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 app
Speaker 1 00:00:43 Authentic and my dog,
Speaker 0 00:00:46 Carla, 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 AA as a whole. Please enjoy
Speaker 1 00:01:37 <inaudible>. My name is Nicholas Thomas Fitzsimmons. Vanden Hable book.
Speaker 0 00:02:23 Just call me Nick. And this is my show
Speaker 1 00:02:30 Instead of authentic, it's authentic. I put Nick in the place of tech. Okay.
Speaker 0 00:02:35 Then Michael, over somebody said anyway with
Speaker 1 00:02:38 Me as always is my dog Marla.
Speaker 0 00:02:53 All right. That's that's enough. Marlin go back to being a Mason anyway, here on authentic, where we get authentic. We 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. We pick up part two, right where we left off in part one. I know weird chronological stuff. It's crazy without Fitbit, do we we'll pick up part two with Tim's strong term smash. Can you hear me, Tim? I can welcome to authentic. Yay. We're here with Tim, Tim, Tim. In fact,
Speaker 2 00:04:17 I have several cousins and uncles and a grandfather named Jim. So my mother always introduced me as Timothy so that they wouldn't think I was another. Jim. I think I might call you Timothy for the rest of the show. That's quite all right.
Speaker 0 00:04:29 That won't bring back weird memories. Well, that's good. All right, Timothy, you went to treatment. Where was that? So
Speaker 2 00:04:36 It was a Hazeldon outpatient program
Speaker 0 00:04:39 To the same place. Your mom?
Speaker 2 00:04:41 Well, a branch thereof. It was in the volunteers of America building at the time. I don't know if it still is at 15th and Nicolette in Minneapolis. So I went to outpatient there and it was co-ed. I think that was where like the last group before they split it up into men's and women's, but in any event. So I went to those and I think, you know, it was good. I remember learning some stuff and getting some insights, but I think as much as anything, when I decided to go, I was the drinking thing was done. It wasn't like, I need to be convinced after that. I mean, I did it because you were supposed to do it. I wanted to do it. What do you mean you're supposed to do it? Well, go through treatment. I mean, that's how you get sober, but that's how you did in Minnesota anyway, at that time. So it's like, I earned the right to be in recovery, I guess, in a sense, you know, but that's what you're supposed to do is go to treatment. So I was going to do it and I was going to graduate and do it. Right. It was really interesting because what I did graduate, people said, I get the impression that we're talking to Tim, the lawyer, instead of Tim, the person,
Speaker 0 00:05:36 I get that impression talking to you tonight, too.
Speaker 2 00:05:39 All right. That, that was going on. So I got sober and then I was practicing law at the time. And there's an organization called lawyers, concerned for lawyers. That is a group of lawyers who are in recovery, who support each other, and also working now with mental health issues. They had a AA meetings in the government. And so I started going to those. Those are the first meetings I went to.
Speaker 0 00:06:00 What did you find helpful about those first AA meetings that you went to Tim? You're you're like a rock star. You are like the best at everything you do. I just find it so fascinating that you slayed school, you slayed this and now you're going to slay recovery. What was helpful about those first AA meetings?
Speaker 2 00:06:22 Definitely seeing these people who I knew by somebody's name or reputation, or even personally who were big shot lawyers. And I thought, wow, they can do that and be alcoholics too. And to hear people who were in a sense kind of untouchable, nobody, nobody could give them any shit cause they were judges or big shot lawyers or whatever, but they were humbling themselves and saying, I need help. That's why I'm here. I need to stay sober. I need to work hard to stay sober. And that's why I'm here. That's what I need to, that's why I need to keep coming to meetings. And that was valuable to me. I went to those very consistently. I don't remember when I first went to other meetings, but I certainly did. And I don't remember how long that was.
Speaker 0 00:07:05 Are there any individuals that were most helpful in those meetings to you? They talk about an AA, finding a sponsor. It's important to find a sponsor. Someone that's gone through the 12 steps of alcoholics anonymous, this program of recovery, one alcoholic working with another alcoholic who was that alcoholic?
Speaker 2 00:07:22 I never really did that. I never did. I remember
Speaker 0 00:07:25 That does not surprise me at all. You know,
Speaker 2 00:07:29 I would say those of us who really do know it, all people, the reason that those of you who think you do, I think I remember asking somebody to be my sponsor, but never really went anywhere with it. I kept going to the meetings and everything. So this is 81 by 83, you know, looking back, I think I was just horribly depressed. And there was a woman who was a, I think a therapist who was kind of the liaison person for lawyers, concern for lawyers. And she said, maybe you should get therapy and refer me to a therapist. So in 1983, after I'd been sober, about two years, I got into this men's therapy group, which was great. I mean, I really needed to do that. So getting into that within the next six months, I decided I need to take my whole life apart.
Speaker 2 00:08:10 So I broke up with my girlfriend. I'd been with for about five years and I decided I was going to quit practicing law because I just felt completely worthless. Like I just couldn't do it. Couldn't do it. And so I finally told my boss and you know, my cousins still worked at the law firm and my cousin had loved my dad to death and really wanted me to succeed in the firm with them too. And I just couldn't do it. And so he took me out to lunch and he goes, you know, what, what do you need? Do you need to be challenged? What's the thing I said, I just can't do it. I can't do it. I gotta give up. So I did that. And then, well, when I got sober, my youngest sister had been already been sober for about six months, but she didn't tell anybody.
Speaker 2 00:08:48 And she lived in Los Angeles. And so after I got sober, she and I started talking again because we couldn't stand each other when we're both drinking. But once got sober, we got really close. She said, why don't you move out here? You can live in my condo and we'll go to meetings and like that. And so I said, yeah, I'm going to do that. And then out of the blue, that summer to the summer of 83, that summer, the guy who'd been my best friend in fourth grade, who moved away that summer. When I went to camp, when I was 11, call me out of the blue. I hadn't talked to him in 20 years probably and said, Hey, I'm coming through town. Do you want to have dinner? And he had a company, orange County, California, where they, part of what they did was they had a contract with a chain of restaurants where they would go.
