Speaker 0 00:00:00 Hey you. Yeah, you, if you or someone you know, is struggling with anything mentioned on today's program, please, please, please, please, please, please email
[email protected]. That's a U T H E N I C K. The
[email protected]. I am available 24 seven three 65 to help in any way that I can. I have resources. I have open ears and open heart and tons of hope. I've been freely given all these things and would love to give them to you. Be good to yourselves and each other. Follow me on Twitter, using the handle at authen, Nick and my dog, Marla on Instagram at DJ Marla dot Jean. Before we get started today, I would like to tell you that suicide is mentioned multiple times. In this episode, if you or someone you know is going to be triggered by that, or you're struggling with suicidal ideation or you have a plan to commit suicide, please reach out, speak with a counselor today at the national suicide prevention lifeline, their number is +1 800-273-8255. That's +1 800-273-8255. Alcoholics anonymous or AA will also be mentioned multiple times during this episode, the expressed views and opinions by the interviewee do not reflect a as a whole. Please enjoy. Yeah, <inaudible> my name is Nicholas Thomas Fitzsimmons. Vanden Heuvel but most people just call me Nick. And this is my show authentic instead of authentic, it's authentic. I put Nick in the place of tech. Okay. Then Michael, over somebody said anyway with me as always is my dog Marla. <inaudible>
Speaker 0 00:02:53 all right. That's that's enough. Marla, go back to being a Mason. Anyway, Kieron authentic where we get authentic. We talk about all things recovery. What do I mean by that? All things recovery. Well, what I mean by that is if you are still living and breathing on this earth, you yes are in recovery from something. As for myself, I am in recovery from alcoholism. I am an alcoholic. I'm also a drug addict. I'm a compulsive gambler. I have an eating disorder. I have bipolar disorder. Really? The list could go on and on and on and on and on. Luckily for you, the show is not about me. It is about two people. First is my guest. TM. Second is the one person whose life Tim is most certainly going to save here tonight. We are here to let you know that you are not alone. We are here to smash stigma and we are here to provide solutions. Well, I think that's all I got Tim without Fitbit, Tim, please introduce yourself. Say hello.
Speaker 1 00:04:00 I'm Tim. And I'm an alcoholic. Hi, uh, dealing with trying to manage my alcoholism for a long time. And in that regard, I haven't used any alcohol or other drugs since 1981, 39 years, almost 40 years. People will often say, wow, that's really wonderful. And I say, it is truly wonderful. I am truly blessed and I am dumb, lucky. And I think another reality is that I have had several relapses. They just haven't involved alcohol and drugs. Primarily. They've involved. My attitude where I see that is when I start thinking I can do it all myself and I don't need anybody. Else's help. I'm in deep trouble. I try to hold that thought in, staying in touch with people whose judgment I trust and get their input as I go along. So I don't get carried away with myself all on my own because that's trouble anyway.
Speaker 0 00:04:47 Right on Tim. Damn, you are long-winded as fuck. Yeah, I love it. No, it's perfect. Could be days. You are great. Yeah. I don't have anything going on until like 6:00 AM so good. We'll be good. All right. Good. We'll order in. Fair enough. What do you want?
Speaker 1 00:05:03 Fair enough. Um, let's wait and think about it. Okay.
Speaker 0 00:05:06 I want taco bell. I could work. Oh God. That sounds terrible. Anyway, Tim, let's get right down to the nitty gritty. In the first segment, we talk about your experience. I'd like to get a picture of what made you and what allowed you to go to certain lengths, IE using alcohol and drugs to deal with life because so many alcoholics and addicts talk about not being able to deal with life on life's terms. What was your childhood like? Growing up?
Speaker 1 00:05:40 I grew up in a small town. I am the youngest of five. I have four older sisters. The oldest of whom died a couple of years ago. And the youngest of whom is six years older than me. So I was kind of like an only child. My parents were 42 and 46 when I was born by the, I came along. They'd kind of had it with parenting. And so a couple of things I truly believe I have been riding the crest of the wave of white male privilege. My entire life, very spoiled in many ways, which is something I dealt with badly later on in any event growing up, I think one of my first memories, my parents were born in 19 five and 19 nine. So they were adults during the depression. They got married in 1939 and bought a house for $3,500 and they never moved.
Speaker 1 00:06:26 They never, uh, expanded the house. At some one point, there were seven of us living there. My oldest sister was 19 when I was born. So she had moved out before I could remember, but tiny little house, two little bedrooms, tiny little bathroom. And in my memory, my parents never had their own room. They slept on a, hide, a bed in our den. Now at the same time, my dad was a small town lawyer, kind of a big fish in a small town. By the time he died, he owned several of the buildings down. They'd never expanded the house. And that was part of their ethos. I think from the depression stuff is you don't do anything that's flashy. You don't do anything that's GoDaddy or sensational or anything. Part of it too was he was the youngest of seven brothers. I think part of it was, he wouldn't want to do anything to show up his older brothers.
Speaker 1 00:07:11 So that being said, my parents were both alcoholics. My mom, my one of my first memories is my mom carrying me up to bed. So I must've been three, four, maybe even two, but I don't know that I would remember that she was drunk and she fell backwards down the stairs. And I bounced on the landing. I didn't know this till many years later, but she broke her collarbone and she was in a lot of pain, but my dad wouldn't call the doctor because she was drunk and we couldn't let anybody know, like everybody didn't know. That was the kind of thing that went on. That kind of thing. My mom being drunk and loud. My dad drank just as much. He just got more rigid and quieter. Well quieter. As he, as he drank a few nights a week, my mom would be kind of raging around the house. Drunk kind of usually monologuing about somebody in her family. Who'd slighted, somebody else 30 or 40 years earlier and how horrible that was. And I remember as a small boy listening to her and thinking, I need to listen really carefully so that I can explain to her that it's not really that big a deal. And she doesn't have to get so upset about it. That, and that was part of my experience
Speaker 0 00:08:19 About what age was that? Oh, geez,
Speaker 1 00:08:21 Four or five, six, seven, eight, something like that.
