FROM ADDICTION TO REDEMPTION II --

“WHY SHOULD I?”

By Frederick A. Hurst

John Wilson was on the floor in the darkened room of an empty crack house, alone, without money or drugs or a permanent place to sleep. He had driven to the crack house in a stolen car after having contemplated rehabilitation. Instead he spent his last $20.00 smoking crack cocaine with a crowd of addicts who left when the drugs ran out.

John was desperate. After years of bouncing back from the edge, he had exhausted his options. He was smart, a smooth talker who could always talk himself into a good job. But his luck ran out. He was collecting garbage and his income could no longer pay for his habit or bolster his diminished ego. He had hit rock bottom. It was unfamiliar terrain and he had no idea what to do.

At some point that night, John heard himself screaming to God for help and was shocked to hear a voice out of the darkness say, “Why should I?” And for every explanation John offered, the voice repeated, “Why should I?”

John was born in Hartford, Connecticut on April 4, 1952 to two hard-working parents. His father died at 49 years old. He had struggled to stay employed in an environment that did not favor a Black man with a sixth grade education. All and all, however, John and his siblings had a good life. They were poor but never knew it. They never missed a meal and their mother kept them reasonably well dressed and insulated from her struggle to provide.

John recalls his mother repeating, “I can’t afford to buy you All Stars (best sneakers of the time) but I can afford to buy you sneakers. If you want more, you’ll have to get a job.” So, John worked. His mother’s habits had rubbed off on him. He shined shoes, ran a paper route and performed chores for the neighbors in their mixed Jewish and Black neighborhood where he had become a trusted errand boy.

And John was a good student. He attended Bracket North East Grammar School. By the time he reached the sixth grade, his religious training became serious. He was baptized as a Catholic and served as an altar boy and after grammar school, attended the prestigious North West Catholic High School on a full scholarship.

John could not make the cultural adjustment to the predominantly White Catholic High School. With only two or three Black students in his class, he felt isolated and withdrew socially as he wrestled with racial remarks and name-calling. His grades suffered and half way through his ninth grade year, he transferred to Hartford’s the predominantly Black Weaver High.

John’s troubles didn’t end at Weaver. They simply changed colors. He was a stranger with a different speech pattern who had to be tested. Somewhat shy and trained to be humble, John didn’t impose himself but when his new associates mistook his meekness for weakness, they soon learned that he could hold his own and embraced him as one of their own.

But the big problem at Weaver was not his fellow students. At Weaver, Black exploitation movies were the rage. Hustlers, drug dealers and pimps were the heroes. And money, fine clothes and something sharp to ride in was what was on the minds of Weaver students and John was no exception.

He lost interest in school and spent his time making money however he could make it, but always legitimately. He didn’t sell drugs, pimp women or rob. He worked in maintenance at a gym and at whatever other gainful employment would give him the money he needed to look good. His grades suffered, especially in the last year when he was working in Pratt and Whitney’s kitchen and playing football.

John didn’t graduate with his class but he was astute enough to attend summer school. He then graduated and went on to attend Greater Hartford Community College. During college, he formed a singing group, the Dynamic Sensations, which attracted a lot of attention from a manager who was planning to move the group into the big times. He had booked a significant engagement for them at the Lincoln Lake Lodge when the group had a near fatal car accident.

The accident was avoidable. John was driving. During rehearsal a spectator was heckling a member of the group. John got upset. When they left practice, the group climbed into his mustang and John chased the heckler, who was driving at a high speed in front of them. The heckler made a sudden stop at a stop sign. John went through it and was side swiped in the intersection by another car. John and one member of the group suffered minor injuries but the third member suffered a broken jaw and neck and what seemed like a real promising singing career came to an end.

In 1971, shortly after the accident, John was drafted into the army. He passed his physical and was shipped out to Fort Dix, New Jersey for basic training and to what also turned out to be his introduction to full-scale drug addiction.

John had dabbled in marijuana and alcohol before the service but did not consider himself to be addicted. While in basic training, he soon learned that if you were sick you could ask for whatever drug you wanted and he had been advised by fellow soldiers that if you wanted something that would make you “loopy,” ask for Darvon, a heroin derivative and John asked for and received it many times over.

John got into a fight with a much larger soldier out of New York, nicknamed “the Beast,” who later became his best friend. The Beast’s brother was a big time New York drug dealer. He became their supplier. Almost every day, John and the Beast would leave the base at six in the evening, go to New York and do drugs – primarily heroin and cocaine – all night and arrive back at the base just on time for reveille. When John was honorably discharged from the service, he was a full-scale drug addict and remained that way for the next twenty years.

Unlike many addicts, John’s decline from grace was erratic. He didn’t go straight down. He had this unique ability to prepare himself for work and to get a job. He couldn’t keep a job for more than a year but for 20 years he remained employed. So, as he bounced from one training program to the other and one good job to the other from year to year, all the while denying his addiction, John delayed his own cure.

