The example they often give, probably apocryphal but almost identically told, is of the alcoholic psychiatrist in the deep South before air conditioning who kept identical white shirts in his closet and fastidiously remembered to change into a new shirt before each new patient. One day he ended his sessions realizing that because of his drinking he had worn the same shirt all day. That rule, that method of separating his alcoholic self from his professional self, had failed. His patients had seen him in a drenched shirt. And off to seek help he went, because by this one slip he had broken that wall and humiliated himself.
By my senior year in college I was well known for my consumption, but at the time I did not realize how well known. Most of the departments in my college had a habit of hosting some sort of mixer once a month, wine and cheese affairs for the social sciences and humanities, beer and pizza for the hard sciences. Professors would stick around to get their noses damp, allow a bit of asskissing, and go home to let the kids fight over the remaining two bottles of merlot. The Russian department, not surprisingly, had them once a week and it was cases of vodka and home made mushroom pirozhki. Because we were surprisingly popular as a major, Happy Hour was a pretty packed affair. The professors, all of whom were emigres and native speakers, basically drank until after midnight and went home faced.
This is an important point, so pay attention: during college, I spent every Friday night at the Russian House drinking with guys who had left the Soyuz in diapers in the trunk of a car at some Carpathian checkpoint or the hold of a Black Sea steamer and were raised speaking the language in the home and English on the street. We also drank after class together for any occasion – Maslenitsa, Revolution Day, Columbus Day, Mayakovsky’s birthday, the Eagles winning the pennant, someone having a birthday, it was snowing, someone ordered strombolis, etc. In retrospect, other students came and went but very few of them were as constant as I was. Basically, I found a way to go through a prestigious and elite college and get good grades while hammered as long as I could explain in grammatically correct Russian that Masha was working in the library while Anton was going to the store for kefir. My drinking did not get in the way of my academic career. It WAS my
academic career.
They had a graduate school, this department, and thirty years’ later I still cannot for the life of me remember why I did not in my senior year apply to stay on for an MA. It would have been brilliant. I could have stayed on drinking with people I liked, fucking my girlfriend (who was a freshman my senior year), moving on to fuck other girls, and avoiding any responsibility for at least two to three more years. I had no other burning opportunities – I had applied to no graduate schools, I had no skills, and I wasn’t going anywhere near a management trainee program. After I blew my recruitment interview in early spring with the only other American institution that would be interested in a Russian speaker in 1985, I was left without immediate options so I turned back to my two strengths – fucking my girlfriend and getting wasted, not in that order of importance or skill – for answers.
People must have noticed because about two weeks before graduation one of my circle of friends asked me to her room. It was the weekend of Haverfest and May Day, the biggest party the school had right at the beginning of exam period. On Saturday one campus was a daylong keg party, on Sunday the party moved to the other campus. Think Mardi Gras for Protestants. I had been trying to get into Holly’s pants all year and I thought finally, she’s taken pity on me and I’m going to see how big those wholesome constantly perky nipples really get when I pin her arms over head. When I got there, two of my other women friends were there. For about two seconds I thought that pity was taking a very generous form – the most I’d been able to engineer in four years here was an MFF ménage and now I was about to get offered an a quatre? Being a senior rocks. Then Hol opened her mouth and it had nothing to do with naked study breaks:
“You’ve probably noticed that I do not drink. I am a recovering alcoholic and I go to meetings. I wanted you to know that and if you would like to understand any more about it, I would like to invite you to go to an open meeting with me today.”
“You mean, like AA?” I asked.
Hol nodded. “Yes, it would help my sobriety to introduce you to the program so you can understand what it does for people who have drug and alcoholic dependency issues. There is a meeting in half an hour and those two can drive us over.” Our two friends look at me sincerely.
“Wow,” I said, smiling. “I would be delighted to help you in any way I can. I didn’t know this about you but it’s cool. Happy to do it.” And internally, I was doing jumping jacks. Hol – who for the last year had been the unattainable good girl in our circle, constantly pulling back when I reached for her – has an imperfection, something she needs my help with. She wants to let me in. I’ll go do this, sure. The hell with the group sex, I can handle Hol on my own when we get back.
I don’t remember much about the meeting. Going in, Hol explained that it was an open meeting, ie that anyone was entitled to attend if they were interested in the program but that if I wanted to share I’d have to announce I was an alcoholic. I figured that telling me the rules was part of the ritual process of helping her and so I gave that understanding nod that people who understand nothing give. What I really liked was how she sat next to me in the row against the wall and held one hand on my leg (to keep it from bouncing nervously) and the other on my hand (to keep me from nervously sketching everyone else in the meeting).
I don’t remember much after that. We left the meeting after coffee and I had no idea what I was supposed to do next to help Hol. Our other two friends swung by, picked us up and brought us back to campus. If statistics are right I was wasted within a few hours.
