Wasted: An Alcoholic Therapist's Fight for Recovery in a Tragically Flawed Treatment System (2 page)

Dana slithers out of the driver’s seat and staggers to the front door with me in tow. Her nine-year-old son,
just home from school, spies us first as we step into the house. He runs up and hugs Dana. Her older son walks in, and he and his brother exchange anxious here-we-go-again glances. The boys back away and sink simultaneously into the couch.

My presence seems to barely register, for which I am thankful. My stomach knots and my jaw clamps and my eyes dart around the room. I wish for a cloak
of invisibility. I’m sobering up quickly, but Dana keeps kicking the vodka-and-orange back. She emerges from a bedroom, her drink mysteriously refreshed. She’s got a stash everywhere. Under different circumstances, I consider that one of her greatest attributes.

Dana stands at the sink washing dishes, an intimately domestic task. All I can do is watch. I shouldn’t be here. The boys sit
silent on the couch, their eyes scanning back and forth from their mother to me and to the door, hoping for a miracle to walk in. Feigning nonchalance, I lean on the back of an old easy chair.

Finally, Dana’s twelve-year-old speaks in a tone and manner that children of alcoholics learn early. Don’t want to set Mom off.

“Mum, maybe it would be better if you came back later?”

He and I lock eyes. I detect fear, disguised as anger. I look away.

“Dana, let’s go,” I urge. I take her by the elbow and guide her toward the door.

Too late. Dana’s estranged husband appears in the doorway. He takes in the scene. I see on his face that odd blend of shock, resignation and the preternatural calm of those who love drunks.

Dana explodes.

“You
useless prick.” Her face contorts with rage. “I hate you.”

Sean, clearly practiced at this, sits down at the kitchen table. “Dana, you’re drunk. Why don’t you guys just leave?”

“You prick. You useless piece of shit,” Dana spits.

Sean turns in his chair to face Dana and places both of his hands on the table. The boys scrunch closer together on the couch. Lizzy, an old white
mutt, belly-crawls under the cherry wood coffee table, just her curlicue tail visible.

My mouth hangs open in shock. I have never heard my refined Dana talk this way.

“Dana, let’s go.” The fingers on my left hand embed into her upper arm flesh. “Let’s get out of here.”

With brute strength she wrenches free and lunges for the Henckels chef’s knife on the kitchen counter.

“Not until I kill this limp-dicked prick!” She wraps her elegant fingers around the black handle.

No time to process this lightning turn in Dana’s personality—I jump to action.

“No, Mom, no!” Dana’s older son pleads from the couch. “Please just leave—just go!”

Sean grabs a kitchen chair and holds it between himself and Dana like a lion tamer. I dive for Dana, grab
her wrist and wrench the knife from her hand.

“Let’s just go, Dana. That’s enough.” I toss the knife back to the counter. I feel my carotid arteries pound.

Dana wrestles and kicks at me as I drag her out the door. They all stare after us, in part disbelief, part relief.

My mind reels. What the hell just happened? What happened to my impeccable Dana? Who is this woman?

I hear Sean on the phone behind us, talking to 911.

We bolt for what is now our getaway car. We jump in and Dana tears out of the driveway, spraying gravel everywhere, cursing vehemently at “the fucking male-dominated world” as we fishtail down the road. I can’t take my eyes off her. I still can’t quite believe she’s the same person.

Though I’m closer to sober at this moment,
Dana still has a driver’s licence. Mine’s been suspended. I picked up my first impaired driving charge a few months ago, at nine a.m. on my way to the liquor store. My second impaired charge came the very next day, also at nine a.m., on the way to the same liquor store. Then a few weeks ago I passed out at the wheel and slammed my brand-new Honda Ridgeline headlong into a wall of rock. It was
my fifty-fifth birthday.

I’m riding shotgun for gawd-knows-how-long.

We careen through the village in search of an escape route and squeal round the corner onto Naramata Road. Her foot to the pedal, the sea-green Miata nose points ever higher up the steep slope. Dana is flushed, breathing rapidly and heavily, still trembling from the encounter with Sean. We climb and climb till
just past the first bend back to Penticton, when Dana suddenly cranks the wheel right and the Miata heads west on an old dirt road through an apple orchard toward the lake. We stop. There is no more road. Pumping the brakes, Dana nudges the nose of her car to the edge of a cliff.

