Wasted: An Alcoholic Therapist's Fight for Recovery in a Tragically Flawed Treatment System (33 page)

I miss my close-knit group of guys up in Penticton.

I believe I’ve conquered addiction. It’s the loneliness that devours me now.

I miss mountain biking, the grind up Puke Hill with Jim and our wild descent down Campbell Mountain. I miss our
pickup hockey games, shooting the perfect tape-to-tape pass right to Randy Alan, who snaps it into the top right corner as Paul the goalie sprawls in defeat, craning to see the puck behind him in the net. I miss going for beers and nachos at the Lakeside. I miss snowboarding down Apex Mountain, carving the champagne powder with Randy and our sons. I ache for my old life. I wonder why they don’t
call. But I know.

My assignment at work today is to sit and monitor a severely psychotic patient. Wong is just sixteen and borders on brilliance, but he’s so mentally ill, there’s little chance for it to shine. He has been catatonic for several days—completely unresponsive to any and all stimuli. We query a conversion reaction, which means the patient is in this state but there’s no neurological
or biological explanation for it. He now requires constant observation.

Here I am desperate for any human interaction, and the one person I’m attending to today can’t speak.

“Wong, how are you today?”

“Wong, can you hear me?”

“Wong, would you like a drink of juice?”

Nothing.

I grab his thumb and squeeze hard on the nail bed. I run my pen up the sole
of his bare foot. I poke his arm with a sterile needle.

Nothing.

He urinates in the bed again. Mark and I change his wet pajamas and linens and give him a bed bath. Mark leaves and it’s just Wong and me again. He is completely still.

Inexplicably, I’m suddenly gripped by suffocating anxiety. These periods pounce when I least expect them. I try to self-talk my way back to
control. I am alone. No one can see or hear me. An involuntary guttural noise escapes from me. This throaty grunt eases the angst. I do a quick scan of the room. No one’s coming. No one can hear me. That’s good. I allow it to get a little louder. Then a wee bit louder still.

Then, in slow motion, like a corpse coming alive in the morgue, Wong sits up erect and opens his eyes in an empty
stare. He looks directly at me and says, “Would you please stop making that annoying noise.” His eyes close and he lies back down.

I snap out of self-absorption. In shock, I pause, then laugh nervously.

An ever-so-slight grin comes over Wong’s mouth and disappears just as quickly.

“Mark. Mark.” I call out. “Come here. Wong’s okay.”

Wong’s okay, but me—that’s a different
story.

As the one-year anniversary of my sobriety approaches, August twenty-third, I experience a fresh dread. I’ve never made it a year. Not even close. I’ve always screwed up. But something is different this time. I never crave booze. I crave people.

I’ve been to many one-year cake ceremonies at
AA
. These are happy affairs, with family and friends and little children running
around making a racket. Mine will not be. Outside of a few stalwart
AA
supporters, it’s bound to be a lonely celebration. I text all three of my boys and invite them to the ceremony. Only Brennan, my middle son, drives down from the Okanagan to attend. Surprisingly, or maybe not so surprisingly, my ex-in-laws, Armond and Doreen, deeply religious and compassionate people, smile and take seats.

The usual Fiver meeting has about seventy-five people attend, most of whom I don’t know. Some lounge around the long centre row of collapsible tables. Others line around the outside perimeter, their chairs against the wall.

Randy is here. He walks over, gives me a card and says, “Congratulations. I’d never have dreamed or believed you’d make a year.”

Dumbfounded, I mumble
my thanks. Throughout my ordeal, especially in the recovery houses, I’d categorized people into good guys or bad guys. But every once in a while someone does something completely out of character. I heard, for example, that Eli from We Surrender goes to meditation retreats. Who are the villains, who are the heroes? I don’t know anymore.

A few of the guys recount Crazy Mike’s repeated relapse
stories, shaking their heads in wonder that I’ve finally, finally stayed sober for a year. They are sombre. There is no sense of celebration here, just dogged commitment on their part as
AA
members to stand by me.

Brennan addresses the group. “I’m glad my dad is sober,” he says. He isn’t normally at a loss for words, but this simple sentence expresses all that matters.

