Wasted: An Alcoholic Therapist's Fight for Recovery in a Tragically Flawed Treatment System (15 page)

Where the heck am I going to get that kind of money?

“Looks like you’re screwed, eh, Mike?” Monk says nonchalantly.

Desperate, like a candidate on a game show I call all my lifelines.

“Mom, I can keep my job if I get a medical assessment by an addictions specialist, but it will cost fifteen hundred dollars.”

“Michael...” Her voice sounds quiet and sad. “I just don’t have that kind of money.”

I know she does. She also has a long history of lending money to drunks.

Then my ex-wife,
Rhonda.

“Mike, even if I had the money, I wouldn’t give it to you.”

Finally, my stepmother. The answer is the same.

My last phone call, to Odette at the hospital. Since Dr. Holic refused to lie for me, I have no choice.

“Odette, when you last called, I didn’t tell you the truth.” I twist the phone cord in my free hand. “Yes. I am an alcoholic.”

Odette sighs.
“Mike, I don’t like being lied to. If you are allowed to continue your probation period, you’ll have to be medically monitored.”

I hang up.

Eli chimes in. “They will never take you back. You fucked up in your first week of a new job. What sane employer would hire a sick fuck like you.”

As if in a trance, I trudge the long hallway to my room and plunge face first onto the
bony mattress. I surrender. This is my fate—recovery houses, welfare, washing dishes at the Boathouse Restaurant. Pay off the bottle of Scotch I owe them.

I play crib. It passes the time, and it’s about the only sanctioned recreation going. We’re not allowed to go to the gym—it’s a waste of time that should be devoted to working the steps of
AA
. More than that, according to Eli, pumping
iron feeds our already gargantuan egos.

I miss going to the gym. When I was particularly stressed and exhausted after a day of counselling my most troubled clients, I could feel my anxiety dissipate with each rep.

I can’t concentrate. I deal the cards, hoping for some fives and tens. It’s easier to count fifteens. Angry Gord is my partner today. He’s a long-time
AA
volunteer who
sponsors many of the guys who come and go through We Surrender. Gord was once a raging alcoholic convicted of spousal assault. He was ordered to see Dr. David Acres, an expert in the medical treatment of addicts, himself a twenty-year-sober prescription drug addict. Dr. Acres helped Gord finally quit drinking, but Gord remains angry. When a guy gets a nickname around here, it tends to stick for
a reason. Angry Gord. Crazy Mike.

Angry Gord holds a certificate in addictions counselling. His efforts to get into the counselling business have failed miserably. He is, however, a master crib player. While I update him on the sorry state of my affairs, he kicks my ass. Then he makes an astoundingly generous offer.

“I’ll give you the money, Mike.” He looks up from his cards. “You’re
a professional. You’ve got to get back to work. You don’t have to pay me back. Consider it my investment in our partnership. We’ll be making damn good money in the future. With your credentials and my experience, it’s a no-brainer.”

Repeatedly, reluctantly, I turn down his offer. I can’t possibly take that kind of money from a near stranger. But I have no choice.

“Okay, Gord. I
will pay you back when I can, though. Thank you.”

Dr. Acres’s medical monitoring costs fourteen hundred dollars. Paid in full with Angry Gord’s money, I book my two-and-a-half-hour session. I’m scheduled to go in on April Fool’s Day. I can’t quite kick the unease I feel about taking Angry Gord’s money.

Monk drives me to my first appointment. I am sick with worry. I’ve been taking
zopiclone, the medication that Dr. Holic prescribed for sleep. The latest research reports that it is just as addictive as benzodiazepines, which are used to treat anxiety. Paranoia convinces me that the lab tests will detect the zopiclone. I’ll be out. I cannot—cannot—waste this lifeline.

“I’ve really screwed up, Monk,” I confess from the passenger seat on our way to my appointment. “I
won’t be able to work ever again. They’ll take my licence to practise away forever.”

“Settle down, Pond. It’s going to be okay. Just sit there and relax. We’re almost there.” Monk’s eyes dart my way and back, aware of the traffic and me at the same time.

“Stop the car,” I say, my hand on my seatbelt buckle. “Let me out. I can’t go for this assessment.”

Monk breathes harder
and more loudly now. He grips the steering wheel, as if willing me to stay in the van. My fear and panic become unbearable. The mad desire to run overtakes me.