Speaker 0 00:08:24 As a very young child, you are witnessing your alcoholic mother inactive alcoholism, and you as a four or five, six, seven, eight year old, you're trying to memorize the stuff. That's that she's saying, right? Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:08:40 And say, you know, Hey, it really isn't that big a deal. And if you ask them now, I don't think they really worry about it
Speaker 0 00:08:45 To me. That sucks it to me. That sounds like you are trying to parent your mother at that point. Absolutely.
Speaker 1 00:08:52 Sure, absolutely.
Speaker 0 00:08:53 Did that continue on through your childhood? No.
Speaker 1 00:08:57 I remember another incident where one of my sisters, I was asking her to do something for me or asking you for candy or something. And she said, go tell mom she's half drunk. And this is like Saturday morning at 11. And they're sitting around the kitchen table. And so I, so I went in and I said, mom's half drunk, mom's half drunk. And then I ran to the other room and bang my shin. And of course jumped on my mother's lap for comfort and felt horribly horrible shame about that. And it was, yeah, it was crazy things kind of float along till I was like 10 or 11 when I was 11, when I was 10, I went to Catholic youth center, boys camp in Northern Minnesota. And so the next summer when I was 11, I'd been planning on going again. And my parents were all set to go and I was signed up, but I didn't want to go because my best friend was going to be moving away while I was gone at camp for 10 days.
Speaker 1 00:09:53 And I'd made this little league team and it was really important to me to be at the games. And I was going to miss a quarter of the season by being there. And I was horribly torn about it. One of my sisters said, if you do this for me, I'll tell mom and dad, you don't want to go to camp in any of that. I don't think that ever happened. So in any event, I get to the camp and I am totally distraught. And so the secondary, third night I sneak out, walked down the road and hitchhiked. I was 11 years old, hitchhike, 19 miles into the nearest town. And I called home and my parents weren't home. And whatever sister was there called the next door neighbor who called the cops. And they picked me up and took me back to camp. You know, they talked to my parents and my parents said, I'll keep them there.
Speaker 1 00:10:33 I think, however, this stuff happens. I got the sense of abandonment. They're not there for me. I can't count on them. I think it really changed the way I saw the world instead of being kind of open to adventure and checking things out. I think I got a lot more scared about being out in the world and trying to explore the world. I think I really backed off from it. And over the next year or two, I really went into what I guess now I would see as some pretty horrific depression depressive episode. I'd always been a great student and straight A's and like that. And I just quit studying. And like seventh and eighth grade 11, 12, 13, I would just sit in front of the TV every night and not do my homework. And my parents got mad, but they'd never really confronted me directly much.
Speaker 1 00:11:20 And I just kind of slid through. And I remember one of the teachers pulling me aside and this is, you know, small town Catholic school and saying, geez, you know, you're too smart. You know, maybe we let you study on your own and you can go ahead and like that. And I kind of did, did it, but I didn't. And I remember thinking if being like my parents is what you get by following the rules and doing things right. I don't want that, but I didn't know. I had no clue where to go in eighth grade, it was expected that I was, I was going to have to go to Catholic school for ninth grade. And I was looking around at various schools. I don't remember even how I found out about it, but I took the entrance exam St. John's prep school in college bill. And somehow I figured out if I go there, I can reinvent myself, become my own person and get away from my parents. What
Speaker 0 00:12:02 Kind of person did you want to become Tim? Well,
Speaker 1 00:12:04 I think what I recall is I wanted to be a great student so that I could zoom through high school and zoom through college and be really successful financially, so that I'd be able to wall myself off from everybody. And so nobody could fuck with me.
Speaker 0 00:12:18 I really wanted to revisit something that you just said. You were talking about a depressive episode that you had, and you talked about your thoughts around it and things of that nature, but I really want to know, how did that feel? Do you remember what sort of internal feelings you were having?
Speaker 1 00:12:36 I remember, you know, now I would call it anhedonia. Nothing sounded fun. I didn't care. And I remember one time, I think I was 13 and my sisters were gone on some ski trip for a weekend and I was going to go and I just went, I'm not going. And they go, come on. It's really going to be fun. And I've had a lot of fun at other trips like that. And I did after that, but I just said, I'm not going. I'm not going. I'm not going. I feel horrible. I don't want to pretend to have fun. I'm not going, you know, just that I can't imagine things being better. And I don't want to pretend and forget it. I give up. That's where I remember thinking about it.
Speaker 0 00:13:12 I remember ever having any suicidal thoughts.
Speaker 1 00:13:16 Not really. No, I, I imagine it. Yeah. I don't know. Not, not anything. You know, I've learned a lot about that stuff since then. No, I don't remember that in particular, no
Speaker 0 00:13:26 Forward, you decided that you were going to reinvent yourself. Right? How did that go for it?
Speaker 1 00:13:32 Well, so I got to school, got to St. John's prep school when I started and I just decided I'm going to be the best student on the planet. I made a point of not making friends, cause I was just going to be go through the top. And from September when I started in December, I was like 10th in my class for up, based on who knows what to second by Christmas time. And I continued that through the end of that first ninth grade year. And then that summer I came home and I was so self-conscious I guess, I don't know what other word to call it. I was 15. Could hardly leave the house the whole summer. I mean, my dad called somebody to get me onto a baseball team because I didn't have the gumption wherewithal to go to a tryout on my own.
