Wasted: An Alcoholic Therapist's Fight for Recovery in a Tragically Flawed Treatment System (4 page)

I’m at the mercy of those dopamine spikes.

In 2005 Rhonda and I did a $125,000 renovation to our home on the shores of Skaha Lake. The two-storey lakeside house now looks like the big reveal on some
TV
makeover show. The entire north wall is gone, replaced with an expanse of elegant French doors that open to a pressed concrete patio, where a soft
waterfall spills into a rock pond. Inside, solid black walnut floors stretch the length of the house. But the kitchen—oh, that kitchen! That’s where we blew the wad. The custom-designed, custom-built cabinets. The centrepiece: a black granite-topped custom-built island. Above it, light fixtures from a high-end design store in Vancouver’s swank South Granville shopping area. Nine hundred fifty dollars
each. At my count that’s about forty bottles of Smirnoff. The sad irony: Now that I have the house I always dreamed about, I’m no longer welcome in it.

My last day in the house: I’m laid out corpse-like on Jonny’s bed. The ratty bent venetian blinds, closed tight, bang on the taupe windowsill in rhythm with the cold wind blowing off the lake. The plastic bell-shaped ends of the pull strings
hang against the taupe wall, and that chocolate lab down the street barks.

Sick and shaky, I stare up at fluorescent stickers of little moons and stars that burnt out long ago. Jonny was five when he and his brothers stuck them on the ceilings of their bedrooms. Holed up now for four days of hard and heavy drinking, I pull back the beige and dark brown faux-suede comforter that smells
like Jonny—that combo of young teenager high-energy sweat and warm sleep-tousled hair. I survey the room, almost as if I know I am taking it in for the last time. The closet, jammed with snowboard boots and hard-worn runners; broken skateboards and a toolbox-sized Samsung ghetto blaster piled up the wall; the broken sliding closet door, hanging by one brass hinge. I meant to fix that in the summer.
Hoodies, T-shirts and frayed-hem jeans thrown high on top of the chipped blue dresser. And just out of reach on the floor, five empty vodka bottles. Jonny was sleeping in Taylor’s room. He didn’t want to see me or talk to me.

An abrupt, angry triple knock on the door lifted my splitting head off the bed. Rhonda stood by the open door, arm outstretched, her hand clamped on the doorknob.
I could see the dark brown dime-sized birthmark on the top of her right wrist. It has always charmed me, ever since we first met in the summer of ’82 at Bridges Restaurant on Granville Island.

“You have to leave, Mike.” Her voice shook. “The boys and I have had enough. You’ve been holed up here drinking for four days.”

When I first met Rhonda, I fell in love with her classic beauty.
Big, striking deep blue eyes framed by long, full lashes. Strong Nordic features—a classic nose and that tiny cleft in her chin—and a shampoo commercial full of dark sexy curls. Everyone thought she was a model: tall and gorgeous. At almost six feet, she towered over me, but I didn’t care. And to my immense good fortune, neither did she.

That day in Jonny’s room, her elegant frame looked
shrunken, hunched and defeated in the doorway. Her eyes showed that she’d gone past hurt and disappointment to something even more frightening —indifference.

“I know. I’ll leave right away.” My mouth, dry and gritty, choked on the words.

“Do you know what you’re doing to your sons? Do you know what you’re doing to me?”

“I’m sorry, Rhonda. I will stop.” I coughed.

As if she hadn’t heard me, Rhonda pulled the door closed.

“Just go, Mike. I don’t care anymore.” The door clicked shut.

I packed a small bag with toiletries, underwear, socks and one change of clothes and drove slowly to the Slumber Lodge Motel, where for weeks I faded in and out of an alcoholic fog just enough to hear the sounds of summer life echo across the water. Children’s
laughter. Dogs barking. Tunes and chatter from the multitude of boats cruising Lake Okanagan. The intimate murmurs and soft giggles of courting couples. I knew life was passing me by, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. I told myself, this is temporary. She’ll take me back.

That was almost three years ago.

I no longer waste energy bothering to keep up appearances.
I just want to hole up with my girlfriend and get drunk. After our night in the drunk tank, in the tiny kitchen of Todd’s little bungalow, Dana and I create a variety of vodka-based concoctions. Caesars made with extra hot and spicy Clamato juice and pickled asparagus stir sticks. Screwdrivers made with hand-squeezed orange juice. Black Russians made with Rockstar Coffee energy drink. Smirnoff Ice
coolers enhanced with a couple of added shots. We gulp down our cocktails as if they were soda pop. I try to make eye contact with Dana. She looks at me but doesn’t see me. I stare into her eyes hoping to make a connection. Those eyes look back at me, empty. It’s a familiar look. I’ve seen it before in my father’s empty blue eyes.

