I walked into Barry’s proudly, like a war hero returning to the patriotic city that had raised me. In my wasted stupor, I believed I looked stunningly young and beautiful, and felt proud to be bringing my new friend to experience the bar that had once been my figurative home.
Old Barry was wiping the counters, food sizzling in the back. I took off my leather jacket, threw it over the barstool like I’d done forever, and sat on top of it.
“Two drafts,” I said, plopping my credit card on the bar. Barry smiled.
“Food smells good,” Marvin said. “Whatcha got back there?”
“Eggs, bacon, hash browns,” Barry replied. “What’ll ya have?”
“All of that,” Marvin replied. “Scrambled.”
I couldn’t imagine eating. I got up and plugged in the jukebox and played everything Larry had liked. I told Barry all about my sober life, which no longer existed. I asked about Larry; he was still in Florida, his brother still living next door to Barry’s Bar. I drank and drank.
We were having a glorious time when, maybe two hours into the morning’s activities, I pulled out a business card from my back pocket.
“I’m going to call Frank the Angel!” I said. I went outside to the local pay phone, filthy as ever, and held the mouthpiece together while I dialed Frank’s number.
“Hello?”
“I’m going to rehab!” I screamed. “Thanks to you!”
“Where are you?”
“I’m at Barry’s Bar!” I hooted. “It opens at 7! I used to live in Pitcairn – came here all the time! But I’m going to rehab in Erie, so I wanted to say goodbye.”
“Do you need a ride?” Frank the Angel asked.
“Nope,” I slurred. “I found a biker last night who’s taking me! I just wanted to thank you again for saving my life!”
“No problem,” said Frank the Angel. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine!” I yelled. “Thanks again! Goodbye!”
I hung up and went back into the bar. At some point, I ordered a cheeseburger.
“They have the best burgers!” I told Marvin, who had barely digested breakfast. “I’ll buy you one!” A credit card is a wonderful thing to have.
Sometime after my burger, Frank the Angel and Frank the Driver showed up at Barry’s Bar. They walked into the dingiest bar in the world, both clean and sober, and found me spinning in the dark on my bar stool.
“OH MY GOD it’s Frank the Angel!” I screamed, nearly falling off the stool while trying to stand. I leapt on him, hugged him hard.
“Be careful!” Frank the Angel laughed. “Don’t crush your cigarettes!” He held out a pack of cigarettes that he’d bought just for me – exactly the right kind.
“Oh my god I love you!” I shrieked. “Thank you so much!” I enveloped him again.
I did not hug Frank the Driver, who was frowning at the situation.
“I just wanted to make sure you really have a ride to rehab,” said Frank the Angel, suspiciously eyeing one-legged Marvin.
“I do!” I squealed. “Marvin this is Frank the Angel!”
Marvin shook Frank’s hand. Even after being up all night and drinking all morning, Marvin appeared sober. “I’ll take care of her,” he said. “Don’t worry.”
“Can you stay?” I begged. “We’re playing the jukebox!”
“No way,” grumbled Frank the Driver.
“Nah,” said Frank the Angel. “We’re gonna get going. But call me if you need anything, anytime!”
“I will!” I shrieked. “Thanks for the cigarettes!” I lit one, displaying gratitude.
As Frank the Angel departed, I remembered where I was supposed to be.
I’d spoken to Marvin and his cute-but-jerky friend for maybe 15 minutes. I’d been too busy trying to drink as much alcohol as I could physically consume.
My reasoning: this was the last time I would ever drink alcohol. I was going to stay sober for the rest of my life! So I had to be sure to drink all the beer and shots available – all on my credit card, of course – and drink anything new that looked appealing. (Wine coolers actually sucked.)
When the bar closed, Marvin headed out to “pick up some stuff.” I’d gone to the bar wearing my leather jacket and boots to find a motorcycle ride to rehab, so I didn’t need any stuff.
In spite of having chains on his belt, a well-worn black leather jacket, a scraggly beard and a wooden leg, Marvin was a soft-spoken biker who didn’t talk much as I prattled on from the sidecar.
Eventually I realized that Marvin couldn’t hear a thing I was saying. The motorcycle was loud.
