SAMUELSSON
37
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Monday morning, I debated whether or not I should wear my Michigan jersey to my first day at rehab. On one hand, it seemed tacky for a first impression, but on the other, it was the biggest Michigan game in any sport in several years. Also, it was patently me. I put on my maize Michigan hockey jersey, the navy block M on the front of the sweater under a CCHA decal. I felt proud wearing it as I walked across the parking lot and strode into the doors of St. Mary’s Hospital, but immediately upon entering the hospital, I felt differently. To get to the IOP room, I had to enter via the Emergency Room doors, then take an elevator up to the third floor; as such, I passed gurneys being pushed around by nurses in mint green scrubs, in addition to heavily-bandaged patients being wheeled around with IV poles. Suddenly the jersey felt flippant. I wondered if the IOP people had deliberately arranged it that way, to remind the addicts of the grave nature of their disease. I wondered, too, if the employees – the doctors and nurses – had learned to identify the addicts coming and going from outpatient rehab, if they labeled me on the spot.
I took the elevator up to the third floor. A coughing man wearing a plaid button-down and khaki Ralph Lauren jacket, escorted by his orange-haired, septuagenarian wife, exited on the second floor. Getting off on the third floor, I checked a directory on the wall, then followed signs down a carpeted hallway. At the end of the long hallway, on the left-hand side, I stood before two heavy wooden doors, on which a sign read “Intensive Outpatient Program Only.” Behind it lay a new world, one in which I would lay the foundations for my recovery, one in which alcohol still existed, but only as a poison. I opened the door and shuffled into the crowded room, wherein other pale and gaunt-looking individuals mingled in their seats and drank coffee around the coffee urn. I felt their eyes on me as I found a seat and tried to look occupied, like I had done this before. It was important not to think of yourself as any different from any other addict. We were all the same.
It is hard to shake lifelong inclinations, though. My addiction, still active, wanted badly for me to compare myself to my fellow patients. It wanted me to notice those miniscule dissimilarities in demographics, clothing, and appearances. There was a wide circle of about twenty-five chairs in the carpeted room so that all of us addicts were facing one another, making it virtually impossible not to look at them. Across the circle from me, at one o'clock, sat a heavy-set twenty-two year old, give or take, his stretched-out legs crossed at the ankles. He wore pajama pants, stud earrings, and a sleeveless FUBU jersey, and his bleached blonde hair was spiked with hair gel. At three o'clock, another male, mid-twenties, wore a James Harden Rockets jersey, a silver chain, baggy blue jeans, and Jordans; big headphones covered his ears like a martian. His face appeared heavily scarred. A fragile-looking girl wearing a black zip-up hoodie over her head walked in and sat down mindlessly, stuffing her cigarettes into her purse. Another in her mid-thirties arrived shortly thereafter and took a seat next to her. She bore the pockmark scars of needle use up and down her arms, some of them covered up with tattoos; wearing a tight-fitting tank top, she made no effort to hide them. I smelled cigarettes on her from across the room. Others – primarily the middle-aged patients, for whatever reason – looked less distinguishable; their generation appeared more inclined to clandestine addiction. There were men and women there who looked no different than those on any regular worksite – business types in slacks and polos, blue collar guys in Carhartt’s, ladies who worked as bank tellers, waitresses, nurses, even retirees.
As more people found their seats, I took out my notebook and pen, anxious to appear occupied and willing. I received a couple of friendly smiles from the surrounding faces, a few noncommittal stares, and a few individuals appeared not to notice me at all. Many appeared lost in their own worlds of Prozac and Suboxone. I was relieved when an olive-skinned, dark-haired woman in her late thirties or early forties quieted the room to a murmur just by entering the room. Clipboard in hand, she claimed a chair in the circle across from me. She wore an ID badge in a lanyard around her neck, thick eyeglasses, and professional dress that gave the impression of high education. Taking a sip from her Nalgene bottle, she looked healthy, pretty, and self-confident.
“How is everyone doing this morning?’ she asked loudly. Her voice was cheerful but professional. She received a collective grumble of a response. Most of the patients were still sipping coffee, groggily slouching. One or two scratched their eyes, hunched over, and moaned, as if the morning physically hurt them. Mornings seemed to be universally loathed by alcoholics and addicts, a topic I’d learn more about later in the program. Sunday mornings, in particular, haunted me for years after I quit drinking.
“Well, before we get started, we have one new admission today,” she started – so she would get right to it, I thought, bracing myself – “so, Zac, do you want to tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got here today?”
