Big Ugly Mike

I once knew a guy whose average weeknight consisted of sucking on a crack-pipe while his girlfriend slammed a syringe into his neck, pumping a few CCs of heroine into his bloodstream, chased by a quart of Jack Daniels.  You might say that he was a bit of a "junkie."  Compared to him I felt like I had spent my whole life as an animatronic Dutch-boy doll, dancing in circles and singing It’s a Small World as boat-loads of tourists float by.  

This guy was serious about his addiction.  But living on the street and sleeping in a dark corner of a public parking garage meant that his self-annihilation didn’t come without a price. 

He stood about 6’1” with bright red hair and a toothless grin, framed by the most torn up, pockmarked face you ever did see.  If I had to guess, I’d say that he was about 42 years old, but he didn’t look a day over 64.  We affectionately called him ‘Big Ugly Mike’.  I never met his girlfriend but I can only imagine what she must have looked like. 

I first met Mike when I was 3 days sober; he had managed to scrape a few months of sobriety together.  After pulling himself out of the gutter, he nabbed a bed in a sober-living house, wrangled a job, and even scraped up enough change to buy an old piece-o-junk car to get around in.  He was the kind of guy that you looked at and thought, “There but for the grace of God go I.”  

Mike took his 90-day chip around the same time that I took my 30-day chip.  In recovery, it's customary to take 2 chips and give the second one away to someone who has less sobriety than you.  It’s kind of a ‘good luck’ thing.  Mike gave his second 90-day chip to me.  

A few months later, Mike was at an AA meeting and got a call that one of his prison buddies had been paroled.  Without a second thought, Mike was out the door with his party shoes on.  He relapsed and lost everything.  Just like that.  

That’s how addiction works.  Any normal person would look at that and think, “What in the world was he thinking?  The guy finally got sober and pulled his life together, then flushed it all away!”  That is the insanity.  That is the addiction.  It is an illness that does not kill a person because they are too weak, rather, the disease is too strong.  

     

Last I heard; Mike was living in a cardboard box behind a Walmart.  I haven’t seen him since he went out.  If I ever do see him, I will give him his chip back.  That is, if he is still alive.

There but for the grace of God...   

     

P.S. After I wrote this last paragraph I found out that Mike’s body was found behind a dumpster at the local mall.  He had overdosed on heroine.  RIP bud.