Acrobaddict (39 page)

We cried ourselves to sleep. I woke up late for work, hoping a blackout would erase his mind and my after-school-special bedtime story—the details of which I couldn’t remember. I ran out the door to catch a cab for work. I was already late, so I decided to make a quick stop at Kimi’s for a bag to cure my hangover when I realized
I had left all my “works” inside Alejandro’s D&G bag. I wanted to throw up. Just as I was about to send a text saying “Don’t open the bag,” he beat me to it.

“I found your stuff. It’s over!”

Just like that. I was devastated, but more upset that he would trash my coke, heroin, and precious spoon that was bent to junkie perfection. I would never again have access to that world, forever shunned from the fake land of cool.

Heroin alone wasn’t working as well as it used to, so I went on a strong bender over the next few weeks. I did coke to wake me up, Xanax to calm my nerves, alcohol to get me thirsty, and a shot of heroin to seal the deal. I knew that mixture was deadly, but it felt good. I missed work frequently and my boss questioned my behavior, but I couldn’t break that gorgeous cycle of using. Once the money and the drugs ran out, the pain became unbearable and shot me back into a suicidal, sober state of depression and despair. Without methadone to ease the ensuing dope sickness, I braced myself for a hurricane of withdrawal.

I shook, cried, pleaded, threw up, and hallucinated for three days in bed, drenched in a puddle of sweat. Even if I had the money to use, I didn’t have the strength to get it. My stomach wrenched and my guts were imploding. Where was the Devil’s warm cradling now? Was this him inside me, ripping my organs apart? I grasped for grace as I hit a new bottom. If I survived this detox I would be forever scarred and deranged. When I could get out of bed, I searched the room endlessly for drugs—scraping, scratching, and clawing for old cotton swabs that once drowned in an overflowing pool of heroin—but they were all gone. The only thing left was a small weed roach lodged between the wall and my bed. Instead of numbing my pain, pot made me think too much. I wanted to be absent from me, but I smoked it anyway since it was better than being abstinent.

I turned on the TV. A rerun of
ER
was playing, with snow falling on a terminally ill priest who spoke of accepting his death and mortality and his declination of medical care. I thought he was talking to me, and as I watched the snow fall I thought of my mother. Nature always transported me to her, and in that moment, with her child almost dead, what would she think? The priest showed me my two choices: kill myself or get into recovery. Was I worth fighting for? If I made it my life’s work, could I quit using?

I saw a blank piece of paper near my bed and wrote, “God, please help me!” I put it on my dresser, the highest place in my room, thinking the closer to the sky, the closer to heaven, the closer to God. Stuck again in a state of demoralizing pain, I held myself tight and fell asleep to the hum of the television.

A seed of hope appeared the next day. Like a flower fighting for life, I had to compete against the desire to die. Without health insurance I couldn’t go to rehab, and I could never stay abstinent long enough for the spiritual aspect of twelve-step meetings to work. Early recovery’s excruciating physical withdrawals always led me to failure, and I had to heal my body first so my mind could follow. I came to believe physical sickness was the normal state after I existed for so long with constant back pain, a chronic runny nose, and profuse sweating.

I went to the employee-assistance program at the
New York Times
. I walked into the office of a young, pretty woman, closed the door, and said, “I’ve been shooting heroin in your company since I started working here. I can’t stop. I’m desperate.”

Unfazed, she appeared pleased that I came for help and asked if I would consider rehab. Part of me wanted to back out, but I pushed forward and said, “Yes,” as the wraith inside me fought back. After I told her I didn’t have any health insurance, she made a phone call and said, “I have great news, and this doesn’t happen often, so you are in luck . . . if you want it. A rehab in Connecticut is willing to give you a scholarship for fourteen days, but you have to go this Monday or it will go to someone else.” It was Friday, and I began to question what I was doing. Would I make it through the weekend? I asked how I could miss two weeks of work, and she replied, “We will cover
you, your job is protected. You’re doing the right thing, and it sounds like you a need a rest from your life.” A rest. Yes, I needed a rest. I accepted the offer.