• 5 •

SHILO IS A
small Armed Forces base in southern Manitoba, about a two-hour drive west of Winnipeg and forty-five minutes north of the North Dakota border. It’s smack dab in the middle of the vast plains that stretch across the continent. “Fly-over country,” sophisticated East Coasters like to call it. We live at #39 Kingston Avenue. Ours is a small three-bedroom,
two-storey duplex with a green plastic-coated clothesline running the length of the yard from the back doorway. Mom hangs clothes winter and summer. I help her take off the frozen sheets and towels, stiff boards of linen and terrycloth.

On this early summer day in 1966, Mom is in the hospital for an operation. “Women’s stuff,” says Dad. She isn’t gone a day and my dad is on a bad bender.
He staggers around the house, giving us orders.

“Michael, pack us enough stuff for a few days for you, Roger and the girls,” he slurs. “We can go fishing and just relax while your mother’s in the hospital.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Dad. Why don’t we just stay home and we can pitch the tent in the backyard.” I want to distract him. Make him think about something else,
anything to derail a disaster. I know these plans. I’ve been in on a lot of them.

Going hunting drunk. Going fishing drunk. Flying the plane drunk. Driving to hockey drunk.

Today’s grand plan is to go away to a cabin at Sandy Lake, about ninety miles north, for a fun family holiday. The four of us kids look at each other, hoping someone will run for it. The rest would follow. We’re
all about a year and a half apart. I’m the oldest, at eleven. Then Roger, ten, Loretta, nine, and Danette, six. I’m used to running the household, but today I just don’t have the energy to lead a mutiny.

I ache with familiar doubt. My stomach hurts and my face burns. My legs and jaw stiffen.

We half-heartedly pack the ’64 Guardsman blue Mercury Comet Caliente. The car is always
tuned up and the oil always changed. Dad is in the Royal Canadian Electrical Mechanical Engineers. “Change the oil regularly and keep her tuned up and your vehicle will last forever, especially a Ford,” he once told me.

Dad loves Fords. And Volkswagens. “That Ford 289
V8
... best engine ever designed. But the Krauts, they make the best vehicles.” Dad says they’re geniuses when it comes
to anything mechanical.

“Those square-heads are smart and damn hard workers. Just don’t buy anything the Japs make. They’re sneaky little sons a’ whores. Look what they did at Pearl Harbor.”

We arrive at Sandy Lake late in the day. It’s a small resort town with a soft beach and lots of perch and pickerel. Little summer cabins dot the shore. As we pass through the town, I spot a
small hotel with a bar.

Several Natives loiter out back drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. A couple of doors down, by the post office, I see a small grocery store. Dad’s eyes follow the hotel as we pass by on our way to the cabin. About a mile out of town, Dad pulls into a tiny driveway leading to our cabin, one of those dots on the lake.

A small, well-made dock stretches from
the backyard right over the water. My little sisters jump out and dash to the end of the dock. They drop down to their hands and knees, peer into the clear water and exclaim, “Hey, look! There’s a whole bunch of little yellow fish! Mike, can we go fishing?”

Dad says, “Those are perch. Good eatin’, but bony.”

We scramble to bring our stuff in. I make the bed assignments. The beds
are small, even by kid standards. A vague musty smell hangs in the air.

“I’m going into town to get some groceries for dinner and some fishing gear,” Dad says. “You kids make a fire in the stove and play down at the beach.”

He looks down at me. “Michael, look after things and I’ll be back in a bit.” And he leaves.

This is not the first time I’ve been told to “look after
things.” At eleven, I am mature beyond my years. Partly because every time Dad has gone on a bender, I’ve “manned up” for Mom. But mostly because I figured out the only way to survive as the shortest person in my school is to presume a leadership role.