I decided to just enjoy the ride. During all my years as a biker, I’d never ridden in a sidecar. It was quite comfortable, so I snuggled down into it and relaxed. I could just lean back and stare at the stars as we rode through the country to wherever we were going. I could even light cigarettes if I ducked beneath the tiny sidecar windshield.
After riding for what seemed like forever in the glorious summer night, we stopped at a small brick building where, apparently, Marvin worked. He went inside and came out with a bag of stuff that he tied to the back of the motorcycle.
I started talking incessantly when Marvin reappeared. We stood next to the bike and smoked cigarettes for a long time. I told him my whole life story, about walking out of detox, and how hard it was to find a rehab that would take me.
“Well I guess we’d better get going then,” Marvin finally said, gearing up.
Erie was two hours away from where I lived, but I was not in a hurry to get there, to let this gorgeous night end. Sunrise was looming.
“I have an idea!” I said brightly, when it became clear that Marvin was ready to go. “I know a bar that opens at 6 a.m.! We could grab a couple of beers for the road and then head out.”
Marvin likely didn’t have young girls asking him for a ride to rehab every night so he asked, “Where is it?”
“It’s in Turtle Creek!” I said. I’d seen the “WE OPEN AT 6AM” sign on a bar door years earlier.
“I think I can get us there,” Marvin said.
I hopped into the sidecar, pulled on my helmet, and enjoyed every minute of the ride. I dozed off at some point, so I have no idea how far we rode. Waking up as the sun started appearing on the horizon, I believed life couldn’t get any better.
Then, just as I thought we’d never get to the bar, I saw it – and pointed. We went in and got two beers, my treat – on credit, of course.
At 6:45 I suggested: “Let’s go to Barry’s! It’s really close to here and it opens at 7!”
Marvin shrugged. Minutes later we were pulling onto Broadway, the main drag in Pitcairn. “It’s right there!” I yelled over the engine. I was positively gleeful.
Marvin pulled over and parked, smiling at my giddishness. I felt like I truly belonged in these dregs.
Barry’s was just opening up.
The next day, I started fervently calling rehabs. I figured it was a sign from God when someone from NA appeared from nowhere to save me, a sign that I should continue down the path of sobriety I’d started.
But none of the rehabs would take me.
First I called Gateway, and told them my detox story. I said I was already on the waiting list, but that I’d probably be dead in three weeks.
Their response? “We’ll have to take you off the waiting list for at least six months.”
“WHY!” I screamed.
“Because it sounds like you walked out of detox against medical advice. We don’t take anyone who’s been AMA in the past six months.”
I crumbled a bit but didn’t give up.
I started calling other rehabs, none of whom wanted me.
The conversations went something like this:
“Have you sought help in the past for your addiction?”
“I was in rehab in 1989,” I said. “I stayed sober for almost three years.”
“Anything more recent?”
“Yes, I went to detox a couple of weeks ago but they shot me with some kind of horse tranquilizer so I left.”
“Horse tranquilizer?”
“I don’t know what it was, but I didn’t want any more shots. They told me I had to get shots or I should leave.”
“Did you leave against medical advice?”
“Yes,” I said. “They made me sign some papers.”
“We can’t take you if you’ve left a detox against medical advice.”
“Why not? I wouldn’t leave rehab!”
“We only take patients who are serious about recovery.”
I called dozens of rehabs and we had this same conversation every time. It never occurred to me to lie to them about leaving AMA. I figured hospitals were all linked together.
Plus I was all about honesty.
I couldn’t find anyone within a 60-mile radius who was willing to have me as a patient. So I kept drinking and looking for a rehab with no foreseeable end to the pattern.
Eventually I branched out beyond the Pittsburgh radius. Someone at a hospital in Erie, Pennsylvania said, “Sure, we can take you. When can you get here?”
I gulped. “Really?” Erie was two hours away. “I just have to find someone to drive me and I’ll be there!”
“Well, you might want to be here in the next few days,” said the nice woman on the phone. “Right now we have beds but there’s no telling how long that’ll last.”
“Okay!” I said. I hung up. Thrilled and terrified, I considered asking Louise for a ride, but one trip to detox was her limit. I considered calling my parents, but they were in Maryland.
