Timeless Wounds of Addiction

Addiction is a strange and strangely powerful thing; in its grip, time does not heal all wounds.  

For me it was booze and coke but not in equal measure: the Bolivian Marching Powder held its sway so much tighter.  I fell head over heels in luv with the dopamine rush, giving me what I imagined was a flavor of the happiness normal folks felt day-to-day.  I was alive for the first time.  I haven't touched the shit since September 1994 and yet just now - February 2014, nearly twenty years later - all it takes to trigger the old gut hollowing anticipation is a news special on street drugs where undercover reporters are shown buying dope in Philly on the very same corners I bought coke.  Those corners, those memories, that feeling.

Those pictures of Aramingo Avenue are ringing the old Pavlovian dinner bell and I catch myself salivating.  I've been dry less than eight years and yet haven't come close to the coke-strength craving for booze.  I was drinking every day all day in the bloom of my active alcoholism circa 2006 whereas my cocaine use was limited to a dozen weekends a year with a couple week long binges thrown in for bad measure during a mere six season run.  Almost twenty years ago.  But there it is, rumbling up smack dab in through my gut.

I write this just a few days since one of my favorite artists, actor Phillip Seymour Hoffman, died of a heroin overdose.   He'd been clean and sober for over twenty-two years before falling back into the briny deep in 2012 and less than two years later is found dead with a needle in his arm surrounded by over fifty bags of dope.

Time does not heal all wounds.  

And certainly doesn't heal chronic diseases like addiction.  You have to be vigilant. Try not to let the "fuck it"s worm their way back into your life as they're the prime breeding ground for a relapse.  Get to therapy, get on antidepressants if needed, exercise even if you don't feel like it (it kicks your endorphins into gear).   Also, don't consider a relapse the end of the world.  This might sound counter intuitive to staying clean but it's very important.  A relapse is serious and something you must make a priority of avoiding; however, if it happens the last thing you want is an "I blew everything so might as well keep using to the point of oblivion" attitude.    It's a statistical fact that when addicts relapse after an extended sobriety they rarely ease back into use but rather immediately plunge in deeper than they ever have.  I think this is usually because the addict wants to destroy the thoughts of having "failed" sobriety.

Relapse is not inevitable and if it happens you can get back on the wagon.   I was sober for 14 months in 1993/1994 but relapsed to my best friend cocaine, and subsequently to alcohol as a necessary come down when the coke ran out.  That binge lasted a week and I haven't touched the white powder since but the boozing continued for another dozen years.  Still, I managed to put a plug in that too.  It hasn't, for the most part, been a struggle for me this time around.  I'm pretty sure I'd have stayed off the booze entirely if I hadn't run into my coke dealer and knocked that domino down.  I can't say for sure what I'd do if I bumped into him today, though I'd like to think things'd be different.  The antidepressants I'm on would have a lot to do with making the right decision.  And let's face it: I didn't just "run into" the dude in '94.  I deliberately put myself in the old neighborhood and practically stalked him before making a "casual" encounter. 

No, time does not heal all wounds.

You have to keep treating them.

Rehab

June 3rd, 2006.  As previously mentioned, I was nearly dead and mad in the throes of delirium when my friend Mike found me at home and drove me to the emergency room; however, by the third day I was mostly lucid and on the fourth I started calling around to treatment centers to inquire as to availability and price (I'd be footing the bill myself since my health insurance wouldn't cover this eventuality).  My sister suggested the Sundown Ranch in Eastern Washington.  She was very familiar with the place since her then-husband Tony had gone through there a few times.  The rehab didn't take for Tony but that was no blight on its effectiveness: no treatment took for him because his "bottom" turned out to be death (and if he could have found a way to drink post-mortem he'd have done that too).   Still, I had no desire to travel across the country and was determined to find one in the local Philly area.   Finally, after a dozen fruitless calls from my hospital bed, I land on what I think is the perfect place: The Keystone Center in Chester, PA.  I liked the irony of its location: smack in the middle of the area where I used to buy cocaine in the late 80s and early 90s.  Plus it was relatively cheap at a couple thousand for a two week stay that I eventually extended into three for an extra grand.

I checked out of the hospital on Friday and into the Keystone Center the following Monday morning, June 12th. My sister had flown in and was staying at my house so she drove me down there in my car.  She'd be heading back to her home in Phoenix in a few days and I'd take a cab back to my place once rehab finished.   The Keystone Center organized its patients into four groups: two male, one female and a co-ed group called Freedom.  The architecture of this rehab was unique with a couple of relatively modern two-story buildings behind an old re-purposed stone and wood mansion.  The first floor of the mansion held the administrative offices that I only saw on check-in and check-out.  The second floor was home to the all-female group and the top floor was where Freedom men and women met for therapy and slept.  The more conventional buildings held the medical ward where prescribed drugs were dispensed and where new arrivals slept when going through detox.  The cafeteria, therapy rooms for the two male groups, a large conference room for all-hands meetings and the staff offices also called these buildings home.  There was another building across the alley which housed a group of juveniles.  These shared our cafeteria but otherwise did not interact with us adults, only really affecting us when they overstayed their lunch period, forcing us to wait longer in line. Well, the young punks were also responsible for the caffeine ban (only decaf sodas and coffee were available because they didn't want the tykes getting hopped up).  I hated them for this.

