- Alcohol
- Drugs
- Friends & Family
Submitted by: Susanne Johnson
When I started my addictions, drugs were different. You got codeine over the counter, alcohol with a grandma’s note, and I started legally smoking at the age of nine. The law was different; so was the punishment. They didn’t know what to do with people like us, they sent us to nut houses. I’ve seen some very cruel things being done to people while I was there. They could never help me. I stayed torn up from the floor up; even I tried everything under the sun to get better. My life revolved around nut houses, detox clinics and penitentiaries. Every time I was arrested, there were either drugs or alcohol involved. I thought I was a connoisseur of commodities, selling them off street corners. Every time they didn’t like my trade and locked me up, somebody else took my place. This disease carried me to adventures that I never thought about.
My mother was a burlesque queen, a very beautiful women, very hateful, very violent, very streetwise. I was a thorn in her thigh. At the age of nine, she cast me out and sent me to my grandmother, but I raised myself in the streets of New York. When they locked me up in those days I refused to be an alcoholic or addict, because they sent you to nut houses. There were no nice treatment centers like today. Some were the size of college campuses– so many houses, so many buildings, so many people, so much waste.
I knew I was on a destruction trail and knew that some day I have to do something about my situation. My mother did not want to have any contact with me. I tried to go down in the gutter to the deepest place you can find. I wanted my mother to see this. She raised two other children and they were fine; I was the only one that was suffering. I was killing me trying to hurt her. She was my biggest resentment. I hated her with a passion and loved her with all my heart at the same time. But I didn’t like my mother at all and she didn’t like me.
I was wanted in multiple states and kept running from the consequences until my charges became “United States of America against Joe” and the feds got involved. I went from one state to another, between New York and Florida. It was everywhere the same.
At the penitentiary I got the “Easy Rider’” magazine and they had a “lonely hearts” section in the back. I had tons of women writing me! They didn’t even care that I was sitting on the jail floor, I could have been Jack The Ripper. I got love letters from everywhere and was telling lies and lullabies to all. I fell for a picture and letters from a woman in Kentucky, and after my release, I went on the next bus on my way to my new girlfriend. I was New York slick and Florida quick and thought that would be my opportunity. I was shocked not to find that pole-dancing beauty queen from the pictures at the Greyhound bus stop, but a women about 4″ high and 4″ wide screaming my name. My parole officer came to the house next day, looked at me with a big smile, started laughing, and said, “The good news is that your home is approved, the bad news are that you can’t leave unless I’ll let you.” He laughed all the way out of the door.
I landed a union job, things were looking good for a while, but as always I lost all the good things in my life, while I gave away everything else. I lost that job and many more. I lost that woman, too. I screwed up everything good I ever had in my life. Bad jobs I left usually with the first paycheck during lunch break. Running, drugging, dodging, using… I did that for so many years of my life. There was no freedom inside of me.
I had to get 64 years of age until I looked in the mirror and didn’t like the man that I saw anymore. I saw a man I didn’t like at all; I saw a dead look in his eyes. I had a wife for many years, made her my enabler. I was full of arrogance and sarcasm. I made her suffer the consequences that were meant for me to take. I didn’t want to wake up to those feelings of shame and guilt anymore, I couldn’t take it anymore. I was shaking and smelly like a race horse, with wounds that won’t heal. Cataracts in both eyes made it impossible to see at night for me, but I drove anyway. God’s grace kept me alive while I was on the road. And God’s grace kept me alive until I found help in the rooms of a 12-step fellowship.
I don’t do that anymore. Although I got fired from all doctors, I eventually got my eyes fixed and can drive now at night without putting others in danger. I don’t drive intoxicated anymore either, almost killing people, which I had done most of my life. Severe health problems sent me several times to the hospital, but doctors didn’t want to treat me anymore. I was an asshole. My life was unmanageable and unbearable.
As I found the fellowship of a 12-step group, I was nipping on the bottle for some days while tying to detox myself until I could pour it completely. I went into the room and was so sick that I found me a chair central to the bathrooms, trashcans and the door. I’m still sitting every day in the same chair, for six years. This chair and the people around it have saved my life. I was broken. I was out of service as a husband, father, person. The morning meetings start at 10 am every day and I arrive between 7 and 8 am to make the coffee and be there if somebody might call.
I won’t forget the first day I came to the rooms. I met a hippie in the parking lot and he said, “come in, have a seat, I’ll get you a coffee.” I found out later that he only had four months of sobriety. While he was getting me the coffee, I was desperately searching his car. I thought, somebody looking like that must have something for the head, but I was not successful.
My addiction and alcoholism were so bad, I didn’t want really to give up, I was scared. I already had a lie on my lips for my wife. I was going to tell her the place was closed. But I went in and stayed. I was going to go for a month, but they told me to make 90 meetings in 90 days. I did 2-3 meetings a day in my first month and decided to stay.
The first several months I stayed dry, but the program went over my head. It was still all about me. My sponsor then took me to another room day in and day out and worked the steps with me intensively and only then I got it. I learned to be honest and willing. I became open-minded and accepted a higher power in my life.
My entire life I believed in God, but I thought that God didn’t believe in me. I had no faith that the church would help me save my life. Now I found a place and a concept that did it for me. I was sitting every morning in the early morning on the bench in front of the building, meditating, taking my inventory and working the steps. “Is there a meeting today?” I was often asked from people driving by and I said, “Come on in, I’ll get you a coffee.”, because someone said it to me now six years ago. I stayed because I love this place. I love to see people getting better and getting clean and sober. It is all about change; change people, places and things. “Do as we do if you want what we have,” and today I try to do that to the best of my ability.
I made amends and still do, if a blast from the past comes up in my head. The 12-step program, the fellowship and my recovery did for me what I could not do for myself. I’m grateful to be where I am today. And if you see a guy in a parking lot, stop there, and he will get you a coffee.