Answer Addiction

Tag: Features

  • Traveling While Sober: Will I Still Have Fun?

    Traveling While Sober: Will I Still Have Fun?

    Just as in everyday life, the biggest battle with alcohol while traveling is internal. But with some preparation, you can go anywhere and have a great time, sober.

    We arrived breathlessly at the Vedado home, a stately stone structure with a newly refurbished interior, ready to learn the secrets of Cuban cuisine. My new husband and I were famished in the way that happens when you travel, lost in time and space, not realizing we were hungry until the situation felt dire. We pulled up to the table, lovingly set with custom flatware and bejeweled napkin rings, ready to chop and dice our way into full. But first, Mojito time! 

    I should’ve known. 

    Alcohol as Social Lubricant

    From my very first international trip—a self-funded excursion to France at 15—drinking had always been a big part of traveling. At bars it was easier to meet people, I often said. Was it really a big deal if that occasionally involved throwing up on them? 

    I continued to believe that alcohol was critical to my so-called social life, even if, toward the end of my addiction, said life mostly involved knowing where Columbus’ most private bathroom stalls were located. Yet, I worried. Besides travel, I couldn’t imagine how I’d date/make friends/comport myself at fundraisers if I wasn’t able to drink, completely overlooking how the trajectory I was on did not include indoor plumbing. 

    When at last I did quit drinking and using, and the time to travel actually came, I wasn’t so worried. By then, I had the shelter of a husband who liked to drink. One look at us and it was clear somebody needed to stay sober. I didn’t realize the pressure this relieved. 

    Until our marriage ended. 

    Escape to Borneo

    That first summer as a divorcee, I was desperate to escape my life, at least for the duration allowed by my accrued vacation time. I wasn’t a fan of group travel, but then I found something called, “The Extreme Headhunters Tour.” Those days I wanted nothing more than to see some heads roll, and though I knew I wasn’t going to get to do any actual beheading myself, the idea that I would learn about others who had was intriguing. Better still, the excursion was billed as physically challenging, while also offering the rare opportunity to sleep overnight at a headhunters’ longhouse. I would meet real Borneans, and other travelers (i.e., men) with the physical stamina and means to book such a tour. 

    I signed on, only to realize the group was largely comprised of retired female librarians. That was the least of my concerns, however, once happy hour hit. 

    Our night with the headhunters consisted of playing a little game. I’m sure there was some food, but what I remember was the drinking. The evening’s entertainment was built entirely around tuak, a kind of coconut liqueur that’s popular in Borneo. The game went something like this: buy one for you, then buy one for me. The crowd was visibly disappointed that I didn’t drink, especially since the librarians were in bed. It was so uncomfortable—and then there was the whole divorce situation—that I briefly considered putting us all out of our misery and throwing back some tuak, but I was lucid enough to know I might not make it out of Borneo if I did.

    “You’re on Vacation, Live a Little!”

    Having traveled the world sober and not sober, I’ve learned that I take my addiction with me everywhere, whether I’m indulging it or not. So it would be an outright lie to claim that those Mojitos in Cuba held zero interest. The glasses had been chilled, crushed ice and fresh mint were on hand, and some beautiful amber liquid awaited my pour. Worse yet, the alternatives were Fresca sweetened with extra sugar and lime juice, or tap water. In my daily life, I pass on sugary drinks like soda. Begrudgingly, I took the water.

    I refuse to let fear keep me from traveling. Getting sober isn’t an event, it’s for the long haul, so I have to be able to do the things I love, such as meeting people whose lives are nothing like mine and coming together with them in an everyday way, like over a meal. The good news is: with some preparation, it’s increasingly possible to avoid these triggering episodes altogether.

    In the case of Cuba, I should’ve realized that cocktail mixing was part of the itinerary when I booked it. The activity was on the booking page, but at the bottom of the list. I have traveled enough to know how squeamish others can turn when faced with nondrinkers like myself. Over the years I’ve heard all the objections: “You’re on vacation, live a little!” Or the ever-popular, “Everyone must try this.” And my personal favorite, “Who will know?” Out of context they’re laughable, but I know how my brain can work. Or not work. Anyway, why test this the hard way?

    Managing My Ego

    For our first anniversary trip, I didn’t want to constantly deal with these objections so when I booked rooms or tours, I notified hosts that my husband and I didn’t drink. This was surprisingly difficult for me: My ego wasn’t so thrilled about drawing attention to the fact that there’s something I can’t handle. After a couple of decades without a drink, the terminally unique creature in me apparently decided that it wants to be just like everyone else. Fortunately, my centered self at home could spot and manage these mental objections. By the time I hit the streets of Paris, I was ready to ward off potential threats to my sobriety.

    “A cup of glass!” I blurted out in my best high school French. The server looked at me curiously. Just as I suspected, I thought, coolly repeating the phrase. She can’t even understand what it means to drink water with a meal instead of wine!

    I’d like to say I laughed and corrected myself, but that would be a lie. I was tweaked to the point of leaving the restaurant, only realizing my error when I reached the street. From then on, I fixed my phrasing to ask for sparkling water.

    Not ordering alcohol had no effect on the way I was treated. The servers did not care whether I drank or not, which is very different from the reception I receive in the U.S. Here, where tipping is a significant portion of pay, the check total matters. There, where tips are more nominal, they could care less. 

    The “worst” experience with alcohol was in another cooking class. The host, despite knowing ahead of time that we didn’t drink, had only tap water on the table. But I put that word in quotation marks because everything else was absolutely delightful. Our host turned out to be a TV personality who was having boyfriend issues. I was happily riveted to my chair for hours. 

    In Lisbon, I expected something less cosmopolitan and thought there would be less knowledge or acceptance of sober travelers. Yet there was a similar nonchalance from servers, tour guides, and everyone else we met. Best of all was the cooking class, where four of eight of us were non-drinkers. I took one look at the sober hipster newlyweds and said conspiratorially, “I assume you’re doing it one day at a time?” To which the wife replied, “What are you talking about?”

    The Freedom to Go Anywhere…Sober

    Just as in everyday life, the biggest battle with alcohol while traveling is internal. It helped enormously to pave the way ahead, letting guides and hosts know I wouldn’t be drinking. But the most valuable part of this practice was that it forced me to acknowledge my own roadblocks so that when my ego cropped up mid-travels, I didn’t have to believe what it was telling me. Unlike my experiences in Borneo and Cuba, I never felt trapped, which is a trigger. 

    Knowing what steps to take ahead of time, I can go anywhere.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • 10 Steps to Leaving Your Joyless Job and Finding Your True Purpose

    10 Steps to Leaving Your Joyless Job and Finding Your True Purpose

    I used to pray for a small enough car accident in which no one got hurt, but my car would need work and I’d get out of the office for a day.

    No Addiction Is Ever as It Seems 

    I’ve heard people say “the problem is never the problem.” No addiction is ever as it seems. In terms of my drug and alcohol addictions, the problem was an inability to cope with the realities of life: The smell of springtime, the first fireflies of summer, all of Earth’s elements struck me with the desire to drink and use. If avoiding “people, places, and things” was going to work for me, I’d have had to relocate to a new, less intense planet.

    Instead of avoiding life, I had to learn new skills to deal with it. I had to have new thoughts. I had to create new neural pathways that made my hand reach for my phone instead of a bottle. I learned to share openly and honestly about the way I felt instead of shoving my feelings down. The root of my drug and alcohol addictions was a fear of being open and vulnerable. By facing that fear, my need to drink and use dissipated. The problem was never the substances themselves.

    Through this process, I learned that I had other problems, with their own underlying problems! I learned that I am also a sex and love addict. Orgasms were never the problem. Sleeping with a married man is ethically unsound, but really wasn’t it more on him than on me? He’s the one who’s married! Morally wrong or not, the weight of the disgust I had for my actions brought me to my knees once again, wherein I learned the real problem: intimacy.

    After working on my intimacy issues, I uncovered another problem:

    I was staying in a job that I hated, and it was making me miserable both in and out of the workplace.

    When Your Job Negatively Affects Your Health

    Most of us have seen Office Space. The truth in life is that most people have to work, except for a few kids with trust funds who never seem all the better for it. But what happens when our work is affecting us negatively? How do we confront this beast while keeping a roof over our heads?

    Working itself is obviously not the problem. Working provides us with money for our homes, our families, our needs and hopefully some wants. Having a strong work ethic is a good thing. The name of the game at this level of recovery is self-worth, and not even so much in terms of money. Money comes and money goes, but how you value yourself, your time, your health, your emotions, and your priorities should remain constant.

    Pay close attention to the way you feel when you wake up in the morning on a workday. Are you looking forward to it? I used to pray for a small enough car accident in which no one got hurt, but my car would need work and I’d get out of the office for a day. It’s so obvious to me now that that was another subtle form of insanity. I thought everyone felt that way. I thought the daily grind was supposed to make you miserable, because if it wasn’t miserable, how would you be able to commiserate with people, and if you couldn’t commiserate with people, what would you even talk about?

    I had no idea that personal development, self-care, growth, fulfillment, and joy could be a part of a career path, or anything my friends would want to talk about. I realize now that constant complaints about hating work are boring, and banter about projects that light us up are a welcomed breath of fresh air.

    If you are stuck in the wrong job, your inner dialogue probably sounds something like the following:

    “I need this job. I’m not really good at anything. I’ve been here a while. I’m not qualified to do anything. I hate my boss, but where else am I going to go? Ugh, today sucks. I’m so over today. I bleeping hate this place.”

