Read the Washing Instructions or You Get Pink Socks — the Big Book Works Exactly the Same Way – Tim T.

And he's here to share his message with you and I'd like to have you all give him a warm Detroit welcome. I just love having people clap for me. They introduce me and everybody starts clapping. I don't know why. Do you all know why? You know, maybe you know me, maybe you don't. You just start clapping and that's a nice thing. Tim T. from Cleveland's here, yeah. You know, huh? That's a nice thing, but who I'd like to thank with a nice round of applause. I've been on a number of committees in my sobriety and I know being on a committee is a new way to make friends. Being on enough committees, you know it's a good way to lose some, too. So I think we ought to give a nice round of applause to the people who invited me here and who made it possible for all of us to be here. And I sit up here before I start talking and a lot of things go through my mind as I'm sitting up here. And I'm listening to how it works and I'm listening to the chairman talk and what's going through my mind tonight is I wore a black suit with blue socks. That's what I'm thinking about up here tonight. And I didn't notice that until I sat down up here tonight. Thank you. But it is the program of honesty. My name's Tim Towsley and I'm an alcoholic. You know, I didn't plan to be an alcoholic. I plan not to be an alcoholic. My daddy was an alcoholic. He was a member of this fellowship. He got sober in 1946. And in 1980, he passed away. And he had 10 years of continuous sobriety put together at that point. And what that did. For me at an early age was give me an opportunity to see what an alcoholic was. See what Alcoholics Anonymous was and to see what the disease of alcoholism was. 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've had an opportunity in my life to spend time in boys homes and detention homes in city jails, county jails. Work houses, psych wards, treatment centers and penitentiaries. I've been married three times and divorced twice. I spent 12 years of my adult life either on parole, probation or locked behind some doors somewhere. And I left home when I was 14 years old. But you know, not one of those things I just mentioned are the reasons I walked through the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous. Those were merely the situations that my disease of alcoholism was a result of. Those were merely the situations that my disease of alcoholism was a result of. Those were merely the situations that my disease of alcoholism was a result of. Alcoholism created in my life. But on June 23rd, 1982, I woke up at the bottom. And it's the bottom they talk about in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. When you know a loneliness that just few men know. That's when you're at that jumping off place. When you're wishing for the end. When you can no longer imagine life with or life without alcohol. And that's the bottom. You see, it's not a high bottom, but it's not a low bottom either. It's merely the bottom. And if you're in this room tonight and you've admitted you're powerless over alcohol and that your life had become unmanageable, then you've reached that bottom, period. I don't ever want to be able to sit in a room of alcoholics, listen to a speaker speak and start thinking things like, maybe I wasn't that bad. Maybe I was worse. I don't ever want to start thinking anything that's going to make me think I don't belong here, that I'm unique or different from anybody else sitting in this room. I want to be part of this today. I don't want to be different. I had my first drink at 13. I got sick, I blacked out, I passed out, and 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 in the backyard of a lady's house in Rocky River, Ohio. I woke up at home in my own bed. And you know, that's really the only difference I can see in 17 years of use and abuse, was where I woke up the next morning. But I know today one thing for sure. I know God wants me in Alcoholics Anonymous. That lady came out of her back door. She found me laying in her backyard. She took me in the house. She cleaned me up. She laid me on the bed. She found out who I was. She called my mother and let my mother know I was okay. 17 years later, I walked into the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. I was sober two weeks, and that lady was leading the meeting. My very first drunk, I found myself in the arms of Alcoholics Anonymous. And that lady did for me that night what she knew how to do. She was three months sober that night. And they told her to help a drunk. And they didn't just tell her to help the young drunks or help the old drunks, the female drunks or the male drunks. 