"JOE, YOU ARE A MIRACLE"

Joe Fields

I was born in Georgia in 1942. With four brothers and four sisters, I was raised by my mother, my grandmother, and my grandfather.

When I was nine, I killed a white man. I was returning home from a party with my sister, Jeannette, who was seven. Three drunk guys drove by and hollered at us to get off the road. They drove up the road, turned around, headed back, stopped the car, jumped out, and chased us across a field. I was scared; I thought they might rape Jeannette. When one of them fell into a ditch, I picked up a fence post and hit him over the head. He died.

The police locked me up and said, "We should hang you right here in your cell." At the trial, the judge told me that I was lucky to be alive, that they should have hung me, that no matter how young I was I had no business killing a white man. He said that since he couldn’t send me to the electric chair, he would give me life in prison. I was to serve half of my life sentence working on a chain gang.

For 14 months I worked on the chain gang. I was the only child. We cut trees, cleaned roads and ditches, cleared a space for a national park. We worked during the week and returned to our camp on Friday evening. Twice during that first year, I was raped.

My mother wrote to a government official, arguing that I was too young to be on a chain gang. I was put in a regular prison before my eleventh birthday. In prison, someone tried to rape me a third time. I nearly killed him with a knife I had bought from another prisoner.

By the time I got out of prison and moved to Philadelphia in 1960, I had developed the traits of an alcoholic. My grandmother had put the fear of God in my heart, but after the first time I was raped, the fear of God left. My whole personality began to change.

The second time I was raped, I became angry at God. I hated society. I was filled with bitterness and resentment. I no longer believed in the human race. I hated white people to the core. When I picked up my first drink at the age of 21, I became an instant alcoholic.

Alcohol seemed to ease the pain and hurt. It gave me courage and hope. I felt as if I could act out all my fantasies, as if I could do anything. It promised me happiness. I had not known happiness. It promised me love. I had not felt loved. It promised me that I would be able to get rich.

Alcohol promised a lot, but eventually it took away my ability to work, my ability to think. In the end, it left me with nothing but pain and suffering. Soon I could not stop with one drink. I could no longer control my actions. Over the next 20 years, I was in about every penitentiary in the state of Pennsylvania, usually for burglary. Alcohol put me back in prison.

Every time I got out of prison, the only thing I wanted was to drink and stay drunk. And that’s what I did. Alcohol had taken complete control of my life.

Once while I was serving a two- to six-year prison term, a sister who was living in Philadelphia died. They let me out of prison to go to her funeral. I had no feelings about my sister’s death. When they let me out in Wilkes Barre to get the bus to Philadelphia, I got drunk. By the time I got to Philadelphia, I was in a blackout. I didn’t know where I was. It took me hours to find my family. I hadn’t seen my mother in 10 years. During the three days that I was home, I spoke to her only twice.

During my 20s and 30s there were periods when I was sober and able to hold a job. After leaving one rehab center, I stayed sober for two years. Yet I didn’t follow through on what people there told me I needed to do. At the time, I still didn’t believe that alcoholism was a disease, that it could kill. I still didn’t believe that one drink was too many and a thousand never enough.

After being sober for two years with a good job, I picked up another drink, woke up after two weeks drunk in an empty house, got up and went and looked in the bathroom mirror. I had such a powerful feeling of horror and hopelessness, I broke the mirror with my hand, then went and tried to jump off a bridge. A policeman pulled me back. Something, someone always intervened when I tried to kill myself.

I continued my pattern of getting drunk and being sober, of being in and out of rehab centers. I entered a halfway house run by a Catholic priest. Someone taught me to drive and someone else bought me a 1963 Oldsmobile. I finished a welding school and got a job at a welding company. I was making good money and had a lot of friends from my AA group—people who cared about me. Yet I still didn’t see alcohol as my enemy.

Soon I was offered a job at a country club. My sponsor told me not to take the job, that I would be making too much money, too fast. He didn’t believe I was ready to handle a lot of money. But I didn’t want to listen to anyone, didn’t want anybody telling me what to do with my life. I took the job, shined shoes in the locker room, and from the large tips, in three months, I was able to save over $8,000.

One Monday morning, I woke up with a bad cold. I didn’t go to work. I went to the drug store and got a bottle of Nyquil. That bottle cost me three years of hell. I got drunk and in one night—all in one night—lost my job, lost my room, and lost all my money. I ended up walking up and down streets in Coatesville, trying to sell a color TV for a hundred bucks.

