she met, his heart was touched, and he eventually got clean. He now has nearly thirty years in recovery. We continued to receive letters from Flobird, who ended up staying in Virginia Beach for a couple of months before heading back to Hawaii.
Later that year, another good friend, Tom M., had just been released from Atascadero Mental Institution for the Criminally Insane. We had used drugs together since the early 1960s, and I had always judged his addiction as much worse than mine. I used him as a dark measure of my own using and life, and tried to convince myself that I would never get that bad or go that far. He came over and we began smoking pot and getting high. He said he wanted to go to Hawaii, so I told him about the islands and Flobird (who was now living back in Hawaii), and the twelve-step programs she had introduced me to. In a sense, I was carrying the message of recovery to Tom. Since I was getting high with him, I don’t think I was very coherent, but nevertheless, it was my first “twelve-step call.”
At the time, Tom could barely talk. He stuttered terribly, and the behavior that resulted from his drug use almost made him seem less than human. I wanted to help him, so I told him, “The North Shore of Oahu is the place to go because all the young people are out there.” I also showed him a photo of Flobird and described her as an “alcoholic and addict,” which was strange because I certainly never used those words before my introduction to twelve-step meetings. In the hopeless circles I ran in, those words were never part of our vocabulary. Tom later told me that he interpreted my murky message as “There’s this weird woman, and if you get hard up you could shack up with an old alkie.”
Within a few weeks, Tom was off to Hawaii. He landed at the airport in Honolulu around 10 p.m. and began hitchhiking out to the North Shore, which is about forty-five miles away. He soon realized that Hawaii wasn’t a small island that you could ride your bicycle around. There were no grass shacks to sleep in. No beautiful Hawaiian ladies in grass skirts were welcoming him. He was greeted with the indifference of an empty moonlit highway.
Tom was dropped off at Sunset Beach, one of the many big-wave surfing spots, at about 1 a.m. He wandered down to the beach and fell asleep under the thick bushes and palm trees. When Tom awakened in the morning, reality set in. He had traveled to Hawaii, where he knew no one and had no money to buy dope. He realized he had made a huge mistake. He had found himself alone, broke, and strung out in paradise.
Sitting alone on the beach, Tom felt totally desperate and confused. Flobird, who was living in a house about a half-mile up the beach, was practicing her daily two-hour routine of early-morning meditation, writing in her journal, and waiting for specific guidance about how she was to live the rest of her day. She later told us that all of a sudden, she received this message: “Go to Sunset Beach NOW!”
Coming out of her bedroom, Flobird woke up several recovering addicts who were then living with her, the same guys I had hung out with when I first met her.
“Get the car started, I have to get to the beach,” she told them.
“Can’t you just walk across the street to the beach?” they asked.
“No,” said Flobird, her voice filled with urgency. “I have to get to Sunset Beach right now!”
Flobird drove a short distance down the highway and pulled up to Sunset Beach. She got out of her car, walked down to the ocean’s edge, and put her hands on her hips.
“Okay, God. Here I am. What’s up?”
Tom was what was up, crawling out from under the bushes in a state of extreme confusion. He looked up and saw the lady in the photo I had shown to him in California. He staggered toward her and began mumbling. She could not understand him, but said, “You are why I’m here. Put your stuff in my car.” It was December 17, 1968; Tom has been in recovery since that day.
I have since learned there are no coincidences in life. But there are miracles we can all experience and connect with when we are fully awake, mindful of life in the moment, and unafraid to follow our hearts. They only ask of us our presence, an acknowledgment, and our attention paid in full. Love merely generates more of itself, with little or no notice.
I soon began getting letters from Tom. I couldn’t believe it. Even in his letters, the miracle in his life was apparent. There had obviously been a colossal change, because he was no longer the same confused person I last saw in California. He had come fully alive. His spirit was awakening. It could be felt on the pages of the letter.
But there I was, still using. It seemed to me that all the addicts who ran into Flobird were getting clean and staying that way. What was going on with me? Why was I immune to this magic? Had I somehow left the room during the big initiation? Since the day I met Flobird, had gone to my first meeting, and found out I had this disease, I wanted to stop. But I was caught in the insanity, the compulsion to use, and nothing seemed to relieve this for any real length of time. As I look back, I can see it was not time for me to answer my invitation to walk through the door of grace. I was not done—not ready within.
Our son, Joshua Bird, was born on September 4, 1969, and we headed back to the Sunset Beach area of Hawaii right after Christmas. We stayed with friends until we found a house across the street from a beach called Sharks Cove. I began going to meetings once again and staying clean for short periods. When Flobird was in town, we had meetings at my house, but after everyone left, I got loaded. It seemed like my resolve was strong when I was safely encircled with other clean addicts, but that determination would leave with them when we said our good-byes. I truly didn’t want to use, but I was powerless over the obsession to use drugs. During 1970 I actually stayed clean twice, for more than three months each time.
Flobird and a bunch of her followers lived in tents across the street in the grassy park overlooking Sharks Cove. By now there were several people who had met Flobird, started going to meetings, and weren’t using drugs or alcohol anymore. They were a bunch of spiritual nomads, helping one another stay clean as they tried to help others who were ready to surrender. She was like a shepherd with a willing flock of misfits, all of them miracles, all of them clean. Then one morning she awoke at an early hour and was given this message: “Go to Egypt by boat.” After she announced this to us, preparations began for the adventure. Since I was married and had two kids, I certainly wasn’t going to join them, and neither was the other Tom. Flobird and her group left for their new journey.
One evening toward the end of the year, I smoked a joint and drank two beers in a friend’s tent. At the time, I had over three months clean. I went into convulsions on the tent floor, and after coming out of it, I said, “Wow, I’m allergic to this stuff.” I didn’t get loaded for a few days, but even after drugs and alcohol had demonstrated monstrous effects on me physically, I still began using again. We flew to California for Christmas in 1970, and once again, I began using more heavily.
I had heard in meetings how the disease can progress even when we aren’t using. Now I was experiencing it in my life, and I was quickly spiraling to my bottom. When we returned to Hawaii, the needles came out and I became strung out again. For the next ten months, I shot dope constantly. It almost killed me.
I was shooting coke and heroin every day. My arms became tattooed with bruises, track marks, and lesions. It got to the point that when I went to score drugs, the dealers didn’t want me to use there. “Just get the drugs and leave,” they said. I had become so hopeless that other addicts didn’t want me around. They ran me off, fearing I might contaminate their scene. I wandered around the North Shore in my swim trunks, carrying a syringe in an envelope in my shorts. I used garden hoses from private homes to get water to dissolve the dope, and shot up in the bushes. I would be missing for days at a time and then wander into my house. Naturally, my wife was fed up with this behavior.
When I couldn’t score dope, I shot caffeine or wine into my veins, causing
