How To Eat Steak Without Teeth

Lessons in the aftermath of addiction

In the aftermath of addiction one of the challenges and thresholds of recovery is dealing with one’s teeth. 

Satan is the Tooth-fairy’s creepy uncle. He takes and takes and takes and there’s never a coin under your pillow. One of the satanic brandings of modern day drug slavery is the destruction of one’s smile. The corrosive nature of drugs and the lifestyle they demand extracts a high cost: one’s teeth. In drug addiction you consume, you are consumed and you lose the ability to consume. 

Devils leave an instinct to hide and the lingering horror in other people’s faces as the gift and evidence of their presence. Devils hate the pleasure of eating. The earthly rebellion started at the table and it has never stopped and the smileless faces are the fig leaves of a self-conscious fall. Eden’s shame is still the stench of serpents.

But in recovery centers I am learning the secret of how to eat steak with no teeth. It can be done, and like sobriety, it’s not easy, but it’s possible, if it’s done…

With faith. 

With gratitude. 

With hope. 

With others. 

With patience. 

With teeth or without.

Last night I ate a steak dinner with a man who had almost no teeth but a few broken shards of bone. He recounted his story to me, it was a string of moments, a horror highlight reel. Bouts of drug induced madness, close calls with freezing to death, fentanyl overdoses, a long list of felonies, hitchhiking from Florida to Washington and becoming a meth addict along the way. Dashed hopes, unwelcoming family, cries for help left unanswered by frightened or disinterested people.

But also a few moments of compassion one cold of night on the streets by a recovering addict on mission to seek and save. A prayer offered for him as he lay half covered with his feet in the snow, oblivious to the self-harm happening, but still able to remember the kindness of that prayer and invitation to Adult and Teen Challenge Men’s Center. The act that eventually led this man to the tables we were sitting at eating steak.

During Chapel a text was sent to the young man who prayed for our toothless friend and he was told that this man was now in the recovery program. A prayer offer on that cold, dark night, led to this man sitting in the service, safe, warm and getting the help he desperately needed.

He’s still toothless, but now…he’s eating steak.