17 years later, I was sober two weeks later. I was sober three weeks later. I was sober three weeks later. They told her to help a drunk, and that's what she did that night, and thank God for the people that were in her path. And I still see that lady on occasion today, and she's still sober. There's two things that bothered me most of my life, two things I ran from most of my life. Those two things are responsibility and authority. You know, I don't like being responsible. There's a lot of responsibility involved with being responsible. Huh? And you know, I certainly don't like... I don't like people telling me I'm supposed to be responsible. It seemed like at 13 and 14 years old, everybody was. Everybody had an idea about Tim's life, how it was supposed to be, how he was supposed to act, and where he was supposed to go, and no one was asking me. If you're wondering, I can tell you right now. My hair has always been too long. My jeans were too tight. The heels on my boots were too high. They said, Tim, you should smoke. No, don't smoke. Tim, you should drink. No, don't drink. Tim, go to school. No, don't drink. No, don't go to school. Tim, come home. No, please, don't come home, Tim. Excuse me. 14 years old, I'm at a family gathering. I hear somebody talking, and they say, my father, my real father, is in the city of New Orleans, and he's sober. And that's all the information I have at that point. And I left home the next day. I went to find my real father. I made my way to New Orleans. I contacted Alcoholics Anonymous. They contacted him, and they put us in a car. They put us in a car. They put us in a car. They put us in a car. They put us in a car. They put us in a car. They put us in a car. They put us in a car. They put us in a car. They put us in a car. They put us in a car. And all of a sudden, I had a father. And all of a sudden, he had a son. And I tried, and he tried for about three months to be those two things. But you see, neither one of us had ever been either of those two things before, so it just didn't work out too good. After about three months, he started drinking, and I found something out. I used to come home at 13 and 14 years old, pass out in my mother's living room. And the next morning, she'd wake me, and she'd shake me, and she'd say, Son, don't drink. Please don't drink. You'll get what your father has. But I never saw what she was trying to keep me from getting until I was 14 in New Orleans, 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 come into our little apartment, take him away, and put him in a detox unit in New Orleans. And at 14 years old, I made a decision in my life that 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. I didn't have another drink for the next four years. But all of a sudden, here I am. I'm in New Orleans. I got no responsibility. I got no authority. I got the rest of my life to go wherever I think I want to be, stay as long as I want to stay, and leave if I don't like it there anymore. And it's 1966. And I guess I was a hippie. At least that's what folks called me, you know. And I didn't do much anything for the next four years, but I had four good years. I hitchhiked from one end of this country to the other. If I woke up in Los Angeles and didn't like it there, then I'd go up to San Francisco. And if I didn't like San Francisco, I'd go to Denver. And if Denver wasn't no place I wanted to be, it'd be Mobile. And if Mobile didn't make me happy that day, we'd go to Miami. And that was just the way I lived. And it was a happy, happy time in my life. If I had a pack of cigarettes, a sleeping bag, or something to eat that day, it was a good day. My expectations were being met. The big book of Alcoholics Anonymous tells me that my expectations are inversely proportional to my serenity level. As long as I get what I think I'm supposed to have exactly when I think I'm supposed to have it, do you know I'm pretty happy? But as soon as it doesn't come exactly, when I think I'm supposed to have it, my serenity level starts dropping. Eighteen years old, I'm outside Salt Lake City. And I'm coming home. Because my expectations aren't being met anymore. All of a sudden, I'm noticing things on the other side of the freeways. I'm noticing people in their backyards, and they have things. They're doing things. They're playing with their dog. They're mowing the grass. They're painting the garage. Whatever it is they're doing, they're doing it in the same place every day. They have some of that American dream. And at 18 years old, I'm going to the movies. At 18 years old, I want to come home. I want to be part of that magazine ad. You know the magazine ad that tells us if we live in this neighborhood, we're okay? If we wear these kind of clothes, we're okay? If we drive that kind of car, we're okay? I tried most of my life to fit myself in that magazine ad because I knew if I had those things that you could see, you'd know I was okay. But I couldn't look in the mirror and know that. You had to tell me. You had to tell me. You had to tell me. You had to tell me. But I know God wants me in Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm three exits east of Salt Lake City. I'm up in the Rocky Mountains. I'm at an off ramp where there's nothing. There's no convenience store. There's no gas station. There's no houses. There's nothing up there. Must go to a ski lodge or something. I woke up the next morning, me and a buddy of mine that were coming back east, about 5, 5.30 in the morning, froze to death up in those mountains. We got up. We walked to the bottom of that on ramp to start hitchhiking east. And at the bottom of that on ramp is a six pack of Olympia beer. And that was my next drink. I drank three. He drank three. I told him if I ever get back to Cleveland alive, I'm going to settle down. I'm going to marry the first girl I see. I got back to Cleveland alive. I got back to Cleveland alive. I stopped at my parents' house. My stepfather wasn't home, so I was allowed to go in. I took a shower. I changed my clothes. I borrowed my mother's car. I drove to the corner to get a pack of cigarettes. I picked a young lady up hitchhiking, and we got married. Now, we didn't exactly get married that day. And the only reason we didn't, I guess, is because in the state of Ohio, the male has to be eight, has to be 21 or have parental consent, and the female has to be 18 or have parental consent. When I married my first wife, I was 18 and she was 15. 