Wasted: An Alcoholic Therapist's Fight for Recovery in a Tragically Flawed Treatment System (7 page)

And then she drops the bomb.

“I’ve reported you to your professional bodies, and so has the superintendent of schools. She had a student in crisis and no one could find you. You are in breach of your
contract.”

I’m stunned.

“Rhonda, I can’t believe you did this.” I try to keep my voice down. “I’m ruined. The whole community will know about my problem now.”

“The whole community knows anyway. Who do you think you’re kidding, Mike? You abandoned your practice and your clients.” She doesn’t hide her bitterness.

“But I don’t even remember coming down here. Rhonda,
I will come back and fix this.”

“No, we’re shutting it down. Your landlord is evicting you. The boys and I cleared out your stuff.” She hangs up.

My practice shut down. Gone. It’s all falling apart now.

I call Brennan, my middle son, the only one still speaking to me.

“Dad, we cleared out your office. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Taking down
all the pictures and your degrees and stuff. Packing up the books and toys in the waiting room. I remember playing with those toys when I was a little kid. I remember bringing in goldfish for the fish tank. It was really hard. One of the saddest days of my life.”

“Bren, I’m in detox in Vancouver. I’m in a lot of trouble. I’m hoping to get into long-term treatment.”

“Dad, I hope
so. You’ve got to get better. You just need to keep doing the next right thing.”

Next I call my lawyer in Penticton, Matt Jones.

“Mike, where the hell have you been?” Matt shouts. “You’re in serious trouble. You’re looking at minimum six months in prison.”

“I’m in detox, Matt. This time, it’s going to stick.” I want to believe it’s true.

Back in the spring, when
I first contacted him, Matt listened wordlessly, like a priest whose physical presence is muted by the mesh of the confessional booth. I offered up a litany of sins. Driving while impaired, driving while suspended, driving while prohibited. Matt and I had shared mutual clients over the years in Penticton and had come to respect each other’s work. I suspect he doesn’t respect me much now.

He takes in a deep breath and blows it out.

“Get into long-term treatment as soon as possible and I will push the matter forward a few months. This is not good. Not good at all.”

I thank him and hang up, suffused with the belief that this time, this time, I’ll stay sober.

I can fix this.

Day 4 of detox at Creekside: food stays down, sleep returns, the shakes
diminish. I corral my wild erratic thoughts long enough to make a plan. I can turn this around. A few more days at Creekside detox and I can transfer over to the Phoenix Centre, the long-term treatment my lawyer orders.

When the staff at Creekside discover my background, they are mystified. A young nurse sits down for coffee with me and asks the question I can’t answer. “Michael, how did
this happen to you? You’re a professional. More than anyone, you know the physiological and psychological impact of what you are doing. Why can’t you stop?” she said beseechingly.

Here in Creekside, surrounded by detox experts and medications, I believe I can.

I’m deep in conversation with two other male patients when their gaze slides sideways. They look past me in stark admiration.
I turn around to see who’s putting on the show.

It’s Dana. She’s decided to join me in detox, like a heat-seeking missile. Every man in the room follows her every calculated step. She plants a kiss on me and gives me a big hug. My reaction is part pride that this fabulous-looking woman wants to be with me and part fear, because holy shit, Dana and I drunk together can get into a whole
pile of trouble. Dana and I sober—well, we’ve never been sober long enough to know. Cautiously, I welcome her to Creekside.

By day’s end, Dana has managed to antagonize most of the nurses on the shift. When I suggest she cool it and let them do their jobs, she lashes out. “They’re disrespecting me. They’re being unkind to me. They’re judging me. They are not showing any compassion or understanding.
I can tell they hate me.” She glares at the nurses’ station, willing one of them to challenge her.

Dana with a few drinks is flirty, quick on the uptake and fast with the punchlines. Dana drunk and detoxing is angry.

She sticks it out for six embattled days, enough to get a personal program to stay sober. She talks to a social worker, commits to a day treatment program, calls her
sister to pick her up and she’s gone. I’ll miss her, but I’m relieved.

