When Angels Cry: Death of An Addict
By Jacques Fleury: The Haitian Firefly
“Hi, my name is Mark Flanagan. I’m an alcoholic, drug addict and homeless person. I live at the YMCA in Cambridge and I’m in the Carey Program. I had my last drink and drug September 13, 2005 and have taken my recovery one day at a time since.”
So begins Mark’s story of his laborious awakening, his journey out of the gaping maw of drug and alcohol addiction to the succoring angelic wings of hope and the often-shifting boat of recovery.
Mark Flanagan knows all too well about the trap and madness that encompasses drug and alcohol addiction. He has quite literally been to hell and back. Now stronger than ever, he has re-emerged with seemingly effortless poise and grace, the likes of an Olympic contender determined to take home the medal that would symbolize his one-year sobriety thus far. He is a bright light around the Cambridge community and if you look close enough, you can see the morning sun rising in his eyes.
He is currently participating in the Carey Program, a 9 month program to help man with mental illness and/or substance abuse problems take back control of their lives, return to mainstream society and become healthy contributing members to their community. The program’s foundation is helping people to help themselves. It operates out of the Multi-Service Center on Brookline St. in Cambridge and Steven Johnson is the program coordinator.
Mark’s story is unique but is still easily relatable to others who have had similar paths of addiction and experienced the tumultuous waves of recovery. However, Mark’s past has not only been marred by the perils of addiction.
He was an all-American gymnast, participated in the 1980 Olympic Trials, a Veteran of the Coast Guard and he once owned his own Gymnastic School. He confesses that drugs and alcohol have always been a part of his life but became more prevalent when a young gymnast under his coaching injured himself and became a quadriplegic. The same week, he also had two of his boys qualify for the Junior National Teams in gymnastics, which to him was a bittersweet contrast of success and failure, heartache and joy. In that instance, he eventually began to sink deeper and deeper into the dark corners of the human psyche that would eventually threaten his very existence!
He did not understand why God would let something like that happen. He recalls looking up into the sky one day and proclaimed “God, I renounce you.” So began his path down a very ugly road, a road to self-inflicted agony. He became what he calls a “functioning drug and alcohol addict” for over 30 years. He delved into all kinds of mind-altering chemicals like alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine. He even tried to escape from himself by moving as frequently as the shifting climate of New England. However he soon realized that relocating did not change his situation. “I could not run away from myself as hard as I tried.” Because for all intents and purposes, where ever you go, there you are.
When asked about hitting bottom, he responded that he had a heart attack back in 2004. But that did not stop him from continuing to use for another thirteen months. Meanwhile, he also started praying to stop using. He began what he calls “a process out of darkness.” His prayers were seemingly answered when he was arrested for possession of a firearm and cocaine with intent to distribute. He plead guilty and could have easily received six to ten years but he lucked out because he went before a sympathetic judge who was all about helping those who want to help themselves. So he only spent 63 days in jail. All in all, he was arrested about four times for drug offenses.
Eventually, he ended up in Albany Street Shelter for two and one half months and in CASPAR for six months (Cambridge and Somerville Program for Addiction and Rehabilitation), which coincidentally runs ACCESS, which runs out of 240 Albany Street, a wet shelter where “Sober” addicts help other addicts. Mark states that five out of the ten “sober” addicts are using drugs themselves even though they are supposed to be helping their peers. He also asserts that according to his experience “more people relapse than stay sober.” He goes on to say “people relapse 8 or 9 times before they get it right.” But admits that statistics can be misleading and that staying sober is an individual choice. He maintains that relapsing usually means chance of death, arrests, homelessness or hospitalization in Bridge Water State Mental Health Facility. He declares, “I have never relapsed because my whole life was a relapse. If I use drugs again, I’ll be dead sooner than later. I was in hell for 35 years. I don’t want to got back there!”
He admits that utilizing drugs and alcohol caused him to treat people poorly, blocking the much-needed spirit of good will towards man. He has renewed his relationship with God, with himself and others around him by contending, “God is in my life [again] and that gives me strength to protect myself.” Although he is a college graduate, he hopes to go back to school to study Theology. “I want my way of helping people to be God driven.” He believes that if he relapses, that would equate with death to him. “I am at crosswords where it’s life or death. There’s no more ‘I have one more drink in me’ because I think I can still deal with it.” He believes that this fatalistic ideology keeps him sober. Because of his newfound faith, he expresses a desire to escape the seemingly infinite and futile cycle of use-guilt-shame-use- -guilt-shame…. “For every year you’ve used, it’s like walking into the woods and getting lost. I’ve been lost in the woods for 35 years and I want to twelve step out.”
He is maintaining his sobriety by following a strict and structured regimen of work, exercise, twelve step recovery meetings and a daily dosage of prayer to his higher power. He realizes that his mind is not what it used to be due to his substance abuse. “Once a cucumber becomes a pickle, it can never be a cucumber again.” But yet he still wants to be a source of inspiration and hope to others. He wants to take a dark path and turn it into light. He wants to believe that the addict in him is dead! He is in the process of fervently re-inventing himself. He professes, “By changing the way you look at things, the things you look at begin to change.”` And he is changing the way he looks at living life with the perpetual but not insurmountable cloud of addiction. He is constantly yearning for salvation. “Each day I receive a reprieve and I try to use it to the fullest.”
Today Mark wears many hats. He is a self-identified Green Peace member, a D.A.R.E (a drug prevention program) contributor, participating in community service at M.I.T. as a gymnastics instructor, volunteer at 240 Albany Street Shelter, a sexton (custodian) at First Congressional Church in Cambridge, and an in-house recovery group leader at the YMCA. He looks a head to a future full of promise.
“My goals continue to expand as I’m working toward becoming a grant writer for Spare Change News and starting my own local Television and Internet show at Cambridge Community Television on the subjects of mental illness, homelessness and recovery from drug and alcohol abuse. And to his fellow addicts he offers this advice “If you should have a relapse, forgive yourself and get back into a program. Find someone to talk to: social worker, sponsor, friend or family member. Massachusetts is a wonderful state for recovery.” Since Mark’s addiction has been slowly dying, his true essence and hope of a new beginning has been rapidly growing. The angels are smiling and so is Mark.
Have a story to tell? Please contact me. Willing to offer a light lunch or breakfast to participants: or call (617) 272-5057.