I awake and look at the dim morning light coming through the blinds. I reach over to my chest of draws and pick up my phone, 5:01 – time to get up. I sit up on the edge of my bed. I had a decent sleep. I expect tonight’s sleep will not be so good, although it might be ok, maybe I am worrying about nothing. I stand up and find a comfy t-shirt on the couch in a pile with my tracksuit pants and walk the hall into the bathroom. I pick up my toothbrush, go back out into the hall and walk around looking down at my warehouse from the mezzanine as I clean my teeth. I drink a bottle of water, do some stretches and then meditate cross legged on my bed for 10-15 minutes – I don’t time it.
Today is the first day of my commitment to being completely alcohol and drug free for the whole month of October. I don’t even know if I can do it – I don’t even really care. Today is also the day that my 14-year-old son leaves hospital. He has been there since September last year. I have to go and hire a wheelchair accessible van so I can drive him to his interim accommodation. I go and make a coffee, set up my desk space and start my journal.
Journal 1/10/19
Sober October. I’m starting to doubt the intelligence of that decision, but I committed my heart to it so I have to at least try. Tommy is leaving hospital. He has a going away party at the hospital at 10am. I don’t know how I am going to handle that. It’s the right thing to do, we have become close with the staff over the last year and they have become very fond of him, the boy who can only love with a smile he couldn’t fake if he wanted to. But I can’t muster any excitement. In theory the move should be better for everyone. We will have much more freedom to implement his care without the hospital regulations, and he has funding for almost round the clock carers. I can be a Dad and friend instead of a nurse. I’m a terrible nurse.
But I’m terrified. The institution of the hospital is safe, when in any doubt I can press the nurses button. And I’m sad. I would love to celebrate his leaving, but the boy who walked in there over a year ago is leaving today without enough movement to do anything for himself. How does he feel? One can only guess from his facial expressions. He can’t communicate a single word, even with the state of the art technology devices the hospital tried. He must be terrified too. He lost everything except the love of his family and now the security he has, the nurses he has come to love, the dependability of the institution, and the security of a stable routine is being replaced. It is replaced with something that he is told and believes is better, but there is still a gap from here to there.
He was told he was going to walk out of the hospital. He was told that he may even make a full recovery. Now he has to celebrate leaving in a wheelchair to an uncertain future in his new life that he would have considered a fate far worse than death. But I will go to his going away party. I will tell him it’s ok to be afraid, that while things should be better in his new digs, change brings fear for everyone and that me, his mum, and the rest of his family will be there for him.
—
I finish my journal and work for a few hours. I go downstairs to the warehouse.
“Today is my to the first day of Sober October. I’m getting completely clean for the month of October” I say to Tim my general manager casually as we pass in the warehouse.
“What?” He says stopping in his tracks, a handful of orders in his hand. “Oh no. You are going to be a prick to work for.”
“I’ll be ok.” I say amused. “You have been on holiday with me when I have been clean.”
“True, but you were getting your dick wet with a new girl every day.”
“You do have a point.” I say as a smile creeps over my face remembering some of our travels together. I head back to my office and think, maybe I don’t need a break. It’s a strong endorsement when your best friend and employee doesn’t think you have a problem. Tim smokes about 3 cones a week. I’m reminded of a similar conversation with my kids a few weeks back.
“I think I’m going to do sober October. I’m getting completely clean for the month of October – no weed” I say to Pearl and Harmony, my 8 and 11-year-old daughters as we are driving in the car. They both break up in laughter.
“How long do you think you will last?” Asks Harmony.
“All month.” I reply indignant. “How long do you think I will last.” I ask.
“A week, max.” She says
“Thanks for the vote of confidence guys. What do you think? Should I stop?”
“No!”
“What. Do you like it when I’m stoned?”
“Yeah, we watch movies together and then you get hungry and we have mad deserts”
“What about you?” I ask Pearl.
“What?” She says dragging her eyes momentarily away from her ipad.
The oldest and me laugh.
“You need ipad October.” Harmony says to her little sister.
“Go away.” She yells as she goes back to the screen.
I wonder, did I chose a best friend and employee who will enable me and are my kids dysfunctional? Or do the people that know me the best really don’t care if I smoke weed or not?