“Pull over here. I want out!”

Monk pulls over in a residential area. I bolt out of the van and race up the street. Monk flies out of the driver’s side, just avoiding a passing truck. The driver honks. Monk bears down on
me like a linebacker and tackles me at the hips. Shit, I forgot just how agile that big bastard is. The wind oomphs out of me and I slam face first into someone’s front lawn. Monk hoists me effortlessly over his shoulder back to the van. I’ve lost some serious weight in the last several months.

“Get in!” he slams me into the seat. “Don’t move till we get to the doctor’s office. I mean
it!”

The shock jolts me into temporary sanity and submission.

“Okay,” I nod. “I will.”

The waiting room in Dr. Acres’s office is large. Several men and women sit in it, reading magazines.

“Michael Pond?”

An assistant stands by the reception desk with my file. I follow her into the examination room and wait for my fate.

Dr. Acres enters. His hair
is salt-and-pepper grey. His warm eyes size me up, eyes wisened by experience. These are eyes of a long-recovered addict.

“Hello, Mr. Pond. I see we are doing a full assessment for Fraser Health and the College of Psychiatric Nurses. Before we start, I need you to go down to the lab and give a urine sample. Then I will ask you a battery of questions. In one week, I will have you come back
and we will review my report.”

Dr. Acres waits for me in the examination room while I give my urine sample.

“Sit down, Mr. Pond,” he says when I come back. “Try to relax. I see you’re very anxious. How long have you had a drinking problem?”

“I think I was born an alcoholic. My father is a recovered alcoholic. My grandfather died due to alcoholism. My brother is an alcoholic.”

“So you know you have a genetic predisposition?”

“The last five years have been very bad. I’ve lost everything: my career, my home, my family...”

Dr. Acres nods. “All this can come back,” he says. “Let’s continue.”

I offer a synopsis of my life with alcohol: the family history, culminating in the final train wreck with Dana.

He listens with a look that says,
“I’ve heard this before. A lot.”

“Mr. Pond, you have a tragic story,” he says. “You have a progressive illness, and it will only get worse if you don’t maintain an effective treatment program for the rest of your life. I know I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, but I can’t be more adamant. You will definitely die if you don’t stop drinking. Quite frankly, I’m utterly amazed
you’ve made it this far. However, with an absolute commitment to recovery, you can get your life back. Maybe not like it was or how you want it, but it will come back.”

I am not convinced. I am also not being completely truthful. I know I should reveal my suicidal thoughts, but then Dr. Acres will be forced to say I’m too ill to go back to work. And going back to work is my salvation.

• 15 •

POND, YOUR EX-WIFE
phoned again,” says Monk.

“Hey guy, you got a letter here from the Canada Revenue Agency,” says Eli.

“Mike, some collection agency keeps calling here looking for you,” says Joe.

“Crazy Mike, there’s a bunch of mail from Visa and MasterCard on your bed,” says Brad.

“Pond, your lawyer called,” says Josh.

The banks have found me, along with all my other creditors. I am in serious trouble. That’s funny—as if I wasn’t in serious trouble already.

The top drawer of my tiny dresser overflows with their demands. They all want money I don’t have.

After my unexplained no-show a week on the job as a psychiatric nurse, I’m convinced I don’t have a job anymore, either. I don’t believe
the assessment will save me. It will only confirm what I already know: I am unredeemable. I’ve collected enough alcohol-related criminal charges to know that I face doing serious time. I feel an all-pervasive sense of doom.

Last week, Dr. Acres prescribed me trazodone. It’s a nonaddictive antidepressant used for sleep. It’s not working. Since I left his office nine days ago, I haven’t
slept. Worry worms deep into my thoughts. All the jumbled, jangled, tortured tendrils weave together nonsensically and coalesce into a monstrous ball of anxiety.

I’m trapped. I see no way out. I’m convinced Dr. Acres’s report will be bleak. It will conclude that I’m a lying drunk with no hope of rehabilitation, unfit to work as a health care professional ever again. It will sentence me
to a lifetime of recovery houses and group homes. Not even Tim Hortons will hire me. I will be forced to file for bankruptcy. Rhonda will keep our house. My sons will never talk to me again.

I refuse to leave my room. Biker Brad has permanently relocated to the couch of willingness. I don’t blame him. I’d walk a wide berth around me.