Speaker 0 00:14:16 You remember what you were self-conscious about? Was it your body? Was it, it was gender actions
Speaker 1 00:14:21 That he's going to think. I, it wasn't anything in particular. It was like, couldn't be comfortable being around like other kids, kids I'd hung out with the summer before. I just didn't even try it. Won't be okay. Uh they'll think I'm, I don't remember even thinking about it. I just remember I can't do it. I'm just going to stay in the house. I'm not going anywhere. I'm not doing anything that had happened that lasted the whole summer. And I remember thinking, wow, at school I was a star and here I'm stuck in the house. This sucks. You know, at the same time, one of my sisters got married at, toward end of that summer. And I got to go on a really cool trip with my oldest sister and her husband and kids. They took me, they lived in near San Francisco and they took me on a trip with them across the Dakotas and Montana to glacier park and then download West coast back to their house.
Speaker 1 00:15:06 That was a wonderful thing. It was a wonderful, wonderful thing. You know, really helped me kind of feel good about myself. Went back to 10th grade, continued the same, you know, just solidly locked in then in January. So this is January of 1968. I was home for a weekend in, I think it was like Saturday night and I woke up and I smelled smoke and I went downstairs and my mom had set the couch on fire with a cigarette. She was drunk and my dad was there and he got up and I got up and we carried the Dre, the couch outside. We poured water on it to put it out. And I think we would have pretended like it didn't happen the next day, which is kind of thing we normally did. But my, one of my, my youngest sister came home later that night went, this is it.
Speaker 1 00:15:44 And she'd been leaving a pamphlets around the house for my parents for some time before that I found out later. So anyway, I got a ride back to school, uh, that Sunday I imagined. And then Monday or Tuesday, one of the priest called me into his office and he said, Hey, your sister's on your way to pick you up. And I said, what's up? And he goes, well, your, your dad's in the hospital. He had a massive heart attack and he's at St. Mary's hospital in Minneapolis. And your mom's at this place called Hazeldon. And so and so out then, what's, Hazeldon a treatment center in center, city, Minnesota. So my sister picked me up and what had happened was my sister went to the only person in their small town that would have any leverage with my dad who was the parish priest. And she said, here's, what's going on?
Speaker 1 00:16:25 And he said, tell your dad to be in my office at three o'clock this afternoon, or I'm coming to your house. Somehow from there, my mom got to Hazeldon and I suppose Monday, and then Tuesday, my dad went to his office, which was two blocks from our house at about 10 30 in the morning he got up and he said, I don't feel good. I'm going home and collapsed on the floor with his massive heart attack. Luckily he didn't make it home. He would have died probably, and ended up in the hospital where he was for quite a while, recovering from the heart attack. Our family doctor told me later, it was the worst heart attack. He did anybody see anybody survived, and this is 1968. So they don't have the kind of technology and know-how that they have now to deal with that stuff. And he quit drinking and smoking was probably the healthiest. He'd been in 30 years for a couple of years after that. But then as his arteries and stuff started falling apart and he died a few years later.
Speaker 0 00:17:11 Did he ever pick up again or did he didn't know? Did he die sober, do you think? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1 00:17:15 Not on purpose. I mean, he would never say I was an alcoholic and I I'm in recovery. It was like, the doctor told me I can't drink and smoke, so I'm not drinking and smoking.
Speaker 0 00:17:23 Do you remember what his demeanor was after that? Great.
Speaker 1 00:17:27 Pretty much the same, same guy, but not real different, not real different in ways we got closer. It was really kinda nice for awhile. Yeah. So anyway, so that, that was January. And then about March, the deal was this, the high school I went to had has a program where they exchange students with a school in Austria because there's St John's a Benedictine monastery, and they have a deal with his monastery in Austria. I was on the, I was planning to go on that thing to Austria for 11th grade. And so in 10th grade I tried out for the baseball team and I didn't make it. I don't know if I would've made it anyway, but that was it. And that was a big deal to me. And it was like, geez, I'm never going to play baseball again. So this is like a month or two after my mom goes into Hazel Lynn and my dad almost dies. And that's when I started drinking and some other guys in the high school and I it's on the same campus as St John's university. And so we got some college guys to get us some beer and I didn't realize it at the time, but later on, I figured out I blacked out the first time I drank
Speaker 0 00:18:24 You. Remember what your first beer was? You said your first drink was a beer, right? Yeah. Do you remember what it was? What kind? Yeah, no. Nah. It's one of my favorite questions to ask because I remember mine. It's interesting.
Speaker 1 00:18:37 Yeah. It was a case out note, somebody planted out in the woods and we went out, I remember feeling a covert operation feeling kind of inadequate because I drank seven beers when I was totally wasted and threw up all over the place at first sight.
Speaker 0 00:18:49 It's time drinking. You had seven beers. And I was thinking, geez, what a lightweight. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:18:56 So that, and that opened up a whole new world for me. So then all that self-consciousness and social anxiety, I guess you'd call it was gone
Speaker 0 00:19:05 Before you blacked out that first time drinking. Do you remember how it felt?
Speaker 1 00:19:10 I remember it being really euphoric. Really wonderful. Really great.
Speaker 0 00:19:14 Yeah. Yeah. A lot of alcoholics talk about the first time they get drunk. They talk about this term they use is, I finally felt as though I had arrived here I am. This is what I've been looking for all along. It sounds like in your case, it was just, yeah.
