JUST LIKE DAD

                                                              JUST LIKE DAD 

 

            The day my dad moved out when I was eight, my heart shattered into a million icicles, slicing my insides, leaving my body and soul cold, painful, and frozen. My mom did her best to heal my grief by taking my sister, Lisa, and me to rodeos, circuses, and away on vacations—to Washington, DC; New York; and all around Florida to Disney World, SeaWorld, and Busch Gardens. Mom worked at Sears in customer service for minimum wage and spent all her extra money on Lisa and me, and I found out years later she borrowed from our home’s equity to take us on trips. My dad, a social worker, sent us $150 a month in child support, which Mom told us was always late. Mom said the reason they separated and later divorced was that “your father’s an alcoholic.”

            As a teenager my sister became interested in fashion and entered a modeling contest. Mom watched while Lisa paraded on stage in a bright orange flowered dress—it was the 1970s and she wore high platform shoes that were all the rage. Lisa tried to calm her nerves as she pranced around the stage, twirling and posing, and when the show finished, she wobbled over to meet Mom, her eyes wide with hope.

            “You walked like a truck driver,” Mom said.

            Mom always said what was on her mind and never concerned herself with what anyone thought of her. Lisa’s friend won the contest.

            Mom also wanted to support my dream of surfing—I so wanted to be a little surfer girl like the Beach Boys sang about. I put Sun-In into my hair, turning it blonde; tanned my skin; and wore puka beads around my neck. When I was 16, Mom took me to the surf haven of Sebastian Inlet up the coast of Florida. An ex-boyfriend lent me his surfboard and I tried to paddle out, but waves pummeled my nonathletic body, and though I gulped mouthfuls of seawater, I did not catch even one wave. I tugged the board behind me, my arms like noodles, and met Mom on the beach where she was lying in the sun—only her face, chest, and arms browned, leaving her legs skim-milk white.

            “What was that?” she said, scrunching up her nose. “All I saw you do was plop around on your belly.”

            Later, we leaned the surfboard against the window of our motel room. In the morning, we woke to find that the window had shattered when the board fell over during the night. Mom hid the board in the bathtub and pulled the shower curtain closed, and soon after, we heard a knock on the door. It was the owner of the motel.

            “What happened to the window?” he asked.

            “Window?” Mom said. “What window?”

            “This window.” He pointed at the broken glass.

            “I don’t know.” Mom shook her head. “It must have been the wind.”

            For the rest of the week, Mom turned to me and said, “It must have been the wind,” throwing us both into hysterics. 

* * *

            One day when Lisa and I were in high school, Mom heard the band Queen singing “Bohemian Rhapsody” on the radio.

            “What’s that?” Mom said, pointing to the coffin-sized stereo against the wall in our living room.

            “The band Queen,” I said.

            “That’s barbershop,” she said, waving her hands into the air. “Hear the harmonizing? Oh, my God, they’re terrific.”

            Mom sang with The Sweet Adelines, a female chorus that sang barbershop style. From that moment on, Mom became a huge Queen fan and bought both of their albums, and when she heard they were coming to our area for a concert, she bought tickets and took Lisa and me. We sat in plastic seats high above the stage as thousands of kids waved lit lighters in the air around the big bubble of a stadium; the smell of marijuana permeated the air. When Queen ended a song, the entire crowd screamed and applauded.

            “Can’t we get any closer?” Mom asked.

            “Let’s see if we can get down in front,” I said.

            So Lisa, Mom, and I elbowed our way to the middle of the floor for a full view of the band. Mom did not stop smiling. During Bohemian Rhapsody, a kid next to us in a dark T-shirt and with long, shaggy hair passed us a joint. I looked at Lisa and then at Mom, and Mom shrugged her shoulders, took the joint, and brought it to her lipstick-stained mouth. She inhaled and began coughing—laughing and choking at the same time. She handed the joint back and everyone around us cracked up. Mom loved Freddie Mercury with his tight red pants—running around the stage like a wild animal with its feet on fire. Mom was the happiest I’d ever seen her. I don’t think she got stoned off one hit of pot—she was high from the music.