The next day, a psych nurse named Glen hands me two pieces of mail, one from the College of Registered Psychiatric Nurses of
BC
and one from the
BC
College of Social Workers, my two professional regulatory bodies. With dread, I open both. As I speed-read their contents, my gut grips. I sit down. My hands shake. I’ve
been suspended from practising. I am under investigation for malpractice and competency issues. Rhonda and the superintendent of School District 53 submitted complaints about my alcoholism and its impact on my practice. My hands drop to my sides. All the blood leaves my head.

I look at Glen, defeated.

“I’ve lost my professional licences. I can’t do my work anymore,” I stammer.

“You’re going to get through this, Mike.” Glen pats me on the back. “We will get you into treatment. Not just for legal reasons, but to save your life, for yourself. For your life.”

Buoyed by his belief, his support, and with Dana out of the picture, I believe I can do it too.

Glen consults with the doctor on my behalf and sits with me as we establish a treatment plan. I
have been accepted at the Phoenix Centre. It’s a brand new twelve-step based treatment facility and it’s only two doors down. As Greg walks me over, I spy the large icon of the Phoenix etched on the façade—the symbol for resurrection.

I begin to feel some hope. I do want help. I do want to recover.

The facility boasts beautiful rooms, a five-star kitchen and a fully equipped gym
in the basement. The south half of the building has thirty-six furnished bachelor suites for men in longer-term transition after the initial three months of specialized treatment. I tour through Phoenix Centre wide-eyed and impressed.

I like this place. I like the feel of it. The clients are laughing and smiling. This time I’ll stop drinking. I promise.

I check in.

FOR
FIVE WEEKS
at the Phoenix Centre, all through November and early December, I zealously stick to the program. For the first time in three years, I begin to understand the nature of my addiction. I work the twelve steps. Intensive personal and group counselling confirms what my professional insight already knows: the deck is stacked against me.

It begins with a powerful genetic predisposition.
And then the nature of my work takes me deep for several hours every day into someone’s terrible trauma. Yet I’d not—as many therapists do­—built in an opportunity to debrief and reframe with another trusted therapist. I debriefed with booze. As the years added up, I became obsessed with this work, addicted to the enormous satisfaction I gleaned from my ability to bring some peace to my tormented
clients. I was also addicted to the status my position bestowed. I wanted my wife and kids to want for nothing. The more I worked, the more stuff we could buy. The more stuff we bought, the more I worked.

At the Phoenix Centre, I develop my own plan for medical monitoring as I maintain sobriety. I establish my own program, and I intend to submit it to my governing bodies. If I stick to
it, I’ll get my licences back. With good behaviour, I earn privileges.

It’s all going so well.

Then Dana phones.

The sound of her voice delights me. When she suggests a steak at the Keg, I boomerang between exhilaration and unease. There’s an old
AA
saying: Beneath every skirt is a slip. Misogyny aside, there is an element of truth to that old saw.

I’m excited by
the possibility of getting out after five weeks. Dana is gorgeous, and I do miss her. But I know she’s off the wagon already. If she kicks them back over the rib eye, will I be able to resist?

She drives up in her sister’s truck. I haul myself into the cab, and the care she has taken to look good for me takes my breath away. She leans over to kiss me and I smell vodka. She is already half-loaded.

My gut clenches.

So what? I can do this.

At the Keg, Dana orders double Caesars. I order cranberry and soda. She marvels at my willpower.

“I’m so proud of you, Mr. Pond,” she says, and sips her Caesar. “I’m off the wagon already. How do you do it?”

I do it all through dinner, and even when we retire to a hotel room down the street. Dana downs more Caesars
as we snuggle on the bed and watch
TV
. And still I don’t drink. But oh God, I want to.

All of alcohol cues supplied by Dana’s drinks are slamming my dopamine receptors.

At 10:45 p.m., I’m like the cork on a bottle of champagne—just a bit more pressure and I’ll pop.

I can’t stand it anymore. I slip off the bed, slide into my clothes and out the door to the liquor store,
where I buy a mickey of vodka. I hide the bottle outside and return to the room. I don’t want Dana to know. She is so proud of me. I kiss her goodbye and leave before the two a.m. curfew at the Phoenix Centre descends. I grab my bottle from the bush, take a few swigs and head straight there. Swaggering now with boozy bravado—“strutting like a little bantam rooster” is how my grandmother would cluck-cluck
her disapproval—I stride past the front desk to my room and tiptoe past my sleeping roommate, directly into the closet. I close the door behind me.

