Dry: A Memoir (8 page)

I sit quietly and a strange and unfamiliar feeling comes to me. It is almost a feeling of relief, ears popping, pressure released. But it’s something else, too. I think for the first time I can see, right up there on the board, that I do drink much more than normal. And the pills I have to swallow to drink. Like my body is allergic to alcohol and is telling me I shouldn’t be drinking, but I do anyway. And when I sit there looking at what I’ve written, I almost can’t help but feel like it’s possibly a good thing I am here. Or rather, that this has been drawn to my attention, made serious and not just a joke.

Maybe that’s enough and I can go?

Dinner goes like this: on the way upstairs, I avoid Kavi, the sex addict from Corpus Christi, a city whose name now sounds obscene to me, like the technical term for a Blue Whale penis.
“The Corpus Christi of the Blue Whale is typically between nine and twelve and a half feet long, when fully erect.”
Once inside the cafeteria I am greeted by some of the other patients, a few of whom I recognize from group or the chemical dependency history class, some of whom I have never seen before. “Thanks . . . yeah . . . culture shock . . . thirty days . . . alcohol . . . I’m sure . . . Thanks anyway . . .” I take a red plastic tray. Dinner is served by the exact same bitter, underpaid woman who served lunch. Her name tag reads
MRS
.
RICE
. So she has lived up to her name, fulfilled her destiny to work somehow with food. She’s a tall woman, fleshy without being fat. Her hair is gray and because it is also long and straight, parted in the center, this for some reason makes me think she used to be a blonde. She is now a former blonde working a double shift in a rehab hospital. I smile at her because I feel guilty, like the fact that I wear Armani means I should somehow have my life more together, that I am ungrateful and spoiled and deserve no empathy or dinner. All of which is probably true.

I take the tray of gray shepherd’s pie, canned cream of corn soup, tapioca pudding and milk and stand there looking at the tables, trying to see if Brian from Group is here. I spot him. I make a beeline.

He seems unsurprised that I chose him to sit next to. “Brian, right?” I ask.

“Shit, you’re doing good. It took me two weeks before I learned even one person’s name.” There’s corn on his chin.

I smile, genuinely for the first time in twenty-four hours. “You’ve got corn there,” I say, pointing to my own chin.

We find an easy rapport. He hates the food here. I agree. The people are freaks. Exactly what
I
thought. The place is in shambles. Obviously. But it works.

“Really?” I ask, unsure as to how this is possible.

He tucks into his meal, placing his arms on the table in such a way that they surround his food, protectively. Between bites, he tells me that he is a psychiatrist and has been involved in treating chemically dependent people for six years and that these are some of the best, smartest and most dedicated counselors he’s ever seen.

“You’re a shrink?” I’m stunned by this news.
So then why . . . how?
I don’t actually ask, but he seems to be able to read me.

“Yeah, at San Francisco General. Here for Valium. With shrinks, it’s always the Valium that takes you down. Occupational hazard.”

For some reason, I never considered that any of this could happen to a doctor. I buy the whole white jacket, stethoscope slung around the neck, double-parked Saab convertible thing.

“Then it was, ‘ . . .
one
Valium for you . . .
two
for me.”

He’s not some nut. He’s a
doctor
.

“That became ‘one Valium for you . . .
five
for me.”

Oh my God
, I think,
that’s exactly the kind of bartender I would be
.

He looks down at his tray and continues. “At the end, which was a little over two weeks ago, I was swallowing all of my patients’ Valiums, about twenty a day, and giving them aspirin instead. I got caught.” He brings his eyes up to meet mine and I see sorrow in them. Sorrow edged with fear. “I might lose my license.”

Sometimes there is nothing else to say except, “Oh.”

We spend the next five minutes in silence, eating. He asks me to pass the pepper.

I drop my napkin on the floor and lean over to pick it up. I finish before he does because I only sip the starchy white broth around the corn in the soup. It’ll be easy to play Karen Carpenter in this place—I bet I get down to ninety pounds by the time I leave.

