In spite of only drinking for two months, I walked into rehab with the worst DTs I’d ever had. My teeth were chattering and my hands were shaking like it was -18° so I hunkered down into Marvin’s sweatshirt – a black Harley Davidson crewneck that smelled like oil and dust.
“I’m here for rehab,” I said at the front desk of the Erie hospital. They sent me to the fourth floor where I showed up not only without my purple duffel, but without even a toothbrush.
They quickly put me in an empty room. They were not nearly as thorough as my first rehab, nor did they shoot me in the butt with librium. Instead, they told me I could rest.
I slept for two days.
Then I called my parents for the first time in many weeks.
They’d moved to Washington, D.C. months earlier. My dad wasn’t home; my mom answered.
“I drank again,” I told my mom. “I’m in rehab.”
My mom did not reply for a long time. After an eternity of silence my mom breathed.
“So you’re safe?”
“I’m safe,” I said. “I’m at a hospital in Erie.”
She didn’t ask why I was hours from home. I asked her to mail me some clothes if she could, and to please make sure Louise was still feeding my abandoned cat.
My mom said she would do what she could.
I was put into the general population on the third day. Like my prior rehab, I enjoyed this immensely. As soon as I started to feel better, I started making friends: Big John, who was terrifically funny; Marianne, a skinny junkie who talked about slitting her wrists to try to get off crack; David, a short guy with a ridiculous mustache and a speaking voice like a country music superstar. (I fell in love with David instantly.)
When Big John graduated from rehab, he offered to deliver our cigarettes. We gathered up our pennies; he wrote down our brands. I gave him my last $5 bill, which I’d been carrying “in case” for weeks.
Big John – who was smarter than we’d guessed – never came back with any cigarettes.
Completely broke and hours from home, I decided to figure out why my credit card had been randomly declined. I didn’t have a quarter for the payphone, but Chase Bank had a toll-free number.
“I need to find out what’s wrong with my credit card.”
“You reached your maximum limit,” said the Chase Bank representative.
“I need you to raise my maximum limit,” I said. “I need money.”
“That won’t be possible at this time,” she said politely. “We have already raised your limit to $12,400 and it looks like you’ve been having some trouble paying your bill. Would you like to speak with a Chase credit repair consultant?”
“No,” I said shrilly. “I just need money. Can’t you just raise it just a little bit? I don’t need much.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
I started to panic. I tried complete and total honesty, playing on her emotions, hoping for sympathy.
“But I’m in rehab!” I shrieked. “And I can’t get home without any money!”
Looking back, this might not have been the best card to play.
“I’m sorry,” she said again. Then, brightly: “Is there anything else I can do for you today?”
“You haven’t done anything for me!” I screamed. Then, as though it would accomplish anything, I slammed down the payphone receiver.
Nearby nurses frowned.
With no idea how I would ever get home, I immersed myself in rehabilitation activities.
This time, I wanted help.
I was so drunk that I’d forgotten the name of the hotel; if it hadn’t been etched into the keytag for my room, I’d never have found the place. But all I could think about was my empty bottle of schnapps.
That mother fucker drank my last drink, I thought. He probably thought I could just buy more.
But I knew my drinking time was limited. And now all the bars were closed.
Like all the other times I’d been drunk in my entire life, I’d ended up nowhere near where I wanted to be, doing nothing like what I’d wanted to do, with some strange guy on top of me and wondering if I would ever get home.
All of my drunken episodes were the same. I thought I was having spectacular adventures but they were all unpredictably messy, and always ended with something I didn’t want. Once I started drinking, my decisions were made based solely on getting more alcohol, more drugs, more more more. More was all that mattered.
The rest – the men, the sex, waking up wherever I landed – that was payment for “more.”
I sat on the curb outside and stared at the asphalt. In front of my eyes, the pavement melted, waves of color swirling over the black.
I sat up, eyes wide: my first-ever alcoholic hallucinations. I’d heard about but never experienced them.
I panicked and called my neighbor, Louise, from the nearby pay phone. It was maybe 4 a.m.
I called collect because I had no cash. Louise accepted the charges.
“Are you okay?” she answered.
“I just want to check on Kitty,” I drawled.
“Are you okay!” Louise repeated emphatically.
“Well I was raped, and that mother fucker drank my last drink.” I told her about Marvin and Meadville and the hotel, then she abruptly hung up.
I plopped on the curb and watched the asphalt swirl.
Moments later, the police arrived and found me in the parking lot. “We got a call from a Louise. She wants us to make sure you’re okay.”
Both officers were male.
“I’m fucking fine,” I said. Swearing came to me so easily when I was drunk, especially when people were – like police officers – preventing my continued attempts at making poor choices.
“We’d still like to ask you some questions,” they said.
I sighed.
When I’d finally convinced them that I didn’t need a hospital, I went into the hotel room. Marvin’s wooden leg was next to the bed. He sat up a little. I walked over and started kissing him, climbing on top of him, trying to have sex with him.
