Warrior Pose (40 page)

“You had a dark night of the Soul,” Father David observes.

“I think it was six or seven dark nights,” I say with a heavy sigh.

During a pause in our conversation, Father David glances at the prayer taped on the wall and says, “That's beautiful, the ‘Serenity Prayer.' ”

“What's its origin?” I ask.

“It's the main prayer for members of Alcoholics Anonymous,” he replies softly. “But it's for anyone who needs help from God when they're facing great life challenges.”

We repeat it out loud a few times. It feels good. But I'm bothered by the AA thing. There's no doubt I drank like a champion over the past two decades, but I've never felt like an alcoholic. After what I've just been through, I have no craving for medications, beer, or wine. I can't imagine falling back into that hell. But the prayer is inspiring and makes even more sense to me than the day I checked in. I have to change what I can in my life. Accept what is beyond my control. Find serenity. Somehow.

My contemplation is broken when a server from the cafeteria knocks on the door and steps in with a lunch tray. “Would you like lunch today?” he asks shyly. I probably threw him out of the room a few times while I was curled up on the floor in convulsions. I can't imagine how I looked…or smelled. This time, I'm famished and the aroma of the food is heavenly. “Yes! Please! I'll take it right here on my lap!” I say all this with the first smile I think I've had for anyone who works here.

Father David watches while I attack the tray like a wild animal. As I swallow the final morsel of potato salad, Nurse Ratched comes in to lay down the law. “You'll have to come out of your room tomorrow morning. We will no longer take your vitals in here. There will be no more meals in bed. You will have to attend all meetings.” She says all this without even a glance at Father David, like he doesn't exist.

“What are the meetings?” I ask as kindly as I can.

“They'll explain it all to you,” she answers curtly and walks out, clicking the overhead light off out of habit.

She frustrates me. But it's clearly more about me than her. I'm sure everyone who works here has to find a balance between compassion and a firm hand. Nurse Ratched is probably the one who found me after my night with the demons, cleaned me up, and got me into bed. And the truth is, I need someone like her right now. Without her toughness I'd lie in bed for a month. I'm ready to accept a firm hand now, but I'd like it to be my own. Detoxing is only the beginning. I've
got to get stabilized. Complete this program, whatever it is. Get back home to Morgan.

After offering me a prayer of his own, Father David says good-bye. I set my watch alarm and lie down to read. I don't even make it through a chapter before I'm sound asleep. I wake up briefly when the last dinner I'll be served in my room arrives. I'm starving again, but I take a pass. I'm too tired to sit up. Too tired to eat. I just want more sleep.

When my watch alarm goes off at 6
A
.
M
.
I'm tempted to pull the covers over my head and fight it out with the staff for another day of rest.
Get up, Daddy
. I can hear Morgan's sweet voice in my head. I miss him beyond belief.
Yes, time to start getting up
. I crawl out of bed, take a hot shower, and put on a clean pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt. As I finish dressing, I feel a small jolt of pain in my back. I remember I need my back brace. I pull the smaller elastic one from a drawer and strap it on tightly, grab my cane for support, open the door, and step out of my room.

I feel like I've been hibernating in a cave. It's a whole new world in the hallway. Nurses are scurrying about. People are lined up for vitals. The lights are scorching bright. Maybe half a dozen patients. This time I look at everyone and smile. It's the first time I've seen their faces. One or two return my smile. The others stare at the floor like I used to. I take my place in line. They're efficient here. I'm soon on the chair with a blood pressure monitor wrapped around my arm.

When the nurse finishes with me, she directs me down the hall to the cafeteria. As I amble toward breakfast, I pass five other rooms like mine, each with a nameplate on the door. Every plate has two names. I'm the only one with a room of my own. What a stroke of luck. At the cafeteria door, another jolt of pain stops me in my tracks. I forgot. I can't sit up to eat. I need my portable lounge.

“Excuse me,” I say to a male staffer striding down the hall who looks vaguely familiar, “I have a broken back. I brought a portable lounge chair with me. I need it. I can't sit up to eat.”

