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Fellow Friends of Bill W. & Those seeking a sober life:
My name is Tim and I’m an alcoholic. As I sit here at my computer at my
desk, in a house that I own, on the night of my second wedding
anniversary, I look back 4 years when I was living in a city park under a
tree. My sole pursuit in life was alcohol.
It’s not hard to remember how far my alcoholism had taken me. Most of my
life, actually, but I’ll start when I arrived in Denver in January ’98, my
only possessions were a backpack & Timber Wolf dog. I’d been bouncing from
state to state via “thumb”. I’d lost everything close to me and had
literally given up on life. A situation it seems I’d been in my whole
life. My present employment was holding or “flying a sign” on street
corners, reading something like “will work for food,” etc. It kept me
drunk. I soon lost both the dog & pack.
I don’t know what kept me alive sometimes, but I’m
sure now it was God. I was out there for a long time, on the streets,
picked up one hustle after another, anything to survive. I had been
respectable (normal?) before; real jobs, relationships, cars. The only
thing I actually held onto through life was that craving for alcohol.
Jails & detox centers were almost the only times
I slept indoors during my first two years in Denver. Why I stayed in
Denver is a mystery to me. I became an adept panhandler.
About 4 years ago, after 2 years living the streets, I woke up one Sunday
morning, on an island in a pond in City Park. I was covered in snow, half
frozen. I was “vodka sick,” the shakes taking over. Something inside me
had just given up. I’d hit the very bottom. I had to do something or die.
I had been to A. A. before but wasn’t ready. This time I felt was my last
chance. York Street is well known, though I’d never been there. It’s an
old mansion that was donated to A. A. in that late 1940’s. I walked in
looking rough, unshaven, unwashed; street life wasn’t pretty. They
actually let me in the door. My first meeting was 7:00am. I had the shakes
so bad I could barely hold a cup of coffee with both hands. But I stayed &
listened. One person bought me breakfast, and they told me to stick
around. I did. Someone let me sleep in their car in the parking lot that
night.
I stayed sober awhile, maybe a week the first time. But they had planted
the seed of A. A. in my mind, and they told me to keep coming back. I did,
and things started getting better. It took me awhile to actually get any
length of sobriety. Things started getting better. This other person,
John, I met while flying a sign one day, put me to work and let me crash
at his place. He wasn’t in the program, and is one of the few people in my
life now who remembers me when I was drinking and seen me at my very
worst. Two years ago he was the best man at my wedding.
One day after I’d been sober for a while, working different jobs and
obtained a couple vehicles, I got angry and decided I’d had enough of
Denver. I took my car and hit the road drinking. Next stop was a jail in
Kansas. Didn’t make it far. John and my A. A. friends helped me get back
to Denver, after 20 days in jail, in Russell, Kansas. I lost my car –
someone bought it so I could pay my fines.
One more try. I had to stay sober. I started working as a mechanic for a
tree company. That lasted about 9 months and I learned a critical lesson:
don’t let your boss be your Sponsor. Working the program is more
important. During this time is when I met my wife, Diane. She lived in the
same apartment building I moved into. They tell people in the program not
to start such relationships until you’ve had one year of sobriety, but
thank God, Diane & I were an exception to the rule. Soon after, we moved
into an apartment, then a house.
That soon ended, though. My boss/Sponsor and I had a clash and there was
my excuse to drink. Why Diane didn’t leave then will and still is still a
mystery. That time lasted 2 weeks or so, and found a very significant
change overcome me. My 9 months of sobriety had replaced something I’d
lost a few years back – my conscience. And no matter how much I drank, I
couldn’t kill it. They tell you in A.A. that a belly full of booze & head
full of A. A. doesn’t mix. I’m living proof. I felt so guilty about
drinking and letting Diane and all of my friends down, because all of my
friends now were sober. I was to the point then of sobering up or taking
my own life. I chose life, but the cost was almost more than I could take.
That was my last drink to date. And it cost us our home. I couldn’t pay
the rent so it put Diane, her cat & I into a 13’ camper on the back of my
truck We parked in the lot at York Street for almost 2
months. I’d had business cards made a couple months prior which read “Tim
the Mechanic”, and I still had my cell phone & tools. Since I was living
in the parking lot of an A. A. club, I had no excuse to miss the 7:00am
meeting every morning,. “Attitude Adjustment.” And it was. The biggest
boost of all was the Third Step Prayer:
“God, I offer myself to Thee, to build with me and do with me as Thy will.
Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will. Take
away my difficulties so that victory over them may bear witness to those I
might help, of Thy power, Thy love and Thy way of life. May I do Thy will
always.”
I got into the work, doing the Steps. I’d work on cars wherever they were
parked for 3 months or so. Then I met Dan through a friend in the program.
I did some work for him and we camped in his warehouse parking lot awhile.
He offered me the use of a building he used for storage to work on cars.