Cowboy – Blast From the Past
The sober October idea came from a phone conversation with a friend who said he did it last year and it was good to get his weed tolerance down. He too was a fallen member of Narcotics Anonymous. I first met him when I was in my early twenties and we were both using heroin. We had some mutual friends – all dead now, and we would meet in passing while scoring, or pooling our money to get better value by buying bulk.
I bumped into him outside my methadone chemist in Box Hill in Melbourne one morning and we had a quick chat.
“How’s Nick and Chris?” I asked about our mutual friends.
“I don’t see them anymore. They’re bad junkies, they can’t handle their shit.” He responded.
I laughed inside, junkies always accusing other junkies of not being able to handle it.
“Ok.” I said. “Are you on done?”
At that stage I thought you were either a heroin or methadone addict. Methadone being basically government produced low quality heroin with a very long half-life so you only need it once a day. You can still use heroin on top, and most do, but you always have the methadone as back up so you don’t go into bad withdrawals.
“Fuck that. I just buy a half a gram a week and have a small bit every day.” He said.
I looked at him suspiciously. I knew no one had that sort of control. I could never make a half gram last more than a day.
“OK. Catch you later” I said as I walked off thinking, maybe he really can control it. I wasn’t to see him until years later when I met up with him in NA. I would forever tease him about “just a little bit every day”. We became good friends and there was a group of us all around the same age in our mid-twenties. We would go out for dinner after the meeting and then back to one of each other’s houses for a movie night. We would have afternoon BBQ’s at our place since we had a big backyard. We would go on weekend fellowship retreats and conventions. I experience bonding like I never had. I will have these friends for ever I thought at the time. These were great days. We were all so broken from our past addictions, it was the first time a lot of us had experienced real friendship, real brotherly love. We didn’t want anything from each other but companionship and a desire to see each other recover our health.
We would sit up late and tell crazy stories from our past. One night Cowboy, as he was about to be renamed, told us of his time in the Christian drug re-hab on a farm where he fucked the cow.
“You what?” Exclaimed Ben (affectionately named Benzo)
“Yeah, well I was horny.” He said without guile nor embarrassment.
“But it’s a cow.” I said.
“Sometimes a hole is a hole.” He replied. Everyone laughed and from then on he got his new nick name Cowboy.
That was almost twenty years ago. Most of the crew from then had relapsed, some had died, a few had stayed clean. I had lost touch with nearly all of them. It was nice to catch up with cowboy on the phone. He seemed to be going ok. He was employed and no longer used heroin.
“I drink more than I should, that’s the unhealthiest thing I do. I like taking mushrooms and will do some Molly now and then. Of course I love weed. I make my own hash oil. I haven’t had any smack or ice for a couple years. The last time I had a three day binge on ice and was then in the horrors for a week after that wondering how I got myself into this situation again. That was the last time.” He said
I finish on the phone with him and thought I could do sober October. I look at the date, it’s August 15. That’s 6 weeks away. That’s long enough away to trick my brain into thinking it’s far into the future, but not so long away that it will never happen. It keeps popping up in my mind over the next week so I make the commitment – I’ll at least attempt it.
3rd October – Mens Meeting
It’s Thursday night’s men’s meeting Mooloolaba. I still have a few friends that go that I have lost touch with. I think it will be good to catch up with them and now I am clean I don’t feel too self-conscious to go. I had been to a couple NA meetings over the last year and it was too confronting, even though I wasn’t stoned I knew I would be not too long after the meeting.
I meet an old friend Slender Buddha and a group of guys at a restaurant before the meeting. He is my age and we were the same clean time until I relapsed almost 2 years ago..
“Welcome back old friend.” He greets me warmly with a hug. “So good to have you back. We need you here.”
“Don’t get too excited.” I say with a grin. “I’m only doing it for a month.”
“Haha. You’ll be back. You have no-where else to go. Don’t make me set up an intervention on you.”
“Go your hardest spiritual leader. But I guarantee you, you will be vaping weed before I get clean.”
“You might be right. I do miss the fruit. I just don’t think I can handle it. I’m sure it would lead me back. Come on let’s grab a table and I’ll introduce you to the boys.”
I knew by site most of the guys around the table, but can’t remember having conversations with any of them. Even when I had done NA meetings I was very distanced and didn’t go out of my way to befriend the newer people. They were very welcoming to me. I had rock star status back then with my “clean time” so even though I wasn’t very friendly back then I got a pass because I was an OCM and at least looked good from a distance. I sat down and we spoke about men’s stuff; work, relationships, parenthood. It was nice and reminded me of my early days in NA in Melbourne.
