Did You Know Mike?
Many of you in the Kansas City area knew and loved Mike.
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More about Mike:
"Mike Johnson was one of the nicest guys I ever met. He always greeted people with a handshake.. always! I miss him so much." Jim Seabough
About Mike by Laura R:
My husband sponsored Mike for four years of good sobriety. Mike was a regular in my home, stopping by for dinner, parties or just to talk. He knew all of our kids and they liked him as much as we did. Mike helped us clean up after dinner or events, was always smiling and was so fit and fun to have around. He was always cracking jokes, told a lot of funny stories and had a very clever and great sense of humor.
He video-taped my wedding but little did I know that he had recently relapsed and was drinking that day.
Mike came out to help put the mast up on our new sailboat one day and was such ham! We took him sailing and the weather got a little rough, my husband and I were freaking out, but Mike just hung on and kept saying how much he loved it!
I went to see him in the hospital after his bad car accident, and it just didn't seem like the same man at all. He was in tremendous pain, mentally and physically. He was so broken... Remorse doesn't even come close. He was completely and utterly hopeless. I hoped this was it, that this time he would "get it".
After he sobered up again and was physically well, I had a friend call me to tell me that her son, with whom I had worked, was in a drying out center downtown, a scary place for indigents. Would I come down and talk to him? Well, I just didn't see how I, an older woman with not a lot in common, was going to have any impact on him, so I called Mike and of course, he said he would come talk to Adam. I don't know if it helped Adam, but it showed me the truly selfless side of Mike, who dropped everything to try to help a complete stranger.
A few years later, my nephew moved in with us, a man who had a terrible drug and alcohol addiction, and Mike befriended him. Mike took him to meetings, got him into a treatment center that he had been in, and the two of them were instrumental in opening a halfway house in midtown for recovering addicts. But Mike relapsed again. (As did my nephew. I don't know where he is right now or if he is in recovery or not. He hasn't seen his four beautiful daughters in about 5 years.)
I was lucky enough to visit him in New York, after he completed a long stint at a treatment facility and it was the old Mike Johnson! Happy, funny, full of enthusiasm and plans for the future. At some point, I told him how much I loved him, and how much I didn't like him when he was drinking. It was like a switch flipped and he was two entirely different people. But here we were, in that great city and things were looking good.
I am so glad I thought to tell him how much he meant to me. I just didn't know that it would be the last time I saw him. When I spoke to him on the phone, shortly before he died, he was again, completely and utterly hopeless. He said he knew what he should do, but just couldn't.
That is what this disease does. It takes away minds and choices. It drains us of the will to be our true selves and to see the joy that sits right in front of us. It drapes a blackness over our souls that shuts out the ability to give and receive love- for Mike was and still is loved.
Please encourage your legislators and community leaders to step up the fight against alcoholism and drug dependence. Research, prevention and treatment need be at the forefront of medical and professional agendas-- in church bulletins, in schools, prisons and the workplace. Especially in medical communities. Millions of people are afflicted with this disease and everyone is touched in some way by it, whether it be a family member, someone at work or someone they know.
Don't let Mike's story, and millions of other stories like his, be for naught. Carry the message and carry hope.
Laura R.
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