Wasted: An Alcoholic Therapist's Fight for Recovery in a Tragically Flawed Treatment System (18 page)

For men who’ve spent time in institutions or prisons, this authoritarian approach might actually work. But I doubt it. Compassion is hard to come by here.

One day, knowing I’m within earshot, I overhear him tell one of the men he’s counselling, “Do you want me to tell you like it is, you fucked-up crackhead? Or would you rather I charge you
a hundred bucks an hour and blow smoke up your ass, like some other fuckers around here do?”

I am that fucker to whom he is referring.

One day, as I sit depressed and suicidal, I hear the click of a camera. Neil stands above me. He’s just snapped my picture.

“I’m going to send this to your kids. You sad fuck.”

Hurtful, belittling behaviour is Neil’s hallmark.

I watch him tear many other men apart and he seems to enjoy it.

Gary is a schizophrenic suffering from acute psychosis. Like so many schizophrenics, he does not have the capacity to care about personal hygiene. Nor does he have the cognitive capacity to process certain information. He is disoriented to place and time. He has difficulty connecting cause and effect. His capacity for
abstract thought is limited. His concentration and ability to stay focused are almost non-existent. He cannot follow simple instructions.

One day, Neil has had enough of Gary. “Get out of here, you crazy fuck. You’re nothing but a leach. Pack your plastic garbage bags and hit the road.”

The next day, we see Gary panhandling in front of the local grocery store, homeless and stoned
on crack.

Neil claims to be accessible by direct phone line from Mission Possible to his home an hour away. The phone is tucked into a small closet on a tiny table with a basic wooden chair. On the wall above is a sign with a number and the words “Direct Line to the Holy Spirit.” The men call it constantly. The Holy Spirit returns your call if he considers you deserving. And that is rare.

A week after my arrival at Mission Possible, I’m not getting any better. I decide it’s time to check out. Permanently. Maybe third time lucky.

• 18 •

I PULL MYSELF OUT
of bed, get dressed and grab my beloved leather briefcase containing all my incriminating documents—police reports, charges, legal papers and my mountain of bills. I have not slept all night. I have a plan.

I go to the garage and retrieve a twenty-foot length of yellow plastic rope that I discovered in a pile of junk several days ago.
Just like the rope Harold used. I stuff it into my briefcase and walk out of the house.

Two of the guys are sharing a smoke on the front porch.

Aussie gestures to my briefcase. “Hey, Crazy Mike, where you going? You got a business call or something?”

By now my obsession with my briefcase is an ongoing joke.

“Don’t do it, Mike,” Aussie says as I walk down the driveway.

“Just think about your boys, dude,” says Cal. Cal and I know each other from We Surrender. One night he revealed that when he was ten years old, he came home from school and discovered his alcoholic father dead, hanging from the beams of their second-floor balcony.

I carry on down the long gravel driveway, through the trees to the main road. I head to a large wooded area full of
trails. I scouted through here the other day and identified a large tree somewhat hidden about twenty metres off the trail in the woods.

What has happened to my life? I love the woods. I wish I had a bottle.

Snapshots flip through my mind.

Me, at the beach, launching the boys over and over again into the water as they scream with glee. “Do it again, Dad, do it again!”

Making bows and arrows out of sticks and fishing line.

Swimming in the frigid water at Numb Nut Creek. That was the name I gave Paleface Creek, at the far end of Chilliwack Lake, where it flowed straight from the Cascade Mountain glaciers perched overhead. The boys’ female cousins would blush and giggle every time we said “Numb Nut Creek.”

I haven’t alerted anyone to my
plan. I’ve cried wolf too many times. I’ve lost count of the number of times I called my mother, my wife, my children, crying like a baby, telling them I was going to commit suicide. The first few calls sent them all spiralling into overdrive, marshaling resources to save my life. But after successive calls, when I actually didn’t kill myself, they couldn’t stand it anymore.

To love someone
who is mentally ill or addicted or both is its own unique hell. That ongoing sense of fear and trepidation, not knowing if the person is going to die this time from driving drunk or from an overdose or will actually follow through on their myriad threats, is too much to bear. I remember how my mother would say, in the throes of desperation over my dad’s repeated drunken binges, “It would be
easier if he
would
just die.”

