On April 15th, 2001 I was admitted to the residential
treatment facility of Hazelden Center for Youths and Families. It was Easter
Sunday, 16 years ago.
I was in rough shape at the time. I was heavily addicted to
crack-cocaine, and used alcohol as my main source of caloric intake. That’s no
joke. I’ve written extensively on that preceding winter in a few posts, and
referenced it countless times. I would go for days without eating anything
other than canned gravy and stale keg-beer. When I did eat, it would be
something I had stolen from Rainbow Foods in the
soon-to-be-demolished-for-a-sport-that-can-go-for-three-hours-and-end-in-a-tie-of-zero-Midway
Shopping Center. I lived on the couch of a reluctant friend who was also
addicted to crack and who was squatting in the home of his mother who had just
died. When I couldn’t take the scene—every few days—I would go drink and sleep
my sorrows away on the train bridge that passes over Snelling and Marshall
Avenues in St. Paul.
Desperately, one day I had had enough and I reached out for
help in the form of a note to my mother I left in her mailbox. She offered to
help, and two days later I was in the intake unit at H.C.Y.F. in Plymouth.
The first day they did all of the paperwork, medical
history, drug test (mine came back positive for T.H.C and Cocaine), and a few
other interesting tests like spelling, reading, and some weird science stuff.
It was the next day, they said, that they would need to draw my blood. Shit.
(Sorry for the language, Mrs. J.)
My temporary roommate and I were equally terrified of
needles and we stayed up all night laughing and joking around about licking the
alcohol off of the wipes they use to sterilize the arm before penetration. He
was from Green Bay, WI and had an equal tolerance for chemicals. We would
become close friends for a while after treatment, and I went to visit him in
New York a couple years later where he had moved to stay sober. At the end of
that trip, our mutual friend told me that he had not, in fact, been sober, and
he was spiraling downward quickly. I never saw or talked to him again.
After a four-month stay in treatment, I moved to Florida for
a one-year aftercare plan in a half-way-house in Palm Beach Gardens. The aptly
named Freedom House had a picture of
the beautiful blue ocean on its web page, but when I arrived, it was miles away
from any beach, and separated from train tracks by only a small stream. Every
time a train went by, the house rattled, and only the shriek of the horn
overpowered the earthquake. But everything else was groovy. I made some great
friends, found my way through the rooms of Narcotics Anonymous, and enjoyed a
warm winter.
I constantly refer to the serenity of those golden days
because I think it was the first time I actually gave recovery a shot, and
maybe the first time in my life I felt good about myself. I made it nearly five
years and decided to test myself with one beer. I failed and suffered for
roughly nine years before I finally was given a chance to rebuild myself
through a stay in prison. I had really hit bottom again.
The thing about the
bottom is, it can always be lowered. There’s a lot of damage I haven’t done
yet, and I’m fully capable of going on another bender, using up all of the
resources I have accumulated since my release from prison, and starting down
the alleyway of certain death. I know I can go back out and use anytime I want
to. I don’t know if I can pull myself back out again. It’s been 16 years since
I hit my first bottom, and I have done it a few times since. Each time is a
little worse, and it’s a little tougher to find my footing. If there is a next time, if I ever do go out to do more research on addiction, I think I will find that the only hole I will be digging is my own grave.