We finish dinner and head to the meeting. I see an old friend Danger I haven’t seen for years, he is now over 20 years clean. We greet and hug then the meeting starts. We do the round the room ID and I say.
“Nick, Addict, 3 days.”
Danger looks at me with wide eyes.
“I’ve been smoking weed for the last couple years.” I whisper to him.
He lifts up his hand to pretend to backhand me.
The meeting has a half time smoke break and I sit with Danger and we talk.
“Hey buddy. I heard about your son. I’m so sorry to hear.”
“Yeah, it’s been a tough year, but hopefully things will calm down now. I just drove him to his interim accommodation near Tan’s while they renovate her house to accommodate him.”
“Oh, that’s good. So what’s with this smoking weed business?”
“Well I gave it a go and I didn’t have the obsession and compulsion any more. I didn’t go back to smoking anywhere near what I did when I was a teenager.”
“How much do you smoke?”
“I vape about half a gram a day. I used to smoke 100 bongs a day in my twenties.”
“Half a gram is alright I suppose. But what are you doing in an NA meeting if you’re cured.” He says with a grin and one eyebrow raised.
“Well, it doesn’t feel addictive, but it certainly is habit forming. I wanted to have a break, but it was hard to get the motivation. Then 6 weeks ago I decided I would do sober October. And then October came around. I miss you guys. I figured if I was clean I might as well come to an NA meeting.”
“Well good luck with it. Although they do say ‘It’s not how much you use, but how drugs affect you’. In any case it’s good to see you old friend. So what are you going to do for the month to keep off the herbs?”
“Nothing really, just my normal routine. I have a week in Thailand on the 19th so I’m sort of cheating since I never use drugs in Asia anyway.”
“How does that go?”
“Mate, I’m so high on sex addiction I don’t even notice it.”
“Haha, Nicko the sicko.”
The meeting resumes and a guy I have never met before shares.
“I have been around these rooms for 25 years and been able to stay abstinent from drugs for the last 20 of those, but until recently I have deprived myself of the love and bonding that is on offer here. In the early days I was so broken I had to do meetings every day. I was just happy not to have to wake up and rob someone’s house to get my drug of choice, that daily meetings seemed a fair trade off. I relapsed a few times and that motivated me to do the steps. The process of the 12 Steps stopped me from relapsing. Then I was off and running with life and trying to make up for lost time. I made money, got married, bought property, became a workaholic, and got divorced – all the wonderful things we do in recovery.
At 19 years clean I felt like blowing my brains out. I knew drugs weren’t going to solve my problems so they were out, but I didn’t have an answer to the isolation and despair I felt. I had recovered from the divorce. I was grateful she was out of my life, but there was something missing I couldn’t place my finger on. I tried going to church, the budhist temple, and more prayer and meditation. These things helped while away the time, but I never felt like I was getting any better in the long run. Early recovery was like 2 steps forward, one step back. This felt like 1 step forward, 2 steps back.
I was starting to think I had a mental illness. In desperation I reached out to another member and got honest. I told them I felt suicidal and didn’t know what to do. They listened to me and then suggested I did more meetings. ‘I have tried that.’ I told them, ‘I continue to do one a week’.
‘Why don’t you try 4 a week for the next month and see if that works. If not them when you blow your brains out at least you will know you have really tried NA again before you say goodbye’
I did 4 meetings the next week and felt much better. So much so that I did 5 the following week and suicide felt like a distant option. Now I consistently do 3-4 meetings a week. I get here early and have coffee with members afterwards. I am loved by and feel love for my sick brothers and sisters – most of you I wouldn’t have even used with.”
Laughs from the audience.
“But in recovery I find a bond here that I have never been able to find anywhere else. Not only does this keep my clean, it keeps me from wanting to kill myself. Thanks”
I thought about his story and remembered the love I felt in NA. How it too had saved me. I was far from suicidal, but if I ever got into that predicament I knew NA was there. I knew I could come back if I ever needed, but I also considered that maybe I could come back now. I looked around the room and saw genuine affection between the members. I missed that. I had plans for travel and a single life that wasn’t conducive to getting clean, besides I was more manageable than nearly all the people in this room. It’s not time for me to get clean yet.
Red Pill Recovery 