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, and I can't tell you today if I love that woman. I can tell you this. 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. Because there's stuff going on in her home that she doesn't want to go back to. Now we're together. We're not alone anymore, for good or for bad. We weren't alone anymore, and we did the best we could with the information we had about love and marriage at that point in our life, which was none. I'd get up in the morning and get drunk. She'd get up in the morning and get drunk. Then we'd beat each other up. You know, we did that one day at a time for about seven years. But out of that seven years, I was going places a lot. I had a lot of places to be. I had a lot of things to see. I wasn't done traveling yet. But now I didn't make all my own plans for myself. I had other people making plans for me. And most of the people making plans for me were sitting behind big benches, and they had black robes and a little hammer to hit. I had a bad attitude. I kept going to jail. It seemed like 12 years of my life, I really only did two things. I got ready to go to jail, and then I got ready to come home from being in jail. And that's about all I did. I had a bad attitude. I'm a child of the 60s, and I was against this and I was for that, and it really didn't make any difference just depending on what you had that I wanted. If you had what I wanted, I was for whatever you was for. If you didn't, then I was with them. And it was that simple to me. I have a report card at home from the third grade. On the back were the teacher rights or compensation cards. I'm not going to read the comments. You know what he says. Bad attitude. It says, Timothy does not play well with others. I'm in third grade. They know I got a problem already. I got arrested a lot. It seems like I was always in trouble. I got arrested for dumb stuff. I wasn't a violent criminal. I was a stupid criminal. I got arrested for things like obscene finger language to a police officer. I got arrested for verbal abuse of a police officer. And both of those charges were in a little city in Ohio called Parma, Ohio. If you all aren't hip to Parma, Ohio, I can tell you that they got no sense of humor in Parma, Ohio. I was a cop in a police station. I was a cop in a police station. I was a cop in a police station. I had a meeting and I was about two years sober, I guess. And a friend of mine was speaking. He was a long timer and he helped me a great deal. He was in jail a lot. And he said something. You know at two, two and a half years sober how smart you are. You know you just, I don't know about anybody else, but two and a half years sober I knew everything. And I made sure you all knew I knew everything too. You know what I mean? And I'm sitting out there, and you know you hear stuff at meetings, and you hear it a lot, but it just doesn't make sense to you sometimes. And all of a sudden it does. He stood up here and he said, I've been arrested 63 times. I wasn't a good criminal. Bang, man, this makes sense. Huh? Picked right up on it. I know I've been charged with at least 63 crimes. I wasn't a good criminal. But in that verbal abuse case of a police officer in Parma, Ohio, I found something else out. You see, I decided to represent myself in that case. I just knew I saw enough Perry Mason and Judge for the defense and things like that. I could handle this little thing. And I went in there and I called my witnesses and I cross-examined their witnesses. I gave my final arguments to the judge. And do you know what I found? I found out I'm not a very good attorney either. That's just the way my life was going. 1975, I stood in front of a judge in that old Lake Fat Courthouse in downtown Cleveland, and he sentenced me. It was 20 to 40 years into penitentiary. I took a big sigh of relief. I felt like someone just lifted a weight off of me. Now, I can hear my wife. I can hear my mother in the back of the courtroom, and they're crying. And they're crying because they don't understand. They know I'm going away and it's going to be for a long time, and they think that's a bad thing, but they don't understand. They don't know what I know. You see, the judge, he doesn't know what I know. He doesn't know that he can't punish me as much as I've punished me. He doesn't know that he can't send me anywhere. He doesn't know that he can't send me anywhere. He doesn't know that he can't send me anywhere. He doesn't know that he can't send me anywhere. But I know that on that day, and I'm ready to go. Please send me anywhere that's going to help. They sent me to that old Mansfield Reformatory in southern Ohio. 1976, the laws changed. My sentence changed from a 20 to 40 to a 1 to 10, and three years later, they sent me home. But you know, when I came home, all that stuff was gone. You notice? Stuff from the magazine ad. The wife was gone. The car was gone. The motorcycle was gone. The clothes was gone. The jewelry were gone. Everything I thought I had to have in order for me to be something was gone. So I sat in a chair for three months, and I drank. And I got as drunk as I could as many times a day as I needed