Wasted: An Alcoholic Therapist's Fight for Recovery in a Tragically Flawed Treatment System (34 page)

“Mike, it’s time we put you on PlentyofFish.”

“What’s
plenty of fish?” I blink at them.

About half a dozen staffers collapse in giggles. Tracey rolls her eyes.

“Internet dating, Mike. Once we take your picture and post your profile, you’ll feel like captain of the football team all over again.”

After being married for twenty-five years and lost in an alcoholic fog for the last three, I’d missed the Internet dating phenomenon
completely. The only email I receive is from Groupon.

Soon, the distinctive ping of email notification punctuates each workday. Dozens and dozens of women appear interested in me. During breaks, my colleagues read each prospective new partner’s profile online, pass judgment on the picture and suitability of each respondent, and pick the lucky women with whom I should correspond. And so
begins a blissful, giddy period in my life. During each lunch break, I engage in several satisfying email flirtations. Every evening after work, I meet a different woman for coffee.

And the inevitable questions begin. “So why don’t you drink? And why aren’t you driving?”

“I’m an alcoholic,” I explain. “I lost my driver’s licence for drunk driving.”

I hope that rigorous
honesty will impress.

“Thank you. I don’t feel the connection.”

“Sorry. I don’t date men shorter than five foot ten. It’s just my thing.”

“I love my wine. I don’t think it’s right to drink in front of you. Good luck. I’m sure there’s a wonderful woman out there just waiting for a nice guy like you.”

And so it goes. PlentyofFish serves up a conveyor belt of attractive
women who clearly do not listen to their mother’s admonitions about meeting men on the Internet. If they only knew half the truth about me, they’d run screaming from the room.

November 21, 2010—I’m tired from a wicked shift, but I have another PlentyofFish encounter planned. I almost cancel. The SkyTrain rattles through the city. I’m en route to meet, at rough estimate, my fifteenth first
date since I started online dating over a month ago. Maureen and I have talked on the phone a few times.

“I’m a therapist,” I said. “I work at Surrey Memorial in psychiatry. My plan is to open a private practice in Vancouver.” I don’t tell her I have an apartment with absolutely nothing in it but a bed. Buying furniture is not on my debt repayment plan.

She’s a former journalist,
now a filmmaker. A journalist. Great. She’ll take probing to a whole new level. I approach Steamworks Brew Pub. As I approach, I spot an attractive, well-dressed, diminutive middle-aged woman, reaching into her seriously overstuffed purse. She looks up and we immediately recognize each other from our profile pictures. I’m surprised she actually looks like her picture. Now a veteran of PlentyofFish,
I’ve seen more than a few women seriously underestimate their age and weight.

She’s fumbling for change to give to a street fellow with a three-toothed grin. As her big purse slides around on her thigh, a pink curler plops onto the pavement. I will come to understand that neither of these two things—the giving, or the random appearance of pink rollers—are uncommon events.

I also
hand the guy a few bucks. “Here you go, buddy.”

“Thank you, sir. You’re both angels.”

There but for the grace of God, go I.

“That was very nice,” Maureen smiles. “I have a soft spot for those guys.”

Hmmmm. This may go better than I thought. We walk into the bar together and take a table close to the window, overlooking the water and boats. When the waiter arrives,
she orders a glass of Chardonnay.

“And for you?”

“Orange juice and soda,” I say with faux confidence.

“You’re not ordering a drink?” Maureen’s eyebrows lift. Shit, here we go again.

“I don’t drink,” I say. Here it comes.

“Why don’t you drink?”

When I tell her, she doesn’t dash for the door. She seems intrigued, even. We plan another date. And another.
Slowly, I unpeel the layers of the onion that is my story. I censor myself. Yes, I was in recovery homes last year, I admit. I’m sober a little over a year.

The night before our second get-together, she says on the phone, “I know my friends would be nervous if they knew about your alcoholism, but I want to tell you Mike, the fact that you’re an alcoholic... it’s not a deal breaker. You’ve
been sober more than a year, and I think if you have the courage and discipline to stop drinking, then the least I can do is keep an open mind.”

