The Cocaine Chronicles (8 page)

Until now I hadn’t thought about it, but I’m famished, too. I rise slowly from the bed, still unsteady on my feet. I’m wearing a T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants. Eddie has on the same. In the closet I find my tennis shoes. I put them on and together we emerge from our dimly lit room and into the brightly lit lounge, a little broken maybe, a little shell-shocked for the experience, but nonetheless alive.

In the days to come Eddie and I will be subjected to a grueling schedule designed to get and keep us clean and sober. Breakfast is served at 7 a.m. followed by an hour-long group therapy meeting. After that it’s a drug and alcohol–education class, which satisfies one of the state requirements for those who’ve lost driver’s licenses on DUI charges, myself included. Then it’s off to individual counseling. Then comes lunch. An hour later we have a study session with the
Big Book
of Alcoholics Anonymous, copies of which all patients receive on their first day. We break again for dinner and afterward we endure a lecture on the damaging physiological and psychological effects of alcohol and dope on our bodies and minds. And every other night, Sundays included, we attend either an A.A. or N.A. (Narcotics Anonymous) meeting held here at the hospital but open to the community. I switch off between the two, since I’ve earned lifelong memberships in both, though I feel more at home with your run-of-the-mill alcoholic. Eddie switches off, too, mainly just to hang with me.

Tonight, after dinner, we flip a coin: heads it’s A.A., tails N.A., and it comes up heads. The meeting is held in the rec room at the far end of the hospital, and Eddie and I get there early to help set up the tables and chairs, make coffee, and put out the A.A. literature. The leader of the meeting is one of our head counselors. His name is Dale Weiss but he’s better known among the staff and patients as Tradition Dale for his strict and unwavering allegiance to the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous. One glance at his face and you know he spent the better part of his fifty-odd years drinking hard and heavy before he ever sobered up. He has the telltale bulbous nose, and across it runs a thin spiderlike pattern of broken blood vessels. In his heyday, I’m sure the whites of his eyes were bloodshot and yellowed with jaundice, but now they’re clear as ice, and that’s how he looks at you. An intense stare, eye to eye, until you glance away.

“How many days you got, Lenny?” he asks.

“I think about twelve.”

“You think or you know?”

“I know.”

“You need an exact date,” he says. “You need to keep an accurate count. I have 3,672 days, and God willing, tomorrow it’ll be 3,673.”

Tradition Dale is big on God, which has always been a stumbling block for me. Though I’m no atheist, I’m not exactly a churchgoer either, and I have a tough time embracing the religious aspects of A.A. The disciples say I need a Higher Power and that this Higher Power can be anything I want it to be, the options ranging from a doorknob to the group itself. “Fake it,” they say, “till you make it.” But I have trouble with that line of reasoning, too. It’s like lying to yourself until you’re convinced the lie is true.

People begin shuffling in five minutes before the meeting is supposed to start. It’s a small group, maybe fifteen or so, about half of them patients at the BMC, the others visitors from the surrounding communities. Eddie and I’ve arranged the foldout chairs in a circle, and Tradition Dale takes a seat at the head of it. He passes around three laminated placards, one with the Twelve Traditions of A.A., another taken from Chapter Five in the
Big Book
called “How It Works,” and a third with “The Promises,” which is all about the important, life-affirming benefits of sobriety. The first two are read aloud as a kind of preamble before the sharing of stories begins. “The Promises” is saved for the end, so as to put a spin of optimism to even the darkest of meetings.

And they can get pretty dark.

One of the greatest realizations to come from A.A., at least for myself, is learning that there are plenty of others out there just as messed up and troubled as me. Some more so. It’s no consolation but it does give me an odd sense of belonging in a world that by and large considers people like me weak-willed, moral degenerates. After the preambles are read, Tradition Dale calls on one of the group to share. In this case it’s a young woman with a bony, angular forehead and sunken cheeks. A borderline anorexic. I’d say she’s in her late twenties, and she looks scared. She looks emotionally fragile, as if any second she could burst into tears. I’ve seen her in other meetings, but she’s not a patient here.

