Seven years ago, I woke up on my third day of a 28 day stint in an inpatient treatment facility. My addictions to alcohol and gambling had finally caught up with me. I didn’t want to go into treatment. I was completely convinced I could handle all my problems on my own. Loved ones begged me to go, with the words of one in particular permanently etched in my mind — “Just remember, your best thinking is what put you in this position.” I couldn’t stand the thought of leaving my daughter, only 3 ½ at the time, for nearly a month.
I entered Lakeside Milam, a well known facility located right outside of Seattle. It looked like an elementary school from the 1960’s in dire need of a facelift. On the third morning, I walked into the common area where two big canisters of decaf coffee awaited me and the other patients in the facility. I stopped to pick up a copy of that day’s Seattle Times that was lying on a table. There, on the front page of the local section, in big bold letters above the fold, was the headline, “Senate Democratic Executive Under Investigation.” This was particularly troubling to me — I was that executive.
I had spent over a decade in the political arena, working on Presidential, Gubernatorial, U.S. Senate, and local campaigns. I’d been the Campaign Director, Field Director, and Communications Director for the Washington State Democratic Party, and the former Executive Director of the Washington State Senate Democratic Campaign Committee. I had organized numerous constituencies, including organized labor, veterans and young people. I was respected and trusted by my colleagues across the political landscape.
I had also been embezzling funds for well over a year. While I wasn’t aware of how much money I had taken at the time, I later learned the embezzlement approached $300,000. Reading the paper, my hands shaking violently from a mixture of alcohol withdrawals and sheer terror, I felt I was reading my professional obituary (and in my mind, it may as well have been my personal one as well). I was convinced that the headline would forever change my life. I was entirely correct — but in ways I never could have imagined.
After inpatient treatment, I dedicated myself to recovery. I became deeply involved in the 12 step community. I accepted responsibility for my actions, and nine months into my recovery journey, I entered the Washington State Department of Corrections to serve my sentence for my crimes.
While incarcerated, I began to think about my future. Was there a way to merge my professional background in advocacy, organizing, and leadership, with my newfound passion for recovery? I looked around and saw that 85% of the men with whom I was locked up were in prison for something related to drugs and alcohol. Given my background and lack of anonymity, was there any contribution I might be able to make in order to change the startling reality I saw everyday while I was in prison?
The day my sentence ended, I made a choice — I would be an opportunity for others. I would carve out a path in a world that I didn’t even know existed at the time. I didn’t have the answers, but I knew that I could find the people that did, reach out to them, and both learn and listen.
There were moments of tremendous doubt, when I became convinced that the headline I’d read several years before was in fact the final chapter of my professional life. But slowly, I began to meet others from around the country who were dedicated to change the way our nation is addressing addiction and recovery, and I began to feel that I might have a second chance.
Several months after exiting my work release program, I went to work for a new national organization, Facing Addiction, and helped to organize a rally in Washington DC where tens of thousands of individuals who had been impacted by addiction turned out to end the silence. I spearheaded the development of a national coalition of over 900 organizations from across the addiction, treatment, harm reduction, prevention, and recovery fields. I oversaw the production and release of resources that promoted multiple pathways of recovery, and organized advocacy efforts to back critical federal legislation.
In 2018, as a formerly incarcerated leader, I had the honor to be selected to JustLeadershipUSA’s Leading with Conviction cohort. The experience changed my professional trajectory. It illuminated what attributes a successful leader must bring to the table. I learned the only thing stopping me from producing stronger results was me. I came to understand that real leadership started with responsibility, owning my own contribution to the results I was producing, seeking feedback from those around me, and speaking to the leader that exists in each and every person. Leadership meant listening, and putting my focus on empowering others.
With the commitment to invest in leaders from across the addiction, prevention, harm reduction, treatment and recovery fields, I developed and launched The Communities Project, a national initiative with the mission of saving a million lives from substance use related deaths over the next two decades. We save lives by investing in the community leadership of people with lived experience and individuals who lead key addiction focused initiatives. Investments in community leadership, through training and coaching, amplify programmatic accomplishments, expand collective efforts, and dramatically escalate opportunities to save lives.
Over the past three years, I’ve had the privilege of training nearly 2,000 individuals across 28 states in leadership and community organizing. Empowering individuals to embrace their inner leader and fight for change in their communities has become a tremendous privilege and the results continue to pour in every day. From opening recovery community centers, peer-to-peer support centers, to providing new levels of support for affected families, and launching new recovery high schools, leaders with whom we’ve worked inspire me every day. If we choose to invest in ourselves, and grow leadership within our field, nothing can stop us from saving a million lives from an entirely preventable cause.
Several years after I read that dramatic headline in treatment, I sat down for a TV interview with KIRO7 news in Seattle. The headline to the new story read, “…Michael King Now Wants to Humanize Addiction.”
That is who I am. That is who I get to be today — how I get to show up in my life. I want to humanize addiction, and empower the leaders across this movement to stand up, speak out, improve results, and save more lives from preventable addiction deaths.
