Wasted: An Alcoholic Therapist's Fight for Recovery in a Tragically Flawed Treatment System (19 page)

I wolf them down without taking a breath. I am so thirsty. Dry mouth—my brain flips through the
Compendium of Pharmaceuticals
and quickly makes the connection. It’s a
side effect of the olanzapine. A hose lies on the lawn. I sneak in through the open gate and turn the tap until a gentle stream flows silently out the end. Then I pee at the side of the garage. But I need to also have a bowel movement. I need to find a washroom.

No restaurants are open. Most establishments won’t let homeless people use their facilities anyway. My stomach cramps and I sweat.
I powerwalk the streets in search of ever-more-elusive public toilets.

Traffic is just beginning to move—early-morning commuters heading to work, oblivious to my predicament. I used to be just like them. I never had to think about how vital a private bathroom is to basic human dignity.

I find a Shell station on the next corner. The South Asian attendant stands behind a secure glass
stall with a round metal speaker and a slider exchange tray. An array of cigarette cartons semicircles the wall behind him.

“Can I use your washroom?” I say into the metal speaker.

“Customers only.” The young man speaks with a strong accent.

“I understand. But I really have to go.”

“Sorry, sir. Customers only.” He speaks mechanically. “We have not a public washroom.”

“If I bought a chocolate bar, could I use your washroom?”

“Yes, sir.” He nods.

“But I have no money. Please,” I beg.

He squirms behind the glass. His fingers tap the counter. My eyes fix on his. They’re dark brown, almost black, with heavy, long lashes. His eyebrows meet in the middle.

He slides the washroom key through the tray. It’s attached by a thick
chain to a piece of plastic the size of a license plate. No way I’m running off with this key... although it sure might come in handy later in the day, or however long I homestead in the abandoned old shack.

“Thank you. I appreciate it.” I snatch up the key and head to the washroom.

After my hard-earned use of the washroom and a quick cold-water face wash, I return the key. Able
to concentrate somewhat, I look up at a calendar on the wall and realize I have no idea what day it is. “Could you tell me the date?” I ask.

“Wednesday. April fifteenth,” he answers.

It hits me. I have to be in court tomorrow—in Penticton. That’s a five-hour drive from here. My lawyer has delayed several times now, waiting for me to gain some sobriety time in rehab. I have thirty-four
days behind me. Not long enough to impress any judge.

I find a lone pay phone in the parking lot of a plaza, in front of a Royal Bank. I press zero to get the operator.

“I’d like to make a collect call, please. 250-490-3434.”

“Collect call from Michael Pond,” the operator says after dialing the number. “Will you accept the charges?”

The phone receiver stinks of
old saliva and bacteria. The last remnant of my old fastidious self is disgusted.

A female voice comes on the line. Jan, my lawyer’s assistant, accepts the charges.

“Hello, Jan, it’s Mike Pond. Is Matt there?”

“Yes he is, Mike. Just a minute. He wants to take your call.”

A woman with a red setter walks by. The dog pauses and strains at the leash to sniff my rank
self. Quite a wallop, I suspect, for his 200 million olfactory receptors.

“Hello, Mike,” says Matt. “Where are you? We’re due in court at nine thirty tomorrow.”

“I’m on the streets again. I relapsed about a month ago. It’s not good, Matt. I won’t get a good report from the recovery house.”

I fidget and shuffle from one leg to the other. My hips and lower back ache. A black
Ford F-150 rolls past. The young driver in a cowboy hat glances my way. My stomach growls.

“Listen, Mike,” Matt says. “You have to get here now. I can’t keep pushing this ahead. I thought you were doing well. You got a good job and a place to live.”

“I was doing well, until a month ago.”

“This is not good, Mike,” he says. “Get here even if you have to hitchhike. I’ll ask
the court for another extension. And that’s it. Be prepared to go straight to jail from court. Make sure you have a place to go to when you get out. Can you go back to that recovery house?”

“I don’t have a suit. How can I go to court without a suit?”

“Who gives a shit about a goddamn suit? Just get here. I mean it.”

“I saw you downtown last week, Matt. In front of the Hyatt.”

“What? What the hell are you talking about?” Matt sounds confused.

“I saw you and your wife walking down Burrard Street.”

“Oh my God. Yes, we were there for a weekend getaway at the Hyatt.”