Speaker 1 00:19:34 I mean, I, I guess looking for what I've been looking for, all one in the sense of being freed from that social anxiety. And am I good enough? Am I fast enough? Am I smart enough? Blah, blah, blah. That definitely. And I remember, you know, I continued on obviously after, you know, in that summer. And I remember one time being out in the sunshine at the beach and the sun and splitting headache from a hangover and I went, God, this is wonderful because it blew out the depressive stuff, the negative self-talk that was going on inside my head all the time. It blew that out for a while. And that was delightful. I remembered that was just what a wonderful thing
Speaker 0 00:20:11 I think. And I'm pushing a little bit here. Oh, that's what I do. Do you think that because of your parents' age and they were just kind of over parenting as you loosely put it earlier, do you think that directly contributed to your not feeling good enough not having that sort of attention that you thought you quote unquote, maybe deserved
Speaker 1 00:20:35 Boy, I have no idea. I don't know. I don't that that doesn't ring a bell as far as that goes. And I don't know that it was attention even. I think I got plenty of attention, but they were kind of in their own world too, you know? And I remember one of the things I think about, I love my parents. I can't say I don't, but I remember thinking, I remember both of the compliments my dad gave me to too. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:20:58 Do you remember? Well, you remember he gave you two, so what were they? One was
Speaker 1 00:21:04 I never struck out playing baseball. I almost never struck out. And he said, you've got to go die, walking home from a game one night. And the other one was, I refinished my, my dad, my uncle in 1958, but in 1956, Chris craft cruiser years later, I guess, well, in the early seventies, before my dad died, I refinished it. And he said, wow, you did a great job refinishing it. And that really stuck in my head. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:21:27 Hmm. Those feelings of not good enough, you pick that might be related to getting two compliments. I'm not a psychologist. I don't claim to be one, but I call it like, I see it. And you got a good eye. Could be, could be sport
Speaker 1 00:21:44 It's it's, you know, and it's interesting too. Cause I'm, you know, talking about this, you know, you mentioned stigma and telling tales out of school, you know, ratting out your parents, writing out your family. That in a huge sense is what I think recovery is about down the road. We can talk about, you know, the, but I think I sent you a note about something. I have a idea I thought of about hitting bottom. One of the things, or here's a something that I remember. I don't know if you've ever seen any father Martin videos, Catholic priests from way back and did all these videos about AA and recovery. And one of the things that really stuck with me from one of those is he said, I think the best definition of humility is stark honesty, no bullshit. This is who I am, nothing to hide.
Speaker 1 00:22:26 It's all here on the table. I think that's pretty much impossible. It's impossible for me. I don't want anybody to know everything about me. I'm sure. Nope. I don't. I don't. I hope, I think no, probably nobody else does either. But I mean, telling these tales out of school, on the one hand, it's like breaking all the rules, you know, violating the family secrets and so on. And at the same time, I feel like it's necessary for me to face these things and throw them out there and say, this is how it was, it doesn't have to kill me. I don't have to have a run my life. I can be, I can grow beyond this stuff. I wouldn't be surprised. And part of what was keeping me from saying, this is somebody going to say you big fucking cry, baby. What, the matter with you, you had, you are so fucking privileged.
Speaker 1 00:23:09 It's true. I was in so many ways, you know, at the same time I've had to do a lot of work, to have a life that I wanted to live out of what I grew up in, whether that's internal in me or outside forces or what, who knows the end result is for me to be happy and have a light life that I like, which I do now I've had to, I would say confront some of the stuff accepted as real and decide to move on one way or the other, you know, and some of it I've really struggled to move on with some of it. I'm sure I've not let go yet. But that's the ongoing challenge is to see it for what it is. Tell the truth about it, accept it and say, this is who I am. This is what I've got to work with. This is what I'm doing with it
Speaker 0 00:23:57 In being in recovery and interviewing people on this show. There is one thing that I know for certain, and that is mental health issues, chemical dependency, compulsive behaviors do not discriminate for sure. It doesn't matter. Your race, color, creed, socioeconomic status. It does not matter. Right. And I think that's, I think that's nice of you to say that you are a white male that had all the privileges in the world. Guess what? It doesn't fucking matter.
Speaker 1 00:24:29 It doesn't protect you from it. That's for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:24:32 Yeah, absolutely. That's not to say that people of certain socioeconomic statuses have access to more help. Right. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is, is the effect. Yeah,
Speaker 1 00:24:44 Absolutely. No, I hear you. And that I agree completely.
Speaker 0 00:24:47 Tim, what does your continued use look like during high school?
Speaker 1 00:24:52 I, you know, I drank on the weekends when I was home from school. I don't think I ever drank at school after that, just because it was too hard. I would come home and drink with my friends, start a weekend warrior type stuff. Yeah, definitely. Then during the summer carried on with it. And I think, you know, and again, looking back, I'm thinking maybe it was probably tied in with, you know, gotten diagnosis of bipolar disorder. And I want to pretend that it's not real, but then I look and I go, yeah, sure. It looks like bipolar disorder to me, I think kind of hypomanic behavior. And it's interesting. Long after high school, somebody said, they talked to one of my teachers and said, did you know Tim? And he said, yeah, you know, the thing was, you never knew who you were going to get. It could be great. Or it could be terrible. I'm guessing that was kind of a cause I think when I got hypomanic and I started getting wound up, I, I can be really obnoxious. Lucky you got Marla to protect you. So, uh, she'll rip your fucking throat out. I believe it. I believe it that's dare shank me. I hear ya. So yeah. So I think that was kind of, cause I never, I never felt like I kind of felt like I had friends, but I never really believed I had friends. I didn't believe that anybody would want to be my friend. I think
Speaker 0 00:26:02 Tim, the way that you describe your childhood growing up and you know, moving through these stages of maturity, both mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually, you sound like you were pretty lonely. Yeah. You sounded like a really lonely kid, huh?