I wanted to play hockey, so I had to skate faster than the rest. My punches had to land harder. I made the team. I also made the football
team, but they didn’t have pants small enough, so a football mom made the necessary adjustments. We were playing the team from Carberry, Manitoba, all corn-fed six-foot strapping Scandinavian farm boys, a team of giants. One tried to tackle me, but I was so fast he missed me and grabbed my pants, which came off. I scored a touchdown in my jock. I was also the high-jump champion, to the disbelief
of my schoolmates. Held the record for years, so I’m told. All of which is my way of saying I learned early the importance of perseverance and determination, of sticking up for myself. “Bitesize. Shorty. Half-a-Man. Little Fella. Shrimp.” The nicknames stuck, said now with warmth and respect, the sting gone.

I fashion us all fishing rods out of willow branches and some old line and hooks
I find in a broom closet by the wood stove. The fire in the stove sputters and hisses.

“Michael, Michael, take us down to fish,” my little sisters beg. I turn the little cottage upside down, but there is no bait to be found, and no shovel to dig for worms. I improvise with a soup ladle and fail miserably.

Finally, my brother Roger’s face lights up. “Let’s try my Silly Putty,” he
grins. We put a little pink gob on each of our hooks. The perch love it. Stupid fish. As the warm summer afternoon wears on, we fish and we fish. Big fat horseflies drone in the background, occasionally swooping in for the kill. Our noses turn bright pink. Our freckles pop. Between us we catch eleven pretty little perch, all about four to six inches long. They’d taste great fried in butter. If only
we had butter.

The air is still warm as the shadows lengthen and the sun glints lower now through the shimmering poplar trees. I ache for Mom. She’d fry up those little fish in no time.

“Michael, I’m hungry. I’m tired. When can we eat?” Danette whines.

“Can you cook our fish, Michael?” Loretta asks.

I know what I have to do. “Rog, keep an eye on Loretta and Danette.
Don’t let them down by the water. I’m gonna get Dad.”

As fast as my short legs will carry me, I beeline for the hotel bar. I hear it before I see it. I hesitate at the door. With a deep breath, I shove it open.

Dad sits at a red terry-covered round table laughing, with a shorty beer bottle in his hand. A Native woman snuggles on his lap. I walk over to him. He glances past me,
then his head whips back.

“Michael,” he says in a low voice. “You’re not supposed to be here. Go back to the cabin, I’ll be there in a bit.”

I stomp outside and wait on the curb by the hotel. And wait. And wait. It’s dark now and I worry about the kids. With a goodbye glance at the well-worn bar door, I trudge back to the cabin.

The kids sit together at the kitchen table
playing Snakes and Ladders.

“Mike, we’re hungry,” says Loretta. “Where’s Dad?”

I don’t answer. Instead, I wordlessly gut, clean and fry the perch.

We devour them. They are delicious, even without butter. Satiated, now sleepy, I tuck the little girls into bed in one small room, then Roger and I take the small bed in the other. We’re just about asleep when I hear loud bangs.

Bodies lurch and sway in search of balance, knocking over furniture. I peer out the curtain that hangs in the doorway to our little room. There’s Dad, stumbling in. Outside, Hank Snow sings “I’m Moving On” from the radio in the Comet.

Here comes an Indian couple. Then a skinny man dressed in jeans, cowboy boots and a straw cowboy hat. They all smoke Export A cigarettes and the men
each carry a case of Molson Canadian beer. This party is just getting started.

I want with all my heart to tell Dad and his new-found friends to get the hell out. I fall back asleep as Hank croons away. I wake up as the cowboy crawls into the small bed with my brother and me, still wearing his hat and boots. He stinks of stale beer, cigarettes, cow shit and
BO
. He slips his arm around
my neck.

I slide out of the cot onto the cold floor, leaving Rog in the bed with this skinny cowboy who stinks.

Eyes wide open now, I hear the sounds of sex. It won’t stop. I hate to look, afraid of what I might see, but I have to look.

I peek into the living room and see Dad on the dingy brown couch with the Native Indian woman. Both naked. My dad on top of her. Hatred
flares up from my gut, sears my brain. The Native man is passed out in a chair, oblivious or desensitized or both.

I wonder about Mom in the hospital and hope she’s okay.

I lie back on the cold floor. I just want to take the kids and go home. I know how to drive. It would be easy. But I just lie there until it’s quiet, other than the incessant snoring of the skinny cowboy who stinks.
His arm is around Rog now. I feel like killing somebody. Eventually, I fall asleep.

When I wake up, everyone is gone—everyone but Dad. He sits at the little kitchen table. That look: I’ve seen it so many times by now. Is it guilt? Remorse?

No. It’s a hangover. Leftover drunkenness and self-pity. He looks at me, those blue eyes empty.