Alone at night, the voices echo raspy and metallic,
as if they come from a transmitter.

You’re a fuck-up. Kill yourself. Kill yourself. Kill yourself.

They whisper from the heating vent.

You useless piece of shit! Look what you’ve done. You’re better off dead.

My head ricochets. They jump to the closet.

You’re a liar, a cheat and a thief. You deserve to die. Do everybody a favour and hang yourself. You can’t
even do that right, loser.

Oh yes I can. I squirm out of bed and yank on my hand-me-downs. They haven’t been laundered in over a month.

I sneak out the back patio door into the cold, wet spring night. The dining-room clock reads 1:53. Dan, bobbing his head to his Sony, doesn’t notice me.

“The years rolled slowly past, and I found myself alone.”

Bob Seger’s “Against
the Wind.” Appropriate tonight.

I hit Marine Drive and veer west past the fish-and-chip joints, swimwear shops and ice cream parlours. As I walk, an easy peace envelops me.

Half-hearted moonlight bathes the silent shops. A police cruiser coasts up from behind. The officer glances my way and drives on. I’m just a little old man on a late-night walk.

Just before the famous
White Rock Pier, I hike down to the beach. At high tide, White Rock Beach isn’t much of a beach at all. A vast, still sea of boulders beckons me, craggy shapes silhouetted in the blue moonlight. The waves whisper behind them.

I spot a rock the size of a ten-pin bowling ball. I hoist it up into my arms. It weighs about fifteen pounds. With the rock braced on my groin, I trudge stiff-armed
up the bank and sway down the long wooden pier. The dim bulbs strung overhead glow with ghostly light, reminiscent of a Van Gogh painting.

My wasted arms complain under the rock’s dead weight. How I wish I had a bottle.

I reach the end of the pier, where the water is deepest. I heave the rock up to rest on the rail at my chest. I finger initials carved into the wooden rail over
the years, imagining long-ago lovers on a warm, sunny day, sea wind lifting their hair. Their laughter and intimate murmurs mingle with the squawk of greedy seagulls circling above.

The black water laps against the creaking pier, pulling me back to this moment. Boat masts squeak and sway in harmony with the waves.

Balancing the rock with one hand, I swing myself up to sit on the
handrail. My feet lock behind the lower bar. I roll the stone anchor into my lap and peer over my knees. The inky water coaxes below, rolling in soft swells. I undo my belt, slide the rock inside the front of my pants and zip up over it. I stare down into the deep water. I hate cold water. I teeter forward and my feet hook more tightly under the lower rail. My hands grip the front rail by my hips,
the worn wood biting splinters into my palms.

No more mental torment. No more taunting voices.

I imagine my dead, bloated body floating on the surface.

I remember boating to the cliffs at the southeast end of Skaha Lake. Brennan’s body curled in a ball as he catapulted off that sixty-foot wall of granite.

He crashed into the water, burst above the waves, screaming,
“Did you see that, Dad? Pretty awesome, eh?”

I imagine myself under the waves, clawing at the water in a frantic struggle to reach the surface as the rock in my pants sinks me to the depths and eternity.

I teeter on the fence. I shut my eyes and breathe in the April mist, the ocean air, the stillness of the pier. My hands quiver on the rail.

Shit.

My boys. Taylor
smiling big and toothy, his broad, square Nordic chin. Brennan excitedly telling a story of his latest camping trip at Sawmill Lake. Jonny running down the rugby pitch with his short, thick legs pumping.

I unzip my pants, hoist the rock up and watch it plummet into the water and to the bottom.

I’m such a chickenshit. Suicide is harder than I thought.

I plod back to We Surrender.
Another failed attempt.

I need a gun. I compile a mental list of the guys who might have guns. I suspect Anton has a Glock stashed. Maybe that street punk, Colin? Amir has one for sure. He threatened to blow Eli’s fucking head off one day.

When I return to my room, the voices announce their verdict.

Loser. Coward. Knew you couldn’t do it.

Insight can be a curse.
I’m psychotic and I know it. Most of the time.

Clinical Notes—Mental Status Exam:

Appearance and Behaviour: Patient is disheveled with soiled clothes and strong body odour. Psychomotor agitation and constant restlessness. Hypervigilant and exaggerated startle response.

Speech: Low and whispered.

Mood and Affect: Depressed and anxious. Affect blunted.