The Harder They Fall (27 page)

And I did get myself off of them. I’ll never forget. My checkup was the first part of May. The doctor says, “Hey, Dick, how’re you feeling?” I go, “Like a million bucks, Doc. I’m walking an hour and a half every day, doing the exercises you recommended. And the best part of it, I haven’t used any narcotic painkillers, just a little aspirin and Advil for a month now.” He goes, “Dick, that’s great. I’m glad to hear you’re doing so well. But the surgery we did on you, it takes twelve to eighteen months for that area to heal. I know you’re a person that likes to push the envelope with your recovery. If you ever start feeling like you’re overdoing it and think you need a few painkillers, let me know.”

Holy cow! When he said that, it opened that door, and I shoved it open full bore. I’d just told him how great I felt, and when he opened the door that little bit, I kicked it wide open. I said, “You know, Doc, come to think of it, every once in a while my back does get quite sore. Since I’m an hour from here and you’re a busy person, maybe I ought to get a prescription from you just in case.” “No problem.” I told him I’d get it filled if I needed it, and he said, “That’s not a problem.” So he wrote me out a prescription for 60 Percocet. I shook his hand, walked out of the office. The medical clinic was attached to the hospital at the other end. I walked down the long
hallway. At the other end was a pharmacy. I went in there, filled the prescription, bought a Diet Coke, got into my truck. I snapped the bottle top off the can and took not one but three Percocet. I mean my mouth was drooling as I walked out to my truck, knowing I had these Percocets! And twenty minutes later as I drove home—’cause that’s how long it would take to get into my system—damn, I got that fuzzy feeling again and was right back just like that. And continued to use and abuse, and continued to return for more and more. I could make myself hurt! I’d say, “Doc, my back really hurts. I must’ve overdid it. Can I come over and get another prescription?” “Yeah, come over.” And so, on the way, I could do these contortions with my back where you kind of tighten it up, so by the time I drove there, I had big knots in my back that would stick right out. I’d be hobbling in there, and the doctor would look at me, and who isn’t going to give the kid some painkillers? I mean, I was purposely doing that just to make sure. … I was so sick!

Of course, a tolerance level continues to rise, so by now, I used more and more. It was late summer of ’94 when I got up one morning to go out for a walk, and honest to goodness, I got out of bed and could hardly move. The doctor said, “Get in here. I got to take some pictures.” So they take me to X-ray, and then I’m back in the doctor’s office. The doctor comes in. I could tell by the look on his face something was wrong. He says, “Dick, this is unbelievable, but it happens in less than 2 percent of the patients. That big bone that we took out of your hip to fuse your lower spine, your body has reabsorbed it into your system. Your lower spine is down there hanging like it was before you even had surgery.” He said, “The only thing that can be done: We need to operate again and fuse it onto the back side. We’ll be opening you up on the front side and use some rods and pins and screws.” He said, “The back side I have no problem doing. The front side, though, is a very delicate operation. You’re talking a lot of nerves down there. You might become impotent.” He said, “I don’t feel comfortable doing it, so I’m going to see if I can get you into the spinal clinic down in the Twin Cities where they do that quite often.” So he made a phone call, came back. “Listen,” he said, “I made you an appointment to see the doctor. They’ll schedule you for surgery. And as of today, I’ll give you another
prescription for your painkillers. But after today, those doctors will have to take care of your pain management.”

He wrote me out a prescription and shook my hand and said, “Good luck. Keep in touch. Let me know how you’re doing.” As I’m walking out of his office, down towards the pharmacy to get this filled, I happened to open it up and looked at the prescription. He’d written it for 300 Percocet! As bad as I was hurtin’, I almost felt like doin’ cartwheels! Honest to God, I walked in that pharmacy and had a big smile on my face. I felt like Jed Clampett on the
Beverly Hillbillies
when he shoots that rabbit and strikes that oil and becomes a rich man. I walked out of there with two big canisters of pills, 150 each. Why, I felt there were a couple of mortar shells underneath my armpits. And I’m thinking to myself, “These are going to last me for the rest of my life.” And less than a month later, they were gone: 300 Percocet! In the meantime, the surgery was scheduled for October, and it was still six weeks away, so I called down there and he says, “Dick, I’m sorry, but I cannot call in a Class 2.” So I said, “A pharmacist will probably take it over the phone.” He said, “Naw.” He just wouldn’t do it. He said, “I’d have to send it up there, and it would take a couple of days. I can call in some Tylenol 3 with codeine in it.”