    How to Change Your Life

    If you want to make a change, you can, but it will require work, introspection, courage, faith, and, initially, some pain. The following steps got me out of a job I hated and onto a career path meant for me:

    1. Meditate every morning. Listen to your inner monologue from the witness seat. Hear the sounds around you and feel your full feelings as they bubble up in your body.
    1. Set an intention to check back into this quiet part of you three times during the workday. Set alarms on your phone to do it. Ask yourself, “Do I feel healthy? Does my body need anything? Am I happy?”
    1. Write a letter to your boss. Don’t give it to them, but write it. Write all the things you’ve never said but always wanted to, and read it every night for one week.
    1. Decide how you want to feel. For example, I wanted to feel respected, confident, creatively free, relaxed, and motivated. Decide how you want to feel and assess if your needs are met in your current workplace. (For help figuring out how you want to feel, I recommend The Desire Map by Danielle LaPorte)
    1. Journal. After you’ve gotten used to morning meditation, add journaling afterward as part of your morning ritual.
    1. Set a date—one that intuitively speaks to you, and on that day, write down what you really want. No limits, no judgment, no fear. Maybe you want to be able to work from home and raise a family. Maybe you want to be able to travel the world while you work. Maybe you want better health benefits and more beneficial perks. Whatever it is, get it down on paper.
    1. Let go. Affirm that the Universe has heard you, that it is an active forcefield of energy and working on your behalf. Create a ritual to do this. If you pray, say it in prayer. Write it down and burn it. Write it down and stick it under your pillow. Speak it out loud to an understanding friend. Whatever resonates with you, do it.
    1. Follow the clues. Signs will appear. You will be inspired to take actions that may seem crazy, weird, or out of your natural rhythm— you should probably take them anyway. I know you’ve heard that the magic happens outside of your comfort zone, and now is the time to get uncomfortable. For support in taking scary leaps of faith, I recommend reading The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, by Mark Manson.
    1. Listen to “9 to 5” by Dolly Parton. Sing it in your car at the top of your lungs. Actually, forget that—sing it at karaoke. This one’s not just for fun—singing and dancing release your heart vibes into the world and create feel-good chemicals in your brain. Plus, at karaoke, you’ll be uncomfortable, confirming your commitment to 8. Go. Sing.
    1. Continue following the clues and report back. Keep us posted. This process may take days, weeks, months, or years, but set it in motion now and see where you’re at in one year, five years, and ten years. Remember—the best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is now.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Religion, Secularism, and Spirituality – How Modern AA Gets It Wrong

    Religion, Secularism, and Spirituality – How Modern AA Gets It Wrong

    AA’s founders did not intend for AA to be religious, and unlike many modern-day members, they embraced a broad view of a Higher Power.

    The role of a Higher Power (hereinafter, HP) looms large in today’s recovery landscape. AA adopts it as the centerpiece of its program. Rehabs that adopt the 12 steps as a major part of their treatment protocol do, as well. Even secular groups such as SMART don’t discourage their members from prayer or spiritual belief.

    AA’s Founders: Higher Power Should Transcend Religion

    But to equate religion with HP would be disingenuous and simplistic. AA’s founders intentionally chose the term “HP” because it transcends religion, while encompassing some of its aspects such as spiritual beliefs, meditation and mindfulness.

    In a 1961 letter to Bill Wilson, Carl Jung wrote Spiritus Contra Spiritum which, roughly translated, means: Alcohol addiction can be fought with spirituality. Further, in the same letter, Jung says: “You might be led to that goal by an act of grace or through a personal and honest contact with friends, or through a higher education of the mind beyond the confines of mere rationalism.” You can see that Jung clearly leaves room for a secular path to recovery (namely: fellowship of friends, knowledge).

    What is really striking about Jung’s observation is that it clearly states that an addict is not limited to just a religious/spiritual HP. Not only does Jung allow for non-religious HP, he sees no need to pit the religious against the non-religious, offering the possibility of a symbiotic relationship between them. Bill Wilson seems to agree with Jung on this matter. And while people may point out that in later chapters of the Big Book, Bill speaks of God, it is clear that “God” is simply what Bill chooses to call his HP.

    The Big Book overtly allows for secular approaches to recovery and never flat-out (unlike modern-day AA and its copycats) rejects alternative views. Again, the founders chose to call their HPs God, yet Wilson understood and shared Jung’s thoughts on the matter.

    Many Modern Meetings Equate Higher Power with God

    This is not, however, what modern-day AA is about. In many meetings the newcomer is taught that the 12 steps are Gospel and HP is God (hence, the incessant recitation of the Lord’s Prayer). Yet half of the original fellowship was cut from agnostic cloth, according to Wilson himself (and including himself). Had they all been religious zealots, there never would have been the need for AA in the first place. The Oxford groups would have soldiered on en masse. The authors go on to say that their understanding of the Spirit is all-inclusive and never exclusive, and this is exactly where modern-day AA went astray from the original meaning of the Big Book.

    What is good for the goose is good for the gander, and if one adopts a broad view of HP (as envisioned by Wilson and supported by Jung), then the following belief should be a fair game.

    The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (hereinafter, CFSM) although widely-known is not an officially recognized religion in the U.S. However, The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides fertile ground for many quasi-religious views, however lighthearted or crazy (which religions are not?), and who is to say that this particular imaginary friend is somehow less credible than any other?

    If someone believes strongly enough, they will tap into whatever force they believe in, whether they are Christians believing in the power of Christ, Wiccans believing in the power of nature and the Goddess (or Goddesses), Atheists believing in the power of their own mind or of science, or Pastafarians believing in the FSM. And let us not forget Jung’s trifecta.

    Yes, some religions make it easier than others. The more developed a set of religious dogmas is, the handier it becomes when tangling with the unknown. Modern-day religions are nuanced clever hoaxes that provide a detailed roadmap to their particular Higher Power to all comers for a small fee (usually a tax-free, labor-free existence plus a little something for the priest).

    AA and other fellowships are not that far behind. Any modern-day 12-step-based program has a religion-based Higher Power front and center. Passing the plate across the aisles is so familiar that it triggers a muscle memory when reaching for the wallet. The elders lead the chorus, the speaker preaches (excuse me, shares) and a religious-like unity bordering on trance ensues.

    Founders Wanted AA to Be Accessible to Believers and Non-Believers

    And while the CFSM is obviously intended to be tongue in cheek, there are some members who take it seriously. And even if others don’t, who is to say that the Pastafari faith is not capable of tapping into their Higher Power in order to heal? Why would it not be in the spiritual tool kit that AA (and by extension all other “A”s) so often references? Why can’t a Flying Spaghetti Monster be as believable as any other man-created deity? After all, they are all equally unprovable and some are even more far-fetched than the Carb-Laden Creator.

    When the founders settled on a Higher Power described as a “God of your understanding,” they were most likely not envisioning a flying spaghetti monster. They weren’t envisioning anything at all. They left that up to each of us to choose. And they intended to leave the door open to anyone with a desire to stop drinking. That includes believers and non-believers, alike.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • But I’m Depressed, Not Addicted

    But I’m Depressed, Not Addicted

    I was there to treat my depression. I couldn’t tell the truth. I couldn’t say I got smashed almost every night, whiskey whistling through my veins, thinning my blood and seeping into my brain.

    “Why are you here today, Emma?”

    Hungover and filled with self-loathing, I’d just revved my car onto a usually-busy street, hoping to get hit by a truck, but nothing happened. Not even a Smartcar in sight. Shakily, I’d walked back into my apartment and asked my boyfriend for a ride to the St. Vincent’s Stress Center. After I’d sat for an hour in a sunny lobby with green chairs and green carpet, a man in glasses and khakis called me into a lamp-lit room.

    “I’m in crisis.”

    “Are you going to harm yourself?”

    “No. I mean, I don’t think so.” I couldn’t bring myself to mention the high-speed reverse onto one of northside Indianapolis’ main thoroughfares. This guy would have to work to get the truth. “I have a history of suicide attempts, though. And depression. I just can’t do it anymore. I’m so overwhelmed with school and work and my dogs and my boyfriend and my house and my…”

    He cut me off and flipped to a new page on his clipboard. “Would you say you’re having suicidal ideation? Do you wish you could just ‘go away?’” Air quotes. Meaningful pause.

    “Yeah. Sort of. I want things to get better, but I don’t know what that looks like. I’ve been through stuff like this before. Depression, I mean. If I have to be hospitalized, it’s okay.” I didn’t want to be responsible for myself anymore. Being in the hospital would mean I could blank out for a while and let someone else take care of me.

    The intake assessor tilted his head at me. “We won’t hospitalize you unless we have to. Let’s talk about your day-to-day. What does that look like?”

    I ticked off my work schedule, school schedule, social schedule; listing my life as if from a résumé. One boyfriend. One job. Two dogs. Fifteen credit hours. Good grades. Dad nearby, but we weren’t that tight. Close with my mom, but she lived far away. No clubs. No sports.

    “Do you drink alcohol or use drugs?”

    I looked up from my lap. “I drink. I mean, I’m a college student.” If there had been a window in the room, I would have glanced out of it. I needed something else to look at.

    “How much?”

    I couldn’t tell the truth. “It depends. Between one and six beers a night.”

    He blinked and frowned for a millisecond. Oops. That was an underestimate. Is between one and six too much?

    He didn’t say. Just returned to his neutral expression and kept moving down his clipboard. “How often do you drink between one and six beers a night?”

    “Oh, maybe three times a week? I guess it depends.” Again, I couldn’t tell the truth. I couldn’t say I got smashed almost every night, whiskey whistling through my veins, thinning my blood and seeping into my brain.

    He blinked again, made a note on his board, and kept questioning, reducing my depression to a list of symptoms. Suicidal ideation. Feelings of worthlessness. Guilt. Sleep disturbance. Headache. Was I missing work? Missing school? Maintaining good hygiene?

    I just ran my car blindly into traffic, I thought, and this asshole wants to know if I brushed my teeth. Medicalizing depression sure was depressing.

    In the end, Mr. Blinky decided that I didn’t need immediate hospitalization. Instead, I’d be admitted to IOP: intensive outpatient treatment. Three hours at the Stress Center, three days a week. “With all your commitments, this will be perfect for you,” he assured me.

    Although I downplayed all my problems, part of me must have known I needed help—serious help. But I couldn’t admit it, not even to a person whose job description included “assessing mental health condition and recommending appropriate care.” I wanted the help forced on me, wanted to be figured out, fixed. Someone needed to see beyond my deception. That would take the burden of recovery off of me and place it on them. Secretly, I wanted to spend a few days in the psych ward, locked away from work, papers, dogs, and dishes. I couldn’t confess that, I thought. I’d sound crazy. I didn’t see the irony of worrying about sounding crazy when I sat in a mental health intake office.

