Be Still
HELLO everyone, my name is Mick and I’m an alcoholic. My sobriety date is 2nd November 1972. I’m known in the Fellowship as Old Faithful because I keep coming back. Some people call me Mick the Punk and others know me as Lobotomy Michael, but more about that later on.
I was born in London in 1936, and as a kid I could never sit still. Always restless, ill at ease and full of anger. I struggled at school, at home and in life. I was in and out of numerous mental institutions where they pumped me full of drugs, but the pills only made me worse. When I was eight, a psychiatrist told my mum I would never grow up, that was true, at least until I got to AA.
I had my first drink in 1951, a pint of bitter. My alcoholism really started to progress around 1956. Never able to be still or stay in one place, I drank my way from London to Glasgow to Belfast and beyond. I lived in squats, bedsits and shebeens. I worked odd jobs to get money for drink. It was just like a well-known book title minus the croissants and Eiffel Tower!
By 1956 alcohol had led me to prison. In 1959 I spent time in a second prison, and in 1960 I was in yet another prison, this time charged with malicious wounding. I didn’t know it then, but these sentences were all direct results of my active alcoholism. Years later the Fellowship led me back to those prisons, and many more worldwide, but this time as a speaker at AA meetings.
By the mid-60s I couldn’t get or stay sober. The streets, spikes and wet houses became home. I was enmeshed in the mental health system too. Psychiatric units were very different places back then; they were more like lunatic asylums. To ‘cure’ my alcoholism they gave me seven years of weekly electroconvulsive therapy. I drank on the way home from every session. After that they gave me a full-frontal lobotomy. I picked up three weeks later. I was trapped in a perpetual cycle of Step Two insanity – repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results. And yet, I still had hope, because in 1967 I first found Alcoholics Anonymous.
I was referred to AA through a hospital. Today, there are 700+ meetings in the London area. In 1967, as far as I remember, the London Where to Find was one piece of paper with six meetings on it! At my first meeting they told me to keep coming back. I didn’t, but the seed had been sown. By 1972, I was spiralling down toward ruin. Homeless, helpless and powerless in Southampton, I drank myself into oblivion. After a violent street altercation, I was picked up, presumed dead and laid out on a mortuary slab, but one of the workers there noticed I was still breathing. Back from the dead indeed. Let nobody say their rock bottom is too severe to make it to AA. That was where my journey of recovery and discovery really began.
I came back to London, back to AA, properly this time. At my early meetings, this time I heard things that stayed with me; I heard them because I was finally listening: “Keep coming back.” “There’s Twelve Steps and no elevators.” “Love and service keep us sober.” Though I really struggled with stillness, AA did for me what nothing else could (including a full-frontal lobotomy), it got me sober. Meetings became my constant, the Steps my salvation, and service my lifeline. I started taking on commitments and was secretary at a group. On my first night, at the 8pm start time, nobody was there, which struck me as a bit strange. I was sat there reading the Big Book when someone came in and told me I’d got the wrong night. I packed up the stuff and went home. But I didn’t drink, so that meeting worked, at least for me anyway!
AA took me to places I’d never even dreamed of: Canada, the US, Europe. I went to Lourdes, I spoke at a meeting in a monastery in Slovenia, a prison in Vancouver. I was also blessed to speak at the International Convention in San Antonio (2010) which was one of the most moving experiences of my life. In 1974 I began helping others through a correspondence service which supports isolated alcoholics by writing letters to those at sea or in prison. I was also a port contact, meeting AA members off ships and taking them to meetings.
Though I believe I’ve always had a Higher Power, my spiritual awakening came slowly. One profound experience came when I travelled to Vancouver for a convention. I attended an AA meeting in a sweat lodge on a Native American Reservation. They told me, “Be still, don’t chase the rainbow.” Though I’ve struggled with stillness, I believe my journey of emotional sobriety started right there. Years later I wrote a song called “Be Still” that was inspired by that experience.
As a kid, I could never sit still. I was always chasing or running from something. In AA, I learned to sit, and I learned to listen. And today – well, my Higher Power has a funny sense of humour because I’m now confined to a hospital bed in a care home, so I don’t have much choice but to be still! Despite my poor health, I still do service. I’m still a sponsor, writing letters to isolated alcoholics around the world. I’m in daily contact with my AA family. I’m still useful, still sober, and still grateful.
The greatest truths AA has taught me are that no rock bottom is too deep, no story is too dark, and no mind is too restless to find peace. God bless you all. X
MICK