Alcohol is always at the scene of the crime. I started drinking when I was fifteen years old. I got sober when I was twenty-seven. It is a miracle that I am still alive. When I was a kid, alcohol seemed important. If my parents were having company over for dinner, wine was always offered. If we went to somebody’s house for dinner, wine was brought as a gift. Growing up in Sonoma County, wineries were where we took out of town guests. The phrase, “nice bottle of wine,” always makes me laugh. Does the nice bottle of wine volunteer at the senior center? Does the bottle of merlot tutor middle school students, struggling with algebra?

The first time I got drunk I was fifteen and I blacked out. My parents let me stay home alone and I drank three bottles of homemade wine with some friends in the park. I was sick for two days. When my band started to play at parties and bars, alcohol was how I was compensated. People love to give the guitar player free drinks. I was fired from my first job for being hungover. Before I took the SAT’S, I threw up in the parking lot because I was still drunk from the previous night. I drank a bottle of tequila the night before I graduated high school.

Reflecting on my high school drinking, I wonder why no one ever said anything. My parents caught me drinking many times. My mom found receipts for beer. My dad thanked me for only drinking five of the six beers in his fridge. When I moved out on my own, I was too drunk to make it to community college classes and eventually quit. I spent my time drinking. Working in restaurants, alcohol is everywhere. Free drinks in paper cups were how I maintained my buzz. I got into a car accident, with a beer in my hand, while delivering pizza. The police pulled me over with empty beer cans on my back seat. No one ever said anything.

“Some of you say, “We can do whatever we want to!” But I tell you not everything may be good or helpful (1 Corinthians 10:23 CEV).” My first church I attended as a sober person was into drinking. This community of faith loved their college years spent on Greek Row, and their faith reflected the image of a frat party. You haven’t lived until you’ve attended a prayer time with a keg. Social drinking was hard to navigate as a recovering alcoholic. One night after sharing my struggle with alcohol with my church’s small group, they immediately invited me to go out for drinks. During this time, I volunteered with a ministry that worked with homeless kids. Alcohol is always a part of a street youth’s story. Abuse, neglect, foster care, Child Protective Services, and abandonment are all framed with alcohol. The staff would meet once a week to pray and update each other on the status of clients. After crying and processing all the trauma homeless youth experience, the staff would go out for drinks. I know people can drink socially, but it always seemed strange to argue as a staff about farm to table produce, ethically sourced coffee beans, all in the name of being sensitive to the oppressed and marginalized, and not want to support those who are in recovery by abstaining from alcohol. We want to stand with the least of these, but when it comes to beer and wine at the fundraiser, well, “were not Mormons.” Alcoholics and addicts understand being alone with God.

Alcohol is the cruelest of addictions. Unlike other drugs, alcohol kills you slowly. Homeless people die the most tragic deaths because of booze. Alcohol related death is always slow and painful. Organ failure happens gradually, deterioration of the mind and body takes years and years to complete. Talking with people on the street who are drinking stolen vanilla extract and cooking sherry is surreal. I once had a friend rummage through a box of hygiene supplies in search of mouthwash. Some mouthwash has alcohol in it. Street alcoholics can drink twelve-hundred dollars of stimulus check money in a weekend. One of the saddest things is watching alcoholics lose control of their bowels. A friend of mine who has an apartment in low barrier housing asked me if I had a queen-sized mattress. While we were talking, I noticed a mattress covered in diarrhea by the dumpster. People drink themselves to death. The humiliation we put ourselves through kills our spirit long before our bodies. Recently, I helped a sixty-year-old man, who is sleeping in a tent, on the sidewalk, with his resume. Every time we talk, he asks me for underwear. He often cries when we pray, embarrassed that he keeps popping his pants. He asked me to pray that he would get sober tomorrow.

When I got credentialed with the Assemblies of God, I signed an agreement that I would abstain from alcohol. After twenty plus years of sobriety it was not a tough decision for me. I can’t tell you how many pastors I speak with who think the policy is too “legalistic.” They usually get angry and defensive, as if me being sober somehow ruins their right to have a “beer with the fellas.” Once, when I was talking with a mission’s pastor, he told me about an Assemblies of God minister that was “down to earth,” because he drank beer. For me, down to earth and alcohol equal death. God given potential and hope buried six feet in the ground.

Alcohol has been given lots of importance in America. The prohibition era in our history has welded alcohol with personal freedom. We believe the government should not regulate harmful products. It’s important that Anheuser-Busch remain profitable for its shareholders. We believe we have the right to drink ourselves to death. Viewed with a biblical understanding, we are not always entitled to do what we want. “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own,for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).” When we view our individual bodies as part of the larger body of Christ, we become a part of one another. Our lives are shaped by each other. “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ (1 Corinthians 12:12).” If someone is in pain, then we are all in pain. Your suffering is my suffering. My healing becomes your healing.

Being sober, and ministering with people who struggle with addiction, I continue to experience the radical freedom from bondage and decay that the love of Christ provides. “On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water (John 7:37-38).” May we all receive the promise of new life that comes from the Holy Spirit. I am thankful to have twenty-six years of sobriety!

Michael Cox