Wasted: An Alcoholic Therapist's Fight for Recovery in a Tragically Flawed Treatment System (29 page)

I fill Grant in as we head back to Langley. He listens, dumbfounded.

“Those bastards filled my prescription for
T3
s. That pharmacist in Abbotsford delivers my four pills daily as prescribed. They charge a dispensing fee each time.” My brain, firing on all cylinders now, puts the pieces together. “Of course the pharmacist must be in cahoots with Randy and Ken. Randy takes a cut. That’s quite the racket. And Ken gets all the narcotics he wants. No wonder he sleeps all fucking day.”

I don’t say a word
to anyone when I get back to the house. I know all I will get is denial. I march straight to the phone to call Dr. Acres. He must know about the Tylenol 3 prescription being illegally filled and sold.

On Monday I call Bob Bellows, my new lawyer, and fill him in. When I first called Bellows he shut me down. “I don’t do legal aid,” he says. “It’s just not worth it. I end up making at best
fifty bucks an hour, and it’s labour intensive.”

I told him my story. He listened without a word, and finally said, “I’m a recovered alcoholic, now twenty-two years sober. I’ll take your case. Stay sober, stay in rehab and I’ll meet you in the lobby of the Surrey courthouse in a few months.”

“Mike, we have a court date now,” he says. “December second. You must plead guilty. You
have no defense.”

“I know. I want to plead guilty.” I want to plead guilty because I
am
guilty. Guilty as hell.

“Okay. I want you to give me a detailed written list of all the treatment you have received right from day one. And write me a biography of your battle with alcoholism. Just stay sober. And stay in that place you’re in. Get a good report from the guy who runs the place.
I know he’s an asshole, but stay on his good side. And we’ll get a good report from Dr. Acres. He’s got a lot of clout. With the right judge, you might be looking at just three to six months.”

“Just!”

“Or less. You never know what’s going to happen. The Criminal Code says minimum thirty days, and with the accumulation of alcohol-related charges and driving while suspended, it doesn’t
look good.”

Wednesday, October fourteenth, I sit in Dr. Acres’s waiting room, still brimming with anger and frustration over the damning pharmacy record. In he walks.

“Good morning. Sobriety date?” Every meeting begins this exact same way. He’s smiling. That can’t be right. He must have talked to Dr. Flannigan by now.

“August twenty-third.”

“Excellent. I talked
with Dr. Flannigan this morning. You remember when you came in last week and we took a urine sample.”

Yes. Oh-my-gawd-yes, I see where this is heading.

“It came back negative,” says Dr. Acres. “Exactly the time you were supposedly taking four
T3
s a day. Impossible. I’ve informed Dr. Flannigan. That will be reflected in his report. Clearly, someone else filled that prescription.
You see, there is a God, Michael. As well, Dr. Flannigan and I will be reporting this activity to the College of Pharmacists.”

“Oh my God!” I smile, a huge grateful grin. “Thank you, Dr. Acres.”

“I also received a letter from your lawyer. I will write him a favourable report. Just keep doing what you’re doing. Stay clean and sober. Come see me every two weeks. Go to at least three
meetings a week. Talk to your sponsor. See you in two weeks.”

Vindication changes everything. I embrace sobriety. I religiously attend
AA
meetings in White Rock, sometimes two or three a day. I ask Robin, a reformed heroin addict, to be my sponsor.

For the next few months, I’m bolstered by his unwavering support. Knowing how much I despise Mission Possible, Robin regularly rescues
me. Breakfasts, lunch, dinner, coffees, phone calls at all hours of the day or night, Robin is there. His quiet belief in God and his steadfast commitment to the
AA
program ground me. He listens without judgment.

“Just stick with the program, Mike,” he reminds me, often. “Believe that it’s in God’s hands.” Part of me believes it’s in God’s hands. But the seasoned practitioner lying dormant
in me knows it’s ultimately up to me. Yes, I need the social supports, but my own cognitive distortions sabotage any sense of hope or optimism. “I will never be successful again,” “I will never have a loving mate,” “I am too damaged.” The first step in cognitive behavioural therapy is to become aware of self-defeating thoughts and negative beliefs about one’s self. I determine that I will become
my own therapist. I will work with and for Mike Pond. I construct my own treatment plan:

1. Identify the problems: (a) depression, (b) anxiety.
   
2. Establish the goals: (a) reduce severity of symptoms, (b) improve self-regulation of mood.
   
3. Treatment approach: (a) cognitive behavioural therapy, (b) medication as prescribed, (c) social support.
   

That social support is
AA
. The invisible
web of
AA
support weaves around me, preparing me for the worst still to come—prison. Steve, an ex-cop, Grant, a gnarly loyal old Irishman, and Roy comprise my personal holy trinity. I stay at Grant’s house often, just to be away from Mission Possible, to get a glimpse of what a real life could look like one day.