We spend Christmas Eve together in her beautiful condo backed up against Grouse Mountain in North Vancouver. As we sit and cuddle on the couch admiring the twinkly Christmas tree, she absently asks, “Where did you spend last Christmas, Mike, with
some of the
AA
guys?”

“Yes, something like that.” I nod. I was in prison, but she can’t know that. Not yet. Then of course, she asks the most difficult question of all. “Why did you drive drunk?”

Aside from the turmoil I wrought on my boys’ lives, the decision—or rather non-decision—to drive drunk is the aspect of my story for which I feel the most shame. I consider my answer a
long time before I respond.

“I drove drunk,” I say, “because I was a drunk. As my alcoholism progressed, judgment disappeared. I went through a stage of giving people my keys, to prevent me from driving. Then that got to be too big a burden on people I loved. They stopped taking them. Then, as my condition worsened, my ability to make a reasoned choice disappeared. Nothing can make it
right.”

That’s all I can say. I sense she’s disappointed, like she expected something more insightful, something that would allow both of us to let me off the hook a bit.

Over the next few months, I unfold my complete story before Maureen. As I peel back each consecutive layer, her eyes pop even wider. Her body coils as if to pounce. Is this where she says, no more, she’s had enough?
No—recognizing a good story when she sees one, she bristles with excitement. One night she says, “You have to write a book, Mike.”

I write, delete, rewrite and delete. After two weeks, I proudly present Maureen with my twenty-page masterpiece. After a couple of pages, she scrunches her nose, tilts her head sideways and looks at me with a protruding upper lip. “Not bad for a first go round.”

I exclaim, “Not bad! I do know how to write, you know.”

She tilts her head a little farther, looks me straight in the eye and says firmly, “Listen. Do you want to write a book people will read, or do you want me to blow smoke up your ass?” I think it was that moment I finally fell completely and irrevocably in love with Lil Mo.

I fell in love with her grit and her wit. And
more than that, I fell in love with her generosity of spirit. Not just with me, but with everyone. It takes a special person to take the heavy odds against building a relationship with a freshly recovered alcoholic. Maureen is that special person: a risk taker, an adventurous soul. She came into my life at a time when I was just beginning to believe in myself again, and having her believe in me
too has enabled me to solidify my recovery, to have the courage tell my story in this book.

• 36 •

SOMETIMES, MUCH AS
I hate to admit it, I act like a sober drunk even if I don’t crave alcohol. It’s an obsessive, intensely self-focused kind of thinking that doesn’t leave much room for anyone else. It’s my place of resentment, where I coldly calculate my spreadsheet of losses. It doesn’t happen often, but the more I engage in it, the more Maureen points
out all the amazing accomplishments of my new life. The more she suggests I concentrate on being grateful, the more cranky and pissed off I get.

One spring night, after a few days of dealing with King Baby, Maureen has had quite enough. She suggests we attend the closest
AA
meeting. Right now. So off we go, in cold silence, to a meeting I’ve never attended, just a few minutes from our
home in North Vancouver.

I walk in ahead of her and she follows, fighting tears of frustration. She won’t talk as she struggles to regain her composure. We find two wooden chairs next to the wall and stare ahead as the room fills to capacity. Everywhere around us, members greet each other with warmth and encouragement.

The chair is just about to call the meeting to order. Maureen
turns to me, eyes wide.

“That’s Dana,” she says with certainty. She looks back at a tall woman with striking red hair who is walking into the room, her back to us.

My heart jumps into my throat. I know that walk. I know that hair, pinned up exactly as I remember it. Maureen knows it intuitively now too, because we’ve been writing this story together. The woman takes her seat immediately
across the room from me. Our eyes lock. Dana. Of all the
AA
meetings in all the towns in the world, she had to walk into mine.

It’s been a few years since we’ve seen each other. She’d call me on occasion, but I rarely picked up, because I know how dangerous Dana and I can be together.