I ended up in Freedom Group.  It was, as I mentioned, co-ed.  It was also much smaller than the other groups and its members had less restrictions than the others.  For one, guys and gals could talk while in their meetings and in the shared TV room in our "penthouse" at the top of the mansion.   There were five bedrooms with either two or four per (these were obviously unisex and it was strictly forbidden to penetrate these walls if you were the wrong sex).   There was likewise two showers/toilets and a private laundry room. Finally, there were no locks on our doors or floor.  The women-only group on the floor below us had similar digs but the male patients not in Freedom lived in large dorm-style rooms with six to a dozen per room and the floors to these rooms locked after 9pm so if you wanted to grab a last cup of decaf or go for a walk, you'd better not get caught out after hours or there was hell to pay because you had to find somebody to unlock the doors, effectively ratting yourself out.  I know this because though I was assigned to Freedom, I didn't sleep there initially; at first, I was still sleeping in detox and then after I was declared clear was moved to one of the other buildings until a bed opened up in the Freedom "penthouse."   Naturally, the other groups resented Freedom and when we mingled together during meals there was no end to the name calling.  How did one rate such an advantage?  I'm not sure.  The people in Freedom were just as fucked up as the others, at least to my eyes.  I think it came down to money and choice.  The ones in Freedom were there by choice, mostly - at least the choice of parents in the case of the kids in their late teens and early 20s - and I think had the money and/or insurance to pay in advance.  Though that's not right either: we had more than a few who were there by court order and at least a few who were being gently/discreetly "reminded" by the staff to call their parents or spouse to arrange payment.   It certainly didn't seem to be divided along racial lines (Freedom had as healthy a representation of ethnicities as the other groups).   Maybe it was the luck of the draw but there was a pervading sense - at least on my part - that this was most certainly intentional.

So, Monday I arrive and check-in.  I pay up front and then after reviewing the medication I was on was told I'd be spending the next day or two in detox.  This confused me because I'd just spent a week detoxing to horrific effect in the county hospital and was quite sure I was as clean as I could possibly be.  The thing is, my gastroenterologist had several years ago prescribed me Nexium for my acid  reflux and Xanax to help me sleep but this latter drug is classified as an addictive benzodiazepine from which I must be weaned.   So they stuck me in a little private room off the Nurse's Station where I could presumably sweat out the withdrawal in close proximity to medical assistance.  There was to my knowledge only one actual doctor at Keystone, the department head, a psychiatrist, but plenty of RNs.  I only took the occasional Xanax so I experienced no withdrawal symptoms at all but rules were rules so I slept here fitfully, trying to ignore where others in rooms beside me were not so fortunate in their cold turkey dance.  During the day up to 9pm, I'd be allowed to go up to Freedom Group for the usual AA sessions/meetings, discussions/testimonials on addiction, and lectures by the various counselors assigned to us.

The Freedom group fluctuated between 10 - 20 people with about 70% heroin, coke or crack addicts, 29% alcoholics and one college age kid who was there for a gambling addiction.  The dude made a lot of money, so he says, but had been kicked off the college basketball team and eventually out of the school itself after the gambling ring he formed was discovered by administration officials.  Turns out Keystone Center had one of the few Gambling Addiction programs in the Philly area with our main counselor, Nick, himself a recovering GA.

The median age of my fellow Freedom riders was about 25, with several under 20 (the heroin and coke crowd).   Jeanie - 19, mother and white suburban upper middle class coke head who fancied herself an inner city gangsta girl - was the wildest, getting into fights during meetings with almost everyone of us and at lunch with the other groups.  She was bi-polar so of course we nicknamed her Tri-Polar.  I was closest with Charlie (a drunk about my age) and Eric (the college gambler), thanks to similar senses of humor.   We'd bust on people waiting in line to eat (an hour's lunch would generally consist of 45 minutes of waiting in line and 15 minutes actually eating thanks to the large population and limited cafeteria seating) but mostly bust on ourselves for being there.  We had no illusions about what we were and this placed us in the distinct minority in that regard.  Most were just now grappling with the fact that they had a problem of some sort, if only because of the fucked up circumstances which landed them in this particular rehab (for many, this was not their first rodeo).  But an addict?  An alcoholic?  "Well, I'm just not sure about that."

Typical weekday Schedule:

7am, decaf coffee available; 8am breakfast, 9 - 10am, AA meeting, 10 - 11am; sober living education, 11 - 12pm, psychodrama (Tue/Thu) or nutrition/dealing with stress (Mon/Wed/Fri); 12 - 1pm, lunch; 1 - 2pm, AA meeting; 2 - 5pm, exercise/swimming/free time (work on writing up post-rehab goals, amends, etc.); 5 - 6pm, dinner followed by reciting of Serenity Prayer in all hands meeting room; 6 - 7pm, evening with counselor Nick on surviving sober or whatever he happened to pontificate on (he was a Jersey-wise-guy-style hoot and could sermonize on AA 101 with the best); 7 - 8pm, guest testimonial/AA meeting; 8 - 10pm, sometimes free time but occasionally a movie in the Freedom common room with addiction theme.

For Freedom group, psychodrama took place twice a week.  This was very interesting.  We walked across the alley to the Keystone out-patient facilities where there was a large room with chairs arranged in a circle around a central chair.  Once seated, a specifically trained "certified psychodrama facilitator" guided us through the next hour and a half.  The process was focused on one member of the group for the entirety of the session.  This volunteer - we were all strongly encouraged to do this prior to completing our stay - would sit in the center of the circle and act out a tragic/pivotal event in his or her life that involved or triggered addictive behavior.  The central player would ask other group members to improvise with them in the guise of specific people in their lives.  It was part theater, part primal therapy.  I surprised myself by raising my hand my last week there.  I had previously watched guys and girls act out physical and emotional abuse, rape, and other unspeakably horrific tales, including one going through Fentanyl-spiked heroin withdrawal.  (While at rehab, there was talk going 'round about a strain of heroin on the street that had been spiked with lethal amounts of fentanyl and while this frightened some of the addicts, two arrived mid point during my stay who had been deliberately seeking out this poison in order to experience the "ultimate high.")

