Tim Cowlishaw is The Dallas Morning News’s award-winning sports columnist. He’s cute and has a dry sense of humor. Laurie Dhue is a tall gorgeous blonde who has anchored on CNN, Fox and MSNBC and now works with Glenn Beck. Are they dating? Nope. Are they future reality stars? Probably not. So, what do they have in common?
They’ve both had lives that were overwhelmed by substance abuse and made dramatic changes to halt their situations.
On Friday, September 27, Tim and Laurie were the keynote speakers at Caron Cares: A Day of Discovery & Recovery at the Omni Dallas Hotel chaired by Kalita and Ed Blessing with Honorary Chairs Charlotte and Fred Ball.
Before the day started with a breakfast talk by Tim, who wrote “Drunk on Sports,” he autographed books and talked with friends (Jim Lites, Scott Murray and Jon Daniels) and fans like Caron Texas President of the Board Robin Bagwell.
But then things got down to business, with Cowlishaw blending humor with an incident that made him start to realize that he had a drinking problem — being pulled over by police, handcuffed in the back of the police car and an overnight stay in the Hood County drunk tank. Still, that wasn’t enough to separate him from his liquid pastime. Then there were two hospital stays resulting from falls and a seizure due to his alcohol consumption. That seizure prevented him from attending his daughter’s giving a speech at her school. That was the turning point. Tim ended to his boozing days. Yes, he did it without a 12-step program, but he advised others to seek help just in case they need support.
After the Caron Cares participants broke into seminars, they attended the luncheon at which the 6’3” Laurie presented a totally different version of the substance abuse problem. She had it all —glamour, a stellar career and a future that had all the signs of over-the-top success. Starting off, she admitted that she used to be proud of the fact that she “could drink like a man” and like a “high-functioning alcoholic.”
For her 30th birthday she stayed out until 3 a.m., woke up the next morning and threw up on the floor next to her bed: “The stain never came out. It was literally a daily reminder of that very special night.”
She used to dance on bars, not just in bars. One spot was Hogs and Heifers. She was dancing on the bar when a gent asked her if she was “the lady” on Fox news. She replied, “I’m no lady, but I’m on Fox news.”
Laurie used to tell people that she didn’t trust people who didn’t drink — “Isn’t that the most asinine thing you’ve ever heard?”
There was an occasion when she was photographed with a drink in one hand and the other arm around Dick Cheney, “the then-vice president of the whole United States. Now, lest you think he’s a warm, fuzzy guy, he’s not. I can only think what Dick Cheney must have thought when I flung my arm around him and posed for this picture.”
Then there was the private party just before the White House Correspondents dinner, when she was going to meet then-President George W. Bush. There was no way she was going to do this sober. No, a few vodkas were going to just warm her up. The photo of Laurie’s and Bush’s meeting is so bad, Laurie’s mother refuses to put it in a frame.
But it didn’t stop there. There was a visit to a NYC ER after an overdose of drugs; Bill O’Reilly admonished her three years before she sobered up that she “needed to quit that stuff”; and her therapist fired her because “you will not admit that you’re an alcoholic.”
She ended up going to an addiction expert and undertook a 12-step program. She put “the plug in the jug and the hearse in reverse.” Her life changed, and she started enjoying life and her work. Some friends and associates asked if she had gotten blonder, had her eyes done, lost weight. No, she had ended her friendship with alcohol and drugs. But three years into her sobriety she hit a wall, resulting in her seeking help at Caron’s Breakthrough program. “It saved my life.”
Being outed “in a very public way” was not something she wanted, but in hindsight she came to regard it as an “opportunity to educate the American people about this disease that effects every single American family in one way or another.”
Laurie compared the addiction movement to the early days of AIDs and breast cancer. Both were considered forbidden subjects. So it is with addiction today.