“I remember,” he says. “It was too big and bulky, we had to put it in storage. Sorry.” He walks off. Then I realize it. He's the one who confiscated my box of drugs the day I arrived.

I peek into the lunchroom. There are nine or ten patients sitting at tables with their breakfasts. A buffet on the right has an assortment of cereals, fruit, coffee, and juices. I glance to my left. A big, red couch. A godsend. I step over and roll myself onto it, still trying to figure out how I'm going to manage this.

“You look like you're in pain,” says a young woman in pink flannel pajamas with thick, short cut blond hair and a perky smile. She gets up from her chair and kneels down by me. “Hi, my name is Sherry. I'm a nurse. Well, I was until I lost my job and ended up here. Anyway, can I bring you something to eat?”

I can't believe my luck. “Thanks, Sherry. My name is Brad. I have a bad back. It would be great if you brought me something. Anything. Just a lot of it, please. I haven't eaten much lately.”

A few others stop by the couch to say hello as they finish their meals. Everyone seems soft. Humble. I feel the same way. We're all in the process of facing ourselves. It's painful, facing ourselves and putting our egos in their place.

“I'll take your tray,” Sherry says just as I finish. “I don't mind doing this for you every meal. It makes me feel like I'm still a nurse.”

“Thanks, Sherry,” I say as I struggle up from the couch. “You're a gem.”

Sherry is the only one here bubbling over with hope and enthusiasm. She's pregnant with her first child. Her boyfriend, the father, comes to visit her every day. She was hooked on Vicodin, but now she's over it. “I'm leaving detox in a few days to spend a month in the residential unit,” she says with a wide smile. “Then I go back home and have my baby. I can't wait!”

“What residential unit?” I ask.

Sherry explains that we're all required to leave detox when the staff determines we're ready. They move us to a complex in a three-story brick building next door. We'll be assigned rooms that are like small efficiency apartments where we prepare our own meals, do our own laundry, become more self-sufficient. In another wing, there's a full schedule of counseling sessions and classes designed to help us build new lives. We'll be required to attend daily Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous meetings in the grand
meeting room just across the courtyard from the detox ward. It's a minimum thirty-day stay.

I've been so out of it, I never knew any of this. No one ever explained the program to me. Or if they did, I have no recollection. I assumed I'd go through detox, rest for a few days, attend a few meetings with staff specialists to make sure I'm stabilized, and then head home. I never really thought it through.

“It's time for your first meeting,” Sherry says brightly. “Sort of a taste of what's in store once you move to residential. It's right next door. The room has a couch you can lie on. Come on, I'll help you get there.”

Sherry takes my free arm and guides me into the meeting room and over to the couch. I flop myself down on the brown cushions and drop my cane on the tan carpet. There are six or seven other patients already in the room as the counselor walks in. He sees me on the couch and says, “You're here for the first time, right?” He strides over, leans down, and shakes my hand. “Welcome. It's good to have you with us.” Then he takes his place at the front of the room.

“My name is Don and I'm an alcoholic,” he says with authority. “Hi Don,” everyone but me chimes in. I'll soon learn this is the formal greeting in AA. “I was a successful businessman,” Don continues with a smile, tugging at the lapels of his tan sport coat. “I had a beautiful wife and two great kids. But there was so much stress in my job that I started drinking at noon and didn't stop until I passed out in bed at midnight.”

Don's smile disappears as he continues. “My family intervened many times. I'd sober up for a week, then get right back on the booze. Finally, my wife threatened to leave me, so I hid my drinking from everyone. I had bottles stashed everywhere: at work, at home, in the garage, in the trunk of my car. I'd sneak out, knock down a pint of vodka in a few gulps, fill my mouth with breath mints, and keep on going. Finally, I crashed. Literally. I crashed my car in the middle of the day, drunk as a skunk. It was my third DUI, and when I got out of jail my family was gone. The McDonald Center saved my life. It can save yours, too.”

On this note, Don asks each of us to share our story. Sherry leans over and whispers to me, “We have to do this every time. It's part of the program.”