            When I was 15, Mom took me to New Orleans for 4 days—she had to be there for a singing competition, and she told me I could go if I paid for my own airline ticket. I worked as a telephone operator after school and on weekends. Our second night there, we sat at a table in our hotel bar listening to a Dixieland band, and a waitress came over.

            “I’ll have a Mickey Finn,” Mom said and tipped her head toward me. “And she’ll have a grasshopper.”

            The waitress walked away without asking for my ID. Mom was a social drinker and loved cold beer along with her dinner. I never saw her intoxicated.

            “What’s a grasshopper?” I asked.

            “It tastes really sweet.” Mom nodded her head. “I think you’ll like it.”

            The waitress came back and put my drink down in front of me. It was mint green, with a little paper umbrella sticking up next to a red straw. I guess she brought it to me, even though I wasn’t 18, because I was with Mom. I brought the little straw to my lips and took a sip. It tasted like a peppermint patty.

            “Mom, this is so good.” I licked my lips. The coolness of the mint turned from cold to warm as it floated down my throat—my first drink in a real bar.

            “I knew you’d like it.” Mom put her lipstick-coated mouth around her straw.

            On the stage, trumpets exploded with music.

* * *

            My love affair with alcohol began. I discovered that it eased my chronic anxiety and insecurities, and made my movements smoother—like oil in a car. My shyness melted like ice in hot water. The summer before college, I drank every night, and four years later graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a chemistry degree, an acceptance into medical school, and full-blown alcoholism.

* * *

            When I went home for Christmas during my second year of medical school, Mom spotted a bottle of gin in my luggage.

            “What’s this?” she said, picking up the bottle. “You’re carrying a bottle with you now?”

            “I hate the taste of gin, but someone gave it to me at a party. I put it in my bag to give it away.” That was the truth.

            “I get worried because of your father.” Mom bit what was left of her nail on her stubby index finger.

            I remembered my parents fighting when I was in grade school.

            “Oh!” Mom said, throwing up her hands while glaring at my father. “Look who comes walking in the door after three days. Where the hell have you been?”

            “None of your damn business, Marie.” Dad shook his head. “For Christ’s sake, leave me alone!”

            “Why, Brian? Do you have another hangover?” Mom waved her finger in Dad’s face. “Been out drinking all night with one of your whores?”            

            Mom married two alcoholics and had enabled my father for years. She used denial when she realized my dad had a problem, and used that same defense mechanism with me. She didn’t want to confront me or she might find out the worse thing she could imagine—that I was an alcoholic and had no intentions of quitting. That I was just like Dad.

            This is how my mom described life before my dad: “I hated both my mother and my father. My father hung my used Kotex on the Christmas tree. They beat me. I was an only child and was never very smart. I barely graduated high school—my nickname was ‘Dizzy.’ I dated this Catholic guy Johnny for seven years. He worked for the phone company. He wanted to get married, but I didn’t, and then I met this man who looked good in a white shirt. I took one look at him, ended it with Johnny, and married him. I found out he was an alcoholic, and he hit me. I never even noticed that he drank, although he did spend a lot of time in a bar. I had the marriage annulled.” 

* * *

            In my third year of medical school, I got a call from Mom saying she was sick and couldn’t work, so I drove to Hollywood, 20 minutes away, to see her. She was lying on her side in bed in her purple room, and her skin was translucent and pale, her mouth sunken because her dentures weren’t in—she looked old. She had a knee-length housecoat on and her legs stuck out like prickly tree trunks.

            “How are you feeling, Mom?” I sat down in a chair next to her bed.

            “Terrible.” Her eyes were empty and stared right through me.

            “Have you seen a doctor?”