I watch him stab an overcooked green bean with his fork and the gesture strikes me as tragic. Suddenly, there is a buzzing in my chest. As if wasps are trapped inside of me, stinging. That a
doctor
could sink so low. I mean, what does that say about me? Surely, an advertising guy would sink even lower. “I really don’t like it here,” I tell him.

He looks at me like he knows something, but won’t tell.

I go on. “It’s dilapidated, unprofessional—and the people. I don’t know. It’s not what I expected.”

He stands up, bringing his tray with him. I do the same and we walk to the trash area, dump our plates.

“It’ll take a few days, but you’ll see. You’ll
get
it.”

A skinny woman with long, dark, straight hair grabs Dr. Valium by the arm and whispers something in his ear. He cracks up and they head off down the hallway together, her arm around his waist, laughing. “I’ll see you downstairs,” he calls back to me.

I think about what Dr. Valium just told me. “It’ll take a few days, but you’ll see. You’ll
get
it.”

This is probably exactly what the Reverend Jim Jones said to his followers as he stirred the Kool-Aid.

It’s called simply “Affirmations.” There’s a nighttime Affirmations and a morning Affirmations. I was lucky enough to miss the morning show.

I’m sitting upstairs in the main room with all the other patients. Marion, the large woman who can only make eye contact with the carpeting, is obviously the “leader” of this group. She begins by asking out loud, “Who would like to volunteer to read tonight’s affirmation?”

Kavi volunteers by leisurely raising his arm in the air and allowing his hand to flop back and forth at the wrist in a vague and affected fashion.

I notice that he has changed into eveningwear. Gone is the tight white T-shirt. Now he’s wearing a black fishnet tank top and his long, springy chest hairs are sticking out through the wide weave. The hairs are strangely glossy, as though he has used conditioner on them. I think I even catch the perfumed scent of Finesse in the air. But it could just be a nasal hallucination.

He reads from a heavily fingered paperback with a sunburst on the cover. “April fifth, taking a single footstep toward change.” As he reads the inspiring and motivational entry, I look at people’s feet. I notice that almost everyone is wearing the pale blue hospital slippers that came in my hospital welcome pack. I morbidly wonder if it’s possible that I will be so broken by this place that I, too, will wear the little booties. And then I’ll cry when they rip, sharing my pain with the others.

Big Bobby keeps blinking his eyes really hard with what is some sort of nervous tick. Pregnant Paul stares out the window, but because it’s dark, I suspect he’s really watching the group reflected in the glass. The WASP has changed from a pinstripe shirt into a white oxford, as though he is on a cruise.

After Kavi finishes reading the affirmation, Marion the Low-Esteem Leader says, “I guess I’ll begin the Grateful Statements. I’m grateful to be here tonight. . . . I’m grateful that I’m alive and feel loved . . . and I’m grateful for you, Augusten, for being here.”

Oh, I really wish she hadn’t done that. I do not want more attention drawn to me
. I mentally vanish from the room, Endora from
Bewitched
.

Somebody else says, “Steve, I’m grateful you watered the plants while I was at ‘individual.’ And I’m grateful that I didn’t
use
today and I’m hopeful about tomorrow.”

A few people sigh, heads nod in appreciation.

The man with the cowboy hat from my group says, “I’m grateful to have you here too, Augusten. And I’m grateful to be here myself. I’d like to thank God for another chance. And say, one day at a time.”

Dr. Valium smiles to himself and stares at the floor. Is he biting the inside of his cheek to halt a smile?

And so it goes, that for fifteen minutes the patients express their gratitude to each other for such things as “saying hello to me in the hallway . . . sharing what you did in Group this afternoon . . . splitting your chocolate-chip cookie with me.”

I can feel the artery on the left side of my head pulsing, moments away from bursting into an aneurysm. Whatever Librium was in my system has already been metabolized by my urban liver. My liver wastes no time. It’s the New York City cabdriver of livers. I’m thinking it can’t get any worse than this.