    Instead of screaming, I nodded. Blinky placed me in a “dual-diagnosis program,” a familiar phrase from my teen years that meant I’d qualified as both mentally ill and addicted.

    “Most folks graduate in four-to-six weeks,” he said, handing me a pamphlet. “Good luck.”

    ***

    On my first night of IOP, I entered the Stress Center’s lobby to find a sweater-vested receptionist behind the tall desk. “Walk straight down the hall to the first office on the right. I’ll tell Dave you’re here.”

    Dave, a soft-spoken therapist with glasses, a mustache, and a lisp, met me at the door of his office. Instead of sitting behind his desk, he pulled his chair around to sit across from me.

    “Bring this with you every night,” he instructed, passing me a maroon folder with the St. Vincent’s triple-dove logo stickered on the front. “It’s like your Bible for this group. It’s pretty empty now, but by the time you graduate, it’ll be full of handouts, worksheets, and journals.” He lowered his chin and raised his eyebrows. “Many of our patients hang on to these for years after they leave us because they find stuff they can use and reuse for the rest of their lives.” He closed his eyes, re-opened them. “That’s what we’re here to do. Help you get the skills you need to live.”

    I nodded, arranging my expression into eager, pliant, and friendly, my eyes sparkling, my smile full. Already, I was trying to charm my way out, as I had in my psych ward trips years before. Had I forgotten that putting up a front back then had led me to this place, this office, with its commercial-grade chairs, fluorescent lights, and a non-ironic “Hang in There” kitten poster?

    For the next 15 minutes, Dave explained what I could expect from my 12 weekly hours of IOP. Then he looked at me over his glasses. “You’ll also need to go to three meetings a week. Here’s a schedule of all the recovery groups in the area.”

    I took the pamphlet, thick as a chapbook, and showed off my nod-and-smile routine again. Skepticism crept in. Couldn’t this guy see that my problem was depression, not drinking?

    “We’re all set then. Let’s get you to your first group session. Don’t worry, we won’t expect you to speak up on your first night. Feel free to just sit and listen.”

    Dave led me to another fluorescent-lit room at the end of the hall. In it, a circle of identical chairs with padded green vinyl seats and backrests. I took an empty seat and surveyed the six nametagged patients around me. Robin, a thickset, bowl-cutted, auburn-haired, lip-ringed woman. Jack, a soft middle-aged guy who looked like Dave, but with a weaker mustache, aviator glasses, and adult acne. Madison, a thin girl who couldn’t have been more than 18. Ryan, a young guy with sagging, wide-legged jeans and a backwards baseball cap. Jane, a twitchy blonde with scars skimming her forearms. And Gladys, an older black woman who looked like an elementary-school principal.

    Dave walked in the room, smiling softly. “Everyone, meet Emma. This is her first night.”

    They replied in unison. “Hi, Emma.”

    Inside, I squirmed, but outwardly, I exuded alpha-dog confidence. Smile, lips closed. I told myself. Chin up. Relax in your chair, elbows hooked over the back. Cross your legs. Look at their foreheads when they talk. It’ll look like you’re making eye contact.

    The first group session consisted mostly of Ryan, the baseball-cap boy, talking about his “Moral Inventory.” To me, it looked like a scribbled list, but Ryan blushed with pride when he held it up. The other patients clapped as though he’d found a cure for lymphoma.

    “I finally did it,” he said. “I kept relapsing every time I got to this point, but now, I did it. I have my inventory.”

    Dave beamed. “Ryan, we’re proud of you. We all knew you could do it. Now, what did you learn?”

    Ryan’s gaze dropped to the floor. “It’s mostly fear. Fear is like this big demon, ready to eat me alive. It’s why I dropped out of school. Why I let my girl leave. Why I get in fights.”

    Dave turned to the group. “What are our two responses to fear, folks?” His lisp swallowed the “s” sounds. Rethponthes. Folkth.

    Robin raised her hand. “Fuck Everything And Run.” Dave looked at her over his glasses. “Sorry, Dave. ‘F’ Everything And Run.”

    “Or Face Everything And Rise.” Gladys, the school principal, finished the saying.

    It all sounded like cheerleading to me. Acronyms. Group responses. And a moral inventory? How could that not make me want to kill myself? If Dave hadn’t released us for a break, I might have asked to slit my wrists then and there.

    When we returned, I listened to the group members talk about hitting bottom. Four words bounced around my skull. I do not belong. Ryan had slugged his ex-girlfriend and blamed it on his dad, who had used him as a punching bag. Jack’s wife had left him after he got his third DUI and lost his license forever. He’d never been able to stand up to her, probably because he was raised by an overbearing mother. I do not belong. Jane smoked meth in the bathroom between double shifts at Burger King, her first job since she’d stopped prostituting. When she was eight, her dad had molested her. Gladys had gotten fired and had to move back in with her alcoholic mother. Church used to help her, but she couldn’t get herself out of bed before noon anymore. I. Do. Not. Belong. I was in college. I had a job. My driver’s license was intact, unsuspended. My parents loved me. I’d never been molested. I’d never stood on 38th Street in a miniskirt, hoping to snag a john. How could I be an addict?

    The next Monday, Dave invited me to his office after group. He wanted to “check in.” Air quotes. Meaningful look. He must have gone to the same training as the intake coordinator who’d interviewed me when I first walked in.

    “Have you found any meetings you like yet?”

    I hadn’t gone to a single one. “Adding on three hours’ worth of meetings on top of the 12 hours a week I’m here, on top of my 15-credit hour school load, on top of my 20-hour work week—it’s too much. I came here because I felt stressed and overwhelmed. How can I add more to my schedule when the main source of stress is my schedule?” My voice had risen in volume. I looked away, toward the door, and hunched my shoulders.

    Dave sighed. “If you want to get better, your sobriety should be a priority.”

    “But I’m depressed, not addicted. Maybe I could cut back a bit on the drinking, but addiction isn’t ruining my life. I don’t belong here. I’m not a meth-head. I haven’t lost my job. I haven’t lost my kids — I don’t even have kids. I’ve never gotten a DUI. I don’t do heroin.”

    Dave nodded and motioned for me to continue. He wasn’t going to let me off the hook.

    I didn’t know what else to say. I looked at my feet. “I’ll try, okay?”

    That night on my way out I threw my folder in the trash can, hoping the other patients would see it. I didn’t return. Instead of climbing the steps to IOP the following Wednesday, I slithered into a bar booth and ordered the usual, beer and a bourbon. Then a pitcher to split with my boyfriend. Fuck it, another shot. And another. Then—oblivion.

    That summer, while walking my dogs in the evening, I stared at the lives inside the yellow squares of windows I passed. I defined these lives, these people, as “good.” Young couples unloading groceries. Families sitting around oaky tables, eating dinner. A girl my age doing yoga in her living room. Husbands and wives suiting up for an evening run. It looked like love, warmth, virtue, balance. When I walked the dogs in the morning, I gaped at the men and women jogging or biking past me while I sucked on a cigarette and squinted my hungover eyes against the sun. Every morning, every night, as I contemplated everyone else’s healthy normalcy, I felt like an ugly exoskeleton, wishing I could fill myself with whatever they had. I could see it, but I couldn’t access it. Instead, I stumped down the road with my unwashed body and my stringy short hair, pulled along by two ill-behaved dogs. In my mind, my body, I couldn’t find those families’ goodness and light. The closest I knew to it was liquor, so I filled myself with that instead.

    ***

    That first round of IOP didn’t take, but maybe Dave and, more importantly, Ryan, Jack, Gladys, Robin, Jane, and Madison had planted a seed. A year later, I walked into my first meeting and said Hi, I’m Emma, and I’m an alcoholic. As soon as I said it, something cool and smooth moved to the center of my chest and clicked. That sentence was the most honest thing I’d said in years. It removed the barrier of I do not belong and replaced it with the doorway of Help me—I’m just like you. 

    Today, I’m ten years sober. When I give a lead, or speak at the psych ward, I try to remember the scared girl I was. Head thrown back, chin up, elbows wide; putting up a tough front to hide my fear. I look for her in every crowd, and when I find her, I make eye contact. She usually looks away, but that’s okay. Someday, she might be able to hold my gaze.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Finding Deeper Meaning in Pride Month: Activists, Trailblazers, and "Wigstock"

    Finding Deeper Meaning in Pride Month: Activists, Trailblazers, and "Wigstock"

    At the end of Pride Month, Debbie Harry, Penny Arcade, Barb Morrison, and others weigh in on trauma, growth, activism, 9/11, and RuPaul’s Drag Race.

    June 28 marks five decades since the police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Greenwich Village. Years of rage erupted into a series of riots demanding equal rights, kicking off the global fight for LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning) liberation. Pride is a movement based on self-affirmation for the LGBTQ community; it came about to commemorate the Stonewall Riots and overthrow years of guilt and shame caused by discrimination and prejudice, and to “build community, and celebrate sexual diversity and gender variance.” 

    The first pride parade was in 1970 in New York City. Now, celebrating LGBTQ pride is worldwide.

    Wig, a movie about the annual drag festival Wigstock, premiered last month at the Tribeca Film Festival.

    A Drunken Drag Show in the Park

    Watching it brought up a mountain of memories for me. The much-loved extravaganza began late one night in 1984, when drunken drag queen Lady Bunny and her wasted entourage spilled out of a nightclub, then wobbled, lurched and landed in the local park. It was there they staged an impromptu drag show in the bandshell at 3 a.m. Their audience was a group of angry homeless peeps trying to sleep. That one unplanned performance launched a nearly 20-year drag (and drug) bacchanal.

    My first Wigstock was in 1987. Had I known about it earlier, I would’ve gone. Since 1980 my modus operandi was to get stinkin’ drunk then hit the East or West Village afterhours clubs until the sun came up.

    Dorri Olds at WigstockI have snippets of memories of meeting Hedda Lettuce (nee Steven Polito). I was a boundaryless touchy-feely drunk. He was wearing the cutest Minnie Mouse costume but with a bare chest. I remember coming eye-to-eye… er… eye-to-fringe-pasty. Without even introducing myself, I stuck out my pointer finger and gave that fringe a twirl.

