“Happiness, more or less. It’s just a change in me, something in my liberty…. But I’m a Lucky man.” – The Verve
By the grace of God, I was relieved from the bondage of self and was introduced to a solution to my addiction to alcohol and heroin at the age of 23. It was the single hardest thing I have ever had to do in my life. It didn’t come easy and it required work on my part. Still to this day my recovery requires daily action and an acute awareness of myself that others not plagued with addiction ever need to worry about. It is because of that though, and my constant vigilance of the self which has made me better in so many areas of my life, that otherwise I would have neglected. My life today doesn’t even remotely resemble the life I lived almost two decades ago. I escaped the clutches of death to many times to recall directly or indirectly from living a life saturated in alcohol and drug use. I was lucky to get out, but not everyone is.
Sadly, 2017 saw a record number of overdose deaths, 72,000. Some states in New England initially hit hard by the opiate epidemic have begun to see a decline in overdose deaths. However other parts of the country continue to see a steady rise of drug overdose deaths. The response by local and state officials in New England; as well as grass roots movements led by the citizens of those states have no doubt played a huge part in the decline of overdose deaths in that region. Communities outside of New England would do well to follow suit and take notice to the efforts being made by individuals and organizations in those states.
Heroin’s insidious grasp over the last 3 years of my using was a living hell I wanted desperately to be free of. I had already been existing with a dependence to alcohol (which by the way claims an estimated 88,000 lives a year and is the third leading cause of death in the United States. It kills more people annually then opiates but does not garner the same attention.), along with an obsession for hallucinogens and crack cocaine binges. Where alcohol and other drugs gradually broke me down over time; like a consistent shot gun blast to my soul. Heroin however, tore through me like an atom bomb leaving no remnants of a soul intact. When I look back at those three years, I spent more time in treatment then I did outside of treatment. This was due to the sheer fact I could not live and maintain a normal life while getting high. I just didn’t know how to manage emotionally or physically with or without substances in my life.
I can remember vividly the last days of my last run. One night in particular. I was living in Southern California and after 14 months clean and sober I had found myself spiritually empty once again. As I had stopped living in recovery, only to become a man living abstinent from substances. I eventually relapsed. Battling thoughts of worthlessness and overwhelmed by a deep disappointment in myself I sought escape from my thoughts and feelings via drugs and alcohol once again. It was an old familiar solution of misery I was once comfortable implementing as an option. This time however I seemed to obtain no real satisfaction from the temporary relief it provided. This night for some reason I abandoned my red and white 1972 super beetle and attempted to walk through the not so great parts of the city of Costa Mesa; where I knew I could score a bag of dope or so I thought. I was a half bottle deep into a fifth of Bacardi 151 and like a good alcoholic I had purchased an extra bottle to store in my backpack for later. Feeling pretty intoxicated from the alcohol and no longer able to keep at bay the obsession chewing through my mind to obtain some heroin, I was off and on a mission. That night would be the eye-opening clarity I needed to be convinced of my own powerlessness and my own need to maintain a spiritual solution to my malady for the rest of my life. There I was following around a guy I literally found hiding behind a tree dodging in and out from behind a row of apartment buildings. He resembled a really emaciated version of Kevin Bacon and that’s how I referred to him through out the night while I attempted to enroll him into finding me some heroin. “Hey Bacon are you going to help me find some dope?” , “Kevin Bacon dude, where the hell are we going?” In hind sight I was insane to think this character was going to assist me in my agenda, when he was obviously pre-occupied with running from someone or something that I had no idea even existed or not, but he didn’t make a hell of a lot of sense when trying to explain it to me. Needless to say, he did not assist me and we parted ways. I would go on through the night to have my last $300 stolen from me except for $50 I would find later that night in a secret zipper compartment on my backpack. Thank god for secret zipper compartments, I thought. The night ensued, and I stumbled alone through the city into the lonely hours of the morning and still no heroin. All I had was the emotional anesthetic of the Bacardi 151 to ease my restless mind and fill the void of where my spirit once lived. The Bacardi was proving to be to little and not enough to fulfill my need and I was feeling panicked. The night would progress on and I would later confuse a vehicle that approached me to be a potential drug dealer, and as I approached the vehicle with hopes of scoring a bag of dope I was very much disappointed. To my surprise the driver had other motives and I was propositioned by the male driver to have sex. An exchange of words began as I would decline his proposition