But of course, then it absolutely does.

“Okay, everybody, what time is it?” Marion asks playfully, leading everybody on.

Two of the patients reach behind their chairs and retrieve two large, well-worn stuffed animals; one is a monkey, one is a blue kitten. They hug the dirty plush toys to their laps and wear great big smiles.

At once, the entire room breaks into an alarming musical chant. “It’s Monkey Wonkey time . . . Monkey Wonkey was a lonely monkey. Then Blue Blue kitten became his friend . . . now Monkey Wonkey and Blue Blue Kitten want to make friends with . . . YOU!!!”

And both patients suddenly lunge off their chairs and sprint over to me, giggling and dropping the stuffed animals onto my lap before returning to their seats like obedient children.

I sit motionless and confused, bathed in applause.
Why a song about codependent stuffed animals? And why am I now holding them on my lap? And more essentially, what time is the first flight in the morning?
At this point, I would even take a bus, gladly the rear seat next to the toilet.

I look at Dr. Valium. He lifts his eyebrows smugly, as if to say,
And there you have it
.

Marion explains, for once looking up from the carpeting, “Don’t worry, Augusten, it’s just a little tradition we have here. Each night, we hand out Monkey Wonkey and Blue Blue Kitten to somebody special who needs a little lift. And since you’re new, that’s why you got them.” Then she adds, as if it were a perk, “So you get to curl up with both of these guys tonight—and tomorrow, you get to choose who pass them along to!”

Before I am able to say a word, the group rises to its feet and joins hands. My own hands are forcibly grabbed by the alcoholics on either side of me. The stuffed animals tumble from my lap.

Then, as if genetically programmed to do so, a young male alcoholic who had been previously slumped in a chair with his hair hanging over his eyes begins, “God . . .” and the group joins him in spooky unison, “. . . grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Amen.”

I think,
How bizarre
. They’re quoting the opening of Sinéad O’Connor’s “I Feel So Different.” I love that song. I associate it with vodka and Rose’s lime juice, back when I first moved to New York City and lived downtown in a Battery Park City highrise apartment. I’d blast that CD and lean out the window in my living room, watching the traffic blur up West Street, the unfathomably gigantic World Trade Center towers illuminated always, even at midnight.

The crowd breaks up, people laugh, somebody says, “Race you to the coffee machine.” I find myself carried by the flow of the group, down the stairs, still clutching the stuffed animals.

“Look, I know this seems really corny, but you’ve got to trust me. Once you get past all the crap, the program here is truly amazing,” Dr. Valium says. “Give it some time,” he adds. “It needs time to sink in.”

Big Bobby waddles over. I want to tell him, “I have no food, go away.”

He says, “Don’t worry, they’re clean.”

“Huh?” I say.

“Monkey Wonkey and Blue Blue Kitten. We throw them in the washer once a week.” He smiles, clomps down the stairs.

I imagine the entire inpatient community standing in the laundry room wringing their hands while they wait anxiously for the plush toys to dry. I go to my room. My roommate is on his bed, curled up into the fetal position. I drop the animals on the floor at the foot of my bed and sit.

It’s nine o’clock. Let’s see. Right about now, I’d be at the Bowery Bar, working on my seventh martini of the night. I’d have napkins with ad campaign ideas scribbled on them strewn on the bar in front of me. I might even be flirting back and forth with the actor/bartender.

I look at my roommate, an older, withered black man who checked in only hours before me. He hasn’t left the room all day. It was whispered to me that he has terminal liver cancer. Earlier he’d been taken to the other, normal hospital, for some additional tests, which is why I didn’t see him when I first arrived.

I undress to my boxers and T-shirt and crawl under the thin sheet. The flat pillow under my head offers no support. I stare at the beige water stains on the suspended ceiling.

I sigh.

So far, mental health sucks.

ALCOHOLISM FOR BEGINNERS

M

y name is Marion and I’m an alcoholic and drug addict,” says Low-Esteem Marion as she looks at the two plump hands in her lap.