Speaker 2 00:09:30 And whenever they were redoing a restaurant, he was the guy who went in and put the pictures on the wall, a little girl with a Collie dog and the little shelf with a brass duck and three books in a paper flower. And he glue that stuff on the walls. And he got the contract because he kept his cost really low because he never stayed in motels. One guy drove her. One guy slept, slept in the back of the pickup truck on a mattress anyway. So he was coming through town. So we had dinner and he said, well, if you're coming to California, come home. And I sat, I was thinking about becoming a waiter. And he said, well, I, I ran restaurants. I can help you get a job as a waiter. I said, great. So November of 83, I loaded all my S like quit my law office job and loaded up all my stuff in my 1976, Plymouth arrow and drove to LA, started working for Pat, lived with my sister in Alhambra. So I had like a 30 mile commute down to orange County to work for Pat. And it was the greatest. It was like, I just felt great. And again, looking back now, it was, you know, mood, mood swings, certainly a big part
Speaker 0 00:10:24 Of it. Was that ever addressed, Tim, not later
Speaker 2 00:10:27 Much later. So dealing with all these mood swings,
Speaker 0 00:10:29 Are you dealing with those at the time? Then part of what I learned,
Speaker 2 00:10:32 I don't know if I learned it that early in therapy. Eventually I learned to realize that when I went into the depressive episodes in the past, that had always been what made me think I could ever do anything. I'm obviously not capable of really doing anything. I have these moments where I'm diluted in thinking that I can do stuff, but I really can't. Why the fuck do I even bother trying eventually in therapy? I don't think this early in therapy, later on in therapy, I learned it's temporary. It will let go after a while. And I didn't recognize the pipeline manic stuff. I just slept. That was normal. I'm smart and fast when I go 90 miles an hour. And that's how it is. But the depressive stuff, I faked it the best I could, but I felt totally inadequate. Totally powerless. Totally. I remember telling somebody how much I made at my law office.
Speaker 2 00:11:14 And he goes, what the fuck you work in there for Jesus Christ? Do you have a rubber Barbara? And I didn't feel like I didn't have the guts to apply for a different job. And I didn't want to try to do a different job because I couldn't do the one I was doing felt completely worthless. So anyhow, so I went out and I'm working in Pat's warehouse and delivering stuff around and in a truck and stuff like that. And it was good. And I went to tons of meetings and needless San Los Angeles, there's a bazillion meetings. So I went to a lot of meetings. One of the interesting things was in meetings in Minnesota, in the early eighties, pretty much everybody been through treatment someplace. When I was in California, almost nobody had been through treatment. They just showed up at AA and got a sponsor and did 90 meetings in 90 days.
Speaker 2 00:11:49 And like that met friends who I still stay in touch with. That was great. It was great. And it was great because I went through a lot of different meanings. So all different kinds of people. I mean, there was one where it was like, you're at the board meeting of the country club. Everybody dressed up fancy and like that. And there were more, my buddy of mine and I went to a skid row meeting is to go to, went down to LA downtown LA and went to some skid row meetings sometimes. And what do you like most about AA? I feel like I'm home. It's where I belong. I, these are my people. This is me. This is, this is who I am. This is what I need to be doing. Yeah. It's great stuff.
Speaker 0 00:12:24 Such a big part of EI is finding a power greater than yourself, finding this sort of spirituality, whatever that may look like, whatever you want to call it, whatever you don't want to call it. It really doesn't matter. The point is, is that I have to believe I have to have faith in something bigger than me that can help me that can take away pain and loneliness and quote, unquote, character defects.
Speaker 2 00:12:52 Then I think it was just AA that there is a place where I make sense where I fit in, where I can tell the truth and people will still like me. That's what it was for me. You know, since then I've come up with my own. Thinking about that. Do you mind going into that? Not at all, not at all. What does that look like? Well, well now the way I think about it, because I've worked as a counselor for a long time. So working with a lot of people that are struggling with this stuff. And one of the things I would talk about is, you know, the first three steps I haven't got the power to fix myself. Second step came to believe there was a power that could fix me, third major decision to do something. And this is from a video I saw a hundred years ago and the guy said, okay, you made a decision.
Speaker 2 00:13:30 Now, what, if you make a decision to open a bank account, how much money you got, nothing, you got to do something. And that's what steps four through nine are, as I understand it. But what I would say to people is, you know, power greater than yourself. And so, you know, where is this mystical flower? And I said, you know, I think, and again, easy for me to interpret a in my own way, but my thinking way that I think makes more sense for me. And I hope for other people is I haven't got it myself. I need to get it from somewhere outside of me because I haven't got what it takes. I need it from somewhere outside of me. And it might be you, and it might be the other people at the meeting. It needs to come from somewhere outside of me. I haven't got it on my own. I gotta get it from somewhere else. And so in that sense, power greater than me, you know, an easier to kind of handle as a power outside of me. So it's not so mystical and mysterious and unable to get a grip on it.
Speaker 0 00:14:13 What sort of people do you seek out in AA to get this help?
Speaker 2 00:14:17 I don't think I seek people out. I think I, I listen. I, you know, it's interesting over the years I've been to gazillions of meetings and two people stick out that I would never would have run into otherwise. One, I lived in St. Paul for a while, and there's a kid at a meeting who'd gotten thrown out of college for drinking. He was getting ready to go back and he'd been sober for a year and a half or something. And then we were talking about the first step. It must've been. And he said, if my life is unmanageable now, it's not because I'm drinking because I'm not drinking. If my life is unmanageable now, it's because I'm not living by the principles of the program. And I went, Oh, he said, yeah, exactly. Another one was a woman in a, in a meeting. And she said she had been sober for a while and started drinking again.