to. And I blacked out, and I passed out as many times that day as I needed to. I crawled. I crawled into a bottle daily. But not once did I ever crawl into a bottle of alcohol to hide from you. Not once in my life did I crawl into a bottle of alcohol to hide from them. I crawled into a bottle one day at a time as many times that day as I needed to so I wouldn't have to face me because 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 was an ex-husband. I was an ex-wife. I was an ex-husband. I was an ex-husband. I was an ex-husband. I was an ex-husband. I was an ex-husband. I was an ex-husband. I was an ex-husband. I ever tried to do in my life. But as long as I stayed drunk enough, blacked out enough, and passed out enough, I didn't have to face that. Finally, after three months, a friend of mine came over. He said, you're coming with me, and he physically took me out of the house. He said, we're going out. You can't sit in this chair and die. You're out of prison. I'm not going to let you die drunk here. And he took me downtown to a little place called the Pirate's Cove in the flats of Cleveland. And I'm drinking past Blue Ribbon Beer. My cousin's band's playing a Marshall Tucker tune that night. And this pretty little girl walked past me, and she smiled right at me. And you know, I smiled right back. And that was her. That was my future ex-wife. The plaintiff. That's right. I tried for a couple of years. She tried a lot longer. She brought things into my home that were never there. She had stuff that she brought that were never in my house. She brought honesty and purity with her when she came. She brought love and unselfishness when she came. And four years later, she left. There was only one thing left for her to take. And that was the disease of alcoholism. You see, I know I'm not the only one I hurt when I pick up a drink. She tried for four years. I tried for two. I had a good job. And I tried to fit in to that magazine ad. I worked hard, and I studied hard, and I got promotions, and I worked overtime, and I did what I was told, and I did the very best I could for two years. I was trying to be a different kind of human being than I ever was before. And you know, after two years, I took a look around my life. And after two years of doing the best I could, I didn't have a house on the lake. I didn't have two Lincolns sitting in a driveway. I wasn't wearing the right kind of clothes. I didn't belong to the right kind of clubs, and I certainly wasn't running around with the right kind of people. And in a drunken stupor, one night I decided that those things were for other people, other people and I was never supposed to have. No matter what I did or how hard I worked, I was never going to have any of that stuff. And I gave up. And for the next two years, I drank. I got up in the morning, got drunk, passed out, got up in the afternoon, got drunk, passed out, and got up at night. I got drunk and passed out. And that's what I did for the next two years. And that's what I did for the next two years. My wife tried for two years to understand, but she just couldn't. She was being eaten alive by the disease of alcoholism and didn't know it. At the end of my drinking is like this. It's not real exciting, but this is at 30 years old. Do you know those times when you'll get together with your families? If it's Thanksgiving or Christmas, Mother's Day, Easter, you'll sit at the table and you'll hold their hand. you'll say great. You'll share a meal with each other. You'll share each other's lives. At my house, this is the way that works. I drive over and I pull in the 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 wrapped in tinfoil in his hands and he'll hand my holiday meal to me. And I'm allowed to sit in the driveway 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 hold their hands and say grace. They certainly don't want to share with me anything that's going on in my life at that time. But I don't want you to think they ever stopped loving me. I don't want you to think that even for an instant their love diminished 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 helped me, they hurt me. And they finally figured that out. My parents loved me so much that they let me go. I don't have any children. So I can only imagine how much love that must take. I have a Doberman at this time in my life. I got a dumb Doberman at this time in my life. I was at a meeting. I talked at a meeting in Cleveland a while back and I told this story and a gentleman stood up afterwards and he said, you know, dumb Doberman is redundant. You know, I went home, looked up redundant and you know, he was right. You see, I come home and I take this dog and I take this dog outside, tie it to the tree, go back in the handbag, and get it out. I go back in a half hour, bring the dog back in. Soon as the dog came back in the house, he peed on the floor. Don't know what he thought he was doing outside. Tie him out on the trees, looking around, he comes in the house, he pees on the floor. Before my wife left, I came, I woke up one morning. And I called her just like normal just to see if she left me any wine money or cigarette money laying around. And she was real concerned that morning in her office and she said, where's the dog? I said, well, the dog's lying around. The dog's laying by the foot of the bed right where it's supposed to be. She said, be careful of the dog. I said, what do you mean be careful of