Then Armond.
“Mike has done a lot of bad things,” he says to the group. “He’s hurt my daughter and grandsons terribly. Sometimes I wanted to hit him. But I still love him and still care about him. Mike is a good man.”

Armond’s words transport me back to a summer night so long ago when he and I, his wife and my new wife, his daughter Rhonda, went swimming in a small lake in southern
BC
. A full moon
shimmered on the water, activating the phosphorescence. As we glided through the water, our breaststrokes broke the surface and the phosphorescence pushed ahead scattered out of our way like a million fireflies. There was so much magic, so much promise in that night. How could it have all turned out so wrong?

I should feel proud of this accomplishment—sober for one year. Maybe some day
I will. But this day is more a crushing reminder of what’s lost.

And after the meeting, another loss—young Rob has “gone out.” The guys from Mission Possible tell me last they heard he was living under the Granville Street Bridge. Young Rob, who got up at five a.m. to drive me to work, who helped me collect bottles for precious bus fare. Who scrounged the ingredients to make my last birthday
cake. Without him, I’d never have made it a year. How will I ever thank him now?

• 34 •

AS SUMMER SLIPS
into fall, Mark from the Adolescent Psych Unit invites me to join them at the gym. Jim asks me to play tennis. The ordinary invitations stop me in my tracks. I have not done anything like this in years. Nervously, I agree, but wait for them to cancel. I’ve lived so long with disappointment and rejection, it has become my default setting.

If I’m going to start going the gym or playing tennis, I need runners. I still wear a pair that had been donated to Mission Possible almost a year ago. Having been homeless, penniless and on welfare, I panic when it comes time to parting with money—strange behaviour from a guy who once thought nothing of dropping a hundred thousand on a boat. I can’t get my head around indulging myself
in a pair of Adidas, half price at sixty-five bucks. A great bargain. I go to the store three times and try them on. I look down at my feet in wonder, because I never thought I’d see the day when I’d be able to purchase my own shoes again. I agonize over the purchase. I finally relent and buy them. Then, wracked with guilt and worry, a week later I return them.

I settle into the idea that
I don’t have any control over whether or when my sons will be fully back in my life. Their absence is a chronic dull ache, but I move inexorably toward a new life, where I believe there will some manner of acceptance. I can already feel it.

In just a few days, it will be my fifty-seventh birthday, about a month after my first
AA
birthday. I’m lying on the bed in my attic suite, mentally
calculating how much remains on each of my debts, when the phone rings. It’s likely a creditor, maybe the hospital asking me to clock an extra shift. I’ll call them back.

But that someone just keeps calling and I get irritated. Finally, I crawl off the bed and glance at the number display.

And then I look again. It’s a call I’ve been expecting for two years, and now I’m terrified
to answer the phone. Expectation, hope and fear all flood my chest and flush up the side of my face. I pick up the phone.

“Hello, Tay,” I say tentatively.

“Dad,” he says, his voice heavy with emotion, “I’d like to come and see you.”

I hold back the urge to scream out loud,
Yes!
and say, “That would be awesome, Taylor. When do you think you’d come?”

“I’ll be in Vancouver
this Saturday. I’d like to get you something for your birthday. Take you out for dinner or something.”

“You don’t need to get me anything. It’s enough just to see you, son.”

The tears run down my face and I clear my throat to sound unaffected. “See you Saturday.”

I count down every hour, minute and almost second until he arrives, on time. That’s my Tay, always on time.
He pulls up in a brand-new black Dodge Ram 1500 Sport. He’s been away working as a lineman apprentice. He climbs down from the truck and just stares. We nervously take each other in.

Taylor is big and burly and handsome, still with that head of curls that makes the girls swoon. I’m thinner, still frail from last year’s illness. I fight the tears. My drinking laid waste to his late teenage
years. He was his mother’s rock and played surrogate father to his younger brothers. What should have been the last carefree years of his youth were spent cleaning up after a drunk, wresting car keys from me or physically kicking me out of our house.

We drive to the pier at White Rock and walk together, our silence interrupted by my rusty, shaky attempts at Dad humour.

Taylor stops
me.

“Dad, I can’t do this anymore,” he says. “I don’t want to be angry anymore. It’s not helping me. Or you. Or anyone for that matter. I need to forgive and move on.” He smiles. “Happy birthday, Dad.”

