Читать книгу Some Assembly Required - Dan Mager - Страница 14
Оглавление[IF YOU MEET THE BUDDHA,] SAY HELLO
“Sometimes the light’s all shining on me
Other times I can barely see.”
ROBERT HUNTER, TRUCKIN’, GRATEFUL DEAD
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In October of 1981, a few months after completing one of my two degrees and going through the graduation ceremony at UC Santa Cruz, I went backpacking in Desolation Wilderness near Lake Tahoe with Mick, then one of my closest friends. Mick had graduated the year before me and was working construction at the time, even though he was a genius in science and math. He had an innate ability to understand how the world works on those levels—areas that have always been a mystery to me. Mick was also one of my hardest-core partying partners. There were frighteningly few mind- and mood-altering rocks that we hadn’t turned over together to explore in-depth what was underneath.
The very first time we met, perhaps not surprisingly, revolved around drugs. I was on the prowl for pot during my first week at UCSC, looking to find, not just a place to score now, but a reliable ongoing source. A friend of a new friend directed me to the dorm next to mine, to a room at the end of the top floor, and there was Mick, wanting to know why I was there. Even though I came with my referral source who lived in that same dorm and I looked no older than my eighteen years, complete with long thick hair down to nearly the middle of my back, Mick immediately suspected that I was a cop. As much as I was tempted to respond with laughter and sarcasm, my mission was serious and I didn’t want to risk leaving empty handed, so I asked what I could do to assure him that I was just a new student who wanted to get high. After satisfying him with my answers to a battery of questions, we concluded our business. It took a few months for Mick to warm up to me, but over time we developed a tight bond.
We had planned to be in the wilderness for three days, and stopped at the Safeway in South Lake Tahoe to pick up supplies. Most critically, a quality steak to go with the killer Cabernet Sauvignon that we had selected for the first evening’s meal. After all, camping in the high altitude wilderness of the Sierra Nevada was no reason not to have a high class dinner. While waiting in the checkout line, I gradually became aware that several lines away the cashier seemed to be engaged, and engaging everyone who came through his line, in having an absolutely great time—on the checkout line at Safeway!
The scene was simultaneously bizarre and compelling. I found myself instantly drawn to this cashier and the quality of his interactions with customers. He was short, bald, rotund to the point of being obese, and wore thick old-school black horn-rimmed eyeglasses. He didn’t just greet his customers; he embraced them: each and every one, in a verbal/emotional bear-hug of warm, welcoming, it’s-wonderful-to-see-you-again-my-old-friend energy.
His manner was boisterous to the point of standing out, yet neither obnoxious nor intrusive. It was congruent rather than contrived, as genuine and natural as the Ponderosa Pines and Douglas Fir trees dotting the landscape around Tahoe. I was mesmerized. Although I wasn’t entirely certain what was going on here, I knew that it was exceedingly rare.
Somehow, in the midst of one of the more mundane, often frustrating environments on the planet, this short, bald, fat grocery store cashier seemed to be operating in a state of unadulterated joy that allowed him to appear to float ever so slightly above the ground that constrained the rest of us. There was a certain music and magic to this person and how he related to others and to the world. Whatever it was that he had, I wanted to experience it up close. I then did something I have never done in my entire life, either before or since. I actually switched lines to one with a noticeably longer wait, just so I would have the opportunity to be in personal contact with this phenomenon, whatever it was.
I waited in his checkout line with curiosity, anticipation, and (especially for me) extraordinary patience, noticing more carefully how the customers, without exception reacted to his unexpected and enthusiastic grace with bemused grins and a sense of wonder. When it was my turn, he greeted me with equal élan and a Cheshire cat smile that consumed most of my field of vision. I made direct eye contact and returned his greeting, adding “It’s great to see someone who really seems to know how to enjoy life.” He leaned toward me, lowered his voice slightly and chuckled, “And you know, it doesn’t cost anything extra,” at which point he gave me a knowing wink.
As his sense of present-centered joy washed over me, for a few brief seconds that felt much longer, it was as if everything else faded away, and in that moment, I knew everything that I would ever truly need to know—though I would quickly forget it. It would only occur to me years later, viewed through the perspective of twelve-step recovery and an enhanced sense of spirituality that this effervescent generosity of spirit stood on a foundation of love—simple, abundant, and pure.
