Wasted: An Alcoholic Therapist's Fight for Recovery in a Tragically Flawed Treatment System (16 page)

Sleep:
Suffers from severe insomnia.

Appetite: Poor.

Thought Content and Process: Ruminates and obsesses over the hopelessness of his life. Suicidal ideation and intent. Memory and concentration poor.

Perception: Paranoia, delusions of persecution, auditory hallucinations.

Judgment: Poor.

Insight: Good.

DSM-5
Diagnosis: Alcohol Use Disorder—Severe; Major
Depressive Disorder; Generalized Anxiety Disorder; Sleep Deprivation–Induced Psychosis.

Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF) score: 35/100.

THE EARLY MORNING
hours tick by. Sleep visits for no more than ten minutes at a stretch. For several days, anxiety immobilizes me.

I call and postpone my visit with Dr. Acres. I’m too afraid to leave my room.

April the eighth
dawns grey and rainy.

Rhonda drives down to Vancouver with her boyfriend. At my request, she contacted a lawyer and asked him to draw up the papers so I can sign my one remaining asset—our home, held jointly—over to her. Signing over the home means accepting I’ll never live there again. I’ve always held out hope that someday I would recover and I’d be invited back.

I’m sober but
a long way from recovered. I’m sick with anticipation of this next loss. Perhaps signing over everything is another mistake? Even Eli, who is big on making amends, isn’t sure this is the right thing to do. “Yah, guy, it’s the right fuckin’ thing to do. Least you can do,” is what he said yesterday. But today, he quietly approached me and said he wasn’t sure he’d given me the right advice.

This time, Josh drives me to the lawyer’s office. I had found him through the Yellow Pages. I just needed a lawyer to witness the deed.

We wait in the parking lot.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen Rhonda. I study myself in the car mirror, and for the first time in a long time, I really see myself. Face still covered with cold sores. Gaping wounds in my scalp where I scratched
worry holes. I look like an old man as I gum my lip.

Rhonda’s green
CRV
pulls into the parking lot. Her new partner ducks out with the dog as Rhonda waves me into the car. She chatters in her matter-of-fact way, as if we’re going to Costco to do the family shopping. This is her way of maintaining calm. Only we’re signing away the last dregs of my life. I tremble with agitation, my anxiety
amplified by the situation. My memory jets back twenty-five years to Thanksgiving, the day Rhonda first introduced me to her family as the man she wanted to marry.

She led me by the hand up the walkway to the main door of her parents’ sprawling rancher. I noticed an embroidered plaque: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. John 14:6 (
NIV
).” I was met first by the royal family. Plaques and pictures of Queen Elizabeth
II
, Prince Philip, King George
VI
, the Queen Mother and the newly married Prince Charles and Di jockeyed for space. Rhonda smiled.

I trailed her into a Norman Rockwell painting. Three pumpkin pies sat on the counter waiting for whipped cream. I peeked in the oven and a waft of hot, savoury air hit my face and
fogged my glasses. Extra sausage-meat stuffing wrapped in tinfoil lay on the oven rack beside the big blue roasting pan. Elaine, Rhonda’s older sister, was mixing two big bottles of ginger ale into a crystal punch bowl. Alcohol-free. In the family room the open wood fireplace crackled. Rhonda’s father, Armond, sat on the couch playing his banjo and singing “Somewhere in Heaven.”

Rhonda
introduced me shyly and proudly. “This is Mike, Dad.”

I was in heaven.

Armond placed the banjo at his side, pushed himself up, limped across the room, let out a deep belly laugh, grabbed my arm and shook it like he was shaking off an old dirty carpet. That was the beginning of one of the most satisfying and grounding relationships of my life. I was besotted with Rhonda, but in
Armond I found unconditional love. Here was a man rooted in his family. Rhonda’s mother was unwavering in her Christian beliefs. She said, “If you want to be with our daughter, you need to turn your life over to the Lord and become a Christian.” So I did. I found stability in their world of absolutes. I gave my life to the Lord Jesus Christ. I was baptized in water and in the Holy Spirit. I became
a believer, even a Sunday-school teacher.

After I asked Rhonda to marry me, my friend Billy took her aside and said, “Maybe you should think this through, Rhonda. You know Mike has a drinking problem.” For a long time in my marriage, I didn’t have a drinking problem. Choosing Rhonda, becoming part of her family, inoculated me against being a drunk.

