Spiritual Awakening
Hey, Did God Just Shake Me?
I Had the Quick and Eye-Opening Type
I was traversing the lobby of the International House hotel in New Orleans after a highly wild Voodoo Fest on Halloween weekend 2009 when I went into a seizure. At least that’s what the medical records say, and the front desk called an ambulance.
Because this was before Obamacare, I had no health insurance, so I was taken to New Orleans’s charity hospital. When I came to, the nurse said I was lucky and found an empty bindle of cocaine in my pants.
The next few days were a blur. I stayed holed up in the hotel like Sid Vicious at the Chelsea. I emerged to see New Orleans’ best bartender from time to time at the sports bar that never closed, a few blocks away.
When I finally boarded a greyhound bus back to Ft. Walton Beach, Florida, I looked and smelled so bad that I was that guy that nobody wanted to share a bench with. Rock Bottom number one.
I take a cab home on November 6. My roommate had been calling morgues, hospitals, and sheriff’s departments looking for me. He was keeping my mom posted. They were worried sick. I called my mom. She was just happy to hear my voice. Rock Bottom. Completely.
Was I going to drink myself to death? I quickly took the chance to visit my psychiatrist, who I was seeing for bipolar disorder. I asked her for a list of bipolar support groups. She said that she didn’t exactly have that but that these groups had lots of bipolar people. She handed me a list of AA meetings. Later I found out she knew I scored a.386 blood alcohol. I went home, and I called Mom, and I told her. I am sure she cried on that line.
On her birthday, November 8, I told her I was going to my first AA meeting that following day. Setting aside the meetings I checked out five years earlier, I went to the meeting. Everyone sounded like the adults in Peanuts cartoons punctuated by the word God. On the other hand, I recognized people, and one recognized me, saying that she was holding a seat for me. I felt at home. Someone handed me a Big Book before I left.
I called mom again. She told me to put on my phylacteries and prayer shawl, which I had not worn in years. I prayed. I picked up a book of stories and read about the Ba’al Shem Tov. I then sloughed it all off on the couch and retired to my bed.
I lay down on my bed and spread eagle, but I was still. Then I felt it! Something picked me up completely off the bed an inch or so and dropped me down hard for emphasis. I did not see a “Burning Bush” or really anything. I felt that I received a vision that I had a purpose in life but needed to quit drinking to accomplish my goals during my time here. This vision freaked the shit out of me, but the Southern Baptists in AA understood me well and smiled when I shared this.
I hate to break this to my atheist friends, but at that moment, I crossed from a semi-agnostic believer to a Gnostic. I knew there was a God because I feel I have had direct contact. Call me what you want and think of me what you want. I called my mom again the following day, and she said she believed me and that many of her friends were praying for me.
I would like to say I never drank again, but that’s not true. I relapsed a whole hell of a lot until January 4, 2018, when I had my last drink. But it has not shaken my knowledge of a force greater than myself.
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