Greedily, clumsily, I all but rip the cap off and down the vodka in minutes. I creep to the third-floor balcony and toss the empty. It lands in a low bank of soggy rhododendrons. Fooled them again.

I fall back onto my bed into a deep
and somewhat guilty sleep.

When I wake the next morning, James, the third-floor counsellor, confronts me, disappointment etched into his face. My roommate was awake the whole time. He reported me while I slept it off.

“Mike, you know the drill,” James sighs. “The group will now consider what happens next.” He leaves me to sit alone in the dining room and watch the kitchen staff
in their white smocks and jaunty chef hats.

I stare out of the floor-to-ceiling windows at the darkening sky. Rain whips across the street, and people puddle jump. My shaking hands wrap around what I’m sure is my last decent cup of coffee for a while. Five weeks of sobriety—blown.

I wait while the group conscience decides my fate. “Group conscience” is an
AA
term that describes
how an entire meeting can reach a consensus on a particular matter. In
AA
, the belief is that the group is guided by the higher power. At the Phoenix Centre, that belief is grounded in a sense of fair play. I already know what will happen.

James approaches me, his ponytail bobbing. He speaks in a soft, melodic tone.

“I’ve got good news and bad news,” he says with an awkward grin.
“The bad news is you have to go, Mike. The group conscience has made its decision. The good news is we will hold your bed and you can come back in thirty days if you stay clean and sober.”

I knew it. A sickening heat surges up the side of my neck. A flush floods my face. It’s December, and outside looks more like Edmonton than Vancouver. A freak cold front has settled over the city. Heavy
snowflakes tumble from the sky.

Where will I go? How will I survive? Who will help me now?

In my desperation, I’m felled by this realization: in what other grave life-threatening disorder do they kick you out of treatment because your disease has kicked in again?

James shakes my hand. “Good luck, Mike. I hope we see you again in thirty days.”

• 8 •

I LIMP OUT INTO
the main foyer, where my duffle bag and two pieces of Surrey luggage—green garbage bags—filled with my meagre belongings slump at the feet of two guys, Jim and Ron from the third floor.

“We found you a recovery house in White Rock,” says Jim. “We’re going to take you there right now.”

“Thanks, guys,” I say. “But
I have to go to the bank to get my money.” That’s another lie. I no longer have a bank account. All my accounts are frozen. I have about seven bucks in my pocket from Dana.

“We’ll stop off at the bank on the way,” says Ron.

“It’s okay. I need some time to myself to think this through. Meet me in the mall in an hour.”

I don’t give a shit anymore. I just want a drink. The
tremors set in. I vibrate inside and out.

I’ll panhandle the balance to buy a mickey of the cheap stuff, a dollar less than Smirnoff. In the wake of protests I powerwalk eight frantic blocks to the mall.

By now I’ve perfected my panhandling technique. Cold and honest efficiency. I look ’em straight in the eye: “Could you help me out?”

No sob story; no bullshit; no explanation.

“Do you have a spare loonie? Could you help me out?”

Every fifth or sixth person hands over a shiny coin or two. Who knows why? Some assuage guilt. Others bear a haunted expression: There but for the grace of God. The rare one meets my gaze with warmth and genuine concern and wishes me well.

I nod in gratitude and express my thanks.

Within half an hour I emerge triumphantly
from the liquor store with a mickey of Bols vodka clutched in my shaky hand. I slip into a public washroom to reload. I brace the door closed because the sliding metal lock is missing. Men come and go and cough and clear their throats and spit. Taps run, and hand dryers whir. The toilet beside me flushes. I gulp big swigs and choke the first few down between gags and heaves. Within minutes
the calm envelops me. The rest of the bottle slides down smooth and easy. Deliciously drunk again.

As I stagger through the mall I hear, “Mike, Mike.”

I turn and the mall spins dizzily around me. I see Jim and Ron.

I’m not drunk enough to miss the disconcerted glances they exchange.