He had attended Hartford and Mattatuck Community Colleges. He went to school for electronics and insurance. He attended IBM school in Atlanta, Apple school in Marlboro and Novell school in New York and each time he was given opportunities for meaningful employment but his addiction never allowed him to stay in any job long enough to develop his full potential.

After the service, he worked at Pratt and Whitney for a year. He obtained an insurance license and “worked at almost every insurance company in Hartford.” He worked for 15 years in different computer jobs, none more than one year, and was an office assistant manager at a diesel company, where he was offered an opportunity to attend diesel school.

But, eventually, the yearly juggling became strained and the quality of jobs declined. John went from working with his head to working with his hands. Finally, after doing security and kitchen work, he landed a job as a garbage collector. His addiction was no longer a secret he hid from himself. His job was no longer for money but purely for drugs and, as a garbage collector, he was always short of the cash needed to buy dope.

One day, short of money to get high, John called his buddy and asked for a loan. His buddy told him he needed to get help. It was November and he promised his buddy he would get help after Christmas because he “had to keep his job.” His buddy asked, “What job?” The words hurt because they reminded John of how far he had fallen.

The next night John stole his sister’s car and went to a crack house with $20.00. John was a “flipper” and knew how to stay high all night with a small amount of money. He would buy $20.00 worth of dope and split part of it with someone he trusted who promised to return with drugs that he would, in turn, split with John. John would take his split and split it again with someone else who would make the same promise. The trick was to always receive more back than he gave but he was always taking the risk that the other person would not come through. John had a reputation, though, and few dared cross him.

However, on this particular night in November of 1996, John played a bad hand. Nothing worked and well before the evening ended, he was out of money and drugs. The house emptied out and John was alone and desperate. At some point he heard himself crying out to God for help, which, he admits, he had done many times before. This time, however, he heard a clear voice saying, “Why should I?”

The voice startled John. It occurred to him that he had bounced back so many times before after calling on God’s help that he simply took it for granted that he would bounce back again. But this time it was different. He had never fallen so low and he had never heard that voice. His assumption was that God had answered his prayers before and would answer them again, especially in his moment of greatest need.

As he continued to cry out for help, swearing all the time that he would change, he kept hearing the response, “Why should I?” and it finally occurred to him that he had never kept any of his many promises to God before. John recalled thinking, “God you’re right,” and he begged God to give him just one more chance and promised he would never have to ask again.

That night, John returned his sister’s car and got a ride to the detoxification center, where he was told they had no beds. He sat down in the hallway and told them he would wait until they got a bed and, seeing his determination, they found him one. He was detoxed and given a ticket to the Leeds VA hospital for long-term rehabilitation

Sitting in a class of 15 others at Leeds, John listened to an instructor explain how only 3 of the 15 would make it. John recalls thinking, “It didn’t matter for me how many would succeed. I just knew that I was one of the 3.”

And he was. John completed the program and was slated for transitional housing at the VA facility in Northampton. It was full so John had to spend three months in the Northampton Interfaith Cot Shelter, a homeless shelter where you picked up your things each morning and left to wait outside until you could move into another church that evening. John recalls that it was December of 1996, an especially harsh winter whose bone chilling cold he will never forget

He started attending First Church as soon as he arrived at the shelter in Northampton. Another church, Miracle Temple Church of God in Christ, was having services in the First Church chapel under the ministry of Elder Bobby Wallace, an ex-military man who reached out to John and helped him understand how to strengthen his relationship with God.

John started volunteering to help at the Grove Street homeless shelter. Later he worked at the VA hospital as an assistant in the Work Therapy Program while continuing to volunteer at the shelter. Finally, he was hired as a relief person at the shelter and then as a permanent counselor, after which he left the VA and got his own apartment in Northampton.

“Everything came like a flood,” he said. He got a car, enrolled in Holyoke Community College and, two years ago, after years in the church, John became a credentialed minister in the Church of God in Christ through Bishop H. D. Bordeaux, the presiding prelate for the Second Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction.

One day John ran into his old friend, Miguel King (See POV article, Miguel King: From Addiction to Redemption, February, 2006). They had met in 1967 when John transferred from Weaver to Hartford High, where Miguel was a student. They both had gone to Mattatuck Community College together but eventually fell out of touch. Each got lost in his own drug world and each found his own redemption.

That day John was dropping someone off in Springfield and he heard Miguel’s familiar voice from the car that had pulled up beside him. They became reacquainted and Miguel asked John to join Second Chance, a spiritual singing group, and he accepted.

Miguel is a founding member of Second Chance, as are Lonnie Bowens and Zeke Johnson. Every member of the group spent years on drugs and each has been drug free and prosperous for at least ten years. The group has recorded and travels around singing and testifying to what God has given them.

John was married with three children. His addiction caused him and his wife to divorce. He has re-established his relationship with his children and is hoping one day to reconcile with his wife. His sister, whose car he “borrowed,” has forgiven him and has remained loving and caring through his entire rehabilitation effort.

John was pleased to be able to share the story of his travel from addiction to redemption and believes it is what God saved him for. He emphasized the point with a paraphrase from the Bible: “We are to let our light so shine so that men may see our good works and give God the glory.” n