I force myself to go for walks. I catch my negative self-talk and self-defeating
thoughts. I restructure them into positive, optimistic thoughts—cognitive restructuring.

November arrives, and the grey, dark, rainy days bleed into one another. This weather usually sends me into a funk, but not this time. This month, I’ll appear before the Review Committee at Fraser Health. This time, I believe they will support me.

Next month, in December, I’ll go to court and
inevitably to jail. I’ve accepted my fate. I accept that it’s all out of my hands. I will get through this, and I will learn from it.

When are you going to surrender your will? Have your surrendered yet, guy? You won’t get sober under you’ve surrendered. I now know the meaning of Eli’s and Josh’s endless hectoring.

Life at Mission Possible seems strangely more tolerable too, because
Rotten Randy has not been seen for days. One day, a group of us sit at the table playing cards. Young John, who was here a year ago and just came back, shares the news. “Did you hear? Randy is at We Surrender. He relapsed,” he says. “One day he’s on the cover of the
Province
, saviour of the down-and-out. Next day he’s one himself, living in a recovery house.”

I should be happy that Rotten
Randy has fallen off the wagon. But that kind of thinking is mean-spirited, and I’m growing to believe what goes around comes around. Neil rarely comes to the house anymore. Ken sleeps constantly, emerging from his room only to eat.

Roy takes over Mission Possible. He and his partner lobby for donations and sponsorship. Almost immediately the food improves. The night he takes over, we
eat roast beef, gravy, mashed potatoes and broccoli.

Angry Gord facilitates our group meetings. I’ve seen him in
AA
meetings over the past few months, but we haven’t spoken to each other. This is our first close encounter since he wrote me off for dead in the hospital and came to collect on his debt.

At the group meetings Gord practices his own brand of confrontational therapy.
“How do you feel about driving drunk, Mike? Do you feel guilty about the fact that you could have killed someone? Do you sleep at night, Mike? Do you have any shame or remorse at all?”

“Gord, drop this. Of all the things I’ve done drunk, driving is the one for which I feel the most shame. Drop it.”

Gord is nowhere near done. He reaches into his briefcase and pulls out a multiple-page
document. I immediately recognize it—Dr. Acres’s initial assessment report. Gord asked me for a copy of it. Since he’d paid for it to be done, I thought it only fair that he get a copy. I didn’t think much of it then. I sure as hell do now.

“Put that away, Gord! It’s totally inappropriate. It’s private—between me and my doctor.”

Gord ignores my protests and reads out loud. “Mr.
Pond was self-referred at the recommendation of his professional governing body for an assessment of his competency to practise—”

I lunge at him and snatch the report out of his hands.

“Don’t you fucking ever try something like this again!” I tear the report to pieces and stomp out of the meeting. I still owe Gord fourteen hundred dollars. I vow to pay him back—every penny. I shake
with anger. In a proper treatment centre, no one would dream of treating a client like this.

Monday, November twenty-third: I sit with the Review Committee, to see whether I get my job back at Surrey Memorial. This time I wait not with dread, like before, but with anticipation. For once I’ve done everything right.

The same members are all here around the table.

“Michael,”
begins the
HR
rep. “We know that you have been clean and sober three months. You have been following the agreement conditions since your unfortunate relapse in the summer. Dr. Flannigan’s report is favourable. The committee has agreed that you may commence another gradual return-to-work program in two weeks, December seventh. How does that sound?”

I fight back the tears and compose myself
before whispering, “Thank you. Thank you.”

Just one obstacle—by December 7, I’ll likely be in prison.

“I would like to delay my return till the New Year. I have some personal matters that I’ll need to deal with over the next month or more.”