So I went to a bar to find a ride to rehab. I decided I would go to rehab in style, on a motorcycle. And I definitely wanted to drink one more time before I went, because this would be the last time ever that I drank.
So I drank all night and, when the bar closed, I asked a really cute – but rather a jerk – guy if he could take me to rehab on his motorcycle. He was a pig, really.
“Fuck no,” he said. “Maybe Marvin will take you.”
I turned to his biker friend who had a wooden leg and a sidecar on his motorcycle. I didn’t want to ride in a sidecar and I sure didn’t want to ride with a guy with a wooden leg.
But it was 2 a.m. and I was out of options.
“Will you take me to rehab in Erie?” I asked.
“Sure,” Marvin said.
Frank the Angel saw that I was in no position to acquire my own cigarettes.
“I just have no idea where to go!” I said. “But I have a credit card!”
I can’t sufficiently stress how stupid I was, loudly announcing my credit card to a stranger on Braddock streets.
“I know a place,” said Frank the Angel. “I’ll get your cigarettes. What kind?”
“Oh boy,” I said. “Virginia Slim Menthol Light 120’s.” I couldn’t believe I was being so particular when I had just been absurdly devastated by the sheer lack of tobacco in my grasp.
Frank the Angel said he would do the best he could.
“I don’t have any money,” I said. “Do you want my credit card?” I waved my card at him, dropping my ID on the sidewalk, then picking it up again.
“That’s okay,” said Frank. “It’s on me.”
He turned to go but stopped.
“Please stay here,” he said. “I promise I will be back.”
Then Frank the Angel disappeared with the driver of the car who, rather coincidentally, was also an NA member named Frank.
I sat down on the curb and waited, giggling. They’re from NA, I thought. What are the chances?
Narcotics Anonymous (NA) is a fellowship, much like Alcoholics Anonymous, based on the 12 steps. I’d been to many NA meetings during my time sober, and I’d learned from them the same way I learned from AA meetings. The people were similarly welcoming, caring, and kind. And anyone who had clean time in NA – just like sobriety in AA – was a walking miracle.
So I wasn’t the slightest bit surprised when Frank the Angel returned from wherever he’d gone and handed me a pack of cigarettes that were almost the right kind.
“Can you tell me where you got them? I smoke menthol.”
“Wait, I’ll be right back!” Frank the Angel grabbed the pack, laughed, and bolted – again.
“No, you don’t have to …” I started, but he was gone. Other Frank sat in the car.
Within minutes, Frank the Angel was back – with menthol cigarettes.
I hugged him. “You really are an angel,” I said.
And then I told him my whole story: rehab, boyfriend, AA, NA, breakup, relapse, meetings, detox, thrown out of the bar, the train, my last cigarette – and then: Frank the Angel.
I couldn’t get through the story without laughing and crying even though I’d felt so dead inside only moments before.
“It sounds stupid,” I said. “But I really think you were sent here to remind me that I can actually get sober.”
“It doesn’t sound stupid,” said Frank the Angel. “It sounds just about right. Do you need a lift home? I promise, you can ride in the back and we will take you straight there.”
I had absolutely no way to get home and here was this angel, offering me a ride.
NA angels felt safer than Braddock streets.
I nodded idiotically and climbed into the car. As promised, Frank the Angel took me all the way home – which wasn’t close – and wouldn’t take a nickel for gas.
Which was good, because I didn’t have a nickel. But I offered to use my credit card to fill up their tank.
They dropped me two blocks from my house; I wasn’t quite so trustworthy as to let them see where I lived.
As I clambered out, Frank the Angel scrawled his phone number on a business card and handed it to me. “Call me anytime,” he said. “For anything. I mean it.”
They drove away and I walked home, thanking God the whole way.
Back on the main drag in Braddock, I was utterly lost.
Being sober for almost three years had changed me; I’d acquired new perspectives. I’d spent so long sober that I’d gotten used to vibrant colors, the comfort of a soft bed, the ability to read a book. I’d learned new songs, had deep, philosophical conversations, traveled to places I’d never been before, explored nature and bathed in its beauty.
In other words, I’d had a life.
The horrors of drinking again and “detox” put me on an all-too-familiar path toward death again. Everything was gray, broken, filthy. Hopelessness overwhelmed me.