I find my tree just off the main trail. I plan to bury my briefcase in the wet, mossy dirt under that log. The sun streams through the trees, lighting up the umbrella ferns. I smell the forest as it pumps oxygen into the air. It’s a warm April day, rare for this rainy time of the year in coastal British Columbia. The rainforest breathes, peaceful and silent.
A sense of serenity descends. A memorable line of Chief Dan George’s to Dustin Hoffman in
Little Big Man
comes to mind: “It is a good day to die.”

I am reaching into my briefcase for the rope when I hear the footfalls of horses on soft earth. Two people on horseback are slowly plodding my way. I do my best to look casual and inconspicuous, leather attaché case in hand.

I force
a smile as they approach. The beautiful middle-aged woman and what must be her teenage daughter smile back astride majestic animals. They glance at each other and then, with identical wondering looks, size me up.

“Hello,” says the mother. “It’s a beautiful day to be alive, isn’t it?”

I look around the woods. The trees stand tall and still. The sun’s rays dance through the ferns
and underbrush. The smell of hay and animal sweat steams off the horses. One nibbles the other’s glossy neck.

I haven’t had a feeling like this in so long; at first I can’t recognize it. Is it a sign from God? Keep going, Mike. Forget about one day at a time. Manage one moment at a time. Just this one beautiful moment.

After a short pause I reply, “Yes, it is.”

As the horses
and their riders saunter off around the bend in the trail, I stuff the death rope back into my case. Today is not a good day to die after all.

I emerge from the woods onto the paved country road. Briefcase in one hand, I thrust out my thumb. I will not go back to Mission Possible. A miasma hangs over that place.

An old blue
GMC
minivan approaches, slows down and stops. In an incredible
stroke of bad luck, the driver is Ken from Mission Possible. He is the only one with a driver’s licence. A cigarette droops from his lips. He glances derisively at my briefcase.

“Where you going, Crazy Mike. Business trip? Ha ha ha.” He guffaws, and the rest of the van’s occupants join in mirthlessly through the smoke haze.

“Crazy Mike’s on a business trip. He’s hitchhiking to
his next corporate meeting.”

“He’s in bad shape, Ken,” Cal says from the back seat. “Don’t you think he should go to the hospital?”

Ken agrees, nodding.

“The shrink needs to see a shrink.”

Resigned, I get in the vehicle. Ken drives the ten minutes to the Langley hospital and orders me out of the van.

“We’ll wait out here. Go in and don’t fucking think about
taking off.”

Once again I sit with an admitting nurse, who escorts me to a side room.

“Wait here, Mr. Pond. The psychiatric nurse will see you shortly.”

The clock reads 5:31 p.m. At 6:04, the psychiatric nurse walks in.

“Can you please give us a urine sample, Mr. Pond?” She hands me a specimen container.

After I hand it back to her, full, she begins the
standard mental status exam.

“I’m not suicidal,” I lie. Nope. Not feeling paranoid. Not me.

As I stand waiting in the doorway, a patient in the bed across from me turns her head away and cries into her pillow.

She thinks I’m evil.

An old man to my left points at me and laughs.

He thinks I’m insane.

I sneak to the washroom down the hall. I look both
ways, open the door quickly and step in.

“Hey, mister!” A woman sits on the toilet. Her four-year-old daughter plays in the sink beside her.

“Oh my God. I’m sorry.” I run back to my room.

The woman, eyes big, scurries past me. She shields her daughter from the crazy old pervert who sneaks into ladies’ washrooms.

The beds around me gradually empty. I am the only
one who remains.

They’re evacuating the
ER
. I’m under surveillance now.

The nurses check on me every fifteen minutes. Is that the police at the nurses’ station?

The psychiatric nurse enters my room. “Mr. Pond, your lab work came back positive for benzodiazepines. Are you a drug addict?”

“No, I’m an alcoholic. I was given Ativan the other day at Peace Arch Hospital.
Are the police here to arrest me?” I sweat. “They think I’m a sex offender. I went into the ladies’ washroom by mistake. The door wasn’t locked. A woman and her daughter were in there. I’m not a pedophile.”

“It’s okay, Mr. Pond. No one is here to arrest you. The psychiatrist will be here shortly to see you. Here, take this. It’s olanzapine. It will help you relax.”