I felt the circle’s collective vision turn to me.
“Sure,” I enunciated, adjusting my weight in my chair. I had no idea of the format of the group, so I treated it like an AA meeting. “Hi everyone, my name is Zac and I’m an alcoholic.”
I told a brief history of my drinking and pinpointed my unraveling to the moment I lost the college girlfriend. I described the series of withdrawal episodes I’d repeatedly suffered since then, and the numerous failed attempts at getting sober on my own that inevitably resulted in those horrible withdrawal episodes, again. “It became a vicious cycle.”
“Then I went on the biggest bender of my life,” I continued. “It lasted two weeks. I ended up in the emergency room here, on the detox ward, on my birthday. That was pretty much the lowest point of my life.” I bowed my head solemnly, adding, “and that’s pretty much how I ended up here.” I exhaled.
“Well, Zac, I want to thank you for your honesty. I think you’ll be a great addition to a pretty good core group here, and I think you’ll find that a lot of people here can relate to your experiences. My name is Tammy, and I run the didactic portion of the program.”
Following my introduction, I received some heartfelt smiles, but the majority of the other addicts remained silent, stone-faced. Their nonplussed collective reaction made me wonder if I was qualified to be there. Tammy passed out handouts on triggers and relapse prevention, told us not to start writing anything on them yet.
The didactic half of the program functioned not unlike any school lecture, an hour and fifteen-minute presentation on the psychology of addiction during which many of the addicts, including myself, took notes in notebooks or doodled on the handouts. Tammy did most of the talking, except to take questions and field responses. While she lectured, I drew baseball and hockey logos, lyrics and guitars, old video game characters, such that my worksheets and notebook resembled those of my elementary and high school years. Looking around the circle, I tried to identify the drug of choice of each individual just by looking at them. There were a few obvious alcoholics: a grizzled, leather-skinned guy in Ford workman’s shirt and Timberland boots, a factory worker who reeked of cigarettes – I soon learned this was Randy, who cross-addicted on pills after originally going to rehab for alcohol abuse and whom I befriended shortly thereafter; another guy who oddly reminded me of every actor who has ever portrayed an alcoholic clown in film, with his sinister-curling mustache and rosy cheeks; another, a sixty-year-old divorcee wearing a leather jacket, thick makeup, and heavy perfume, looked like she would not be out of place at Chatter’s. Others, I pegged as junkies: one was a thin, gangly woman not much older than I who wore ripped jeans and a Ramones tee shirt – her weathered arms, with track marks and self-inflicted scars, aged her beyond her years; another was a similarly-gangly Ichabod Crane type, a young man about my age in ripped blue jeans and a Lions hoodie who had large, mischievous eyes. Some group members, of course, were more mysterious in their silence, more difficult to peg right off the bat.
After the didactic session, we got a twenty-minute lunch break. Towards the end of the lesson I noticed several patients tapping their feet, checking the time on their cell phones, getting up to stretch, and generally growing agitated. As soon as Tammy dismissed us, they all funneled to the exit doors. On my first day, I watched them from the IOP window, which looked out across the hospital parking lot to the old hospital cemetery in an overgrown field. They flooded out of the Emergency Room doors and walked in pairs to the smoking section at the far end of the hospital parking lot. Lunch appeared to be a competition to see how many cigarettes they could chain smoke out there. Ever the addict, even in rehab. For me, it was no different. I drank coffee during the didactic session, then switched to Diet Coke for group therapy, and, after my first day, I joined the smokers in the parking lot to dip and sometimes read while the others smoked and chatted.
Following lunch, Tammy disappeared into her office. Another therapist, Anne, the one who’d conducted my intake exam, took over for Tammy and ran the group therapy portion of the day. She used a professional, authoritative voice and employed a tough-love approach while maintaining a caring relationship with everyone on an individual level. I learned how group therapy worked by watching.
Erin, a thin, black-haired heroin addict in ripped jeans and a tight green halter top, pleaded with Anne to speak first in group. “I have been fuming all morning and I have a lot of shit I need to get off my chest,” she demanded. Soon, I learned this was a regular occurrence for Erin. Anne acquiesced, but not before asking the group if anyone else had any pressing concerns they needed to talk about. So Erin told us about her relationship with her baby daddy and about how she was currently permitted to see her son only once weekly. She talked and talked.
