- Alcohol
- Drugs
- Faith
I wasn’t born an addict, but I was raised as one. My addictions started shortly after birth when my mother started putting paregoric, an opiate, in my bottle. Everyone thought I was very calm and slept well. I was just drugged. This went on for quite some time, and no one noticed despite my having pneumonia five times before I was two. Eventually someone did catch on, and I wasn’t allowed to go home from the hospital until my father came home from the road.
It was about this time that my dad taught me how to use a church key and open his beer for him. My reward? A swallow of beer. I come from a long line of Irish folk, and my father lived up to the stereotype of being able to drink with the best of them. A typical weekend would leave us both hungover on Monday morning.
Around this time my mother decided that if she couldn’t drug me, she could at least beat the living tar out of me. She used a belt, her hand or the preferred steel wands from our Electrolux vacuum cleaner. This was most likely due to the fact that she could connect them and reach me across the room without leaving the couch. By the time we moved to Indiana when I was four, I was pretty much used to pain as a way of life.
When I finally started school, it was discovered that I had a very high IQ and the ability to grasp the Roman Catholic catechism. I was winning competitions, and that was a good thing, because second place was painful. It was also decided at this time that I was going to be a priest. I was immediately made an altar boy and learned the entire mass in Latin. I had no idea what I was saying, but I could say it well.
Throughout all of this, the slightest transgression would still bring a beating. Failing to finish my chores or coming in from playing a little late incurred a whipping. One time that I forgot to fold my school clothes, and it led to a beating so bad that I had to put washcloths in my pants the next day so that I could sit down at school.
As time went on and I grew into my teen years, my studies of the Catholic church and its teachings brought more questions than answers and a realization that something was missing: a feeling of being called to the priesthood. There was just something that seemed to be missing in all of the rationale of the catechism, and after much searching, I came to the conclusion that it was missing the most important part of Jesus’s teachings: unconditional love. At this point I made one of the best decisions of my life: The priesthood was not for me.
This announcement was met with some of the most intense beatings of my life. They went on for days. I would get one in the morning when I woke up, one when I returned from school and one before bed. They were meant to change my mind about the priesthood, but they had the exact opposite effect. The harder she hit me, the more determined I was to stand my ground. Fortunately by this time my mother was a full-blown alcoholic, and she would usually exhaust herself and fall asleep pretty early.
Around this time Catholic social services decided to present my parents with two little girls up for adoption. I never quite figured out how or why that happened, but I knew it was up to me to keep them safe. I took it upon myself to fix their messes before mom noticed, and I was successful for the most part. I was 13 and raising two girls, and that didn’t seem too fair.
By the time I entered high school, I discovered pot, and it was a pretty much a done deal at that point. Between pot, schnapps and beer, nothing hurt anymore.
I had never quit believing in God. I just couldn’t bring myself to trust him. If He was “with me always,” why was I taking care of my sisters and explaining my bruises and scratches to my teachers as lost arguments with livestock?
I spent more and more time away from home in the evenings. I looked for activities that would keep me out of the house for the longest amount of time, but in the end I still had to come home. The first day of my senior year I had just returned home from school when the phone rang. It was the trucking company saying that my dad had been hit by a ton of plexiglass and had broken his back. He was out of work for the next 11 months, and I became the family breadwinner. I would clean stalls before school, come home, do homework, take a nap and go to work at the trucking company loading trucks. The only “good” to come out it was that my dad had an endless supply of codeine pills and never missed the three I would snag each day.
All the work caught up with me, and I ended up having to go to summer school to get my diploma. I was so fried that college was definitely out of the question. I also knew that I had to get out of the house or something bad would happen. My sisters had learned how to lay low, so I joined the Air Force. I signed on to be a weapons system specialist, because I knew that it was my best chance to get as far away as possible. I was sent to England to work with nuclear weapons. I was actually very good at it and had an exemplary record. I had managed to become a highly-functioning addict. As long as I stayed stoned, no one would know I was stoned.