A few weeks later I was graduated with no idea what I would do for the rest of my life and so without any plans I soon ended up back in the milltown where I had grown up, and that’s where we pick up the story a year later.
By now my disease had fully taken over. I had been making a toenail clipping more than minimum wage working at a halfway home for schizophrenics – yes, I graduated from college into a mental institution – and it was a perfect cover for my drinking and drug use because all of us on the job were either using or dealing or both. Money was so tight that I actually quit smoking cigarettes cold turkey to save money for the good stuff. Then I stopped drinking on my own dime. Then I started rationing food...
I was miserable. This town was where I had grown up. To have returned there after four years of an expensive college, a trip around the world, and all of that, to make just enough money to pay for rent, donuts and weed, was even to my fuzzy little brain a failure. The only college friend I have who lived up here in the hills is a guy named Tod. So like a lot of first year graduates, I spent a lot of time on the phone with kids I went to college with.
Primarily, believe it or not, Holly. I still can’t figure out why she took my phone calls, much less called or wrote me. For my part it was equal parts dumb lust and a fascination with why this person who no longer partied wanted anything to do with me. But she and I end up speaking almost every week for the year after I graduate. (And by then she’s not the only person from college to get sober. Another of our mutual friends with whom I kept in touch, Erica, was also trying to talk me through my misery.)
So here we are a year later and Tod and I decide to take a five hour motorcycle ride down to school for May Day weekend. A few words about Tod. He and I were both Russian majors, both ethnically Russian mixed with normal human ethnicities, both from Western Massachusetts. The difference between us, I realized even at the time, was that he did not need to take drugs to be miserable because he was naturally bipolar. At least twice a year for the past five years he had ended up on my doorstep in college or back in the skels asking if I could sit with him for 12 hours until the urge to commit suicide passed. The first couple times he could blame it on acid. When even two beers got him crying we all knew it was just organic with him.
So why, you might ask, did I volunteer to sit on the back of a motorcycle with a manic-depressive cruising at 70 mph? Partially because Tod was always honest about his impulses and agreed to stop if the idea of putting us over the Tappan Zee Bridge into the Hudson got too attractive. Partially because aside from being nuts, Tod was physically a ridiculously perfect motorcylist – he was built like a volleyball player, all flat muscle and sinew, he had a sniper’s eyesight and his reflexes were catch-a-fly-on-chop-sticks ridiculous. Think Tom Cruise’s sidekick in Top Gun and you get the idea. Finally, I kind of really didn’t give a fuck. Tod may have come by crazy by birthright but I had to work to get this nuts and I was going to enjoy it.
This story is similar to the Elephant Walk: many days if blur with several moments of cinematic clarity. I’ll give you the clear moments but first a few basic plot vectors:
One. Before coming down I had called Holly and asked if she’d take me to another meeting. We had been talking for months about my drug use. In retrospect I have to say she was really patient. We had not slept together so I’d have to say I was too. Sure, she said, let’s do it Friday morning after you get down here.
Two. At the same time, I had called down and made absolutely sure of what I already knew: that there would be an abundant supply of purple microdot coming in from San Francisco and that my usual May Day weekend dose was ready for me.
A few moments to explain my fondness for LSD. In only ten years of active drug use, I took a lot of different types of drugs. Pot was my wife, familiar and simultaneously submissive and demanding. Booze was the slut who let you in her trailer just because you brought a bottle opener. Cocaine was that distant relation who picked you up in her limo and took you out to service her entire sorority. Crank was that psycho punk bitch who loved to mate to loud music and the smell of gunpowder. Acid? Acid was a goddess, a muse, a nurse, a teacher, that innocent beautiful girl who loved you chastely with her musical soul of truth for 12 hours and then left you, unlike all of the other women in your home pharmacy, actually satisfied the next day. Acid was the only drug I took that, for three days after the trip was over, I had no desire to get high. I stopped missing all of the others within months of sobriety. The only way I deal with losing acid is by doing my
best to forget I ever knew her. I can go years. Writing shit like this doesn’t help, because acid really made me happy.
Another weird thing about LSD at least as it affected me. There’s little point to mixing acid with other drugs. When tripping, marijuana just relaxes you slightly; the effect is similar to a cup of chamomile tea. Alcohol makes you slightly more flexible and giggly. But their real intoxication effects don’t work. If you want you can drink all day long and all that will happen is that the next day you’ll be thirstier.
Three. Remember how I told you I had no idea why I had not just gotten into grad school to extend my period of societally approved uselessness? After a year of making less than five bucks an hour to document how many times Kevin Knapik exposed himself to Becky Versailles during rec time I was thinking very clearly about grad school. And by very clearly I mean not very clearly but very often. So after my call to Holly asking for one sort of help with my drug problem, followed by my call for the other sort of help with my drug problem, I called down to my favorite drinking buddies (ie my Russian professors) and asked if we could discuss candidacy for the MA program. Sure, they said, there’s a departmental party Saturday night after Haverfest.