My first day ended unceremoniously, without me having said a word. A couple of different guys from group, acknowledging my Michigan jersey, made comments about the college basketball national championship, said they’d be watching and rooting for the Wolverines. I went to Patrick's that night as usual, and we went through all the superstitious rituals we’d accumulated in a two week span. Spike Albrecht’s magic in the first half inspired visions of immortality. An end-of-rotation freshman, Albrecht made four threes in the first half en route to 17 points, shattering his career high in a single half of basketball. Alas, the magic ran out. Louisville went on a run to cut a twelve point Michigan lead to one at the half, then dominated the second half. The Cardinals cut down the nets, and I had to go on with rehab and law school as normal, not unlike the days after the 2009 Stanley Cup. Sane folk did not take seriously any notion that these events greatly affected my mental well-being, my general attitude towards life. Perhaps that was my problem alone.
I spoke little my first week in group, to the extent that Anne eventually called me on it.
“How are you doing, Zac? We haven’t heard much from you yet,” she asked during group therapy towards the end of my third day. “You look kind of scared, to be honest.”
“I’m not scared,” I protested. I tried to explain that I was merely trying to get comfortable and that I wasn’t the type to fight for speaking time.
“I respect that, but after your first week, we’ll be expecting you to take on an increased participation role in group,” she advised before dismissing group for the day.
After that, I felt more comfortable sharing in group. I met people during the tobacco sessions at lunch and befriended Randy, the middle-aged alcoholic and pill addict. Its novelty worn off, rehab started to become routine every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, something I even began to look forward to. It got me away from the rigors of law school for a few hours, three days of the week – I missed the remainder of my Water Law courses, but was able to attend most other classes – and provided me necessary time away from mundane life to evaluate and accept my problem as a serious medical condition, one which I would deal with the rest of my life. The three hours in IOP gave me time for meditation, in addition to perspective on a different demographic of people for whom life hadn’t been so stable and charmed. Besides, rehab was exciting. On any given day, you might meet a new patient in group, hear an original addiction story. I loved hearing addiction stories. Other days, shit went down. Anne and Tammy kicked one guy out of group after several group members expressed that he made them uncomfortable. He tended to stalk up and down the room, clenching his fists, and admitted to angry, violent urges. In another instance, Tammy confronted a harmless-looking mother of three boys when she showed up late to IOP with alcohol on her breath. She admitted she had been smoking crack all night. Some patients, even the ones you’d expected to make it, simply stopped showing up out of the blue, and their relapse was left unspoken in group.
Per IOP requirements, I attended four Alcoholics Anonymous meetings per week. I fulfilled this obligation on weekends – which were suddenly quite empty without alcohol – and weeknights. I regularly attended the 10:00 p.m. Friday night meeting at the New Life Church in Canton. There, I announced to the group that I was currently in outpatient rehab and in need of a temporary sponsor. An alcoholic named Alfred volunteered for the job. I also befriended an overweight guy about my age named Joe. Joe told me he was a law student at Wayne State, too. We talked Michigan sports and the Red Wings.
In IOP, I had identified the weekends as a trigger for me – a danger zone – so Anne helped me develop a plan that included daily meetings on weekends. The idea was to increase my meeting attendance as a reminder, and to keep me busy on off days from IOP. On Saturdays, I attended the 10:00 a.m. meeting at St. Andrew’s church in Livonia, or alternatively the 8:00 p.m. meeting at the same location. As it turned out, one of my St. Mike’s grade school football coaches ran the Saturday night raffle at St. Andrew’s like a seasoned auctioneer. I often sat at the same table as Kaylee, a tall blonde student at Wayne County Community College who had recently received her second DUI charge. Socially, I felt like I was finally making headway within the program as I increasingly immersed myself in recovery culture.
Sundays drew the biggest crowds to AA meetings. It made sense. I attended the big book study meeting at St. Kenneth’s in Livonia or, if I was feeling up for the drive, to the massive but disorganized young people’s meeting at a church in Ferndale.
Certain meetings left a bad taste in my mouth, when, for instance, the invariable oddball said something off-putting at a table, the Bible thumper backhandedly admonished the non-believers, or the narcissist rambled far too long, thereby taking up a disproportionate share of the hour-long meeting. Because AA is open to anyone who desires to quit drinking, it attracts many less socially-adept personalities, including outcasts, sociopaths, predators, egomaniacs, and social vampires.
