- Alcohol
- Drugs
- Friends & Family
Submitted by: Susanne Johnson
January 25th is Tim’s sobriety birthday and in 2016 he proudly celebrated two years of continuous sobriety. This is the longest period of a sober living he has experienced since he started drinking and drugging at about the age of 14. He remembers his first drunk experience very well. He got a case of beer from a neighbor and had all intentions to finish it up. It never crossed his mind to just taste it or have just one, he wanted to finish the whole case and get totally messed up.
As he grew up, he heard and saw all this stories about his grandmother hiding bottles everywhere. Both of his parents drank as well. It did not scare Tim off at all, he was up for his own experiences. (Now, his family lives in the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois, where his grandmother will celebrate over 40 years in sobriety and over 80 years of life.) In childhood, Tim shuttled around in his life between Kentucky and Illinois; he went to three different high schools and had problems trying to fit in. Then he found a group of friends in high school with long hair and concert T-shirts– they were The Stoners. Those were the people who accepted Tim and whom he felt home with and with whom he got a crash course in sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll.
Tim went to treatment a couple times. The first time he was just twenty years old and was given the opportunity as an option by a judge. He did not want to believe that he had an alcohol problem at that young age and continued what he had been doing after he came back home until it caught up with him ten years later again.
He thought only the drugs were his problem. He kicked the drugs in 2006, but kept going back to the alcohol. He spent 30 days in jail and 30 days in treatment with a two-year charge hanging over his head, but even that could not stop him from drinking. “I wanted to get clean and sober, I just never followed through with it,” says Tim, “I never worked the steps or got involved.” He went eight years of his life without a driver’s license, which didn’t stop him from drinking or from driving. The next ten years were dominated by his alcohol abuse. He could not do drugs on his job, as he got tested, so he kept drinking more and more instead. He worked at the shipyard and started to miss work as a result of his drinking habits and could barely keep his job. They have an attendance policy and Tim made sure he was always one day below the maximum missed days.
This job is still with Tim. He has held it longer than any other jobs in his life. After two years of sobriety today and living and learning through a 12-step fellowship, he was just told by his employer that he turned into a reliable employee. Tim is very proud of this development in his life. This is all because he walked through the doors of a 12-step fellowship again two years ago, this time on his own and without being forced.
Because of his previous treatment he knew where to go and what to do. This time he was serious and this time he made it successfully into long-term sobriety. The drugs and the alcohol did quit working. He was sick and tired of being sick and tired. He lost girl friends and marriages along the way. His first wife today laughs with him about it, reminding him how he walked out of the door saying “I just want to smoke a little pot,” walked out,and never, ever came back.
“The first nine months I tried to get the program by osmosis or something. I just sat there in the back, never said a word, didn’t work the program, but at least I came,” states Tim. After those initial nine months, he still had the urge to drink and drug. During that time, a lot of issues came up for him all the time and he decided to change the way he worked the program. The fellowship of the 12-step program and the supportive sober club he frequents became his second home and he usually makes one or two meetings a day.
Now, Tim is 43 and has a sponsor. “I just been doing what I should have been doing all the time,” said Tim. “If I would have just quit the drugs and alcohol, that would have been fine, but it has been so much more. The program and the fellowship have given me much more than this.”