I chose, for psychodrama, to reenact my recent experience with alcohol withdrawal and the delirium that came along for the ride.  I was quite certain at some point about 6 hours into my hospital stay that I was dying of a terminal disease.  I screamed at the doctors and nurses to save me and accused them of murder after they insisted that I was experiencing alcoholic delirium.  Alcohol withdrawal can be fatal if not treated with medication, they allowed, but my withdrawal was in fact being treated.  Lies!   So I re-enacted this with members of the group playing the role of doctors, nurses, my sister, and some of my friends.  It was cathartic,  if more than a bit creepy.  And it brought me closer to a few members of my group, most of whom I'd kept at a distance (I'm not good socializing).  Turns out I was much better at consequential socializing than I am at the normal small-talk usually required.  At a rehab, most everything is emotional and there isn't as much a need to talk about sports or the weather or day-to-day life.  Of course, as I left I promised to keep in touch with all of my new "friends" and then never did.  I certainly regret that now as I'd like to know how they're making out.  I know the statistics say most drank or used again - and some end up in a recovery/relapse loop for years - but you always hope for the best.

I flipped out on the day before I was to depart.   The Remeron anti-depressant the Keystone medical staff had put me on wasn't available once at the nurse's station after waiting in line during evening med call (twice a day you'd line up to get whatever meds you were prescribed).  I went off on the nurse there and continued my tirade with the Keystone director, Deb.  I apologized to both when I cooled down.  I'd only been on the drug for a few days and yet was still horrified at the thought of missing a dose.  I'm sure now that I hadn't been on it long enough for it to have any discernible effect, so I'm sure it was purely psychological.

I only met with the actual staff shrink once.  He was the "chief medical officer" and only M.D. on staff so appointments were hard to come by.  Most were only granted one audience.  I explained to him that I did not believe in a higher power and though I understood the value of AA and the 12 step program for others, I would not be following it per se.  Not strictly.   I'd take what I need and leave the rest, as they say.  I'd already planned to join Secular Organizations for Sobriety (S.O.S).  I liked their philosophy, the tenet of which is the Sobriety Priority (in short, sobriety is #1 priority in your life and everything else flows from that).  Needless to say, this went over like a lead balloon.

I ended up extending from 14 to 19 days mostly because I was comforted by the structure and insulation from "real life."  But my bank account wouldn't let hide there forever so it came to pass that I "graduated" and was discharged the morning of July 1st after which I took a cab back home and into my newly sober real life.

Torn & Sewn on Fabric Row

July 11th, 1993.  I'm walking double-time toward the pay phone on 4th and Bainbridge, around the block from my hovel on Monroe.  This particular summer night finds the heat and humidity particularly oppressive, soaking my T-shirt with sweat just a few steps out the front door.   Emerging from the arctic climate of the apartment's central air, the swelter hits my body like a freight train and I buckle.  But I'm off to the races again after a curt pep talk. Holed up in my little 3rd floor walk up the past week, there's clearly a powerful need to replenish.  In fact, I thought it was Thursday afternoon until I stepped outside into the darkness.

I live in the heart of Philly's Fabric Row, just a few blocks off the busy strip of bars and restaurants on South Street, which means the roads are usually lined with cars looking for parking on a Saturday night.  Night?  Clearly.  Unless I'm losing my vision. Saturday?  That's what the ATM receipt says.  Where did the week go?  Where it always goes for me these days. A short reflexive pause to survey the landscape and then I'm back into tunnel vision mode: my mission, the score.

The roll of twenties in my pocket is slick with perspiration as I race to the rendezvous point around the corner past the Famous 4th Street Deli.  I don't recognize my connection but nevertheless make her out at once, not far from the pay phone.   Her expression - her demeanor - makes it clear she's no South Street reveler gearing up for the clubs; she's a courier, my Sherpa's intermediary, and her body language says as much.  Tonight, she's my lifeline and I love her more than she'll know.  (Random trivia note: Denzel Washington uses this very phone in one of the scenes from the movie Philadelphia.)

I walk up quickly but nervously to my new love, with an eye peeled always for the cops.  My paranoia unbounded, everyone smells like Five-0 out here tonight.  And there's a good chance they are, heightened fears aside.  So the exchange is made fast: currency for goods.  Two thumbnail plastic baggies chock full of lumpy white bliss pressed into my palm and my bank roll likewise into hers, passing the baton without acknowledgement in this felonious relay race.  She blinks, tucks it away, then picks up the pay phone and dials.

Having scored the primary supplies for the evening, a rush of relief radiates through my fingers.  A wordless au du to my new lost love in a rush, I quick-step across Bainbridge's double wide expanse to the north, veering left a bit in order to sneak through Leithgow, the side street that splits 4th from 5th.   Swinging into Phila Deli around the corner on South, a prescription is filled for several six packs of beer constituting the oh-so necessary brakes that'll slow my heart down to earth once I run out of blow.  I've long ago learned that waiting until the need arises to buy alcohol often leads to wild heart palpitations crawling out of your skin when you first glance at a clock and it reads 4am, long past closing time.  My connection's still glued to the pay phone gabbing obliviously as I pass her by again, this time lugging two large grocery bags of booze back to my humble abode.

How will this particular ride into heavenly oblivion distinguish itself from the countless journeys that came before?   Simply put, it was to be my last for 14 months.   I'd stumble thereafter just once again, in September of 1994, but this trip would effectively put to bed my particular cycle of addiction to cocaine.  What follows is a sketch of the events and my state of mind that finally put the kibosh on this slow motion suicide carnival ride.