I figured payment was definitely owed.
Gently Marvin rolled me onto the bed, placing my head on the pillow.
“Just get some sleep,” he said calmly. “We’ll talk in the morning.”
When morning came, I was shivering, teeth chattering, the DTs setting in. Marvin gave me his sweatshirt for the ride.
An hour later, we stood outside of the hospital in Erie where the rehab awaited.
But I saw a bar across the street.
After losing my last drink to the would-be rapist, I desperately wanted one more chance – to do it right this time.
“It’s open! Please?” I begged.
Marvin shook his head. “No more bars,” he said. “You’ve gotta go in. And I’ve got to go to work.”
“Work?”
Marvin nodded. “I’ve got to go in today.”
I tried to remove Marvin’s sweatshirt, but I was shaking uncontrollably.
“Give it back when you get out,” Marvin said.
I hugged and thanked him, and walked inside to rehab.
It was a spacious bar, with a jukebox blasting and people playing pool. Carrying a bottle in my pocket made me feel like a degenerate but I sure wasn’t leaving it outside.
This bottle would forever be my last drink.
I sat down on the bar stool in Meadville, feeling completely at home with the strangers. I felt safe.
This was a mistake. Drinking always implied my relative safety while simultaneously throwing it out the window.
I carefully concealed the bottle in my leather jacket pocket as I sat down and ordered a draft beer. Finally, I thought. I completely forgot about the root beer schnapps I’d wanted. Instead I drank two beers, then slipped into the bathroom to take a clandestine sip of peach schnapps in the toilet stall.
When I got back to the bar, an uninvited man was waiting for me on my bar stool.
I don’t know his name. I’ll call him Hank, though it could have been Eric or Tim or Bob. He was scruffy, blond, tall, obnoxious and drunk, not necessarily in that order, and his name didn’t matter.
When Hank found out I was buying beer on credit, I bought him some drinks.
Then, when my credit card was suddenly randomly declined, Hank bought me drinks.
So when the bar closed and Hank offered to drive me back to my hotel, I accepted. I still had visions of finishing my bottle alone.
I hopped into Hank’s pickup truck, but he didn’t drive me to the hotel.
Instead he said, “I’m gonna show you a special place.”
“I don’t want to go to a special place,” I said, fondling the bottle in my pocket. “I want to go to my hotel.”
“Just wait,” he said, putting his unwanted hand on my knee. “You’ll love it.”
I did not think I would love it. I didn’t even like this guy. But, completely stuck, I rode with him to what can only be described as the middle of nowhere.
I stepped onto an enormous grassy field. There was no light.
“This is the best place to see the stars,” he said. “C’mon, lay down!” He threw himself into the grass in the pitch blackness. I sat down warily next to him.
This was not where I wanted to be.
Within minutes, he was kissing me, rolling on top of me, slobbering all over me, taking off everyone’s clothes leaving me half-naked and scratched by rocks in the grass.
I did not participate. I turned my head and said, “get off of me” and “I want to go back to the hotel” and “stop it” until finally, in the darkness in the middle of nowhere, I screamed, “You’re raping me!”
And that’s what finally made him stop.
“I thought you were enjoying it,” he said.
“No,” I said.
I opened my schnapps and glumly took a sip, calming my nerves.
“Aw man,” he said. “Gimme some of that.”
Then the obnoxious man whose name was probably not Hank took my bottle of peach schnapps out of my shaking hands, put it up to his lips, and downed the remaining liquid in one agonizing gulp.
I stared, dumbfounded.
“You drank my last drink!” I screamed at him. “You drank my LAST FUCKING DRINK!” I started whaling on him, swinging hard, fast, repeatedly. “You fucking raped me then you DRANK MY LAST FUCKING DRINK YOU FUCKING BASTARD! TAKE ME BACK TO MY FUCKING HOTEL!”
Within seconds we were in the truck, within minutes at the hotel. Still fuming I leapt out, cursing him. He barely stopped, then careened away.
I loved walking along train tracks. As a drunk, I’d ridden four-wheelers in the snow on the train tracks in Ohio. After tossing myself out of detox, I’d stood close enough to a train to nearly lose my life. And now, in Meadville, Pennsylvania, only a few weeks later, I was strolling on the tracks again.
My entire goal: find a liquor store and keep drinking.
I expected to buy a bottle and sip shots by the tracks, staring at the freights as they rumbled by and making my way back to the hotel when the bottle was gone. I’d drink the whole bottle myself, I reasoned, since Marvin was asleep, and then I’d go straight to rehab when he woke up.
But my plans rarely worked out when I was drinking.
I walked and walked in the hot summer sun. And while I was enjoying my stroll, it felt like the end of my life. I’d been dragging out my last drunk for … how long had it been? What day was it? What time was it? I’d left home to go to a bar and find someone to drive me to rehab … on Monday, I think. Or was it Sunday? I couldn’t recall. And it didn’t matter.