He wants me back in his life. He wants to forgive me. This nightmare—living a life without what I value most, my sons, has come to an end.

• 35 •

WITH TAYLOR BACK
in my life, I ramp up my recovery. In spite of my ongoing ambivalence about
AA
, I decide to finish Step 5: admit to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. Regardless of whether I believe it was the
AA
program that got me sober, this seems like the right thing to do. But I must find someone
who will listen while I confess. Really—who has that kind of time on their hands?

Other men in
AA
who’ve done their Step Five urge me to seek out Sister Meryl. They speak of her in hushed tones of awe, respect and gratitude. She and Father Larry run a treatment program just off Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, Bountyfull House.

Sister Meryl greets me at the door of Bountyfull House.
She’s a small woman in her early seventies, with a big, beatific smile. I follow her up the narrow staircase of the rickety old house to one of the small bedrooms, converted to an office.

As I reveal the results of my “searching and fearless moral inventory,” Sister Meryl listens with absolute compassion and all sense of time and place disappear. She just keeps smiling.

Failures
are often judged harshly, especially in recovery houses. Whoever had picked up, gone out or whatever else we chose to call it, was the number one subject of gossip. Some expressed genuine concern and regret for the fellow who relapsed. Others expressed a grim satisfaction, with comments like, “I knew that fucker didn’t have the balls to see it through.” Even our leaders spoke that way.

Five hours after I begin, my Step Five is complete. I should be exhausted and so should she. But there is a unique energy in the room, born of a sense of fresh possibility.

Sister Meryl invites me down to tea with her and Father Larry.

“You’ve got to take this experience as a gift,” Father Larry says to me. To that, Sister Meryl adds, “To teach you how to be better at what you do,
that is why this happened to you.”

I leave the little house on Heatley Avenue light and free.

“WELCOME, EVERYONE,” SAYS
the terminally gorgeous yoga instructor.

What the hell was I thinking? Here I stand, a small, scrawny, past-middle-aged man in spandex shorts, surrounded by real goddess women in my first Bikram Yoga class. After the spiritual cleanse delivered by my Step
Five with Sister Meryl, I find myself drawn to the notion of an actual physical cleanse. I’ve been athletic my whole life and miss the exhilaration of physical exertion. Young colleagues at work rave about hot yoga. So I thought I’d give it a try.

“Do we have any newcomers?” the instructor asks, scanning the room.

The room is so hot, I want to bolt and throw up. But her eyes lock
on mine, and I sheepishly raise my hand. No escaping now.

“Hi, my name’s Mike and I’m an alcoholic” nearly tumbles out of my mouth. Instead, I say a shy “hi.”

“Follow my instructions,” says the instructor. “If you feel nauseous or like you may faint, go into child’s pose or savasana. Please do not leave the room under any circumstances. And try very hard not to drink water until
we’re through the first series of poses.”

Now I really want to bolt.

I fight the nausea and concentrate on following the instructor through a progressively more difficult series of poses. The sweat pours off me. Small puddles form on the hardwood floor and my yoga mat. Rivulets become torrents streaming down my back. I fight for oxygen. A blinding headache forces me to the floor.

As I lie there and collect myself, I imagine fleeing outside to gasp mouthfuls of fresh ocean air. I think back to the sweat lodges I attended with the Okanagan First Nations on the banks of the Similkameen River. I fought similar urges there, too. I remember how transformative the heat could be, how the simple act of just being with the struggle was in itself a path to spiritual enlightenment.

I stay put. The nausea subsides and so, finally, does the headache. I get up and finish the class. Walking home, the world has an enhanced quality. There is more sparkle to the twinkling lights of the city. With each inhalation, the ocean air crackles. Blood pumps furiously throughout my body. Whatever this drug is, I want more of it.

I walk to the White Rock Bikram Yoga studio
every day, sometimes twice a day, and on my days off, three times a day. Typical Mike, who can do nothing in moderation.

A few months into my three-times-a-day hot yoga addiction, my young colleagues at work eye me appreciatively, exchange glances among themselves. And then Jim, obviously designated pitchman, speaks.