Crack Up
What I once called my “relapse” began with a trip to Rudy’s and the casinos. For some reason I decided that via money-management I could actually make money gambling. If my story wasn’t so full of debacles, that notion might be a good example of my best thinking. At any rate, it didn’t take long for the blackjack mission to turn into a drinking binge. I think I blew a couple thousand bucks that night. I was just getting started.
I stayed at Rudy’s for a couple of days and we pithed a big-time bender. He got fired. At some point about four days in we sent the two chicks he had living with him to the store to buy beer. We gave them a hundred bucks, told them to get a case of beer, smokes, and probably some non-essentials too. After some time one of them came back with the news that the other one was on her way to jail. For whatever reason she felt the need to steal cigarettes, even though they had plenty of cash and direct instructions to get cigarettes and some other stuff too. For some reason that event spurred Rudy and me to make a road trip to Memphis. (Another example of my best, intoxicated thinking.)
So we loaded up his Pomeranian, Casius, and hit the road. A day or so later we showed up at Jack and Eddie’s ticket broker business and proceeded to party like we were 19 again. (We were 30.) At some point I jettisoned Rudy and started working as a ticket broker with my Memphis friends.
I don’t remember much about the first month. It’s just an alcoholic haze. I do know that it wasn’t too long before I got a DUI. To my horror, it was number three. I’d pleaded guilty to two some nine years and a few months back. Had it been 10 years later, it would have been a relatively minor deal. As it turned out though, I was in a fair amount of trouble. I do remember being frightened, when not especially intoxicated, that I’d thrown away my sobriety and was obviously crashing and burning. Additionally, I was sad that I’d basically thrown in the towel on Becky. Although she didn’t write me off for some time, I would never see her again. I think I still thought I loved her. I had money and certainly could have made the relatively short trip to see her and try and patch things up. I never did though.
Before too long I’d rented a house. Jack moved in and we bought a bunch of expensive furniture and electronic stuff. Then, when we were on the way home with the stereo and television, Jack bought a handful of crack cocaine. Things were about to get much worse. From that very night, we smoked crack, almost always to the tune of several hundred dollars, (sometimes more) almost every night for the next three months. Within a month of the beginning of the crack up I noticed a six-pack I’d bought several days earlier was only missing one beer. My drug of choice had changed.
A couple of months into this crazy life, we bought a bunch of acid. We were having a big party down at our office when I had what everyone there called a seizure. I don’t remember how it started, but apparently I threw up a little and just fell out of the picture. When I came to it was several minutes before I could see. I couldn’t talk. Every few minutes I’d experience this wave of something, I’m not sure what, where I had crazy hallucinations and could only hear this awful, mechanical grinding noise. It was terrifying. After several hours I was more or less okay. The next day we joked about my friends having to “throw my body in the dumpster” in back of the office. Had I succumbed that undoubtedly would have happened.
It didn’t take too long for the crack smoking to reach the absolutely ridiculous stage. For some reason Eddie wasn’t smoking yet. Jack and I, and maybe a chick or two, would hole up at the Holiday Inn and smoke for days on end. I clearly remember not going to the bathroom, not even to take a leak, for days at a time. We didn’t eat. We didn’t drink. We smoked crack like chimps in some sort of university experiment. At some point Eddie would track us down and come and flush whatever dope we had down the john. He’d be furious with us for leaving him alone to run the business, not to mention all the “company” money we were blowing. So he started smoking crack too!
After several months I ended up pleading guilty to what the lawyers called a first DUI enhanced. That meant I had to pay, I think about a thousand bucks, do 30 days in jail (which somehow turned into three weekends), get a probation officer, and go to some sort of court ordered rehab. Needless to say, everything I was supposed to do, save the three weekends, was problematic. I didn’t do it. So at that point I was essentially some sort of not-wanted-especially-bad outlaw.
I could go on about the ridiculous antics for pages, but they were really all the same. They were about smoking crack. All this went on for a little more than a year. Towards the end Jack and I had been on a big binge. There were several hangers-on over, and after two or three days, I suddenly got very tired. I decided to lay down and as I began to drift off, noticed I was having some sort of spasms, for lack of a better word. I knew I was dying and I was glad. Instead of getting up and telling somebody I was in trouble I just drifted off to sleep. I had had enough.
Somebody checked on me though. They got me up and I wound up in the emergency room. Obviously I survived. I was back smoking in just a day or so. Not for long though. I had, by then, completely run myself in the ground. I couldn’t work. I was about to be homeless, so I decided to do the honorable thing and kill myself.
In hindsight, I can’t say how serious I was. I chose to take a whole bottle of Lortab, whereas I had a .380 and could have probably accomplished the goal with the gun, had I really wanted to do it. But I took the pills and started drinking and in an hour or so I felt so good I didn’t want to die anymore. I rode all over town and drank in bars and terrorized acquaintances. After several hours I did get violently ill. I threw up for a couple of days. And while I had the dry heaves it felt like yellow jackets were stinging me all over my body. Again, though, I obviously survived.
About that time, out of the blue, my father called me and said if I wanted to straighten out I could stay with him while I recovered. I’ve always felt like Jack put him up to it, because he had no way of knowing how bad things had gotten. At any rate, and to my surprise, I jumped at the chance to escape.