and stated I was only looking for heroin. As he looked me over he told me that if I got into his car he would drive me around and help me find what I was looking for. I ached to fulfill my want for heroin and quiet the obsessive thoughts that fueled my motivations that night. For a moment I contemplated getting into the car, even with the conflicted thought that I may not be alive the next day if I get into this car; but my desire to get high seemed to out weigh the need to keep myself safe. This is how addiction functions; it over powers our executive functioning that in normal circumstances allows us to weigh risk and make rational decisions. That’s the power of addiction. That became very clear to me in that moment. For I knew what this man was probably capable of, he must have outweighed me easily by 100 pounds, and I was still contemplating taking the risk to go with him to find dope and get high. Which wasn’t even a known guarantee. As I attempted to open the back door of the SUV he gestured to me to go around the vehicle and to sit up front with him. It was in this moment that I was graced with clarity and made the decision to not get in the vehicle and I changed my mind declining his offer. He pleaded with me to get in the car with him, and as I was about to walk away from the vehicle he grabbed my arm and reached down and began to grope me. Shocked I found myself unable to move for what seemed like an eternity. Confused to why I didn’t respond with some form of violence, for I was no stranger to fighting I thought. What was wrong with me why did I just stand there afraid and helpless? I finally was able to regain some sense of myself and was able to pull myself away running across the parking lot. I had ran so fast I hadn’t noticed I had lost a shoe in the process, until I stopped running after who knows how far and how long. But once I stopped running I was left to acknowledge my shame of what had just happened, my shame of my addiction, and my shame of my existence. Luckily for me, I thought, I had another bottle of Bacardi 151 to make it all go away even if it was just temporarily. I must have drank myself into a blackout, which was pretty common for me. I had awoken in a bush outside a local Del Taco with no memory of the last several hours, no shoes, no shirt, bruised and bloody. I had blacked out and had no recollection of how I ended up half naked in a bush outside a fast food joint. That one is still a mystery to me. Something profound though happened to me in that bush outside a local fast food chain in the hours just before dawn, as absurd as that statement reads it is true. Where most go to find a quick bite of Mexican food, I guess I found God at Del Taco. I recommitted myself to God. I recommitted to myself, because deep down I wanted a better life. I was awoken to the fact that I needed to consistently seek out help from others and from God if I didn’t want this life anymore. It took me a couple more days to put down the alcohol under the watch of my brother and his wife who had come up from San Diego, where they were stationed in the Navy, to find me in Orange County.
On April 12, 1999 I had my last drink and recommitted myself to a program of action and building connections with God and others. I haven’t used or drank since that day and my life has been all the better for it. I truly am a lucky man. If anyone was predicting the outcome of my life up to that point based upon how I was living life it would be an easy guess to say death or prison would be the most likely outcome. That just isn’t the case today. I can’t explain why I am one of the lucky ones, why some get it and some don’t, why some are willing in a moment and others are not, why some are teachable at certain times and others are shut off to hearing a new way of living life. I do know that recovery is achievable for all; sadly some of us just run out of time and chances. Probably better then trying to explain why people don’t recover; I can better explain what I did and the action I took to get well after years of failing at staying sober, do to my own pride and self-absorbed approach to life. For me though it was in those failures, that eventually I found God and then through years of truly living recovery and taking action to better myself I began to heal and love myself and others again.
Recovery is available to all who seek it out, failed attempts may be part of one’s journey like it was mine, but it doesn’t have to be. The biggest thing we can do for ourselves is to be kind and loving to ourselves, be persistent, be a warrior of the self and trust in others that have traveled those roads, be teachable, be humble and most importantly build connections with them, and trust in God.
For I have noticed in my time in recovery a pretty remarkable thing. The power of addiction is one of the most powerful things I have seen operate in an individual’s life. Until I got sober I would have said it was the most powerful thing in the world. But there is something more powerful. It is what we need more of in families, communities, and the world. It is the power of authentic connection between something outside of our self, a connection with other people and with a God of our understanding. The desire to serve one to the other. For when that power is respected and maintained in a healthy positive manner, it can empower us to achieve anything.
“And how many corners do I have to turn? How many times do I have to learn. All the love I have is in my mind… I’m a lucky man” – The Verve
The MixTape Diaries 