Speaker 2 00:14:59 And she was home drunk sitting in her chair. And she said, she thought to herself, maybe I don't care enough about myself to get sober. And I just thought, wow, sounds like a horrible place to be. I want to care enough about myself to be sober. Another thing for me, that ties in with the idea of like a power greater than myself as a whole idea of spirituality. And in my mind, the definition I came up with to try to really simplify it is spirituality is what you believe in that will allow you to have the best life you can have. So what might be, I'm going to be a good Christian. So I'm going to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ and so on and so forth. And the way I would put it, you know, as a counselor was, if you were going to be the best version of yourself, what rules would you live by?
Speaker 2 00:15:40 You know, we talk about, well, I don't believe in God or whatever. I go fine, but everybody has a set of rules in their head that they're constantly measuring themselves against. Am I doing well? Am I not doing well? Am I being who I want to be? And I would say to people, if you were going to be the best version of yourself, what values would you live by? What rules would you live need to live by up to more? And everybody comes up with the same list. Every time, honesty, reliability, meaning my actions match my words. I say, I'm going to do something. I do it caring, loving. They all kind of motion into each other. Eventually all of those kinds of values that we all measure ourselves against all the time. My real belief is self-esteem is directly tied to that. You like yourself better when you're living up to your values.
Speaker 2 00:16:22 When you're more, you're living up to your values, the more you like yourself when you're violating your values, you like yourself a lot less that's when you feel like crap, when you feel like I have let down, every thing I ever believed in, and everybody, whoever believed in me, that's when you feel like shit, the idea for me is there is a pretty clear cut concrete way for me to get better for me to recover. I need to find those things out there. That will give me what I need so that I don't use. And it's not the only thing obviously, but it is essential without that nothing else is going to work.
Speaker 0 00:16:55 And that's so much bigger than AA. Absolutely. It's just a way to live. And a is just a subsect of this whole recovery process. Sure. Wherever you are in your recovery journey. Like I say, in my intro, if you're still living and breathing, you're in recovery from something and all AA really provides is a recipe. And if you feel like bacon, come on.
Speaker 2 00:17:19 That's a great thing. And needless to say over the years, from time to time, and always there are people who are complaining about AA and LGS. They make, you got to believe in God and all this kind of stuff. And I just go, you know, it's interesting. I had an intern counseling intern and we were talking about AA. And he said, well, you know, but you gotta do. And I said, show me one place in the book, alcoholics anonymous, where it says, you got to do anything. You don't gotta do anything. If you want what we have. And you're willing to go to any length to get it, then you're ready to take certain steps. And to, you know, as a counselor, people would say, well, how do you know someone's going to make it? And I go, I don't. But what gives me the most encouragement for somebody, the most optimism for somebody is when their actions and their words say I'm going to do whatever it takes.
Speaker 2 00:18:02 We can get to it. Now, my idea of hitting bottom is there is no bottom. I worked at a treatment center that worked with people with brain injuries and mental illness. There were people in that, you know, anytime, any day, I would say, there are people in this building, who've gone through stuff you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy. They've lost finger and toes from frostbite, from falling asleep out. And I think they've lost families and brains and jobs and everything there is to lose because of their addiction. So if you're waiting for the magic bullet to hit you is to make you decide you're going to quit using you may well die first or suffer consequences. You're not willing to, to suffer. You can say you've hit bottom. After you've gotten to a point where you've made a decision and said, I see this for what it is I'm going to do, whatever it takes to not go back there. Then you can say, you've hit bottom and you're moving toward recovery. That's how I see it. Tim
Speaker 3 00:18:50 Kind of help. Do you receive from the people you counsel?
Speaker 2 00:18:54 Uh, Paul, I mean, you know, to a large extent, you know, I'm not, I'm not working as a counselor anymore. I left there in may seeing them struggling with these ideas, you know, saying it, I hear myself sometimes, which is a really valuable thing. You know, one of the things that comes up is clients will say, well, now that I'm getting cleaned up, I'm going to straighten out my girlfriend or my dad or my cousin or whoever. And I always go, you know, the thing that's most likely going to get them to do something different is seeing you being different and having a better life. They're going to want what you have seeing people get better is the greatest. Cause people say, wow, it must be horrible. You know? And I go, yeah, sucks. A lot of the time, you know, a lot of people don't recover, but the magic doesn't always happen. But he said, it's really cool to see people get better. Even people who we would say failed, you know, they go out and 48 hours, we get a call from detox and they're back in detox. Is that a failure? There is no failure. It's all steps along the path. And I hope you don't have to die before. You can have some happy silver time in your life. You know, it's a step in the wrong direction.
Speaker 3 00:19:53 Even the people who look like, you know,
Speaker 2 00:19:55 You call it, we want to call them a failure or whatever. They got something. They heard something. And people, when people would come back, they'd been there six months, three years, 10 years before they come back, like, well, God, I feel like such an idiot. I screwed up and I go, stop, look, we're all on this. I stole this from Gloria Steinem, who I got to see speak in 1983 while there's an upward spiral of recovery. As we go around and around, we bump into the same issues. But as we progress, we gain some more skills to deal with those issues. Each time we go around, we all in the process fall back from time to time. In my experience, I've never seen anybody who fell all the way back in the bottom. They fall back part way and they get caught or they catch themselves and they get back on track and can keep moving forward.
Speaker 2 00:20:39 If they decide they want to, that I think is the accurate metaphor about it. Everybody's going through their life at any moment in life, they're doing something to try to make things better. Come up with a rent, get a new car, get a new girlfriend, whatever, whatever they're, they're working on, making things better for themselves. Sometimes more effectively, sometimes less effectively. What are the things we can do to help ourselves get where we want to go live up to our values and get the, get the most out of that. That's what I think it's about
Speaker 0 00:21:12 Gaining things from your clients that you see yourself in them. What would you say to someone that comes to you? You talked a lot about what I like to use. I like to use this phrase a lot, this black and white thinking, and you go these extreme highs, these extreme lows either I am the best I am King shit, or I am lower than the shittiest shit. Yup. You were alluding to bipolar disorder with hypomania and depression, throw all those out the window, all those diagnoses. And let's just talk about black and white thinking because you've experienced that. And you still experience that. We all experienced that to some extent. What do you say to a client that is actively engaging in that black and white thinking?
