Acrobaddict (18 page)

I went back to my room, finished the Ritalin, and then had the most tormented sleep of my life. Trying to sleep while tripping and
speeding invited all the demons I had just released to come stab and tear my mind.

The next day a call from my counselor woke me up. She wanted me to come in and talk. I went to her office, destroyed by the weekend, and we talked about giving rehab a shot. She said my school insurance would cover the cost, and I could take the remainder of the semester off for medical leave and return in the spring to retake all the classes I was failing. It seemed like the smartest thing to do—even if I didn’t want to stop using drugs, it would erase my bad grades and give me a bit of a clean slate. She told me to give it a try, and I could leave the place if I didn’t like it. I had to be there fourteen days. It was a Monday morning, and I would leave the next day. I surrendered, called Darren, and told him we had to party hard that night.

I packed clothes for a few nights’ stay, and as I left my room for a pre-rehab fuckup at Darren’s place, the entire girls’ gymnastics team came in with a huge card that said, “Good Luck, Joe.” I was completely disgusted by that gesture. It felt like a horrible Hallmark movie. All I could think about was that first line of coke with Darren, and here were these people, hugging me and telling me everything would be fine. I wanted to douse the place in gasoline and burn us all alive. They repeatedly extolled my bravery. It was all I could do to conceal my laughter by staring at the floor. They finally left, and I ran to Darren’s in desperate pursuit of my high.

I treasured my first line like a lover’s tender kiss. The first line of that night will be forever burned in my memory, for better or worse. After I snorted the “opening credit,” I loved to light a cigarette and suck an Altoid mint, calling this combination my “steak dinner.” I believed this reference gave me dignity and class.

After we did coke all night, Darren drove me to rehab. I arrived with my nose burning and my lungs on fire from all the cigarettes I had smoked. I didn’t expect a five-star hotel, but it was a lot dirtier than I imagined, with a damp, moldy feeling. Someone immediately came and took my bags, opening them and going through all my stuff, searching for drugs, cologne, mouthwash, or any other creative thing an addict might use to get high, but I didn’t try to smuggle
anything in. I went upstairs for my intake and told a nurse about every drug I had ever taken. I went to my room, kept my clothes in the bag because I didn’t plan on staying that long, and took out my teddy bear, Oatmeal. He had gone everywhere with me. He had been at the Olympic Training Center, and now he was in rehab. Things weren’t looking up for that bear. He used to have beautiful, soft fur, but it had become matted and stuck together because I had put him in the washing machine. After that he started looking more like real oatmeal, left out in the sun, caked together and hard. He was missing his nose and an eye.

He sat on my bed staring at me, reminding me of my childhood. I had to look away, unable to talk about my situation with him. The room was dark, and I was exhausted. All I wanted to do was sleep. It was hard to function after partying all night, and now I was crashing. I needed medication, pills, anything, but all I got was solitude, goose bumps, and a runny nose. The room had five additional beds, but for now I was the only person who occupied one. I was terrified someone else might come in. In an hour I had to go downstairs and meet the group.

I called my college counselor to let her know I had arrived. I told her I wanted to leave, and she strongly recommended I stay for the entire fourteen days. I told her I couldn’t miss Thanksgiving with my family and began to cry. Her kind exterior changed, and she put up a strong, tough-love front. I hung up the phone and felt powerless in that hellhole of a rehab, and hated her for putting me there.

It was difficult to stay put in that place. All I could think about was calling Darren to come rescue me, but when I did speak with him, I felt calmer. After a couple of days I realized the rehab wasn’t all that bad, except that I did get a roommate—a forty-year-old ex-con alcoholic and drug addict who was on his third time through rehab. I prayed that wouldn’t become me. I made a friend who called me “baby.” She was a sweet sixty-year-old woman addicted to crack. I wished she could have stayed, but she left to go to a halfway house.

On the fourth day I got into a fight with my rehab counselor, who told me if I didn’t open my eyes I was going to come back in here as
a heroin addict. He handed me a copy of AA’s Big Book. I thought I was being clever as I wrote a quote in it from a movie I liked about how some birds aren’t meant to be caged. I slipped the book under his door, and then called Darren to come get me. He knew I wasn’t supposed to leave, but I said, “Just be here,” and hung up the phone. We headed back to school.

The phone woke me up. It sounded angry and desperate. I answered sleepily, and it was my college counselor. She wanted to see me immediately in the dean’s office. Without time to shower or brush my teeth, I ran out to meet them. When I walked through the door, I almost threw up. Both of my parents were sitting in the office. It felt like a bruising slap in the face. My father hadn’t even seen my school, and there he was, looking estranged, disappointed, and afraid. My mother looked concerned, but managed to hold it together. Their relationship was still oceans apart. I sat down. I wore the sleep of last night on my skin.

The dean started talking and said if I did not finish some sort of rehabilitation, I could not return. And because I left rehab before my stay was completed, the school insurance wouldn’t cover my next stint. If I didn’t go, I wouldn’t receive my gymnastics grant money and would be kicked out of school. I was enraged. It was my decision to go, and it was my decision to leave. I wasn’t caught with any drugs on campus, but that didn’t matter. My counselor flipped through her book and found an intensive outpatient program. It was all day every day for two months, and it was my responsibility to get there. It was decided that I would start a week after Thanksgiving, and I knew I needed to complete that one.

