You Ought to Do a Story About Me_Addiction, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Endless Quest for Redemption by Ted Jackson

Author:Ted Jackson [Jackson, Ted]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography, Adult
ISBN: 9780062935670
Goodreads: 53066570
Publisher: Dey Street Books
Published: 2020-08-25T00:00:00+00:00

We arrived at 5:00 P.M. with the crowd of hungry men and women and underwent the same screening they did, which included a humiliating hour-long interview. I answered a litany of difficult questions about some very personal things. I guess I passed, because the volunteer screener approved me for a twenty-one-day stay. He told me I’d be kicked out if I didn’t submit to a TB test within seven days.

The shelter required everyone staying overnight to bathe. Some came only for a meal. About 40 percent were white. Over 90 percent were men.

None of them were Jackie.

At 6:00 P.M., the intake closed and the front doors locked, signaling the men through the double doors for a required one-hour chapel service. The sign on the wall read, “You don’t have to pray to stay,” but you had to be in the same room. Regardless, most of the men and women eagerly engaged with the singing and preaching. Many praised God with raised hands and erupted in shouts of “Amen!” Those who weren’t singing, and there weren’t many, slept or read beat-up paperbacks in the back of the room. One man, sitting alone, told me that he was Jesus, possessed by Satan. “I know this sounds crazy,” he said. “It’s been a little Armageddon going on in my head.”

Photo by Ted Jackson | NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune

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