    The next day, I woke up at 5 p.m., still drunk, and called a friend.

    “Can’t believe what I did this time,” I said, with each word triggering another hammer to my head. “I have to stop drinking. I’m so embarrassed. I twirled a stranger’s pasty.”

    “Honey, isn’t that what fringe pasties are for?”

    During my laugh she cut me off.

    “You’re right about the drinking, though. You’re getting closer to wet brain. Not a pretty look.”

    Man, her timing was right on. I’d just been side-swiped with a blow-up. My mild-mannered roommate and long-term bestie grabbed my upper arms with his long-fingered, graceful piano-player hands. He squeezed me so tightly it hurt. An enraged vein popped out near his temple as he shook me and yelled, “I’m not gonna watch you kill yourself anymore. Quit drinking or I’m leaving.”

    That’s when I buckled.

    He spotted my determination and supported my efforts but each failure led to another until it hit me hard: I could not stop. On a bug-eyed morning after a night of coke, I dialed my cousin and asked for help. I woke up in another state.

    The 31 days turned me inside out and ripped off the protective skin but I managed to learn a few things. On the last day, the staff told me I needed a therapeutic community for a year.

    “You won’t be able to stay sober because you started too young and New York City is full of temptations,” they said.

    It pissed me off, so I went home treating it like a dare. Oh yeah? Watch me.

    A Return to Wigstock, Sober

    Staying sober out of spite drove me to keep schlepping to therapy and muddling through dark moods without offing myself. It took a year and a half before I would take a chance on being around the lucky bastards who can be high and happy. After dips into socializing I inched toward more outings. Shaky, but better, I ventured back to Wigstock in August of 1999. The riotous, flamboyant, fake hair and sequins up to there were exactly what I needed. That year was a blast and I wasn’t in a blackout so I remembered it.

    Lady Bunny felt we needed a lift again so she brought Wigstock out of retirement last year and it was the inspiration for Wig. It reminded me of the impetus for Jane Rosenthal and Robert De Niro to co-found Tribeca Film Fest right after 9/11, when our grieving city needed a lift.

    My favorite segment in Wig is Lady Bunny engaging Debbie Harry in titillating banter at 2018’s Wigstock revival. Then Harry launched into the Blondie hit “Atomic.” The punk powerhouse who blew the ceiling off of rock and roll’s patriarchy doesn’t need any backup, but taut and sexy artist-director Rob Roth dancing beside her dressed in a black bikini with sparkly top and smoky eye makeup added to the hot ambiance.

    By happy coincidence, one month after the Wig premiere I found myself seated at a tiny table in a dark corner of Alan Cumming’s Club Cumming sandwiched between Roth on my right and Harry’s manager Manzi on my left. It struck me that here we were in the East Village only blocks from the park where Wigstock began.

    We were there for the season finale of “Enclave Reading Series,” a monthly event featuring literati like Pulitzer-prize winner Michael Cunningham along with other established and emerging voices. That night, Debbie Harry was the surprise guest. She snuck in via the club’s dimly-lit entrance then slid into her waiting seat beside Roth. Enclave’s co-founder, co-curator, and emcee Jason Napoli Brooks built up the mystery guest before announcing, “The one and only, Debbie Harry!”

    Debbie Harry Remembers 9/11

    As the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer headed to the stage, the room burst into cheers. The club’s seductive red lighting and boudoir-ish velvet curtains served as the perfect backdrop. The disco ball always hanging over the piano seemed especially fitting that night. “Club Cumming” shone in red neon hanging above the singer’s head. Next to that was the sign that read, “I ❤️ New York Pride.”

    Harry opened by saying she’d planned to read something “a bit more lighthearted” but instead took her manager Manzi’s advice.

    “I just hope that all of you that take antidepressants have taken them,” she told the crowd. “And for those of you who don’t, I hope you’ve had a nice drink.”

    Debbie Harry at Club Cumming

    Harry read about her night at a 2001 Marc Jacobs fashion show.

    “There was a big party that he threw down on one of the piers in the West Village and it was wonderful.” She described it as a happening—an event. “And everybody was there.”

    After going to bed happy, the next morning her friend called to say “Turn on the news.” Harry gave an eerie account of staring at the towers from her window. She saw smoke and recounted the “surreal feeling” of not knowing what she was seeing on the TV. After that, Harry read a poem about the days that followed.

    I’m looking forward to reading Harry’s memoir Face It (HarperCollins), which comes out on October 1. It’s hard to believe she turns 74 in a few days.

    During this month of Pride, I’ve been afraid we’re going backwards. Needing a reality check, I tracked down writer, cultural critic, comedian and theatre performer Penny Arcade. Her work exudes empathy and celebrates all of our differences.

    We discussed activism in the LGBT community.

    “Lady Bunny stands out because she has never relaxed her work standards over the past 30 years. She manages to have real politics in a world that is so much about fitting in,” she said.

    She also credited RuPaul for making a strong contribution in the ’80s.

    “The LBGT community was founded on having to band together against the illogical hatred of homosexuality,” said Arcade. “But 2019 is a long road from Stonewall to coming out to your mother as she is watching Will and Grace.”

    Arcade said it’s just human nature to want to be accepted.

    “But the LGBT community is no longer the issue it once was. RuPaul’s Drag Race has created drag contests for heterosexual boys all across America.”

    Arcade also expressed what many people seem to be feeling these days.

    “We are living in an era of emotional and social isolation that is greater than anything I have experienced in the past 50 years of my social consciousness.”

    Inspiration and Responsibility for Pride

    Next, I interviewed Harry’s music producer, Barb Morrison (pronoun they/them). They’re proud of 29 years clean.

    “One of the things that was so cool about hearing Debbie [Harry] read at Club Cumming was that we got to witness her speaking from a vulnerable place. She took us on an emotional journey with her,” Morrison said.

    We moved on to discussing today’s political climate with the emphasis on Pride Month.

    “I feel a responsibility to push myself to be even more honest with my work,” said Morrison. “Being on the trans spectrum I also feel a responsibility to help other trans musicians tell their stories.”

    They expressed that now it’s more important than ever to be visible and authentic.

    “Not only for ourselves,” they said, “but to help others free themselves from stigma and shame. Watching Debbie read that night inspired me to be even more honest, to tell my truth, and to fully step into my own authenticity.”

    Like Morrison, Steven Polito (aka Hedda Lettuce) finds deeper meaning in Pride.

    “For those of us with traumatic experiences almost anything can be a trigger,” said Polito. “I have to be extra vigilant. Turning my tragedies into triumphs is my gay pride.”

    Amen.

    Wig is now showing on HBO.

    (Images: the author at Wigstock; Debbie Harry at Club Cumming. Both provided by Dorri Olds, all rights reserved)

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Relapse for Cash: How Patient Brokers and Unscrupulous Rehabs Prey on Addicts Looking for Help

    Relapse for Cash: How Patient Brokers and Unscrupulous Rehabs Prey on Addicts Looking for Help

    Patient brokers know there’s more money in relapse than in getting people sober.

    If you think patient brokering, also known as “body brokering,” is just about “professionals” getting kickbacks for referring a client to a certain rehab, you are wrong. It’s much more complicated and sinister than that. I did a deep dive and interviewed the head of a watchdog group, a rehab counselor, a rehab business development guy, and the head of an ethics association to try to get the full picture. And despite patient brokering being officially illegal in California and Florida since January, it’s still terrifyingly prevalent.

    I was first prompted to write this piece after an experience with a sponsee. She was in a sober living and was offered money by another client at the house to relapse and then check into an upscale rehab. Because you must test dirty for your insurance to start over and cover treatment, she got loaded and was shipped off to a fancy Malibu rehab for a week. She was ecstatic. 

    Recovering Addicts Preying on Other Recovering Addicts

    Of course, soon she was sent to a shitty sober living which she described as a “flop house.” Thankfully she didn’t die during the relapse, and she didn’t get her money either. The “body brokers” in this case, recovering addicts preying on other recovering addicts, ran off with the kickback money they got from the rehab as well as the money they were supposed to give my sponsee. If this sounds bad, it gets worse. 

    I spoke with David Skonezny, the admin for the closed Facebook group “It’s Time for Ethics in Addiction Treatment.” As Skonezny moved through the ranks of drug and alcohol counseling, eventually becoming the COO of a treatment center, “body brokering,” an open secret in the business, came to his attention. He started the group to “separate the wheat from the chaff” and to identify the people he wanted to work with to create a solution for the myriad problems plaguing the profession; however, he underestimated how pissed off and hurt people were. 

    “It quickly ended up being a referendum of sorts on addiction treatment as people started posting snapshots of text messages, naming names… It got really deep really fast.” As a result, one of the moderators of the group set up a site that provided a comprehensive list of agencies for the reporting of illegal and unethical activity, including credentialing and accreditation bodies, law enforcement, state agencies, and insurance investigators. People can now report the facilities as well as the brokers engaging in this illegal and unethical behavior. That site is: Ethics in Treatment (www.EthicsInTreatment.com).

    “Body Brokers” Buy and Sell Patients

    As Skonezny explained to me, in the referral game it’s about buying clients. Initially a treatment center might pay perhaps $10,000 for a client (that figure has dropped substantially as a result of immense competition), but it was worth it because you could bill the insurance for six figures over the course of a treatment episode. As it became harder to acquire clients this way, body brokers and rehabs started to offer other inducements such as air travel to treatment, clothes, cell phones, and cigarettes. And because people with these premium insurance policies are hard to find, brokers would find a prospect and then buy the policy for them. The rehab pays the first month’s premium, and then once the insurance is active, bingo. 

    Once the benefits are exhausted, however, the client gets kicked out, usually with nowhere to go and no return ticket home, and ends up homeless and desperate. But now they know the drill. They realize if they get loaded, they’re eligible for treatment again and can go back into rehab. This revolving door, “going on tour,” as Skonezny calls it, became a common strategy for both the brokers and the clients in order to maintain free housing, food, and other perks. 