I shove the key into the outside door and hurry up the two flights of stairs to my place, the "penthouse" of the three units in this converted multi-family house.  Back into the deep freeze, chilly sweat soaks my skin.  It was actually the nicest apartment I ever rented, narrow but deep with high ceilings, central air, and my own mini-washer/dryer unit to boot.  I also had a private staircase in the apartment itself that led up to the roof where I could sunbathe with a view of city hall and much of the rest of the city.  All for $525.00 a month from 1992 - 96 with no rent increase, two blocks from the heart of the South Street action.   The one downside?   It was so narrow that getting furniture of any size up the stairs and in through the door proved challenging (I ended up having to sell my larger couch prior to moving in).   Still, it deserved better than me, at least better than the me who inhabited the joint the first couple years.  In those days it was merely my cocoon, used to wall off the world for the drift into madness.   Other than being stumbling distance to a plethora of bars and restaurants with take-out beer and the fact that it served as a kind of midway point between the cocaine meccas of Chester and Kensington, I might as well have lived on the North Pole for all I availed myself of its vibrant surroundings and culture.

I rush into my place and toss the beer into the fridge.   That's just medicine, needed later to come down safely from the mountain.   But who wants to entertain such notions now?  It is time now to climb!  The cocaine experience started out socially for me with a dysfunctional sub-culture from which I learned much things I'd rather have never known.   As Jim Carroll would caution, they were a "constant warning to take the other direction."   In the end, it degenerated into isolation, much as it would later with alcohol.  Grabbing a CD jewel case already scratched/sticky from the counter, I get to work.  The door to my bedroom closed?  Check.  Blinds closed?  Check.  My body flailed out on the mattress?  Check.  Okay, we're ready.  Next, the contents of the first baggie are dumped out on REM's Reckoning (or some equally random case), the chopping begins, the separating, the lining up.  Finally, the snorting.  Eventually, the bleeding.  Rinse and repeat for the next 20 hours, with an occasional beer break mixed in to keep the blood pressure below bursting.

My highs are euphemistically described elsewhere in this blog as wired wakefulness and concentrated bliss.  They were certainly all that, but also something more.   It sounds so awful as recounted here (and believe me, I've held back the uglier details something fierce on these pages; my candor has its limits), but in the moment it was wonderful beyond description, all happening away from the horrors, up in the serenity of my head.   No other drug has ever come closer to bringing as much happiness to me.  It always arrived with a truckload of misery, to be sure; however, not nearly as much as alcohol eventually rained down on my life.   On balance, the happiness was artificial and short lived, the misery real and persistent.  Still, if that was all there was to this equation, I never would have stopped.   Happiness is happiness, who is to say what is artificial or real?  And long or short-lived, it was better than the alternative.  No, the kicker in the mixer that kept me clean was simple biology, chemistry.  I would be dead pretty quickly continuing down this path.  Cocaine isn't compatible with biological life, not for long, not for me. And of course, there were the finances.  You plunge into coke, you don't end up working a whole lot at a time when you need that income the most to keep the white stuff coming (well, you can work a shitload for long stretches at first, but not too effectively).  All that to say, it's expensive.   So coke didn't work for me chemically or financially.  But I digress, so back to that day ...

By the time the sun goes down on Sunday, the coke is history.  I'd licked the last of it off the jewel case, the baggies long since torn asunder in hopes of finding some long lost morsel hidden in microscopic crevasses within.  Without luck, of course.   It was then time to turn to the come-down beer in the kitchen fridge with gusto, slugging three in rapid succession just to slow the heart down to what I surmised was a safe jack hammer pace.  Thank you, Her Doktor!  That was an hour or so ago.

Two beers further into my come down routine now, bent over on my sofa in the living room.  Thinking about things.  Left my full time job back in March.  I'd been with that company for seven years but the consulting position I accepted paid a lot more and I could make my own hours, could choose when to work and when to "relax" (all dangerous things for someone with my proclivities).  Of course, I haven't been with a client for several weeks now, what with the marathon blow binges and all.  They really eat into one's productivity.  So, no real savings, no discernible cash inflow to help stem the outflow.  The result is that my phone will surely soon be shut off for non-payment in the coming days.  Next the cable.  Then the electric.  My credit's fucked.  I am almost 31 years old and have not yet begun to live life, afraid in fact of trying.  These ruminations reach a crescendo over my psyche and I stew.  The reason for this reflective mood?  I'd switched on the tube to kill time coming down and the movie Clean And Sober happened to be on HBO.

I tend to enjoy irony and often watch movies such as Lost Weekend or Days of Wine and Roses while drinking, fully understanding - even embracing - my condition and yet at the same time never giving thought to rectifying things.   I always figured heretofore that rectification for me would be death and death would be here soon enough.  This time, though, Clean And Sober is really getting its hooks into me. It's not a particularly wonderful flick.   You never get to see the protagonist on his slide (he's already pretty much bottoming out when we first meet him).  You do, however, see the consequences of his addiction pretty starkly.  And Michael Keaton is great in his first dramatic role.  All told, right movie, right time, right tone.   I don't believe in fate, or that I'm somehow special, an omnipotent being arranging this fortuitous chain of events just for me.  It is a happy coincidence.  In fact, the movie has been showing pretty regularly of late on cable and I'd caught pieces of it earlier in the week, coked up and drinking down just as I am this evening.  But it didn't strike me then like it's hammering me now.  An hour into watching, I feel light headed and look down to see a rapidly spreading little pool of blood on the carpet.  My hand goes up instinctively to my nose, warm sticky wet. I dash into the bathroom with my head tilted back.  Then I drop to my knees in the john and cry.

Cut to Monday late afternoon and I'm attending my first Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meeting.  I have a sponsor before I leave.  Thus begins the first year of real sobriety for me as an adult (hell, the first month).  I re-join my old employer within a week and stay put there for another seven years.  I stabilize.  For a while, anyway.

