In 1977 I was drowning. I had been drowning for more than ten years. It felt like the dreaded “undertoe” my parents warned me about when I first walked out into the ocean as a kid.
I noticed that even though I was just trying to stand still, people on shore were getting further and further away. The safe beach was getting smaller and smaller. The waves washed past me, but instead of being nudged back onto the shore, I drifted further away. I didn’t know if I had the strength to swim all the way back.
So, let’s see, what were my options? I could
1.) drown
2.) yell for help
3.) see how long I could tread water before drowning, and hope someone rescued me
For most of my life up to that point, I looked hard at door number three. But no one ever rescued me. Not for lack of trying – but what I now know is that no one COULD have rescued me. Since I trusted no one, I was not eligible for rescue.
How could I trust someone else, when I didn’t trust myself? There wasn’t much “self” there to begin with. I was only twelve years old when it all started. Heck, I never really HOPED someone would rescue me, because of one simple fact: I didn’t care if I lived or died. “Hope” was something that other people did.
So by definition, I was hopeless. No one could make me care. I was the world champion of Not Caring.
I often thought someone must have made a colossal mistake sending me out into this world. It wasn’t designed for me. I didn’t think the way other people did. Something was missing. There is only one way to describe it: I was afraid. Of nothing and everything. I was afraid to get up in the morning, afraid to look at myself, afraid to try. I wasn’t good enough.
Being fearful 24/7 is hard work! Sometimes (not often) I forgot to do it, and would accidentally try something new. But mostly, I was in pain. It was like walking around in circles, wearing shoes that were the wrong size.
Early on, I found that when I listened to the radio or records, in only seconds, the pain was gone. Magic! For years, I left a radio on all night while I slept. Like marinading myself in soothing voices and the jangling sounds of guitars! To this day I sometimes wonder if people can smell the odor of 60’s music on me.
Then I found that pills worked even better. Both music and pills at once were the best! My first one was a headache remedy called Darvon, a synthetic opiate. My mother handed me some in 1966. I never looked back.
She was a nurse. My dad was a family doctor. Some of my earliest memories were going on rounds with him, and having people in the hospital call me by name. I still love the smell of hospitals and treatment rooms. It feels like home.
For a long time, I trusted the drug companies too – the ones who invented all those pills and potions that I had so much fun with later. They seemed to have a system, to know what they were doing. There was actually a manual – I studied it far more than my school work. It was called the “PDR.”
I quickly exhausted all my sources for opiates. At this stage, I thought that people who used street drugs were crazy to risk trying things that the goverment hadn’t approved. I turned my younger brother in to my parents for smoking pot. (A couple years later I would sell everything I owned to buy it myself.)
Of course I drank beer too, every chance I got – it was easily available, harmless, and people didn’t look at me funny when I had some. But drinking a whole case was hard work. Then there was Boone’s Farm Wine. Popular with the girls, at least.
My dad’s office, and every medicine cabinet within reach were all empty by now. Once I was eighteen and “legal” (!) I found the underground network of scrip-doctors, who would prescribe anything I asked for, at a price. I mostly chose amphetamines. But when I discovered LSD, I felt like I had found the missing ingredient in my life. I was so sure of this that at one point I was going to give some to my mother.
Opiates would still turn up now and then, in the form of powder. When my buddies turned to robbing drug stores, I chickened out and switched to alcohol. Now I really was marinading myself. I was smoked, too.
Aside from the permanent damage it was doing to my heart, brain, and the rest of my body, I landed in the hospital from more obvious injuries many times – once by rolling a car end-over-end down an embankment. Another time I walked in front of a car going 60 mph while in a blackout. Did I do it on purpose?
The East wing of St. Francis Hospital became my home for a while. I was carried away by the men in the white coats, just like in the movies. All that was really wrong was that I was drunk and high. I learned that for the most part, even the best doctors and psychiatrists can’t tell the difference between addiction and physical illness. To this day, there is still no medical treatment for a spiritual illness, and there never will be. The funniest part is that when they put me into the ambulance to go to the mental ward, there was a priest in there. I don’t remember if he said anything to me.
I loved it there. Something was always happening. Once again, they had a system, a way of doing things. It was a community. I was the only male patient on a ward full of women. Woohoo! I didn’t want to leave.
Outside the hospital, in those two short weeks, people in my life were moving on without me. My wife of six months had a new boyfriend. My boss got someone else to do my job. My mother disowned me, and started making plans to “live in a different area, where there won’t be such bad influences…”
When I finally realized that my way of doing things wasn’t working, and no amount of drugs or alcohol had any effect on me any more, the opportunity finally came. Someone who spent a lot of time to gain my trust asked me this question: “are you ready to go to that rehab now?” What I thought it meant was that I might be able to use drugs & alcohol “socially,” whatever that means. Just enough to feel normal.