Speaker 1 00:26:19 Yeah. I never, I've never really thought of it that way, but that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 0 00:26:23 Talked about obviously looking back in hindsight, it's like, Oh yeah, I did struggle with some mental health stuff. When I was a kid, I just couldn't label it. I couldn't name it at the time. But when you talked about being in your family, being the youngest, sort of not having as much attention from your parents that maybe they paid to the older and then being reclusive and then deciding that you were going to be number one at school. And you said, you said that you did not have any friends. Right. When you went to school, you did not have any friends. And then you came home for the summer and you didn't want to see anybody. So you were all alone and Tim, I'm very sorry that you went through that. Thanks. No one, no one
Speaker 1 00:27:04 Really thought of it that way. But yeah, it makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 0 00:27:07 No one should ever have to go through that, especially as a young child. Yeah. And I'm very sorry that you went through that.
Speaker 1 00:27:14 Wow. Thanks. You're welcome. I appreciate that. Yeah. I never thought of it that way, but that's why I'm here. Cause we can all learn and grow. We're learning if we open ourselves to it.
Speaker 0 00:27:23 That's right. Stark honesty, Tim. There you go. Let's go. Let's continue with that. Stark honest, talk to me about your Busan.
Speaker 1 00:27:31 He kept drinking through high school and then 11th grade, I got to go to Austria and you can, anybody can drink in Austria. So we drank when we could there in boarding school again. So not a whole lot of opportunity drank a lot. There came back the next summer and was drinking a lot and that sort of thing. And then it was my senior year and I was such a good student. They set up this thing where I could do an independent study project first fall semester of my senior year. So basically I hitchhiked home every weekend and screwed around and I did some, I did some actual work on it. I'm sure it's supposed to be looking at college and stuff. Oh, well then yeah, January, January. So January, 1970 minus cool ski trip and my best friend at the time. And I left the resort or a, you know, the ski place where we were staying and hitchhiked into town, wherever it was somewhere in Wisconsin got really drunk. I don't know how he got drunk. I think we were drinking at a bar. I don't know why they'd service. I remember
Speaker 0 00:28:23 Because it's Wisconsin. Well, there you go.
Speaker 1 00:28:27 Being in a bar. And I remember probably being really obnoxious talking to the singer in the band. And then I remember walking out the back door and down some steps that really icy. So I was being careful. And the next thing I remember is kind of coming to and thinking, Oh crap, I forgot to take out my hard contact lenses that I had at the time. And I sat up and opened my eyes and I was in jail. So we were in jail the next morning. They let us out and we hitchhiked back to the ski area and the priest who was running the trip was like, you know, I've still, I've heard, I've heard from within the last year. And he's sounds like he was dying of ALS. He was like the most compassionate, one of the most compassionate people I've ever met. And he just said, so you know what happened guys?
Speaker 1 00:29:08 And I think we've thought about trying to tell him a story. And it just said we got arrested. We were in jail. So we got back. I was a whizzbang student, so they weren't gonna, they were going to suspend my friend and not suspend me. And I said, that's bullshit. You know, if you've got a suspended, us suspend me too. So they did. I got home and my parents, I remember my mom saying, well, you know, the first time you drank and lose control, you know, like that. And I said, man, I've been drinking every weekend for the last three years like that. And that's when I actually told my parents, I, like I said, you know, this is such bullshit and I'm feel so. I don't know what, you'd it probably alone and so on and so forth that I could kill myself. I said that smashed a chair.
Speaker 1 00:29:47 And we went and saw a therapist once. And my parents went in and talked to the therapist and then I went in to talk to him, the therapist. And he said, well, your mom's kind of in Lala land over here. And your dad's kind of seeing all the big buildings, but not seeing the manhole open manhole in front of them and kind of thing. And I don't know what, what came of that. But anyway, I think that kind of scared my parents so that a few weeks later I was too cool to watch the Superbowl. The Vikings were playing in the Superbowl, but I was too cool to watch the super bowl. So I was out on the ice on the Lake, near our house, flying a kite. And my dad was watching the super bowl and the phone rang and it was a guy from new college in Sarasota, Florida.
Speaker 1 00:30:26 And I'd done really well on the national merit scholarship test. And I wasn't a semi-finalist but pretty close. And so they called up and recruited, you know, said they wanted me to come to their college. And my dad said, I will be, you didn't get that far. My dad said, Hey, call back later, the Superbowl's I'll call back later. And they said, we'll let you start this spring quarter rather than finishing high school in Minnesota. So I went to the teachers at my high school and I said, what do you think? And they said, yeah, you can do that. You know, send us some papers and do this kind of stuff. And they tried to talk me out of it. Cause they said, you know, this place is not going to last. It only started in 1960 and it was like 500 students. And it was basically like hippie college, no grades, no credit hours, you know, individual assessments of how you did in each of your classes.
Speaker 1 00:31:10 And that sort of thing. I had wanted to go to Stanford because Mona my, my oldest sister's husband went there and I applied and I don't know even know what I ever got a response I got into Notre Dame. And I think I just, I don't know why I don't think I ever, and I remember thinking that's going to be another four years of prep school. I don't want to do that. So I decided I wanted to go to Florida. So I did. So my parents and my youngest sister and I drove down to Florida, I got checked in. And because I was fluent in German from haven't been in Austria, I had a one-on-one tutorial with a German professor and, you know, having been in boarding school, I was a great student. I could sit down and crunch the stuff out and he gave me a novel.
Speaker 1 00:31:46 That's kind of the, I don't know, the German equivalent of like Warren and peace or whatever, the magic mountain by Thomas Mon. He said, yeah, we're going to read this a quarter. I remember looking at it and thinking I could get through like three pages in an hour. And so I, it means I'm going to have to put in like three hours a day to get through this book by the end of the quarter, you know, it was, it was great. It was great in so many ways. On the other hand, you know, at times I thought, geez, I kind of wish I'd gone a regular college course. You know, I had to take other kinds of classes cause I could just take whatever I wanted.
