Recent events of which we are all aware have reminded me how easy it is to reject the truth while enraptured in a distorted reality.
This is a hard memory for me but one that is right for this moment.
Thirty years ago I sponsored for a short time a young crack addict.
I met him at a meeting in Chicago and I said I’d help him get started with the 12-Step program.
One day when I arrived at his home to take him to a meeting I was greeted by his wife and his lovely baby girl.
I couldn’t help but notice there wasn’t a stick of furniture in the place. The only thing I could see was a cardboard box on the floor.
On our way to the meeting I asked him, what was this all about? He told me they’d sold all their possessions to get the money for the apartment. The cardboard box was where their baby slept.
He pleaded with me to believe him.
We attended a First Step meeting at “Mustard Seed” where so many had sobered up in the past 50 years.
It was a terrific meeting with an unmistakable message:
Get Real.
After the meeting I offered to lend him a hand restocking his apartment with furniture I had in stored in my basement.
When I left him that afternoon:
- their apartment was furnished
- their baby had a bed
- their refrigerator was full
- they had winter coats from our closet
The Mustard Seed had delivered a message.
When I returned the next day to take my friend to another meeting —
- he was gone
- his wife was gone
- his baby gone
- his apartment was empty
The building manager said he’d sold the furniture that morning.
He left with his wife and daughter — to some new world of distorted reality.
Getting real was definitely not on the agenda.
Presumably he was on the hunt for more crack and — a new mark.
The Mustard Seed had gotten its answer
Such is the story of anyone enraptured in a fantasy world — so cunning, baffling and powerful. How it:
- lies
- cheats
- steals
And if left unattended long enough — it will certainly kill.
It’s impossible for someone who’s not ventured into a fantasy world to fully comprehend its ferocious power.
Once it stakes its claim on a person the spell is very hard to break.
As I walked through the empty apartment I couldn’t help but remember the time I lived in this fantasy world of
- deceit
- denial
- despair
When I similarly discarded an opportunity to Get Real and leave my world of distorted reality.
……….It was late one night in 1977 in Washington DC when I was pulled over after a long night of drinking and carousing.
I was way over the legal limit.
The police officer saw that I was impaired and conducted a field sobriety test to establish the fact.
I was drunk.
Then a strange thing happened.
The officer, rather than handcuffing me and carting me off to jail, engaged me in what I later came to know as a 12-step call.
He said he knew that I had a problem — and knew that I knew I had a problem. What I didn’t probably know, he said, was that I was on a death march to oblivion and would soon destroy everything I cared about.
…..even my very life.
He knew:
- what I was
- where I was
- how I got there
He said he knew all that because he himself had been there.
He wrote down the phone number of Alcoholics Anonymous and gave it to me. He then asked me to lock my car and get into the patrol car wherein he drove me home.
He left me with these words:
“Now go have a good life.”
I woke up the next morning, discarded the note, and announced to my friends that I’d really dodged a bullet the night before.
Hardly true.
Four years later I found myself sprawled on a parking lot near the post office, not two miles from where the police officer had handed me the note.
It was only after I woke up in intensive care that I finally got the message.
I’ve often prayed my young friend Got Real and let go of his world of distorted reality.
Dare I say —
It is the same prayer I have for my country.
Just a thought…
Pat
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