    “This has created an artificial recovery community in Southern California, particularly in Orange County where kids are getting flown in and then kicked out. At one point it created a massive homeless population of young addicts, especially in Costa Mesa,” Skonezny told me. Some of those kids die on the streets, some go home, some keep cycling through treatment. 

    How did we get to this place? I asked. Well, when the Affordable Care Act went into effect, behavioral health issues, including mental health and addiction, became essential medical services. 

    “This created an unprecedented availability for people to get insurance coverage, and people who wouldn’t have otherwise had an opportunity to go to treatment now could,” Skonezny explained. “This should have been a good thing, except that with addicts flooding addiction centers, the owners and others began to realize that there was a lot of money to be made.”

    There are two types of insurance policies: an HMO, where you need a referral from a primary doctor and must go to a place in network, and a PPO, where there’s no referral necessary and because it’s out of network, there are no contracted or set rates. Rehabs want the PPOs. They can charge whatever they want, and they do. They can bill the insurance for ridiculous amounts for daily services ($2,500 for a daily session from a PPO vs. $300 from an HMO) including huge charges for urine tests.

    Alumni Get Kickbacks for Bringing in New Patients 

    Soon insurance companies got wise to the game and began reducing the financial reimbursement to rehabs, as well as the length and level of care they would allow. As a result, the rehabs were making less money and thus needed to up their referral game even more, so they got their alumni involved. Newly sober addicts who have been in a 12-step program have access to a network of possible patients: newcomers in meetings. These newly sober ex-clients start getting kickbacks from rehabs to bring in new clients. And then those clients do the same once they get out of treatment. Now you have a new cycle: predators creating predators. 

    Eventually, those people who were cycling through treatment stopped getting authorized for the higher levels of care, but they were still being okayed for intensive outpatient treatment (IOP). So IOPs began to get swarmed with clients, but these clients needed a place to live. To fill that need, sober living residences started popping up all over the place. Therein lay the beginning of kickbacks between IOPs and sober livings. 

    “So now we have this massive infrastructure that needs to be fed. With less clients at higher levels of care, rehabs start charging for urine testing they’re not doing and getting kickbacks from labs. Even sober livings who have no right to bill insurance for testing clients start hooking up with labs and getting kickbacks,” Skonezny said.

    The people engaging in these practices are not necessarily predators by nature, Skonezny says. They are typically new to recovery and still fighting old demons and dealing with underlying trauma or other psychiatric conditions. “I think initially most people (with the exception of some of the more predatory ones) that get into this profession are well intentioned, but then greed takes over, or perhaps fear, and they begin to cut corners and engage in unhealthy, unethical, illegal behaviors.”

    There’s More Money in Relapse Than Getting People Sober

    Skonezny pointed out that all of it—treatment, sober livings, urine testing—has roots in legitimacy, but here’s the ugly truth: there’s more money in treatment than there is in recovery. There’s more money in relapse than in getting people sober. 

    Chuk Davis has 21 years in recovery and has been working in this business for over a decade. He is currently a counselor at Wavelengths Recovery and he has seen patient brokering first-hand and from the inside.

    Davis explained to me the phenomenon of “client advocates.” The “advocate” calls a treatment center and says, “We have somebody who’s a really good fit for your program.” They then charge a “finder’s fee,” which was outlawed in January. “Unless you are part of the organization, you cannot be a paid recruit for the organization.” he said.

    “These client advocates are really entrepreneurs: 25-year-old kids driving $50,000 cars,” Davis clarified. “Turns out they were bribing the client to come to treatment with money and a $500 gift card… The idea was they were doing some sort of vetting, but they weren’t. They were getting a fee from the center and then bribing the clients to go to treatment.”

    Prior to this practice, treatment centers would contract with call centers, which would take leads and then charge the facility a certain amount of money for any lead they took. That too is now illegal.

    “I’ve seen people come into treatment who say they are drug addicts but they test clean immediately. They give us some bullshit story that they already got clean but need help maintaining their sobriety. Soon enough they are paying a bunch of clients to leave and go to some other treatment center that they’re probably getting a kickback from,” Davis said. “Unfortunately, two of the people that were pulled out of treatment like this ended up getting loaded and dying.”

    If Treatment Centers Don’t Pay for Patients, There’s No More Patient Brokering

    Davis is hopeful that the new laws regarding patient brokering will thin the herd, and the super shady people will get pushed out. “I mean they have people talking to the local homeless and offering them $1,500 to go to some place in Long Beach for ten days. Of course those guys are going to go. In the end it’s the kids that really want help that are getting fucked.”

    I next spoke with Zach Snitzer, the co-founder and director of business development at Maryland Addiction Recovery Center. 

    His take on patient brokering was a little different. “Patient brokering goes further than simply paying for patients. In my mind, it includes things like waiving insurance deductibles, website and call aggregates, free sober living thanks to the high payment for lab tests; not simply paying someone $1,500 to go to treatment.”

    Snitzer’s answer to the brokering problem is simple: “If treatment centers don’t pay for patients, there’s no more patient brokering. If you take down the treatment centers that are doing patient brokering, then patient brokering goes away.” He’s adamant that we not only prosecute the patient brokers themselves, but the facilities engaging in it as well. 

    Snitzer echoed Skonezny’s observations that it’s not money-hungry crooks infiltrating the treatment industry to take advantage of people who need help, it’s people who are already here: “The patient brokers are typically people who are early in sobriety or people who were once patient brokered themselves.”

    “You should be piss testing us more than you are…”

    Snitzer has seen many patients who are hip to the hustle, asking what the facility is getting reimbursed, and having an insider’s knowledge of diagnostic codes. “When you have clients saying, ‘You should be piss testing us more than you are,’…well, no wonder they can’t get better.” Usually patients like that—who are already caught up in the game—don’t stay long in treatment, he said. They’re rarely initially willing to get better; for them there’s no money in getting sober.

    Snitzer agreed that the ACA was a contributing factor to the problem but added that referral fees were happening way before insurance. “It’s a decades-old industry but it’s still very wild wild west. There needs to be more regulation in the industry. People seem terrified that if they don’t self-regulate, an outside agency will come in. But there are lots of industries that are regulated by outside agencies and organizations thrive in those environments.”

    And state licensing is simply not thorough enough. “They don’t look at the whole scope of the organization. They don’t look at admission processing, urinalysis policies, or marketing practices… they look at hand washing stations and fire extinguishers.”

    “Part of the problem is that addiction is a disease and rehab facilities are actually healthcare organizations and want to be paid and respected as such, yet they often don’t have programs that are offering evidence-based care,” Snitzer said. 

    “We can’t even agree as an industry about what ‘success’ looks like. Is it sobriety? That used to be what success looked like. But can that be the standard anymore? Not everyone who enters treatment is a hopeless variety alcoholic as defined by the 12 steps, and therefore maybe they don’t require lifelong sobriety to achieve a high quality of life. What about an 18-year-old kid with trauma who’s self-medicating to cope or dealing with a psychiatric issue? Do they need sobriety?” 

    Snitzer believes the results of effective treatment can’t be measured by the same set of criteria for everyone: “We need to figure out what a successful outcome for that person is, and it has to be defined by quality of life, and not just sobriety.”

    He’s also witnessed the bribing from other facilities: vans pulling up with gift cards and other goodies, coercing patients to come to their facility in whatever way they can. “We take our clients to outside meetings and they’re approached by poachers offering to fly them out to California, claiming they have ‘music connections,’” Snitzer complained.

    When I asked him how Maryland Addiction Recovery Center manages to stay ethical amidst all this, he was frank. “We don’t expand above our means. We keep things a size that’s manageable. We all started working at an ethical place [Caron]. In the mentorship we got, this kind of stuff doesn’t happen. Granted we opened in a place where there aren’t hundreds of rehabs like Florida or California. When we started, there were just a few IOPs and a few residential places but not a true extended care.”

    What’s the Solution to Patient Brokering?

    So now you’re well versed in the problem. What’s the solution?

    Andrew Powers is in long-term recovery and has worked in the treatment field for eight years. While working for a center based in both Colorado and Maryland, he noticed several differences between the locations. Colorado treatment professionals worked in a very collaborative, transparent environment while those in the DC Metro area were more closed off. 

    “The cultures were drastically different,” Powers told me. He saw that people were talking shit about each other, and he thought, “Let’s raise the bar for the individuals representing treatment programs because people are receiving care at these unethical centers whether you agree with what they do or not.”

    To accomplish this goal, he created the D.C.-Maryland-Virginia Professional Liaisons Association (DMV PLA), a regular forum for business development professionals, admissions representatives, marketers, and others that “focuses on the professional development of those working in these roles.” 

    Unlike other PLAs, which Powers found were often about referral generation and schmoozing, the DMVPLA would aim for a higher standard.

    “We are working on a membership similar to NAATP [National Association of Addiction Treatment Providers], but rather than for the provider it is for the individual, which folks will be able to apply to be a part of and then held to an ethical standard of conduct,” he said. “It will be community-based at first and then we can roll it out from there… if it makes sense to do so.”

    “In our field there are very limited forums for individuals working as business development, or in admissions, to receive professional development… In fact, most organizations don’t even invest in their own employees’ growth or train them on ethics at all,” Powers explained, emphasizing again that his organization is not for networking. 

    Like Skonezny and Snitzer, Powers acknowledges these brokers didn’t start out as predators, but that after they learn what’s going on they have an obligation to do the right thing. “There are people with good hearts and intentions working for these unethical programs, but some don’t know better,” he said. “[We’d have to tell them] ‘That thing you just saw go down, that is illegal.’ And they say, ‘Well I didn’t know it was illegal, I wasn’t trained when I got hired!’ Well now you know.”

    Addiction Treatment Must Police Itself from the Inside

    Powers was clear that the industry must continue to police itself from the inside. There is only so much that outside bodies can do. “People need to speak up and stop pointing fingers behind people’s backs. The term ‘marketer’ is almost synonymous with felon at this point… Let’s move toward a solution and gain the respect that our profession and roles deserve,” he urged.

    The DMV PLA has received support from NAATP and others, but it’s still a work in progress. They have a lot of people reporting “well I heard…” and with that kind of vague info, their hands are tied. 