As perfect as that moment was, of course it couldn’t last. Perfection only visits us every once in a great while, and it never stays very long. Such transcendent experiences are always temporary. Whenever I try to keep them as if they are possessions, I invariably set myself up for disappointment. The most healthy and spiritual thing I can do is to recognize and appreciate these moments for what they are as opposed to focusing on what they are not and can never be.
Mick and I drove to the trail head for our initial eight-mile hike into the wilderness. It was a magnificent autumn afternoon in the High Sierra. The air was cool and crisp at our elevation of slightly over 7,400 feet, but it was sunny and very comfortable. Although it was mid-Autumn with its emerging potential for storms, there was no hint in the forecast that this glorious weather pattern wouldn’t continue.
We set up camp at the edge of one of the smaller lakes south of Tahoe in the Desolation Wilderness. The collective spirit of nature and the universe seemed to be smiling amidst the majestic panorama of color and geology. We enjoyed a sumptuous supper centered around our rib-eye and Cabernet that merged seamlessly and sensuously on our palettes to create the synergy known by red wine aficionados in select circles as “chewy wine.” Satiated by our meal, my close encounter with the Buddha at Safeway, and the serenity of the scenery, as well as a substantial stash of smack-down sinsemilla (high-end marijuana to the uninitiated), we slept soundly that night.
We awoke to the roof of our tent concaving in on us to within inches of our faces. Instinctively pushing the fabric up and outward, we displaced what in silhouette seemed to be a shitload of snow. Suddenly very awake, Mick and I looked at one another with the same thought, “No fucking way!” Upon unzipping the tent entrance we were greeted with more than two feet of fresh snow, all of which had fallen silently during the night, blanketing everything.
We were totally unprepared for anything like this. My heaviest clothing consisted of a sweater and an insulated sweatshirt. There was immediate wordless recognition that this was a serious and potentially dangerous situation. We knew without having to confer that the focus of our adventure had instantly shifted to simply finding our way back to the ranger station and our car safely.
To get to our campsite we had followed a well-delineated trail, the last part of which was a fairly steep downhill climb to the level topography around the lake. The depth and virginity of the snow made it a bitch just to identify where to pick up the trail to head back uphill. After an anxiety-provoking half hour of searching, assessing, and guessing where the hell the trail was and becoming increasingly cold and wet, I was starting to get scared. Fortunately, shortly thereafter, we were able to find what appeared to be the trail, though we were far from certain.
Apprehensively we ascended, making tediously slow progress until it became clear that we were on the right path. The mood on the trail back was 180 degrees from the easy-going, laugh-out-loud good time that defined our hike in. There were few words exchanged as we conserved our energy, concentrating intently on making forward progress, simply and steadily putting one foot in front of the other. As the sun rose higher, we found ourselves trudging through melting snow that became ankle-deep freezing water, negotiating the trail with the kind of intense determination achieved through practiced perseverance and tunnel-vision focus.
A sort of grim staying-in-each-moment intensity kicked in. The immediacy of our challenges crowded out all other considerations with one nagging exception: a gnawing feeling of anxiety—that lower-grade fear and worry of—what if? What if we can’t make it back to the car due to any one of a half-dozen possibilities that could further bite us in the ass? Fear is almost always related to the unknown, to the uncertainty of the future and what it may have in store for us. But, as natural as such doubts were to the situation at hand, there was too much at stake to ruminate on them. Like the frigid water taking up more and more of the trail, these doubts could swirl around each step we took yet not penetrate . . . much . . . or so I needed to believe.
By the time we made it to the safe haven of the ranger station we were half-frozen, with hypothermia in close pursuit. Our feet were soaking wet and in bad and getting-worse-by-the-step condition, even though we were both equipped with high-quality hiking boots. As we immersed ourselves in the warm cocoon of the roaring fire, I exhaled a Yankee Stadium-sized sigh of relief while puzzling in amazement at how quickly and completely everything can change.