I'd stick with AA for a few months but the spiritual aspect of the program eventually had me searching elsewhere, eventually reaching out to Secular Organizations for Sobriety (SOS). I've maintained my ties with SOS to this day, now with a successor organization, Lifering.   AA is great but there is never only one way to anything, including sobriety (if something works for you, keep at it).  My biggest misstep during this stab at sobriety was that I didn't get professional help for depression.  When I slipped in 1994, I quickly righted myself when it came to the coke (once and done, clean now for 15+ years).  Ironically, the only reason I drank again was to come down from that coke episode but the cork wouldn't fit back into the bottle.   No, the come-down booze that coke spurge necessitated was my full fledged plunge into the briny deep of chronic, progressive alcoholism over the next dozen years.  I think I've documented that swim and subsequent arrival back onshore sufficiently elsewhere on these pages.

This aspect of my experience has been exhausted here.  It's certainly exhausted me.  Perhaps it's time I attempt to dredge up some happy days for prosperity next.  It could happen.   But that'll take digging deep to find.  Until then, silence will reign on this blog.  With maybe just a bit of bad poetry to bridge the gulf.

1992 Heartbeats a Second

August, 1992. I lay on the couch with my heart pounding like a jackhammer.  The last of the coke gone and no alcohol in my hovel, panic had me in its grip. Boom, boom, boom.  Teeth chattering, freezing cold sweat, eyes all pupil. Boom, boom, boom.  Where were my car keys?  My eyes darted around the room, out of focus.  It was Sunday night, I needed to find a bar with alcohol somewhere, take-out beer to slow my heart down.  Boom, boom, boom.  I was living just north of Wilmington in Delaware but had just moved into this apartment from Media, Pennsylvania 30 miles to the North.  I wasn't familiar with what might be open on a Sunday in the immediate surroundings - my mind could only conjure up the Media establishments.  Boom, boom, boom.

I drove shaking, sweating, jittering raw nerves up I-95 and I-476 to Media.  Jack's bar, open every Sunday.  All pupil and sweating, jittery I pulled into the bar's parking lot and looked in the rear view mirror.  Jesus!  Like something out of Night of the Living Dead.  Thank God Jack's interior is good and dark.  Still, I needed to clean myself up a bit, comb the hair, get my squinting down pat to hide the wild eyes.  Slow the heart palpitations.  God, did I really drive here?  It's drizzling rain and I'm so wired out of my skin I can barely see let alone operate heavy machinery.  The force multipliers adrenaline and fear bring to the table are nothing short of amazing.

Inside, Jack's is dead on a mid-summer Sunday evening.  I manage to maneuver to the take-out case, grab several six-packs of brew and pay for it with minimal social interaction: head down, pass the barkeep sufficient cash, let him bag the beer and keep the change and motor on out into the night.  A half hour of terrifying action southbound behind the wheel of my shitty little black Mazda 323 with heart beating wildly caught in my throat and I'm back into Delaware, to my apartment.  I didn't kill myself or anyone else on the road this time only through undeserved dumb luck.  Boom. Boom. Boom.  But relief from the pounding and palpitations is at hand, thanks to Adolf Coors - at least that''s how it's always worked in the past.

But this time the booze did not keep up its end of the bargain.  This time, no matter how much I drink my pulse just keeps racing.  Did my heart skip a beat?  Two beats?  Boom. Boom. Boom.  I pace my apartment, gulp for air.  Fuck!  The alcohol has no effect.  I lay down on the couch, stare up at the ceiling fan, sweating/dizzy.  How long have I been up?  Two days, three?  Shit.  Boom. Boom. Boom.  My heartbeat echoes through my sinuses, up into the frontal lobe.   Looking around the apartment - torn drapes, faded carpet, TV unwatched on some random channel, blue walls into the white light of the kitchen.  My toes feel tingly, numb.  Boom, boom, boom.  My heart is - if anything - racing faster.

I make the decision: I need to go to an emergency room.  Shaky / dizzy, I jump back in the car and head down south to Wilmington Memorial.   At this point I'm gasping for breath.  Perhaps this addiction thing isn't all it's cracked up to be?  Are we having fun yet?  Then it's twenty minutes of chilly sweats and my ticker doing double-time at the pump station before I'm finally led in to see a doctor.

I describe my symptoms and beat around the bush to the ER resident for just a few minutes before letting on that - funny coincidence - I just might have ingested a very small amount of cocaine that evening.  Think it's related?   The doctor in fact is pretty sure there's a strong causal relationship between my heart nearly exploding and the Bolivian Marching Powder coursing through my veins.  You see, it's a stimulant.  Condescending smirk.  But isn't alcohol a depressant? I deadpan, ignoring his snide bedside manner.  Booze didn't work this time, doc!   Long story short, the rest of the conversation boiled down to a variation on Doc, it hurts when I do this!  Well then - don't do that!

The doctor gives me some valium and sends me home with written instructions to "stay away from cocaine."  Of course I will, Herr Doktor.   I follow those instructions to the letter just a bit more than two years later.  After all, I'm a bit slow.  But Deja Vu is a bitch in this context and even the slowest among us eventually grow wise to the weary.  Or we simply grow weary and die.

A Snow Blind Samurai (Tracking Hell through Aramingo on the Road to Oblivion)

1989. Summer.

My mind is screaming but my body is quiet, stomach churning.

And my brain is baking.

Parked and conspicuous on the side street of a neighborhood decimated by poverty, drugs and crime, menacing shadows seem to surround me as they pass by, turn/look, and finally, thankfully, move on.

I'm trying my best to blend into the driver's seat, scrunching down, wishing I could vanish. And fervently hoping it won't be too long even while logic and reason clue me into the futility of that. Then again, if logic and reason were my guides I wouldn't be here now. Somewhere west of Aramingo, a handful of blocks east of 3rd and Indiana. West Kensington. The Badlands. Waiting. Visions of the Velvet Underground's Waiting for the Man buzzing through my mind's eye.

My little Suzuki Samurai jeep is a bright blue beacon floating in the sea of the dirty gray that permeates the streets up here. Christ, I might as well have a big spot light shooting up from the vehicle into the sky, spelling out my intentions to the thieves and the cops alike.