Speaker 0 00:32:15 Were you drinking during this time? Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 00:32:19 Smoking pot. It wasn't like I couldn't get out of my room. It was like, you know, we drank on weekends and we probably drank during the week too, but yeah,
Speaker 0 00:32:25 Nothing out of the norm. No, I mean, there weren't any sort of consequences, like waking up in jail with your hard contact still in. Yeah,
Speaker 1 00:32:32 No, no, I, that didn't happen again. Another time, one night in my hometown, I got stopped by the cops twice drunk and they let me go both times in the same night. In the same night. Yeah. Lucky sob. No kidding. No kidding. And this is all then in college, that's when I first took LSD and I really, really, really loved it. And I really, I smoked a lot of weed. I really, really, really loved weed. What did those do for you? Weed was just like get to relax and yeah. And again, I think kind of slow my brain down because my brain is, you're going 800 miles an hour running. Yeah. LSD I think was really helpful. I think I really gained some positive stuff from it. One was realizing that my thinking and my feelings didn't necessarily have to be in lockstep. They didn't have to go together.
Speaker 1 00:33:18 Cause I, you know, especially being an 18 year old guy obsessed with sex, I remember realizing high on LSD who cares about sex. This feels so great. You know, who cares? And it realized that that was even a possibility was mind blowing to me. My thinking is going so fast. I can't even hold a thought long enough to say it out loud, but I enjoyed it. I never had, you know, a bad trip as people say. But I remember thinking if you had any deep self doubts, this would, could pull you under, you know, and at the time I was like, I got it made. Everything's cool. You know, life is good. That kind of stuff. Yeah. So I, you know, I did that and the first summer I came home and I had an internship with Hennepin County and they had a volunteer probation officer program and I worked in the office, um, people managing it.
Speaker 1 00:34:01 And there was a woman there who was a probation officer from Vienna, Austria who was there as an exchange student exchange kind of program. And so during the summer I talked to her and I said, Hey, I'm going to this experimental college where they encourage you to do off campus stuff. If I came to Vienna, could you, can I follow you around and do a research project with you? And she said, probably, you know, let me talk to that's right. And talk, talk to my boss, I'm going to get back. So I ended up doing that. So the next winter quarter, so it was been January to March of 71. I went and lived in Vienna, Vienna by myself. It was really great because I didn't have anybody to speak English with. So when I got there and Vienna has a dialect, that's different, even from where I was in boarding school, 40 miles away, very distinct dialect.
Speaker 1 00:34:40 And so I couldn't understand anybody the first week or two. And then I got to the point where you don't have to translate in your head and you know, I dream in German and that kind of stuff. So that was a really great experience. In many ways, came back. It was spring break when I got back and then I hitchhiked to New York and from New York to Michigan and had all these, you know, great experiences and stuff that were a lot of fun. My would have been my senior year, second year. Anyway, I came back. I was back in Minnesota for a year with another internship kind of job, and then went back on my senior year in college. So 73 to 74, I was home at Christmas. My dad had a stroke. He'd been pretty sick before that he had surgery on his aorta and he never really recovered from it.
Speaker 1 00:35:20 But at Christmas time he had a stroke. And I remember talking to the doctor saying, well, should I go back to college or is he going to die? Or, you know, what should I do? And he said, no, I'm pretty sure he's going to recover. You know? So yeah, go on back to school. So I went back to school and then after a few weeks, one of my sisters call me and said, I think dad's dying. Mom doesn't want to tell us. My mom had started drinking again at this point. In fact, the doctor, when he was talking to her, when my dad was dying in the hospital and he called her at night and she'd be drunk. And I noticed that from time to time too. But anyway, came back and my dad lingered for a couple of weeks and then died at the end of January that year.
Speaker 1 00:35:50 And then I went back to school and finished and then really felt like I needed to be home. Cause my mom was there and my dad was dead stuck around. I didn't have a job or anything. So I signed up at the university of Minnesota. My two best friends from college were both going, working on being doctors in Hawaii. I'm going to be a doctor too. So I started taking science classes because of the internship jobs. I'd had an agency in Hennepin County or had a job opening and I got the job and it was who was it called? The criminal justice council. So this is 1974. There were all the riots in the 68, 67. After that Congress passed, what's called the safe streets act. And so there was all this money for various kinds of programs to reduce crime and help kids. And this, that, and the other thing.
Speaker 1 00:36:36 So the agency I was working for was like the County screening office for applications that came in for these grants and so on. So I started in the fall, the date when they handed out the money was February and March. Something like that. After that it was dead. I mean, there was literally, I mean, I remember asking my boss, what should I do? And he said, well, why don't you rearrange the bookcase? I think that drove me nuts because I felt like I'm not doing anything. And I don't remember what I did was put a clock radio on the far side of my room and put it on a country music station. So it made me get up
Speaker 2 00:37:08 Ben Turner
Speaker 1 00:37:12 Because I didn't like the country music. So I quit the job. And I remember thinking, you know, when people always said, well, you're going to be a lawyer like your dad. And I was like, yeah, maybe, maybe not. I got to do something mentioned this before we started. One of the things that happened too, was I'd love smoking weed up until about then. But once I got out of college, I remember it hitting me and it's like, I'm out of college. I'm 22 years old. I have to do something important with my life right now that anxiety gripped me so much that whenever I smoked pot, it just kicked that anxiety up and I couldn't enjoy it anymore. I still kept drinking. And, but I, I believe didn't enjoy smoking pot anymore after that anyway. So I quit the job. And so I applied to law schools and I got into, um, William Mitchell and Hamlin who are separate back then. And so I got into law school at Hamlin and went to law
Speaker 2 00:37:57 School. So, um,
Speaker 1 00:37:59 Man, you know what, again, my mom paid for it and I was bouncing around and did that. You know, that I'd always been a great student. In fact, you know, I've sat and I think it's really true if I would've gone to law school after 10th grade, I would have done better than I did after finishing college. You know, in the first semester, at the end of the first semester, I was like, Holy crap. You know, it's like, I got like CS and was like, this is not how I do things. This is not me. I knuckled down a lot more got through that. And I really dug law school. I loved that kind of thinking. And I remember the professor saying, you've got to learn how to think like a lawyer. And I remember realizing, I think I've already got that from hearing my dad talk about legal stuff.
