Cracked Head Memoirs

Just when things were their worst for me, fortune intervened. My mother’s boss, a very successful man, had taken an interest in me. He was a recovering alcoholic ,so automatically we had a big thing in common. Over the years he’d sent scores of people to treatment, always at prominent facilities, paying for their rehab out of his own pocket. He offered to do the same for me. At first I turned him down. Then after another week or two of serious abuse, I called him and asked in the offer was still good.

A few days later I was on a plane flying to California and the most famous treatment center in the world. At that point I was about as far down in the dumps, in every sence, as I’d ever been. I had hit a bottom, and as a result was in a frame of mind where I could be taught. I was about to have what is probably the most beneficial and most memorable experience of my life.

A day or two after arriving at the center, I was halfway thinking about bolting. That’s one of the benefits of getting treatment across the country; you don’t really have anywhere to run to, especially if you’re virtually penniless. Late that afternoon I stepped out of my bedroom and sat on the patio to think. Looking at the mountains bathed in the late day sun, it dawned on me that I wouldn’t even know which way to go to get back to Alabama. Somehow I found that mildly amusing. I settled in for the duration.

After a week or two, I was doing pretty well. I won’t say I was having fun. Rehab is too much work for someone as lazy as me to have fun. But maybe I was having fun. I had bonded with many of my piers. They were from all walks of life, varying ages, and were sick to varying degrees. In my first rehab experience I had believed, almost certainly mistakenly, that I was smarter than most of my piers. I was under no such illusions this go round. Almost all of the new group were accomplished. It was humbling.

One Sunday afternoon I was in my room reading Chapter Five of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. I’d read it several times before. Still, something strange was going on in my psyche. It was making sense to me. I was suddenly able to see myself for who I was and see myself described in the Big Book. Up until that very instant, I’d been convinced that my problems were caused by others. The list of people I blamed was lengthy. Of course my parents figured prominently. Society was also to blame. The world was screwed up and was why I was screwed up. I knew it deep down in my soul.

Then, out of the blue, it began to dawn on me that just maybe I had a little something to do with all the shit that went on in my life. Strangely, the realization was almost instantly liberating. To me, the absolute genius of the program is that it places responsibility, even blame, squarely on the addict. Suddenly it dawned on me that if I was the problem, then I could do something about it. (Where as if you were the problem, I almost certainly couldn’t.) As is apt to happen, just as I was having my very personal breakthrough, someone knocked on my door and called me to the phone. It was Jack, one of my best friends, calling from Atlanta. I don’t recall the exact content of the conversation, but was basically that as soon as I finished treatment, everyone would love me again, and I could resume partying with more or less a fresh start.

I didn’t argue with Jack. Immediately after the talk, I went for a walk by myself, and experienced what I’ll call the proverbial religious experience. It was like a flash of insight into myself. I realized in that instant that I didn’t have to live lies of the type Jack had suggested any longer. I’d been doing it since I was 16 and was stunned to realize that there was another option. I was who I was, an alcoholic and a drug addict, and got that way because I liked the way drugs made me feel, and because I couldn’t live life on life’s terms. I wasn’t cured. Far from it. But I had somehow arrived at a place where I could begin get a little better. It was very cool.