Key Points:
- The Rev. Michael Adam Beck was an abandoned child and drug addict who ended up incarcerated.
- Loneliness is often associated with addictive behaviors, Beck believes.
- Today, he is a pastor at the same church that helped save him in the darker years of his life.
The Rev. Michael Adam Beck knows what Elvis Presley meant when he wailed about being “down at the end of Lonely Street.”
For Beck, “Heartbreak Hotel” was solitary confinement at the Marion County Jail in Ocala, Florida.
“I have seen some horrible places in my life, but nothing comes close to the darkness of the solitary confinement pod,” Beck said.
“It’s one of the cruelest things we can actually do to human beings that are made for relationship with God, is put them in a box for 30, 60, 90 days by themselves,” Beck said. “You can destroy yourself in that scenario, which a lot of people did.
“I found Jesus in that scenario.”
Beck, director of Fresh Expressions for The United Methodist Church, was born addicted to drugs. His parents abandoned him.
In his new book, “Never Alone: Sharing the Gift of Community in a Lonely World,” Beck shares more about his jailhouse experience and how he got there.
“I was a full-blown drug kingpin, working with a network of shady doctors who overprescribed opioid narcotics so I could conveniently distribute them in the streets,” he writes in the book. “I also used these opiates. … I took hundreds of milligrams of OxyContin every day for years.”
After being jailed, he went through withdrawal, suffering vomiting, diarrhea, muscle pains, cramps and hallucinations.
“As general population (in jail) is often a less than ideal place to go through withdrawals, in order to get myself out I started a fight,” he said. “After resisting the guards physically and receiving a beating in kind, I was … taken to solitary confinement.”
In solitary, he was kept in a small room 24 hours a day, with only a small shaft of light through a window and a slot through which food was delivered.
“With no clocks or calendars, we counted the days through the three meals,” the book continues. “Some of the most hardened criminals are broken by time in isolation. Suicides are regular occurrences … as inmates find a way to hang themselves with their bedsheets or slit their wrists with a shaving razor.”
Beck calls the experience “hell on earth.”
“Many people do not survive that kind of incarceration and those who do are traumatized for the rest of their lives,” he writes.
After being released from jail, Beck headed to the one place he experienced community as a child — St. Mark’s United Methodist Church in Ocala — where today he is the co-pastor with his wife, the Rev. Jill Beck.
He told his pastor, “I think I met Jesus and I don’t want to live this life anymore.”
The pastor, a recovering alcoholic, told Beck that “Jesus saved your soul, but (Alcoholics Anonymous) will save your (butt).”
Eighteen years later, Beck remains a dedicated 12-stepper. But digging deeper, he believes that loneliness and isolation are a main reason people get involved in addictions in the beginning.
“In isolation, we fall into this spiral of use, abuse, drinking, alcoholism, whatever,” Beck said.
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“The cure is really community. It’s a spiritual in nature cure, being together in those meetings every week. So I have a sense of solidarity and community.”
Even deeper, Beck believe that 12-step programs are more like early Methodism than modern church worship.
“That depth of community, where you come and talk about your (stuff) and like, realize that you suck, you have to work through that stuff,” he said.
Many recovering from addictions “do the superficial level,” Beck said.
“Let’s go sit in the pew, listen to some stuff and some music, and then go back to the isolation. …”
In addition to an addiction recovery program, jail ministry, food pantry and interracial unity movement, St. Mark’s has an assortment of Fresh Expressions ministries meeting in tattoo parlors, dog parks, salons, running tracks, community centers, burrito joints, digital spaces and elsewhere.
“It’s really obvious that the cure to addiction is community,” Beck said.
Patterson is a UM News reporter in Nashville, Tennessee. Contact him at 615-742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org. To read more United Methodist news, subscribe to the free UM News Digests.
Can Fresh Expressions rescue the lonely?
A new book by the director of Fresh Expressions for The United Methodist Church diagnoses humanity as suffering from deep loneliness. The Rev. Michael Adam Beck believes he has the cure.
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