So I just happened to be in the right place, at the right time, with the right person, and I dared to hope. It might have happened differently, and I wouldn’t be here writing this. As it turns out, there absolutely is something far more comforting, reliable and (yes) powerful than medicine, religion, psychiatry, or music.
It was time to leave never-never land. It was time for me to finally grow up.
I was still afraid, of course. But once I realized that this thing really works, it just didn’t matter as much. The most important thing was that I could stay afloat, all day, every day. I started swimming back.
I had no idea what was ahead. But I was pretty sure I was finally pointed in the right direction.
So now I had a new fear – that I would fail at this, and die, or worse. It wasn’t my imagination – people all around me, in the rooms, were dropping like flies. They mostly went (back) to jail, but a lot of them died, many in their twenties or younger. The reality is that most of us don’t make it. This is just a fact.
My first lesson was to learn that drugs & alcohol aren’t poison, and they aren’t evil. Lots of people use them every day with no problems. I just wasn’t one of them, and I never would be. They couldn’t get into my bloodstream unless I picked them up with my own hand. I will never forget the day that I finally realized that just because they were there, didn’t mean I had to use them. I actually had a CHOICE. Duh.
I mean, it’s no different than if there were a box of donuts sitting there. I don’t know about you, but I can say I have never seen a donut get eaten without someone picking it up first. Of course, like most of us, I really did have problems controlling my eating, coffee drinking, and everything else those first few years. There is one key difference though – donuts will not make my life unmanageable.
I just wasn’t the kind of guy who does that sort of thing any more. “No thank you, I don’t drink.” No explanation necessary.
I discovered “feelings.” I always saw myself as an android, a robot. Emotions only got in the way, and made things complicated. They had been erased by substances for so long that I didn’t know what they were any more. So imagine my surprise when the first one I felt was ANGER!!!
I got a job stacking lumber. Pretty soon I was slamming those boards down, way too hard – and it felt GOOD. What the heck? Later on I realized that wanting to throw or break things was just that same old fear coming out – through my arms. But it sure felt great. Years later I discovered exercise.
Remember those “bad influences” my mother was worried about? I always thought that was part of the “people, places and things” to avoid. I eventually realized that it wasn’t my former friends, or drug peddlers, or the liquor aisle that I needed to avoid – it was them – MY FAMILY. “Growing up” meant learning to think for myself, and trying to do whatever happy and successful people did. I was on the right track. I felt OK.
So it helped a lot to just stay around happy and successful people. They were literally a good influence. What goes in is what comes out. In the rooms we call it “sticking with the winners.”
I had a great roomate. We were like the odd couple. He couldn’t understand my bizarre habits or grandiose thinking. I couldn’t stand the things he liked to eat or his taste in music. But we respected each other, and stayed sober together. Like most things, I didn’t realize how much I learned from him until years later.
I learned that the biggest obstacle to my success and happiness was my own brain. Mostly, it got me into trouble. You’ve heard the expression, “what was I THINKING…?” I still couldn’t trust anyone else in particular, but I could trust someTHING else. Like a large group of people, many no longer living, who bothered to write down how it all works.
To keep moving forward, I only needed to do a couple of things for sure, every day without fail. I had to get on my knees and ask for help every morning. Here is the thing I know now, after doing it over 10,000 times: it didn’t matter WHO I asked – it only mattered that I DID ask. Somehow, I WAS rescued. Every day.
I became grateful for that.
The other thing was pretty much the same, at the end of the day – yes, on my knees again – I had to look back and admit that the day had turned out pretty much OK. Sometimes better than just OK. This part was NOT about feelings. Just the facts! I could do that.
You can talk about “how it works” until the cows come home, but no one will know what you mean until they try DOING it. The more successful I became, the less I cared about HOW. It just works. I don’t mean paying attention at meetings. I mean doing the steps. Then doing them again.
When all else fails, read the instructions! I now have a handbook of principles I believe in, and a whole community of people like myself that I can talk with. Today I am quite a bit better than “OK.” Light years beyond it, as a matter of fact! With every new level of growth and serenity, I end up saying the same thing: “I had no idea!” I know, I make it sound easy, but of course it isn’t. It’s simple. But not easy. Simple is beautiful!
Staying clean is a lot of work. Staying sober is even harder. Is it worth it? You bet. I now have everything I need. The funniest part was finding, decades later, that I always had it. I should have paid more attention to the Stones.
There was also a bonus – I have everything I ever wanted. People respect me. Some even like me. A few love me. Now I know how to love them too.
In those first days after detox, people kept telling me, “LOVE IS NOT A FEELING.” I spent a few years thinking about that, and decided they were right. Love is ACTION. It is how we treat each other. It is trusting each other. In the words of someone I very much admire – I now truly believe that “the reason we are here on earth, is to help each other get through this thing – whatever it is.” Amen.