Speaker 1 00:38:34 You know, the idea of kind of looking at both sides and imagining what's the other side going to say. And if I were going to argue against myself, how would I do that? How would I construct that argument? That kind of thing. So I really dug that and you know, and at the same time it was like, I'm a rebel and I'm going to do this all on my own and I don't need any help from anybody. And so I sublet an office from some guys I'd done some, some lawyers I'd done some work with and started my own office and I was there about a year and a half. And I'm pretty sure it ultimately, I probably spent more money than I made part of it. You know, looking back. I know part of it was, I was. So, you know, for instance, when I started driving, I could just drive into the gas station, fill the car up and say, charge it in my mind.
Speaker 1 00:39:13 The money is just going to be there. Don't worry about it. And it'll come cause I'm, I'm great. I'm wonderful. And it's going to come. And it didn't. And then my cousin was still working for what had been my dad's law firm and invited me to come and work for them. And so I worked for them for petty pitiful amount of money that depressive stuff really kicked in. And I started there in the fall of 79 and in 1980, I remember I went to, uh, you know, some trial lawyer, seminar and Reno. And I remember thinking, well, this is gonna give me that edge so I can actually get out and do really succeed at this. And it didn't work. And I remember really struggling with it and thinking what's going on here? You know, I, you know, I can do anything. I can do anything I decide to do.
Speaker 1 00:39:57 I can make myself do whatever I want to do. Why can't I do this? And I remember thinking at one point, well, if I really wanted to do this, I could, I do it and I'm not doing it. So maybe I don't want to. In the meantime, I got sober in June of 1981, I'd been drinking and carrying on a drinking and carrying on. I blacked out regularly. I threw up pretty regularly. I remember after I quit drinking about a year and a half later, I got the flu or something and I throw up and I went, wow, I haven't thrown up since I quit drinking. And there were a series of events that got me ready to quit. That's set me up to quit. And one of them was, I was still drunk on a Sunday morning or something, or maybe on Monday morning, even and a client called me and wanted some advice called me at home.
Speaker 1 00:40:35 And I was talking to him. And I remember after that going, that was one of the rules, was it wasn't gonna affect my legal work. And in that, that got to me like broke through my bullshit wall. Then the next one was my boss at the law firm settled some big case. And he goes, Hey, let's go out for a beer. So we went to TGI Friday's on three 94, had a drink. And there was somebody sitting across the bar and we started chit chatting and he said, I'm buying. And so we're drinking scotches. My buddy, Larry I'd promise. I was going to go have dinner with him. And I had food in the car. And so anyway, and I was supposed to be there at seven 30 or whatever. And so all of a sudden I realized, Oh wow, it's quarter to eight. So I ran, I got to the payphone.
Speaker 1 00:41:16 I called him. I said, Hey, Larry, I'm sorry. I'm late. He goes, Hey, you want me to wait? I'm in the middle of something. Why don't you give me another hour? And then come on over there. And I said, great. So I went back and blacked out and never made it there in the, in the course of that. However, one of the things that was kind of funny for a drunken scene was when I first sat down, there was a woman sitting next to me smoking. And I said, can I borrow a cigarette from you? And she gave me one. And then later on, when I was really drunk, I looked over and she wasn't there, but her cigarette pack was still there. So I took a cigarette out of it. And her girlfriend who was on the next seat said, what the fuck do you think you're doing?
Speaker 1 00:41:48 And watch it buy your own goddamn cigarettes. And I remember looking at her and thinking I'm too drunk to respond. She kept talking at me. I couldn't talk. I think she was starting to get sympathetic. And then I went, Oh my God, she's hitting on me. And I'm still too drunk to talk. And then it was blacked out. And then I remember I came to when the lights came on at closing time, my boss was there with some woman on his lap. And I went out, threw up in the parking lot and I got home and my, I was living with a girlfriend and she said, God, Larry called me what the hell happened to you? Where were you? You know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, freaked. Everybody out. That was the first time. I mean, that was a consequence of a kind that I never really had before. You know, I was like, yeah, I was drunk, big deal, you know, blah, blah. But I scared people, I guess.
Speaker 0 00:42:28 Did you ever have other people in your life addressing you about the severity of your drinking? No. No, no one, no, not a sister. No, no.
Speaker 1 00:42:40 Interesting too. And I, and I say this, I, I need to think through it. I, but I think is right. Nobody. I knew at the time thought I needed to quit drinking when I did.
Speaker 0 00:42:49 Why do you think that is? Because I look good. I knew how to look good. Do you think they knew? No. No.
Speaker 1 00:42:55 I mean, they said later, like a true well could be, but you know, I mean, my girlfriend who had lived with for three or four years at that point said, you know, you're really neat. What's the big deal. Yeah. You get in trouble. You know, you do it too much, go too far once in a while. What's the big deal. How are, and then, so anyway, these events led up to, so the last one was like in March and I went to a guy I knew from law school said, Hey, are you going to so-and-so's wedding? And I said, well, no, I don't know him that well, I wasn't invited. And he goes, wow, you got to come to the stag party. So I went to the state party, you know, and it was like, and I sat and I decided this many, many times before I quit tricking, I'm going to have to and get home early.
