She was a great gal. But she taught a class on religious literature in the public school. And part of the curriculum was a little book called What the Great Religion to Believe.
I was 15. I read this book. And it seemed to me they all believed the same stuff. They had different rituals and different this and different that. But they were all wrong in the same way. And so that's when I marked my atheism. I'm pretty sure it happened earlier. But 15 is when. So when I got to AAA 20 years later, and they said I had to have a gun, well, I'll give you a shot. But like I say, it didn't take.
I remember walking out of mass a free man about six months later. And I still go to church if there's a wedding or a funeral. That's the only time. But I don't abhor it. But I don't have much respect for it, though. I have to admit that. I don't. Well, so why are you going to respect everybody's beliefs? No. And let's go back to Alcoholics Anonymous for a moment. There's a chapter on, well, it's one of the addendums or what do they call them? Appendix.
Appendix. Yeah. Spiritual understanding or whatever. And one of the quotes is you can't. Contempt prior to investigation is stupid. And I agree with that. But contempt after investigation is another thing completely. Okay. So in any event, I've started this podcast. And I call it a temp season because I do see it differently than Bill. Let me give you, for instance, Bill uses the term sobriety. Now, we're talking in the big book now. Uses the term sobriety and not drinking as if they're synonyms.
And my experience, my observation, and my deep sense of what's real, they're very different things. Now, not drinking has to precede sobriety if you're alcoholic. I mean, you can be a sober person without ever drinking. But if you're someone who's alcoholic, you have to stop drinking before you can get sober. And you can't get sober without making an attempt to get sober. And this 12-step process is effective for that. I mentioned earlier that I'm involved with a free thinker group.
And I didn't know they existed until nine years ago, ten years ago. I was out on Long Island, again, going to a meeting that I'd never been to before. And I saw this one that fit my schedule. And I went to this free thinker meeting, which, by the way, I didn't like very much. Because all they did was talk about knock-knock. From my perspective, focusing on the 12 steps and on the fellowship of AA is what really makes this thing work.
I know I wouldn't be sober today if it wasn't for, well, I should mention dozens and scores of names of people. And the characters I've met through the years. It was the people in AA that allowed me, taught me, showed me, illustrated, answered my questions. All of the things that made me able to be sober. And one of the things I – I don't like a lot of the readings. Like the How It Works reading that's read in a lot of meetings around the country and maybe the world.
There's one line in that thing that I like. It says, probably no human power could have relieved my alcoholism. I know that it was the humans in AA who taught me how to live a sober life. There's no question about that. Now, is it okay to stop for a moment? Yeah. Okay. You can stop whenever you want. Okay. Well, I don't want to be ended yet. No, no. We're not ending yet. We can start because what we'll do is we can slice the audio wherever.
For instance, when you say – when you drop the F-bomb, I'm going to put in that we gave you permission, but we'll – there's a few seconds of dead air after that that we'll cut out. And there's another moment where I think there is just a transition that I think we can cut off later. I'm just kind of making mental notes already. Yeah. But, yeah. You can – Do you want a pad of paper? Would it make sense for you to write down your ideas? Yeah.
That sounds great. No, I have one right here. Okay. All right. Yeah, take your time. There's no – it's progress, not perfection, Tim. Well, it's funny you say that. Now, we're going to start again. The idea of progress, not perfection, that's a quote out of the book, but I think it's process, not perfection. Okay? For instance, I'll give you one of my most important lessons I would ever show anybody about A&S. It's what Obi taught me.
You know, we do the first nine steps to deal with the wreckage of the past, which is crucial to move into the future. You've got to deal – you've got to put it away. Where does it belong? It belongs in the past. So what's the mechanism here? So many people – there's a book called Drop the Rock. Maybe you'll have to cut that because I can't say that. But some people think that six and seven are very complicated steps and take practice and application of those steps for years.
And I think that as soon as you read them and understand what they say, that I'm not perfect and I need some help getting better. And that's perfectly done after the fifth step because I just got done telling some jerk what a jerk I am. That's the best time to admit those things. But the mechanism that allows the promise of those steps that somehow I'll become a better person, the mechanism is the tenth step. Not four through nine.
The tenth step is not four through nine. The tenth step is a current events step. Four through nine all have to do with history. What I was like. What it was like. All that stuff. All the bad shit I did. Ten is about looking at today. Yogi Berra said it best. It's amazing what you'll see just by looking. So if I look at my life, if I look at the day and I recall or recognize in the moment that I've been an asshole, I can fix it right now.
I can deal with that right now. But if I want to get better, if I want to become the man I want to be rather than the lying, sneaky bastard I was when I got there, even though I had a successful life, I had a big house and I had a business with scores of employees and made money, all that stuff. For me, looking at my life every day allows me to make adjustments. And I'm gentle with me.
I don't beat myself up bad, but I know when I've done things I shouldn't have done. Like another one, me and Bill in the big book. Bill was only sober a few years when he wrote the big book. He didn't have a clue what it was going to be like to be sober five years or ten years or 20 years or 30 years. Some people were sober 60 years. He didn't have a clue how that would be and we can't expect him to.
But for us to take his admonitions in the book about resentments and the seven deadly sins and all of this looking at negative stuff continuously, if you've been sober a couple years and you're still a fucking liar, you're not doing the ten step. So do the ten step every day and just look. Don't look for, just look. And if you look at it, you'll see who you are. You'll see how you affect other people. You'll see whether you're good or not.
My religion might be based in a quote of Benjamin, not Benjamin Franklin, although I like a lot of his stuff. Abraham Lincoln said, when I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. To me, that's enough moralizing. As a human being, we inherently have a sense of good. We have a sense of right and wrong. We have a sense of when we're useful. And useful is what we all ought to aim for, in my mind.
My grandpa Ralph taught me that. If you don't work, you die, he said. Now this might not seem like a lot of work. And it really isn't work for me. This is the labor of love. I go to meetings, not because I have to go to meetings to say it's over. I haven't done that for, well, probably a couple years is important. And I think it's important for anybody to come at least a couple of years to have a real sense of what you want to do here.
And then if you want to choose to keep going to meetings, go to meetings. If you choose not to, that's okay. I've sponsored hundreds of people who I never see. That's because they practice 10, 11, and 12. That's the meat and potatoes of AA, not 1, 2, 3. And I guess I'll close with this idea. I mean, I go to the early birds, and I go to the free thinkers meetings, and I go to other meetings now and then, when I'm traveling or whatever.
And I go there because everybody needs to hear stuff. I focus on two groups of people. The new guy, obviously, if there's a new guy, I want to make sure he understands that he can get well. There's some simple things they can do. But there are so many people that have been in AA, been sober for years, that simply don't know that it's really simple. It's all about 10, 11, and 12. I hear people talk about still calling their sponsor at least once a week.
What the fuck for, okay? I mean, if you're trying to arrange a golf, a tee time, okay. But if you're calling your sponsor to ground your sobriety, I don't see it working that way. This is an individual, you know, people call it a we program. No, no, no. I did the first step. Tom did the first step. Somebody else did the first step. Therefore, we did it. But we each had to do it ourselves. And that's the truth of this program.
We each are volunteers for sobriety. We each have to make choices and do the things that we need to do, including join the No Matter What Club. No matter what happens in my life, it's never been a solution for me where other people, because they don't go through these steps, they come up or they read that 12 and 12 and they try to do all 12 steps all the time, they get confused. The reality is, if once I've done the first nine steps, if I start practicing 10, 11, 12, I'm good.
Good to go. And I guess I'll go. So, if there's anybody out there, thanks for listening. Great. So, let's stop that recording.