Smack in the middle of rural England, I ran into Billy Graham. Staff Sergeant Billy Graham, every bit as on fire for the Lord as the Reverend. He was so patient and never preached. He witnessed by example. He let me know that the questions of my youth had answers. He took me through the Bible and answered my questions. The answer to all these questions was the same: Jesus Christ.
For the first time in my life, I began to feel at peace. I wasn’t drugging anymore and was only occasionally drinking. Jesus was number one in my heart, and I started to gain something I never had before: Self-respect. For the next six months, my life was good.
At the end of these six months, the US went toe-to-toe with Iran. We loaded 80 planes with 160 nuclear weapons. It was truly the most terrifying moment in my life. My walk with the Lord was still new enough that I lost all control and ended up inside of a vodka bottle for the next six months. The one advantage to my job was that I could quit working with nuclear weapons anytime I asked with no penalty. I asked, and they sent me to the Philippines. To work with Napalm and gas.
Turning me loose over there was like giving a kid razor blades and telling him not to cut himself. I was there two years and ended up totally strung out on Valium, weed, mushrooms and anything I could get my hands on.
While in the Philippines I got engaged to a fellow GI. Right after I got engaged, I learned my mother was dying. We flew back to the states, got married in front of my mother and came back with a bong. We had just returned when the first ax fell. I was caught with a pound of mushrooms. Fortunately God had other plans, as the evidence tested negative, and I was granted an honorable discharge.
We returned to the US where my toxic lifestyle eventually ended our marriage. I ended up back in Indiana driving a cab and discovering cocaine. I found that I was good at selling it and was able to make up to 500 extra dollars a day. Through all this I still knew who Jesus was. I knew I wasn’t better than Him, and I knew He loved me, but I guess I just didn’t care.
I ended up in a marriage that can only be described as a drug-related accident. I also ended up a full-blown addict whose profits went right up his nose. I was spending close to $400 a day on my habit. That came out to around 150,000 dollars in one year.
One day it finally came to an end. In one night my marriage ended, and I was in jail for resisting arrest. I really felt like I was at rock bottom and had been abandoned. I ended up losing my job and not being able to find another. Soon I was eating out of dumpsters and about to be homeless.
On May 1, 1989, I woke up, realized there was nothing left and hung myself from a 4” oak beam. As I stepped off I thought, “This doesn’t hurt as much as I thought it would.” There was sadness, but not from me. It came from without, and to this day I believe that it was God’s sadness at having to take me so low to raise me back up.
I woke up several hours later with a cut on my head, a sore throat and a broken oak beam as a reminder of who was in charge. My first thought was, “Okay, I guess you want me around for something, so I guess I’ll stick around.”
Since then I have been clean and sober. He has blessed me with a wonderful wife and family and brought me to my calling which is serving as a recovery leader. This can all change tomorrow, but now I am willing to follow. Have I stumbled? Of course. After all, I’m human, and once in a while I have to be reminded to, “Be still and know that I am God.”
Do I sin? Usually not before I wake up. Has it been easy? I was promised Heaven, not Heaven on earth, and I have the scars and pains to prove it. Has it been rewarding? Without a doubt!
I am now in my mid-50s, and over half my life was a fog. I have learned to consider that a blessing, because it makes me appreciate everything He has done for me that much more. My life verse changes on a regular basis, but one has been with me for years is Romans 8:1: “There is therefore, now, no condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus.”
Only He knows all the moments of your life, and you will have to account for each and every one. I do not want to stand in front of Him and have to explain a single wasted moment. When all you have left is prayer, you had better be able to say that prayer is what you started with. Sometimes when you feel like you are totally wiped out and are running on God, that is exactly where he wants you. If the man who wrote the Letter to the Romans calls himself chief amongst sinners, then who am I to claim any other status than that?
I am not an afterthought. Before He said, “Let there be light,” He said, “Let there be Larry.” He said that for each and every one of us. We are forethoughts! How great is that?