I felt completely unloved. I couldn’t call Louise; she’d been very clear that I needed to stay in detox. My parents had moved to Maryland and didn’t even know I was drinking again. I couldn’t call Paul. I didn’t even have phone numbers for the handful of people I knew in AA. Even Ronnie had hung up on me.
I was done with college – twice – and fired from another job. I had no career prospects, no hope to ever love again. Other than Kitty and my Atari game set, nothing waited for me at home. I had no friends, no soul mate, no family, no future, no life.
For reasons I hadn’t yet conjured, I hadn’t just thrown myself under a moving train.
So I was walking around in circles in Braddock, Pennsylvania, an armpit of a town devastated by the loss of its mills, and I couldn’t even get another beer because I was too high on detox drugs to be served.
My rage at the detox flared again. Detox had trampled my rights, and now I couldn’t get a beer. I have always been able to make myself a victim, and on this day I was an exceptionally pathetic victim.
It was in this condition, wandering alone despondently on the streets, when the worst thing happened. I reached for my cigarettes and tragically discovered that I only had one cigarette left in the pack.
If I lit the cigarette I wanted, I would have no cigarettes at all.
I stopped walking and looked around. I was surrounded by boarded-up buildings and garbage rolling down an empty street. There were no convenience stores, no bars, no gas stations, no restaurants, nothing.
Since I’d started smoking at the age of 20, I had never been without cigarettes. And now I was down to my last cigarette.
I had no money, no alcohol. I felt homeless, empty, desperately alone.
A car appeared on the street, slowing down as it drove, two young guys staring at me as they passed.
I had nowhere to hide; I froze, mentally on high alert.
The car rolled down the street; I breathed.
Then it made a sudden U-turn, heading back in my direction – and stopping. The guy in the passenger seat jumped out and headed straight toward me.
“Hello?” he called, somewhat harmlessly. “Um, hi … do you need any help? My name is Frank. I’m from Narcotics Anonymous.”
From Narcotics Anonymous!!!
I burst into laughter and started to cry at the exact same moment, instantly becoming hysterical. Not only was the strange man not attacking me, but I’d been sent an actual angel: the answer to my unspoken prayer.
“You’re an angel!” I scream-wept. “You’ve been sent directly from God!”
“I don’t know about that,” Frank the Angel said warily. “But I can help you if you need some help.”
Laugh-sobbing uncontrollably, I howled: “I’m out of cigarettes! Can you help with that?”
Finally, Frank laughed. “I think I can,” he said.
I’ve always been drawn to train tracks. Train tracks provide the illusion that there’s something new and beautiful, somewhere better than wherever I am.
So I walked down a berm from the dilapidated town to the tracks, still too detox-drugged to be fully functional, only barely drunk enough to do something stupid.
I’d made the spontaneous and momentous decision that, like a hobo in an ancient movie, I would hop on the next train that passed. I’d ride it until it stopped. I would never return.
I stood on the tracks, smoking a cigarette, planning my haphazard escape. I considered my dismal surroundings: gravel mixed with broken bottles, cigarette butts, crushed food boxes; abandoned industrial buildings with broken windows, graffitied doors, bricks crumbling; a deserted caboose rusting on a parallel track. I imagined the lumbering train and envisioned my one, perfect leap.
I finished my cigarette. I waited.
I didn’t have to wait long. In the distance, I felt, heard – then saw – a freight train rumbling toward me, its yellow engine pulling a line of cars as far as I could see.
I moved back only a couple of steps, needing to be close, ready.
As it rolled closer, the horn blasted. Could the driver see me?
I stepped back another two feet. I was still so close, I could almost touch the tracks. And then, as though I’d had no warning, the train was there – the engine past me, the train cars so close, their wake whooshing with such force, I nearly fell into them.
I crouched in the gravel quickly, trying not to fall, my body low enough to see behind the wheels as they passed. I scanned the row of train cars, looking for my opening, and saw that they were all closed. Would there be a space between cars? They were just boxes with wheels, no Frosty the Snowman slid-open doors through which I could pounce, no easy-grab ladders on their sides.