Speaker 2 00:21:57 Well, give me an example. If you would, let's say I'm stuck in black. Okay. I would expect that I w what I'd be hearing is, you know, I've been to treatment eight times and I just can't get it, you know, I'm screwed. And so why bother? Why bother trying? Is that kinda what you're thinking about? Do you want
Speaker 0 00:22:13 Play a game? Sure. Let's play a game. All right. I'll be black UVU come into your office. And I sit down slumped.
Speaker 2 00:22:21 So what's happening, Nick?
Speaker 0 00:22:23 You know, same old shit, fucking depressed. And I tried this thing, you know, I tried as hard as I can and I can't fucking get it no matter what, I can't stop drinking. It's like, I got it. I got it. And then I don't, I've let, I've let my entire family down. Sure. My mom doesn't even talk to me anymore. Right. Some days I just, I just want to go to bed and not wake up. I don't know if that sounds, I don't know if that sounds suicidal. Like, I dunno if I don't know if I want to kill myself, but I don't want to live
Speaker 2 00:22:56 Certainly on the track towards suicide, suicidal thinking, but it sounds like it really sucks to be you right now. Yep. But you're here. So one of the things people say about treatment is, well, why would you bother working with somebody who's court ordered? Cause they're not going to try anyway. You know, they're just doing it to get through. And I go, you know what? They might hear something. They will hear something. Now you say you've been sober for any period of time. What's the longest. You've been able to stay sober.
Speaker 0 00:23:20 I get through 28 days of inpatient and you know, maybe a week. Okay. What have you, a week after inpatient?
Speaker 2 00:23:29 What I would look at is what happens during that week. And let me, let me back up and kind of talk about how this happens. Obviously, returning to drinking, is that what you call it a bad decision, something that's against what you want to do. You want to be sober. You want to have a life. So somehow you're getting into a where you're deciding something that goes against your plan. You're a value. One of the things that I run into regularly is where people in groups who've been in chases with the cops. And I always say, what were you thinking when you took off from the cops? And they always say, I wasn't thinking, I'd say, well, then let's back it up and analyze this. What facts were in place. When you got into the car that would predispose you to run from the cops, no license high on drugs, drugs in your pocket, no insurance warrants.
Speaker 2 00:24:11 The challenge, you know, with your continuing to drink right after treatment is catching yourself early enough in the process. So you can do something before you go over the edge. Easy for me to say hard to do. But somehow you stay sober for 28 days in a week. What are you doing differently those first days before you drank? And then what, what are the things that lead up to that drinking where you could catch yourself sooner, call me, call in a buddy, call your doctor, call your therapist and do something different. So you don't have to go over the edge and we don't have to do it all right now. But that's, that's what I would be thinking about with regard to, how to help.
Speaker 0 00:24:47 Yeah. One of the hardest things for me though is like, I, when I get there, I don't want to call anybody. Sure. Of course. What do I do?
Speaker 2 00:24:55 What are you willing to do? You're here. So that makes me think that you want things to change. You want things to get better. Talk about what stopped you from calling somebody. I mean, do you think about it? Geez. And treatment. They told me I should call somebody. I mean, do you even think that?
Speaker 0 00:25:07 Yeah, but I don't want people to know that I'm struggling. I sure. I don't want to be a burden anymore. I've been a burden my whole life.
Speaker 2 00:25:16 Yep. If we're talking one-on-one I would say like, who are you? Where are you go about burdening everyone? I mean, who would you call if you're going to call somebody? My sister. Okay. Let's call her right now. It was a phone call. Your sister asked her if she'd feel like you were being a burden. If you called her, would you be willing to do that? Let's give it a try. See what happens? You know, because I think what we do is we think up these things, we turn them into big problems and they're capable of thinking, you're going to burden. Your sister is something that's, you're, you're, you're deciding for your sister. If she says, yeah, you'd be a burden. I don't want to hear from you. You know, I'm so sick of your fucking bullshit then, you know? Right. I'm guessing that the reason you want to call her is cause you somewhere, you know that she probably be receptive and she want to help you.
Speaker 2 00:26:02 And, and this is the kind of thing, like practicing, calling her now and saying, Hey, here's one of the things I'm realizing is I get stuck on feeling like I don't want to be a burden to you. So I don't call you before I drink. Where you be, okay with me calling you and she'd say, hell yes, you idiot. I've told you that 5,000 times, right? But those little pieces, little pieces, again, you know, the thing like somebody being court ordered to go to treatment. I mean, some people come to treatment and they've already made up their minds. They're on the road recovery. Some people are ambivalent stages of change and they're ambivalent. And there are people who don't really want it at all, but they could have come here or they could have gone to jail. And they came here for some reason, they wanted to, this sounded a little than jail, you know?
Speaker 2 00:26:44 And they could say, well, Hey, at least I'm going to be locked up. And I got better food and stuff like that. But nonetheless, they're here and you were, you are, you, they might look at you. Are you, are you and go, I'm definitely smarter than that guy. And he's making it. What's the hell's matter with me. He might look at any one of you. He might connect. You know, one of the great things in treatment was seeing people who you would expect would never want to be in the same room with each other, becoming buddies and supporting each other and pumping each other up.
Speaker 0 00:27:09 We are people who normally would not mix.
Speaker 2 00:27:12 Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:27:15 Tim, I don't think I'm going to have a drink today. Good. I support you.
Speaker 4 00:27:22 You got such a good counselor. Why'd you quit? I'm old. I get to retire. Oh God. I'm going to be, I'm going to be 69.
Speaker 0 00:27:31 The booze. That's a good year. Talk about taboos. I'm going to be 69 in February. I've heard some good things about 69. Well we'll, we'll see. Well, we'll leave that where it is. I don't think my mom wants me to talk about that. Okay. Have you ever gone to Alanon?