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Most drugs of abuse produce intense initial sensations of pleasure. These sensations vary tremendously across different types of substances. In contrast to the relaxed calm that co-occurs with the immersive floating euphoria of opiates/opioids including heroin, cocaine produces a high characterized by a massive boost in energy, followed by feelings of power and grandiose self-confidence. When injected or smoked in its free-base form, coke produces an instantaneous rush that feels like a rocket blasting off, leaving Earth’s gravity at break-neck speed—a massive high like the most ground-shaking orgasm multiplied by an exponent. I’ve heard some people describe it as feeling as though they are god. I was never that grandiose—for me it merely felt like caressing the face of god, as dopamine, the neurotransmitter most directly linked to the experience of pleasure, was released from the neurons in my brain in unnaturally occurring quantities, flooding every single synapse, where its reverberations thundered. In those moments of rapture, it felt like forever, but it only ever lasted a few short minutes at most.
For me, coming down from that exhilarating height was always as bad as the take off was good. As soon as the rush reached its apex and began to subside, withdrawal started to set in, followed by feelings of despondency and despair driven by the diminution in my brain’s stash of dopamine. It was my own personal version of the space shuttle breaking up into pieces and slamming back to Earth. It is the simultaneous drives to recreate the ecstasy of the monumental rush and to escape the emotional death grip of the crash that churns the obsessive-compulsive need to continue to use coke. And it’s a Sisyphean cluster-fuck. With each successive hit during a using session, the high gets a little lower and the low gets a little higher, as the brain’s available inventory of dopamine is progressively depleted, until all that’s left is depression.
Not having a clearer sense of what to do with the rest of my life, I figured that law school was a reasonable option and registered to take the LSAT (Law School Admission Test). The night before the exam I decided that I could inject coke one time—after all, it was only 7:30 p.m. By the time I quit for the night, it was 5:00 a.m. the following morning. Shockingly, I didn’t do very well on the test. But I did use the experience as a learning opportunity of another sort.
I would never again shoot coke unless I had heroin or some other opiate/opioid or a benzodiazepine such as Valium as a neurochemical parachute, allowing me to float gently back to earth rather than crashing face first. Shortly thereafter, I transitioned to preferring heroin alone, though I remained open to the occasional speedball. For a year and a half, I lived like a vampire, using till the sun came up, confined to long-sleeve shirts in public even in summer. My senior thesis, and with it my Planning and Public Policy degree, went unfinished.
When I was first introduced to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in graduate school, the DSM was in its third edition. I was dumbfounded to learn that unlike multiple other drugs—opiates, alcohol, barbiturates, tranquillizers, etc.—there was no category for substance dependence (the then DSM equivalent of “addiction”) for cocaine. Until the crack epidemic of the 1980s started ripping apart the lives of individuals, families, and whole communities like a Category 4 hurricane, the prevailing belief was that cocaine was psychologically, but not physically addictive (as if there was a definitive separation of mind from body that made for any meaningful difference between the two).
Anyone who had ever done an appreciable amount of the drug knew otherwise. My master’s thesis (which was completed) addressed this topic, arguing for the addition of a category of “substance dependence” for cocaine in the DSM. It was an easy argument for me to make. When DSM-IV was published in 1994, it was there—professional expertise having finally caught up with hard-boiled experience.
The road from junkie to graduate student was circuitous and full of impediments, beginning with an arrest for the criminal sale of a controlled substance in January of 1983. My habits were expensive and I funded them through illicit manufacturing and sales. There is an inverse correlation between active addiction and judgment. As my addiction advanced, my judgment declined and with it, my attention to detail. Mail order was part of my business. It was a very different time and sending drugs through the mail was not that uncommon. I sent a large package to someone in New York who came recommended by a friend I had known since childhood and with whom I had done plenty of similar business. Little did I know that the person on the receiving end of this particular package was a cop.
Ironically, I had already made the decision that I needed a lifestyle transplant. I had dismantled my business infrastructure and was planning to move back to New York within the month. My relocation was expedited when the cops arrived early that morning with weapons drawn to wake me up and execute the warrant for my arrest. I had planned on driving back to New York; instead, I took a plane and had a police escort.
Between the time of my arrest and sentencing in May of that spring, I don’t remember breathing much. Encased in prolonged stress and anxiety, I experienced physical symptoms of trauma, including elevated pulse rate, edginess, muscle tension, insomnia, and when I did sleep, I had nightmares. I went through the full gamut of emotional and psychological trauma symptoms: shock and disbelief, anger, irritability, sadness and hopelessness, worry and fear, difficultly concentrating, feeling disconnected and wanting to withdraw from others, along with unabating guilt, shame, and self-blame.