“I thought I was hallucinating. I was psychotic. I still am.”

“Mike, I have to go now. Meet me in front of the courthouse next Wednesday at nine o’clock. If you don’t
show, a warrant will be issued for your arrest. Can’t your girlfriend drive you?”

“I’m not sure she’s my girlfriend anymore. I haven’t heard from Dana in weeks.”

“Oh.”

“Matt,” I tell him, “I want my case waived to Surrey courts.”

“When you waive, it’s an automatic plea of guilty.”

“Yeah. I know. I intend to plead guilty.”

“I think that’s best, Mike.”
The relief in his voice is audible. Not his problem anymore.

I thank him for all his help. He wishes me well.

Waiving my case to Surrey was Monk’s advice. If the case is waived to the Lower Mainland, then Eli can go to court on my behalf and testify to my ongoing sobriety. I also want to save my boys and Rhonda the embarrassment of dealing with my drunk-driving record in my hometown.

Matt is a good man. He agreed to represent both Dana and me pro bono. He managed to get her off the uttering threats charge. She had to agree to an anger management course and alcohol and drug counselling. I know I won’t be so lucky. The thought of jail haunts me.

A bus approaches, headed for Surrey Central Station. The driver looks at me with my briefcase. “I’m sorry I have no
money,” I say.

“It’s okay. Move to the back,” the driver says.

I sit in the long back row against the window, my cheek pressed against the fog-cold glass.

The bus hisses to a stop in the notorious Newton area of Surrey. What once used to be a respectable working-class neighbourhood has been overrun by addicts and dealers. Crazy Mike gets off and wanders amidst all the other
homeless and mentally ill addicts. The shelters kick everyone out in the morning after breakfast.

“Hey, man, need meth?” a young man asks. Already they ply their trade.

I shake my head and keep walking without making eye contact, straight south on King George Highway. The olanzapine has completely worn off now.

Someone is going to kill me today. I will be baptized in the
Holy Spirit. Is that John the Baptist? He is sent from heaven to kill me. No, it’s Jordan the Psychopath from the Holy Mission Possible.

A horn honks behind me, and I jolt into reality and jump off the sidewalk onto the grass.

“Hey, Mike.” It’s Adam from We Surrender and a couple of guys I don’t know riding in his grey-blue ’89 Honda Accord. It has rust all over the rear quarter
panels and wheel wells. “Whatcha doin’ wanderin’ the streets of Newton with your briefcase? You got an important business meeting or something? Get in. We’ll give you a ride. Where ya headed?”

As I slide in the back seat, I say, “I don’t know. I think I should go and admit myself to the psych ward at Surrey Memorial. I’m crazy, Adam.”

“Well shit,” Adam pulls the car away from the
curb. “We don’t need a psych ward to tell us that. We all know you’re nuts, Crazy Mike. Let’s go. We’ll find you a shelter.”

One of the guys gets on his smartphone and Googles men’s shelters.

“Gateway House: full. The Front Room: no beds. Hyland House: full. Cloverdale House: yes, they have a bed.”

“We’ll drive you to Cloverdale, Mike,” says Adam. “You’re not staying on
the street. You wouldn’t last a week here in Crackerville.”

• 20 •

WE HEAD EAST
through Surrey and Langley and arrive in the outskirts of Cloverdale, a small rodeo town turned sprawling suburbia. The shelter is a small farmhouse refurbished to hold eight men. A pretty young woman greets me at the door. She is polite and respectful, probably a recent graduate from a local college or a social work student.

“Hello,
Mr. Pond,” she smiles. “My name is Ramita. I’m the supervisor this shift. Welcome to Cloverdale House. I’ll show you around, then we’ll do an intake assessment and life plan. We’re a licensed facility subsidized by the Fraser Health Authority.”

An
assessment
and
life plan
. Words I haven’t heard in a long time.

A guy scrubs the toilet in one of the pristine bathrooms. A middle-aged
woman chops fresh vegetables in the well-equipped kitchen. She wears rubber gloves. A couple of guys prepare a salad at the dining-room table. They both wear gloves.

Once again I’m bemused by the incongruities of my situation. Last night I wore a discarded sweatshirt stinking of vomit. Today everyone around me wears rubber gloves. This place is spotless.

The smell of roast chicken
in the oven renders me incapable of thinking of anything but food.