My hands tremble as I remember the wild ride over Okanagan Mountain that landed us in jail. The
two of us staggering to the liquor store the next morning. Dana buying me winter clothes so I could survive on the street. Breaking into her friend’s house and drinking every drop in sight. Springing me from We Surrender. The many times her
MX
-5 sped off into the night, her long red mane flowing behind her in the wind. Dana, sitting at the end of my hospital bed, slurping Red Bull and vodka as
I hovered near death. Betraying me with Big Stu. Dana, Dana, Dana. The damage we did to each other, and to everyone else who cared about us. I’m mad at her, mad at myself. Relieved she’s here because maybe she’s finally sober now, too, but unnerved as hell because just when I finally get my act together, here she is again. I wish her well, but I worry what any contact with her will do to me. Will
I want her sober? Will she still want
me
sober? What’s Maureen thinking now?

The chair begins. “This is an
AA
open meeting. Could we have a couple of topics please?”

A middle-aged woman calls out, “Humility.”

An older gentleman says, “Step Three.”

Another man in the back yells, “Gratitude.”

“Thank you,” the chair says. “That should be enough.” His eyes sweep
the room and fix on mine. I hold his gaze. The non-verbal interaction confirms the invite and consent to speak. He smiles.

“Would you like to share?”

First to share. I get the opportunity to set the tone of this meeting. My head tips left, and I unconsciously scratch that one spot on the crown of my head and my face flushes self-consciously.

“Sure,” I pull in a deep breath
and deliver the obligatory
AA
intro. “Hi, my name’s Mike and I’m an alcoholic.”

A refrain of “Hi Mike”s.

I look directly across from me to see Dana’s lips pout and those big blue eyes widen. She shifts in her chair and splays the fingers of her hand on her knee to inspect her nails. Perfect as always.

I clear my throat.

“This is my first time at
this
meeting and
it’s good to be here. I’ve been sober two-and-a-half years and I think my brain is just now starting to function somewhat okay. I lost everything due to my drinking. And now it’s all starting to come back. My sons are talking to me again. I am practising my profession again. I’m in an amazing relationship. And I’m very, very grateful tonight.”

I gaze sideways at Maureen. Her eyes brim.
She’s angrier now, because all day I refused to be grateful about anything. Now the group nods appreciatively and I bask in their approval and she still thinks I’m a dink.

Dana watches us and crosses her legs. I can’t gauge her reaction.

Several more people share. A young man offers, “I ended up almost dead on the Downtown Eastside. I had to surrender my will and get humble. I
thank this program for saving my life.”

A shudder crawls up the back of my neck as I remember, not so long ago, wandering those same streets, lost and lonely in the black cold rain, panhandling for beer money.

“Thank you.” The chair nods. “I think we have time for one more.” Once more he scans the room. He stops at Dana.

“Would you like to share, ma’am?”

“Yes, I
would. My name’s Dana and I’m an alcoholic. I’m three months sober. The whole thing has been very humbling.” Dana recounts her humiliations and her triumphs. So, in front of a hundred unaware strangers, we catch up on each other’s lives.

After the meeting, Maureen and I stand looking at each other, the question unspoken.

“Go over and talk to her, Mike,” Maureen says, and slips
out into the hall.

I weave my way over to Dana, neither of us quite able to take in what just happened. How we’re actually together after all this space and time, in the same room.

The crowd falls away. I search my heart and the truth pops out of my mouth. “I’m glad you’re getting on track, Dana.”

Her eyes spark with that familiar fire and I feel myself drawn to her. Oh
God, not now, just when I’ve really got my shit together. She gazes up at me with a look that’s part come-hither but more “holy shit, I can’t believe we’re both standing here sober and alive.”

We stand and stare and process. And then I surrender. It’s over and we both know it. Romance has taken a back seat to regret. We both have done each other too much harm.

We are at a loss
for words. Which is a first for us.

“Take care, Dana.”

“Be well, Mr. Pond.”

I am.