the dog? She said, the dog was mad last night. The dog was growling and showing his teeth. Please be careful of the dog. I said, that dog wouldn't hurt me. I'm its master. That dog loves me. I said, what was I doing? And see, apparently I came home that night in a blackout. I walked into the bedroom and I peed on the bedroom floor. You know, this poor dog's sitting there probably thinking that dirty SOB's kicked my ass a hundred times for doing that. You know? Even my dog has a resentment at this time in my life. But I woke up that morning, June 23, 1982, and I made a phone call. And this phone call I probably made a thousand times in my life. Maybe ten thousand. I don't know. This phone call to my mother. It was a simple call. It was help. And my mother came. She walked into my house. I'm kneeling on the living room floor. I weigh 112 pounds. I'm crying uncontrollably and I'm shaking apart. And she took one look at me and the first words out of her mouth were, I'll kill her for doing this to you. Alcoholism is a family disease. I'm a family man. I'm not the only one I hurt when I pick up a drink. Blaming others is a big part of that disease. My mother has it too. We started making phone calls. And I found myself in an emergency room. I got a doctor giving me a shot of thiamine. Playing with my stomach and telling me, son, you have an alcohol problem. I said, oh no, sir. Not me. I don't want to be an alcoholic. I told him, I plan not to be an alcoholic. No, I'm not going to be an alcoholic. And we argued back and forth. And he said he didn't care what I wanted to be or didn't want to be. He said, if you don't stop drinking, you're going to die, Tim. It's just that simple. They took me out and they put me in a psych ward on the east side of Cleveland. I spent ten days in that psych ward. I'm powerless over alcohol. My life had become unmanageable. I spent the first three days in restraints. And I wasn't tied down because I was acting a fool or anything. I was tied down because I tried to hurt myself the night before. And they were just trying to protect me a little bit. I got a psychiatrist and he comes to visit me in that psych ward. 5, 5.30, 6 o'clock in the morning. Happy. I got the happiest psychiatrist on earth working in my psych ward. Tim, how you doing? Good to see you. Isn't it a wonderful day? I don't know about the rest of you all, but 5 o'clock in the morning tied to a bed in a psych ward on the east side of Cleveland. You know I'm not real spiritual. I told him what I thought. And he just listened. You know how they do. He write in his chart and nod his head. Now I'm a psychiatrist, sir. They gave me all the tests. That MMPI. Y'all take that MMPI test? That's a wonderful thing. It's got 601 questions on it. I like to have a nickel for every time I take it. Every time they sent me somewhere, they made me take it again. So I guess I never did pass it. I'm a psychiatrist. I'm a psychiatrist. I'm a psychiatrist. I'm a psychiatrist. I'm a psychiatrist. Well, there was a question on that MMPI. It was my favorite. Do you urinate more than most people? I don't know. Couldn't answer that one. I'm powerless over alcohol. My life had become unmanageable. Now that sounds like step one. like step one, but it's not. On the third day, my psychiatrist came in. He took the straps off. He set the chart on the windowsill. He sat on the edge of my bed, and he said, son, I can't make your wife come home. I don't have a job to give you. I'm not paying 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. God wants me here, and he sat on the edge of my bed, and he shared a little story with me, and then I shared a little bit of my story with him, and now no longer was it I'm powerless over alcohol, that my life had become unmanageable. All of a sudden, it became weak. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable, and that's step one. You see, I know today that without the we, I don't have a chance, man. Seven days later, he sent me home, and he gave me something. I think it's the most valuable thing anybody's ever given me. He gave me a meeting schedule to the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous, in the Cleveland area. He said, when you get home, you do two things. You go to a meeting, and you get a sponsor. And when I got home, 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. I said, Ma, I gotta go to an AA meeting. She said, all right, I'll come get you. And she came and got me. She'd been to hundreds of AA meetings all over this country back in the 40s and the 50s with my daddy. 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 the first time I'd been 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'm going to share that 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 stay away from the women in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I paid attention to about half of my mother's advice. But I did get a sponsor that night. I walked in, and I got a sponsor. He was an old friend of mine, one I'd been in a bug house with before and in the penitentiary with. And he'd been sober about three years. And his wife was chairing a meeting that night, and she handed me the traditions to read my first meeting. And I tried to give him back. And he said, no, this is your first lesson in AA, Tim. You never say no to Alcoholics Anonymous. No matter what the request is, the answer is yes. Then he said, now you can go get a cup of coffee, and you can