For the most part, though, I cast aside lingering doubts I had regarding AA. I learned that I didn’t have to embrace Jesus Christ or any god while in AA. The St. Mary’s IOP, like most successful recovery facilities, utilized the twelve-step methodology, and AA or NA meetings were mandatory. This policy demonstrated to me that AA was legitimate, medically approved. I discussed my religious reservations within group. Anne and my fellow IOP patients helped me understand the concept of a higher power that did not have any religious connotations. Erin said her higher power was nature. Ronny said his was music. Anne suggested that some people make AA their higher power. Such preconceived misconceptions about AA cast aside, I embraced it open-heartedly, for the first time, and learned to enjoy late-night drives to meetings, making trips all over metro Detroit to try out different clubs. I liked meeting fellow addicts and alcoholics in recovery; they were all like me, all addictive personalities, and I felt a level of understanding with them that was absent in my relationships in the outside world. Customarily, AA members volunteer their phone numbers in a little booklet presented to newcomers, so I acquired the phone numbers of many well-intentioned people those first couple weeks. It all gave me a purpose and a sense of belonging.
Anne and Tammy encouraged us to find new hobbies and make healthy lifestyle adjustments. So I recommenced my interval running regimen, going for long walks and jogs through surrounding Westland and into Hines Park, usually at night. There was something peaceful about suburban neighborhoods at dusk in spring, the front lawns freshly-mowed, laundry exhaust fumes wafting pleasant aromas into the night, but at the same time, the golden lights in the kitchen windows, the smell of supper, and the blue glow of televisions made me lonesome — lonesome for an irretrievable decade. Outside of my recovery circle, I spoke to almost no one outside of my family. I was too afraid of jeopardizing my sobriety to speak to my buddies yet.
Because I started two weeks after my emergency room discharge, I was actually about three weeks sober at the conclusion of my first week in IOP. Cognizant of this, I raised my hand during group therapy on Monday to discuss my proclivity for relapse during the third and fourth weeks of sobriety. We devised a plan that again revolved around increased AA meeting attendance. “Go every day if you need to,” Anne suggested. We discussed the topic regularly in group thereafter, and Anne frequently checked in to ask if I was dealing with any triggers. I increased my AA attendance over the next two weeks and my peers at IOP kept me in check by asking how I was doing. I did the same for them, investing myself in Erin’s sobriety, in Randy’s sobriety, in Kevin’s, and in Susan’s. We experienced recovery together in that room, no matter how fleeting, and something about the special bond we shared helped keep me sober, too. In a short time, these strangers had become my keepers, guardians, friends, and I have often since pondered how close we were during those brief few weeks together, and how integral to each other’s lives we were during that critical juncture of our lives.
Most addicts in IOP stayed for thirty days, five or six weeks tops, depending on how good your insurance was. Half wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible. So it was not long before I had to face the reality of saying goodbye to individuals I had relied upon early on in IOP. Some of them graduated to the early recovery group, which met only once a week, while others transitioned to outpatient therapy elsewhere. A few pledged to stick to a strict AA regiment. The vast majority of them, I never saw again. Their fates unknown, they disappeared like ghosts.
Grimly, Anne informed us that the odds were against us. She said that, of the twenty-something of us, only one or two of us would stay sober for more than a year upon leaving rehab, according to statistics. That left an ominous dread hanging in the air upon each successive graduation from the program. Technically, we were not supposed to communicate with one another outside of rehab, but the rules seemed flexible in that department, so I exchanged phone numbers with some of my closer companions in IOP, adding them to the scores of numbers I’d acquired at AA meetings. All of those phone numbers eventually vanished into the fickle abyss of early recovery, through whose doors pass millions, but where relatively few stay for the long haul.
By the end of April, I felt like a seasoned veteran in rehab. The turnover rate was high, such that by my third week I had been there longer than most. On April 24, I received my thirty day sober chip from the St. Andrew’s meeting in Livonia. Regular attendance at AA meetings had emboldened me with a sense of independence and confidence in my recovery, and I no longer felt anxiety speaking at meetings. Law school exams ended, and graduation ceremonies came and went without my attendance.
Around the same time, the Detroit Red Wings made an exciting push to extend their professional sports-leading playoff streak to twenty-two years. I hadn’t paid much attention to their season, theretofore. Gary Bettman’s lockout had resulted in the cancellation of the first half of the season, and Detroit played mediocre hockey for most of the second half. Going into April, they were 17-13-5. Sober, however, I had vast quantities of free time, and I followed the Red Wings’ April schedule intently. For their part, the Wings had saved their most compelling storyline for the season’s end. After losing six of nine games to start the month, Detroit had to win its remaining four games to secure a playoff bid. Implausibly, they did just that, defeating Dallas, L.A., Nashville, and Dallas by a collective score of 15-3 during a helter-skelter span of six days, thereby keeping the streak alive.
