Wasted: An Alcoholic Therapist's Fight for Recovery in a Tragically Flawed Treatment System (5 page)

“I gotta go to the store and get us
some grub and fishin’ tackle,” Dad mutters. “Take care of your brother and sisters. I’ll be back in a bit.”

I stare at his back, broad and muscled, as he pulls on his army-issue white T-shirt. When I was little I would nuzzle my nose in his T-shirts.

I haven’t done that in a long time. I look at him with disappointment as he walks out the cabin door. I think: When I grow up, I’ll
never be like him.

• 6 •

WELL HERE I
am: all grown up. There’s an empty forty-pounder on the night table, and now I’m exactly like him. After two weeks of binge drinking at Todd’s, there’s not a drop left in the house. My hand rests in a soft indentation on the side of the bed where Dana should be. Every time I pass out, she disappears. I get up and stumble to
the bathroom. I hear the
TV
in the basement. Whenever we get rollin’ on the booze, Todd retreats to the basement. I swing open the front door to get a breath of the cool, crisp fall air.

How long since Dana left? I have no idea.

Several plates littered with shards of burnt toast and hardened egg yolk ring my bed. I need a drink. I slink down the stairs into Todd’s tiny windowless,
airless bedroom. I tiptoe my way through piles of stale, dirty laundry. I leave the light off—don’t want to alert him to my presence. I hear him laugh at the
TV
. Good. I rummage through the collection of rolled quarters and loonies Todd keeps on his dresser in an old tattered basket. Many times I’ve helped him roll his spare change while we sat watching the hockey game. Twenty years ago, Todd
was robbed and smashed in the head with a two-by-four, which left him permanently brain-damaged. Now he’s being robbed again.

I sneak back upstairs. The phone rings. I recognize the number. It’s Dana’s sister’s, in Vancouver.

“Come down here, Mr. Pond,” Dana’s voice sounds heavy and sad. “I’m not doing very well. I need you, Mr. Pond. Please, please, you have to come and help me.”

I hang up the phone. Dana needs me. How many loonies for the six-hour bus ride to Vancouver?

“THIS IS THE
last stop, buddy, you have to get off.” The bus driver shakes me awake. When he turns his back, I gulp the last few ounces of vodka from the bottle stowed in my backpack, bought with Todd’s rolled quarters. Outside in the cold late-October rain, the driver hoists my duffle bag
out of the underside baggage compartment and watches me, somewhat concerned. Stiff and wobbly, I collect my wet bag and pour myself out into the heart of Vancouver’s notorious Downtown Eastside.

I’ve got to call Dana. I need to find a payphone, because I left my cell in Dana’s Miata, now in the impound lot in Penticton.

And—holy shit!—that’s not all we forgot. I slap my forehead.
The synapses all firing now, I remember: there’s a hundred pounds of moose meat in the trunk, too.

Before the binge at Todd’s, I’d been out hunting with some First Nations friends, and a cache of cut and wrapped meat had been loaded into Dana’s trunk. That was two weeks ago. They’ll have pried open the trunk by now, convinced there’s a body in it.

I chuckle to myself. Down here,
this kind of behaviour doesn’t get a glance.

After the warmth of the Okanagan, the coast’s cold rain feels like an assault. Heavy winds whip the water sideways. It lashes the near-deserted streets and pounds so hard that the drains, blocked by decaying leaves, can’t keep up. In the dark and in my drunken state, I can’t dodge the dozens of ankle-deep puddles. My socks squelch in my shoes.
As I lurch from door to door, I find every covered stoop already spoken for. The godforsaken wretches down here have one up on me—they know the lay of the land.

At least I have a warm bed to go to, with a warm woman waiting. Finally, I spy a payphone.

The last payphone on the Downtown Eastside is my salvation. Even the druggies have cellphones now. I squeeze into the booth and
shut the door against the wind and rain. I keep one eye trained on my duffle bag, as it now holds all my worldly possessions. Dana’s cell goes directly to voice mail. She probably lost it. Again.

I dial Dana’s sister’s number collect. 604-267-3... 604-268-2... No, that’s not it. I jab the keys. My panic mounts. I pound every permutation. I try dozens of numbers. None is Dana’s sister’s—a
number I have dialled dozens of times.

I need a drink. But I have no money.