My parents left, and I didn’t say good-bye. I blamed them for all of this. Darren and I made a new pact, a list we would stick with to help us change our lives. At the top of the list was “No drugs!” Then came exercise, then schoolwork; at the bottom was “Be happy!” We knew
we could do it. I invited Darren home for Thanksgiving to honor our new clean and sober beginning, a good holiday with a fresh start.

Well, needless to say, my fresh start didn’t last very long. I fell asleep on the table during my family’s Thanksgiving dinner. I had a xanny bar (the 2 mg dose of Xanax) as an appetizer, Klonopin for my entrée, and a delectable desert of Percocet. My family knew I was loaded, and my mom kicked me out of the house . . . again.

Darren and I drove back to Holyoke and got an eight ball. I tried to stop doing coke, but I found it hopeless. Darren’s birthday was coming up, so we ended up going back to Boston for more Klonopin. We didn’t have any money (as usual), so I lied to all of my friends and told them I would use their money to buy mushrooms. I stole their money and pawned my favorite pewter sculptures of warriors and skeletons in battle that my mother had bought me when I was a child.

I bought three bags of crystal meth, twenty-five Klonopin, and four pills of ecstasy. I took the ecstasy on the drive back from Boston, along with a few other pills. I ended up being pilled out for a couple of days, and then I needed to buy coke to stay awake. For Darren’s birthday I scammed someone else and got ten OxyContin. The effects of those pills felt awesome. I decided during my drugged-out state that I would actually do my best once I started in that new recovery program. I couldn’t believe that I was a drug addict.

19

NEUROTRANSMITTERS

S
EROTONIN, A NEUROTRANSMITTER, IS A NATURAL CHEMICAL MADE IN THE BRAIN AND SMALL INTESTINES
. I
T IS RESPONSIBLE FOR FEELINGS OF WELL-BEING
. S
EROTONIN DEFICIENCIES CAN BE TREATED WITH SEROTONIN-SELECTIVE REUPTAKE INHIBITORS
(SSRI)
SUCH AS
P
ROZAC
. T
HESE ANTIDEPRESSANTS ATTEMPT TO PRESERVE THE SEROTONIN ALREADY IN THE BRAIN RATHER THAN HELP PRODUCE MORE
.

It was winter break between my fall and spring semesters, and I was in the second week of the intensive outpatient program. A light snow covered the city of Holyoke and dusted away the gloom and corruption. I felt hopeful. Two weeks without using, and physically I felt better than I had in a long time. I began to see the terrible things I had done and was ready for a change. I knew my future depended on passing every Wednesday’s drug test and on my ability to follow directions, and knew to ask for help.

The program was intense, with group therapy, individual counselors, and a psychiatrist who helped me address my anxiety, depression, and insomnia—problems that had plagued me my whole life. The group’s great faith and shared similarities led me to start enjoying the required twelve-step meetings. The psychiatrist had diagnosed me as manic-depressive and said my depression had a name and it was
not
“drug addict.” That only validated my denial that I had a problem with drugs or suffered from the disease of addiction. I was just medicating my feelings of sadness and despair.

Darren began to change as I changed. He saw me trying to crawl out of that hole and recognized that our relationship was contaminating us. He decided to move home to Virginia and started thinking about his own future. Together we were too self-destructive. We packed up the broken-down, boxlike apartment he’d lived in and cried. We knew it was for the best. We had become as addicted to each other as to the drugs we took together. We said our good-byes, and he left. Now I would have to go through college alone. No more Cloud or Darren to hide behind.

I was not the only Putignano going through rough times. My brother, sisters, aunts, uncles, and parents had been working hard to keep the restaurant open during the recession. Bad business choices combined with a decline in customers brought devastating results to the family—Giovanni’s Avon Towne House closed during my sophomore year. The loss of the restaurant left everyone unsure of their lives. We had been born into that industry, and it was assumed that it would always be there. My father had deep shame about losing the business, and I think my mother was even more heartbroken because she would no longer see him at the bar. Even though they hadn’t been together for years, I think it comforted her to see him as she passed through the smoke and gin. It wasn’t just a place of business; the restaurant was our family’s body, where we bled and bonded, for better or worse, and now our family crest had been shattered. Our livelihood was turned into a Chinese restaurant, mocking us as others succeeded.

I had a few days off from rehab for Christmas and went home in an attempt to make my way back into the family. I stayed with my sister Trish, since my mother and I still had issues. Returning home was painful, like slipping into an ice bath, freezing and numbing. The quaint town I’d grown up in was still the same, but also changed, as my ghosts and demons reemerged and threw themselves on me. The beautiful birch trees that once welcomed me now rejected my being, and I felt a bottomless pit of despair. When my sister went to sleep, I curled up on her couch by the Christmas tree. The twinkling colored lights and tinsel became the backdrop of my tears. I cried so hard I almost vomited. I couldn’t believe what I had become, and I was unable to slow it down. I prayed to God, to anyone, to anything.

I felt like a helpless child. I hoped and wished and prayed that there was a miracle waiting for me inside one of those perfectly wrapped Christmas presents.