Clear moments I remember:
1) Friday morning – go to that morning meeting with Holly. I did it sober, knowing I had a drug problem. Ninety minutes of listening to people talk about my life story. I was a hell of a lot sicker than I had been a year ago. I was shaking. I knew what I was. I couldn’t say it aloud but I knew.
2) Straight after the meeting Holly asked me what I was going to do about the weekend. Did I want to go to another meeting Saturday morning before Haverfest? Sure, I said, and I meant it. I figured I’d get wasted Friday night, then wake up and do the meeting with Hol, then come back and weigh my options. What I intended to do was drop right after the meeting and run back to campus so that I could be at the party around lunch time when it hit.
3) Friday noon -- I went to my department because I wanted to start talking about graduate school with them. All the profs had open office hours and so there was a line. I remember being really stressed about the obvious conflict I had set up for the next several days – it’s really hard to live up to a promise to someone to try to get clean while simultaneously zooming out of the galaxy with pupils the size of basketballs – and so I actually locked myself in the tiny departmental bathroom, got on my knees and prayed to a God I did not believe in:
“What do I do? How do I stop feeling this terrible? How do I let Holly help keep me sober when I’m fucking miserable? It’s noon and I’m sober and I want to die. Help?”
The answer came back: “You have to stop right now. Go tell Holly. Go tell someone. Go to another meeting.”
I thought about that for a minute. “Can I speak to your manager….?”
4) I remember little about the rest of the day. I know I had my little intro chat with the department, they were happy to entertain my return, I went off as if that was a huge success and I assume that I started getting wasted within minutes.
5) Saturday morning. Sleep through the meeting, stand Holly up. Oh well, guess my choice is made. Score twice as much acid as I usually take, drop both tabs, walk to Haverfest. Have an amazing time. Forget completely about the meeting, sobriety, Holly, all of that.
6) Saturday evening. DON’T ATTEMPT THE FOLLOWING – decide 12 hours into what will eventually become a nearly 20 hour acid trip that there’s No Problem At All With Going To Holly’s Room To Say Hi And Tell Her That Everything Is All Right. It does not go well:
• Holly (opens door to see me sunburnt, stoned, unable to decide on ‘sheepish grin’ or ‘did I fuck up again?’ as a facial expression, irises turned completely black from dilation, breathing through my mouth): “What.”
• Me: (I couldn’t remember what shit I was saying when I said it. I sure don’t remember it now. All I remember is that she just waited until I shut up.)
• Holly: “Look. If you want to live or die that’s your decision. If you loved yourself half as much as I love you, you’d understand why I refuse to watch you kill yourself.”
• Me: (Opens mouth, maybe sounds came out.)
• Holly: (Slams door.)
• Me: “You love me?”
• Door: No answer.
7) Shaking, ashamed, and still ridiculously high, wander around until it’s time for the departmental party. Fortunately everyone is drinking there so they don’t seem to mind me wandering around, muttering and looking like I don’t belong on the same planet as they do. Confess to most of the management of the department where I want to be a graduate student that I am fucked out of my gourd on the best acid I have ever had and that’s why I can drink even more warm vodka than usual. Stay at party until six in the morning. Sleep in someone’s closet on a pile of raincoats.
8) Sunday around 4 pm. Wake up having missed most of May Day. Realize that the less chance I have of running into Holly the better. Continue to drink and smoke pot wherever possible in people’s dorm rooms. Notice at some point that this is strange even for me – typically after a serious acid trip, I am actually content sober for at least 48 and sometimes 72 hours. I am however even more miserable than before and I notice that I must still be tripping slightly because pot and beer and wine and vodka aren’t really having the desired effect. I realize I humiliated myself in front of her and my department. I’ve shit on the only place that loves me.
9) Sunday night, wrap my arms around Tod and go back north. Realize that if he does want to pull over for one of those “I should not kill myself today, right?” talks I got nothing. Tod is actually in a great mood. He spent the two days running around and burning calories, the only therapy that works for him and he’s actually really up. Bummer, I was wondering what the Hudson tasted like…
That was around the 3rd of May. I returned home to my last 200 bucks. I spent the next four days and nights blowing through that buying as much vodka and pot as I could and consuming it. I might as well have been drinking Sprite and smoking hay. I tried calling Holly. I got her answering machine once or twice and hung up. I got a call out of the blue from Erica. She was blunt: stop calling Holly, stop calling her. They need sober people in their life. If that’s not me, well…
The next 48 hours I could not sleep, I could not work, I could not get high. I just wanted to be someone else, or dead. I finally made a deal with the same Creator who tried to help me in the bathroom. Let me sleep, and when I wake up I’ll get help.
Then I fell asleep. In the morning I pulled open the phone book and two hours later I was in my first meeting. I have never used since. I'll get back to you on whether it was the right decision...
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