Gentrification has crept into Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Well-heeled diners sidestep massive puddles and run the gauntlet of shopping carts to line up in front of the latest hot restaurant. They glance in my direction but my presence barely registers. My cloak of invisibility finally seems to be working.
More seasoned entrepreneurial drunks and addicts offer to hold the diners’ places in line, save their parking spots, watch their cars.

As I round a familiar corner, loud, thumping music drifts from a club. When I first arrived in Vancouver some thirty years ago, I probably patronized this place myself.

I have no money, a concept I can’t quite get my head around. “No money” used
to mean, just pull out a credit card. Mine are all suspended for non-payment. My one remaining bank account—joint—Rhonda has justifiably frozen.

A rush of blood heat races up the sides of my neck, and my face flushes a fiery red shame. I look down at my feet, put my hand out and mumble to the kind of people I used to be. “Do you have any spare change?” I look down to the shaking hand.
That can’t be my hand.

I can’t make eye contact. I can’t be aggressive. I can’t do it.

I’m a failure at panhandling.

The craving for alcohol courses through my veins. It’s my poison. It’s my medicine. I need it to stop these shakes, these tremors, these leaps of vomit up the back of my throat. A vibrating queue of young people snakes halfway down the block.

I scan
the lineup, unzip my duffle bag and pull out the one last thing of value in my life: my laptop. My hands caress its leather case, given to me by my sons on my fifty-fourth birthday.

I look down at it for a long moment. This laptop is my life: notes, writings, programs, spreadsheets, databases, proposals, pictures, training materials for my workshops, business plans— everything I would
want and need to start some semblance of a new life as a therapist in Vancouver.

I swallow hard and shuffle along the line.

“Does anyone want to buy a brand-new laptop?” I hold it out to the people in line. “Does anyone want a new laptop?” I repeat my plea over and over. It gains urgency and volume with each repetition. Each one in turn looks, then looks away, focusing on the flirtatious
dance at hand.

“Let me see what you got, old man.” A young guy surveys my laptop. He wears a slim-fit white shirt opened to the sternum to reveal freshly waxed, shiny, steroid-enhanced pectorals.

“I’ll give you twenty bucks.” He’s rightly assessed he has the upper hand in this negotiation. “That’s all I got, dude.”

“Twenty bucks? I paid fourteen hundred dollars for it.
The case alone cost a hundred and fifty dollars,” I stammer.

“Twenty bucks, take it or leave it,” he says.

Bastard. In desperation I take it.

My hand shakes as I jerk the twenty-dollar bill from his hand. I walk forty-three paces down the block, into a bar, and order a Rickard’s Red. My favourite beer. I down it, and in quick succession order four more. Gone in a matter
of forty minutes.

I drop my head onto the bar and the light fades.

I WAKE UP
God knows where. I uncurl myself from a fetal position on the only tiny piece of dry concrete in Vancouver, my no fixed address for I think three days now. My splitting head rests on my duffle bag. I fumble for my jacket. It’s gone. The beautiful black leather jacket I bought several winters ago when life
was good is gone. One by one, pieces of the man I used to be keep disappearing.

A bedraggled fellow with an overflowing shopping cart shuffles past. “Hey, man, you got any extra cash so I can get some breakfast?” He nods at me.

“Beat it,” I mutter as I uncoil my stiff and aching body, standing up to get my bearings.

Where the hell am I? 604-298-3250. A surge of clarity
rips through my foggy brain like a bullet. 604-298-3250. Dana’s sister’s phone number. I repeat it over and over as I run around frantically trying to find the payphone I’d used before. 604-298-3250. 604-298-3250. Where’s the damn phone? 604-298-3250.

I spot the phone booth beside the liquor store. Inside, I dial the number.

Pick up. Pick up. Pick up. Three rings. Pick up. Pick
up. For Christ’s sake. Pick—

“Hello.” A tired voice answers the phone.

“It’s Mike,” I say. “How’s Dana? Is she there?”

“Hello, Mike. She won’t come out of her room. Only to go to the bathroom or drive to the liquor store to get more to drink.”

She calls out, “Dana, it’s Mike.”

After what seems an eternity that deep, sexy voice, now with an edge of rasp,
picks up the phone.

“Oh my God, Mike,” Dana says. “Where have you been? You were supposed to be here days ago. I’ve been phoning everyone in Penticton. Your office manager said you left there on the bus. I thought you were dead. I need you. You have to get here now.”

She gives me directions to her sister’s place.

