Amnesia couldn't make them forget
     their 20-year bond or the special love
     Alkies and Addix develop over the years...

    (Story fictionalized  enough for total anonymity...based on a recent Journey through the  Valley of the Shadow of Death...)
 

     One fellow told me about one of his experiences that ranged over many years and more than a few miles, but was never more than a prayer and a  phone away. It seems this old workhorse somehow picked up some strange viral passengers, and after some simple surgery, had a seizure and wound up back in the hospital. Bad became worse. Pneumonia was apparently knocked out a couple of times, but some strange gutter-running demon was hell-bound to end this sponsor's life. Even the docs seemed ready to pull the final plugs.
   

     Strangely, after coming out of the worst of it, this old-timer AA-NA sponsor was impressed with two images: His caring and relentless doctor, and a fellow he hadn't seen for a long time. They didn't understand the sudden turn-around in his health. In the Heartmind of the old-timer, a voice suggested timidly, “Some one prayed for you.” Why would the image of this one man out of many he had worked with. The situation early on was in Silicon Valley, where the one was a tech writer and the other, a programmer. Through mutual interests and humor they hit it off well. The big programmer was the quiet type, but one day on a sunny lunch meeting near a small lake, he spoke up about the old-timer's drinking and drugging. Of course, it was hard to figure what he was truly asking. Was he just being nice and showing interest in a new friend? Or did he know someone who might be a toper or doper? It was a bit of a mystery, so the big guy took home a 12 X 12 and a Big Book. Sometime later, another sunny lunch a la' Silli Valley, they were walking around the small lake again. “You know those guys in those books?” 
 

      “You mean like Dr. Bob and Bill W.?”
 

      “That's me. I'm them.” His voice was quiet and calm. No arguments. No bluster or fluster of ego or frothy emotional reaction. “I'm like them.”  I couldn't believe it, for here was an honest church-going man with a mental masterpiece for a mind... reduced to the simplest of terms. The most direct humility and honesty. Since he was primarily involved with narcotics, he was introduced to Narcotics Anonymous. There were some rough times ahead for him, though. Smoking Paranoia Weed had done its evil damage: the FBI had his home and shower wired to hear and see all that he did. That was merely the tip of the effects of the quality of grass he was used to smoking. He admitted later, though, that he would smoke anything...and did.

      Once every few years, one or the other would call just to check up on the other person. He used to say a prayer for the big guy EVERY day, for he knew he couldn't be there to guide and direct him the way he wanted. The best he could do was run a spot-check prayer every now and then for him. And a few others in the same circumstances. “What goes around, comes around.”

     A week or so after the old-timer was home and figuring out much of his amnesia, he dropped a "Hi" note to the long since seen. But never forgotten. And he couldn't get the prayer idea out of his mind. The phone rang, and a calm and unemotional voice asked for the old timer.

   Then the old-timer spilled the beans about everything, including that someone had said a prayer for him. A gentle friendly voice from the past, answered immediately: “Yes...we do that, don't we?!”