Moments of Clarity

by Christopher Kennedy Lawford

  There’s something that happens in recovery. You start to notice all these coincidences. You look and you say, “God really was carrying me on this thing. I know it now.” You start seeing the connections. And that’s what happened to me my first year and a half in recovery. It was a well-publicized case, and everybody in the program knew I was going to prison. They would get me through the day. I remember a couple of guys would go running with me and we’d run until my head stopped talking. We were going fourteen, sixteen, eighteen, twenty miles a day, all that period of time that I was facing this day of reckoning.

  A friend in recovery told me to go and tell the U.S. attorney everything I’d done. I said, “No, I’m not going to do it.” He said, “You got to do it.” He made me go down, and I told the U.S. attorney that I started it. I dealt drugs, I was a high-volume money launderer, I put the whole drug ring together. He looked at me like I was crazy and he said, “Listen, we’ll call you back by the weekend.” When he called he said, “We checked it out and I can’t believe it. No one has ever come to us and told us this much about themselves. Good for you. But you’re going to prison, no matter what.”

  I just kept putting one foot in front of the other. I went to my recovery meetings. I went down to my probation officer. I went through this thing clean, not worrying and not lying.

  The day of reckoning came, when all of us who’d been arrested, all twenty-five of us, were sentenced. It was August 1, 1983. A Monday at one thirty in the afternoon. I remember I had to wear a suit. There must have been fifty or seventy-five people from recovery down there, and many of them had written letters to the judge on my behalf. The courtroom was filled up with them, and reporters. The reporters were there because the case was such a huge case and so well publicized. It was the biggest moneylaundering case in the history of California up until that time.

  I sat there and I listened to the sentencing, and the judge was handing out sentences of fifteen years, twenty years, twenty-five years, fifteen years, and so on. Until that moment, I never got the depth of what I did. I never thought it was such a big deal. It never got to me inside until that day, when I started to hear everything. All the disasters that were happening around me, and the anguish and the pain that existed because of what I’d done. It dropped into my soul, and I realized what a despicable thing I had done.

  Then they came to me. The U.S. attorney got up and he said, “Michael was trying to change his life before he got caught. He was cleaning himself up. He was in drug rehab, and he did not know we were investigating him.” The place was stunned. Then I stand up before the judge, and the judge says, “This is the hardest sentence I have to hand out.” I almost died. I don’t know what he means, “the hardest sentence,” after I’ve listened to all these people going away for a minimum of fifteen years. He said, “One of the reasons it’s so hard is because I truly believe you’re trying to change your life. Second, I’ve never read letters like the ones written for you since I have been a judge.” Finally he said, “You have five years probation and a fine of five thousand dollars.” This noise went through the place. I was stunned. All the reporters were stunned.

  When we walked outside the courtroom, all the people in recovery stood around in a circle saying the Lord’s Prayer. And Judy Ann, who was my counselor in rehab, nudged me and said to me, “Michael, never forget where that verdict came from. The judge just said the words, but that was God’s verdict.” That’s when I found God. That was my moment of clarity.

  That moment has never left me. I think about it every day. I will never forget how I felt. The power, the pro cess that goes into that power, is amazing. All I did to get that was show up for the first time in my life. I was honest, I conducted myself in a humble manner. That moment has lived with me and has allowed me to take it into my life and look at a series of things and say, “Thank you!”

  I wish I could sit here and tell you that Michael became perfect from that moment on, but that was not the case. How I have changed is that I know—down in the core of me—everything will be taken care of by a power that is far greater than me, that wants me to be happy and joyous and free. I know that if I live in absolute truth, then everything is always going to be okay. I can hear that voice, not my screaming voice but that quiet voice that always tells me the truth when I choose to listen to it.

  I’d like to get to a place where I think about the pain my actions are going to cause others. That’s another level of consciousness that I’m just really getting into after twenty-five years. It’s not always about “I’ll do this and pay the price.” It’s “That’s going to pain that person, so I do not really want to do that.” That’s a shift.

