The Fugitives
May 2004
My wife and I stood before the federal judge and listened to her pronounce sentence on us. We were both going to do prison time. We'd been through a lot in the twenty years we'd been together. We'd drunk and drugged together, and now we were both going to prison on a drug-dealing charge. I like to say that we were “codependents and codefendants.”
How had I gotten here? I had certainly come a long way from the fifteen-year-old who'd hung out with the older guys because they could buy booze for me. I remember that I always drank more than my friends and could never seem to get enough. In college, I started drinking every night, and the only way I would wake up to get to class was by setting up a device with my stick that would knock over a huge pyramid of beer cans when my alarm clock went off. As the beer cans came crashing down, I would drag myself out of my stupor and head to class.
Some years later, I had a job working as an all-night country and western disc jockey. My shift would start at midnight and I would drink right up until 11:45 P.M. and then make a mad dash to the radio station. The guy I relieved would put on a long record for me, and I would fall into the chair trying to pull myself together. I would sober up by about 6:00 A.M. at the end of my shift. I can't imagine what I must have sounded like to the audience and was not very surprised when I got fired.
At another point, my wife and I were living on a fifty-seven-foot boat in New York City and would order our booze by the case from the neighborhood liquor store. Because we lived on a large boat, the liquor store thought we entertained a lot, but it was just the two of us drinking alone and drinking unbelievable quantities of booze. We had been dancing for a lot of years, and now we were going to have to pay the piper.
After sentencing us, the judge said that we were to be given a “voluntary surrender.” That meant we had three weeks to get our affairs in order before we had to report to our respective prisons. I hadn't been able to get my affairs in order for forty years, so I had no idea how I was going to do it now. But I was going to have to go whether my affairs were in order or not. Most of the three weeks were consumed with getting the alcohol and drugs we were convinced we needed to survive. The day came to go, but we didn't know how we could live without our alcohol and drugs. So we chose to pursue them instead of showing up at prison.
Now we were on the run; we were hunted fugitives. We found ourselves living in an abandoned apartment; I went out stealing all day so we could buy what we needed. I remember waking up in the morning and saying, “Not another day of this. I can't do this any more.” Then I'd get up and go out and start all over again. I had reached the jumping off place that the Big Book talks about. I could not live with alcohol or without it. I had no idea how to get off the hamster wheel I was on, so I just kept running.
In the next couple of weeks, several incidents took place that seemed unrelated and just fortunate coincidences. In retrospect, I know that God was giving me all the rope I needed. We were living in New York City, and we decided it would be safer if we got out of town. We ended up in a cheap motel in a small town in upstate New York, a few hours from the city. My wife was pretty drunk one night and decided at 2:00 A.M. that she was going to go out and get some food. Somehow she managed to drive down the road about a mile to an all-night diner. As she was leaving the diner, a New York State trooper observed her car weaving and pulled her over. Her driver's license indicated that she was from New York City and her past experience had told her that New York State troopers are not overly fond of people from the city. He gave her a breathalyzer test, which showed she was more than legally drunk. She knew that this was the end and we had finally been caught. She sat there waiting for the inevitable as the trooper called in her license on the radio.
Suddenly, the trooper appeared at her window once more and handed back her license. He then pointed her in the right direction and told her to drive carefully. She couldn't believe what was happening, but she didn't stop to ask questions; she just got out of there as fast as she could. By all rights, we should have been arrested right then, but God felt we weren't quite ready and still needed more rope.
We counted ourselves lucky and immediately left upstate New York. We decided we would be better off back in the city where we wouldn't stick out so much. About a week later, I found myself in an area of New York's Lower East Side nicknamed “Alphabet City” because the avenue names are letters of the alphabet—Avenue A, Avenue B, Avenue C. The further down the alphabet you go, the tougher the neighborhood gets. I was there to buy drugs. Normally, the police don't bother you there much, but that day they were doing one of their semiannual sweeps. I was arrested and taken to the Manhattan Criminal Courts building. I found myself lying on the floor of the jail cell, miserable and sick. Although I had given them a phony name, they took my fingerprints. I figured it was only a matter of time before they found out I was wanted by the Feds. But being caught wasn't on my mind. The only thing I could think about was how I was going to get through the night with nothing to ease the pain.
The following morning, in a semidazed state, I was led through court and told by a court-appointed lawyer that if I would plead guilty they'd let me out for time served. Sounded like a deal to me and before I knew it, I was back on the street. I couldn't believe that they hadn't caught me. But God knew I wasn't ready and needed just a little more rope.
A week later, my wife and I were back down in Alphabet City. We took a cab downtown and my wife held the cab on the corner while I went to buy what we needed. I got back into the cab with fifteen bags of dope in my pocket, and the cab driver suddenly turned around and looked directly at us. He said, “I was a slave to alcohol and drugs for twenty-five years, but I don't have to live like that any more because I have God in my life.” Oh great, I thought. This is just what I need. I can't wait to get back to do my dope, and this guy wants to talk about God. Then he looked right at us and asked, “Do you two want to stop?” and without a moment's hesitation we both said yes. He said, “Then let's join hands and pray and ask God to help you stop.”
Now, when I had prayed before, I said something like, “Oh God, please make sure my contacts are there,” or “Oh God, please make sure he's got the stuff.” In fact, I'd often asked God to help me stay sick. I'd never thought of asking him to help me get well. Now the time was right. God had finally given me enough rope, and I was at the end of it. There in the back seat of that taxicab, with fifteen bags of dope in my pocket, holding hands with this cab driver whose name I didn't even know, I sincerely asked God to help me stop. I had finally surrendered.
The very next morning, we were picked up by the federal marshals and taken away to start our prison sentences. Although I didn't know it at the time, this was the answer to my prayer. That was the last time I had a drink or a drug in what is now almost eighteen years.
The two and half years that I spent in prison were a wonderful experience for me. It was there that I found Alcoholics Anonymous, the Twelve Steps, and a God of my understanding. It was there in prison, using the Steps, that I started to take responsibility for my life. For the first time, I was learning to like myself.
The principles of Alcoholics Anonymous that I learned in prison and after I got out still guide my daily life. For my wife and me, Alcoholics Anonymous is the center of our lives. We are both active in corrections work, sharing our stories with those who are still incarcerated, and the message we bring to them is one of hope. We sponsor newcomers and do service at several different levels. It seems the more I give to Alcoholics Anonymous, the better my life gets.
Today I have an incredible life in Alcoholics Anonymous. I have a beautiful family, run a successful business of my own, and am a useful and productive member of my community. Best of all, my life has meaning today. Alcoholics Anonymous has given me something of real value that I can share with others. I get to see God's grace changing their lives just as it did mine.
Dennis