My manager, Odette, checks her calendar. “Okay, how does Monday, January third, look? If that’s not enough time, let us know and we
can postpone.”

Oh dear God, please let that be enough time. That would mean only a month in prison. That would mean getting off lightly.

• 30 •

IT’S 9:33 IN
the morning and I’m sitting on the narrow, finely polished bench outside the courtroom and wait for Bob Bellows, my lawyer. I am about to begin what is without a doubt the worst day of my life. Barring a miracle—and I’ve been running pretty short on those—I’m going to prison. All night, I rehearsed what I’ll say to the judge.

Your Honour,
I am guilty of everything as charged. I just thank God I didn’t hurt or kill anyone.

Your Honour, thank God, I never hurt or killed anyone. In my current sober state, driving drunk is indefensible.

Your Honour; Your Honour; Your Honour.

Anxious questions interrupt my rehearsals. What will my boys say when their friends ask them where I’m spending Christmas? How will my
mother get through it? How will I get through it? I began my career working in institutions. I know what goes on in there.

My guts churn. We are scheduled to appear in twenty-seven minutes. Bob Bellows weaves his way through the waiting crowds in the lobby of the Surrey courthouse. Bob is about my size, and I suspect we’re close to the same age. He cuts a rumpled Columbo-like figure as
he shuffles my way.

I wear an oversized, decades-old hand-me-down suit, shiny with wear. I snagged it and a pair of dress shoes after an elderly widow dropped off her dead husband’s clothes at Mission Possible. She told us he was a big man. The suit’s sleeves hang past my knuckles. I shuffle along in bankers’ shoes that are three sizes too big. My precious Rockports, the last vestige of
the man I used to be, were stolen off me at We Surrender.

My Rockports—I remember when I’d poured myself off the Greyhound into the Downtown Eastside and rummaged through my duffle bag to find something warm and waterproof to wear. What had I packed? Padded biking shorts; a basketball pump; one running shoe and a single bike shoe, both for the left foot. Clearly, a drunk had packed my
bag. Then, finally, the beautiful pair of shiny black waterproof Rockports. They say you can tell a lot about a man from his shoes. Wonder what mine say about me now?

Everywhere around me, lawyers mill about, engaged in urgent conversation with their clients, voices muted, bodies taut. The high ceiling underscores the sense of import. I see young Max, my former roommate at the little house
in White Rock. We glance ruefully at each other. I heard from the other guys he’s facing another impaired driving charge. After his fiancée broke up with him, he launched on an anguished post-break-up tear and crashed his truck, four years of sobriety evaporated. I wonder what it would feel like to be sober that long. I can’t even imagine it.

“I just gave the judge a copy of the biography
you sent me,” Bob says as he sits down on the bench beside me. “I’ve had guys write these bios for twenty-five years. I hope to God the judge is as impressed with it as I was. But I don’t hold out much hope.
BC
’s got zero tolerance for drunk driving now. You’re going to prison. For how long depends on the judge.”

I slump back against the hard polished wood. Over my years as a therapist,
I often asked clients what they had to look forward to. It’s a way of gauging psychological hardiness. It is in the absence of hope that people suffer the worst despair. I ask myself now. I can’t think of anything. I am empty. I only exist in this moment of dread.

We file in through the double doors. The courtroom is packed; an assembly line of petty crime waits to be processed. There’s
a steady murmur of low conversation and the constant coming and going of red-suited prisoners as they are processed from remand.

My turn.

I stand alongside Bob Bellows before the judge. I peer up at him. He scrutinizes me over the rims of his glasses, then leafs through a slew of papers before him. I notice the lined notepaper of my handwritten bio. He glances at me, then the documents,
then back at me. Our eyes meet, and in his, I see compassion.

“Mr. Pond,” he starts. “You have a very tragic and compelling story, and it is a miracle you are still alive; however, the law says that it is mandatory that I send you to jail. Do you have anything to say before I pass sentence?”

“Thank you, Your Honour.” Here we go. “I take full responsibility for my actions. I thank
God every day that no one was hurt or killed.”

“Mr. Pond, when I review your driving record, I am taken aback. Until 2007, you have no previous infractions other than the odd speeding ticket. However, in the last two years you have amassed a terrible record. Twelve offences: all related to alcohol—
three
impaired convictions alone in an eight-month period.”