The Drunk Logs (12 page)

Nervous, I struggled to utter the words.

“Go ahead, Matt, and every time you begin to speak, remember to start off with your name and purpose,” she said as she rested a clipboard on her lap, and prepared to take notes.

“Okay. Well, uh, I have been drinking most of my life, but started to drink heavily the past four years. During that time, or gradually, I started to stay to myself, gradually losing what friends that I had. Uh, wasn’t really taking care of myself and was losing a lot of weight. Uh, started to defecate blood and vomit stomach acid. Um, I kept trying to quit and figured this one day was going to be my last. So I drank…probably a gallon of bourbon, blacked out, cracked my head, wound up in the hospital, and came here.”

I was so nervous and ashamed, I not only forgot my name, but gave them just an outline of my situation and sped through my speech as I neared the end. In my mind, I couldn’t express in great detail exactly what I felt. I hadn’t tried to be difficult; it was all I had.

“Oh, now, that is not going to fly. You have to come up with more!” Ben shouted.

Ben was a bald, black, middle-aged man. I later learned he was a homosexual and ex-homeless person, who had been living in the halfway house behind the hospital for almost two years. The crack and the street had weathered his face and limbs into snake skin, pleated and stretched tight over time. The few teeth that he had left were strongly protected by his rancid breath, and his bloated stomach looked as though it hoarded away food, afraid to discard any for fear it would never see another meal. He was a proud man who cherished his earned belongings, from his new glasses all the way down to his worn, pink slippers.

“Shut the fuck up, gentle Ben,” said Jack Jack as he came to my defense. “Every time someone doesn’t give you what you want or it’s not to your approval, you start in on that person.”

The group began to disintegrate.

“I do not…”

“Jack. What did I tell you about your language?” Maureen said.

“I’m sorry, but he doesn’t know how to talk to people properly.”

“We can handle the situation…” Maureen began and then was interrupted.

“He’s right, Maureen,” Craig said.

“Wait one second, Craig,” Maureen said as she tried to control the situation.

“Every time we meet, there’s an argument,” Robby mumbled.

“I only want the best for my fellow patients,” Ben stated.

“Fellow patients?” Jack Jack yelled. “Are you nuts?”

Bobby leaned back in his chair, extended his legs, and whispered to me, “Didn’t take long for this to get out of control.”

“Stop…everybody please stop!” Maureen screamed.

For a few moments, there was silence in the room as I sat astonished at what just happened. As I looked around, I tried to gather any information I could from the expressions on peoples’ faces, but was distracted by the laughter that had come deep from within my stomach. I took another look around the room and realized that these people were all crazy, but for some strange reason, I felt at home.

Maureen closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She leaned back in her chair, and rubbed her temples.

“Now, I know I have been your counselor for only two weeks and some of you get the illusion that I am inexperienced. But let me tell you, I have twelve years of experience in counseling, and you people are worse than the prisoners I had to counsel when I started.”

She took another deep breath, leaned forward, raised her clipboard, clicked her pen, and prepared to start again.

“Maureen, I have a question on that homework you gave us?” Robby mumbled. “The question asked was what I was going to do to stop from drinking. Well I wrote “AAA,” is that good enough?”

“What?” Maureen asked, puzzled.

“I said, if I wrote AAA, was that a good enough answer for my recovery?”

“He means AA, not triple A,” Jack Jack said.

“Yes, that’s fine,” she answered.

Robby was a medium-built, middle-aged black man with white hair. I later learned he was an airline mechanic who lived with his wife and three stepchildren, who beat him on a regular basis. The company sent him here as a last resort to treat him for alcoholism and to guarantee that, if he did not complete the program, they could fire him without getting sued for racial discrimination. He had worn only two different sets of clothes for the three weeks that he had been here, and showed definite wet brain symptoms. His insurance would only cover another two weeks and the amount of care given to him would only assist him so far.

Craig handed the completed sign-in sheet to Maureen, who laid it on her desk.

“Okay, let’s start with Craig. Tell us a little about how your day went yesterday,” Maureen said, probably preparing for the worst.

