Читать книгу The Social Capitalist - Josh Lannon - Страница 16

The Bottom

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Our lives continued this way for years, as we hid behind our jobs, our money, and our belongings in order to avoid the real problem staring us in the face: my addiction. By late 2001, I had blown through nearly all of the money we had convinced ourselves we were rolling in, and I had begun stealing money from the nightclub just to maintain the addiction.

I had skipped out on many of my responsibilities at home and at work, even avoiding work by frequently calling in sick or just disappearing altogether. I had lost a substantial amount of weight, since the only thing I seemed to be ingesting these days was alcohol; I was unable to hide my malnourishment. And Lisa and I were beginning to drift apart, because the only thing I seemed to care about anymore was my next run.

The subject of my heavy drinking and partying had come up numerous times in our conversations, and I had committed, for Lisa, to attempting more restraint. It’s not like I’m an alcoholic, I thought. Alcoholics can’t stop drinking. If I really wanted to, I could stop for a week at a time; an alcoholic can’t do that. I just liked going out and partying, having fun with my friends. We were just doing shots, relieving the pressures of work and toasting good times. There was nothing wrong with that, was there?

So sure, I’d work to control the drinking, I said. I would just cut back on the number of drinks I had on a daily basis. I created workarounds, rules that would curb my behavior but still allow me to drink. They included rules like, “I’ll only drink after work,” or, my personal favorite, “I’ll only drink beer.” But as anyone whose life has been touched by addiction knows, that was pure delusion.

On November 23, 2001, Lisa and I went out with our friends, Chris, a fellow police officer, and his wife, Jen, to dinner at the Tiller Man Restaurant. In preparation for this night out, I had avoided taking even so much as a sip of alcohol that whole week, and I was feeling it.

“What do you think about having a drink with dinner?” I asked Lisa, nearly bursting out of my skin with anticipation.

She debated for a few seconds, looking at me as if scanning to see if I was too anxious. I gave her my best poker face. She clearly wasn’t happy about it; her eyes plainly said “no,” but I’d put her on the spot and she couldn’t argue. She remained silent, faking a smile to me through clenched teeth.

I kissed her on the cheek and quickly summoned a server to bring me a double Stoli and cranberry on the rocks.

Three minutes later, feeling good and enjoying an evening out with friends, I thought nothing of ordering another round when our server reappeared to check on us. It didn’t even dawn on me what I’d done until I noticed Lisa glaring at me, her eyes full of disappointment. I’d put her in a frustrating situation – she couldn’t even say anything, for fear of embarrassing me in front of our friends. Instead, she withdrew more, already consumed with anger and dread over the inevitable binge of self-destruction that I had just set in motion. And because she was scheduled to work the night shift at the jail for the next three nights, this dinner had all the makings of the perfect storm.

SIDEBAR:

Setting boundaries and sticking

to them is a key component in

dealing with a loved one who is

in an addiction cycle. I had set

boundaries but wasn’t always

good at sticking to them. I loved

Josh and would ultimately let

him have his way because I was

afraid of what would happen

if I didn’t.

As the night wore on, my plan hatched. I pulled Chris aside to ask if he was up for a night out with me after dinner. He was. After we all said our goodbyes, Chris and I dropped our wives off at home. I gave Lisa a feeble excuse, something about “checking in on business,” which she saw through immediately but said nothing. I gave her a quick kiss goodbye, and assured her I’d be home soon, which we both knew was a lie.

Lisa looked at me, clearly seething with anger at me and, perhaps, at her own complete lack of control of the situation. But that was also tempered with fear. She never knew anymore whether she’d be seeing me for the last time. All she could say was, “Okay. I love you, Josh.”

I kissed her quickly, avoiding her eyes as I strapped on my Glock 45-caliber handgun and grabbed a wad of cash from our safe, and muttered, “Love you too.”

I opened the door and heard, on my way out, “Be safe. Come home soon.” I left for The Library, a topless bar owned by my father, to meet Chris and get the party started.