  When I was younger, I was afraid of girls; I was afraid that I wouldn’t be good enough, I wouldn’t know what to say, they wouldn’t like me. And that fear continued with me a long time. When I was drunk and on drugs, that fear left me. In sobriety, what I’ve realized is that the mere fact that I own that fear—that makes it less powerful. I can work on it.

  Does that fear still live inside of me? Yes. Is it something I spend a lot of time thinking about? No, but it is there. I know it. Because of this fear of rejection, I rejected myself. In high school I was captain of the basketball team, and maybe if I’d asked out one of the cheerleaders, she might have said yes, but I took myself out of the game. I didn’t want somebody to say no to me.

  I try to teach my son better. I say to him, “When you look across the room, there is nothing like the magic of seeing a special person for the first time. And if you don’t try to introduce yourself, that’s sad. It’s sad for you. It might even be sad for that other person. It could have been a great connection. And the more you’re able to do that, the more you’re able to be at rest with yourself. Be vulnerable. Ask.”

  I’ m sixty-five years old. I still worry about the girl, my actions toward the girl, and what will happen if I go over to her. But I know I have to try. I have to ask. The more you ask, the more you’re going to receive and the more you’re going to learn.

  Bob Timmons

  Anyone who spent any time at all in L.A.’s recovery community over the last twenty years knows who Bob Timmons was. Multiplatinum musician or teenage gangbanger, it didn’t matter—if you were trying to get clean, Bob T. would do anything for you. That included calling you on your bullshit, as often as needed. Somehow he managed to do it with compassion.

  Bob could connect with such a wide range of people because he himself had such a wide- ranging journey. His schizophrenic mother tried to kill him; he was put in foster care and ended up on the streets; he became a violent felon, in and out of prison. Yet by the time he turned forty, his entire life was devoted to helping others. Thirty years ago, he cofounded Impact House, a pioneering treatment center that combines support, confrontation, accountability, and counseling to help people deal with their addictions. He helped establish several other treatment and outreach organizations, including MusiCares, a part of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences that helps musicians struggling with addiction.

  In 2006 Bob was diagnosed with emphysema, and when I interviewed him he was showing the effects of the disease—yet that only made him more gentle, more empathetic, more willing to reach out. He died in spring 2008, and at his memorial service, everyone who spoke said they’d felt like they were Bob’s best friend.

  S

  omebody said to me the other day, “We thought you were done teaching, but you’re teaching the greatest lesson you could ever give us, how to have courage and not be afraid of death.” Because

  they’re going through all of this with me, every inch of it. Good, bad, I don’t hide it. And of course I am scared. For a couple of weeks now I haven’t been able to sleep because in my little- boy mind, if I go to sleep, I won’t wake up. Fighting sleep, like the boogeyman is going to get me. I’m starting to share all that with everybody because I’m human. But the Buddhism thing keeps me together, you know. They say death is just going into the next room.
They celebrate death. And they say if you look any fear in the face, particularly fear of death, then it flees like an unwanted stranger. I’ve gone to the last chapter, where you’re back to being a child. I’m like an eight-year-old, full of joy—and none of this makes sense.

  I’ve got two choices. I can feel sorry for myself and be angry because I’m dying. Or I can let that go. And so I choose to be happy. Fifteen, twenty times a day, I just say, “Thank you.” Laughing out loud—“Thank you.”

  I never would’ve come into the rooms unless Danny Trajo brought me. We were cellmates at San Quentin, and we got along really great because we both were full of rage and anger.

  One time in a meeting, someone asked if we’d ever been in knife fights in prison, and both of us laughed. They said, “What’s funny?” and we said, at the same time, “We’d never fight with a knife, that’s too plain.” Danny said, “Pipes, lead pipes, because—well, picture a watermelon being dropped from a height. That’s much more dramatic than just a nice clean little knife wound.” So both of us were soldiers for a well-known white- supremacy group. The way it worked, a Mexican guy could approach a black guy without him knowing it’s a hit. It’s not about let’s have lunch or play dominoes. So this is the kind of person I am, and the kind of person Danny is.