The scene is surreal. Think Thelma and Louise in a British Columbia tourism ad. We teeter at the edge of the
steep cliff overlooking Okanagan Lake. Dana’s sports car perches precariously on the road edge, the ground beneath an unstable mix of sand, silt and gravel.

Two hundred feet below, the lake’s shiny blue waters sparkle. A cloud of sandy dust and dirt drifts silently forward off the cliff. The sky fades from orange into purple. The sun sets.

Dana’s manicured porcelain hands still
grip the steering wheel. Her tousled hair hangs over her face. She blows away an out-of-place strand. Her bloodshot eyes glare straight ahead at nothing. They scare the shit out of me.

A few months ago, I fell in love with those eyes. It was a bright July day. I had taken my lunch break at Three Mile Beach. I was sitting staring out at the water, washing down my wrap with a Smirnoff cooler,
when out of the corner of my eye I spied legs. Long, tanned legs. I tracked them up as they disappeared below a flimsy apple green sundress. She looked at me and smiled, then turned away with a bounce of her dark red curls. I watched her for the next few minutes. She kept glancing back.

I looked behind me to see if she was trying to make eye contact with someone there.

Nope. No
one else on the beach.

I downed the last swig of the cooler and, with all the swagger a five-foot-six-inch man can muster, I strode across the sand and introduced myself.

“Dana,” she replied, and reached out to shake my hand.

She’s getting divorced. She’s moved up to the Okanagan from Vancouver. She’s managing a friend’s B & B. Two kids, living up here with her ex.

I commiserated. I too am getting a divorce, but I can’t even get my act together to make that happen. We agreed to meet for coffee the next morning. That was the first and last coffee we shared. We immediately switched to the hard stuff. Dana is a drunk like me.

“Fuck.” Dana squeezes the steering wheel. “I hate that prick. He called the cops.”

The giddy, drunken exhilaration
of being on the lam subsides. The gravity of our situation sinks in.

I need to take charge because I am closer to sober. I ease open the passenger door. I hate heights. I shuffle out of the car, leaning back as if leaning forward would send me cascading over the edge. I peer down just enough to see the lake. I edge back and around the rear of the car to the driver’s side and swing open
the door.

“Get out. I’m driving. You’re going to kill someone.”

“No. Fuck off. I’m driving. I still have a licence, you prick.” Dana stares out the windshield.

How did I so quickly become the prick?

I shove her toward the passenger side. She arches over the shifter, glances sulkily my way then out the window. I climb into the driver’s seat, press the brake, shift
the Miata into reverse, ease off the brake, while gently pressing the gas pedal and slowly back away from the cliff edge and turn the car around. We don’t get far before I hear it. The faint wail of police sirens echo up the valley as the Miata squeals onto the pavement of the main road.

As I round the first bend, the wail accelerates and amplifies. I squint in the rear-view mirror to
see three
RCMP
cruisers closing on us, really fast. Should I try to outrun them?

Sober second thought intervenes. I pull over.

The officers haul us out, splay us spread-eagled over the trunk of a patrol car and pat search, and then not-so-gently handcuff us. I am subdued, fearful and aghast, a star in my own getaway movie. Dana wriggles, fights, slips a hand out of the cuffs and
whoops in triumph. “Did you see that, you fucking pricks!” She pumps her liberated fist into the clear night sky.

Her bravado doesn’t last long. Cops quickly re-cuff her, tighter now, and dip her head into the back seat of the first car. I get ducked into the second car, and the third cruiser brings up the rear. As we pull out onto the highway, I can still hear Dana screaming. We head
back to the Penticton drunk tank.

• 3 •

FRANK IS THE
processing officer tonight. Shit. We played on the same hockey team for years. Our sons played hockey together since they were toddlers. Countless times over countless beers, we’ve engaged in play-by-play analysis of the boys’ games. We’ve bunked together on tournament trips. Played poker into the wee hours of the night,
carrying on like old buddies. We
are
old buddies.

Tonight, Frank is all business. He ushers me in to the back room. Sits me down in front of the Breathalyzer. With resignation, I blow. He and I both know I’m over the legal limit—by a lot. He takes my fingerprints, then my mug shot. As he fills in the requisite forms, Frank pauses and peers at me.