            “I have carpal tunnel in my hands.” She showed me the insides of her wrists. “From all that box-lifting I had to do at Sears. The doctor says I have to lose weight.” Mom had always been obese, never exercised, and ate whatever she wanted, including fried, fatty food and sweets.

            “What about work?” I was scared but tried to keep my voice steady.

            “I don’t know what I’m going to do.” She shut her eyes. The curtains were closed and the only light was a streak of sunlight that pierced through the slanted opening. Everything looked like it was in shadow—dark and gray.

            Mom had always said that Sears was trying to get rid of her so they could hire part-time people and not give them benefits. She never returned to work, lived on disability payments, and had to sell the house we shared all those years. Mom spiraled into a deep sinkhole like depression, which was not helped by medications or even shock therapy. She had been hospitalized for depression when I was a child, and her mother suffered from this debilitating disease as well.

            Even though my alcoholism worsened throughout medical school, I managed to graduate. The day of my graduation, Mom was in the hospital, so Dad took me to see her. She had developed multiple medical problems due to her obesity, and because of her depression, could no longer live alone. I wanted her to be proud of me, and I closed the curtain for some privacy.

            “I graduated, Mom,” I said, nodding my head. “From med school.”

            “That’s good,” she said and glanced at me for a moment, but seemed to look right through me. 

            Where was the mom I once knew? I remembered her singing and playing the piano and bringing me home a marijuana plant from her boyfriend’s son when I was in high school. I pictured her booing Nixon when he came on TV and pointing at him and saying, “Watergate, Watergate, Watergate.” She took Lisa and me to Washington, DC and refused to let me buy a Nixon doll, but then let me buy a box in Puerto Rico that said “Marijuana” in red letters like on Marlboro cigarette packages and an opium pipe from Disney World.

* * *

            But the day of my graduation, Mom lay there, lifeless—a shell of her former self. The room was quiet except for the muffled sounds of people talking in the hall. I felt like Mom would never know how far I’d come. I felt sad and helpless. I had been accepted into a psychiatry residency in New York City and did not even know how to help my own mother.

            I moved to New York to do my psychiatry residency, and my addiction flourished in a city where bars beckoned from every corner and taxis roamed the streets in yellow ribbons—no need to drive. I only saw Mom when I flew down to Florida for drinking binges. She was living in assisted living and seemed to be improving, unlike me—I was an end-stage alcoholic. In my last year of residency, I was confronted by my hospital about my drinking and finally got sober. But that summer while I was traveling, Mom ended up in a psychiatric hospital once again. Her depression worsened and she had to be placed into higher levels of care, eventually ending up in a nursing home. Once there, she gave up on everything, did not go to activities or physical therapy, and lay in bed watching one TV station all day. She lived in diapers and the only thing that brought her pleasure was eating junk food, which worsened her medical problems.

            When I visited her, I never told her how I had gotten sober and was helping other addicts. She was no longer there. She died when my whole family was together in Florida for a reunion a month before her 80th birthday. Memory is a strange phenomenon—I did not realize until I wrote my life story down how Mom took her painful, abusive past and made a happy childhood for me and my broken heart. But my alcoholism stole time away that I could have spent with her, and by the time I got sober, it was too late. Sometimes you can’t redo the past no matter how many steps you work, take, or climb.

            At her memorial service, I told some of my favorite Mom stories, and pictures of her from her singing days decorated the room. When I saw her in the casket, it was the first time I saw her at peace in a long time. She visited me in a dream that year—she was in a place filled with Christmas decorations, music, and laughter—all the things she loved. And she had a smile on her face like the night of the Queen concert. 

 

Taxi Driver Angel

                                              TAXI DRIVER ANGEL

    When I was 23 in a bar in Boston, a bulky bouncer waddled up to me and told me I was too drunk and had to leave. Outside I drank beer in a van with someone I met. Then I blacked out.