  Then Danny got out, and three, four years later, I paroled. He’d given me his mother’s number, because where does any forty-year-old self-respecting convict stay? With Mom, of course. So I call his mother’s house and she says, “He doesn’t live here anymore,” and gives me his number. I call and he says, “Where are you staying?” I said, “Well, I don’t know—all I got is the Department of Corrections start-up kit,” which is a bad suit and two hundred dollars. He said, “Well, hey, I’ll come and get you and you stay with me for a couple of days until you figure out what you’re going to do.” So he comes and picks me up, takes me to the extra bedroom at his house.

  I’d like to get a little money, you know, so I say, “Let’s go do some things,” and he tells me he’s not doing that anymore because he’s in a group, and he wants to take me to a meeting. I had no conception at all of what he’s talking about. I mean I went there to do crime with him. But nothing else is going on, and I’m in between careers, so to speak, so I go to the meeting.

  Danny, during the break, waves me over to where he’s talking with this redheaded guy and he says, “Bob, this is Eddie. He’s your recovery sponsor,” and Eddie says, “Good to meet you, I’m glad to be your sponsor.” This is contrary to the steps—you’re supposed to choose your own sponsor—but Danny knew in his wisdom—well, he knew a couple of things. First, he had to pass me on right away like a hot potato because we had too much history together. And second, if I didn’t get a sponsor and jump into recovery, I wasn’t going to stay long enough to do anything. Eddie was my sponsor until the day he died, with forty-seven years sober. He was my main man, and Danny kind of made that marriage.

  Anyway, I was about six months sober and clean, and Eddie asked me what my sobriety day was. I said, “I don’t know,” and he said, “Well, you’re supposed to know,” and I said, “Well, I didn’t know I was going to stay in the program.” I thought about it, I remembered it was cold and rainy, sometime in the fall, so I said, “Let’s say October—October the sixteenth, because that’s my birthday.” So I decided I was going to stay.

  And what happened then was, all the planets aligned or something. I knew I couldn’t just take up space anymore. I’m not here and I’m not alive just to take up space and be selfish. I had a purpose, and I knew that my purpose was to save people. I didn’t know exactly what that meant. Maybe I could have been a doctor or something, but it soon became clear to me that I’d be saving people through the program.

  Looking back on it, I can see little things—I always knew, wherever I was, I wasn’t where I was supposed to be. I mean my mother tried to kill me when I was nine years old. She’s still alive, been locked up ever since—she’s eighty-eight years old, in the state hospital, the Cuckoo’s Nest place, paranoid schizophrenic. So then I stayed with my dad until I was twelve, and then—well, I used to say I ran away, but you know how the longer you’re in recovery, the more willing you are to be gentle with yourself? So now I say, I left home because the streets were safer than my own home.

  And then in prison, in my organization, a lot of the guys have tattoos all over their face, on their hands—I can show you pictures—and I got tattoos across my chest, my body, but for some reason I never got anything on my face or my hands, any place that really marks you, sets you apart for good. I said, “I’m not going to do that,” even though everybody else was.

  When I decided that I was going to stay in recovery, at that moment I knew I had a purpose. No burning bushes, but with every ounce of my being, I knew my life wasn’t just a random thing. I was where I was supposed to be, ready to do what I was supposed to do. And it felt . . . it felt joyful.

  Well, pretty soon I realized that there are no treatment centers for all these people trying to get clean in these horrible environments. I got a house—I had no money, but I found a house and got the owners to rent me the house for a dollar a year because it was abandoned and I promised to clean it up. And then I started bringing in people, and that became Impact House. I was seven months sober when I started Impact House. No education, a convict. But it was so clear. The need was there, and that was what I was supposed to do. So I did it. No education, no history of sobriety, no credentials at all—it shouldn’t have worked, but it did. And the only reason it did was, I took myself out of it. I trusted that whatever it was that had brought me to that point wouldn’t just dump me there and leave.

  See, I know it’s not me. I’m just the vehicle. I didn’t get myself here. I got invited here. And if you’re here for a purpose, you’re not invested in win-lose. And so Impact House worked, for a lot of people. We brought a lot of people into sobriety, and it didn’t matter where they came from, a million-dollar mansion or a flop house on skid row.