The 2013 Stanley Cup playoffs started in May. Entering the playoffs as the seventh seed in the Western Conference – their lowest seed since the NHL moved to an eight-seed system in 1993 – the Wings flew west to Anaheim to take on Cory Perry, J.S. Giguere, and the two-seeded Ducks in a rare underdog role, hoping to play spoiler. Riding three overtime victories, the cardiac Wings surprised many by taking the Ducks to a seventh game. Game 7 took place on a Saturday night in Anaheim. Henrik Zetterberg, Justin Abdelkader, and Valtteri Filppula scored for the good guys. Jimmy Howard played one of his best games in a Red Wings uniform, stopping 31 of 33 shots to secure a 3-2 victory for Detroit. The upset imbued me with momentary ecstasy, then loneliness, the remainder of the night. I thought about how my friends were probably celebrating with shots and beers by the fistful; it was Steve Fideler’s birthday, for which they went out to Malarkeys and watched the game, and I had chosen to stay home on account of my sobriety.
Towards the end of my fourth week in rehab, Anne and I privately discussed the option of extending my treatment. I had confessed my fear of relapsing once I got out, having little confidence in my sense of responsibility when left to my own devices. I’d found a comfortable routine with IOP, one that I liked. Anne called my insurance provider and agreed to extend my stay another week or two. The educational lectures in didactic group started to repeat themselves, so I increasingly doodled in my notebooks and on the backs of handouts in group. My therapists, Anne and Tammy, my fellow IOP group members, my acquaintances at AA, and my temporary sponsor all assured me that leaving rehab was part of recovery; they encouraged me to move on to the next step, but still I balked at the prospect of leaving the security and structure of the intensive outpatient program. None of them knew what I knew about myself.
The Red Wings drew Original Six rival Chicago in the Western Conference Semi-Finals. In a reversal of longtime roles, Detroit played the sort of old, grizzled underdog. Chicago was now the top dog in the Western Conference, having won the President’s Trophy for the league’s best regular season record, a high-scoring team led by young guns Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane, and Corey Crawford. After getting blown out in Game 1 at the United Center, Detroit bounced back with a 4-1 blowout of their own in Game 2, evening the series going back to The Joe. Jimmy Howard stole the show in Game 3, stopping 39 of 40 Chicago shots on the night. Gustav Nyquist, Drew Miller, and Pavel Datysuk scored in the 3-1 statement victory. On May 23rd, I received my sixty day sober token from an AA meeting in the early afternoon; that same night, the Red Wings defeated the Black Hawks 2-0 at Joe Louis Arena on the strength of another Jimmy Howard shutout. That gave them a stranglehold on the series with a 3-1 advantage, but Chicago’s young stars finally showed up in Games Five and Six, extending the series to another pivotal Game Seven on May 29. I watched Game Seven with Patrick and Colette at their house in Redford, hoping to reprise our NCAA tournament luck, but it was not in the cards. Detroit lost the game in overtime. At only 3:35 into the first overtime, Brent Seabrook beat Jimmy Howard to put an anticlimactic end to a tightly-contested game and series. Chicago went on to win the Stanley Cup.
It’s hard to say exactly when I started to slip up. As with most relapses, the slide was gradual, brewing in my subconscious. Dating, certainly, was a big mistake. Though AA and St. Mary’s recommended a one year hiatus from dating, it existed only as an unwritten rule, as far as I was aware, and, nearing sixty days sober, I started an email correspondence with Lauren, a fourth grade teacher my cousin Mary Frances had talked about setting me up with at Easter. We exchanged pictures via email, too. She was tall – as tall as I was – and, most visibly, large-chested, with curly blonde hair streaming to her shoulders and larger than average eyes. At age 29, she held the allure of an older woman; a home-owner and mom of two wiener dogs, she offered a semblance of domesticity I thought I needed at the time.