    Since so many people are afraid to come forward lest they lose their jobs, Powers would like to have a confidential suggestion box where people can submit anonymously and then they’ll confront that person. 

    Powers was humble in saying that “the DMV PLA is nothing special… just good people who came together in the community to try and make a difference in the profession, and ultimately in the lives of those seeking treatment… this can happen anywhere.” 

    Let’s hope it does. 

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Finding Deeper Meaning in Pride Month: Activists, Trailblazers, and “Wigstock”

    Finding Deeper Meaning in Pride Month: Activists, Trailblazers, and “Wigstock”

    At the end of Pride Month, Debbie Harry, Penny Arcade, Barb Morrison, and others weigh in on trauma, growth, activism, 9/11, and RuPaul’s Drag Race.

    June 28 marks five decades since the police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Greenwich Village. Years of rage erupted into a series of riots demanding equal rights, kicking off the global fight for LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning) liberation. Pride is a movement based on self-affirmation for the LGBTQ community; it came about to commemorate the Stonewall Riots and overthrow years of guilt and shame caused by discrimination and prejudice, and to “build community, and celebrate sexual diversity and gender variance.” 

    The first pride parade was in 1970 in New York City. Now, celebrating LGBTQ pride is worldwide.

    Wig, a movie about the annual drag festival Wigstock, premiered last month at the Tribeca Film Festival.

    A Drunken Drag Show in the Park

    Watching it brought up a mountain of memories for me. The much-loved extravaganza began late one night in 1984, when drunken drag queen Lady Bunny and her wasted entourage spilled out of a nightclub, then wobbled, lurched and landed in the local park. It was there they staged an impromptu drag show in the bandshell at 3 a.m. Their audience was a group of angry homeless peeps trying to sleep. That one unplanned performance launched a nearly 20-year drag (and drug) bacchanal.

    My first Wigstock was in 1987. Had I known about it earlier, I would’ve gone. Since 1980 my modus operandi was to get stinkin’ drunk then hit the East or West Village afterhours clubs until the sun came up.

    Dorri Olds at WigstockI have snippets of memories of meeting Hedda Lettuce (nee Steven Polito). I was a boundaryless touchy-feely drunk. He was wearing the cutest Minnie Mouse costume but with a bare chest. I remember coming eye-to-eye… er… eye-to-fringe-pasty. Without even introducing myself, I stuck out my pointer finger and gave that fringe a twirl.

    The next day, I woke up at 5 p.m., still drunk, and called a friend.

    “Can’t believe what I did this time,” I said, with each word triggering another hammer to my head. “I have to stop drinking. I’m so embarrassed. I twirled a stranger’s pasty.”

    “Honey, isn’t that what fringe pasties are for?”

    During my laugh she cut me off.

    “You’re right about the drinking, though. You’re getting closer to wet brain. Not a pretty look.”

    Man, her timing was right on. I’d just been side-swiped with a blow-up. My mild-mannered roommate and long-term bestie grabbed my upper arms with his long-fingered, graceful piano-player hands. He squeezed me so tightly it hurt. An enraged vein popped out near his temple as he shook me and yelled, “I’m not gonna watch you kill yourself anymore. Quit drinking or I’m leaving.”

    That’s when I buckled.

    He spotted my determination and supported my efforts but each failure led to another until it hit me hard: I could not stop. On a bug-eyed morning after a night of coke, I dialed my cousin and asked for help. I woke up in another state.

    The 31 days turned me inside out and ripped off the protective skin but I managed to learn a few things. On the last day, the staff told me I needed a therapeutic community for a year.

    “You won’t be able to stay sober because you started too young and New York City is full of temptations,” they said.

    It pissed me off, so I went home treating it like a dare. Oh yeah? Watch me.

    A Return to Wigstock, Sober

    Staying sober out of spite drove me to keep schlepping to therapy and muddling through dark moods without offing myself. It took a year and a half before I would take a chance on being around the lucky bastards who can be high and happy. After dips into socializing I inched toward more outings. Shaky, but better, I ventured back to Wigstock in August of 1999. The riotous, flamboyant, fake hair and sequins up to there were exactly what I needed. That year was a blast and I wasn’t in a blackout so I remembered it.

    Lady Bunny felt we needed a lift again so she brought Wigstock out of retirement last year and it was the inspiration for Wig. It reminded me of the impetus for Jane Rosenthal and Robert De Niro to co-found Tribeca Film Fest right after 9/11, when our grieving city needed a lift.

    My favorite segment in Wig is Lady Bunny engaging Debbie Harry in titillating banter at 2018’s Wigstock revival. Then Harry launched into the Blondie hit “Atomic.” The punk powerhouse who blew the ceiling off of rock and roll’s patriarchy doesn’t need any backup, but taut and sexy artist-director Rob Roth dancing beside her dressed in a black bikini with sparkly top and smoky eye makeup added to the hot ambiance.

    By happy coincidence, one month after the Wig premiere I found myself seated at a tiny table in a dark corner of Alan Cumming’s Club Cumming sandwiched between Roth on my right and Harry’s manager Manzi on my left. It struck me that here we were in the East Village only blocks from the park where Wigstock began.

    We were there for the season finale of “Enclave Reading Series,” a monthly event featuring literati like Pulitzer-prize winner Michael Cunningham along with other established and emerging voices. That night, Debbie Harry was the surprise guest. She snuck in via the club’s dimly-lit entrance then slid into her waiting seat beside Roth. Enclave’s co-founder, co-curator, and emcee Jason Napoli Brooks built up the mystery guest before announcing, “The one and only, Debbie Harry!”

    Debbie Harry Remembers 9/11

    As the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer headed to the stage, the room burst into cheers. The club’s seductive red lighting and boudoir-ish velvet curtains served as the perfect backdrop. The disco ball always hanging over the piano seemed especially fitting that night. “Club Cumming” shone in red neon hanging above the singer’s head. Next to that was the sign that read, “I ❤️ New York Pride.”

    Harry opened by saying she’d planned to read something “a bit more lighthearted” but instead took her manager Manzi’s advice.

    “I just hope that all of you that take antidepressants have taken them,” she told the crowd. “And for those of you who don’t, I hope you’ve had a nice drink.”

    Debbie Harry at Club Cumming

    Harry read about her night at a 2001 Marc Jacobs fashion show.

    “There was a big party that he threw down on one of the piers in the West Village and it was wonderful.” She described it as a happening—an event. “And everybody was there.”

    After going to bed happy, the next morning her friend called to say “Turn on the news.” Harry gave an eerie account of staring at the towers from her window. She saw smoke and recounted the “surreal feeling” of not knowing what she was seeing on the TV. After that, Harry read a poem about the days that followed.

    I’m looking forward to reading Harry’s memoir Face It (HarperCollins), which comes out on October 1. It’s hard to believe she turns 74 in a few days.

    During this month of Pride, I’ve been afraid we’re going backwards. Needing a reality check, I tracked down writer, cultural critic, comedian and theatre performer Penny Arcade. Her work exudes empathy and celebrates all of our differences.

    We discussed activism in the LGBT community.

    “Lady Bunny stands out because she has never relaxed her work standards over the past 30 years. She manages to have real politics in a world that is so much about fitting in,” she said.

    She also credited RuPaul for making a strong contribution in the ’80s.

    “The LBGT community was founded on having to band together against the illogical hatred of homosexuality,” said Arcade. “But 2019 is a long road from Stonewall to coming out to your mother as she is watching Will and Grace.”

    Arcade said it’s just human nature to want to be accepted.

    “But the LGBT community is no longer the issue it once was. RuPaul’s Drag Race has created drag contests for heterosexual boys all across America.”

    Arcade also expressed what many people seem to be feeling these days.

    “We are living in an era of emotional and social isolation that is greater than anything I have experienced in the past 50 years of my social consciousness.”

    Inspiration and Responsibility for Pride

    Next, I interviewed Harry’s music producer, Barb Morrison (pronoun they/them). They’re proud of 29 years clean.

    “One of the things that was so cool about hearing Debbie [Harry] read at Club Cumming was that we got to witness her speaking from a vulnerable place. She took us on an emotional journey with her,” Morrison said.

    We moved on to discussing today’s political climate with the emphasis on Pride Month.

    “I feel a responsibility to push myself to be even more honest with my work,” said Morrison. “Being on the trans spectrum I also feel a responsibility to help other trans musicians tell their stories.”

    They expressed that now it’s more important than ever to be visible and authentic.

    “Not only for ourselves,” they said, “but to help others free themselves from stigma and shame. Watching Debbie read that night inspired me to be even more honest, to tell my truth, and to fully step into my own authenticity.”

    Like Morrison, Steven Polito (aka Hedda Lettuce) finds deeper meaning in Pride.

    “For those of us with traumatic experiences almost anything can be a trigger,” said Polito. “I have to be extra vigilant. Turning my tragedies into triumphs is my gay pride.”

    Amen.

    Wig is now showing on HBO.

    (Images: the author at Wigstock; Debbie Harry at Club Cumming. Both provided by Dorri Olds, all rights reserved)

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • My Higher Power Problem in Overeaters Anonymous

    My Higher Power Problem in Overeaters Anonymous

    Although I have a strong sense of higher power in my life, I did not understand how admitting one’s powerlessness and putting faith in a higher power would aid in eliminating my compulsive eating.

    I first encountered Overeaters Anonymous (OA) while hospitalized for having the disability of schizoaffective disorder, albeit in a roundabout way. During my stay, a woman came to the ward to share her story of success from her own schizoaffective disorder, during which she talked about how she lost over 100 pounds from participating in OA. Given that I too struggled with weight loss, I immediately was inspired by her story.

    After her presentation, we exchanged contact information, and she began to offer her advice on how to win the battle of weight loss. She recommended I write down everything I eat, and within a few weeks I was counting calories. After being discharged from the hospital, I continued to lose weight, writing all my calories every day without fail for over two years. I lost 70 pounds in total.