sit down. He gave me some things to do. He said, if you sat in a chair, put it away. If you were dirty in an ashtray, empty it. If you had a cup, throw it away. He said, I want you to read one page in the big book every day. I don't want you to turn that page until tomorrow. You read that page as many times that day as you think you want to or need to, but do not turn that page until tomorrow. And maybe, Tim, just maybe in 164 days, you might know something about the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. He said, if you had trouble praying, I want you to use three words your mother taught you when you were a little boy. I want you to get up in the morning and kneel down. You get up in the morning, you kneel down, and you say, please. You get up and you go about your day. At the end of that day, if you hadn't had a drink, you kneel back down and you say, thank you. Please and thank you. My mama did teach me those words when I was a little boy. You know what my mother called them? The magic words. What's the magic words she'd say? Huh? And they were magic for me. My sponsor got me into the steps. He said, do you want what we have? Hell, I didn't know what he had. I knew he had a brand new gold Rolex. He had a brand new Oldsmobile Tornado. And he had a stewardess wife. Do you want what I got? Do you want what I got? I didn't know what he had. And I don't think you have to know. When you come through the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous, you don't have to know what you want. Because I didn't. All you got to know is what you don't want. And if you know that, then it's up to me to have something so attractive. You have to ask me, where'd you get that? That's my job. To make you thirsty enough to want. Would I? I have. They said, you do what we do. So that's what I did. I went where they went. They went to that meeting. That's the meeting I went to. They sat over there. I sat over there. They folded their little raffle tickets a certain way. I folded mine a certain way. I did what they did. And you know, I came to believe by watching those people that my life could be different. And then I knelt down with my sponsor and I said a third step prayer. And I wasn't sure. If I wanted God's will for me. Because I didn't know what God's will was. I had an idea. And I didn't think it was going to match up with mine real good. But then they explained it to me with the penny. Simply. On the back of the penny you can see the words, one cent. You can see the Lincoln Memorial. But as soon as you turn it over, on the front of the penny it's going to say, In God we trust. And that's the third step. In God we trust. That step's not about God's will. That step's about mine. What am I willing to do with it? Am I willing to trust God with it? Today I can tell you I am. And once I do that, you know there's another word down in the center of that penny that comes into play. And that word's liberty. And that's the freedom I get from self when I trust God with my will. And then I started on the fourth step. And you all know that. That fourth step's not something you want to rush right into. You know what I mean? You've got to take your time with that. Because you've got to read all them books. And you don't want to mess it up. Because we've got books here in AA, right? Where's the book? We've got blue books. We've got green books. We've got blue and blue books. We've got little red books. We've got little black books. We've got books. And you've got to read all them books. Because if you don't read the books, you might mess it up, right? You know there's only one way to mess up the fourth step? Don't do it. It's the only way to mess it up. I was sitting at home one day. My sponsor calls. He says, how's that fourth step coming? I said, oh, it's coming right along. Coming right along, you know. And then he gave me something. Don't think you ought to give your new guy too much of. He gave me information. He said, it'll get done in God's time. You know, that's exactly what I was thinking, too. It's going to get done in God's time. And I hung the phone up. Five minutes later, the phone rang. And it's my sponsor. And he says, hey, Tim, how's that fourth step coming? And I got something now for him, right? I got information. 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, Tim, because God's time is tomorrow morning at 9 o'clock. I made an appointment. I made an appointment for you to do your fifth. See, that's just the way my sponsor works. He's always with me. He'd sit behind me at a meeting and they'd say we need coffee help. He'd raise my hand. Tim will do it. You know, Tim does it. Because my sponsor has never once called me. Not once. And said, hey, Tim, you know, now that you're five years sober, you don't have to be on coffee duty anymore. My sponsor didn't call me when I was 10 years sober and say, hey, you know, Tim, now that you're 10 years sober, you don't have to pick up after yourself anymore. Meeting. My sponsor didn't call me when I was 15 years sober and say, you know, you're 15 years sober now, Tim. You probably don't need to read that big book anymore. My sponsor never once called me and told me to stop doing anything. He told me to do in the first place. Because we only do things one way here, and that's a day at a time. I did a fourth step and I did a fifth step. And then I stopped. And the big book doesn't say stop. Stop. Big book are the directions to a new