The Wheelhouse Monument Run Community Rally
- Date: Saturday, October 3, 2026
- Featured speaker: Adam T. of Los Angeles, California — 12:00 noon
- Lunch served / riders arrive: 11:00 a.m.
- Motorcycle raffle winner announced: 1:00 p.m.
- Location: Jimmy Burke Activity Center, 500 W. 13th St., Deer Park, TX 77536
- Admission: Free and open to the public
- The ride: Motorcyclists gather for breakfast at the San Jacinto Monument and ride together to the rally
Full event details and rider registration →
On Saturday, October 3, The Wheelhouse will welcome Adam T. as the featured recovery speaker at our Monument Run Community Rally.
If you have never heard Adam speak, it may help to know this up front: he is not coming to deliver a polished lecture about alcoholism.
He tells the truth with the kind of humor that comes from having lived through things that were not funny at the time.
Adam spent years cycling through Alcoholics Anonymous, treatment centers, relapse, consequences, desperation, and another attempt to get sober. He describes himself as someone who kept coming back long before he was actually ready to surrender.
At times, he will make you laugh. Then he will say something that lands differently, maybe something somebody in the room may need to hear.
Ahead of October 3, here is some of his story:
“I Didn’t Have a Bad Weekend. I Had a Couple of Bad Decades.”
Adam did not arrive in Alcoholics Anonymous the way people sometimes imagine it happens. It wasn’t one terrible night, one moment of clarity, one decision.
“Alcoholics Anonymous wasn’t on my to-do list,” he says. “I didn’t get to AA because I had a bad weekend. I had a couple of bad decades.”
His drinking started early. By eighth grade, he says, he was already passing out under the bleachers, falling asleep at school, and earning the nickname “Space Cadet.”
“I couldn’t find homeroom,” he jokes.
Eventually AA became part of his life, but becoming part of AA and actually getting sober turned out to be two very different things. Adam spent 17 years recycling through the rooms.
“I was one of those perpetual chip takers. I had so many chips and key tags I could have played poker with them.”
He remembers one meeting secretary finally telling him to “give them back.” Even through those years, the old-timers made one thing clear to him: the door was not going to close.
“I thank God for the unconditional love and compassion of the old-timers. They made it very clear to me that the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous would continue to be open, and if and when I was ready to take action, AA would be there for me.”
He was not ready for a long time.
Twenty-Eight Trips Through Treatment
The rooms were not the only place Adam kept returning to.
“By the time I finally got sober, I’d gone through treatment 28 times. Not 28 days like the movie. This isn’t Hollywood. Twenty-eight consecutive times.”
At one point he mentioned those 28 trips to his sponsor, perhaps expecting sympathy. He did not get quite the response he was hoping for.
“My sponsor looks me right in the eye and says, ‘Adam, that doesn’t make you an alcoholic.'”
You’re kidding, Adam remembers thinking.
“He says, ‘No. It means you paid half a million dollars for a Big Book.’ I wasn’t laughing at that one.”
Alcoholics Anonymous wasn’t on my to-do list. I didn’t have a bad weekend. I had a couple of bad decades.
The joke had a point buried in it, and the point was this: by then, Adam knew a tremendous amount about alcoholism.
He had counselors, treatment, relapse-prevention classes and AA meetings. He had knowledge. What he did not have was surrender.
“I could know everything about alcoholism,” he says, “and still drink.”
That became one of the hardest truths for him to accept. The problem was not simply that alcohol brought terrible consequences. The problem was that he could see those consequences coming in perfect detail, and his mind would still walk him back to a drink.
“I have a mind that somehow always takes me back to alcohol.”
He has his own definition of insanity because of it.
“You hear people say insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. That’s not my insanity. My insanity is doing the same thing, knowing exactly what’s going to happen, and doing it anyway.”
Anyone who has loved someone with alcoholism, or lived it themselves, is likely to recognize exactly what he means.
“Help Is the Dirtiest Four-Letter Word in These Rooms”
Ask Adam what finally changed, and the answer is a single word: Help.
“Help is the dirtiest four-letter word in these rooms.”
For years he wanted control. He wanted to understand everything, and he wanted to argue.
“You tell me it’s black, I’ll tell you it’s white. You tell me it’s big, I’ll tell you it’s small. Tell me to go left, I’ll go right, with an attitude, and then I’ll blame you for eternity. You can lead me into the gates of hell, but you can’t push me into heaven.”
What he eventually had to do was stop trying to outthink recovery. His sponsor handed him a principle he still repeats: “You can’t think your way into right living, but you can live your way into right thinking.”
“Bring the body,” Adam says. “The mind will follow.”
For someone who had spent decades doing whatever he felt like doing, that was a radical proposition. He had a long list of things he did not feel like doing… things like going to work, sitting in the front, taking commitments or just being responsible. AA taught him to do the action first and let the feelings catch up. Eventually they did.
Three Words That Reached Him
Plenty of people had tried to help Adam over the years. Counselors, family, professionals, friends. What finally got through was another drunk.
There was something different about another alcoholic sitting across from him and saying, in effect, I know. Not “I know you drink too much.” Something underneath that.
“I’m talking about resentment. Selfishness. Dishonesty. Fear.”
Another alcoholic understood what Adam felt like when he was drinking… and what he felt like when he wasn’t.
“The greatest thing I ever heard in AA was three simple words. Yeah, me too.”
Those words told him he was not uniquely hopeless. Someone else had been where he was. And someone else had gotten out.
You can’t think your way into right living, but you can live your way into right thinking.
It is one reason Adam puts so much weight on service. He has carried AA meetings into treatment facilities, detox centers, and the Veterans Administration. Helping another alcoholic, in his view, is not something recovery eventually graduates into. It is recovery.