Lisa spent the next three days upset and increasingly resolute. This certainly wasn’t the first time she’d seen me pull this kind of stunt, disappearing for days, but this time, for some reason, it felt different. This time, she was convinced, would be the last. Because even if I made it home alive, Lisa was determined to end the madness. Her resolve grew stronger with every passing day: If I wouldn’t agree to get some professional help for my drinking, she was prepared to leave me.

SIDEBAR:

There wasn’t much I could say.

I would be going to work soon

and knew he would leave the

house anyways. It was a cycle

that happened over and over

throughout the years to where

we were just going through

the motions. It was a no-win

situation. I felt like I had lost a

part of who I was during this

time and I was done.

Meanwhile, Chris didn’t stay at The Library with me but a couple of hours. Responsible to the core and loyal to my family, he was sure to ask me what my plans were – was I headed home, too? I told him I would be, just so that if Lisa asked him about me, he could report honestly that I’d been planning to return home soon. I knew that if Lisa really wanted to find me, she would. She was a natural detective, and she knew all my favorite haunts.

I spent the next 24 hours hitting several casinos, eventually growing bored enough to call a few party friends and make a plan to meet up at Cheetahs, and then Crazy Horse 2, both strip clubs, both perfect places to disappear with my friends and drink. Now don’t get the wrong idea here, strip clubs aren’t that glamorous, and our wives had been there many times with us. I was buying, so it was a hard offer for my friends to refuse, and none did. By November 26 – day three of my run – I was a complete mess and it was finally time to crawl home.

I had timed it just so that when I arrived in the middle of the night, Lisa would have left for work already, and she wouldn’t have to see me like this – beaten up, depressed, broke, and reeking of alcohol and strip clubs. I had convinced myself that carrying a handgun was a matter of necessity; it was essential, in my line of work, and in a city this tough, to protect myself. But if I’m being honest, I was terrified of the hallucinations that plagued me every time I drank or took drugs. They took the form of dark, haunting shadows moving around the room and around me, paralyzing me with fear. Wearing the gun gave me an irrational sense of comfort.

But as I entered our home and crawled onto our couch, confronted with depression and loneliness as real as our furniture, as well as a troubled sense that I’d done irreparable damage to Lisa and our marriage, that gun gave me comfort in a new way. It offered a way out. I was my own enemy, I knew that, and here, face to face with my enemy and with no one to stop me, my way became clear. I had struggled for years with the temptation of suicide, and on this night, I thought, maybe the madness could finally end. I began to sob from utter despair, now believing there was nothing I could do to improve this situation but end my own life.

My next memory is of sitting on the couch with my Bushmaster 223 AR-15 assault rifle in a sort of trance, resigned to ending my life as quickly and efficiently as possible. I had spent over an hour cleaning, oiling, and reassembling the firearm. It was my process of honoring the weapon and preparing for death—the Samurai’s “way of the warrior,” or bushido. Yet I was ashamed of what I had become.

Hallucinatory shadows darted around me, clambering around the house, making ominous sounds and whispering terrible things to me. I took my weapon in my hands, sprang from the couch, and began walking the house, breathing heavily, clearing it room by room, and pointing the muzzle of the barrel into the darkness. My martial arts training was kicking in, and I was going through the motions, but what I was chasing, I still don’t know.

Why am I doing this? I asked myself, looking down in confusion at the rifle in my hands. What am I doing? There’s no one here. I then began thinking about turning the gun on myself. Am I really about to shoot myself with my rifle, in our home, so that Lisa can find me?

Lisa had been cleaning up my messes for years. Did I really think that killing myself this way, so that she could find me in a bloody mess on our floor, was going to help her?

I was so disgusted with myself, and full of fear. The hallucinations taunted me again, and I screamed a terrified, “Aaaahhh!”

The full force of what I’d planned to do hit me like a sucker punch. I dropped to the floor, letting go of the rifle, and cried so hard I couldn’t breathe. Can’t I kill myself the right way? I wondered. Could I do anything right?

SIDEBAR:

Over the course of the weekend, I

had grown stronger in my resolution

that I was done. I didn’t want to lose

Josh but I could no longer go on

feeling the way I did. I wanted to be

happy again, and those days were

few and far between. It felt like the

only time I was happy was at work

and I was tired of the worrying about

Josh and whether he would end up

dead, in the hospital or in jail.