And the train was going fast – so fast! I’d thought it would be slower, easier, calmer than it was, and instead it was barreling through so rapidly I could see the brown, metal wheels blazing past me – and the noise! The train was so much louder than I’d anticipated, and I was right there, right within its grasp, the clackety-clacks and the squeals deafening as I crouched and watched and waited.
And then I knew, quite suddenly, that it would be easier to throw myself beneath those wheels, just one simple movement away, than it would be to jump onto that train.
I decided it was time to die.
My stomach lurched and churned; I closed my eyes and felt the roar, inhaled the dust and metal, wind whacking my hair into my face. And then I opened my eyes and watched, every fiber of my being alive and knowing that in one split second, I could be gone. The chugging sounds mocked me: You-Should-Be-Gone-You-Should-Be-Gone-You-Should-Be-Gone.
I absorbed every sound, every pounding movement, every smell, staring intently, purposefully, visualizing my death. I thought about my head under the weight of those wheels, my body thrashing and pulled along, a minuscule twig dragged forcefully by the monster that was this train.
I stared straight ahead, deciding, waiting, considering. My stomach never stopped fluttering, aching to the point of nausea. Was it fear? Or knowing?
Suddenly the train was gone, and I was still there. Still crouched beside the tracks. Still alive.
After a few minutes, the rumbling subsided. My shaking subsided.
I stood up and walked back toward the city, alone, with no discernible follow-up plan.
I felt higher leaving detox than I was when I went in, thanks to the horse tranquilizer they kept shooting into my rear end. It was a very unpleasant shot, and an even more unpleasant feeling. I was lethargic and dazed and could hardly hold myself upright, even after sleeping for several hours in the detox.
But now I was free. They’d told me that if I wanted to stay in their detox, I had to be knocked out the entire time. And I was livid.
Having no say over what I do with my own body is my least favorite thing.
Alcoholism had robbed me of that say for ten years, but the blame went elsewhere. As I raged out onto the streets of Braddock, I fell into an emotional spiral that started with raging at the nurses and ended with diving into a bottle to kill myself. Before my eyes had adjusted to sunlight, I was seeking the nearest neon Budweiser sign.
I walked inside and asked for a draft before realizing that I had nothing: no money, no cigarettes, no lighter and – worst of all – no driver’s license.
“Can I see some ID?” the bartender asked, having never seen me before.
I reached into my back pocket and then said, “I’m 27. But I left my license at the hospital across the street.”
“No ID, no service,” he said apathetically.
Maybe I won’t be able to drink, I thought. But I was furious, and fury drove me right out that door and back into the hospital, up the four flights of stairs, back to that nurse’s station where I had to sign numerous forms before they would give me what was rightfully mine.
Even in my dazed condition, it took everything I had to hold myself back from diving over the wall and throttling all the nurses.
But I restrained myself. I signed the AMA papers. Finally, they gave me my stuff and I went straight back to the bar where the bartender begrudgingly sold me a beer. I used my Chase credit card, which I’d acquired as a sober Chatham College student, to pay for the very, very cheap beer. Being poverty-stricken, I’d been using credit like money for about a month.
After two drafts, I fell off my bar stool. I was still so high on librium, the beer made me absurdly unsteady.
Pulling myself from the floor back onto the stool I yelled, “Another beer, please!”
“You’ve had enough,” said the bartender. “You’re too drunk. Ya gotta go.”
“I’ve only had two beers!” I cried. “Where am I supposed to go?”
“I don’t care where you go,” said the bartender. “But you can’t stay here. Do you need me to call the cops and have you removed?”
I stared at him, my jaw agape. In all of my years of drinking, I’d never been thrown out of a bar – and now I was getting thrown out because I was too high on detox drugs.
“No,” I mumbled.
I plodded back out into the sunlight and found a payphone. I called Ronnie.
“I know you’re drinking,” Ronnie said. “I’m not going to hang out with you if you’re drinking.”
“But I just – “
“No,” Ronnie said. And he hung up.
I couldn’t call anyone; I couldn’t go home. I was too high to be served alcohol, and nowhere near drunk enough. I had no money, four cigarettes, and nowhere to go. So I just started walking down the gray, empty streets.
When I saw the train tracks, I suddenly knew exactly what I needed to do.