“I’m Gloria,” she says, “and I’m a grateful alcoholic. I’m glad I’ve been asked to share because I’m going through hell right now. It’s been a year since Charlie died, and I know they say it’s supposed to get easier with time, but for me it only gets worse.” She pauses. She looks around the group. “I don’t think I’ll ever be the same. He was always happy to see me when I came home, always there to cheer me up when I was feeling blue. You couldn’t ask for a better companion. We went everywhere together. Did everything together. Now he’s gone and I still can’t believe it. Last night I woke up thinking he was in bed with me again, but when I reached over to touch him there was no one there. The sheets were cold.” Again she pauses, this time to stare down at the floor. Her pain seems genuine, and I find myself feeling for her. “My friends,” she says, “tell me to look on the bright side—that we had twelve wonderful years together. And no one can ever take that away from us. I’ve been thinking about getting another puppy, but it wouldn’t be fair to Charlie. I mean, it’s just not right, especially so soon.”

Eddie is sitting next to me. He leans over and whispers in my ear. “Has she been talking about a dog?”

I shrug. “I guess so.”

I don’t like to think of myself as a cruel or insensitive man. Certainly you can deeply love a pet. At the same time, however, it strikes me that this woman has issues independent of alcohol and drugs and that maybe she’d be better off sharing her feelings with a good psychiatrist.

If addiction has one redeeming value it’s that it does not discriminate, crossing all ethnic, economic, and social barriers. In this group of BMC patients, we have a doctor who used to prescribe his own morphine sulfate, a paramedic who couldn’t keep his hands out of the med kit, a housewife strung out on wine and anti-anxiety pills, and a Beverly Hills building contractor hooked on OxyContin. Then there’s my pal, Eddie Salinas, a sixteen-year-old heroin addict, and a thirty-something-year-old crackhead who hails from the friendly city of Compton, home to the notorious Crips and their beloved brethren, the Bloods. He has prison tats covering both arms, and on his neck, in fancy script, is the name
LaKesha
. Dale asks him to talk next.

“I’m Ronnie,” he says, “and I’m a dope fiend and a drunk. My father was a dope fiend and a drunk. My mother was a dope fiend and a drunk. Both my brothers are dope fiends and drunks. Getting wasted is a way of life.” This guy doesn’t so much talk as shout, and he can’t seem to sit still in his seat. I’ve heard him share before and I like his passion. I like that he’s a little over the top, since the rest of us are usually more subdued. “Normal, for me, is being fucked up. Normal, for me, is getting sick on Thunderbird wine. Normal, for me, is spending every cent I make on rock. Can’t pay the rent, no problem. Just do another rock. Electric company turns off the power, no problem. Just do another rock. And when the money’s gone, and the dopeman don’t answer the door to you, you do what you got to do. Pimp your wife. Pimp your daughter. Rob some punk, split open his motherfucking head. Ain’t nothing stop me from getting the rock till the police send my sorry black ass back to prison where it belongs. Who all here would go that far?” He looks around the group, trying to register his effect on us. He wants to shock. He wants, I think, to show us that his addiction is somehow stronger and more real than ours because it comes from the streets. “That’s the monkey,” he says. “That’s the jones. Let me tell you all something, and then I’ll shut up. When I get out of here, first thing I’ll do is fire up that crack pipe. And you know what? Listen now,” he says, “because this is the kicker. It won’t be because I want to. I mean, I know rock’s bad. I know it takes me back to prison. Every time. But I’ll do it anyway. I’ll do it because of one thing. Because,” he says, “it’s who I am.”

On that hopeful note, Tradition Dale calls on the doctor to speak, the morphine addict, who confesses to having intercourse with his female patients after he’s knocked them out with a potent anesthetic. After that it’s the building contractor from Beverly Hills whose foray into addiction started with a minor back injury and a generous prescription for OxyContin, a synthetic narcotic similar to heroin. Others in the group share, too, but these are the highlights of the meeting, and when the hour is up everyone rises from their seat. We form a big circle. We all hold hands and recite what’s called the “Serenity Prayer”:
God grant me the Serenity to accept the
things I cannot change, the Courage to change the things I can, and
the Wisdom to know the difference.
This is followed by individual outbursts of various A.A. clichés:

“Keep coming back.”