“Hi, Marion,” chants the circle.

“I’m right where I need to be,” says Marion to the hands.

“You’re right where you need to be,” echoes the circle.

“I feel my feelings and share them with others.”

“You feel your feelings and share them with others.”

Marion looks across the room at a member of the circle, briefly, before looking away. “I love myself.”

“You love yourself,” affirms the group.

“And I am somebody.”

“And you
are
somebody,” the room says in unison.

A brief, small smile passes across Marion’s lips, her cheeks flush with color and she wipes the palms of her hands across the legs of her jeans, turning to the person sitting to her right.

“My name is Paul, Alcoholic,” says Pregnant Paul.

“Hi, Paul Alcoholic,” says everyone verbatim, including Marion who is now able to look directly at Paul, who himself looks at the floor and represses a nervous smile.

“I’m a good person.”

“You’re a good person,” promises the room.

“I will get well,” says Paul optimistically.

“You will get well,” promise the addicts.

“I’ll lose my spare tire and find a cute boyfriend,” grins Paul.

“You will lose your spare tire and find a cute boyfriend,” sing the patients.

“And I am somebody,” he says, hands clasped across his belly.

“And you are somebody,” says everyone, except me.

As was explained by a counselor this morning, Affirmations are a time when we affirm in ourselves something we would like to strengthen. For example, if I feel I am fat, I would say, “I am thin,” and the group would affirm this in me. “You are thin.” It’s as simple as that. And you always end with the phrase, “I am somebody.”

Funny, but similar affirmations haven’t worked for me in the past. I do recall many times telling Greer, “I’m not drunk. I would never show up to work drunk.” And her telling me, “Bullshit, you lying fuck.”

When the circle finally comes to me, there’s a brief moment of silence, because I have stopped paying attention to the affirmations, and am instead imagining how it would feel to walk into a jewelry store in downtown Minneapolis and buy an expensive watch to replace the one that I gave to the ex-cop after sex one night during a blackout in my apartment.

There is a clearing of a throat. All eyes slide my way.

“My name is Augusten and I’m an alcoholic,” I grumble.

“Hi, Augusten,” says the room.

“I’m glad to be here,” I lie.

“You’re glad to be here,” they repeat.

“I won’t check out after lunch,” I say.

“You won’t check out after lunch,” they affirm.

There
, I think.
Done
.

“And . . . ?” somebody says.

“And what?”

“And you ARE somebody,” three or four people say with some hostility.

Jesus Fucking Christ. “And I
am
somebody,” I say sarcastically.

“And you are somebody,”
they overemphasize.

When Affirmations are over, I go straight into Group. Today, nice David is not the counselor of the group, but instead there’s Rae. Rae’s a big woman. And to add an exclamation point to this fact, she wears a loud floral print; gigantic blossoms all over her body. There’s something in her voice that makes me think I won’t get away with anything, that I shouldn’t even try. I feel pretty confident Rae’s clubbed more than her fair share of baby seals in her life.

“Today we’re going to talk about consequences. The consequences of our drinking. Does everybody know what consequences are?”

Nobody says a word.

She looks around the room, stares each and every person directly in the eyes, including me. This takes a while. I feel a shiver pass through me. Worse, I think, than making eye contact on the subway with someone you suspect belongs to a gang because they are wearing a Halloween mask in June.

Rae gives a bloodthirsty grin. “Oh, I see. None of you have experienced any consequences as a result of your drinking. My oh my, what a lucky group of alcoholics you are.”

The only thing that I can think is,
Oh shit
.

Still nobody says anything. People just sort of shift around in their seats, we don’t even look each other. I sense we are all looking at our shoelaces, concentrating hard on the knot.

“Okay then, let me tell you what a consequence is. A consequence is when you’re a drunk and you meet another drunk at a bar. And you and this other drunk start a relationship. Every night you drink together. And every night this drunk that you hooked up with beats the shit out of you. And every morning, he apologizes. And you forgive him. So what if he breaks four bones in your face? You have plenty more.”