Speaker 4 00:27:45 Yeah. Okay. Could you explain real
Speaker 0 00:27:47 Quick to those out there that are listening that don't know what Alanon is versus AA Alanon is
Speaker 2 00:27:53 A offshoot of AA. I think it was actually started to some extent by, uh, bill Wilson's wife, one of the founders of AA and some other people, you know, back then it was kind of presumed that alcoholics were a male. You know, they were all, you know, basically kind of middle class, white guys. Middle-aged middle-class white guys over time, their thinking expanded where maybe young people and women and other kinds of people would, uh, want to get sober too. But, um, Alanon is an organization for where the friends and relatives of addicts and alcoholics to get together, to support each other in dealing with those people, the addicts in their lives, without going crazy themselves. One of the things that, you know, I've, I haven't been to a lot of meetings. One of the things that stuck with me is the idea of what they call a three CS.
Speaker 2 00:28:40 I didn't cause the addiction, I can't control it and I can't cure it. And basically, you know, for instance, as a counselor, when people would call me and they would say, Hey, my husband, brother, daughter, son, girlfriend is drinking and I'm trying to stop him and I can't stop him. What should I do? And my first statement is, get the hell out of the way, because that is a freight train that will run you over and kill you. So get the hell out of the way and go to Alanon of the many people I've suggested Elena to an amazing number have said, I went once. It was just a bunch of women complaining about it.
Speaker 4 00:29:12 Their husbands would say, well, you got to keep going.
Speaker 2 00:29:16 And you know, so the rule is, how long do you got to keep going to Alanon until you want to go? You know, how many Al Allen ons it takes to screw in a light bulb? Nevermind. I'll just sit here in
Speaker 4 00:29:25 The dark.
Speaker 2 00:29:27 But you know, and that's what it's about is getting caught up with addicts and realizing that, you know, if your person you cared about had cancer, you might decide, well, I got, I got affects them. Most of us know that's pretty unrealistic. We need get them to doctors and healthcare providers who know how to deal with that. I don't, but with addiction, for some reason, we think that we can intervene and, uh, and fix them as you learn more about it. You're you can find out that that's probably not going to work and it's gonna make you crazy. In the meantime, one of my sisters kid went through treatment a few times and she became the queen of Alanon. As I described her,
Speaker 0 00:30:02 Is she the one that left the pamphlets around?
Speaker 2 00:30:06 No, no, that's a different, different one different one. And at one point I was at her house and she was talking with one of her Alanon buddies and the one who was complaining about having to go to this meeting and that meeting, we got to pay for this and we got to pay for that. And my sister said, you know, let's Sue sometimes part of being part of an alcoholic family is really fucking inconvenient.
Speaker 0 00:30:25 And
Speaker 2 00:30:25 Then, you know, an interesting thing too, is in Alanon, you know, in AA it's been my experience that people are willing to yuck it up about obnoxious drunken behavior and for the people in Alanon it's not funny in a similar note, I went to some, um, and I don't know that many around anymore if at all, but there were a kind of a movement about adult children of alcoholics. And that was one where I remember going to a meeting and this woman said, Hey, you know, I've been the treasurer for the last three years and my job changed and I really haven't got time to do it anymore. I'd like to give it up and I'd pass it on to somebody else. And in an AA meeting, my experience has been, if Susie says, Hey, I wouldn't need to give up, uh, being the treasurer.
Speaker 2 00:31:02 So then you say, okay, Hey, I nominate Nick to be the treasurer. Everybody goes, yay, Nick. And you're the treasurer. Fuck it. But you know, it's done. So in this adult children eating, they spent like an hour and a half talking about it. And I remember having this vision, this sense of the pain was so palpable in the room. I remember having the sense of it's like 10 people sitting around in a circle each with a 40 pound block ice on their lap, pretending like it's not there. You know, that, that was the pain level in the room. It was astounding. And that's kind of, part of the package with addiction is the incredible wake of devastation that it leaves and causes to everybody around it. And I even with all of the experience and insight in that I've had with it, I'm still astounded at how powerful it is. You know, I get to see people every day whose lives are just trashed because of it. It's not going away as far as I can tell,
Speaker 0 00:31:55 Switch gears. For sure. You talked about mental health issues that you struggle with the bipolar disorder now, is that an official diagnosis that you've received?
Speaker 2 00:32:05 Yes. So back it up in 83, I started going to this therapist, went to California. I only stayed there about eight months because for I left, I met the woman that I ended up marrying and was still in love with her. So then the next spring, I'm not looking back. I think I was just on a hypomanic thing and I was like, Hey, life is good. I got it all together, ongoing back to Minnesota. And everything's going to be great. Well, between that thought in returning two weeks later, it was already back in the tank. And the deep depressive episode, I was a fully licensed lawyer in Minnesota and I didn't have the gumption to apply for a job that even required a resume, much less as a lawyer. And so I answered an ad out of the paper and got a job in a warehouse for six 50 an hour, first few months that we were delivering file cabinets to a, an accounting firm in St.
Speaker 2 00:32:48 Paul. And I'm wheeling them down the hall in my shirt with my little name tag on it. And then I look up and there's one of my law school classmates standing. And I said, hi, Larry, how you doing? And he said, hi, Tim, how are you doing? And I said, I'm okay. And it was true. I was feeling good about myself. That was a good thing. What do you attribute the left from that? You attribute that again, kind of hypomania kind of thing. But I mean, I felt like I was doing what I could do. I was doing a real job. I was getting paid for what I was doing and I wasn't underperforming. I was being adequate. I was being adequate, but therapy group. I was in the therapist from time to time, we'll refer to somebody, has having delusions of adequacy,
Speaker 0 00:33:30 But
Speaker 2 00:33:31 I think I was really feeling like, you know, this is okay, this is good. Um, I'm being a normal human being then, you know, over the years I stayed in that, that therapy group. And over the years learn more about, you know, learned insights. Like my depressive episodes, aren't going to last forever. I don't think I ever caught on to the hypomanic stuff till later, realizing they weren't gonna last forever and I could come out of them. And it wasn't really who I had to be all the time.