way of life. And if you want a new way of life, you have to read the directions. I have a pair of pink socks at home. I never wanted a pair of pink socks. No one ever bought me any pink socks, and I never bought any pink socks, but I have a pair. I used to have a pair of white socks. And a brand new red T-shirt. Some of y'all have done this before, ain't you? I got home, I wanted to wash that red T-shirt, but I didn't want to wash it all by itself, so I threw it in the washer with the rest of the wash, washed everything all up. Dried everything all up. Y'all know what I got. Pink socks. So I'm folding my T-shirt, and I got a slight resentment. And then I noticed something on the back. There's a little tag on the back of your T-shirt. Y'all probably never noticed it. It's got writing on it. You know what it says? It says, Washing Instructions. Washing Instructions. Wash separately. I never took time to read the directions. But you know, even if you do read the directions, and then you don't follow them, do you know what you get? Pink socks, man. I became entirely ready. And I humbly asked God for help. And God said to me, Forgive, Tim. God said, Forgive. God said, Forgive. God said, Forgive. God said, Look at your list and learn to forgive the people in front of you that you've wronged and who have wronged you. And that's what I had to do when I had to learn to forgive. Because until I could forgive everybody I thought that wronged me, I had no right to go out and ask for forgiveness from anybody else. If I can't forgive, I have no right to ask for forgiveness. And once I became willing to forgive, I went out and I made direct amends to the people. And I made direct amends to the people I wronged. And you know, before I was halfway through, those promises started coming true. I've got that Lincoln sitting in the driveway today. I keep it disguised as a Ford, though. You know, that's just so no one will steal it. It's sitting out back. Maybe I'll see it. Maybe you'll see it when I leave. You'll think, Well, that's no Lincoln. That's a Ford. And maybe that's a Lincoln. That's what you'll see. But remember this tonight. You're the only person sitting in this room that's looking out of your eyes. And that's the only person that's ever going to be able to decide what you see. And it can be good or it can be bad, but it's always going to be your decision. When I leave here Sunday, I'm leaving in a Lincoln. And it's a town car. It's triple black. It's got a moonroof and a 12-disc. It has stereo in it with leather seats. And I'm going to get inside the car. Alcoholics Anonymous is an inside job. I spent most of my life thinking if I could make the outside look good enough, the inside would feel better. And I was wrong. You have to start on the inside. You have to start on the inside. My God loves me a great deal. I know today how to live resentment-free. I didn't say I did. I just say I know how to. I came into these rooms. You know, God lets me hear stuff. He doesn't always let me hear stuff the way you think I should hear stuff, but he lets me hear stuff the way I need to hear stuff. And I came into these rooms and you people told me things like, pray for your enemies. Huh? Have you heard this? They tell you that in Michigan? Pray for your enemies. Huh? I'm right from the psych ward. They just took the straps off me. Pray for your enemies, they're telling me. You know, I got some enemies and some resentments when I got here. I want to, you know, my ex-wife just left and all of that. I want to do stuff for her maybe, though. Maybe I'm going to buy her a new car. Like a 72 Pinto with no brake lights, maybe. You know? I want to see my little brother. My little brother's a born-again Christian. And I said, they told me to pray for my enemies. What should I do? He said, you should. It tells us to in the Bible. And then he showed me what it said in the Bible. And do you know what it says? I don't know it exactly, but I know the way I heard it. And that's all I know. It says, That praying for your enemies is like heaping hot coals upon their heads. See, I like that. That's not what you told me. But that's the way I needed to hear it. And then I started praying. You know, my sponsor, he'd say, pray for them. You know, just ask, maybe, for these people, your enemies, to go to heaven. Tomorrow. You know? And you know, my God didn't care. Once I knelt down, my God doesn't care what I say. My God's interested in action. And as long as I take the action, the results will follow. Half measures avail us nothing. It doesn't say half measures avail us half. It says nothing. And I don't know about anybody else in this room tonight, but I know I've had more nothing than I want. I don't want any more nothing in my life. And I don't have to have any. As long as I follow the 12 steps and the principles laid down in them. This is how I live. This is how I live my life today. I take one word from each of the last three steps. Continue. Improve. And practice. Now, each one of those words is an action word. You have to do something if you want something. So I continue on a daily basis to improve my conscious contact with God. As I practice the principles laid down in this. And I have a great life today. I've got some of that stuff, you know, from the magazine ads. I've got some of that. And I like it. Some of it I like. Some of it I'm not too crazy about anymore. But I had to have it. It's just how it is. You've got to