Mikey marks big milestone in ongoing battle
He’s well known in anonymous halls all around the city, yet most of those who have known him for years can’t tell you his full name. They simply call him Mikey. And today is a very big day for
Mikey because it’s the 31st anniversary of his last drink which he consumed at the
1987 St. Patrick’s
Day parade.
Halloween? Think candy. July 4? Think hot dogs. But when you think of St. Patrick’s Day, which is today — ostensibly a celebration of the land of saints and scholars — you can’t escape visions of rowdies puking green beer.
“That was me,” Mikey, a Hyde Park native, recalls. “For an alcoholic, any excuse will do, and the parade is a great one. You don’t pass up a drink on St. Patrick’s Day; it’s like Christmas Eve for a kid. So, despite all the promises I had made, I ended up loaded again.
“But when I got home and saw the hurt on my wife’s face I knew it had to end. That’s when I finally admitted to myself I had a problem and reached out for help, or as my father’s generation put it, I took the pledge.”
Today, Mikey sponsors others in recovery, organizes retreats and attends anonymous meetings daily, which to some might sound like an obsession, though that’s not how he sees it.
“I’m no different from that guy who walks through the door for the first time,” he explains. “While I don’t live in the past, I don’t close the door on it either because this disease can blindside you, manifesting itself in so many ways.
“It’s almost as if it speaks to me, telling me I’m OK now, and that one drink wouldn’t hurt. But just one drink is all it would take to make me the drunk I used to be.”
There’s humility in Mikey’s story, an inclination to be humble when he’s congratulated on 31 years of sobriety.
“While that may sound like an eternity to some people, I can’t think like that,” he said. “I don’t have 31 years; all I have is today.”
When he goes to his anniversary meeting Monday, however, he does plan to wear his Shawshank Redemption T-shirt.
“Remember what Andy (Tim Robbins) told Red (Morgan Freeman)? He said the choice is to ‘get busy living or get busy dying.’ See, Andy got a second chance at life. Me, too. I’m one of the lucky ones.”
He’ll probably watch bits of the parade tomorrow because it’s such a happy, festive occasion, so quintessentially Boston.
“But somewhere in that crowd I know I’ll also see the guy I used to be and he’ll remind me I could easily be that guy again. That’s why I’m now living one day at a time.”