Speaker 0 00:33:53 What sort of skills and tools were you using to get out of that breathing exercises?
Speaker 2 00:33:59 Boy, I don't re you know, I think it was just stuff that I was learning by being part of this therapy group from hearing other guys talk about it and the therapist talk about it. One of the things that I, that happened when I had the first meeting with the therapist, I was kind of all applying to be in the group and I'd been keeping a journal and I was reading through the journal and I got to a point and he said, stop back up and read that last paragraph. And I said, w what? It said, I wrote, I feel like a kid with a broken heart. And he said, let's talk about that. Yeah. I don't remember anything in particular, but I did gain some knowledge, but anyway, after several years, so now we're getting close to 1990 and he said, you know, you're getting better at it, but it's still really a problem for you.
Speaker 2 00:34:37 Maybe you should see a psychiatrist. So I did, and they put me on antidepressants and it was like, it was like, wow, now I feel great. I can do anything. So I decided to leap back into practicing law. And before that, when I, when I quit back in 83, I was like, no way, no, how never going back. But now I decided I was going to, and I launched myself into it. It went pretty well for a few years. And then I got caught up in the hypomanic thing. And I mean, thinking of just as I was driving here, I was thinking how to describe it. And my, my former wife wrote me a letter at the time saying, you know, you're acting like an addict. Yes, absolutely. And I, you know, and I think what I got was, you know, instead, you know, and I was like, I'm, can't quit.
Speaker 2 00:35:17 I'm not going to quit. I'm not going to give up this time. I'm going to make it work. And it was like a gambler. I just got to get back to the casino one more time. I'm going to win it all back and everything's going to be okay. And I just kept scrambling and scrambling and scrambling like that. And it didn't work in that process. Speaking of Hazeldon one day, my sister and my former wife and my brother-in-law showed up in my office and I went, this is an intervention. And they went, yep. Jagged me off to the, uh, relapse prevention program at Hazelden in center city. So I got there and the first night you're there, they, they had a bunch of people that were going into inpatient treatment. And I was in the, whatever the relapse prevention program. And so they gave us a Shipley, Hartford intelligence test and the Beck depression inventory, and, uh, uh, Minnesota Multiphasic personality inventory. And one of the great moments was during the middle of the testing, somebody popped up and said, Hey, is anybody else bothered by these phones?
Speaker 5 00:36:08 I'm hearing. So
Speaker 2 00:36:13 Went back to the, whatever the place was, where I was staying. There was somebody kind of following me around what the hell is up with that. A couple days later, I met with a psychologist and we're talking and he said, well, I looked at your Minnesota MMPI, Minnesota Multiphasic. And he goes, you know, what it tells me is you're, you know, you're really struggling. You're really in a lot of pain. You're trying really hard, but it's just not happening. It's just killing you. I go, yeah, that's pretty accurate. And he said, and here's the Beck, depression inventory. Anybody gets over about a 15. We know they got some issues, you know, anybody like 20, 20, 25, you know, it's pretty serious stuff because you got a 39 and, uh, which is, you know, suicide watch. So somebody had sent somebody to follow me around when I left the room after taking that test.
Speaker 2 00:36:48 And I remember thinking, as I was taking the test, I'm not checking. I don't know if you've ever seen the Beck depression inventory. Oh yeah. So it's a number of questions and they're each have four parts and the four parts go from, I feel pretty good. Most of the time, I feel pretty good. A lot of the time I feel pretty bad. Most of the time I'm going to kill myself today. And they're each four parts like that. So I remember as I was taking it thinking, I'm not checking the most extreme boxes on each of these, but I hope they realize how bad I feel. And you know, and at the same time, I was still trying to pretend like it's not that bad. I'm okay. I'm going to snap out of it. I just need to go a little hustle a little faster and try a little harder and everything's gonna be okay. And when I got there, people would say, well, when did start drinking again? And I said, I didn't. And they'd said, well, how long have you been sober? I said, 15 years. And they go, what could be wrong? I go, well, let me tell you what I've been doing.
Speaker 5 00:37:36 And they go, Holy shit. So,
Speaker 2 00:37:40 You know, the biggest regrets I have in my life is burning out. My marriage burning out. My wife, my former wife, she gave up. We're really good friends. Now I'm invited for Christmas. And life is good in many ways. And we really worked great together with our kids, but she was just burned out. She just had it, you know, at one point she said, are you gambling? Do you have a girlfriend? Are you snorting Coke? You say, you're at work all the time. We don't have any money. What the hell is going on? And that was true. I wasn't snorting Coke. I didn't have a girlfriend. I wasn't gambling. I was just spinning and spinning and spinning and not getting anything done and not making any money. So then that, that, that was in April. I went to the relapse program in July. I closed my law office and went to work as a paralegal.
Speaker 2 00:38:20 Like for another lawyer, did that for a while, kept going to meetings and stuff, just try to slow everything down. Then my wife and I separated in 99 and I moved over to St. Paul, that was silver house. And I had like, no job. And I worked temp jobs and went to meetings. Then I got a job as a child support officer in Hennepin County, which was kind of bizarre, but I'd done all that stuff as a lawyer. So I knew most of the rules about child support. So I did that for a couple of years and then a guy in a meeting, he was in counseling school. And I remember thinking, wow, you know, so I asked him about it and I was thinking, you know, maybe I could do that. And so anyway, he said, Hey, look, I got these two jobs as a tech at a couple of treatment centers that I need to give up.