    When I came to, I was in a cheap motel room reeking of stale smoke. A guy with long hair paced on a carpet, dotted with cigarette burns and stains. I sat in a chair next to the window, the curtains closed. A dirty bulb hung by a string from the ceiling. There was an old TV and a double bed still made. How much time have I lost?  The strange guy’s fists were clenched and he avoided looking at me.

      “So do we have any beer?” I said, trying to say something neutral.

     He stopped pacing, and stood in the middle of the room. His bloodshot eyes stared at me, like he was shooting lasers. He looked like the devil.

     “We’re getting the hell out of here,” he said, and spun around and grabbed a set of keys off the dresser.

      I grabbed my purse and followed him. When we got outside, the sun had barely woken up. It was cold and the sunlight sharp—the first rays squeaking though. The devil man was my only way back to the city of Boston, and I wondered how far we were from there. I climbed into his van, and he burned rubber. We tore down the quiet street. I took my wallet out of my purse and opened it—empty.   

      “Wild night, huh?” I said.

      The strange guy pulled the van over to the side of the road and stopped. He gripped the steering wheel with a bulging bicep.

     “I’ve had enough of your crap,” he said. His slit eyes looked red like blood. “Get out!”

     “What?” My heart raced.

     “Get out of my van.” He pointed at the passenger door.

      “But we’re in the middle of nowhere.” My voice shook.

     “That’s your damn problem.”  He slammed his open hands on the steering wheel.

     I was afraid he might pull out a gun or a knife or rape me, so I opened the door and stepped out onto a rocky road. There was no sidewalk, and I shivered as I watched the devil zoom off. I looked down, and there were scraps of metal next to my foot. There was no phone around—I didn’t see a gas station or a store. All I saw was deserted road. It was cold, and all I had on was a T-shirt. I wrapped my arms around my chest, and rubbed my arms trying to warm myself. My head pounded, my mouth was parched and I started crying.

     Out of nowhere, a taxicab drove up the street, and pulled over to where I was standing.

     “You need a ride somewhere?” The taxi driver said through the open driver’s window.

     “Yeh, but I don’t have any money.” I brushed a tear from my cheek.

     “No problem.” He smiled. “Get in.”

     I opened the door and climbed into the back seat. It was warm and I felt protected.

     “Some asshole just left me here in the middle of nowhere,” I said to the soft eyes in the rear view mirror.

     “Really?” His voice calmed me and there was soothing singing on the radio. “Where do you need to go?”

     I thought about that for a minute. I knew the guy I was staying with would pick me up if I called him. He lived twenty minutes outside Boston. 

     “You can drop me off at Kenmore square,” I said. “By that big sign.”

     We drove for about fifteen minutes. I wondered what I would have done if the taxi driver hadn’t come. When we got to Kenmore Square he pulled over—I was safe. He turned around to face me. His eyes were a deep earth brown.

      “I can’t thank you enough,” I said. “You saved my life.”

      “Take my card and some change so you can call someone.” He handed me a handful of coins and a business card. “Call me if you ever need another ride.” 

        “Thank you so much,” I said and grasped the money and his card in my hand.

         “Remember Jesus loves you.”  He smiled and his eyes glistened in the early morning light.

       I got out of the car, and when I looked back over my shoulder, the taxi was gone. A shiver ran from the bottom of my spine to the top of my head, and it came to me—I just met an angel. I went to a phone booth outside the convenience store, and dropped some quarters in and dialed my friend's number.  I looked at the business card in my hand.

     Dave’s taxi service. Serving Jesus and His children. Jesus saves.

     I believed in Jesus once. What happened to my faith?  What happened to me?

       

     I was a child when I began searching for spirituality. My dad moved out when I was seven and I had a lot of fear and anxiety about the future. My mom always talked about our lack of money, and fear she’d lose her job. When I was 11, I told Mom I wanted to go to Catechism classes with my best friend Kristie so I could get confirmed at my church, Trinity Lutheran. Mom said we were only Lutheran because that was the closest church to our house, but I wanted to be confirmed there. I went to services there Sundays with Kristie and my sister. 

