Change doesn’t come about on a national scale without strategic planning and organizing. Just ask Michael King.
Michael spent a decade organizing and running political campaigns around the US. Now, as the Director and Creator of The Communities Project, he’s taking that expertise to communities across the country to align their voices and combat addiction through organizing.
But first he had to work through his own addictions to alcohol and gambling.
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I made a trip to Vegas on a surprise bachelor party.
I was quite drunk as we all, were having a jolly time. We decided to walk up to a blackjack table.
I had never really gambled in my life. And I won several hundred dollars as did my two friends who were joined me at that table.
And as I sat there and nursing beer after beer, the rush that I felt from this experience of gambling was like nothing I'd ever experienced before.
And it began a three and a half year journey with gambling that coincided with my alcohol use.
My father had found recovery when I was very, very young. My father’s father lost his life as a result of addiction. My father's father's father suffered from addiction.
Sadly, it didn't stop me from experimenting and then becoming addicted myself.
I finally had my first real experience getting drunk when I was 13, and I absolutely loved it.
I didn't drink every day, wasn't really possible, but I obsessed about alcohol all the time.
And I started immediately doing things to get alcohol that I'd never done before -- shoplifting it from the local convenience store, taking from my friends’ parents liquor cabinet.
And I started drinking alone.
By about 15 years old, I realized that maybe I had issues with alcohol.I walked into a recovery meeting, and what I'll always remember about it was how I immediately felt attracted to all of those people in the room. They seemed to talk about feelings of sadness and isolation, and things that they had felt -- and I felt more at home in that environment than maybe I had ever felt in my life.
I actually ended up remaining in recovery for over five and a half years.
My grades improved dramatically. I auditioned and got into my first choice theater school, which was Emerson college in Boston. I was sober. Being the 18 year old sober boy at the keg party is not the most appealing place to be.
The Democratic presidential fight was starting to heat up between, at the time, Vice President Gore and Senator Bill Bradley from New Jersey, and I was just gravitated to the news of this political campaign, and the excitement of it.
I took a bus from Boston up to Manchester, New Hampshire to volunteer for Senator Bradley's campaign. I just was so attracted to this excitement. There was a rush in this work.
And I switched my major to Communication, Politics and Law. And I started to have a lot more fun.
The summer prior to my senior year, I'd had my first paying job in politics. I had started as an intern and then gotten hired for the summer to work on a campaign for governor of Massachusetts.
And I was at an after work party. I could still tell you that I had four beers that evening. And I remember walking home excited, thrilled, exhilarated, and thinking, There's no possible way I could be an alcoholic, and I have now wasted five and a half years of my life.
Drinking was just an exclamation point at the end of a wonderful college experience.
I graduated cum laude from the school. Had a job lined up to go work on John Kerry's presidential campaign. I'm sort of naturally a shy person or an introvert in a large group of people, and I would start to drink, and I would feel completely comfortable. I would feel comfortable doing an impersonation of our boss. And everybody laughed!
Now I only felt comfortable doing that after I'd had a couple beers. So those beers in my mind were the key to social success, to being liked by women. Look at me, I'm traveling the country, I'm making a difference! And alcohol is at the core of that.
The career continues to accelerate. All the while my drinking is increasing. All the while I'm caring a lot more about being out at the bar than I am planning the wedding, which took place in September, 2007.
The state Senate Democratic Campaign Committee, which oversaw all of the campaigns for our state Senate -- the executive director position came open and I took it.
In the meantime, I had had my first child, my daughter was born. She was the light of my life. And even, despite just the love that I felt, and the dedication I felt to fatherhood, it couldn't seem to overtake my need to gamble and my need to drink.
I started working for our Senate. And I had near complete autonomy. There was a bar right across the street. My drinking moved to several beers at lunch. I had paid off a ton of debt that I'd had and driven it right back up, all at the casinos.
Things were starting to really spiral for me. The job was kicking into gear. The election year of 2012 was starting.
I was drinking in the morning. I woke up nearly every single night in fit of -- I didn't realize until I went to treatment that, I was suffering from alcohol withdrawals and I didn't even make the connection at the time that that's what was going on.
In November of 2011, I think, I was tapped out again on my own money, and I wrote myself my first fraudulent check in my job.
Now this is a cause that I had dedicated myself to for at that point nearly a decade. And I wrote myself a fraudulent check for my addictions.
And I knew what I was doing. And I didn't feel entitled to it. I did't feel that I was, that I deserved money that didn't belong to me.
I was stealing money that could be going to the very campaigns I was so dedicated to helping. But it felt I didn't have a choice.
Little did I know at the time because I wasn't aware that I had taken about $250,000 from the Campaign Committee, and drank and gambled every penny of it away.
Finally, by January, 2013, it's all falling apart. There was nothing left to take.
And I drove to a casino. I took out one last payday loan, for the "Win to Win all Wins." Lost it all in a couple hours.
And I went to my first recovery meeting in a long time on February 16th, 2013. And I haven't had a drink or drug or placed a bet since.
I came back. I had to face the music. I fessed up, lost my position, obviously. Went into treatment.
I knew my marriage was over. I knew that I had a son on the way, and that I had a kid I loved.
And I felt that I deserve a second chance at life. I've got to accept responsibility for the things that I've done, and I can't run around and just blame addiction for it. It was very important to me through the process to not do that.
I started this journey of humility that continues to this day, trying to right the wrongs that I'd done. Try to find a way to be comfortable in my own skin, absent alcohol, which had never happened for me. Even in my first venture into recovery that's what was lacking. That never happened for me.
I pled guilty to eight counts of felony theft. And I ended up doing three months behind bars, and then five months in work release prior to going into community custody.
Every single person I met in there, 85% of them, were in there for addiction-related crimes.
This is such a broken system! I wanted to do something about it.
Is there a way to merge my love for politics and organizing with my passion for recovery? Cause I'd like to do something about it, and I felt somewhat of a responsibility kind of given my background to give back.
And it's all been amazing. I've gotten individuals in recovery to engage in over 50,000 calls to action, from passing legislation in Congress to a project that I feel most passionately about -- The Communities Project, which has been training individuals around the country in how to engage in organizing, the very work I did at the beginning of my political career. But to take it to addiction.
I continue to do this amazing work today.
I have an amazing partner in my life today, a woman who inspires me every day.
I have two children who, after a lot of rebuilding, are with me 50% of the time.
I get to pay my bills on time, with money that I earned. I get to look in the mirror, and on most days, feel pretty darn comfortable in my own skin. And know that I didn't lie to anybody today. I didn't cheat anybody. I didn't take anything that didn't belong to me.
And I get to be proud of that.
And I get to be who I am.
And I'm Michael King, and that's my story.