    I began to fall off with calorie counting when I started working full time, juggling the stress of my disability simultaneously. I began gaining weight again, then becoming further stressed when I started graduate school in social work while still working full time. While my mental wellness has become stronger and stronger, I still today struggle with compulsive eating and weight gain.

    Given my friend’s success with OA, I wanted the program to work for me as well. I attended a meeting in my neighborhood, but immediately felt alienated with the higher power concept. Although I have a strong sense of higher power in my life, I did not understand how admitting one’s powerlessness and putting faith in a higher power would aid in eliminating my compulsive eating. No matter how much I prayed, the change never happened. I shed many a begging tear.

    Subsequent visits to OA meetings did not clarify the concept of higher power. I wanted to philosophically discuss the nature of what it is, with others sharing how they worshipped, how they experienced their higher power as a force in their lives. Yet when people told their stories of recovery and abstinence, they merely referred to their spirituality in bare sentences. “I leaned on my higher power, and I was reformed.” “Hold on, and the miracle will come. It’s just around the corner.” This told me nothing about the strength of their spiritual senses.

    I also experienced confusion about how the spirituality of the 12 steps applied to overeating overall. I felt that compulsive overeating was different from alcoholism and substance abuse, in that it does not result in as much harm towards others. And while virtually anyone would prefer not to be around people who are heavily drunk or on mood altering drugs, overeaters are not as shunned or disparaged. Further, there is nothing comparable to the issues of body image that are always closely entwined with overeating and which are sometimes the focus of discussion in OA meetings. Body positivity is a current movement in which people embrace all shapes and sizes as equally valid. There are also people who are sexually attracted only to those who are overweight or obese. This external perspective can have an effect on how we perceive our own behaviors around food and may even cause some people to reconsider whether they need to lose weight or participate in a program like OA. I can’t think of anything similar when it comes to alcoholism or drug addiction.

    My personal faith includes the world manifesting according to the plan of a higher power that may not have my abstinence from compulsive eating in mind. Just because I ask for better eating habits, that does not mean that my desire will be granted. What of people who die due to tragic circumstances? Why do people suffer in general? I have cried and begged to my higher power for sobriety, and it has not been granted.

    For me, OA meetings are not enriching enough to make time for in my busy schedule. Virtually everyone at the meetings I attended were older retired and disabled women, none of whom worked. I did not find mutuality with them, not due to their different life stages, but because they did not have the same packed schedule as me. It was easy for them to attend multiple meetings per week and calmly remain connected with their higher power, while I could barely manage to make time in my schedule to relax and be mindful. I did not see them as people I could imitate, and my attempts at finding a sponsor yielded similar feelings.

    Attendees also were not people I wanted to be around in general. In previous years when I weighed less, incidentally when unemployed and still on disability benefits, I achieved weight loss because I frequently went to the women’s gym in my neighborhood. I made friends and got support from people in a mutual and empowering way, and I improved my physical health by exercising in classes and in the weight room. This felt like a more proactive use of my time than sitting in a circle idly, talking about an ambiguous higher power with physically inactive older adults.

    My past experiences have taught me the winning combination to fighting compulsive overeating: counting calories by writing my food intake down, eating healthy foods, and attending the gym at least three times a week. Although this proves more difficult today because I am busy with full-time work and graduate school, I now manage to go twice weekly. I hope to bump it up to three times in the near future.

    Although OA is not compatible with my sense of higher power, my investigation into the 12 steps proved to be an enriching experience. Many people have found recovery with 12-step programs, and it is important for me to understand how specifically it transforms lives, especially as a social work student. When people talk to me about how it benefits them, I can empathize and identify on a fundamental level. The 12 steps also symbolize a spiritual progression, from chaos and despair to spiritual wisdom and groundedness. My sense of spirituality is somewhat congruent with these concepts.

    I personally embrace harm reduction as the resolution to my compulsive overeating. This is the concept that complete abstinence needs not be the immediate goal of recovery, but rather that one can taper off by reducing the harm of current practices. This lends to taking a practical step-by-step approach to recovery, inviting the idea that recovery is a journey and not a destination.

    Harm reduction also seems more forgiving and affirming. These days, addiction is not always characterized as a disease that one remains afflicted with for their entire life; it’s often considered a behavior that is rooted in the need to address a certain underlying condition, such as stress or trauma. Relapse and slip-ups merely fall in stride with the bigger picture of life, and it’s not helpful to think of it as all-or-nothing.

    I hope to achieve recovery in the near future with my own eating, but I also need to celebrate what I have already. I have a loving family and a wonderful network of friends who are passionate about mental health and social work. I have achieved wellness despite my grave disability of schizoaffective disorder, and I am successfully completing more obligations than many can muster. Although weight loss is not happening now, I know that my higher power has the best plans for me in mind, and that I should have faith in everything unfolding in its due time.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • I Can’t Wait to Hug My Brother: A Conversation with White Boy Rick’s Sister Dawn Wershe

    I Can’t Wait to Hug My Brother: A Conversation with White Boy Rick’s Sister Dawn Wershe

    Whenever they needed something, our police and government, the FBI, they made all these big promises: You do this and we’re going to give you this. But when it came down to it, nobody was there for Rick.

    When Rick Wershe was 14 years old, his older sister Dawn didn’t live at home. She was shacked up with her boyfriend smoking crack. She remembers the day her dad came over to tell her that Rick had been shot. They rushed to the hospital where Rick was in a bed, hooked up to all these wires and monitors. Dawn just lost her mind. She was hysterical and the nurses had to give her a Valium to calm her down.

    The .357 bullet entered Rick’s stomach and came out his back, just barely missing his main artery and blowing his large intestine in half. After Rick was discharged, Dawn moved back home to take care of him. His recovery was long and slow, and Dawn didn’t understand why he was so paranoid. Later she found out that Rick had been informing on local drug crews to the FBI, DPD and Prosecutor’s Office.

    You’ve probably heard of White Boy Rick. His odyssey has been covered in magazine, newspaper, and internet articles, a feature documentary, and a major motion picture with Matthew McConaughey. But while the injustices of his case have been widely profiled, the collateral damage to Rick’s family has received less attention.

    As Rick remained in the public eye, Dawn faced her own problems, including battling a 30-year addiction to crack cocaine. The Fix sat down with Dawn to discuss her drug use, how she’s dealt with her brother’s continued incarceration, how it felt to be portrayed on the big screen, and what it will be like to finally have him home.

    The Fix: When did you get involved with using drugs and do you recall the first time you experimented with drugs?

    Dawn Wershe: The first time I’d ever smoked crack cocaine was actually at my father’s house when he was in California. It was my girlfriend and these two guys. They’re like, “Hey, we’re going to go get this stuff. We want you to try it.” I think I was 15 years old. After that I smoked it now and then. When I was 17, I had a boyfriend who used to go rob people. Then we would go smoke. It was crack, but back in the 80s they called it freebase.

    When we were freebasing in the 80s, it was pure cocaine. It was an unbelievable high. I became addicted. My boyfriend ended up going to jail when I was 18 and I struggled with my addiction for probably a good year until my family said it’s either rehab or we don’t know what to do with you, so I checked myself into rehab. It was over on Michigan Avenue. I met a lot of strange characters there. I got clean and had my daughter. I stayed clean for a long time. I had a relapse when she was two.

    You battled addiction off and on for close to thirty years, what was that like?

    I got clean and had my second daughter. Another relapse, got clean, and had my third child, my son. Another relapse, got clean, and had my fourth child. It was a vicious cycle. Sometimes I’d only relapse for a

    day or two. After I had my fourth child, another son, I just said enough is enough and I was clean for over ten years. But after he turned ten, I relapsed again. My relapses were like daytime trips: going places I

    shouldn’t have been. Soon my relapses started becoming more frequent, and some longer than day trips. They became two-day trips, three-day trips, depending on how much money I had to spend. Always crack cocaine, that was my drug of choice.

    My addiction started spiraling again, I was using more frequently. I would disappear for a day or two back then. Maybe I went a month without crack, maybe I went a week. It depended on the situation, but it all was bad looking back. I can’t think of one time that I was happy and smoking crack or freebasing. Most of the time I was paranoid and worried my family was going to know; it was like how am I going to deal with this? I have to get back home. The streets are ugly. I saw and heard things that nobody wants to see or hear.

    How do you think your addiction hurt and affected you and your family?

    My addiction crushed my family. It was horrible. Now that I look back and see things I did, and what the outcome of them was, it mortifies me that I’ve put them through that. Especially my kids when they were younger. It’s something I would never want to put anyone through again. The biggest regret I have is putting my family through that. Something [would] happen in my life, let’s say my husband cheated on me and I found out. I’d be off to the races. Bam, I’m gone. Because I’m going to show him, I’m going to pay him back. But in actuality I was hurting myself and I was killing my family.

    It didn’t hurt him, he didn’t care. I would leave and then I would feel so guilty. The guilt consumed me. As soon as you take that first hit, it’s like, “Oh my God. They’re going to know I’m high. They’re going to be so disappointed.” That was the worst thing I could’ve done. I never robbed anyone, I never stole anything, I never sold my body. I never did any of that. I would just leave and lie to everyone. I’d say, “I’m going to the gas station” and just not come back. It breaks my heart. I just thank God that my children have unconditional love for me.

    When was your last relapse and how long have you been clean now?

    I relapsed in March of 2017. Right after the documentary about my brother premiered in Detroit. I was clean 11 months prior to that. Right now I’ve been clean a little over two years. I don’t think I’ll ever relapse again at this point, because I hit the bottom of the barrel and that last time I had an epiphany. It wasn’t a good epiphany, it was me dying. And my children having to deal with that: having to deal with the way I died, where I died, how I died. And it devastated them. Nothing anyone says or does to me at this point in my life could make me want to use drugs. Not a boyfriend, not a man, not my kids, not a stranger. Not anyone could say or do anything to me that would make me say, “Well, I’m going to go get high. I’ll show them.” That Dawn is gone.

    What’s it been like watching your brother go through his ordeal with the criminal justice system and the insane amount of time he’s been forced to remain incarcerated?