Speaker 2 00:39:00 Cause I'm moving on. I'll pass them on to you if you want. So I went from Hennepin County over to, uh, MCTC minis, Minnesota, Minneapolis, community, and technical college. So I started there in February of 2002. And the first day at MCTC, I was sitting in class next to Lisa. Lisa was 18. She was in high school taking college classes. So we were chatting about what we're going to study. And so on. And the end of the first week, she said, um, yeah, I'm doing this and that this weekend, she says, what are you up to? And I said, Oh, my sisters are in town for my birthday. And she said, really, how old are you going to be? I said, 50. She said, dude,
Speaker 4 00:39:33 Shut up. My mom's going to be 40 in April. And there you said that's right. So, uh,
Speaker 2 00:39:44 Yeah. So that's all good. And so we got through counseling school, did an internship at Hazel Lynn's out anyway. So I think got into being a counselor. And so I was a counselor for 15 years. The last place until I left in may really enjoyed it. And I think learned a lot about myself. I think some people benefited, you know, all of the skills that I developed and won in along the way. I'd been a salesman for awhile and I practiced law for periods of time and all that kind of stuff. So all those skills I think helped helped me as a counselor, especially with the people I worked with who were lot of them struggling with brain injuries, mental illness, other kinds of disabilities, and realizing that, you know, there's the old story about treatment being the, a cruise ship that's going across Lake superior and they get halfway across and say, Hey, we're, uh, we're going back.
Speaker 2 00:40:28 If you want to go on you're on your own. And so it, people jump in the Lake and they're swimming and the invisible robot of AA comes up and says, you want to want to join us? And he's like, guys were nuts and invisible robot. Eventually the guy climbs into the invisible rope and he goes, what do I do now? And they go roll like, hell. But the point being that as a counselor, you learn about how do you get people to learn the skills they need to deal with their addiction and quit using and have a life. One of the things with clients I was working with in particular is because of their various disabilities treatment is like a first step in a longer process. For some people you could say, great, go from here to, uh, you know, if you've got a home to go to back it up a little bit in the eighties, I was involved in the, his Lin alumni association.
Speaker 2 00:41:10 And as at a meeting in center city in 1983 or 84, and the president of Hazeldon at the time was talking and somebody said, what's your success rate? And he said, good question. What does that mean? Does it mean you never drink again or maybe a drink a little, but you don't get in trouble. What does that mean? How do you, how do you find it? That's one question. The other one is, how do you gather that information? He said, we call people six months or a year after they leave treatment. Most of them we don't get of the ones we do get ahold of. There's no reason to doubt them, but we have no way of verifying what they tell us. Yeah. I mean, there are ways of probably measuring that, but it's not easy. And he goes, here's how I think about it.
Speaker 2 00:41:44 Give me a 42 year old, white male in tech job and tech family. It's really good. You deviate from that in any direction it drops off. So if you're leaving treatment and you've got a good job to go to and a supportive family, those kinds of things, you know, and I always say on a, you know, enough dose that you and your wife can go to Hawaii for a couple of weeks and talk about your treatment experience. In many ways, it's going to be easier for you to succeed people with brain injuries, with mental illness with dropped out of eighth grade, never, you know, 42 years old, never had a W2 job. Those kinds of things need more. So be easy to say, okay, go to treatment, go home, go to meetings, get a sponsor, or maybe go to halfway house for 90 days. Well, that presumes that at the end of 90 days, that person's going to be capable of living independently and being self-supporting.
Speaker 2 00:42:28 And for a lot of people that's not realistic. Other steps, like getting them caught up with the systems, things like caddy waivers and things, to get them into supportive housing and other kinds of programming that they need to succeed in life as well as recovery and give them enough structure so that they can focus enough on recovery. If you're spending all, if you're homeless, it's pretty hard to focus on what does God want me to do today in my life in recovery? It's that much harder when there are those kinds of distractions and day to day struggles to get along with a lot of what I was able like to do was really find those resources, find those places, assisted living places and group homes and places like that. But you know, it takes more work and some counselors would say, well, I didn't go to counseling school to be a social worker.
Speaker 2 00:43:16 What the hell? You know, fine. But I want to do the whole package. I remember being in court one time, I got subpoenaed to testify about some guy we'd thrown out a treatment and he was on probation for five years. Let's say. And I remember thinking, wow, if I had somebody I could work with for five years, we could really make a difference. Sometimes, obviously, sometimes not having them over an extended period of time, as opposed to 30 days or 90, maybe even 90 days makes a big difference. And again, that's a whole nother can of worms about, you know, the treatment process and the recovery thing. But there are so many people that are, there's so much damage that's been done to so many people. When you look and say something, some kind of intervention at some point could have made a big difference and it didn't happen for whatever combination of reasons
Speaker 0 00:43:59 Perhaps that could have been earlier on in their lives. Sure. What do you think education should look like if you were to reform or to put together some sort of chemical dependency awareness, you know, there's that fuck dare program. Shit. Shit did not work for me. And it may have worked for some people, but it sure shit didn't work for me.
Speaker 2 00:44:21 My thought is anybody over the age of 12 is wearing a dare t-shirt is probably a drug addict.
Speaker 0 00:44:27 I mean, you can find them at like thrift shops and stuff and people wear them as a, when they're smoking a joint, what would you put into place?
Speaker 2 00:44:34 Well, I don't know. I, I have never thought about that hard. It would be really, I don't know. It'd be really hard, I guess.
Speaker 0 00:44:41 At what age do you think that information should be introduced
Speaker 2 00:44:45 Really early grade school? For sure. Yeah. Grade school, for sure. Yeah. I don't know how to present it. I, you know, the obvious is have people come in and tell them terrible stories, but it's like, you know, scared, straight kind of stuff. It's like work. It doesn't work. It's going to bounce off. Yeah. I don't know offhand. I don't know. I never really exploited that. Nope.
Speaker 0 00:45:05 That's your homework. Okay. Tim Carey. You have homework now, Tim. Jeez. Okay. I'm going to call ya. Fair enough. You have, you have until the first of the year. All right. If you don't have any answers, I'm not going to publish this episode. Oh no, no. Don't cry. We didn't waste our time. I got a lot out of this and we're not even close to being done yet. Good, good. I have a couple more thoughts. Oh good. Here's what I thought you were going to share them. And then you just kind of stopped talking.