  One thing about working with stars, actors or rockers or whatever, it gives you resources, that network. You come across a kid, ten, ten and a half years old, selling heroin and coke at the park. The eighteen-year-olds give it to these kids because if they get busted it’s just juvenile time, and the kid gets all his drugs for free, so he’s got more track marks than a fifty-year-old junkie. I’m thinking of one little guy, brought to me by a cop. I don’t know how many times they make the movie but it’s always the same movie. Father died of a heroin overdose, two brothers killed in street- gang stuff, one other brother doing life, all the generations of the gang world, and that’s who you are and that’s what you do.

  But this kid could make it, and I figure, well, you know, if he’s going to have a chance, he has to be mentored. And so maybe I have a friend of mine take him to a Lakers game and they gave him a jersey that all of them signed, and it happened to be Shaq’s jersey.

  Or say the kid’s interested in guitar. So he takes guitar lessons twice a week from West L.A. Music, and then whoever’s in town, they might set up some tutoring. Santana’s done some tutoring, and he’s the same story, come up from selling Chiclets down the corner in Tijuana.

  Or one of the guys I know, he set up a little business that made him a billionaire and he’s currently the president of the USC alumni association. He can help get a kid a tutor, get his grades up, talk to the president about getting him into USC.

  And then you know what? Whatever that kid does in life, he’s going to be giving it back. An attorney advocating for poor people, an environmentalist . . . hell, even if he’s just a guy who does a good job, he’s a good friend, a good father, a good husband, he’s giving it back.

  So there’s a lot of stories like that, and I appreciate that network. But the fact is—this is something Mick Jagger told me, it was 1991 in Paris, they’d just started a tour. We have lunch in his room, and I say, “Why do you keep touring? Obviously, you don’t need any more money, you’r
e getting older, what’s enough?” And he didn’t even hesitate, he said, “Bob, if I stop touring, I’ll die. That’s my narcotic, that’s where I get my energy from. One thing I know, with all my wealth, my name, the fucking Stones— all of that combined won’t give me one more day here on earth. And I’m afraid when the music stops, so will I.” Now a lot of those guys live it—look at B. B. King. He comes out, they sit him on the stool, and he plays better than most of the kids half his age. But Jagger’s the only one I’ve heard put words to it.

  No matter what—no matter how many people we helped, how wonderful we are, what we got in the bank, who we know or don’t know—none of that gets us two more hours here on earth. That’s the equalizer.

  You know, I do have sadness about not being here physically. I’m just not ready yet . . . just being a little selfish because I enjoy the same pleasures we all still get here. This a wonderful place.

  A couple of days ago, a little baby hummingbird was down out of the nest, and I go get something to keep it warm and feed it, so focused on this little bird. And I just think about me in prison, and here I am. I got to laugh, this is what gets me off now, taking care of this little bird.

  That’s what I have to teach now, what it is to be human, what it is to face death. I’d like to be here, turning seventy or seventy-five, but at least I got some teaching left to do for a while yet. So when somebody asks “Why do you think this happened? Why did you get your moment?” I think it’s because I was supposed to be a teacher.

  Rudy Tomjanovich

  Rudy started his career in professional basketball in 1970 as the San Diego Rockets’ first- round draft pick. The team relocated to Houston the following year, and Rudy played or coached for the Rockets for another thirty-two years. When he ended his playing days, in 1981, he was the team’s third- leading scorer and a five-time NBA All-Star. After a few years as a scout and assistant coach, he took over as head coach for the 1992–93 season. The next two seasons, they won back-to- back championships. He’s also a tough guy; I still remember seeing the punch Rudy took during an on-court brawl in December 1977. The blow shattered bones in his jaw and skull and nearly killed him, but five months later, he was back on the court. I had no idea he’d ever had substance abuse problems until a mutual friend suggested that I talk to Rudy for this book. When I met him, I realized he truly is a gentle giant: so humble, so soft- spoken, so nice. Like so many people I’ve talked to, it amazed me to hear that he could have achieved so much while dealing with such deep emotional torment—and that all those achievements didn’t do a damn thing to relieve the torment.