Today I know that everyone is searching for a sense of freedom within, but when our seeking is misdirected, many of us turn to drugs, alcohol, money, relationships, or acquiring more things to fill ourselves. Our spiritual search becomes an endless, and at times terrified, hunt for fulfillment. We label people who abuse drugs and alcohol “addicts,” but isn’t craving of anything addiction? We fail to realize that all things are impermanent, and that nothing outside of us will ever take away our inner feelings of emptiness and isolation.
On a Sunday at 3:50 p.m., December 24, 1967, my daughter Celeste was born. The small one-story stucco hospital, which was built in the 1920s or 1930s and looked more like plantation housing, was located in Waialua on the North Shore of Oahu. It was nearly empty when we arrived. The doctor and nurse, who were to be in the delivery room with Laura, were the only staff there, and had asked me to watch the office and answer the phone. Were they serious? Of course I would watch the office. Turning an addict loose in a hospital is like releasing a kid in a candy store. I’m not proud to admit it, but while my daughter was being born, I was in the pharmacy stealing syringes and looking for drugs to shoot up. That feeling of being happy I’d had just a few months before was gone. It became too clear that I had no choice about shooting drugs. If I had ever had a choice, it was pushed out of the way as merely a distraction as I frantically searched the cabinets for injectable narcotics. Sadly, in an addict’s life, the drugs always come before everything else.
Celeste Noel Catton was a healthy, beautiful baby, and I was a proud father. Her birth was a good thing in my life, a very good thing; but even becoming a father couldn’t keep me clean.
Overpowering feelings of separation continued taking over my life, and I had no idea what to do about it. I kept taking drugs in an attempt to find that inner “God consciousness” I had read about in my spiritual books. Samadhi, joy, light, and love were what I knew I wanted, but my heart was running on empty. I had been running in place for too long. Despite the confusion and complete chaos in my life, I never forgot that simple line in my SRF lessons: When the student is ready, the teacher will appear. I thought maybe I should go to India to search for enlightenment, but the truth was I couldn’t even leave the North Shore and go to Honolulu, on the same island, let alone India.
Little did I know, my life was about to change dramatically in a way I never dreamed possible. The miracle was about to take place. The teacher was about to appear.
Celeste was now about two months old. I was a full-blown addict, and quite a far cry from the fatherly Ozzie Nelson on the popular 1950s TV show “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.” I loved my daughter and was primarily into the “spiritual seeking” part of my addictive drug use. I wasn’t shooting dope (except for the time I stole the syringes from the hospital) and mostly took lots of LSD and smoked hash. I was “meditating” and exploring various spiritual paths and gurus. The spiritual books and meditation lessons I was receiving in the mail gave no indication that drugs could help anyone on their spiritual path in any way. I had essentially sanctified my using by creating a self-invented religion of the time—one that allowed for “mind-expanding drugs,” but considered needle-driven drugs to be for “true” addicts. Only books written by others in the drug culture supported this behavior. Deep inside, I knew I had to stop. How many times had I said I would stop, only to pick up again and again? How does one stop this insanity? This inner voice would pose these questions to me in quiet and unguarded moments, but I would silence it with spiritual rationalizations or simply another hit off the joint.
Taking daily walks with my daughter in her little backpack carrier along Ke Nui Road, a small one-lane road with the main highway on one side and the ocean on the other, became a special part of my day. If I had any moments of purity or states of holiness in my life, they were found in these gentle strolls with Celeste. Our daily path was lined with foliage separating us from the busy main road. We would stop and admire the flowers and the tiny bugs that lived amidst the greenery, crawling here and there for us to watch. The earth would seem to come alive and attempt to impress us with this magical matinee. Since I didn’t work, I was able to spend every day with my newborn daughter. Yet, as we took our walks viewing the nature around us, the disease would pull me back. I was still feeling separated from the world and its inhabitants and was very paranoid at times. I was unable to experience the “oneness of life” that is promised by following the various spiritual paths I was reading about. I certainly didn’t identify with the freedom, love, and peace preached by flower children in the sixties. I was totally lost in the desperation of addiction, but didn’t know it. Since I wasn’t shooting drugs into my veins or taking pills, I kept trying to convince myself that I was okay. Addiction is most certainly a disease of denial.
Next door to our little two-bedroom home was a four-bedroom beach house that had been vacant for several months. Early one morning a car pulled into the driveway of this house, and I saw a lady get out and go into the house. Later in the day, there was talk in the neighborhood about a strange-looking lady who had moved into the beach house.
The second time I saw this woman, who called herself Flobird, she was standing on the white, sandy beach in front of the house, dressed in a bikini. She had long salt-and-pepper hair that she always wore in a distinctive style—a bun pinned on top and the rest falling to her waist. She was tall and skinny, her face wrinkled and her skin weathered from years in the sun.
As I approached this woman, with the sun beginning to set into the ocean behind her, I felt something I had not felt in so long. We began to talk, and I felt good inside. I didn’t feel the anxiety in my stomach that I always carried. She told me she was a beachcomber. “I pick up lost souls and lead them to a spiritual life.” Flobird looked directly into my eyes, almost as if she could see through to my soul. I felt so much love from her and knew that she understood me completely—even the pain I carried within. Comfort seemed to emanate from her, and my thoughts seemed to clear away for a wordless message. In that instant, I remembered what I had read in my meditation lesson: When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.
I later learned that before finding twelve-step programs and getting into recovery in 1960, Flobird was considered a hopeless type of addict. As a result of decades of addiction to drugs and alcohol, she had seriously abused her body. At one point in her early recovery, she experienced severe physical and emotional problems. A doctor told Flobird that her liver was shot and she was dying. He gave her six months to live.
Nearly everyone who met Flobird could sense this unconditional love radiating from her. Her entire being poured out joy, light, and love. At the time of our meeting, she had about eight years in recovery.
Flobird told me this story:
“A year-and-a-half after coming to the program, I came home from a meeting and the pains had taken over my body. I started getting liver attacks. I called my supervisor where I worked at the time and said I had to quit. Seeking direction, I went to the Bible, as I usually did, closed my eyes, and placed my finger on the page I had opened to. It said: If you can’t leave houses, husbands, children, and wives to follow me, you’re not worthy of me. Then I picked up the twelve-step program book, flipped it open, and put my finger down on a page that said: We have to be willing to go to any lengths.
“Then I called my husband, from whom I was separated, and asked if he wanted to get back together. He said no, because he never had it so good. I said that was okay, and that he could have everything—our house in Riverside, California, and all the assets. Walking out the door was the hardest thing I have ever done.
“I ended