“Please get some help, Mike.” His
pen hovers over the form. “You’ve got to stop. You’re needed in this community.”

“Thanks, Frank, I will.” I hang my aching head. I know I won’t. Not today, anyway. I need a drink.

Eyes down, I shuffle into my cell. The door slams behind me. A sour stench assaults my nose—a blend of vomit, bleach, urine and sweat. I shake and my stomach lurches. I hurl myself toward the standard
jail-issue stainless steel toilet and just make it. I wretch and vomit and wretch and vomit and dry heave again and again and again until I stop and lie spent on the concrete floor beside the toilet. In just a few hours, blessed dawn will save me from this fetid hole. We’ll get sprung, the liquor store will open, I’ll get my medicine and the shakes will stop.

I peel myself off the floor
and collapse onto the bed, cold, battleship-grey painted metal with a one-and-a-half-inch-thick black plastic mat like the ones you use at the gym to do sit-ups. I pull the blanket over my aching body, aware of the rush of red heat up the sides of my neck delivering guilt, shame, recrimination and the inevitable self-loathing.

With most of the alcohol purged from my system, I contemplate
this disastrous turn of events. Dana is charged with uttering threats. I have a third impaired charge.
Three
impaired driving charges! I could have killed someone. When working with clients who’ve driven drunk, I’ve always dispassionately wondered how in this day and age anyone could drive drunk.

Now I know.

How will I ever look my three sons in the eye, especially Taylor, my oldest?
He took on the burden of preventing me from driving drunk. He developed a sixth sense, anticipating that moment before the alcoholic’s judgment gives out and the grandiose sense of self kicks in. That very last moment when I still had a single shred of good sense, he’d show up and demand I hand over my car keys. A few days later he’d show up and hand them back, knowing he’d have to do it all
over again in another few days. The last time he knocked on my door, I was deep in
DT
s, detoxing, and he sat at the foot of my bed for hours to see me through it.

“It’s gonna be okay, Dad. You’re gonna get through this. You need some Tylenol? I’ll get you some more water.”

Once healthy enough to walk, in a swift betrayal of his compassion I immediately shuffled down to Bubblees,
my favourite liquor store, right next door to the local peeler bar, Slack Alice’s, and stocked up on Smirnoff. Back home, when I was deep into my bender, Taylor showed up, a moment too late this time. I was on top of my game, impervious. There was nothing I couldn’t do. I refused to hand over the keys. He wrestled them from my hands, then stared at me. Something in his eyes changed. He tossed the
keys on the kitchen counter and walked out the door.

Not so long ago, my three boys were the centre of my life. I loved being a dad. Back in 1992, after work I’d rush home in the early winter twilight and head directly to the backyard, grab the pistol nozzle of the crackling stiff green garden hose and stand there for hours, night after night, flooding layer after layer, letting each layer
freeze until the sheet of ice shone smooth like black glass in the moonlight. I constructed the rink boards with two-by-fours and four-by-eight sheets of half-inch Douglas fir plywood to create two-foot-high walls around the rink that took up almost the entire backyard. I installed floodlights at each end. Then Team Pond took on all comers. Seven-year-old Taylor already had the style and confidence
of a pro. Five-year-old Brennan attacked the puck with gritty determination. And three-year-old Jonny, well, he was so cute all he had to do was show up. I was player, coach, trainer, manager, first-aid attendant, water boy and referee. Brennan argued every call I made. Time suspended as we perfected passes, pretended to be Gretzky, Lemieux, Orr and Lafleur. And we always beat the Bruins for
the Stanley Cup. My wife, Rhonda, good-natured but exasperated, would yell herself hoarse. “All right, you guys, that’s enough. Mike, the boys have to come in. It’s way past their bedtime.”

Regret.

I’m probably going to jail, where I belong. Quickly now before I forget... Thank you, dear God, for saving me from killing someone, for keeping an eye on me when everyone else has given
up the job.

More incomprehensible shrieks from Dana interrupt my reverie. I hear the overnight duty officer reprimand her.

“Ma’am, stop pushing your feet through the food slot. Please remove your feet.”

I envision her pretty red-painted toes protruding through the food slot. How did this get to be my life?

Who will see my clients when I’m in jail? With all my drunk-driving
infractions, I’ll lose my driver’s licence for life. And worse, I’ll lose my licence to practise psychotherapy.