Unlike the other bubble-gummers who dare to swing up into this area for their recreational party favors, I haven't arrived here as an outsider. I have my Sherpa, my guide. So no waiting in a line of cars at one of the outdoor drug bazaars catering to Joe and Jane Suburbanite for me. Those traffic jams are further east, closer to I-95. Instead, we pull into a dilapidated side street, kill the engine and lights, I give my Tenzing Norgay the money fresh from an ATM withdrawal, and he disappears into the hood while I sit there, alone.

It's plain to me that addiction does at least as fine a job eradicating judgement as it does dignity, money, a life, and the rest of what it takes. Even with all that, what it provides me, sitting here in 1989, is singular and compelling: glimpses of happiness or at least escape from my head for a few hours. In 2009, fifteen years clean of that particular indulgence, I've yet to find its equal. So, I sit there alone. Waiting.

Ten, fifteen minutes. Shadows and staring, aggression and hatred. Clearly, I'm not welcome.

Then suddenly Norgay emerges from the shadows, stupid smile and stoned shimmer virtually radiating from his being, already high on a large chunk of what should be mine. But that's the price I pay for his guidance up the mountain. I fire the ignition and we head out. Now comes perhaps the most terrifying part of this adventure through the looking glass: snaking my way through the burned out buildings and numerous patrol cars, an out-of-phase vehicle with an out-of-place driver and right-at-home junky sidekick nodding out beside him, a couple of bags of felonious powder in their pockets. Not a recipe for a happy ending. One slip and it's down the icy ravine, into the abyss.

Yet I always slip the noose and make it back down from the treacherous summit into base camp again, back to the comfort of suburbia. I drop off my guide, head back to my hovel, and drift off into sweet dreams of wide-eyed wired wakefulness. Fleeting happiness and escape. Only to repeat the cycle ad nausem, addicted as much perhaps to the russian roulette surrounding the hunt as I am to the consumption.

My tunnel vision eventually closes in on the fading point of light at the other end so completely that normalcy warps into the strange and this kind of shit into the norm. I even rope others into these kamikaze missions, keeping them blind to the destination and purpose until past the point of no return. A friend I hadn't seen in years arrives from out of town to catch up, hit the bars, have a few drinks and reminisce about the old days in the Navy together. I meet him at the airport with my Sherpa in tow, explaining we need to first take "a short road trip" before hitting the town. Great to see ya! It's been awhile! This'll just take "a few minutes." He's pretty shaken after the 20 minute Badlands park-and-sit scene. Afterward, I drop him off at the apartment and he's left to fend for himself while I drift off to wired island. When I get up the next afternoon, he is gone. And I haven't talked to him since.

Good times.

What tips the scale back to the land of the living for me? Enough mornings after. Enough afternoons after. Enough three days after. When the wired dreams morph into jittery, heart-palpatating waking nightmares. When the ATM is empty and the Sherpa goes missing in action. When the bills come due and the collection calls start at work. When the Samurai is repossessed. When my credit becomes truly fucked. When the blood from my nose turns my white pillowcase red, when it soaks through and covers my mattress in blotchy maroon patches. When my phone is turned off for non-payment. When booze no longer calms the shaking coming down. Coming down. Finally, the coming down. Finally, the coming down is simply that much more painful than the wired dreams are freeing. When all this comes to a head, I finally come to my senses. Four years after it comes to a head, anyway. After all, I'm slow to learn and a great procrastinator (I'll completely upend my world in the fight against any change to it, wise and at the same time oblivious to the irony of it all).

Then a year of living clean, 14 months, dissolves into a week back into the wood chipper when I spy my Sherpa "by chance" one weekend just prior to my 32nd birthday. But that week was my last, over 15 years gone by now. To be clear, that week busy getting my nose dirty included plunging my liver back into the briny deep as well. After all, it was the only way I knew to come down, slow the pulse to sleep. And keeping my nose clean thereafter didn't translate to pulling the liver back out of the river. In fact booze became a ready-made substitute for escaping the bonds of myself and I dove ever deeper across the span of the next nearly one dozen years. Time spent on the high seas before I nearly drowned making it to shore.

For those of us missing whatever it is we're missing, finding it even for a moment, and especially in concentrated bursts of what we imagine happiness feels like, is pretty fucking compelling. It carries with it a lot of weight, requiring that much more on the down side for us to run in the other direction, moving the scale back again toward the breathing end of life.

Many of us never get it righted and just keep going, going, going into oblivion.

Bob and Ruth

Bob Douglas was all chest high plaid pants, wild eyes and eager ears, working the police-fire scanner knobs and his telephone dial with savage efficiency in the darkened room at the back of his house. This was his war room, his command center. The Information Station.

Hey, down there at 1310 Hoyt! Get ready for the fire truck! You, up there at 706 Grand! The police cruiser's coming your way! Yo, over there at 925 Rockefeller! Domestic Squabble just down your alley at 918 Wetmore!

He was wired into it all, hooked into the information grid of nineteen hundred and seventy. Everett, Washington's emergency dispatch signals surfing across his brainwaves, his thoughts tuned into their frequencies. Forever clearing his throat of the perpetual phlegm of ignorance, he thirsted for the knowledge that these crises and misdemeanors washed down into him. But it wasn't enough to obtain the wisdom, he was compelled to impart it onto others. And not gently either - no, this education was delivered to his friends and neighbors with a vicious ruthlessness. Mr. Douglas, you see, was a man both supremely impatient and utterly mad. He suffered neither fools nor the rational gladly.

A call would come over the scanner and his shock of curly hair shot straight up, his hairy ears throbbing with the details of this latest catastrophe. Incessantly tuning the signal to clear the noise from the necessary, Bob would focus, waiting - until, Bam! He'd catch wind of a juicy one through the static and hone in on the location. A picture would form in his mind's eye as he zoomed in for a close up. His gnarled fingers would then start clawing down the phone book white pages, mapping the dispatch address to a neighborhood and the 'hood to his acquaintances, however vague the connection. Match! Yes! Now he would make with the telephone dial.