For our first date, Lauren and I met in downtown Plymouth on a sunny Sunday evening. We met at Kellogg Park and walked to Dairy Dan for ice cream, which we ate on a park bench at the war memorial down the street. Lauren told me she was counting down the days left in school. I thought about it, but decided against mentioning that I was counting down the days I had left in rehab. I figured that was a third or fourth date conversation topic. After ice cream we walked back to the Penn Theater, an old, one-screen theater from the seventies, and I bought two tickets for Safe Haven, a Nicholas Sparks thriller set in a maritime-forested beach town. For our second date, we ate dinner at Max & Erma’s before seeing The Conjuring at the Canton Emagine Theater, after which Lauren kissed me in her SUV. She put her hand up my shorts and asked me to come back to her place. It was only after the relationship had already turned physical that I brought it to the attention of my substance abuse therapist and the rest of my IOP group, and that alone proves that I knew it was wrong.
“What if we’re not in a relationship – what if we’re just ‘hanging out’?” I asked during group, bolstered by what appeared to be a nonchalant collective reaction from fellow patients.
I was suspicious of the no-dating rule, and the lack of a clear line regarding the issue gave me all the liberty I needed.
“People could be in the most unhealthy of abusive relationships,” I theorized, alluding to a couple married individuals within our own group, “in a relationship completely detrimental to their sobriety, but there are no rules regarding already established relationships.”
Anne held her ground, as did two elder statesmen in group, stating flatly that there were several reasons for the rule, but she didn’t fight me on it like she might some other issue; in my addictive thinking, I considered that tacit permission enough.
Walking out to the parking lot that afternoon, Shandra, a bigger black woman in treatment for alcohol abuse, called over to me: “I hope you get some this weekend, sweetie! I don’t see what the fuss is about anyway.”
I continued to date Lauren, but far worse, I continued to withhold my recovery from her. Another tell-tale indication that I was on the verge of a relapse was my casual abandonment of my temporary sponsor and, in the process, the twelve steps.
“What is the protocol for telling your temporary sponsor that you want to find another sponsor?” I inquired during one of my last days in IOP.
Several others in group nodded and expressed that they had similar concerns. At first, Alfred had seemed friendly enough. He walked me through the first three of the twelve steps without issue. My friend Joe from the Plymouth-Canton Alano Club had recommended him, and nobody went out of their way to dissuade me from taking on Alfred as my temporary sponsor when he volunteered for the job. But Joe had recently admitted to me that he had been lying. He didn’t actually go to Wayne State Law. He was enrolled at one time, but had dropped out after a single semester two years ago. He apologized for lying and told me he had been on a gambling binge when he had told me as much. Then I started hearing rumors about Alfred at meetings — about how he was known to be a “13th stepper,” how girls new in the program should steer clear of him. At meetings, he made odd remarks and several comments which I flatly disagreed with. Then he tried complaining to me about his own recovery, including how many women in the program were saying bad things about him. I got the sense that he was not as invested in my recovery as he was in need of a friend.
“Has he worked the steps?” Anne asked in response to my question. “Has he been sober for more than two years?”
Begrudgingly, I answered affirmatively. Anne didn’t delve into the topic much further. Maybe I was wrong, but in both AA meetings and in my IOP group, my peers did not seem to place the same value on sponsorship that I felt necessary for my recovery. The steps were supposed to be the ticket to getting sober, and a sponsor was the guide who walked you through the steps and helped you process them. Was it really not that big of a deal to wind up with a borderline pariah for a sponsor? I thought there should be a better process for procuring an able sponsor. Maybe I was placing too much emphasis on it. I stopped answering Alfred’s phone calls and deleted his voice mails. I figured I would find another sponsor at the right meeting.
Erin, Randy, Ruth, Kim, Robin, Susan, Bruce, Shawn, Bryce, and Bethany all graduated from IOP. Their faces faded as my own discharge date from IOP loomed ever nearer. New addicts and alcoholics, fresh off of some catastrophic event or another, filled their vacant seats. Into that room came Wanda, an overweight black female who lived in the Westland apartments. She told us she’d been raped twice in her teenage years. After that, she turned to weed and pills. Into that room walked Chloe, a beautiful, Kurt Cobain-obsessed girl of only eighteen who had lyrics tattooed on her wrists. Shy, she opened up slowly. She turned out to be a heroin addict separated from her boyfriend against her will. Another newcomer was Christy, an anorexic woman with a whiny, nasally voice and a hook nose; she complained regularly, mostly about her family’s house fire, in which she lost everything, including her beloved Schnauzer, Roscoe. Ken, a well-dressed banker type, had gone through a divorce and subsequently got himself hooked on pain meds. They’re all an illusion to me now, but in that narrow sliver of time they saved my life.