I march straight up Main Street to the closest SkyTrain station.
The SkyTrain is Vancouver’s wondrous above-ground driverless train. No one takes your ticket; it’s an honour system. You just buy it and walk on. Tonight, I have no ticket and no honour.

I squish my sodden body and duffle bag into a seat. The train is warm and dry. Everyone reads quietly, texts or just stares into space. In a mere thirteen minutes I will arrive at Metrotown Station.

That gives me thirteen minutes to take stock. Getting on that Greyhound, I abandoned my practice; turned my back on the few loyal clients who still believed in me. I haven’t been to my office since the bender began at Todd’s little house. I wonder if I even have an office anymore.

At 9:47 a.m., the automatic doors slide open and I step off the train. It’s still pouring outside.

It’s a short walk past the sixties-era mall, home of the closest liquor store to Dana’s sister’s home, into post-
WWII
suburbia. Tired, I trudge past row upon row of the same Italian-style, stucco-covered bungalow. I tap on the door of 4357 Portland Street with some trepidation, not sure of what will happen next. I can’t wait to see Dana—that pretty red hair, loose strands falling over her
cheeks and neck. I can’t wait to lose myself in those huge, piercing blue eyes. My stunningly beautiful drinking buddy.

The rust-red door opens and some other woman appears, dressed in grimy white sweat pants and an equally grimy pink terry robe, dirty lifeless hair hurriedly trussed up in pins.

“Well, who the hell is this?” I laugh.

Dana grabs my arm and shoves me into
a bedroom immediately to the right of the front entrance. I stare into her dull eyes. Where is my Dana?

“Quick,” she whispers. “Get in here.”

I smell vodka: Smirnoff. The bottle shimmers mirage-like on the nightstand, the usual blessed forty-pounder and a two-litre bottle of Fresca alongside, with a half-empty glass and ice.

First things first—I reach for the uncapped bottle
and take two quick swigs. Brief pause. Breath. Then a third big gulp. Ahhhhhhh. The familiar warmth spreads from my core out to my freezing extremities. The anxiety that buzzed through my entire body and mind mutes. The craving satiated, I focus on Dana.

Dana. How could someone change so dramatically in one week?

“You look terrible. You must have lost ten pounds!” I estimate.

“You don’t look so great yourself, Mr. Pond,” Dana pulls at her hair. “Where have you been? I’ve missed you so much. I thought you were dead.”

“Downtown Eastside Vancouver.” I sit on the edge of the bed.

“What did you do for money?” she asks.

“I’m pathetic at panhandling. I sold my laptop for twenty bucks.” The memory of it kicks at my gut.

“Oh my gawd, Mike,
not your laptop.” Dana shakes her head. She changes gears. “We’ve got to get out of here.” Our eyes lock in longing. “We need to be alone.” All at once, Dana dives into her clothes, throws toiletries into an overnight bag, gulps down her drink and calls a cab.

Doris, Dana’s sister, hides in her bedroom behind a blaring
TV
.

The cab arrives and, like the rats we are, we scurry out.
Booze has brought us to life. The drunken electric energy between us crackles once again.

“Take us to Metrotown Mall,” Dana barks to the driver.

We arrive at the mall and Dana darts into the
TD
Bank. Within minutes she strides out through the pouring rain straight to the government liquor store a few doors down. In a heartbeat she’s back in the cab with a brown paper bag full of
clinking bottles.

“Take us to the Burnaby Motel.” Dana hugs the bag in her lap.

I inspect the contents of the bag and share my approval. “Good work, babe. You’re the best.” I pull out a vodka cooler, twist the cap off and drain it.

We arrive at the motel and hole up, just like Bonnie and Clyde again. When it occurs to us, we order in: pizza, Chinese food, Thai. More importantly,
when our supply runs out, I stagger to the nearest beer and wine store. Dana’s phone rings constantly.

Her sister. Her work.

Time and reality suspend. Nothing stops the bender until the money runs out a week later. Dana contacts her friend Vicki, who spends winters in Greece. Vicki agrees to let us stay in her house. We shell out our last few dollars for a taxi. Dana races to the
spot where the key is hidden.

“I can’t find the fucking key!” Dana’s voice rises with panic. “There’s no fucking key here!”

It’s getting cold and dark. I try to jimmy every window. No go. This place is break-and-enter-proof. Now I’m thinking like a criminal. I find a heavy eight-foot steel pipe at the side of the house. With a long run-up and full force, I ram the door over and
over again, taking the occasional break to replenish my drink.