On that day I was walking down Peachtree street in downtown Atlanta headed towards the crackhouse with five dollars in my pocket and no other way to get any money. I had just lost my job as a waiter at an upscale restaurant and was looking for somebody to sell me a five dollar hit.
I wish I could tell you that I suddenly had a "spiritual awakening." I wish it was as dramatic as all that.
Instead, I got a glimpse of myself in one of the mirrored windows in one of the skyscrapers. Here's another wish. I wish I could tell you that I saw myself in the window and felt such shame that I immediately decided then and there that I would never use drugs again.
Nope, didn't happen that way at all.
Instead I took a step in the direction of the crackhouse. Then I stopped. Then I took another one. Then I stopped. I waited a few seconds and took another step. Then I stopped.
I began to notice how tired I was. And I thought about me walking the twelve blocks to the crackhouse in the sweltering, humid afternoon. I thought about going the rest of the day and all of the night without anymore money to buy crack with. I thought about the withdrawal pains. I thought about missing the check in time at the shelter. But most of all I thought about how freakin' hot it was.
I thought about how weary I was. And that's when the thought hit me. I call it the thought and not my thought because it was a thought that was so alien to my experience at that time. To this day I still have a nagging feeling that the thought was actually thought for me.
The thought was this: "F*** this, I'm going to rehab."
To me it feels like the thought was given to me if you will, by some entity who realized that I never would have come up with that thought on my own. That I needed help. Someone who was me but a higher part of me.
Hmm... maybe that was my spiritual awakening after all. But I digress.
It was strange but after the thought popped into my head I wasn't tired anymore. I made it to the shelter on time, I got up at four o'clock the next morning and walked directly to the rehab, determined to sit there until a bed opened up. If there was no bed that day I'd come the next day.
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