I had a cold tray of food waiting for me when I woke up in detox. I didn’t want it. I could hardly lift my head off the flat pillow. I was barely hungover and somewhat thirsty, but I felt dizzy and weak and fuzzy, like I was still on drugs.
I hadn’t done any drugs in days, so this confused me. I felt higher in detox than I’d been on the streets.
I wandered out the door and down the hospital hallway, to a communal room with couches. I was hoping something would be happening, that I could find someone to talk to, that the group schedule would start soon. But no.
Two men were sitting there, staring blankly at whatever blathered on the television. They didn’t look up when I walked in, so I walked back out. The hallways were bare. Other than the TV, there was no noise. I went back into my room and stared out into the very gray world. I felt beaten, exhausted, desperately bored.
I had no idea how long I’d been there, what day it was, what time it was, or what I was supposed to do. I nibbled on the crackers from my tray, staring dazed through the window.
I’d been awake for maybe an hour when the nurse came back. “Drop your pants,” she said.
“I don’t want another shot,” I said. “It knocked me out!”
“It’s supposed to knock you out,” she said. “It keeps you from going into DTs.”
“But I want to be awake,” I said. “I was sober for almost three years and I only had six beers before I came here. I want to get better.”
“Drop your pants,” she said again. “You can get better while you’re sleeping.”
I did as I was told. It hurt like heck, again. And within minutes, I was asleep. Again.
When I woke up the next time, who-knows-how-long later, it was mid-afternoon. I had no idea how long I’d been there, no idea how long yet to go, but my head was spinning from whatever horse tranquilizer they kept giving me. I did not want another shot.
I walked to the nurse’s station and begged: “I am awake. I’d like to stay awake and not get any more shots in the butt. I’ve already had two of them and they just make me dizzy and tired.”
“How long have you been here?” asked a nurse.
“I have no idea!” I wailed. “I’ve been asleep the whole time!”
“Well if you’ve had two shots, you’ve probably been here two days. That means you’re due for another shot.”
“I DON’T WANT ANOTHER SHOT,” I said loudly. “What other options do I have?”
“You don’t have any other options,” she said. “If you are detoxing here, you will get another shot.”
Exasperated, I tried begging. “I am detoxed. I am fine. Please, please, please don’t give me another shot.”
“You don’t have a choice,” said the nurse. “Go back to your room and wait for the nurse.”
“No!” I said. “I’m not doing this again! What else can I do?”
“You could leave AMA,” she said.
“What’s AMA?”
“Against Medical Advice,” she said.
“Then I guess I will do that,” I spat. “I can’t fucking stay here if I have to get another shot!”
I looked around at the very blank faces behind the nurses station, ignoring my pleas, not hearing me. And then I looked for an exit sign.
I didn’t bother with an elevator. I went straight for the exit sign and pounded into the stairwell, leaving detox behind.
When I finally realized I was not able to quit drinking without professional help, I wanted the plush comforts of rehab to help me get away from alcohol. But after Gateway told me about the 14-day restriction and the waiting list that would take nearly a month to get in, I felt desperate.
And unlike during my prior rehab, I didn’t have insurance.
“I don’t know what to do,” I said at an AA meeting. “I really want to stop! I was so much happier when I wasn’t drinking but now I can’t get through even one day without alcohol. I need rehab!”
“You could go to detox,” someone said. “Hospitals have to take you if you’re drinking and you ask for help. And they’ll give you insurance when you walk in so it’s free.”
Free detox? This sounded too good to be true. “What do I have to do?” I asked after the meeting.
“They won’t take you if you’re not drunk.”
That’s my kind of restriction, I thought.
I went home and asked Louise for help. I didn’t want them to take my car again.
“Can you drive me to Braddock Hospital?” I asked. “I need to be drunk before I go.”
Louise sighed, frustrated by me and the chaos of our living arrangement since I’d started drinking.
Finally she said she would drive me to detox. “This is a one-time deal,” Louise said. “I won’t do this twice. So you better do what you need to do this time.”
“I will!” I said. Then I proceeded to drink an entire six-pack in order to be drunk enough to go to detox.
Louise dropped me off outside of Braddock Hospital. “Don’t forget to tell them you need insurance,” she said – then she drove away, both dismayed and hopeful.
