Sometimes we are put in places to serve when it is essential to serve but difficult. I put a couple of my friends in that position last night.
I received a call a couple of days ago from an old friend Joe (not his name) who was on the edge with multiple addictions and painful life issues that were beating him down. I met him for dinner and pointed him toward Pat our Recovery Pastor here at Hope. Pat pulled in one of our key recovery leaders, Skip, to meet with Joe yesterday. When Joe arrived it was obvious that he was in trouble. Since we had met, he had stopped all drug and alcohol use and was try to detox himself. They called me and got me on speaker phone so that we could convince him that he needed to go to the hospital NOW!!!
Joe agreed and Pat and Skip spent the evening with him last night in the hospital as they pumped him with meds to get his blood pressure under control. Joe is at home now and the three of us have been taking shifts in going and hanging out with him. This is day 3 of his detox, and they say that is the toughest day. He is feeling it. Aches and pains, tremors, nightmares, physical and psychological cravings, confusion, crazy talk ….. the whole gambit.
Joe is hopefully back on the road to recovery and I am so proud to call Pat and Skip my friends. I have learned so much from just observing their calm, assertive strength in this tough situation.
One funny story — As I was sitting with Joe, he would move in and out of reality as he talked. He would say something totally logically but then the next sentence would be way off the wall. He would say something about his family and then make an obscure and nonsensical reference to the movie “Apocalypse Now”.
Well, we were talking and I asked him about his favorite baseball team the Texas Rangers. He said that they were awful this year (which is very true) but they had won a game yesterday by the score of 30 to 3. I thought, “Okay, the detox has just spoken!” I clarified that we were talking about baseball and not football. He adamantly insisted that he knew what he was talking about — (Yeah Right!) He kept insisting and looking for a newspaper for proof. I thought that I would look it up on my phone to settle him down to the realization that he was just not thinking clearly — professional baseball scores do not run into the 20s much less the 30s.
Here is what I found online:

Sorry Joe! Sounds like you might be coming out of it. Maybe I can drive you to your first meeting. May your victory over your addictions be as overwhelming as the Rangers’ victory over Baltimore.