It appears I needed a booster
shot.

Twenty years later Rhonda would say to me, “I should have listened to Billy.” When I think of how much I’ve disappointed Armond and hurt his daughter, tears well. I wipe my eyes and push the car door open. “Let’s go in and get this thing over with.”

As Josh, Rhonda and I file into the office, the lawyer eyes me carefully.

“Mr. Pond. I want to make it very clear you
are not getting legal counsel from me.” He speaks slowly, hitting every consonant. “You have no legal counsel here. I am just witnessing your signature. Is that clear?”

What’s clear is that he’s questioning my mental state.

I sign the documents. We leave.

Josh drives me back.

“It was the right thing to do,” he says to the windshield.

I rest my head against
the cool window. The fog from my breath obliterates the outside world. I don’t know what the right thing is anymore. I have no legal assets. I am officially destitute. The car rolls along the road back home to We Surrender.

• 16 •

A WEEK GOES BY
and I have barely left my room, but today I must. Today, Dr. Acres will deliver his report. He’ll share it with me first, then he’ll deliver it to the authorities. I need to show up at his office, even though I know it will all end badly. Monk offers to drive me. He’s taking all the guys downtown for the North Shore Round-Up, a renowned
AA
event
held every year in Vancouver. Thousands of alcoholics gather for a weekend of dry fun—a contradiction in terms if there ever was one.

I must play normal for the doctor, particularly this doctor. He holds my shaky future in his hands.

I’m actively suicidal. Dr. Acres knows—based on a search of the database where all the province’s prescriptions are logged—every medication that’s
been prescribed to me over the last five years. He suspects I have a history of misusing benzodiazepines. He must know I’ve been taking zopiclone on the sly at We Surrender. But the stuff doesn’t even work.

Dr. Acres greets me in the examination room.

“Good day,” he says, and smiles. “You look rough today. Are things okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I shrug. “Ready to go back to
work. I need to go back to work. A lot of debts to pay right now.”

“Well, your lab work came back negative.” Dr. Acres taps my chest. “However, your prescription report shows a lengthy history of taking benzodiazepines and hypnotics.”

My shoulders drop with relief. The zopiclone wasn’t detected. It appears that not everyone is against me.

“I have taken Ativan,” I explain,
“and other anti-anxiety agents over the years, for sleep and withdrawal.”

He stops me. “You’re poly-doctoring. You’ve had six different doctors over the last five years alone. It appears you have a problem with prescription medication as well as alcohol. The point being, you have a long history of alcohol and drug abuse.”

I’m too wound up to articulate an argument. I know in my
heart I’m just an alcoholic. I used pills over the years only to combat the effects of the booze. On my downward spiral, I only went to walk-in clinics, thus the six doctors in five years.

But really, what does it matter what kind of mess I am? I’m a mess.

Dr. Acres continues. “I’m recommending that you remain in the recovery house or a similar treatment centre for a minimum of
three months. You must remain abstinent. You must attend
AA
meetings at least three times a week. You must provide clean random urine specimens for the next two years. You must be medically monitored by an addictions specialist. At the end of three months, if you meet all these conditions, I will recommend a gradual return to work.”

A shock of relief heaves out of me. But it is short-lived.

“The monitoring will cost six hundred dollars up front,” Dr. Acres says, “and you’ll pay one hundred dollars each time you provide a random urine sample. The average is eighteen samples a year over the two-year period.”

My broken brain does the math: $4,200. That’s a pile of money that I don’t have, and see no way to obtain.

I stare at a picture on the wall, of a college
soccer team surrounding the doctor, autographed by the players. On the bottom it reads “Thanks, Doctor Dave.”

Inanely, I read it out loud. “Thanks, Doctor Dave.”

“You’re welcome. You’ll need to see me every two weeks. Book your next appointment with Donna. See you then. I’ll send the report to your employer and the College of Psychiatric Nurses.”

Monk waits outside in the
van, his massive bulk hunched over a paperback,
Awakening the Buddha Within
. Several guys from the house stand on the sidewalk. They smoke, leer and make rude gestures to women walking by.

Monk sees me, snaps the book shut and hollers, “Let’s get going! We have to be at the Hyatt downtown by twelve.”

