Click Here for PART ONE
Click Here for PART TWO
Click Here for PART THREE
I was told by a doctor the next day that I had suffered alcohol
poisoning, and I was lucky that it had not been fatal. My blood alcohol content
had been 0.41; a 0.40 is typically when people slip into comas or, as the
doctor had said, death.
That night I went to a meeting of Alcoholics
Anonymous. It wasn’t my first time attending AA, but it was the first time I
had entered the rooms with the realization that I might be, probably was,
alcoholic. It’s funny, I’m able to remember that meeting now, even after five
years and hundreds of subsequent meetings. I was slightly hungover, and the
topic was something pertaining to “Life on Life’s Terms.” When it was my turn to
share, I spouted off some nonsensical meanderings about my past trials &
tribulations, but nothing really pertaining to the topic at hand. I wanted to
rattle off all the bad shit that had happened to me. But I believe that’s a
common happenstance among most newcomers: a kind of quasi- competition in the
Top 10 Charts of Personal Suffering and Misery; who has the worst horror story
involving drugs or alcohol; everyone trying to subtly one-up the last man’s
sorrow. Well, that was me.
It was when I got a sponsor and began working the 12 steps that I understood there
were appropriate times to share my experience, and other times that were not so
appropriate.
I procured eight months of continuous abstinence from both drugs and alcohol,
and it was a glorious eight months. I went to AA Conferences, I was the
secretary for my home group, and I had a social life with sober people. Things
at home were just as grand, too. I had slowly begun to regain the trust of my
family. I actually had money in my pockets and in the bank. Though I was still
living at my mom’s, she helped me to save for when I moved out again.
I was in the middle of Step 4 when my balanced program began to falter. The
fourth step is a searching and fearless, personal moral inventory. In layman’s
terms, what that looks like is a person creates a list of people, institutions
and principles they feel have wronged them, and record how and why they’re
pissed off at said person or place, then those beliefs get flipped inside out,
and put under a microscope and analyzed with a sponsor, to see where YOU were
wrong in each of those situations. It’s not an especially jovial task, and it’s
even more tedious to examine these instances and find out all the faults you
have. Add to this my problem finishing things I start, and halfway through, I
lost my steam. When it came to me sitting down and actually writing the damned
thing, suddenly everything else needed taken care of first: the kitchen needed
cleaned, the laundry needed done, the dogs needed bathed, etc. and so on.
While I busied myself not busying myself working on my inventory, I was asked
to be the chairperson for my home group meeting the next month. Before I could
really think about it, I exclaimed, Yes!
I’d chair it!
I had the entire month to stew in my nerves over chairing that meeting. All my
internal fears over my low self-esteem, my sense of inadequacy, came rushing
back to me in torrents.
The day I was to chair my first meeting, I was so pent up with dread I couldn’t
stand it, and finally I asked a coworker if he had anything to help me. He went
on a lunchbreak and brought me back two extra-strength Vicodin. So that night,
right before I was to act as chairperson for not just any AA meeting, but my home
group AA meeting, I threw eight months of sobriety down the proverbial
tubes, and ate both of the Vicodin. Most people would say that was when my
relapse happened, but in all actuality, my relapse started some time before the
physical moment I took those pills. My program slipped when I stalled
finishing my fourth step, and at the moment I was asked to lead the meeting a
month prior, I had 30 days to lay the bricks for relapse.
I took Vicodin four times that month, each time being moments before I sat at
the head table of Southside Club to chair my home group Big Book study. When my
month of chairing was over, however, I continued buying painkillers. At the
house, I was even pleased to find several bottles of Vicodin in drawers and
medicine cabinets.
For a couple months, I had the opiate use under control. But because at that
point I still had a conscience, I eventually came clean about it all. I started
back at Step One, with a different sponsor this go round, and went to a
private, inpatient treatment facility for a few weeks. I had some success
staying clean for a short while, but the call from opioids was a persistent one
that I could not keep ignoring.
Though I tried to avoid those cravings, I succumbed, and for quite some time, I
secretly consumed hundreds and hundreds of painkillers a month. There I was,
back at square one, hiding my usage behind a metaphorical smokescreen. I even
kept a faux sober date to make the act all the more convincing.
It came tumbling down, the smokescreen evaporating, on a Superbowl Sunday.
For breakfast that morning before church, I had downed a handful of Klonopin,
after church for lunch I enjoyed a large handful of Vicodin. I told my mom I
was going to a meeting, and she asked me if I’d stop at the market to pick up
items for the game that night. I replied that I would of course do that for
her. Instead of going to a meeting, though, I went to a buddy’s condo, where I
smoked lots and lots of marijuana.
When I arrived back at home, my mom gave me an odd look and asked where the
cookie cake and other snacks were. I remember feeling slightly confused at the
question; cookie cake? What the hell was she talking about? Then it came
rushing back to me: the food for the Superbowl! I was told to pick some
up, but all the benzos had made me forget 100-percent about going to the store.
I made to spat out some quick excuse to try and assuage the words that I just
knew were going to come from my mother, but I was not fast enough. My thoughts
were panicky and felt caught in the muck & mire of my Klonopin-sloshed
brain. Four words crept out of my mom’s mouth:
“You’re high, aren’t you?” All I could do was nod in agreement.
She had told me myriad times that if I messed up again, after the many, many
times she had given me second chances, that if I came home again under the
influence, I would have to leave. I didn’t even wait for her to say as
much. I told her I would leave the next day.
*****
For a short time I lived with my father. He and I have a history
that could fill encyclopedia’s A-Z, with special influence on volumes “B” (for
betrayal), “G” (for grudge), and back to “A” (for asshole). But we looked past
our past. He had his own personal demons, and I mine, and we didn’t allow them
to clash. I didn’t stay with him long, and soon moved in with a friend from
high school, and her boyfriend.
Because I had no one to hide my drug usage from (in fact, my roommates, Janis
& Larry, were quite the burnouts themselves), my addiction flourished under
the watchful eyes of no one but myself. I didn’t have to sneak around or hide
anything from anybody, and if my mom asked how I was doing, I would lie and say
I was just peachy.
The truth, however, was far grimmer. A depression more bleak and cancerous than
I had ever dealt with before, swept over, and obliterated me. There is no
exaggeration when I say I would cry myself to sleep every single night. I made
a nightly ritual of getting drunk and putting on headphones to listen to a
playlist on my iPod I had titled, “The Sads,” (consisting mostly of Cat Power
songs (thanks Monte, ha)). Lyrics about broken hearts, drugs and sadness shot
through the earbuds and echoed around my head while I would convulse in bed
from weeping so deeply. I would piss in empty booze bottles because I didn’t
want to leave my bedroom. I would continue to go out with Janis and Larry every
so often, so they wouldn’t think anything was wrong, but I’d go to the
bathrooms of the bars we frequented, and just break down. I would think of my
family, of my mom mostly, I would think of past relationships. I’d think of
everything I lost.
But then an old coworker from a previous job opened up a whole new world to me,
and I was sorely, sorely mistaken if I believed I had lost everything already,
because I was about to learn what it truly meant, to lose it all...