It was 2200 square feet, mostly filled with cars. I didn’t know if it was
God’s will or not. But a couple of weeks later I had a clutch job and
needed a place to do it. Business had picked up. We started living in the
camper across from the shop, but we were drawing attention as well. City
zoning step into the picture, and we made some changes. All the shop had
was a toilet that had been there since the 40s’. over the next few months,
I worked on cars or the building 24/7. I built my own bathroom from
scratch, literally, except for the plumbing. It was filled with little
miracles along the way; I needed things like bathtub, shower stuff. I
picked it all up from the most unusual places. One job I picked up
originally turned out that I didn’t get paid on a house remodel job. The
contractor took of with the money. But he was storing stuff left over from
that job and other in my shop (we had took over payments & moved out all
the car by then). In any other situation it would be considered junk, but
mixed in was a lot if the things I needed.
I worked 20 hours a day for a week,
but it was all worth it when I experienced my first hot shower. I didn’t
even have the walls finished yet, so I stapled plastic to the ceiling
around the showerhead. Over the next couple months I built another room,
with some help from someone I was helping stay sober. He was living in the
camper from my truck that I put in the shop – it was a 2200 square feet
shop. I then picked up $1200 in maple hardwood cabinets in a deal, so I
built a kitchen-even installed a dishwasher. God works in mysterious ways.
I set up a computer and learned how to use it. Even started a web page at
timthemechanic.com. But there was always chaos in my life, most of it
self-inflected. I’d take on jobs that seemed impossible to most. To sleep
more than 4 hours a night was a good thing.
Then one night, mid February ’02, this friend & customer showed up late.
It was well below freezing outside. He was really drunk & looking for a
warm place to sleep it off. He had a Chevy Suburban parked outside. I
really didn’t have room in the living area, so I pulled his truck inside
and told him he could sleep in it. He had a sleeping bag and it was at
least 45 degrees inside. My conditions were that he not start the vehicle
and he go to my 9:30 meeting the next morning – it’s actually the place I
met him. The next morning, around 8, I went to wake him. I knew
immediately that he wasn’t going to. He was stiff and cold to the touch.
It’s something you don’t forget. Diane didn’t believe me and checked
herself.
I spent the next hour dealing with the coroners’ office and detectives. I
remember the big door being wide open, 10 below outside everyone freezing.
Alcohol poisoning, they said later. The police were cool, though, and let
me go in time to catch the last half hour of my meeting. I needed them to
know what alcohol does. My mind kept asking why I had survived through all
of my drinking years, sleeping & living outside in far worse conditions
and as much alcohol inside me and I still alive. Ray, my camper guest, was
there, too. He didn’t learn anything; he went back out not long after.
It forced me to make some decisions in my life. March 9th Diane & I were
married. I didn’t realize how many friends I actually had until my
wedding. We were married in a ministry that I had been involved in while
on the streets. It was cool. Imagine, 50 plus people here to see me get
married, when 2 years before I’d been sleeping on the driveway outback,
drunk with no one, only the clothes on my back & a desire to drink. My
wife and I are still happily married.
Briefly: over the next year we moved into a small 21’ travel trailer. My
wife’s father, sadly to say, passed away and she had inherited 10 acres in
Texas. Planning to move there and set up shop. Horrible trip, sold
property, came back. It was one month of no fun. God closed that door and
brought us back to Denver.
The miracles I speak of are everyday. It’s like God
keeps opening the right doors for me and I walk through. The struggles are
enormous sometimes. My body is beat up and scarred, but from hard,
rewarding work- not from falling down drunk, fighting the cops or someone
else. We lived for the last year in a 31’ Airstream travel trailer. We had
this given to us for $850. It cost $30,000 new in ’78 but is still near
perfect. That was our “God thing”, as I call it. It’s called a Silver
palace. And our dog, Jakote, an Australian Cattle herder dog, is just
perfect. We could not ask for more.
God & A. A. gave me a life. I learned
how that I was powerless over alcohol & my life had become unmanageable
–that His awesome power was the only thing that could show me what sanity
was, let alone restore it. Sanity had really never been a part of my life.
You know, my folks were alcoholics, siblings too. My decision to let go
and let God changed my life in such a way that I live miracles every day
of my life. To learn forgiveness is to get rid of all the garbage from my
past as easy as the delete key on this computer. Resentment - the killer
of us all. Most of us let that crap build until explosion. I just let God
have it and he relieved me of it all.
If I were to take credit for any of this I’d be lying. I just walked
through the doors that God opened for me and did what was put before me. I
just do the “next right thing” and it works. I don’t follow my will; I
take God’s lead. Trusting God to lead me through the many obstacles I’ve
encountered in my sobriety.
I celebrated 3 years continuous sobriety 1/20/04. We closed on this house
2/06/04. 4 years ago I was called things like bottom feeder, street tramp.
Now I’m happily married, have my faithful pup Jakote; I have my family
back. I’m trusted again. My sister Linda, with 14 years or so in the
program, someone who has seem me hit the bottom, has witnessed all the
miracles in my life, and did things she would never imagined doing before
to help us buy a house. God’s awesome, folks. Every day of my life is a
miracle….
Sincerely,
Tim Branthoover
Visit Tim's website at
www.timthemechanic.com
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