Speaker 2 00:45:31 One of my favorites. Okay. Trigger triggers. What's a trigger. Well, it's some, some observation, some message we get that encourages us to use. People will talk about, you know, seeing them. In fact, there was a counselor I worked with who had a whole collection of pipes and bottles and what do they call them? Roach clips and all that kind of stuff. And she would have a meeting, have a group where she'd put them out in the room and people say, well, I can't see that. Cause that's, that's a trigger. You go, well, you're going to get triggered sooner or later, let's deal with analysis, check it out and deal with it. Long story short, one day we were at a staff meeting and she said, Hey, the maintenance people throughout all that stuff, I don't have my trigger stuff anymore for the trigger meeting. And we're like, Oh, bomber.
Speaker 2 00:46:11 You know, the next day I'm in our nurse's office and look into one of my colleagues offices. And there are two big handles of vodka. One's empty. One's about half full. And I figured, Oh, must be part of the new trigger group. So in to be jokes through the lamb, I grabbed the one that's half full and pulled it up and slammed at my face. And as it hit my face, I went, this is real vodka. It's not water in front of my boss and the nurses. So the nurses gave me a breathalyzer and I passed. So life was getting the guy whose office it was in. It said that as I was walking in and picking it up, he was like, felt like he was moving in. Slow motion to say no, don't do that anyway. So anyhow, you got a free lapse. I did.
Speaker 2 00:46:50 Well kinda, I didn't even drink any, but Danny. Wow. So the trigger thing, so people would talk about triggers. Oh yeah. I'm going to show a movie. Why can't watch a movie about math because you know, it's going to trigger me and I go, well, let's trigger you and deal with it. One day, a couple of years ago, mini group. And there's a guy there and he's strikes me as somebody who really doesn't take it very seriously. And he'd been in treatment, been in our treatment a couple of times before. And he goes out and he's drinking pretty soon and he's drinking quarts of vodka. And then finally something happens and he gets thrown back in. And so it's so I can do him. And he was going a group and I said, Hey, you ever been to AA? And he goes, no, it's a trigger.
Speaker 2 00:47:20 And I just looked down for a second. I went, you're the trigger. And I think that's the case. We have to give that Roach clip, that Budweiser sign, that, whatever it is, the power to trigger us, you know, we have to invest. We have to identify those things. As the things it's like identifying, you know, status symbols or things that I relate to that make me that affirm my identity or affirm my reality. I'm driving a 2006, uh, Chrysler minivan at the moment. But hot cars mean things. I mean, I've read where they've done tests on guys. Hasn't guys, mostly guys are into cars and guys' brains light up. When they see cool cars. I like to resist that, but I did cool cars. I like cars too. What's what's that all about? What's the point? Advertising and salesmanship and all that kind of stuff, but why should I be reacting to cars? One of the things I remember years ago, there was a Cadillac commercial, new Cadillacs, and the song played over. It was a led Zeppelin song. What was it? Dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. I don't remember what the song is. Anyway. I'm gone. Why are they playing the 40 year old rock song on a Cadillac commercial? I went, duh, who buys new Cadillacs? Middle-aged white guys who are going to go. That was my favorite song in high school. Yeah.
Speaker 6 00:48:40 <inaudible>
Speaker 2 00:48:42 Exactly all that kind of stuff. Back to the idea of the trigger. The trigger is something that I have identified as being associated with, with using. And I can say, well, that makes me want to use yeah, remind you about it. You know, whatever you get to decide what you're going to do about it. What's the trigger. What's, you know, we have urges all the time. One of the things I always say to people is, you know, we talk about impulse control. Well, you know, I've just, I just lost it. We all deal with impulse control. So within the next three hours, everybody in this room is going to have the urge to pee. And then the reality is you have several options. You could just sit in your chair and pee in your pants. You can do that. That's an option. Some people do that.
Speaker 2 00:49:19 You could stand up and pee in the corner. So you don't have to leave the room and miss a minute of this fabulous talk. You could excuse yourself and go to the bathroom and come back. Or you could look at the clock and say, well, group's going to be over in 20 minutes. I can wait. But you know, we all go through those. Now. We've all been trained since we were a year old to learn how to respond to that impulse appropriately. But every other impulse that we have, we have the option of, we have always have a bunch of options of how to deal with it. You don't have to, you know, because somebody offers you a joint, you don't have to take it, do it. You know, again, the, the high-speed chase with the cops, you set yourself up. Well, I had to take, you know, it's like when you watch cops on TV and they go on the high-speed chase and the guy crashes and you know, hopefully it doesn't kill anybody and they pull them out of the car.
Speaker 2 00:50:02 They go, why did you run? He goes, well, I thought I had a warrant and they go, you do, if you would've stopped, you would have spent a night in jail and got out in the morning. Now you're got, you know, multiple felony counts for running from the cops. It wasn't just that moment. But you set yourself up by getting into a car with no license, no insurance high on drugs, drugs in your pocket. So on and so forth so that when the lights come on behind you, you take off instead of pulling over every action that you take, you have to go through that process. You know? So one that you
Speaker 0 00:50:28 Want to change. And again, to me, all change is about backing it up and catching yourself early enough in the process so that you can do something to keep yourself from going over the edge or getting in trouble with whatever it is. All right. We're going to take a little break. And when we come back, we're going to talk about Tim's process of hope. Yeah, we'll be right back. And we're going to talk about my favorite four letter word. No, it's not shit. It's not fuck. It's not wait. It, could it be it's Oh, hope, hope, and stay tuned next week for part three, the conclusion of Tim Jeep in which Tim will talk about his, Oh, until then it's always here on authentic and keeping authentic. We have to pay credit where credit is due, the musical stylings. You add on today's program to kick us off. You always hear
Speaker 1 00:51:23 My mum, mum, mum, mum, mum, mum, mum, mum, mum, mum, mum, mad madness by muse. And then we'll end with Tim's
Speaker 0 00:51:33 Riding with the King by John height. And as always remember, be good to yourselves. It is ever so important.
Speaker 1 00:51:54 <inaudible>.