She pauses. My hands are sweating. I have the sensation of ascending on a roller coaster.

“When your friends tell you that you are crazy to stay with this man, you tell them that it’s none of their business. Eventually, you lose your friends. But you don’t care, because you have your booze and you have your man. But that’s just an example.”

She pauses. “Of course, a consequence could also be losing a job because of your drinking, or losing a friendship, or even losing your self-respect. Maybe letting the dishes pile up in your sink until you can’t see your sink anymore.”

A bell rings. I think of my apartment. It’s my deepest, darkest secret. The fact that I drink is not a secret. The fact that I’m usually already drunk when I meet Jim for drinks is not a secret.

My apartment is my secret. It’s filled with empty liquor bottles. Not five or six. More like three hundred. Three hundred one-liter bottles of scotch, occupying all floor space not already occupied by a bed or a chair. Sometimes I myself am stunned by the visual presentation. And the truly odd part is that I really don’t know how they got there. You’d think I’d have taken each bottle down to the trash room when it was empty. But I let two collect. And because two is nothing, I let three collect. And on it went. The ironic thing is that I’m not the kind of person who saves things. I don’t have boxes filled with old postcards from friends, cherished mementos from childhood. My apartment is clean and modern in design, kind of what you’d think a New York City ad guy’s apartment would look like. I even spent half my paycheck one month on a single end table.

Except there are bottles everywhere. And magazines all over the floor.

Every time I’ve removed the bottles from my apartment, promised myself it would never happen again, it always happens again. And when I used to drink beer instead of scotch, the beer bottles would collect. I counted the beer bottles once: one thousand, four hundred and fifty-two. You have not felt anxiety until you have carried a plastic trash bag stuffed with a few hundred beer bottles down the stairs in the middle of the night, trying not to make a sound.

Quickly, before I can change my mind, I speak up. “Something you just said, I can relate to that.” Already, “I” statements.

She looks at me, folds her arms across her chest and nods. “Go on.”

I tell her about the bottles. And how because of them, I never invite anybody over to my apartment. “Actually, whenever I hear somebody in the hallway, I freeze in case they knock on my door, so I can pretend I’m not home.”

I feel a pang of sadness, and it’s actually for myself. Why would somebody live that way? I also feel like I have broken a confidence. So this is what I say. “It’s funny, but admitting this out loud, I feel really strange, like I’m saying something I shouldn’t.”

She claps her hands together. “Exactly! What you are doing is ‘telling on your addict.’ You need to visualize your own internal addict. Think of it as a separate ‘being’ that lives inside of you. And it wants nothing more than for you to drink. When you don’t drink, it says, ‘Oh come on, just one.’ Your addict wants you all to itself. So when you talk about the bottles, or any other consequence of drinking, you are in effect, ‘telling on your addict.’ ”

I play along. I try to imagine a nasty little man living inside my forehead, kicking the backs of my eyeballs for telling. Then I imagine myself wearing the hospital slippers.

“Of course, your addict is not really a separate entity within you, but I think it helps to visualize it as such.” She smooths the front of her dress. “Now, how are
bottles
a consequence of drinking?”

“Um, I guess because they make the apartment messy,” I say.

“And?” she questions, sounding like a prosecuting attorney.

I just look at her, puzzled. Someone forgot to give me my script.

“Anybody else?” she asks the room.

Big Bobby straightens in his chair. “Well, if he’s got all those bottles in there, then, like he said, nobody ever visits him. So that must be lonely.”

I feel instantly pathetic. More transparent than jellyfish sashimi.

“Yes,” she says, “That’s it exactly. The bottles allow you, Augusten, to place a wall—a wall of glass if you will—between you and other people. Effectively, you are a prisoner in your own home. And your internal addict loves this. Because the goal is to have you isolated. Your addict is very jealous and wants you all to itself.”