Craig was white, dark haired, middle-aged, and, from what I could gather, an attorney, who had his own practice and who prided himself on his intelligence and self-assuredness. He was of medium build that looked like he exercised whenever given the opportunity, from his jogging outfit to his hi-priced water in hand. But his young appearance hid the fact of his long alcohol and drug use.

“Um, checked in with my business partner and he says he’s able to handle the case load so far. It’s just hard on him going out to lunch or dinner with new prospective clients.”

“Why would that be?”

“Because, it eats a lot of your time away. You have to go to a nice restaurant, order drinks, and if you’re lucky, you’ll have a new client to justify the bill.”

“Well, who says you have to drink?”

“It’s just common practice, that if you go out and everyone is drinking, so do you.”

“Well, if they come to the lunch or dinner wearing jeans and you’re wearing slacks, do you go home and change?”

“No, but…” Dumbfounded, Craig could not answer.

She wrote on her clipboard and proceeded to the next patient on her list.

“Bobby, the last time we spoke, you mentioned your friends and working as the manager at a building supply store.”

Bobby sat up in his chair and lowered his head into his chest, a strong contradiction to the individual he was outside of the room.

“Yeah. Well, I was thinking yesterday exactly how much money my friends owe me for all the advances I gave them before I came in here. And the total that I came up with is about fifteen thousand,” he said sheepishly.

“And these are the people who you did cocaine with, and sold to?”

“Yes.”

“Well, do you expect to get that money back when you have completed your treatment here?”

With tilted heads and heavy eyelids we did our time. We listened half-heartedly, and became consumed by our own selfish gain. Lost inside our own amusement, we sat, waited impatiently, and awakened only to the sound of our names.

“Yes, I expect getting my money. I mean, that’s a lot of money owed to me.”

“And what will you do if they don’t have the money?”

“I’ll just pull out my Glock and go all ninja on them.” He slapped the fat under his arm, and pretended a gun was hidden there. “Because, things will go down that way if need be. I’ve done it before.”

I watched Bobby in disbelief, and imagined that, yes, a gun indeed could have been stored in one of the many layers of fat. But for Bobby to cross his arm to retrieve it was another matter in its entirety.

“So you’re going to go back to the same environment as before, when you know you need to change the people, places, and things in your life to stay sober?”

“No, I’m just going to collect my money and stay away from all the other stuff.”

A grin began to quiver in the corner of Maureen’s lips. “It won’t happen. Take, for example, an alcoholic. He doesn’t become a bartender to stay sober.”

She stared at Bobby like a mother who has scolded her child. “Think about that for a while, Bobby. Is fifteen thousand dollars really worth the rest of your life? Okay, Pat, you’re next.”

Pat looked startled, shifted in his chair, and quickly decided what to say. He wiped the crust from the corners of his mouth and looked ahead stoically, perhaps expecting great words of wisdom would soon flow from his lips.

“Well, you see, as you well know, I love crack and alcohol. Couldn’t get enough of it and it couldn’t get enough of my money. Frickin’ lost everything. House, children, and jobs. Even yesterday, I was sitting at one of the picnic tables talking to some people, when I got a whiff of what smelled like crack burning. I don’t know if it was somebody’s cologne, perfume, or what, but it set off a massive craving. I tried to talk to somebody, but I couldn’t get any words out. So, I tried taking deep breaths, that didn’t help. I even went so far as to sit on the grass with my legs crossed and meditate, looking like one of those Hare Krishnas, but that didn’t work.”

Pats unorthodox breath between words and W.C. Fields voice brought everyone’s attention back into the group, and they smiled.

“Eventually, after all of this, the craving went away, but I wondered if there was anything else I could do to stop the cravings?”

Maureen covered her mouth as best she could and tried to erase her smile before she talked. “Well, you did the right things, but you also could pray or take a walk; do anything to try to take your mind off it. You see, you have to understand that the craving will be very strong at the beginning, because your body is telling your brain that you need the drugs. It doesn’t understand why it’s not in your system anymore, so you have to re-train your body and brain to accept the notion that it won’t be there anymore. Just like in the beginning, when you told your body and brain ‘here is something new, deal with it.’ And then the cravings will gradually subside over time.”