    When Rick started selling drugs on his own, I was there with him. I told him it was going to be bad. He ended up going to jail not too long later. He was only selling for a year on his own after he wasn’t an informant. And when they sentenced him, I was mortified. I mean, I had just lost my little brother. Then the very next day they took my dad. They arrested my dad for threatening a federal officer at Rick’s trial. They ended up dropping that and charged him with components to make silencers. He got convicted on that.

    In two days I lost the only family I had. The only one I had left was my grandmother, my dad’s mother who helped raise us. And she wasn’t good, she was in and out of the hospital and living in a nursing home. I wish back then we had home healthcare where I could’ve let her live with me, because she raised Rick and I with my dad. It was very devastating to lose my dad and my brother, and then nine months later, I lost my grandmother.

    Every week I went to the prisons to see my dad and my brother. I would gather up my kids, sometimes go get Rick’s kids, sometimes pick up my mom and go visit them at the prison, which is an all-day thing. It killed me because I didn’t have my family. That was my whole support system — my brother, my dad, you know? It was the Three Musketeers, and now we’re no longer. I feel that they used Rick as a child. They took away his childhood from him.

    People talk about them doing it in China and foreign countries, but our police and government, the FBI, they did it here. They did it to Rick. Whenever they needed something, they made all these big promises. You do this and we’re going to give you this. But when it came down to it, nobody was there for him. Nobody came to bat for Rick at his trial. Nobody came to bat for Rick at his parole hearings until 2003 and then more recently.

    What was it like to see yourself portrayed on screen in a big Hollywood movie and be a part of the Shawn Rech documentary?

    I was in the documentary, which I’m quite certain helped gain my brother his parole in 2017. And that was put together and orchestrated in the best way possible. It gives the solid answers and the truth. In the documentary we don’t talk about my drug addiction.

    When the Hollywood movie came out, I saw it for the first time in public and cried the first 30 or 45 minutes. They had me on screen looking like I was a dope fiend. They had my dad — Matthew McConaughey — with greasy hair; the clothes he was wearing and the car he was driving were never anything that my father wore or had. I told everybody before it happened it wasn’t going to be real, it wasn’t going to be right. That movie just caused me so much grief, aggravation, and pain that it’s a wonder I didn’t relapse.

    Rick got paroled from Michigan and now he actually has a date, what’s it going to be like having him finally come home?

    He had to go to Florida to do a five-year sentence for something that happened while he was in prison involving a car theft ring. He was turned down for clemency in March 2019. But next year in 2020 he’ll come home. I can’t wait to stand there and watch him walk through that gate, because it’s going to be so surreal. I probably will pass out because I won’t believe it.

    I can’t wait to be able to hug my brother. To have him home. To show him how different life is out here now from the life that he left. To be with us as a family. To be around his grandkids, my grandkids, and to just spend time together. It’s just going to be one good time after another. It will be dinners, barbecues, trips, just family time. It’s going to be family time for a long time with us when he comes home.

    (Images of Dawn and Rick Wershe via author)

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • The Magic and the Tragic: Falling in Love in Recovery

    The Magic and the Tragic: Falling in Love in Recovery

    I wondered if the bitter taste of the endings would overpower all the other memories of my first sober loves.

    I met C at the most inopportune moment imaginable: I was a full-blown heroin addict. He was not. We met on a video chat website called ChatRoulette, both of us drunk with our respective friends; he lived in California, I in New York. After a few months of daily phone calls and video chats I was head-over-heels in love and flew out to San Diego to meet him, doing my best to appear healthy and normal. I hadn’t told him and didn’t plan to.

    C was less a boyfriend than a hostage, an innocent pulled onto a rollercoaster he didn’t yet realize was brakeless. The only reason I was able to hide my addiction from him for a while was because he was so impossibly normal—he surfed, played guitar, had a tight-knit group of equally normal friends. What he saw in me, tattooed and cynical, I still don’t know; perhaps, like me, he needed something different. He’d never known any heroin addicts in his idyllic suburban life, so he missed all the tell-tale signs. Naturally he would think the marks on my arms were inflamed mosquito bites and not track marks, because who would lie about something like that?

    I’ll never forget the look on his face when he finally caught me. I get why using heroin would be unfathomable to someone who has never tried it. It must be near impossible to understand the kind of pain and self-loathing that makes heroin seem like a viable solution. By the time he’d caught me I had been making half-assed attempts to get clean for months, but the look on his face was the final push I needed. I left New York and moved in with him in California and despite some false starts, despite the odds, I got better.

    In the cold hard light of my fledgling sobriety, the fantasy guy I’d created in my mind began to crumble the way real-estate euphemisms do when you see the actual apartment. You really want to believe that they actually meant cozy and not suffocatingly claustrophobic, but they never do. Never. In my heroin haze I’d romanticized all his flaws: instead of being emotionally repressed with awful communication skills, he was pensive and mysterious. He wasn’t living at home to save money, he was too cheap and emotionally enmeshed with his mother to move out. I loved him even so, tenaciously, holding onto him with white knuckles as the relationship unraveled over the next few years.

    The night it finally ended, I felt like I’d been thrown off a cliff. I’d gone straight from drugs to love and for the first time it was just me, unadulterated, crying alone in my car in an empty parking lot. For the first time, I was really, truly sober.

    After the breakup, I decided to move back east to go back to school to study film, or writing. A few days before Christmas I stopped by a college in Brooklyn to figure out admissions, and, smushed into a packed rush-hour train on my way back, happened to look up and lock eyes with a guy a few rows away.

    An electric current pulsed through me. He looked tired and messy—two days of beard, deep circles under his eyes, terrible posture, dark-blonde hair stuffed into an awful neon orange ski hat. But there was something about him.

    I took my notebook out of my bag and started writing about him, unfiltered stream-of-consciousness, private thoughts I’d typically never share with a stranger, especially one I was so attracted to. I filled over a page and then decided to give it to him. Why not? What’s the worst that could happen? With this burst of confidence, I wrote my number at the bottom of the page but even before I’d finished folding it up, I lost my resolve. The note was still in my palm when the train slowed and he walked towards me, mumbling something unintelligible and thrusting out his hand: he had written something for me. I handed him my note and he looked down at it, then back up at me. We grinned at each other. Just like that, I’d somehow stumbled into a cute first-meeting worthy of Nora Ephron herself.

    At dinner a few nights later, he spoke slowly, deliberately, eyes crinkling when he smiled. He told me his name—E—and that my note had made him laugh. He was a musician, and like most musicians I’d known he was a bit of a disaster. Maybe more than a bit: a self-diagnosed narcoleptic, a diabetic who struggled to stay on top of his blood sugar, an ex-cocaine addict. (He didn’t specify how long. Weeks? Days? Hours?) As he told me all this, I knew the sensible thing was to make up some excuse and book it the hell out of there, yet there I was, moody and self-absorbed, a writer (enough said), an ex-junkie. I was an insecurity-ridden raw nerve fresh out of a spectacularly painful breakup, far from the picture of perfect mental health. So I didn’t book it; I stayed put.

    After that first date we saw each other constantly. We listened to records, played Scrabble (I always won), talked late into the night, laughed, made out in his driveway. I met his friends; he sent me albums he thought I would like. One night I sat on his kitchen counter eating a yogurt and he stood there with the refrigerator door open, staring at me with a big, dumb smile.

    “What?” I said.

    He shook his head and closed the refrigerator door, still smiling. I’ve never felt more beautiful than I did right then.

    “What are you scared of?” he asked me once after we’d had sex.

    “Failure. Success. Mediocrity. Rejection. You?”

    “Well, everything, I guess,” he replied. “I’m afraid of everything.”

    We both had piles of baggage, but there was a major difference—I was in recovery, depressed but going to therapy, an addict but a clean one who went to meetings, afraid of everything but doing it anyway. In his bed when he thought I’d fallen asleep I felt him pull away, back into a dark part of himself he didn’t want me to see. I couldn’t help but remember the way C did the very same thing.

    After I returned to California we continued to talk, but over time he stopped answering my calls, calling back days later at odd hours sounding distracted and paranoid. He would tell me he didn’t believe I was actually moving back to New York and I’d repeatedly reassure him that my return ticket was already booked. Eventually he stopped calling back at all, and though I was angry, I also felt something else, unmistakable and undeniable: dread. After a month of radio silence, I Googled his name.

    “Tappan Zee Jump: man’s family ‘blindsided’ by death.”

    He must’ve been so cold, I remember thinking. It was the beginning of April—temperate in San Diego, but miserably wet and chilly in New York. Over the next few weeks I jumped from denial to anger and back again, unable to comprehend the amount of pain he must have felt to justify jumping off a bridge. I thought about what my mom’s face would look like if someone told her I’d killed myself, or the way she’d feel if she found out I had died of an overdose. I realized it wasn’t all that different.

    That summer, I was compelled to google another name: C’s. We hadn’t spoken since the breakup and I’d thought up all kinds of reasons as to why he had never reached out. Interestingly enough, none of these reasons included him having a pregnant new girlfriend. I didn’t feel all that different looking at C’s baby registry than I did when I saw E’s obituary. Both felt devastating and permanent; both had nothing to do with me. I wondered if the bitter taste of the endings would overpower all the other memories of my first sober loves.

    In AA they often talk about “selective memory”: Play the tape through, they say. Instead of just remembering that one perfect drunk night, play the tape through to how you felt the next morning, to the shame and panic of waking up after a blackout. Instead of just remembering little moments of a relationship, look at the whole thing, the magic and the tragic. I knew the tragic parts by heart, but as the years passed I began to see the magic, too: C and I on motorcycle trips together, holding hands in the dark, recording songs in his bathroom (the acoustics were better). Then, the magic of learning how to love someone; the way I felt on the train on that cold winter day when I met E; the way he looked at me in his kitchen, his big smile illuminated by the white light of an open refrigerator. The note he gave me: “to me you’re perfect and I LOVE your hair” in a loopy script on the back of an old business card. I still have it, somewhere.

    Those are the things I remember now, not because I’ve forgotten the endings or the sad bits, but because at almost eight years sober, I’m beginning to finally see the big picture: the sad parts are gifts, too, maybe more precious than anything else. I play the tape through, and all I feel is grateful.

    View the original article at thefix.com