have it sometimes. Remember, I had to have a microwave once. Had to have it. I might have got drunk if I wouldn't have got it. So I got it. And you know what? If it wasn't for Orville Redenbacher, I probably wouldn't use it at all. But I had to have it. I hear things a different way. I don't know if they're 20 years sober, 20 minutes sober, or getting ready to be sober in 20 minutes. I don't know who has my message. But I know that if somebody's talking and I can hear them, God wants me to listen. I got a new angle on the first step about six years ago. I was invited to talk in Indiana. And my wife couldn't come with me, so I took a new guy with me. I didn't want to take my car because it ate a lot of gas, so I took her car. She got a Honda Civic. And you know those Honda Civics. What do you get in a Honda Civic? Three, four hundred miles to a gallon in a Honda Civic? You just drive a Honda Civic from now on. You might never run out of gas. So I jumped. I jumped. I jumped in this Honda Civic with my new guy, and I'm sliding through Indiana. And I go past the sign, and it said my exit's about three exits away. And I look down, and the gas gauge said empty. And I'm thinking, well, yeah, okay, empty maybe, like in a real car. Not a Honda Civic. Well, empty in a Honda Civic, you're reserved. You've got to have another hundred miles anyway. We went underneath the sign that said my exit was two miles, and I ran out of gas. So what do you get? If you've got a Honda Civic and it says empty, they're dead serious about that. Laughter So I coasted for another mile, right? Here I am on the side of the road in the middle of Indiana. Got a new guy sitting next to me. I don't even want to turn over and look at him. You know what I mean? Laughter I just spent the better part of about three and a half 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 going, vroom, vroom, vroom. Finally I turned over and I looked at him. He just looked up at me and grinned. You know, that new guy grinned. You make a mistake, they'll point it right out to you. Right out to you. So he looks at me and he grinned. And he says, we're powerless, ain't we? I said, oh yeah, yeah. I said, yeah, we're powerless. What do you think we ought to do about it? He says, we've got to admit, we've got to admit it, right? I said, yeah, yeah. Because if we don't admit it, we can sit here the rest of our life. If we don't admit there's a problem, we're never going to get anywhere. I said, okay, we admitted it, what do we do next? He said, we take certain steps. That's just about what we did. We walked about a mile and a half, to the nearest gas station. I don't know who has my message. But I know I need to be listening to whoever's talking. I have a great life today. There's a difference in my life today. My wife's with me today. She can come some of the times when I have to go out of town, and sometimes she can't, but it's always nice for us to go somewhere. My wife's pretty intelligent. A lot of my friends, question that. A lot of my friends ask me, aren't you intimidated? My wife has all kinds of degrees. Bachelors, Masters, PhDs. They say, aren't you intimidated by that? No, I'm not intimidated by that. I'm proud of that. It doesn't intimidate me at all. And I'm proud of that. I'm so proud of that. I got new license plates this year. You know what my license plates say? Ph.D. G.E.D. I got letters after my name, too. I got letters after my name, too. You know, I get to the prisons, and I talk, and I talk to the guys in the penitentiaries. And the last time I was there, I don't know, five, six, eight years ago, I don't even remember when I was there. And it came to me at one of those times that when you're in jail and you want to make a phone call, you have to make a collect phone call. And it reminded me of my collect phone call in 1975. You see, there's a difference in my life today. They walked me into the bullpen in that old penitentiary in Mansfield, Ohio, and they told me I had this much time. I could call whoever I wanted. I could talk. I could talk this much, this long. I could call anywhere in the world. I had to call collect. And I stood in front of that phone, and I started dialing. And then I dialed some more. And then I dialed some more. And I dialed until I didn't have any time left. You know, I couldn't find one person on this earth, not one, that would accept a collect phone call from me at that time in my life. Not one. Not one. But on October 16th, 1993, my wife and I got married. We had an AA wedding. It started with the serenity prayer. It ended with the Lord's Prayer. We had a reading in between from the 12 and 12. We invited 320 people to that wedding. Do you know how many people? Do you know how many came? 320. That's the difference. That's the difference from then to now. And the only reason I can see for that difference being in my life is because on July 4th, 1982, I walked into a room just like this. I met people just like you. You gave me a book. You held my hand as you walked me through it. You loved me until I could love me. And I know today that gratitude is an action word. So I also know I can't drive enough miles. I can't shake enough hands. I can't buy enough big books. I can't put away enough chairs or make enough coffee to show you. I mean to truly show you how grateful I really am for what you've done for me. Just allow me to say thank you very, very much. Thank you. I don't know who has my message, dude.