After surrendering a promising basketball career to drugs and alcohol, Tim Riordan found his way home via TLC
Growing up on Rhode Island, I had a great family. Coming from a family history of alcoholism, I was warned not to partake in the use of alcohol or drugs. At a young age, I excelled in all sports and easily made positive and loyal friendships.
At the age of 10, I caught the eye of former NBA player Cuttino Mobley who, at the time, was playing basketball at the University of Rhode Island. He became like an older brother and a father figure to me. He took me under his wing and invited me to live with him and spend my summers in the inner city of Philadelphia and then to Houston when he was drafted into the NBA.
At the age of 14, I began to smoke weed daily and drink on the weekends. Prior to this, playing sports was my high but by the age of 16 I had to smoke weed prior to playing sports just to have fun. I did not think that I had a problem because I was still able to excel in sports. I then decided to go to Springfield College to play basketball.
Throughout grade school I was always told that I had ADHD, but thankfully my mom was wise enough to not allow me to be put on prescription drugs. However, I regretfully chose to begin taking Adderall because I was told that balancing between college schooling and basketball was going to be difficult. Adderall was like having a prescription of legal cocaine and I quickly became addicted. In order to calm down, I would smoke weed throughout the day and drink at night to try to get the very little sleep that was at all possible. I was also heavily involved in dealing large amounts of marijuana to make money and afford my habits. Due to these factors, I did not live up to my potential as a basketball player. This became a deep-rooted feeling of failure, shame, and regret. In the fall of my junior year I injured my knee and was prescribed painkillers. This was the end of my basketball career and the beginning of a 10-year battle with opiate and alcohol addiction.
In college, I was fortunate enough to meet a girl named Jenessa Cintron who turned out to be, in my eyes, the most amazing woman in the world. I did not pursue a serious relationship because I was not ready and did not have a biblical view of how to respectfully treat a woman. A few years after graduating from college I realized that she was the love of my life and I was fortunate enough to rekindle my relationship with her. She was a single mother and I felt that she not only deserved a positive man in her life but her daughter deserved a father figure as well. I was proud to take on the responsibility of being a father to her awesome daughter.
While all of this was occurring, unfortunately, I was deep into my addictions and ultimately went into a methadone maintenance program while continuing to drink alcohol daily.
In 2012, I had had enough and came to Transformation Life Center for a second chance at life. At TLC I found a loving relationship with God, which was something that I had never experienced in my life. Growing up, God was nonexistent in my life and I was never really exposed to church. My first journey through TLC gave me a foundation with God and taught me to love others in the way that I would like to be loved. I loved my family and friends but the problem was I still did not have love for myself or a true relationship with God.
Shortly after completing six months at TLC, I walked away from my love for God. In that time, God still loved me and blessed me with the marriage to my beautiful wife and, shortly thereafter, the most amazing blessing of all time — a healthy baby girl.
Through all of this, I attempted to lean on my own strength, which I have found is not possible (Proverbs 3:5-6) Without God in my life I continued to self-sabotage by self-medicating with alcohol and marijuana daily, even though I had a beautiful family.
This once again led me to almost losing my life to alcoholism, but by the grace of God He did not give up on me. This close brush with death and the fact that I was not being the husband, father, son, and brother that my family deserves led me back to TLC to build a much stronger relationship with God. This time around, I have never felt God’s love so prevalent and I am going to lean on Him for the remainder of my life because He is the way, the truth, and the life, and the truth shall set me free. I am beyond thankful for God and Transformation Life Center for what they are both doing in my life for myself, and ultimately the most important thing in this world, my family.