“I don’t want
to take that. It’s an antipsychotic. It’ll knock me out.”

“We can’t give you a narcotic—doctor’s orders. Please take this or we will have to give it to you by injection.” How many times have I said those exact words to uncooperative patients? Without another word, I take the medication.

My head numbs and my eyes narrow. My arms and legs feel heavy, like wet wood. The olanzapine
has kicked in. My thoughts wire together a bit. I can’t stay here. They will lock me up.

Down at the nurses’ desk, the police keep looking at me and laughing. They are here to trap me in a sting operation. But I’m too smart for them. Feigning nonchalance, I saunter into the patients’ waiting room and pick up the phone. Hours have passed since Ken said he’d wait outside. He’s gone home.

“Hey, Randy, can you come and get me?” I don’t take my eyes off the police.

“What, Pond, are they releasing you?”

“Yes.”

“We can’t come and get you this time of the night.”

“But it’s only a ten-minute drive.”

“I’m not coming to get you. You’re on your own, Pond.” He hangs up.

I bolt for the exit door and dart through the parked ambulances.
The cold night air hits me like a slap. Shit! I forgot my briefcase. They’ll read my documents and find me. I scramble back past the nursing station, grab the case and dash out down the long access road to hide in the trees.

It’s cold. I wait and watch. No one comes after me.

• 19 •

I APPROACH A PLAZA
of small businesses and restaurants. I’m famished. I haven’t eaten in two days. Several Dumpsters on wheels huddle in the back lane. The green one: locked. The blue one: locked. The black one: open.

I rummage through layers of wet, smelly garbage and find a half-eaten Subway meatball sandwich. My favourite. It’s
cold, the bread soggy with tomato sauce. It goes down in three chewless bites, bits of wrap included. Subway never tasted so good.

Somewhat satisfied, I head down the street and take a left on a gravel side road. I meander along in the rain and chill. The olanzapine keeps my thoughts settled, but I sense anxiety waiting in the wings.

What will I do? Where will I go? Whom can I
contact? Nothing. Nowhere. No one.

I need to stash my briefcase. All the valuable legal documents, business statements, personal writings and bills have become too heavy to carry.

No, better not. Someone might find it.

A patrol car pulls up beside me and an officer gets out. His flashlight beam hurts my eyes as he approaches. He’s very young, with a military haircut. He
scans me up and down. I’m dressed in a blue polo shirt and jeans, my leather attaché in hand. “What are you doing out on the street this time of night,” he demands.

I’m stumped for an answer. I shrug.

“Can I see your
ID
?”

“I’m sorry—I don’t have any. I’m homeless.”

“I know what homeless looks like, and you aren’t it.” He points to my briefcase. “What do you have
in there?”

“Just a bunch of personal papers and important legal documents.”

“Really.” Sarcasm oozes out of him. “Put it on the trunk and open it up.”

I open it. The officer finger-shuffles through the stash of papers.

“Yeah. Wow. Looks like pretty important stuff.” More sarcasm. He slides back into the patrol car. “Stay off the road or you’re gonna get hit by a
vehicle. It’s dark on these streets. Take a bus to Surrey in the morning and go to Social Services.”

I keep marching.

By now, the chill has crept into every one of my aging joints. I find a discarded sweatshirt in the ditch. It’s filthy and stinks. I pull it over my head.

I spot a dilapidated shack with a caved-in roof nestled on the edge of a power cut-line. I crawl in
through a smashed wooden door. The place reeks of piss and shit. Apparently I’m not the first homeless guy to find this little sanctuary. I pull a couple of splintery planks together, lay them on the ground and lie down with my briefcase full of secret treasure. Sleep comes in short, shivering snippets. Dear God, please let it be sunny tomorrow.

The sun rises and cracks through an opening
in the wall at my feet. Thank you, God.

I gather myself up. My body aches. I step outside and find a tree to relieve myself.

I hit the streets again, scavenging for food under a weak sun.

In a back lane, bins and bags are piled in small groups behind each home. It must be garbage day. I look both ways and lift lids to check inside each bin, careful not to get caught.

What’s this? A small tray of macadamia-nut chocolate chunk cookies rewrapped in clear plastic—looks like something from a specialty bakery. Three whole untouched cookies left. Who would throw these out? What a find!