During my presentencing interview, I was asked whether I had a “drug problem.” “No” I answered unequivocally, mobilizing my most deferential and diplomatic persona. “Sure, against my better judgment I sent a few packages as a favor to friends who had requested them, but it’s not like I have a problem with using drugs myself.” It was a line of denial, minimization, and bullshit similar to many I would hear years later as an addiction treatment professional.
I received “lifetime” probation, meaning that the length was indeterminate. After five years I was eligible to apply to have it terminated, but the decision would be based solely on the judge’s discretion. If there was anything remotely positive that came out of my bust, it was that I had to change the course of my life; it was not an option not to.
After a couple of unsatisfying jobs in (legal) business, I came to the realization that since most of us have to spend so much of our waking time for so many years doing whatever it is we do for a living, if I wasn’t fundamentally okay with my chosen vocation, I’d be setting myself up for long-term discontent. I figured that since I had a degree in psychology, I should try to put it to use.
At about the same time during the end of the summer in 1984, my girlfriend and I got married. Even though I was from Long Island and she was from northern New Jersey, we met in psychology classes at UC Santa Cruz. For months, even before we met formally, we were drawn to one another, tuning in to each other’s presence across a cavernous lecture hall in a class of over two hundred students, though neither of us had any inkling of the other’s attraction. For me, it was physical attraction; whereas she described intrigue with this long-haired hippie-like character who casually strolled in late, took a seat right in front of the professor, and matter-of-factly posed questions and interjected comments.
We were friends for two years before anything romantic evolved. She grew up the hard way, in a challenged and challenging family, and demonstrated a phenomenal resiliency, growing far beyond her upbringing. From the time I could remember, I was programmed to go to college. She had been actively discouraged from going to college. She did it almost entirely on her own, and after several starts and stops across five schools, she became the first person in her family to graduate from college.
She was not an addict, and never used like I did. She had a core of honesty and integrity that I marveled at, but could only aspire to. We had planned to move back East together prior to my arrest, and surprisingly she still came, leaving her own master’s program in vocational counseling at Cal State San Francisco in the process. I absolutely adored her, and in the aftershock of my self-inflicted trauma, I would have been lost without her, and whether or not she was aware of that, she was extremely intuitive and likely sensed it. Knowing me in all the ways she did, joining me in New York was either an act of pure mercy or a desire to see some of the potential that she saw in me actualized, or some of both.
We got married during Labor Day weekend, and the following Tuesday I started as a diagnostic caseworker at St. Mary’s Family and Children’s Services, a residential treatment center in Syosset, NY, for latency-age and adolescent boys from all over Long Island and the five boroughs of New York City. I got the job in part because they saw me as a diamond in the rough that they could train, and in part because I was willing to accept the $12,500 annual salary—even in 1984, that was a near poverty-level wage.
I was part of a five-person multidisciplinary treatment team in a ninety-day diagnostic unit that conducted comprehensive evaluations and made placement recommendations on kids who were removed from their homes due to abuse, neglect, or juvenile delinquency. I performed psycho-social assessments, made home visits, and represented the agency in the family courts of the six counties from which our clients came. I saw some grotesque, stomach-churning examples of child abuse, the most heinous of which was a fourteen year-old whose fingers on both hands ended after the first knuckle. When he was six years old, his crack-addicted mother’s crack-addicted boyfriend had held this child’s hands over an open stove flame until, even after multiple surgeries, that was all that remained.
It quickly became clear that if I was going to continue in this area of work, I needed to get an advanced degree. I weighed the options of a master’s in social work versus a doctorate in psychology, and based on bang for the bucks in terms of money and time, decided on an MSW at the Hunter College School of Social Work in Manhattan. I was also accepted to the prestigious MSW programs at Columbia University and NYU, but at that time the annual tuition was $9,600.00 at Columbia and $7,500.00 at NYU. Because the School of Social Work at Hunter was part of the City University of New York, tuition there was $1,900.00 annually. All three were among the most highly rated graduate schools of social work in the country, and the ratio of cost to quality made the Hunter program the most competitive of the three to get into.
I received my MSW in 1987, and was released from probation in May of 1988 with a Certificate of Relief from Disabilities, restoring all of the civil rights that were forfeited as a result of my felony conviction. I had stopped using intravenously. I snorted heroin and cocaine a small handful of times before forsaking them altogether in the late 1980s. But I continued to drink and smoke pot.
