I did my last shot of dope in a dingy bathroom lit by a candle on December 1st 2007.
Now, in my mind, I was sure things would get better and I would be able to bounce back soon. Through a series of events, things got worse and even though I was sticking to the suboxone program, my life completely fell apart. I found myself broke, sleeping in a friends spare room while my kids lived in a beat up old RV behind the house. Struggling to stay clean and having absolutely no real hope for a future, the threads that were holding my mind together were snapping one after another. I slept with a sig sauer 229 next to my head on a pillow every night, just in case it got too hard to go on. Honestly, if not for my kids, I would have ate a bullet just to put an end to the whole twisted play I had written and that somehow made it even worse. I had two people really relying on me getting it together and the pressure was enormous. I had nothing left on any level.
I was setting on my friend’s porch smoking cigarettes one night, a couple months clean but really struggling, severely depressed and about half out of my gourd. This was a pretty shady neighborhood and this guy came walking by with some stuff he had stolen from Walmart. He asked if I wanted to buy a Maglite flashlight. I happened to have a few bucks from some stuff I had sold that day so I asked him if he had anything else. He said he had a mp3 player and I think I gave him 20 bucks for both of them. It was a Phillips go gear preloaded with hits from 1985. I set on the porch the rest of the evening, listening to songs and then went to go to bed. I don’t know why tonight was the night but I really had nothing left and the desperation was so heavy. The thought of taking my life was just so strong! I finally got to such a point of absolute brokenness that the only possible thing left for me was to get down on my knees. Try one last prayer of complete desperation and honestly, I had no confidence of anything happening. Even getting clean hadn’t helped and I really wouldn’t have blamed God for just letting me roll out and get what I had coming. By this time, I had no illusions about what I was and what I deserved. I had no defense to even throw up.
For a little back story, I had an ex-wife who was the mother of the 2 kids that were with me. She had her own drug problem and hadn’t been a part of the kid’s life for the last 15 years or so but would call from time to time, often when she was in trouble or some super dramatic dope fiend drama. Often, I would try to talk her thru the rough spot and then might not hear from her for a year or two.
I prayed and I didn’t feel any real inspiration or hope so I went to bed and put on the head phones of that stolen mp3 player. In 1985, the band Cheap Trick had a hit called “The Flame.” It was never a favorite of mine. I was more into some of their older stuff from back in Jr.high . But I listened to it anyway a couple times and then fell asleep.
At 4:24 in the morning, my phone rang and it was my ex-wife from Texas. She said she was up listening to old music on the computer and she listened to Cheap Tricks “The Flame” and had an overwhelming urge to just call me and tell me that I was doing good and it was going to be ok. I barely even woke up and told her I would talk to her later. When I woke up in the morning, I remembered all this and checked my phone and seen that she had really called, thinking it was a dream. I called her back and asked why she called the night before and she told me the same thing. I got off the phone and my mind was trying to figure out if all this was even real and what are the odds of 2 people both listening to the same old song a thousand mile away and then for one to have the urge to call someone they rarely talked to and tell them all that. Instantly, I knew that God had reached out to me, through a way that would demolish all my abilities to chalk it up to chance or deny its power. From the guy walking by with the mp3 player, to my desperate prayer and song choice all the way to a crack addict in Texas. All the pieces went together to be a miracle, built for me, at the time I needed it most and when I was the most willing to receive it.
I almost don’t like writing about that night. It was the single most important night in my life. Yet trying to put it in words falls short of how huge and meaningful it really was. I know that most people won’t get how impossible it was for those events to line up in such a way to save my life. But I think that is kind of why it was so big! God knew absolutely what would work for me and then brought that to pass.
If I had any really feeling at all, it was too make a move! Do something to grab a hold of this moment not knowing what it meant or its ramifications. Grab it like a life saver thrown to a drowning man. The only thing I knew to do was call an old friend who used to come by my Tattoo shop and talk to me about how he was a Christian now and how Jesus was the only true way. I used to get a big laugh at him but we went way back so I always let him babble. So my move, my grab at the ring, was to call and ask him to take me to church with him.