JUST FOR TODAY: PAIN TEACHES A LESSON

I don't know his name, but I mourn his passing.

I know virtually nothing about him -- what he looked like, what his
favorite TV show was, what he liked on the radio when he drove down
the road on a sunny summer afternoon with the windows down.

Yet because he was an addict, I know most of his story. I never met
him, but his mother has called me periodically when she reads this
column. A sweet and kind woman, she told me several months ago that
her son was serving a life sentence for a drug-related crime.

What she told me next has touched me ever since: "For the first time,
because of what you write, I think I understand him and what he's gone
through."

She called again on Friday, telling me her son had died in prison,
having been there for 19 years. The cause of death was hepatitis,
contracted during his days of active addiction almost 20 years ago. He
was up for parole next year.

Instead, he died in a cage, a victim of a disease he didn't ask for
and one that society doesn't understand. He died because of choices he
made, put away for crimes he willfully committed. Did those crimes
make him a bad man?

No way. Recovery has taught me that, as an addict, I'm not a bad
person. I always thought that I was, and I hated myself. I hated my
life, what I had done to myself and what I had done to others. I
loathed my own reflection.

But recovery taught me to let go of that self-hatred. It taught me
that I'm not a bad person -- I'm a decent person who's made some bad
decisions. And but for the grace of my Higher Power -- whom I choose
to call God -- our places could have easily been switched, and it very
well could have been me who languished and died in bondage.

I feel sorrow and compassion for his family. When his mother called me
to inform me of his death, she told me, in no uncertain terms, how I
needed to stay clean and not go back to my old lifestyle. I wanted to
reach through the phone and give her a hug.

There's nothing I can do to take away her pain, just like there's
nothing I can do to free other suffering addicts from the chains of
addiction. All I can do is continue to work on my own recovery, share
its message with others and hope that, by my example, other addicts
will want what I've earned for myself.

Getting and staying clean isn't an easy thing. I heard an addict share
one time that freedom isn't always free, that it takes fortitude and
hard work to keep it. And sometimes, we're told, an addict has to die,
having never found recovery, for others of us to learn a lesson and
embrace what we've found that much more tightly.

Today, I'm free from active addiction, and so is my unknown friend.
The difference is that I still retain this mortal coil, and today I
relish both the beauty and darkness life brings. My brother has found
his own freedom, and if there was a God in his world, I have faith
that he's in a place of love and light, where there are no physical or
emotional chains to bind him to pain.

I only wish I could tell him that his death, while tragic, has helped
me to stay clean, at least for another day. And by sharing a small
part of his story, it's my hope that it helps others to find freedom
in life, as I have.