     My mom finally said okay, and I started late, but they let me into the class anyway.  I wanted to learn as much as I could, and loved the green book they gave me. It was full of stories and pictures of Jesus and his disciples, and listed The Ten Commandments.  I also saved up coins I found at the bottom of Mom's purses and around the house, until I had enough money to buy The Living Bible, which most of the other kids in my church had.

.     That summer a school bus came I attended a Bible school and asked Jesus to be my Savior. I called the number they gave us and everyday heard a different Bible verse. Just hearing them made me feel safe.

    In high school, I stopped going to church and gave up my search for spirit totally. I became immersed in a new journey— I became an alcoholic and an addict.

           At age 29, I was given a choice at my work: seek help for my substance abuse problem or lose my medical license. I realized something had been missing for a long time—spirituality. Suddenly I realized God had never left my side. He sent the angel taxi driver, and protected me all those years.

     On January 5^th, 1992, I prayed before I went to sleep.

     “Dear God,” I said. “Please help me stop drinking and using. I want you back in my life. Amen.”

     From the next day on I lost all desire to drink. It was a miracle. I’ve been clean sober for 22 ½ years and now help other addicts.

Should I share my recovery story with my patients?

SHOULD I SHARE MY RECOVERY STORY WITH MY PATIENTS?

I work with patients everyday who suffer from many addictions---meth, heroin, prescription pain meds, alcohol, cannabis, cocaine, crack....but I struggle with telling them my story. Would it be an inspiration or would they judge me as a psychiatrist in the "well she partied her way through medical school and residency--how much can she know?" Also, there are a few of us "in recovery" who I work with. We found each other but I don't know if they use their recovery stories when they meet with patients (nether are psychiatrists). Recently I treated this 60 something lady, who although had money coming in every month, was living down by the river, homeless, and using her income to buy alcholol. She was beat up by two men and ended up in our hospital. She never could stay sober more than a few weeks her whole life. We got her into a rehab but at the last minute she changed her mind and said she wasn't going. We offered to get her into assisted living (where you cannot drink) but she declined. Everytime I met with her we talked about her alcoholism and how great a new, sober life would be for her. She asked for a hug after each of our meeting and I'd say, "You deserve to be sober." Now I wish I had said, "I never thought I could do it in a million years, but here I am 22 years clean and sober." I don't know if it would have changed the outcome but I regret not telling her. It is hard for physicians in recovery, although we're out there; some are out of the closet, and some like me, are lurking and hiding in there. I am also afraid if the "big wigs" find out I'm telling patients personal stuff,  I will get into trouble. I don't have a private practice yet, but work for a corporaton-like hospital. Right now I'm not quite ready to leap out of my dark, dingy closet..just yet.

DROWNING THE DYMANIC DUO

When you are suffering from an illness, sometimes the experience can bring people in your life closer, but when that disease is addiction, it is a different tale all together. When you are in the throes of dependence, you slash and slice people from your life like an out-of-control samurai sword and don’t even realize what is happening until you sober up and realize the damage you have done.

Beth weighed over 200 pounds and swayed like a large ballerina in the wind as Tobacco Road’s house band, Iko Iko, wailed and jammed to the blues. Her body was pear- shaped—her breasts not so much small as her hips wide. Her burnt auburn curls brushed against her shoulders—one ringlet, cascading like a waterfall, caressed her forehead.

Her eyes were powder blue like a mid- afternoon Montana sky. Her eyelashes, coated in brown mascara, curled above the blue, and when she saw a man who captured her attention, she’d slowly close her right eye and reopen it—a silent flirt in a smoky bar. Her lid, covered in blue eye shadow, glittered as the lights shined from the stage.