Knowing rehab was around the corner, I wanted to get loaded; but with the goal of getting back on naltrexone before leaving rehab I needed two weeks clean, so using wasn’t an option. If I shot up now, I’d be dope sick upon arrival, and for the first time I wanted recovery to work. Still, I couldn’t go to rehab sober, could I? Everyone gets high before they go—it’s like an initiation. But I really needed this to work and I would be wasting precious time in rehab lying in bed, trying to recover from dope sickness during my first few days. Naltrexone worked; it wasn’t the total solution, but it would buy me some drug-free time and allow my mind to heal. Not using over the weekend ensured I would be on naltrexone before leaving rehab and reduced the chance for relapse upon return to the city. But then, would my last high be my best high? If I knew that would be my last, could I make it better? Once I started to obsess about using, the desire overwhelmed me. Yes, I had to use again.

But I didn’t. For the first time in a long time, I stayed abstinent that weekend through TV reruns, tears, and pint after pint of Ben & Jerry’s. Monday morning I got in a van bound for St. Mary’s rehab in Connecticut. I told my roommates I was going home to visit my family in Boston, and left with little hope in my heart. I was defeated and broken.

While not a five-star hotel, the rehab was nicer than my first one years before, and far better than past mental hospitals and institutions. It was set on a hill surrounded by a dense forest; and I saw two deer in the grass on my first day. We weren’t allowed any music, books, or anything non-recovery related for entertainment or distraction. My roommate was a giant steroidal bodyguard at a strip club and talked incessantly about all the strippers he’d banged. He couldn’t believe he’d ended up in this place, alone and womanless. Where were all his beautiful strippers now?

Seeing others find recovery through the doled-out twelve-step materials, I scoured their contents searching for answers and trying to
decipher the secrets locked inside the same words I’d read countless times before with no result. What was
my
problem? I needed to believe those words and feel them inside what little humanity I had left. I would eat the pages, one by one, and ingest them into my soul, if that were the solution. I cried and clung tightly to the possibility of recovery.

My roommate and I finally spoke late one sleepless night—person to person, human to human, his tough exterior stripped down, connecting on a level of shared suffering. People say the universal language is love, but I say it’s pain. Our stories were different but familiar, and I felt a deep sense of peace as we identified our honesty together. In that horrid room where countless sick addicts before us had detoxed, crying and screaming in agony and resentment, we tried to surrender, and the hushed sobs of my He-Man roommate lulled me to sleep: the addict’s lullaby.

On my fourth day I was assigned to Kara, a strong Latin-American New Yorker who had battled her own addiction in the 1980s’ coke euphoria days, and was now a therapist. Her sharp eyes cut me to pieces, and a foreign glow emanated from within her. This wondrous light only shines from those who have earned it, those whose beaten souls and bodies somehow escaped hell. Her gut-wrenching honesty scared me at first, but, already broken and exposed, I no longer cared if she saw who I really was.

Over the next few days I became accustomed to the long, strict days starting at 6:00 a.m. Outside of rehab my only reason for getting up that early would have been to buy a truckload of heroin. But here, before my day started, I would go into a large stone room overlooking the forest and sip my coffee, which was decaf even though they said otherwise. In those quiet moments as the day broke, I searched myself for strength. Could I summon it again? Could I call out to the warrior I had vanquished to the bottom of the ocean, submerged under years of drugs? Would he even listen or recognize me?

I tried remembering that athletic power, forcing myself to feel the sparkle of muscle memory. I could feel that power lying dormant in my bones and caught glimpses of myself on the high bar, freely
swinging against the chalk-stained steel. Those memories gave me a sense of life and happiness, and a dim feeling of hope. That small spark rekindled who I had once been, and, just as my soul had demanded so many years ago from an eight-year-old boy, it gave me direct orders to work out and regain my physical strength and flexibility. With a decade lost it wouldn’t be easy. How could I return to that kind of form?
I’m too old and too broken
, I thought. But the answer resonated throughout my body: “Do it.” I went up to my room and started doing push-ups, sit-ups, and handstands. To strictly concentrate on recovery, exercise wasn’t allowed in rehab, but I had direct orders from the sun, bypassing all man-made laws, to guide me out of despair.