“It works if you work it.”

“And it won’t, if you don’t.”

Communality has never come easily to me. By nature I’m a cynic, and in my book any public display of camaraderie is automatically suspect. I’ll accept as truth man’s darker nature far more readily than I will his goodheartedness, what little there is. Still I know I’m in exactly the right place. Still I know I belong here, that I’m no different or better than anyone in the group, and when I leave the meeting that evening I somehow feel uplifted. I feel, somehow, that I’m making progress.

On the way back to our room I stop at the pay phone across from the nurses’ station and tell Eddie to go on, that I’ll catch up. We’re not supposed to use it after 8 p.m., and it’s well past that, a few minutes before 10, but the nurses’ station is closed for the night and the hallways are empty. I dig into the pocket of my sweatpants and come up with a handful of change. I haven’t spoken with Alex and Nina for a couple of weeks now, and I want to hear my daughter’s voice. I want to let them both know I’m making real headway. That I’m pulling it together this time. I deposit the coins. I dial the number.

Alex answers, and she sounds groggy.

“Did I wake you?” I say.

“No, I’m just lying here on the couch watching the news.”

I want to ask if she’s alone but I know better. It’s none of my business anymore, and the last thing I want to do is get her started.

“How’s Nina?”

“Fine,” she says.

“Can I talk to her?”

“She’s not here.”

“Where is she?”

“Out with her friends.”

“But it’s a school night,” I say. “It’s almost 10 o’clock.”

Alex laughs, a scoff. “This from her father in rehab. C’mon,” she says, “give me a break. Since when did you start caring about your daughter?”

“I never stopped.”

“Get off it, Lenny. I’m the only parent here. While you were off getting fucked up, who do you think raised that little girl?”

I have no answer for her, none that doesn’t shame me, but it doesn’t mean I ever stopped loving Nina. And for that matter, Alex, too.

“Anyway,” she says, “let’s change the subject before I lose my temper. My lawyer’s been trying to get ahold of you but they have some stupid policy there about only friends and family and they won’t put his calls through.”

“What’s he want now?”

“He wants to make an offer.”

“You mean
he
wants to make an offer,” I say, “or
you
want to make an offer? On what? What for? Just get to the point.”

There’s a long pause, and when she speaks again her voice is dead calm and businesslike. “I’ll let him fill you in on the details,” she says, “but basically we’ve agreed not to press charges if you’ll sign over your half of the equity in the house. The way I see it, we’re doing you a tremendous favor. Seriously, you’re looking at attempted murder, or at the very least attempted manslaughter.”

“For Christ’s sake, it was an accident.”

“That’s your version.”

“You know I’d never try to hurt you or Nina.”

“Save it for the judge. I’m sure he’ll agree that plowing your pickup truck through the house was just an innocent mistake.”

At that she hangs up.

For a while I stand there in the empty hallway, listening to the hum of the receiver, wondering why it is that we can’t ever talk civilly. Why it is that we always end up arguing? At what point did we surrender our marriage? At what point did I cross the line from recreational use and social drinking into addiction, where I needed a drink, a line, a pill, anything just to make it through another day? What began as fun, or escape, had somehow turned deadly serious through the years. And in the end it wasn’t so much about getting high as numbing myself to the guilt and shame that accompanies a lifetime of abuse.

I return the receiver to its cradle and head back to my room. There I find Eddie lying belly down on his bed, writing in a notebook under the dim light of the table lamp.

He looks up at me as I come in. “Have you started your letter yet?”

“I will tomorrow,” I say.

“It’s due tomorrow,” he says. “You’d better get on it. That counselor is a real bitch.”

Eddie is referring to our group-therapy leader whose approach to sobriety involves belittling his patients, dismantling the self, or the ego, so that he can supposedly reconstruct it for us from scratch. His assignment calls for us to write a detailed letter of apology to the one person who we believe suffered the most from our drinking and drugging. We’re asked to make a list of all the times we let that person down, how we hurt and humiliated them, and we’re not allowed to make excuses for ourselves. No rationalizations. No justifications. We’re to take full responsibility for our actions, and when we’re done with the letter, instead of sending it, we’re supposed to share it with the group and then destroy it.