At Mission Possible, dinner came after the 5 p.m.
AA
meeting. Being the new guy, it fell to me to make it. Twenty ravenous men would flood in, demanding dinner. Some would be especially hungry because they’d been out all day on construction sites. Randy, Mission Possible’s director, known to the men as Rotten Randy, has
a construction business on the side. Residents collect welfare or
EI
and work under the table for Rotten Randy and, I suspect, are underpaid.

But one can only get so creative with frozen wieners and potatoes, the only menu items available at Mission Possible. And in my state of heightened anxiety, to quote my dad, “I couldn’t parboil shit for a beggar.”

The guys mutinied.

“We’re going to McDonald’s,” they yelled. “Can’t eat any more of this shit. There’s gotta be more than wieners to eat.”

“Dunno what you fuckin’ guys complain about,” Rotten Randy said. “I buy groceries every week, and you eat them in the first three days. Lazy ungrateful sons of bitches. I’ve been running recovery houses for fifteen years. Never heard such a bunch of whiners in my life.”

At Cloverdale House, a fellow about my age looks up, smiles warmly and says, “Hey, how are ya? My name’s Gene. Dinner will be ready soon. You hungry?”

My reverie is broken. I don’t comprehend. I stare blankly. It’s been so long since anyone tried to engage me in a genuine and respectful fashion, I’m not sure he’s talking to me.

“Hi, my name’s Mike. Yeah, I am pretty hungry.”

“Good. Get settled in, then fill your belly.” He smiles. “The food is really good here.”

“Come into the office, Mike,” says Ramita. “This will take about an hour. Then you can put your stuff in your room.” I follow Ramita into the little office.

A couple of guys laugh easily as they come in the back door, pull off their work boots and stand them neatly below the coat rack.
Already, I feel anxiety wane.

“I need to ask you some questions. Standard intake information.” Ramita writes on a clipboard.

“Okay,” I nod, thinking ahead to that roast chicken.

“How did you end up on the streets?”

I offer Ramita a condensed version of my story, from my fall from grace in Penticton to down-and-out recovery houses in the Lower Mainland. Her huge
brown eyes open wide. She listens intently.

“I just graduated from a social work program,” she tells me. “This is my first job. You have quite a story, Mike.”

“Yeah, I guess it is. It’s not over yet.”

“I need to ask you some questions about your mental status.”

Uh, oh. Here we go. My stomach flutters—not from hunger this time.

“Have you ever tried to harm
yourself?”

Ramita is compassionate and genuine. I see it in her eyes. “Yes, Ramita, I have. I tried to hang myself, drown myself and jump out of a moving vehicle. I have nothing to live for.”

She averts her eyes for a second. She doesn’t want to ask the next question. But she does.

“Do you have suicidal thoughts now?”

“Yes, I do.”

“I need to call Car 87,
Mike. We don’t have the resources here to help you. They’re a police and psychiatric nurse partnership that respond to mental health emergencies. You need professional help. We’re just a shelter.”

“I’ll be okay,” I protest. “I don’t need to see a psychiatric nurse. I
am
a psychiatric nurse.”

“I have to do this, Mike. It’s the law. I’m concerned for your safety. They will come here
and do an assessment. Just go and try to relax in your room.”

Why did I tell Ramita I was suicidal? Why can’t I keep my mouth shut? Why do I keep sabotaging myself? Having worked in mental health for three decades, I know the stigma associated with being certified. I still hold on to a shred of hope that someday I’ll work again.

The
RCMP
patrol car pulls up. A young constable and
a rotund woman in her late fifties step out and approach the house. She’s an old warhorse from the mental institution days—I can tell from the self-assuredness of her walk. She’s done this a million times.

I hear Ramita fill them in outside my door—everything, including my status as a health care professional.

“He says he wants to kill himself. He’s agitated and very anxious.”

The psych nurse comes into my room and pulls up a chair while the young constable stands in the doorway, his hands clasped in front like a soccer player protecting his privates for a penalty shot. He’s ready if I bolt.

“Hello, Mike. My name is Belinda. I’m a mental health nurse, and this is my partner, Ron. We came to do an assessment and help you.”

I don’t want to prolong
this. The outcome is inevitable now.

“I have suicidal thoughts,” I explain, “but I don’t have a plan at the moment.”

“But you have made attempts in the past?” Belinda asks.