Ring, ring.

Ignorant Acquaintance: Hello?

Bob: Ummmrrgghhh. Hey, down there at 1215 Colby, you got a heart attack one block down, 1314 Wetmore. Ummmeegghh.

Click.

With that said, Bob would abruptly hang up. He needed no reply from his pupils and had no time for idle chit-chat. They didn't even have names to him, his friends; he referred to them only by their addresses.  There was serious work to do, removing the blinders from the beleaguered citizens of this jerk-water town. How little they knew of these moments of consequence taking place right under their noses! But Bob, he knew. Strokes, heart attacks, burglaries, peeping toms. Bob had total coverage. He was the master of this knowledge. The great and powerful Oz!

This man was a god to me growing up, a giant. Fueled by Antabuse and aggravation, he was nothing so much as a raw nerve personified. All work and no play was not in Bob's vocabulary, though the definition of 'play' is subjective. For instance, he 'played' his long-suffering dog Wolfy into a quivering nervous wreck until the poor thing could take no more, finally succumbing to a fatal heart attack. Not satisfied with simply schooling his own pet, he worked the neighborhood animals into frenetic basket cases as well (they were unable to sleep for days after one of his visits). But unlike Wolfy, at least the neighbor doggies had times of relief when 'uncle' Bob went home. None of these unfortunate side effects were intentional, of course. Mr. Douglas was simply being Mr. Douglas. Wass a gooodd dooggg?!? yessyouare, yessyouare, wass a good dog!?!?! eh? eh?!?!? Was a good dog!?!?! Ehh, ehh, ehh!! On and on and on, he'd go. Bob would have them chase their tails, tug on rags, run down Frisbees, play chop sticks on the piano, clean his garage, mainline meth, and tear their own tongues out. And that was for starters. Waasss a goood doogggie!?!? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Errrmmmdddhh!!

This was simply Bob's way.

His bright plaid pants weaving to and fro, manic voice booming and the constant gurgling of phlegm in his throat, Bob just couldn't stop, had no sense of boundaries or limits. Luckily he was clearing his throat so much of the time that you couldn't make out most of his psycho-babble. His affliction was Turrets Syndrome melded with an obsessive-compulsive disorder and manic tendencies all rolled into one fifty-something package. Or was he sixty-something? It doesn't matter: he was ageless, beyond time.

Bob would also visit upon children what he inflicted on the town's canine population. I cowered in terror upon his arrival at our doorstep. As I said, he was a god to me. Sort of like Loki, the Norse God of Mischief. Or Satan.

Bob stopped drinking years before I knew him, though it took a few trips through treatment before the "cure" took hold. His regiment of Antabuse and terminal psychosis remained the only vestige of a drunkard's past. I have no idea why as a child I was cognizant of his pharmaceutical intake, probably because my parents kept no secrets, as long as they weren't theirs. As though taking Antabuse was a scandalous thing, especially when compared to the unrestrained active alcoholism my folks reveled in.

I had always assumed that Bob and my Dad had been drinking buddies and that was how our families became friends. Those two may well have been boozing pals at some point; however, Mr. Douglas sold insurance back in the day - before he retired to his role as town crier - and that was how our families originally came together. (We had insurance?!?) A television commercial come to life with your broker as best buddy and trusted adviser. His friendship, though, was more akin to Jim Carey's Chip Douglas in The Cable Guy: you'd have to pry your relationship with him from his cold, dead hands. He mated for life in this regard.

Speaking of mating, Bob was not alone. He came as a package deal, wrapped up in a bow with his stubby chubby swinging 60s red headed whack job misses, Ruth. Ruth had the unfortunate habit of wearing skirts sans undergarments on occasion, but was not blessed with the body of Sharon Stone, nor was she of an age - she was somewhere north of fifty - when that behavior might have been viewed in a different light (a black light was too luminous for her particular horrors).

Mrs. D would readily cross and uncross her legs with a silly, knowing smirk as she visited with our folks making gabby small talk, always sounding and acting to me like Sue Ann Nivens from the Mary Tyler Moore show come to life with a dye job. I'd see red and go blind. The carpet matched the drapes, though neither of any shade nature could have conjured up. What nightmares these visuals would give me! ("Join me for a crimson bath! Red-dye #5 mixes well with Mr. Bubbles! Come on in, the water is fine!")

Errhhhhhh.

My Mom - also a Ruth - cut Mrs. Douglas's hair regularly, though she had no training or 'natural' talent in the tonsorial arts that I'm aware of (certainly the results bared that out). This ritual would take place in our kitchen, the two ladies enjoying a beer or two while my Mom took the scissors to that red fright wig atop Mrs. D's head. I had my first taste of the suds in this setting, though I'm not sure why I was offered (I couldn't place my age, maybe 10?). A first initiation into the alcoholic profession my parents saw as the family calling. I was strangely drawn to watching this beauty parlor ballet unfold, my Mom hacking at Ruth D's head while they both got toasted. I shutter when I think about this today. Now that I am thinking of it, my Mom's services to Ruth also included regular dye jobs (though they were, to my knowledge, all on the "up and up").

Bob and Ruth spawned one child, Lee. An odd kid who became a cop, he was by some accounts a sexual deviant. The girls in the neighborhood all dreaded Lee's approaching swagger, as he put his moves on them in his best 70s Disco Stu style.

Nature, nurture - Lee had both going against him and probably didn't stand much of a chance. But at least Father Douglas could follow his son's adventures from the comfort of his back room courtesy of the trusty police scanner. Sometimes his son would be dispatched, and sometimes his son would be dispatched upon. Sort of a one-man game of cops and robbers (or cops and flashers, to be more precise). Who would Bob call during these episodes? Himself? But the line's forever busy! I imagine that after episodes such as this, a confusion of sorts must have hung for a time over Bob's Rear Window lifestyle.