She wore mostly black with a flash of pink or turquoise here and there. Beth’s dancing outfit often included a cowboy hat, a wide belt, and cowboy boots. Red lipstick outlined her tulip- shaped mouth, which often broke into a smile—hinting at naughtiness and at the same time comfort. When she left the club around 4 a.m. she strolled to her white convertible with the Florida license plates that said, “Dr. Beth.” Silver earrings dangled from her earlobes, and light from the street lamps made them flicker in the night like airplanes—or—if you were lucky—a falling star.

Beth and I met the first week of medical school at the University of Miami. I got an idea of tie-dying our plain white coats for anatomy lab and I told Beth.

“What a great idea,” she said, nodding her head. “Let’s do it. I want mine to be blue.”

We had a party at another girl’s apartment and made our new works of colorful art. I loved the way we looked going into the lab the following day. Swirls of blues, yellows, and reds danced around the sterile, silver room, making the cadaver lab seem more festive.

                                                                 * * *

The next week a group of six of us went to a bar on the water to celebrate turning our cadavers over and seeing their faces for the first time. We drank round after round of creamy drinks called Harbor Lights, in curled glasses that looked like little vases. Made with Kahlua coffer liqueur, they tasted like dessert and reminded me of my first mixed drink I had in my friend’s kitchen when I was 14. The drinks warmed me inside and we all ended up wasted from too many shots.

Later Beth and I ended up in the ladies’ room and spotted some girl lying face up on the floor; her shirt was stained with vomit, and remnants dribbled down her chin. Her eyes were closed and her friend caressed her hair as she squatted down beside her. Beth rushed over and took the fallen girl’s wrist and began taking her pulse.

“Don’t worry,” Beth said to the girl’s friend. “She’ll be okay. We’re doctors.”

I laughed so hard I barely made it to the stall on time.

One night Beth told me she was taking me out for my birthday. When we walked into her parents’ house I heard, “Surprise!” I looked around the living room—all my friends were there. There was even a cake. Beth had planned the whole party for me.

“Why does every cake I ever get say ‘eat me’ on it?” I said.

“Why do you think?” Beth said and smiled.

Beth “got” me.

                                                              * * *

Throughout our four years of medical school, Beth and I partied together most weekends and some weeknights. We shared many common interests: love of bars, dancing, and meeting men. I always met guys and had a blast when I was out with Beth. People in our class referred to us as the “dynamic duo.”

I could always count on Beth to be the responsible one. She always drove when we went out, as I was too drunk to drive anywhere. At the time I had a love affair with alcohol that Beth did not share. She did not miss school often like I did. She did not wake up with pieces of the night before missing, her head pounding while she searched through her purse to find evidence of how she’d made it home. I’d wake in the morning and think to myself, “How did my life become like this? This is not how I’d imagined it to be. What happened to me?”

As a child I searched for spirit—first through yoga when I was 11 and then to Jesus and church when I was 12. I had a hole in my soul and was seeking something to fill it up. Fill me up. That year, I also discovered my calling—I would become a doctor and help drug addicts heal. The following year I began having anxiety attacks where my fingers went numb and it felt like my heart would beat out of my chest. I could not catch my breath, my mind raced, and I thought I was dying. Now I know they were panic attacks. At the time I thought something was terribly wrong with me.

At 14, I stopped going to church and discovered a new spirit to fill me up. One warm South Florida night while out cruising around in a friend’s car, I finished a whole beer for the first time—Michelob in a bottle. As I stumbled out of the ’69 Camaro, I felt a click in my brain—my first buzz. Everything changed in that moment. My thoughts slowed in my head and I felt safe in my own skin. I felt normal because of the alcohol. Click. By my senior year of college, drinking had become as normal a part of my day as breathing. My photographic-like memory and ability to cram all night before exams allowed me to graduate college Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in chemistry, an acceptance into University of Miami on academic scholarship, as well as full-blown alcoholism. That is how addiction enters a life—first slowly and then encompassing all.