I’m terribly allergic to codeine. I break out in hives and get itchy and stuff. But I thought, “What the heck, it’s a narcotic. Maybe my body has changed since I last used it.” So he called in a bunch, 30 or so. I knew they weren’t nearly as powerful as Percocet, so when I got home from the pharmacy with them, I took like 10 or 12. A half hour later, I was itching so bad and was broken out in hives. I called back down there. I said, “Doc, man I broke out in hives and I’m itching.” He says, “Dick, listen. What you need to do is go to your family doctor. Let your family doctor take care of your pain management until you get down here.”

So I hopped into the car. I hadn’t seen the family doctor for over a year. Well, I get up there and he’d moved to some other place. But there was a new doctor that had just came in, and they gave me him. And I walked in there and showed him the knots in my back. ’Cause I had ’em but I made ’em even worse, you know. And I get in there and he says, “My gosh!” And he looked at his nurse. “Nurse, bring in a 120 milligram shot of Demerol.”
’Cause I was in pain, but in worse pain than I actually was. And I said, “You can give me a Demerol shot here in your clinic? I don’t have to go to the hospital?” “Oh, yeah,” he said. “Listen, Dick, if you get like this again, you come in here. We’ll give you a shot anytime.” So I’m thinking, “Ooooh,” ’cause that to me was the ultimate, to get the Demerol shot. Pills were good but … So he gave me a prescription for Percocet and said, “Gosh, if your back gets this bad again, we’ll give you a shot anytime.”

About once a week, I went in and made it hurt real bad, worse than it was, to get a shot of Demerol and a new prescription of Percocet. I did that every week and got the load of drugs right up until the time to go down for surgery. Had the surgery, was in the hospital a week, and was sent home with Percocet, that was all. The doctor down there wasn’t real big on the painkillers. He aimed for you to get by on as little as possible. So I got home and, after a few days, was just about out of pills. It was a Friday. And I was in a lot of pain—the front scar. Again, it was painful, but part of the pain was from knowing I was just about out of pills. And that psychological-rebounding kind of a deal occurred. So I remember telling Mary, “Mary, I can’t handle the pain anymore.” And they took me into our little hospital into the emergency room, and the doctor on-call there—our family doctor was gone for the weekend—gave me a 150 milligram shot of Demerol right away. Then he put me into my own room, and instead of giving me shots, they hooked me up to an automatic drip. And they must have had that bugger cranked up but good! Basically, for two-and-a-half days, it comatosed me. Seriously, every once in a while I’d wake up, but mostly I was in the ozone layer. When the bells and whistles of the machine went off because it was empty, I’d sense the nurse come in and put another bag up there, reset it, and close the door.

Monday morning, Mary is in visiting with me, and she has the chair by the bed and is talking to me. Pretty soon there’s a knock on the door. The door was actually kind of half open, and the doctor knocks on it and pokes his head in. A lot of doctors are so busy they’ll knock on the door, push their head in, “Dick, how’re you doin’?” “Okay.” You know, “We’ll see you tomorrow,” and they charge you a hundred bucks or whatever. Well, he knocks on the door. Mary says, “Oh, come in.” He walks in and closes the
door. Right away I’m thinkin’, “Uh-oh, that’s not a good sign.” Then he goes over to the corner and grabs a chair and brings it over to the bed. I’m thinkin’, “This is really not a good sign” because I knew what was coming. He had the charts. And the last thing I wanted to hear was what he was about to say. But even worse than that, the last person in the world I wanted to hear what he was about to say was Mary. I didn’t want an official, a doctor, to say with her listening that “I think Dick has a problem.” ’Cause if I would have been there alone, I never would have come home and said, “Hey, Mary, the doc thinks maybe I have a problem with the painkillers.” She knew I was banged up. She didn’t know how many pills I was taking ’cause she worked during the day. For more pills, I called the doctor and would go and get ’em. For all Mary knew, I’d been home all day long. I didn’t talk to her about my mental state at all. I kept it well hidden to keep her from asking questions, as I feared she might. Mary’s the kind of person who might pick up the phone and call the doctor then and there: “Hey, I think this guy’s gettin’ hooked on this stuff.” So I really played it cool around her.