I don’t want to go. I want to go back to the recovery house. Forty-two hundred
dollars might as well be a million. After the finality of signing over my one remaining asset to Rhonda, I’ve lost all hope. My head rests on the passenger window. As shop windows and people blur by, the guys bombard me with ridicule.

“How’s it feel getting loaded then going to work to take care of a buncha mentally ill kids, Pond?”

“Yeah, Pond. You’re more fucked up than the crazies
you look after.”

“Hey, Crazy Mike. You’re crazier than the crazies. You need bug juice. Ha ha ha.”

They’re right. I can hardly discriminate their voices from the ones in my head.

At the Hyatt, thousands of people bump and mill about. I wander amidst them, confused and disoriented.

I spy Matt Jones, my lawyer. He walks my way with a big toothy smile. No! That’s not
him. It can’t be him. He’s in the Okanagan. He’s an alcoholic attending the rally? That’s why he’s here. No, he’s here to take me to jail! I pivot and careen through the crowd in the other direction. I want to jump in front of that bus.

Monk’s massive paw clamps onto my shoulder. He spins me around. “Not on my watch, Pond! Get in the van. I’m taking you back, you crazy son of a bitch!”

Since he was my desperate resuscitation partner for Harold a few months ago, keeping me alive has become Monk’s mission. We are like war buddies now, locked in grim camaraderie.

Monk’s eyes narrow as he shoves me into the vehicle.

We race south on Highway 99. Monk’s paws pinch the steering wheel of the blue ’89 Chevy van. The high noon sun glares into our eyes.

Monk’s moon-shaped face stares straight ahead. He pulls the visor down and with firm calmness says, “Don’t even think about it, you crazy fuck, or I’ll kill you myself.”

That’s right, I’m thinking about it. I’m thinking about nothing else. Whipping along at 112 kilometres per hour, I will simply open the door and jump out.

I unclick my seatbelt, muffling the sound with my hand,
and let it retract slowly. My right hand clutches the door handle, fingers wrung tight on the chrome. If I open it quickly and fly out, it will be over fast.

“I’m done,” I swallow, hard.

“Don’t open that fucking door, Pond,” Monk commands, keeping his eyes trained on the road. “Just relax, damn it! I’m taking you to the hospital.”

My fingers squeeze the door handle until
we screech to a halt at the
ER
entrance of Peace Arch Hospital in White Rock. Monk runs around to my side and flings open the door.

“Get out! Now!”

“I can’t go in there. They’ll certify me.” I cannot be certified as a crazy person. Even in my advanced state of mental decompensation, I know my career as a therapist is toast if I get certified.

“You
are
certifiable, Pond.
Get the hell out of the van! If you don’t go on your own two feet, I will carry you in there.”

Under the Mental Health Act, if I’m certified, I am deemed a danger to myself and/or others and will be legally held against my will for up to thirty days in a psychiatric facility. I don’t budge.

Monk phones Josh, the house manager.

Josh’s tinny voice vibrates through the phone.

“You know they don’t want crazy fucks like him there,” he says to Monk. “They hate drunks. You’re wasting your time.”

Monk is frantic. “I don’t know what else to do with him. He’s driving me crazy. He’s going to off himself. He almost jumped out of the van.” Monk glares at me.

Faced with 310 pounds of fury, all five foot six of me acquiesces. I may be crazy, I may want to
kill myself, but I don’t want to suffer undue pain. I go limp. As we say in mental health lingo, I decide to become compliant. For now.

Other patients smell my stale, sweaty presence before laying eyes on me. I know I look terrible. My toothbrush and I broke up a long time ago. I haven’t shaved or showered in two weeks, despite constant friendly hints like “Pond, you smell like ass and
look like fuckin’ shit” and “Don’t touch the food, Pond, you’ll contaminate it.” I refuse to shower. I now not only look the part, but live the part of a skid-row bum. I just don’t care.

Tremors wrack my body, my breath flaps shallow and rapid. My heart flip-flops in my chest. A steel band pulls ever tighter around my temples—paralyzing anxiety. Everyone stares at me.

A young couple
whisper to each other and gesture in my direction.

An old man says, “Hey, buddy, would you just sit down and wait like the rest of us? There are some people in here who are really sick, you know.”