During the three years after medical school graduation, my obsession with alcohol intensified, and I put it before everything. I craved anything with booze in it—from tequila shots to top-shelf champagne; imported beer to cheap wine; vodka and orange juice to rum and cokes. Beth stayed in Miami and I moved to New York City, and my addiction progressed and flourished in a place where bars beckoned and winked from every corner and taxis roamed the streets in yellow ribbons—no need to drive. I went out drinking every night, which caused more and more problems with my training to become a psychiatrist. I was trying to help others with their substance abuse problems and mental illnesses and was barely able to function myself. I called in sick often, and when I was not at the hospital the other residents had to cover for me. In medical school I rarely made it to school on Mondays, so in residency I never scheduled any outpatients on a Monday, as I was always hung-over.

One weekend I flew down to see Beth and we enjoyed a weekend of sun, drink, and fun in the Florida Keys. When we returned to her home in South Beach, she called a man who she’d hoped would be her boyfriend and we all made plans to meet. At that point my brain was in so many fractured pieces from all the booze I had consumed, and as soon as I saw him we began kissing passionately right in front of Beth. I felt I had known him all my life. The rest of the night was shades of gray, but I ended up at Beth’s later that night. The next day, while she was at work I slunk out of her apartment like a coward and stayed with the man for two days. When I finally sobered up back in New York, I realized I had betrayed Beth—I knew she was no longer my best friend. I had destroyed our dynamic duo.

I practiced psychiatry as a wounded healer but three years into my residency, six months after that episode in Miami, I was given a choice by my residency director at the hospital: get help for my substance abuse problem or lose my medical license. Among many things, he told me one of my supervisors found me drinking on the job. I’d never drunk during work or carried a flask or bottle with me—the alcohol he smelled was coming from my pores after a weekend binge in Key West with the man I lost Beth over.

At first I did not want to accept I had a problem with my best friend, alcohol, but then I thought of all the problems it caused all those years: losing Beth as my best friend, not showing up for work or school, and all the things I did intoxicated I regretted—often apologizing for things I did not even remember doing. I finally realized I was an alcoholic and needed to stop drinking.

For six months I tried to stay sober, only to relapse again and again. After failing to get clean on my own, I attended AA meetings, where they told me to “turn your life over to God as you understand Him.” So I prayed to God, who I no longer knew or understood.

“Dear God,” I said. “Please help me stop drinking and using. I can’t stop no matter what I do. I don’t want to die. Amen.”

From the next day on I lost all desire to drink—a miracle transpired. I continued attending AA, prayed and meditated, and also worked through the twelve steps which gave me tools to live by. I bought a gym membership from a friend and began taking exercise classes. The fist couple times I gasped for breath and the next day my muscles ached with pain. But I kept going and it got easier, and I loved the feeling after I worked out—better than any high from alcohol or drugs.

                                                                  * * *

My sobriety date is January 8th, 1992, six months prior to graduating psychiatry residency, and a little over a year after I lost Beth. Over time, Beth forgave me but our relationship was never the same. Looking back I realize that my alcoholism had caused many problems in our friendship over the seven years we were close. She often let them slide as her love for me overlooked my problems. Once she told me, “When you’re drinking and I look in your eyes, it’s like you disappear.”

Addiction is like a tumor inside that you don’t know is there. It slowly grows and takes over your healthy parts, replacing them it with malignant ones. While once a smart, caring kid who wanted to help others with their addictions, I turned into a selfish person who cared about one thing—when and where my next drink would be. I had a disease that told me I did not have one and that alcohol was not the cause of my problems, but the only solution. How can a healthy friendship survive something so toxic?

I have been sober for over 19 years and to this day I miss Beth’s Johnny Cash outfits, her Lucille Ball hair, and her Angelina Jolie lips. I have seen her many times since then, but I know she sees me in a different light. She married a musician with the same name as my nickname, “Reggie.” I send her a card and letter every year sharing my life. I will always treasure our friendship like a precious gem tucked away in the jewelry box of my heart. Some things you do can never be undone no matter how many steps you work, climb, or take.