I had to fill out a bunch of paperwork for my “free insurance.” The state of Pennsylvania provided it to people like me who had no job, no money, no way to pay for care. (I have no idea if this still exists.) Then they took me upstairs to the detox wing, where they took away my cigarettes, my lighter, my driver’s license – basically everything I had – and dumped me in a dark room alone.
The bed had no sheets. The chair was stained. Even after six beers, this felt gross.
Someone entered wordlessly and put one stiff plastic sheet and a thin, torn hospital blanket on the bed. I sat on the windowsill and stared into the gray day. Braddock was crime-ridden, rat-ridden, addict-ridden. The whole city looked dingy, bleak, dying.
This didn’t feel like the rehab with the bluebirds and goldfinches.
A nurse came in and said, by way of introduction: “Drop your pants.”
“What? Why?”
“I’m giving you a shot.”
“What shot?”
“Librium.” I had never heard of librium. They hadn’t even asked me about my drug of choice yet.
“I would rather have the shot in my arm, okay?”
“This one goes in your butt. Drop your pants or I’ll drop them for you.”
I pulled down my pants. Fear clenched every muscle in my body.
I’ve since learned that clenching doesn’t help with the extreme pain of a shot in the butt. “OW!” I screamed, butt muscles excruciatingly throbbing.
“Take a nap,” she said and walked out of the room, closing the door behind her.
It hurt so badly, I thought I would never recover. I was rubbing the sore spot and whimpering to myself when, with barely a second of warning, I flopped onto the bed and lost consciousness.
I slept for many hours.
Since I was hanging out in the local sober club while I was drinking, I attached myself to a tall, red-headed Irish biker who also hung out at the club.
We played pool together, and the jukebox, and smoked copious amounts of cigarettes. It was just like being in a bar. So when the Irish biker decided, after 18 months sober, that he wanted to go out and drink too, I just sort of wandered out the door with him.
Together we visited bars I’d never frequented, which were just like all the other bars in the world. We got drunk for a couple of weeks together, had some sex, and I even met his extremely large Irish Catholic family, who didn’t seem to care that he was not sober.
My family cared, but they had moved to Washington, D.C. so I didn’t mention my transgressions to them. And I didn’t answer the phone if I was drunk and my parents called. They had no idea that after I’d finally rebuilt their trust in me, I was watching it drizzle away like water leaking from a plastic bag.
I’d been drinking, and quitting, and drinking, and quitting, and drinking consistently for several weeks before my neighbor said, “Maybe you need rehab.”
My first instinct: NO. I can do this on my own!
But I loved rehab. I’d had such fun there! I loved the comfort of being fed regularly without having to buy or cook my own food. I loved playing chess with my rehab boyfriend. I loved groups where we talked about our innermost feelings. I loved the safety of being away from the temptation of drugs and alcohol. I loved meeting Abraham Twerski and getting pearls of wisdom offered as freely as sunshine. And my favorite day in rehab was the day I walked out – and ended up watching bluebirds and goldfinches in the woods.
I knew the bluebird thing was unlikely to happen again, but I didn’t want to go to just any rehab. I wanted to go back to Gateway.
So the Irish biker and I got good and drunk, and then we drove ourselves to Gateway to check in. Actually, he drove my VW Bug since I was too drunk to drive. Somehow we made it there in one piece.
We stumbled into the lobby laughing.
A stolid woman looked up from behind the welcome desk.
We yelled: “We want to check in!” and burst into hysterics.
She waited until we calmed down. Suddenly I realized that it was very, very quiet except for us. Finally she said, “We don’t have any beds available right now,” she said. “We can put you on a waiting list.”
“I need help now!” I wailed. “I need another 28 days clean! I was here in 1989, does that matter?”
I could tell from her face that it did not. “Things have changed a bit since you were here,” she said. “Insurance laws have changed, so you can only stay for 14 days now. And the waiting list is about three weeks. How did you get here?”
“We drove!” said the Irish biker.
“Then you’re going to have to get a ride home,” she said. “You can’t drive in this condition.” Then she confiscated our keys and made us wait until someone from the Irish Catholic family took us both home.
The next day, I got a ride back to Gateway to get my car, and put myself on the waiting list.
During the following week, I totally destroyed my chances of getting in.