I think of how I’m always in a rush to leave the office early, come home and drink. How lately, I don’t even care if Jim’s busy or if I don’t see any friends. I don’t mind at all staying home alone. And drinking. In fact, I think I’m starting to crave staying home alone instead of going out. And then I think of Pighead. How we never talk about his HIV because we never need to because he’s fine. Except for sometimes.

“Augusten,” he will say to me, “I’m not asking for any favors. I’m not asking you to take a vacation to Hawaii with me for a month. Just come over for dinner once in a while, come for roast beef. Call me up and say, ‘Hey, how’s it going?’ ”

I think of how demanding I consider him to be. Needy. “I can’t,” I always tell him these days. “Work.” Even roast beef and
60 Minutes
is too much to ask of me. Even a phone call.

Dr. Valium goes next. He talks about how he might lose his medical license for his Valium addiction. How all those years of schooling could end up being for nothing.

“That’s a
consequence
all right,” Rae says.

The others bring out their greatest hits. The WASP talks about the car accident and his mother’s paralysis. Low-Esteem Marion talks about her failed relationship with her girlfriend of six years. Big Bobby talks about not being able to hold a job and hating himself because he’s thirty-two and still lives with his parents.

It’s all very Ringling Brothers. And as freakish as these people may be, it’s not exactly like I can’t relate to what they’re saying. It’s more like I can sort of relate. Sort of completely.

“Ten years ago, I was a prostitute in Green Bay, Wisconsin. I would fuck or blow anybody for enough money to buy a bottle of booze. And hey, it didn’t have to be good booze. Gut rot was perfectly fine, just as long as it was a liter. Then I met my ‘Mr. Right,’ ” Rae says, spitting out
Mr. Right
like it’s something toxic. Like she bit down on a thermometer and is now spitting out the mercury.

I look at her face while she talks, seeing if I can spot any signs of the leftover broken bones. I see no evidence, and, in fact, her skin is very smooth and she has an expression of calmness that seems, to me, almost like a vacation destination—a place I want to go.

“I hit rock bottom in my bathtub. I’d been unconscious in it for two days. When I woke up, my hair was glued to the side of the tub with my own blood. I was lying in my own excrement.”

I look at her in her loud floral print and think,
No way
.

“But that was ten years ago. Five years before that, fifteen years ago, I was a doctor’s wife. I drove a Cadillac and went to night school. I had plans. Except, my marriage was beginning to fall apart; my husband was having an affair and I refused to admit this to myself. So I picked up a new hobby: drinking. At first, it was just a cocktail at night, before dinner. Then two cocktails. Then six. By the end of the first year I was having a drink in the morning, instead of coffee. And after three years I had dropped out of school and was drinking full-time.”

Wow
, I think.
Does a Bloody Mary count? I love a Bloody Mary in the morning. Doesn’t everybody?

She continues. “I realize my case is a little different. It was a little faster. Five years, from nothing to rock bottom. I guess I learn quick.”

She’s an excellent presenter and would have succeeded in advertising, is what I think. She generates a sense of excitement in the room and I become aware that my hands are moist with sweat, but not from fear. From needing to know what happened next. I like the drama. I glance around the room and other people look rapt as well. And I feel like,
That’s the reason to go to a gay rehab. People appreciate the drama
.

“When I got out of that tub and looked in the mirror, I did not recognize the creature looking back at me. And on that day, I went to my first AA meeting. That was ten years ago. Today, I’m sober, I have a Ph.D. and I’m sitting here with you, trying to help
you
become sober.”

Sober. So
that’s
what I’m here to become. And suddenly, this word fills me with a brand of sadness I haven’t felt since childhood. The kind of sadness you feel at the end of summer. When the fireflies are gone, the ponds have dried up and the plants are wilted, weary from being so green. It’s no longer really summer but the air is still too warm and heavy to be fall. It’s the season between the seasons. It’s the feeling of something dying.

“See, alcoholism is exactly like bubble gum. You know when you blow a bubble and it bursts, some of the gum sticks to your chin?”

Small, tentative laughter.

“What’s the only thing that gets the bubble gum off your chin?” she asks.