The Best Life I Ever Had

My friend Joe got in touch asking what I'm up to these days.

I told him that I'm very much in love, writing a lot, doing work for a diverse collection of organizations helping them raise money and getting ready to hit the road again traveling.

He came right back saying how wonderful that is. Then he said, "You did so much for the Recovery Community. Now enjoy yourself."

And that was it.

It left me remembering Potter's Place, a long term transitional house for addicts. In a grand old Victorian house on 34th Street in downtown Savannah, twelve men lived in community with one another. Each doing his best to recover, stay clean and do good work. I always loved visiting which I did often.

It was a broken down old house when I was hired by Union Mission but in couple of years we'd raised what we needed to renovate it. The guys really got into renovations as they represented lives being changed. It was always a happy, profane bunch of smokers who drank coffee by the gallon. The budget for coffee was the single largest budget line item!

Later we took over The Hacienda, a seven bed program for women. It was just as much a dump when we got it with a big hole in the living room floor. The ladies were all rail thin from their addictions. They flaunted their sexuality, all spoke with gravely voices and drank coffee like the men at Potter's.

Together they would throw these cook-outs and invite every addict in Savannah to come ... and they all came. You couldn't see any of them for the clouds of smoke but I could hear them slurping coffee, speak in gravel voices and explode into coughing fits whenever they laughed.

They always invited me to say a few words at the beginning then ... they wanted me to leave. As much as they liked me and as much I loved them, I wasn't a member.

"When you go home at night," Andi Grant once asked me at The Hacienda as she flipped burgers on the grill, winking at me with one eye with a lit cigarette dangling from her mouth, "do you just get freaking wasted?"

"Sometimes," I honestly answered.

"Man," she continued taking a long drag from the cigarette, "I would stay wasted forever if I did what you do."

I shrugged my shoulders.

I loved Andi. She worked as a waitress at the old Checker Club where the Savannah Visitors Center is now located. I'd eat lunch their several times each week because the food was good and Andi always made me laugh ... and think.

Eventually, she found a better job and moved into a trailer off Highway 17.

We lost touch.

Then she called me one day out of the blue. "Hey Rev," she said in gravely voice. I could picture her with a cup of coffee in one hand and a cigarette in the other. I asked her how she's doing.

"You know Mike," she said as I heard her exhaling the smoke, "the happiest days of my life were at The Hacienda and those cookouts. We all loved each so much. And we were all messed up Mother Fu&%ers."

I've never forgotten that. The happiest life had for her was a homeless shelter? There's something wrong with that. But what she missed was the community of strugglers all sharing the same addiction. Somehow they loved each other through. It was as holy as it gets. I'm proud to have been a part of it.

A few years, Andi died of complications from AIDS. We sold Potter's Place for almost half-a-million dollars and used the money to help start the J.C.Lewis Health Center. The Hacienda also closed though we started the Ben & Bettye Barnes Center to take its place. Both of those are still going strong.

These days it cost a lot of money to recover from addiction. Most programs are court ordered and pay for themselves by charging addicts crazy expensive fees.The logic is to punish the addict by taking their money away and giving it FOR-Profit companies who do quite nicely. It supposed to not be a burden to tax payers ... except it is. When they can't pay the courts have them arrested and they go to jail which is paid for ... by the tax payers.

It begs a question doesn't it? Where do addicts get money when they have none? Right? It makes little sense.

While I'm busy creating this new life for myself, I appreciate the Joe's and Andi's I've had the honor of knowing and loving. It's nice that they remember the things we did then.

Maybe we'll do them again one day.

The world sure needs them.