I just needed more. And as I walked and walked and walked, I wondered if the desk clerk had been confused, or if he’d lied to me. And just as I was wondering if there was actually a liquor store close enough to the tracks to see it, I saw a shopping plaza in the distance. I felt hopeful.
It was still a long walk to the plaza.
As I walked, I considered the most important question: What will I get for my last drink? I thought about buying rum and drinking rum and cokes, since that had been my first drink. I’d come full circle. But then I would have to buy coke, and mix drinks, and I just wanted to drink out of the bottle. I didn’t want beer because it would get warm. Finally I settled on root beer schnapps. I loved root beer schnapps. It would be the perfect thing.
I finally reached the plaza, found the store, and felt hopeful. I walked inside. Unaccustomed to buying hard liquor after drinking beer for most of my drunken years, I felt a bit let down that the store was so small. Sure, there were plenty of options – but wine? Yuk. Too much wine. Too much vodka. Where was the schnapps?
Finally I found it: a whole section of schnapps: apple, peach, and peppermint. Yuk! Who wants fruity schnapps? And peppermint schnapps reminded me of drinking that minty mouthwash at Ronnie’s house.
These will not do, I thought.
Then to the bored guy behind the counter I called, “Do you have any root beer schnapps?”
“Root beer? No.” He didn’t move from his spot.
I stood there for a long time. Finally I picked up a bottle of peach schnapps, which seemed like the least awful choice, and bought it with my credit card.
Is this even enough?
It would never be enough.
Somewhat desperate for the perfect last drink, I asked: “Is there a bar anywhere around here?”
“I think there’s a place about six blocks that way,” he waved. “But it might have closed down.”
That sounded like my kinda place. “How do I get there?”
He waved haphazardly, “Six blocks that way.”
So I discarded the last-drink-on-the-tracks idea and started walking “that way.”
The sun disappeared as I walked. My bottle was half-gone when I stepped inside.
After Frank the Angel’s visit to Barry’s Bar, I was reminded that I needed to get to rehab. I remembered the lady on the phone: get here soon – blah blah – beds might not be available – blah blah blah….
When Marvin said “are ya ready to go?” I looked around at Barry’s Bar. There was no better dark, grungy place in the world for me, right then and there. I wanted to stay forever.
I would never, ever be ready to go.
“I guess,” I said. If I had to stop drinking, this was a great last place to drink.
And I had to stop drinking. Even though every molecule in my body wanted more more more MORE! I knew that I needed to get to rehab. Even though my brain was demanding: GO TO REHAB! the ticker tape in my brain was saying only one thing: this is the last time … this is the last time … this is the last time ….
I am an alcoholic. There would never, ever be enough beer for me. I couldn’t have one drink, because I would not be able to stop. I would never be able to control the consequences. I would not be able to have a life of any kind unless I could get off the alcohol.
I needed rehab. I needed it like I needed oxygen. But with alcohol already in my system, the only thing I really wanted was another beer.
Still, Erie was only a couple of hours away. Marvin was ready to go. I needed to go with him. So with a nod to Barry, who probably assumed I’d be back in an hour, I walked out the door. I sloshed myself into the sidecar and we finally drove out of Pitcairn.
I passed out almost immediately.
The sun was blazing down on me when I woke and took notice of my surroundings. We were on a highway somewhere, nothing but green all around us. I lit a cigarette inside the sidecar.
That’s when Marvin said, over the din and without so much as a hint of exhaustion, “Um, I’ve been awake for more than 24 hours. And I need to call work. They don’t know where I am.”
Marvin’s well-being had never crossed my mind.
“Oh my god stop!” I said. “Stop somewhere, anywhere! And call work! And get some sleep!”
A normal person might be worried that sleepy, drunk Marvin would crash the motorcycle and kill us both.
My first thought: if we stop, I can get more alcohol!
“Are you sure?” Marvin asked me. “I know you want to get to rehab.”
“Yes! It’s totally cool! You need sleep!” I said. “I’ll pay for your hotel!” (I loved that credit card.)
Within minutes we were checking into a hotel in Meadville, Pennsylvania, 45 minutes away from rehab.
“Is there a bar within walking distance?” I asked the desk clerk. I’d been sleeping for maybe two hours, but I was ready to start drinking immediately.
“I don’t know of any,” he said, sizing me up. “There’s a liquor store a couple of blocks east.”
“Which way is east?” I asked him. I had no sense of direction and just wanted him to point.
The desk clerk stared. “I guess you could follow the train tracks,” he said. “Just follow them awhile and you’ll get to a plaza with a liquor store.”
Train tracks.
We got our room keys and I waved to Marvin. “See ya!”
Marvin was too tired to argue. “Just make sure you come back,” he said.
Marvin was starting to figure me out.
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.
