I’ve had better days

When I came out of rehab, I was still trembling. I had been taking enough narcotics to knock out the cast and crew of the Titanic. I managed to con three doctors and went to different pharmacies in order to dodge the computers. I was deep in the mire of drugs seeking behavior. I overdosed the day I was to fly to Oregon to enter Hazelden. It was an accident, or so I like to think. Taking narcotics is a death trip. It’s about not feeling. In any case, I was so out of it that I forgot about the dose I took earlier. God forbid that I would err on the side of prudence. So I accidentally did double of what was already a near lethal dose.

It was a horrible experience. I was being revived by paramedics. The scene was out of a B movie. A guy was asking me the year, what city I was in, who was the president etc. I thought I was sinking in quicksand. My light was dimming fast. It was as if nearly all life was gone. All the colors were fading.

My friend Valerie Higgins saved my life. Had she not checked on me, had she not called the called the paramedics, I would have died. Later Valerie drove me to Oakland airport for my flight to Hazelden. I couldn’t walk or hold my luggage and had to be wheeled through the airport. Except for my heartbeat, I felt dead. It was Christmas Eve 2006. The airline personnel were all wearing Santa Claus hats topped with white fuzzy balls and little bells. The flight to Dante’s ninth circle was ready for takeoff.

The plane was full of traveling families. The scene was grotesquely surreal. I had reached my moment of pitiful, incomprehensible, demoralization. I felt my bones fractured under the weight of an unimaginable loneliness. I was about to experience the longest 28 days in my life. It takes someone who has been broken to help someone mend. I was about to enter a place where the wounded help the broken heal.

What is strange is how common this experience is among addicts and alcoholics. I was lucky, I survived. But it is much more than that. I prevailed. That would have been impossible without divine intervention in the form of other formerly shattered souls.

The way I perpetuate my drug life is to surround myself with people who get high like I do. Conversely, the way I stay clean and sober is to surround myself with people living sober and healing their lives. If twelve step programs were a branch of the military, there would be people with Purple Hearts and Silver stars out there. The way some people maintain grace and dignity in the face of serious tragedies continue to inspire me. I have seen and met people, whose children have died unexpectedly, have financial ruin and lethal illness. Not only did these people remain sober, they maintained their dignity and self-respect, they used their experience to help others. These people are my heroes. Because of their way of being, I am inspired to be a better man. These were all broken and shattered people. Now they serve as examples of human nobility. I am made whole by people like this. I want to hang out with these people in the afterlife.

I go to therapy, worked 12 steps, work with other people, work out, work on my MA, read, write, talk, listen, dream, hope, heal, answers questions and question answers. What I come up with is that some days are better than others. But once in a while, there are spectacular days.