So the doctor says, “Dick, my God, the amount of Demerol that you took over the weekend—it could have killed a herd of elephants. I really think that you’re becoming addicted to it.” Well, I started bawlin’ ‘cause I didn’t want to hear that, and as I said, especially didn’t want Mary to hear it. “Listen,” he says, “we’re not going to cut you right off. We’ll work you through this.” He says, “We’ll reduce it little by little. You’ll be fine.” And that’s what they did. They cut the shots down gradually over a few days. They weaned me off. And the day I was going to get discharged from the hospital, the nurse comes in and says, “Dick, here’s a prescription, and the doctor says to just take the medication as prescribed and you’ll be fine. The doctor would like to have you go across the road to the mental health clinic to get evaluated. Make sure everything’s okay.” But there was not talk of treatment for any abuse. And I looked at this prescription, and it was for 75 pills of 100 milligram tablets of Demerol. I go, “They make Demerol in a pill form?” She goes, “Oh, yeah.” I’m thinking, “This is unbelievable!”

I get discharged, go over and get my mental health checked out—no problem. So I’m using this Demerol, which is to me better than the Percocet
even. And I was taking it way more than I should have been, and finally was getting down toward the end of my supply. Obviously the doctor wasn’t going to be giving me more drugs. I had one last checkup with my back surgeon. Well, by the time that came around, I was down to one 100 milligram pill of Demerol. And Mary drove me down to the Twin Cities. It’s a little over a four-hour drive from where we live, so I took that pill before we left and was fine on the ride down. But he checks me out, and I start having anxiety attacks. I’m out of the pills and have a long way home. I said, “Doc, do you think I could get a prescription?” And he said, “Absolutely not!” He was even mad to be asked. I went on, “Doc, I’ve got a long way to go. I own a pickup truck, it’s not like driving a car.” And I begged. And begged. And he’s goin’, “Nope,” and I kept begging. I would not leave the office! (Mary wasn’t with me, she was out in the waiting room.) Finally, just to get rid of me, he wrote me out a prescription for one tablet, one 100 milligram tablet. There was a pharmacy right down below. The pharmacist looked at it three times! You know, I came that close to takin’ a pen and adding a zero. But if the doctor called downstairs, I’d be in big trouble. Well, one was better than none. So the pharmacist filled the one, and the ride home I was fine. But by the time I got home, the drug was wearing off. Then I really started having anxiety problems. I broke out in sweat. My muscles twitched. My whole body was wretched. I drew a hot water bath and sat in the tub, hoping that would relax me. “What,” I thought sitting there, “am I going to do?” A few months before, I’d read in a magazine about people who go to detox. The first couple of days, they put you on some kind of drug to help you come off of it. I thought, “Man, I bet that’s the way to go!” So I called Mary, who came into the bathroom, and told her, “I need to go into a treatment center and get help. I’m flipping out here!”

Mary and I packed my bags and we get to the local hospital where there was a treatment center on the top floor. You have to sign up for a minimum of seventy-two hours. You’re locked up and can’t leave. I filled out this form, and gave Mary and Andy a kiss, and they walked out the door. They took me to my room, the nurse came in, and I asked, “When do I get some Percocet and Demerol?” She starts laughing. I said, “What’s
wrong?” and she goes, “What makes you think you’re going to get some drugs?” And I go, “I read somewhere that when you come to places like this, they do that so you don’t … they ease you down off the stuff.” “Well,” she goes, “they might do that at some places, but we don’t do that here.” And I’m looking at the one and only window in my room, small with steel bars on it, and I’m thinking, “Oh my God!” I start bawling. “Why, I gotta have some of that stuff!” She goes, “Well, I’ll give you some Valium.” I’d had Valium, and it kind of relaxes you a little bit. So I’m sobbin’, and she comes in later with this paper pill cup and hands it to me with a glass of water. And I look in it and say, “Man, you forgot to put the pill in there.” She goes, “No, it’s in there.” Valium is so small anyhow, and it was like a quarter of a Valium. I go, “This isn’t going to do any good.” I’m bawling. She says it will take the edge off, so I take it. I didn’t use the water. Then after I swallowed it, I took my tongue and licked out that paper pill cup for any residue in there. About forty-five minutes later, I could feel the effect of the pill. It kicked in, sort of relaxing me, but I remember thinking I had to talk to the doctor, knowing I could convince the doctor to give me some drugs. I just knew I could!