The first person to speak up says, “Hi, I'm Tony and I'm a drug addict.” Tony is a building contractor who started on painkillers after an injury on the job and got hooked. Next, a businessman named Michael tells us he's an alcoholic who needed a quart of scotch every day just to keep going. Steve is a sometime student in his twenties, addicted to cocaine and methamphetamine. He shares details of his suicide attempts. Sherry tells us she's thirty, pregnant, and was hooked on Vicodin. Judith is a forty-something housewife who mixed wine with Valium for too many years.

Each of their stories touches me to the core of my being. I can feel their pain, their anguish, and their fear of returning to addiction and empty lives. As much as I would like to think otherwise, I realize my story is no different from theirs, except for one thing: I don't miss the drugs or feel any compulsions. I'm never going back. When it's my turn to share, I say, “Hi, I'm Brad. I've got a broken back and cancer. I've taken too many medications and drank too much wine and beer. But I don't think I'm an alcoholic or drug addict.” I'm met with glances of disbelief and guffaws of dismissal as a wave of embarrassment floods through me. After the meeting, I ask Don for a moment of his time and try to explain myself. He stops me mid-sentence.

“You're an addict, just like everyone else here,” he says resolutely. “I've heard what you're saying too many times before from too many different people in denial. They always go out those doors and straight back to booze and drugs. You need to join AA, go to meetings every day for the rest of your life. Get with the program and stay with it, or you'll fall right back on your face.” Before I can respond, Don pats me gently on the shoulder and heads down the hall.

There was great kindness in his firmness, but Don's words hit me like a punch in the stomach. Am I an addict for life? Incapable of going forward without daily meetings? Always on the brink of relapse? It's hard for me to believe. My whole body rejects the idea. I'm sure the residential program is wonderful and has a lot
to offer, but I know it's not for me. It's more than believing I don't have lingering addictions. It doesn't fit my circumstances. I'm in great pain and barely mobile, can't sit for meetings, do laundry, or cook meals, much less hike up and down the stairs for the rest of the required activities. The problem is, it looks like I don't have any choice, and I know I'm nowhere near ready to try to go home.

“I just spoke with Don,” a woman from the front desk walks up as I turn to leave the lounge and head for my room. “He told me how you're feeling. The residential program is a requirement of your stay here. We've been in touch with your wife, and she is adamant that you follow the program.”

“Thank you,” I answer, feeling powerless and realizing the futility of attempting a discussion. I'm sure they've all heard it innumerable times from too many people like me. I trudge back into my room with pain in my back, legs, and throat as stress grips my body. Lying on my bed, I ask myself if I'm in denial. If I shouldn't just give in and go with the program. I get the same answer.
I know I'm off drugs for good and I'm not addicted to alcohol.
I can't tell you how I know with such certainty, but I do. I also know I'm not going to move into the residential unit. It doesn't fit, and I'm not physically capable of handling the routine. I have no idea what to do next. It feels like I'm free-falling, and it grips me with fear.

When I return to the cafeteria for lunch, Sherry has everything ready on my tray. I can't figure out why she's so upbeat and bubbly. Everyone else here has their tail between their legs, including me. I thank her and lie on the couch again to eat, trying not to spill anything on my only clean T-shirt. I'm still famished, but the food doesn't taste as good and my stomach feels acidic. I know it's because I'm stressing about the residential thing.

Dr. Gasparo is waiting at my door when I head back down the hall. I lie on the bed as he pulls up a chair. Then I give him the whole story. Tell him I can't do the residential thing. Beg for an option.

“I've never had a case like yours,” he says when I'm done. “I'm aware of the pressure for you to go into the residential program, but this is the first time I've felt it's not right for someone. Give me a few days and let me see what I can come up with.”

“Thanks for listening,” I say with a huge sigh of exasperation. When he leaves, I stare at the ceiling, wondering what I've gotten myself into.

It goes on like this for two more days. Vitals, meals, and meetings. Waiting for news from Dr. Gasparo. Wondering where I fit in. If anywhere. I'm obedient and avoid making waves. But it's frustrating. The pain is getting overwhelming without the drugs. And I still feel the residual effects of all that dope. I'm dazed. Blurry. Fuzzy. Like I'm wrapped in invisible gauze.