My prison caseworker once told me, “If you stop putting drugs and booze into your body, you might discover what you truly love to do in life.” That’s exactly what happened. The problem was, what I truly loved to do was steal things. Getting sober meant a career change for me.

By 1990, when I was 37 years old, I’d managed to accumulate 73 arraignments, plus a couple of indictments. I was looking at 15 years to life on a “career criminal” indictment. When I asked the federal parole officer just what that meant, he said it meant I had never in my life had a legitimate source of income. I guess the paper route didn’t count.

Eventually, it dawned on me that maybe my way wasn’t working anymore. This was during my sixth incarceration, and I was getting sick of doing time. One night, we were crowded into my cell, six or eight of us. I had those guys laughing so hard they were begging me to shut up. After lights out, when things had quieted down a little, I realized I was in a federal penitentiary, with no drugs, no booze, and I had been laughing harder than I had laughed in many, many years. It gave me a tiny bit of hope that maybe I could have fun without drugs and booze. I didn’t stay sober at that point, but I never forgot that night.

I ended up beating the career criminal charges, but was found guilty of being a felon in possession of a firearm. Instead of 15 years, I served three years in federal facilities, followed by five years on parole. One condition of my parole was to attend at least five 12-step meetings per week. So I would go to four meetings on Saturday and one on Sunday morning and nothing changed. If you took the drugs, booze and crime out of my life, there wasn’t much left. I would manage to go six or nine months clean and sober on my own, and I would get to a point where I had no idea who I was. I would feel the emptiness of my life, and before long return to using drugs to try to fill that emptiness. As a result, I ended up violating my parole on four different occasions, which meant a return to prison each time.

Dozens of people had strongly suggested I get a 12-step sponsor, but I was real uncomfortable with that idea. I was in and out of prison, on the run from the U.S. Marshals, doing 40 bags of heroin a day. I was afraid a sponsor might screw up my life. After my fourth violation and incarceration, I was finally desperate enough to ask a man from one of my meetings to sponsor me. He started working the 12 steps with me right away, and for the first time since I was 5 years old, I began to experience some positive change. I was shown how to live without a drink or a drug in my life every day.

It took a lot of acting for me to get sober. I didn’t know how to be honest, so I would act in a way I thought an honest person might act. I would think, “Now, what would an honest person do in this situation” and that’s what I would do. The same with being compassionate, reliable, responsible, accountable and spiritual. None of this came naturally to me, but after time, I learned to live life on its own terms, not on my terms. I began to be able to bring something of value to a situation, instead of always taking.

Today I work as a stand-up comedian. I make recovery-based comedy presentations in prisons and youth facilities and to the recovery community in general. I also go into some local high schools and do a crime and drug awareness presentation. Most people who see my act think of me as someone who made it out alive – although some of the local law enforcement look at me as The One That Got Away.

I’ve wasted a lot of years not being honest with myself, trying to convince myself and others that my earlier life amounted to something better than it was. The fact is, my history is just that – history. People can and do recover from their histories and from their addictions and become active, contributing members of society.

Felon O’Reilly, aka Al Joyce, lives in southern Maine and last month celebrated five years clean and sober. Learn more about his life and his stand-up schtick at www.felonoreilly.com

Please join our weekly conversation about Maine’s substance abuse problem. We welcome comments or questions from all perspectives. Letters may be mailed to Bangor Daily News, P.O. Box 1329, Bangor 04401. Send e-mail contributions to findingafix@bangordailynews.net. Column editor Meg Haskell may be reached at (207) 990-8291 or mhaskell@bangordailynews.net.