into my veins or taking pills, I kept trying to convince myself that I was okay. Addiction is most certainly a disease of denial.
Next door to our little two-bedroom home was a four-bedroom beach house that had been vacant for several months. Early one morning a car pulled into the driveway of this house, and I saw a lady get out and go into the house. Later in the day, there was talk in the neighborhood about a strange-looking lady who had moved into the beach house.
The second time I saw this woman, who called herself Flobird, she was standing on the white, sandy beach in front of the house, dressed in a bikini. She had long salt-and-pepper hair that she always wore in a distinctive style—a bun pinned on top and the rest falling to her waist. She was tall and skinny, her face wrinkled and her skin weathered from years in the sun.
As I approached this woman, with the sun beginning to set into the ocean behind her, I felt something I had not felt in so long. We began to talk, and I felt good inside. I didn’t feel the anxiety in my stomach that I always carried. She told me she was a beachcomber. “I pick up lost souls and lead them to a spiritual life.” Flobird looked directly into my eyes, almost as if she could see through to my soul. I felt so much love from her and knew that she understood me completely—even the pain I carried within. Comfort seemed to emanate from her, and my thoughts seemed to clear away for a wordless message. In that instant, I remembered what I had read in my meditation lesson: When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.
I later learned that before finding twelve-step programs and getting into recovery in 1960, Flobird was considered a hopeless type of addict. As a result of decades of addiction to drugs and alcohol, she had seriously abused her body. At one point in her early recovery, she experienced severe physical and emotional problems. A doctor told Flobird that her liver was shot and she was dying. He gave her six months to live.
Nearly everyone who met Flobird could sense this unconditional love radiating from her. Her entire being poured out joy, light, and love. At the time of our meeting, she had about eight years in recovery.
Flobird told me this story:
“A year-and-a-half after coming to the program, I came home from a meeting and the pains had taken over my body. I started getting liver attacks. I called my supervisor where I worked at the time and said I had to quit. Seeking direction, I went to the Bible, as I usually did, closed my eyes, and placed my finger on the page I had opened to. It said: If you can’t leave houses, husbands, children, and wives to follow me, you’re not worthy of me. Then I picked up the twelve-step program book, flipped it open, and put my finger down on a page that said: We have to be willing to go to any lengths.
“Then I called my husband, from whom I was separated, and asked if he wanted to get back together. He said no, because he never had it so good. I said that was okay, and that he could have everything—our house in Riverside, California, and all the assets. Walking out the door was the hardest thing I have ever done.
“I ended up at Imperial Beach, just north of the Mexican border. I took my gear and went out on the sand dunes, where I stayed for forty days.
“I was on a beach with hundreds of seagulls and pelicans. In the morning, they’d rise up and fly. The pelicans were so beautiful, and I’d feel lifted up. Several times in my mind I’d think I’d already died and gone to heaven with the birds.
“The pains in my body became unbearable, and my ankles were swelling. One morning, I just lay down and said, ‘Okay I’m ready.’ I knew I was dying.
“And then the obsession to drink hit me. I looked at the ocean and thought it was vodka. I crawled down to the edge to get a drink and crawled back up. I don’t know how long this went on, but as I was lying there, suddenly there was stillness. I mentally saw the universe as pure, vibrating light. I spiritually experienced it.
“All knowledge was open to me. I saw that everything was perfect in its changing form. Most people don’t know that. They have to wake up. The vibrations, like 10,000 volts of electricity, went through my body. Love and joy went through me, and I was awake for the first time in my life.
“My body began to heal, and after another two weeks I packed my stuff and walked back into the world. I now knew that my life was no longer mine. I was a channel to give away God’s love.”
After listening to Flobird’s story, I experienced an amazing insight. I knew I had found something I had been looking for all my life. Even though I had no words to describe it, a feeling entered my heart that I wanted what this person had.
From that day on, Flobird considered herself a beachcomber, and the ocean became her beloved friend. In twelve-step meetings, she always talked about the birds: “Look at the birds. They live in the moment, taking no thought for their lives, food, or where they will lay their heads.” That’s how Florence (her birth name) got the nickname “Flobird.”
Flobird gave her life completely to God. She frequently said, “I’m sure of God and He is sure of me.” When she walked away from her house in Riverside, she gave up all of her worldly possessions. She asked for nothing from her husband or society; she told us that she totally trusted that “God would provide wherever He guides.”
This is how Flobird entered my life that eventful morning in 1968. She had been living and helping out at a recovery halfway house for alcoholics and addicts in Kaneohe, which was about forty miles from the North Shore of Oahu. That morning, as usual, she had been meditating and writing in her journal. Faith can be a conditional thing, but by now Flobird had learned that if she surrendered fully, the direction would come. She was told to go to the North Shore, where she was spiritually guided to the vacant, fully furnished four-bedroom house on the beach. She reached above the door and found the key.
Daring to follow her heart, Flobird moved in. When the realtor arrived the next day to show the house, he discovered Flobird and asked what she was doing there. “God told me to come here,” she said. “Can you please have the electricity turned on?”
Needless to say, it was turned on, and Flobird lived in this house for about six months. This was my introduction to the modern-day miracle, an event that was to become a common experience over the next ten years that Flobird was in my life.
When I met her I was incredibly lost in the world of addiction. The using and despair had left me on autopilot, traveling in circles. But I was also seeking a better way of life by learning how to meditate and become more spiritual. The deep feelings of separation, fear of life, and complete emptiness were so strong inside of me. All I could do was take more drugs in an attempt to fill an emptiness that couldn’t be filled by anything outside of me. No amount of drugs, my wife, a baby, money, sex—nothing worked. The despair and the feeling that I didn’t belong anywhere now dominated all of my thoughts and actions.
My talks with Flobird were the first time I had ever heard anything said about a twelve-step recovery program. It was difficult for me to understand her because I had never thought of myself as an addict. After all, everyone I hung out with used alcohol and drugs the way I did. Our ever-present misery just seemed to be another facet of the lifestyle, almost like a tattoo that symbolizes what gang or tribe you belong to.
In February 1968, Flobird started one of the first twelve-step meetings on the North Shore. It was held at the beach house and attended mostly by recovering addicts from Honolulu. I was about to take another step on my journey of self-discovery.
I was afraid to go to the first meeting, but I did walk back and forth on the tree-covered lane to and from the beach, gazing into Flobird’s living room window each time I walked by. I was unable to walk into a house full of people I didn’t know. Even people I did
