Michael...my angel

This is a long entry today…so buckle up for the ride.

There are two sentences in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous that I read recently. They refer to an important point about my own recovery that I sometimes forget - for strange reasons - given the enormous import an event had in my life while I was in a treatment facility many years ago.

Here’s the story. In mid-January 1988 I went to a treatment center for my alcohol and drug use. I had been “sober” starting about three weeks before when I stopped drinking on my own. Friends had come to visit for Christmas that year and I made it through the holidays in relatively good shape. But, my life had deteriorated so much before that abstinence period started that my brain simply stopped functioning after the New Year. I was a puddle of emotional stress. I was most often sweating and trembling. I was ranting and raving. My wife and I were in constant battles. My then 2.5 year old son acted as a referee several times between us – a graphic image of the sad mess my life had become. At the end it was clear: Either I went to a treatment center to stop the madness or I was going to be alone to wallow in the aftershocks of alcoholism and addiction and, eventually, death.

So I ended up at a hospital for alcoholics and my detoxification began. I was not a happy person there. In fact, I was rude, aggressive, hostile, insulting and miserable, and I wanted everyone there around me to know it and stay out of my way. For the most part, everyone in the treatment center did, including the technicians and counselors who were afraid they had a real crazy person on their hands and not your run-of-the-mill alcoholic.  I spent most of my time alone those first few days. And, this is the part of the story that relates to the Big Book quote I mentioned that was so important in turning my life around.

One night, lying on my bed feeling sorry for myself and tremendously angry about my plight, a young man came into my room I had never seen before. He was hesitant as he asked permission to come in. He was quick to note that the staff had warned him about me and he needed to know if it was OK to talk with me. I said nothing. Not deterred by that, the young man sat down quite a distant from my bed and started to talk.

He said his name was Michael and he was at the facility as a part of his recovery - talking to patients there as a part of his AA commitment to carry the message of recovery to still-suffering alcoholics and addicts. He said he heard about me being so angry and isolated and he wondered if he could talk with me. I said nothing. Not discouraged by my hostile rudeness, he started telling me about his life. He related his story of addiction, living on the beaches of South Florida, and falling apart emotionally and physically. He told me about what happened when he stopped using drugs and how AA had come into his life through other alcoholics and addicts who taught him how to remain clean and sober. And he told me that the same thing could happen to me if I gave up the fight, admitted I had a problem with alcohol and drugs, and decided to join him and others downstairs in a meeting. I said nothing.

He excused himself after those few minutes of self-disclosure and wished me well. When he left, I burst into tears. All the emotional pain inside me caused me to feel incredibly sad. I had squandered my life and I knew it. But, I had never felt, until that night, that there was ever any hope for me stopping the drinking. Michael had given me that hope by his simple presence, courage to talk to a lunatic, and message of recovery that made it possible for me to think the same could happen to me. When I was finished feeling so bad and crying, I went out to the staff office and started talking. You could literally not shut me up for the remaining three weeks. I talked about everything, all my experiences with the insanity of drinking and drugging, and I usually spoke about what happened to me that night when Michael came to see me.

That reference in the Big Book talks about what happened to a man in a hospital bed when another recovering alcoholic came to him and shared his experience, strength and hope. It reads…”I knew that this man had something. In that short period he built within me something that I had long since lost, which was hope.” (page 244)

Now, the truly strange thing is that over the past 25 years that mental image of Michael being in my room that night has dimmed: Sometimes I don’t believe he actually was there. Yet, the emotional memory of it has remained strong.  It is so dim, but so memorable, that I frequently wonder these days if there really was a Michael.  Or, was this an hallucination? Was this event some spiritual process whereby my Higher Power placed in my mind the idea that there was some angel who visited me that night and provided the hope I was missing? Was this really Michael the Archangel come to help me through this life-shattering experience and give me the strength to carry on in recovery?

Who knows the answer to these questions? All I know is that something happened to me in that room. Something came over me when I was physically and emotionally beaten that gave me the strength to admit reality – that I was an alcoholic – and that I could actually do something about that if I had faith that I would not only survive, but prevail. And, I think that’s the same thing that the man in the Big Book experienced.

I never saw Michael again after that night. He never showed up at the dozens and dozens of AA meetings I went to during the ensuing years.

But, he has never left me.

All the best,

Roger