A memoir by Michael Johnson
The true story of the sex, drugs, addiction, destruction, and moments of grace that shaped my life — and the battle to survive the one person I could never escape: myself.
The greatest things we can survive are ourselves — and the weight we give to our memories.
One life. Three photographs.
“Have you ever felt God and the Devil fighting for your soul?”
It started on the stairs
“The worst part of being a child of an alcoholic is that love often follows violence.”
My father taught me that the same night the police took my mother, my baby sister, and me to a safe house.
“I've spent years trying to find that place — the one that held my father's love and my mother's safety, and no fear for me. That place didn't exist.”
I told myself I was surviving
“Different, at twenty-four, is tragedy dressed as freedom and worn arrogantly as triumph.”
Fresh out of the Navy, I had the mask most addicts wear — the got-it-all-together look. Underneath was five bottles of Jack a week, meth when the fire called, and a lie I built my whole life around: if only.
“I had spent years treating my pain like proof that someone else owed me rescue. But rescue had never been the same thing as responsibility.”
Bottom is when you stop digging
“God, help me.”
I'd driven the entire East Coast running from a knife, a jail cell, and myself. I couldn't outdrive me. What happened next in that storm, I'll let you read for yourself.
I'll only tell you where it led: I walked back inside, sat across from my grandmother — the one who took me in and said “you've lost so much weight… but you will be” — my hands still shaking, and said the truest thing I'd ever said: “I think I need to go to rehab.”
Why the butterfly
“He was making something that had never existed before, and it needed the dark to grow.”
For a long time I prayed to be put back the way I was. I know now that was the wrong prayer.
Peace wasn't something to be chased.
It was something to be received.
God did make butterflies for me, so I could give them to you.
About the Author
I didn't study this from the outside. I lived it. I survived active addiction, and I've lived the long, unglamorous work of recovery ever since.
I know what it looks like to appear successful while your private life is on fire. And I am willing to tell the truth about the people I hurt, not only what was done to me.
Michael A. Johnson
Who this book is for
From the final page
This is my truth — the sex, the drugs, the pain, the destruction, and the moments of grace that shaped my life. The story of the people I hurt, the people who saved me, and the battle to survive the one person I could never escape: myself.
— God Made Butterflies for Me
Available in paperback, hardcover, and eBook.
Available now as an eBook on Amazon. Paperback and audiobook coming soon.
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