She took a long pause, presumably to let the information sink in for Pat and the rest of us.

“Fifteen thousand dollars? Man that is a lot of money,” Robby said minutes later.

“Robby, not now, we’re working on another issue.” With her attention sidetracked for a second, she returned to Pat. “So Pat, another possibility is what my sponsor said to me once. If you feel like drinking, or in your case, using crack, wait, and tell yourself you can wait one day. And if you’re feeling the same way again the next day, say the same thing to yourself. Pretty soon the thought of using will not seem obtainable, because you’re always waiting for tomorrow.” She paused again. “That was one thing that worked for me. You need to find out what works best for you.”

Not to forget the information that was fresh in her mind, she took a while and wrote frantically on her clipboard. Our attention again started to wander; but with one strong swoosh of her pen, we were brought back to the matters at hand.

“Next is William. How are you feeling today?”

William was a frail, young, Hispanic male. His pale complexion and jet-black hair made him look like a black and white photograph, and his clear blue eyes were like the color of the Caribbean ocean that masked the pain and confusion within.

“All right,” he said in a soft voice.

“All right is not a feeling, William,” she said, and waited patiently. “The last time we talked you mentioned the five years of sexual abuse from a family member. Since then, how are you dealing with that?”

“Fine, I guess.”

“Fine is also not a feeling, William.”

Emotionless, they stared at each other and waited for the other to break the silence. The tension built as the other patients stared back and forth between them.

“William, I cannot help you if you do not open up to the group and me.”

“I know.” But William said nothing further.

“He just doesn’t feel like talking right now,” Ben said, stabbing into the silence.

“That is not the point, Ben. I can only help him if he opens up. Silence is not part of the treatment.”

Jack Jack slumped over, looked at Ben disgusted; his eyes were half-shut. He took a deep breath, rolled his eyes back into his head, and turned toward the window.

“Well, then I want to see you in private, and we can talk one to one, maybe that will help.” Maureen began to write a note in his file. “I want to see you today at two o’clock.”

“Okay,” William said.

We became restless as we shifted in our chairs and stared at the clock above the door.

“Ben. You’re next,” Maureen said, as she looked up from her clipboard and smiled.

“I celebrated my twenty-third month here at this fabulous hospital that changed my life. Because, when I came here I only had two cigarettes and a dime to my name. And through the grace of my higher power, I have been given the strength to battle my disease of crack cocaine and alcohol…amen. I have currently found employment and am contributing back to this facility that has given me hope. I hope to be a beacon to other addicts, to show them the result of someone who has succeeded.”

“So when we’re done here, we’ll get our own pair of pink slippers?” Craig asked.

Everyone laughed except Jack Jack.

“Please don’t belittle what I am trying to convey. I am just sayin’ that I feel happy. My life is on the right path by following the program and I want to show individuals how to get what I got,” he stated proudly.

“Well…that’s an interesting way of looking at it, but I would refrain from trying to counsel anyone just yet, Ben. Even counselors know that one way might not work for one person, but yet work for another. The difference is taking all the information that is available and making an educated guess,” Maureen said.

“So, what you’re trying to tell me is that you want to give what you caught to everyone. Is that right?” Jack Jack said, looking angrily at Ben.

“You know that is not what I meant, Jack Jack.”

Maureen seemed to prepare for another argument.

“Now, come on, guys, let’s continue, we only have a few more minutes before group is over. Jack, you are the last one.”

“He always is,” whispered Ben.

“What?” Jack Jack leaned forward in his chair.

Maureen interjected to break the tension, and talked about a subject that was sensitive to Jack Jack. “Jack, I was wondering how everything was going with your girlfriend. I remember you saying that the family is upset about it, because it’s your ex-wife’s cousin and they accuse her of being an inhibitor in your sobriety?”