Speaker 1 00:43:30 So I'm not a wreck tomorrow and so on and so forth. And so I was going to this state party, all these guys went to law school with, and I'm like, I'm not going to be drunk and obnoxious. I'm going to have a couple of beers and be polite and go home. Well, you know, stay too late. Got too drunk that cracked through my bullshit barrier. That wasn't it. So then another couple of months later, so we were getting toward June, an old buddy of mine, friend of a friend came into my law office and was asking me about some real estate thing or something. And he said, Hey, I'm going to have this big party next month, whatever. I'm going to have a boat on Lake Minnetonka. And it's going to be all these girls and it's going to be great. And he said, Hey, we're Steve.
Speaker 1 00:44:04 And Steve was my best drinking and using buddy. And I said, you know, I haven't seen him in a while. I don't know what's going on with them, man. So I called them up on the spot and I said, Hey, Steve, Patsy are, and he's going to have this big party, man. You gotta be there. And he said, ah, I can't make it. I said, what are you having brain surgery? You know? I mean, what, what could keep you from this? And he goes, uh, don't tell anybody, but I just got out of treatment. And I went, okay. And so hung up and said, yeah, I'll have to call him back. You know? So then as soon as Pat left, I called them back, Steve, what? The, and he said, well, he got in girlfriend trouble. And he worked where anyway, and we went to the employee assistance, people where he worked and they said, you know, do you drink and use drugs?
Speaker 1 00:44:39 And he said, well, yeah, I may say, well, you have to go to treatment. So he wants to treat me the way I think of it is his saying that gave me permission. And I said, well, how'd you do that? And he said, well, they told me to call this place. And they referred me to this treatment center. And so I said, well, what was the name of the place? And so he told me and I called the place. And they said, yeah. So they referred me to, it was a Hazeldon outpatient program that was in the volunteers of America building at 15th and Nicolette. And so I went there, met with the counselor and I remember sitting there waiting to go in for my first meeting with a counselor before I even started. And there was some woman sitting there and she was like, forties, fifties.
Speaker 1 00:45:11 And I was 20, what? 29? She said, what are you doing here? And I said, well, you know, I've got to check out and see what I can get some help. And she called home, what the hell are you talking about? You know, you look like you're a professional athlete or something. And I was just thinking, where are you? What planet are you from lady? But I thought, yeah, see, what's the problem. What's the real problem. But anyway, so I went in and talked to the counselor and during the course of the conversation, so we go through the whole thing and we get done and he says, yeah, you know, it sounds like you got a problem. I said, okay, I don't know if you can make it an outpatient, you might have to go to inpatient. I was like, Hey, I can't do that.
Speaker 1 00:45:43 I'm a busy guy. And he goes, no, um, you know, he said, well, you know, tell you what, I'll give you a week in outpatient. See how it goes, you know, but might have to refer you to inpatient. I'm like, yeah. Right. I said, okay. So, uh, you know, when do you want me to start? And he goes tonight. I said, I can't start till now. I'll have a softball game. And he went no tonight. So I called the softball guy and said, not coming anyway. I started. So I went through the outpatient program looking back on it, you know? And then the other thing too is, and I really think this was in the back of my mind was what I was really afraid of was that at the end of the conversation, he was going to say, you're not an alcoholic. You're just fucked up.
Speaker 1 00:46:19 We can't help. So through the outpatient program, and I think people have asked me how he stayed sober. I said, I know people that have worked at it a lot harder than me that haven't succeeded. But I think, you know, from my own, from my internal interpretation, it was so not fun. The last couple of years I drank that I didn't struggle a lot with cravings or urges to relapse or any of that kind of stuff. And I remember realizing that when I would start drinking after the first one or two, I'd go like, Oh God, where's this going to end up? You know, I mean, recently I listened to a TV show or something and one of the characters says, Hey, yeah, let's meet for drinks. And it just hit me. And I thought, what he means is let's meet at five, we'll have one or two drinks, and then we'll go home and have dinner and go on about our normal days to me, once we're going to meet at five and a half drinks, that means the rest of the night, the rest of the night is going to continue. And where am I going to end up? And what do I have to do so that I can make it through that and not get in trouble the next day? I never knew when it was where it was going to go once I start it. And I think knowing that was dug into my brain, made it easier for me not to
Speaker 0 00:47:30 Get caught up in cravings or, you know, magical thinking about it was going to be okay for me to drink again. Do you remember when you actually acknowledged that once you have one, you don't know where you're going to end up? Yeah. When was that about? It was at least a year before I quit. If not more. And at that point, did you think you were an alcoholic? You know, I think in many ways, I've always thought I was an alcoholic because I never pretended to want to drink socially. It was always like, let's get wasted and be obnoxious was basically it a badge of honor, if you will. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Do you think that came from your parents openly drinking? I think it was kind of in response to, or in defiance of my parents pretending they weren't alcoholic. And you were going to show everyone that you were exactly and that you didn't care.
Speaker 0 00:48:24 There you go. Yup. Yup. Yup. Yup. All right. We're going to take a little break, Tim. Okay. When we come back, we're going to talk about the rest of the story. Okay. Oh, you got some help. Great. Come on back next week for part two of Tim G before now in keeping authentic on authentic, we have to pay credit where credit is due. The me's the cutoff styling you add on today program to open the show. You always hear my mama, my mama, my mama, and madness by muse. And then we're going to change accents so we can get into Tim's tunes. The first pick by Tim is going to be the love by Shaka Khan and Rufus. Remember be good to yourselves. It is ever so important.
Speaker 3 00:49:48 <inaudible>.