I stayed drunk, ended up in another empty house, and finally called some friends. They got out of bed at 3:00 in the morning, in the middle of winter, came and got me, and took me to another rehab hospital.

But I still wasn’t ready. I didn’t share in the meetings. I still was not ready to be honest with myself.

In prison and out of prison, I tried many times to commit suicide. I hated the way I was living. Sometimes I felt numb. I felt fear. I would wake in the morning with the shakes, scared. I would feel a tremendous, unknown fear, not knowing what it was about, what I could do about it. There was nothing left to do but to take another drink to calm me. I used to walk the streets of Philadelphia praying to God that he would put me back in prison because I didn’t want to live on the streets.

The last time I attempted suicide, I took all sorts of pills with bleach and detergent mixed together. I woke up in a hospital with tubes down my throat, my nose, inside my stomach. The doctor told me he had no idea how I had lived through it. He said I was a miracle.

When I got out, I began drinking again, but soon took a drink that would be my last. A friend of mine and I had gotten drunk on a Saturday night and I woke up on Sunday morning on the street. I didn’t even know what year it was. I drank a fifth of vodka and couldn’t get drunk. I drank another fifth of vodka and couldn’t get drunk. I was scared that I was going crazy.

After drinking about three fifths of vodka, I called the mental health services and told them to come and get me. They found me on the street corner, balled up in a fetal position, crying like a baby, not knowing why. They put me in the hospital, where I stayed for three weeks.

The only thing I could do was cry. I couldn’t do anything else. I tried to commit suicide after being sober for about three weeks, cut my wrists. They sent me to the state hospital, where I saw people who had lost their mental capacity as a result of alcoholism. They were in a vegetable-like state.

I had tried many times to get sober. I had promised God many times that if he would just help me through another crisis, I would get sober. Now, in this place, somewhere deep down inside me, I knew that I had to give up alcohol. I told God that whatever it would take to get me sober and keep me sober, I would do it.

That was 20 years ago. I came out of the state hospital and entered a rehab center. I learned that alcoholism was only part of my disease. My deeper sickness was the pain, the hatred, anger, and fear that I had stored up and needed to face and work through.

When I was a child on the chain gang, I cried after I was raped, then vowed that I would never cry again. I learned to cry again. I learned to live again. I learned about humility, honesty, and forgiveness. I learned that people loved me and that I could love back. I learned how to receive and how to give.

How do I stay sober? I have remained heavily involved in AA. I go to as many meetings as I can, usually at least two a week, and I take the Twelve Steps seriously. I work them as hard as I can.

After I got out of rehab, I went away with my spiritual director, spent three days with him, told him every wrong, every hurtful thing I could remember—things people had done to me, things I had done to other people. Was that ever hard. I just got the garbage up and out.

When I was done and he hugged me and told me he loved me, I knew I could let it all go. I knew I didn’t have to carry that load around anymore. I made amends to people. For my mother, who doesn’t want to talk about the past, it is enough that I stay sober.

But I have also learned that there is more to life than just staying sober. After I got out of rehab, I took a year off just for myself. I went fishing by myself. I remember that first year going into a shoe store and buying myself a pair of shoes that fit. First time I ever remember having shoes that didn’t pinch or flop around. They felt so good, I danced out of the store and down the street.

I stay away from people who judge or criticize me. I hang around with people who accept me and make me feel good about myself, people I can laugh and have fun with.

Today, anything I can do to help another person, especially another alcoholic, I will do. I pick folks up off the street and drive them to a rehab center. I work part-time in a rehab center. I cook Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners in the church basement for people who would otherwise have none. Sometimes we’ve been joined by members of the police force.

A few years ago, I got married. I am learning more about love and commitment in this relationship.

Every night I thank God for helping me through the day, then I throw my shoes under the bed so I’ll have to get on my knees again in the morning, so I’ll be sure to thank God for another day, sure to ask for help to get through it.

And I’m not afraid to look in the mirror anymore. Now, every morning when I look in the mirror, I say, "Joe, I love you." I say, "Joe, you are a miracle."

—Joe Fields, Norristown, Pennsylvania, works part-time in a drug and alcohol rehab program and full time at Mercy Suburban Hospital. This is his story as told to and recorded by Polly Ann Brown.