I snuck into my room between group therapy and counseling and worked out. I was light years away from where I had been ten years ago. I was weak, stiff, and out of shape. I didn’t exactly know why I was doing it, but if felt good to slowly restore my body’s natural opiates and give my mind tiny periods of relief. It was a huge mountain to climb, but I knew not to concentrate on reaching the peak. I had to take single steps, not thinking about the past or the future, only about securing a present moment without clinging to an anticipated outcome.

I continued working with Kara, and while her power was intoxicating, her honesty frightened me. One day she shut the door and said, “Sit down. I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told another human being.” I was nervous that she was about to drop a bomb on me or reveal a secret I could not handle. She continued with conviction, “Joe, you are special. There is something powerful about you. I don’t say this to anybody, and as everyone knows, I’m very honest, but you are unique. You have something to give the world. I’m not saying this for your recovery. I’m saying this for your soul—and you need to know it. You’re special.”

Instead of rejecting and casting aside the compliment as I would have done in the past, I sat quietly and listened. She wasn’t fueling my ego, but feeding my spirit, with purpose behind each word, a direction, a responsibility, and a belief. I started crying, sobbing through
countless layers and years of destruction. They were dormant tears of an unheeded truth: “Stop killing the magnificence within, stop hiding, inspire people to be more than they are. Better yourself and humanity.” I swallowed her words and held that moment close.

I completed the fourteen days, fighting negativity and secretly training, but fear of relapsing in the outside world set in when it was time to leave. I had achieved my rehab naltrexone goal, and immediately went to a twelve-step meeting once back in New York. Instead of sitting in the back hating everyone, I sat near the speaker. I needed to reveal my addiction, talk to others with the same affliction, and identify with their sense of hope. Living near Kimi made a run-in with the Grim Reaper and her disability stick inevitable. Would I have the strength to turn away from her seduction?

I returned to work at the
Times
a new person—on time, alert, efficient, happy, and amicable. My boss was proud of me, and one day, as I walked the long hallways, a woman stopped me and asked if I had recently had my braces removed. She said she’d never seen me smile before, and I should do it more often—of course, I never had braces. I kept the same daily routine to make sure I had an order to follow: wake up, have coffee, make my bed. I had never made my bed before, but now those small acts learned in rehab made me feel good. I cleaned my room and got rid of a pharmacy of syringes, bent and burnt spoons, and alcohol swabs. I exorcised the demons, closing my eyes as I threw away my past.

A few weeks passed, and my roommates noticed something different about me; I told them I had had a very healing trip to Boston. Keith mentioned a Broadway audition casting gymnasts for the show
Jumpers
. In response, I felt fear radiating throughout my body; but something inside said, “Go and see.” After wrestling with the idea, I decided to watch the audition and, if I felt comfortable, put my foot in the ring. At rehab they’d said to treat myself as if I were the only survivor of a devastating train wreck, and, while I should have taken a year off heavy exercise to let my body recover from years of intense heroin use, I was inspired to try. I went to Central Park and started flipping. I could only perform a few flips safely, and my body hated
the idea, but I kept at it, the same way I did as an eight-year-old boy in the basement. It felt like I was excavating the remains of my past, brushing the dirt off my bones—it didn’t come back easily. Little dizzy stars flashed from the corners of my eyes as my body reacclimated to working against gravity. My inabilities became humiliating, and I wanted to give up and go use, ashamed that I was so out of shape. A few overrotated twisting flips landed me on my back, rolling in the dirt. With sore ankles and a deflated spirit, I had had enough and went home.