He sums up AA’s three legacies: Recovery, Unity, and Service. And in three words of his own: “Contribute. Belong. Learn.”
The longer he stayed in the middle of those things, he says, the more something shifted inside him. “I somehow feel wanted, needed, and loved in every area of my life.”
That idea is familiar to us at The Wheelhouse. Men here do not simply recover beside one another. They recover with one another.
The Black Suit
Adam’s sponsor once told him to go buy a black suit. “He said, ‘If you stick around Alcoholics Anonymous, it’ll come in handy. Unfortunately, you’ll go to a lot of funerals.'”
Then he added: “And if you drink again, at least we’ll have something nice to bury you in.”
“He was mean,” Adam says.”But I needed to hear the truth about alcoholism.”
That combination runs through everything he says: humor that never once minimizes what alcoholism does. He can make a room laugh about treatment, meetings, sponsors, relationships, and his own worst behavior. But somewhere along the way this stopped being a story about inconvenience and became a matter of life and death.
When that became real, AA stopped being something he squeezed in.
“I used to build Alcoholics Anonymous around my big life. As my life expanded, AA became more and more inconvenient. So what I’ve had to do in order to stay here and really thrive is build my life around Alcoholics Anonymous.”
A Quiet Mind and a Loving Heart
One of Adam’s favorite stories is about a question his sponsor asked him early on.
“Adam, what do you want from AA?”
Adam thought about it. “I grew up in Malibu. What I want is a yacht and a Learjet. At least I’m honest.”
His sponsor told him that if he actually worked the Steps and lived the program, he would get something else entirely: a quiet mind and a loving heart.
Adam did not think much of the offer at the time. He understands it now. He describes the opposite of a quiet mind as the voice that wakes you at three in the morning and starts talking, saying:
- You’re a loser.
- Something bad is going to happen.
- They’re going to find out about you.
- Your relationship is falling apart.
- You don’t need AA anymore.
And the opposite of a loving heart? “A vindictive heart. A prejudiced heart. A resentful heart.”
For years, he says, he lived trapped between what he calls two thieves.
“Yesterday and tomorrow. In yesterday, I have guilt, shame, and remorse. In tomorrow, I have fear, anxiety, and worry.”
Recovery taught him to live somewhere else: Today.
For Adam, that is a far bigger promise than simply not drinking.
The greatest thing I ever heard in AA was three simple words: ‘Yeah, me too.’
“God, Help Me. God, Give Me. God, Use Me.”
“There are only three prayers in this life. One is, ‘God, help me.’ That’s got most of us in this room. One is, ‘God, give me.’ That’s a big distraction.” Then comes the one he believes matters most…
“God, use me.”
There may be no better way to summarize where he ended up. The man who spent decades needing somebody to help him became a man asking to be used to help somebody else.
That is why we are excited for our community to hear him.
Come Hear Adam T. at the Monument Run Community Rally
You do not have to be in AA to appreciate Adam’s story.
You may be in recovery. You may love someone who is struggling. You may have a son, father, brother, husband, friend, or coworker whose drinking has left you wondering what recovery can really look like.
Or maybe you simply want to spend an afternoon with people who believe broken lives can be rebuilt.
Whatever brings you, we hope you will join us.
The Wheelhouse Monument Run takes place Saturday, October 3, 2026. Riders gather for breakfast at the San Jacinto Monument and ride together to the Community Rally at the Jimmy Burke Activity Center, 500 W. 13th St., Deer Park.
Come have lunch with us beginning at 11:00 a.m. At 12 noon, Adam T. takes the microphone. At 1:00 p.m., we announce the winner of a customized Harley-Davidson Low Rider S.
Admission to the Community Rally is free and open to the public.
We expect there will be laughter. And somewhere between the jokes, the stories about treatment, the tough sponsors, the relapse, the surrender, and the recovery, Adam may say something that stays with you long after you leave.
Frequently Asked Questions
When and where is Adam T. speaking?
Adam T. speaks at 12:00 noon on Saturday, October 3, 2026, at the Monument Run Community Rally, held at the Jimmy Burke Activity Center, 500 W. 13th St., Deer Park, TX 77536. Lunch is served beginning at 11:00 a.m.
Is the event free?
Yes. Admission to the Community Rally is free and open to the public. Motorcycle riders participating in the Monument Run itself register separately, which includes breakfast at the San Jacinto Monument and admission to the rally.
Do I have to be in AA or in recovery to attend?
No. The rally is open to riders, families, alumni, supporters, sponsors, and anyone in the community. Many attendees come because someone they love is struggling, or because they simply want to support the work.
Can I bring my family?
Yes. The Community Rally is a family-friendly event with food, fellowship, and raffle drawings alongside the speaker.
Who is Adam T.?
Adam T. is an AA circuit and recovery speaker from Los Angeles, California. He is known for combining humor with an unflinching account of long-term alcoholism, repeated treatment, eventual surrender, and recovery through the Twelve Steps.
How does attending support The Wheelhouse?
The Monument Run is one of our largest fundraisers of the year. Registrations, sponsorships, raffle tickets, and donations help provide housing, meals, transportation, recovery resources, and employment assistance for men rebuilding their lives. You can also give directly or become a sponsor.
What if I need help before October 3?
You do not have to wait for an event. The Wheelhouse hosts AA meetings daily at 210 W. Helgra St. in Deer Park, and you can call 281-478-4488 at any time to ask about our recovery program for men.
Join us Saturday, October 3. Lunch at 11:00 a.m. Adam T. speaks at noon. Come support The Wheelhouse, meet our community, and hear a recovery story you are unlikely to forget.
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