So these are my slanderous memories of just a couple of characters from my childhood. An introduction. They will return. They were central to my upbringing in many ways.

It takes a village. Indeed.

[Postscript: my sister recalls once, back in the days when Bob had been drinking, he accidentally flushed his false teeth down the toilet. The mental picture of that event and the subsequent dental panic - Did they result in a clog? My dad was a handyman, did he break into the sewage pipes to retrieve the choppers? - was strong enough to me that I felt I needed to share.

My sister also recalled for me Bob's love of the pornographic (which explains his wife Ruth). For example, Bob liked to keep his extensive collection of Playboys piled high in plain view on top of his living room coffee table, in order to give all visitors the chance to pursue the interesting articles. He often left the mags open turned to the "article" spread. He went so far as to send my then teenage sister a fold out of a playmate pic because he thought it looked like her. He ratcheted up creepiness several notches in his day, claiming the word as his own. ]

Our Living Room Cries, Her Coffee Cup Bleeds

I was fixated as a kid on a red and white checkered coffee mug, a cup that would never know the taste of java; in fact, it knew only wine, woman, and song. The wine was cheap, the woman my mother and the song metaphorical. Think Beach Boys 'In My Room,' moved to the front of the house with the atmosphere of Leonard Cohen's 'Dress Rehearsal Rag.' Our living room was an irony, its name an oxymoron.

This mug held court on the TV tray, itself acting as end table to the living room love seat. A white-handled prince among the ashtray, matches and cigarette butts scattered like peasants around it, this ceramic monstrosity was perhaps the favorite among my mom's assemblage of accouterments. It was a toss-up between that cup and her smokes, but I think the balance was tipped when the cup was full. And full it was, often - wounded, in fact, by the beverage it contained. A stained bloody crimson interior, ravaged by Ernest and Julio Gallo's Tavola Red, courtesy of the gallon jug ever present on the floor beneath her feet.

My mom was invariably perched in a regal green robe on her throne, the leftmost cushion of that filthy love seat. Across the muted colors of her homemade braided living room rug, Dad lay passed out on the larger couch along the wall behind the shuttered front windows. His beverage of choice - whiskey, brown bagged - stood steadfast in the corner within reaching distance, no mug required.



That rug - God I hated the thing. Like Edward Sissorhands, it wasn't finished. Ever. Started from thrift store coats by Mom in her 30s, the endings lay unraveled, half hidden in the corner of the room, itself a metaphor for the people who paced on the twisted fabric.





And through the hazy chain smoked fog of Alpine Camel nicotine, the cheap Van Gogh Sunflowers print looked down upon us from its vantage point high up on the green painted stucco wall across from Dad.

I usually squatted by the heater vent below Vincent's flowers, laser focused on the television.

Mom would chain smoke, drink and watch, sometimes she would cry. Always she would read. Dad would drink, smoke and drool. And throw up into his mixing bowl; thank God for Tupperware and other small favors. Dad would sit up occasionally, unsteadily. And drink. Often this required a bit of help, during the shakier times. Wrapping a bath towel around his neck and tied to the wrist of his drinking arm, he'd pull on the terrycloth with his steadier hand and guide the bottle to his mouth, like a seasoned crane operator.

Turn up the volume on the TV! Did I hear that? Probably not - it was just my sensibilities imploring me to drown out the madness. I would spring from my perch over to the console set in the corner and crank the volume up to satisfy my sanity. In time, though, no sound could silence the sickness, and no flickering image could mask the claustrophobia of the room. Television, the thing which allowed me to escape the reality of that place, for the longest time could only be found in its midst, that room. Eventually I was able to watch my diversion for short periods in the local hospital waiting area a couple of blocks up the street. But you couldn't loiter around there for any extended length of time.

More often, when my psyche and stomach couldn't take another hit, I'd go to my room and read (Manchild in the Promised Land, Invisible Man, Outsiders, Great Gatsby, On The Road) or listen (Beatles, Presley, Cohen, Stones, Joel, Springsteen later Clash, Costello, Parker, Ramones). I became obsessed with all things music - albums, eight tracks and Creem magazine fed my addiction. And I'd put my thoughts to paper on my little typewriter. Thoughts and paper lost to time and trash.

Or I'd leave - run, outside - somewhere, anywhere, finally nowhere.

That room, it followed me. At school, until I couldn't go to school. With my friends until I had no friends, became an outsider, a loner, a weirdo. To the Navy, it followed me; to the bottle. It followed me into the bars, until I took the bars home. It was there in Chester and North Philly, following the trail of white powder into my blood stream. The height of the high was the only time I gave it the slip but at a price: when it picked up the scent it did so with renewed vigor and punished me for my elusiveness.

It's with me still, that room (that house) - out of sight, but never out of my raging mind's eye. That room. That robe, those books, that cup. The smoke, those bottles, that bowl, the vomit. Those people, melted into the furniture - my family, smoldering.

The Beatles Help! brings to mind my family more than any other music - I bought the album on August 11th, 1977 and found out my Dad had died of Cirrhosis later that day, so each of the songs invoke memories of the event. I remember being so psyched about getting my hands on that record, never mind that it was 12 years old at that point. For me the Beatles were a relatively new discovery in the mid-70s - only three or four years into my obsession - and I was gobbling up the shit. Hearing the news about Dad had an effect on me I wasn't expecting: overwhelming sadness, pain. I had been braced for it and was anticipating relief; it was a surprise. I lost myself in my room that day and played Help! over and over and over.

However, it's Rubber Soul that's been teed up on the iPod of late, my favorite fab four album. In My Life, indeed.