Series: Four Lives, One Last Chance - A Year In Drug Court: Part 18 Of 41

ACT III. LINWOOD

"Who is an addict? Most of us do not have to think twice about this
question. WE KNOW! Our whole life and thinking was centered in drugs in one
form or another - the getting and using and finding ways and means to get
more. We lived to use and used to live. Very simply, an addict is a man or
woman whose life is controlled by drugs."

- -- Narcotics Anonymous basic text

When Linwood was still getting high, an old family friend would snatch him
right off the corners and drag him to Narcotics Anonymous meetings.

In those days, he left the meetings without hearing a word. His friend, who
had kicked his own ferocious heroin addiction 10 years earlier, knew that
Linwood wasn't ready to hear the message.

After entering Drug Court, Linwood started attending meetings again. His
battle for sobriety was still fresh and new, and nothing had moved him
profoundly.

But Linwood wanted to stay clean, and he knew the meetings could help. He
kept attending, hoping for some moment of rapture that would help him make
sense of his life.

Then one night, he spotted his old friend at a meeting.

He remembered how this man had tried to help him. He knew his friend had
been clean for 10 years through his devotion to NA. And he wanted what this
man had - a job, a home and a family.

Linwood began to shake and cry. He rose from his chair and walked over to
his friend. He asked him to be his sponsor - to teach him and guide him
through his recovery.

Linwood was finally ready to listen.

Once he did, he heard things in those meetings that he never expected -
things that would open doors long since closed in his mind.

He heard, "We'll love you until you learn to love yourself."

He heard, "If you don't pick up, you won't get high."

"If I don't pick up the crack pipe," Linwood thought, "I won't have all
this pain."

The concept seemed so simple, but the notion had never occurred to him - a
testament to how far he had fallen.

Linwood soon became hooked on the things he heard. He began chasing the
meetings like he had once chased the rock, often going to two a day.

He would sit there like an eager student, holding a pad and pen with his
battered NA "Basic Text" resting in his lap. The blue-jacketed book is an
instruction manual for recovery, and Linwood pored over it until the
sleeves were worn at the sides and the pages were marked and highlighted.
His friends filled the inside covers with inspiring words, like the kind
you find in a high school yearbook:

"Keep coming back, more will be revealed," one wrote.

"There is lifesaving information in this book," said another.

With a new purpose to his step, Linwood walked all over the city to
meetings with names like "Trust the Process," "A Gift Called Life" and
"Let's Get Spiritual." He found a divine energy filling the rooms like
sunshine.

There he would recite their mantras until they became more than slogans -
until they became the basis for the deeply religious experience of
recovering from drug addiction.

Linwood soon discovered that addiction had a viselike grip on his soul.
This disease could kill him, he learned, unless he followed the 12 steps of
NA and practiced its spiritual principles.

All addicts are arrogant and self-centered, they told him. Linwood knew it
was true.

All his life, no one could ever tell him anything. He ignored his mother's
advice to stay off the corners. In school, he thought he was bigger than
the principal. On the streets, he thought he was bigger than life.

Addiction, he found, isn't about using crack or heroin. Many of his new
friends told him they were addicts long before they ever touched a drug.

Addiction, they said, is actually about the crazy, twisted thinking that
led them to ruin. And all of them continue living with addiction - with
diseased, negative thoughts - even after they stop using.

That also made sense to Linwood. He had been acting crazy since second
grade, when he blacked a teacher's eye and got held back a year.

But while NA taught Linwood the roots of his addiction, it also taught him
to take responsibility for his actions. He may not be responsible for his
addiction - no more than someone is responsible for having leukemia or
Parkinson's disease - but he is entirely responsible for staying off drugs.

In that light, Linwood's world became clearly drawn between right and
wrong, good and bad. For too long, he had to admit, he had been doing wrong.

"God gave you your soul and the ability to make your own choices," Linwood
says now. "If you make the wrong choices, that's on you, not God."

Within months of his redemption, others in NA began calling him an
attraction and saying he had an aura. He would often spend hours counseling
other addicts.

Soon he started sharing his experiences at the meetings. He quickly became
a cherished speaker, and his date book filled with commitments to discuss
his recovery.

Now, when Linwood talks about his addiction, he shouts and pleads like a
prophet, and his hands fly through the air. His eyes go bloodshot and
teary, and his bottom lip quivers. His audience becomes rapt. Some cry,
others shout:

"Free yourself, Linwood! Free yourself!"

He usually begins by telling his listeners how the fast life of the corners
called to him like a siren. In one speech, delivered to some Drug Court
newcomers, he starts calmly, speaking in a soft voice. He talks about his
childhood, when he would look at the drug dealers with admiration for their
style.

"I look at the old cats standing on the corners and talking all that slick,
and I liked that," he says. "I wanted to be a part."

His voice rises slightly as he describes following the false idol of cool
to the gutter.

"What I came to realize is reputation almost killed me," he says.

"The images that I lived almost KILLED ME!" he says, his voice now booming.

As his mind stretches back to the times when he couldn't stop smoking
crack, Linwood looks as if he's pleading with the audience to hear and
understand, as he must have pleaded with himself to quit.

"I'd throw that stem down," he recalls, "and the stem would say, 'Why you
throw me down? Huh? Why don't you pick me back up? Use me. Don't I look out
for you? Don't I make you feel good?' "

As he comes to the end of his talk, Linwood winds down to an even pitch,
almost as if he had come back to the beginning.

"If I'm doing the right things for the right reasons that means I'm being
of service to God. It ain't about what I want to do no more," he says.

"Today, it's about what God wants me to do for others. I'm a servant.
Today, I serve."