After a long time spent crying on the floor of the hall, an idea occurred to me like another sick voice in my head. My martial arts training was so refined that I could do it myself, through autonomic control.

I could meditate deeply with extreme focus, which I had done many times before. But this time, if I could meditate deeply enough to block out physical pain and tap into energy, I could also reverse the process and shut down my body, depleting it of energy using those same methods. This last, deep meditation would just go deeper than I’d gone before. There would be no blood, no mess to clean up. Clean and efficient. This was my way out.

I crawled on my hands and knees into our home office, then lay down, preparing myself to enter the meditation that would ultimately shut down my body. I focused on pulling the energy from my feet and hands through my limbs and up into my body, then dropping that life force back to earth. I repeated this, pulling and pulling energy through my body and then down to the ground. I focused on my breathing and could feel the frigid cold in each part of my body as it slowly, limb by limb, became lifeless.

When I could no longer feel or move my limbs, I then focused on my head and neck, pulling the energy into my chest and into the ground. I pulled deeper and deeper into the darkness. I grew colder and colder, and finally I could no longer feel my body. Then I blacked out.

SIDEBAR:

I don’t know how we had gotten

to this point, how we let our lives

spin this far out of control, it wasn’t

supposed to be like this. I knew my

decision could go one of two ways

and although I didn’t want to lose

Josh, I knew that was a possibility.

Addiction would eventually kill him

and I was always torn on how would

I feel if it happened after I left him,

would I feel like it was my fault

because I didn’t stay? Was there

something I could do? How would

I feel if I stayed and he died? I knew

that by giving him a choice it would

allow me to move forward and not

feel the burden of that weight.

I hadn’t talked to him all weekend

so I had no idea the shape he was

in, or what he was thinking, I just

knew that we both were hurting.

I was gone. I drifted through darkness, eventually coming upon a faint light in the distance. The light moved swiftly toward me, and when it reached me, it transformed into the figure of a woman who looked familiar, though I couldn’t place her. She reached a hand out to touch mine, caressing it in such a loving, comforting way that it reminded me of being in the arms of my own mother, in the innocence of youth. I felt safe and loved, fully believing, for the first time in a long time, that I would be okay.

Then she said to me the words that changed my life forever: “No … Not yet. There’s more work to do.” Then she let go of my hand and disappeared as quickly as she’d come.

Like a patient receiving an electrical jolt from a defibrillator, I startled awake and took an enormous gasp of air. I realized that my plan had failed. I was trapped, once again, in this miserable life. My strength completely drained and my mind emptied, I could do nothing but cry.

After hours passed this way, I heard the familiar sound of Lisa’s keys in the door. It was time to face her and the desolation I’d created. I lay on the couch in the living room, holding my breath and waiting for the inevitable dressing down I knew I deserved.

She slowly made her way through the house, and spied the rifle in the hallway. I heard a slight gasp before she appeared, standing above me, looking down.

The look in her eyes was a mixture of pity and strength. She stood there in full uniform, badge over her heart and gun strapped to her side, and she looked different to me now. There was resolve in her eyes, watering with the enormity of what she was seeing, but I could see by the expression of distaste and disregard on her face that she was done with all this. Lisa, the strong, determined Lisa I’d fallen in love with, was once again standing here before me. I felt relieved to see her, even as I dreaded what would surely come next.

SIDEBAR:

I was ready for it to stop. I was

ready to take a stand for me. To

either move forward together or

move forward alone. I was glad

that Josh was willing to come

with me, to take on life again.

There comes a time when we

each get to Take A Stand for

something we either get to say or

do that will have a positive effect

on you, those around you and

possibly the world. It could be a

very difficult thing to do because

the answer may or may not be

how you want it to look. Trust

your intuition and follow your

heart and you can get through it.

She sighed heavily, then looked me right in the eyes and said, “Josh, either you go to treatment now, or I’m packing my bags and leaving you.” I had been searching for a lifeline for a long time. I had wanted it all to stop, but didn’t know how. Lisa’s strength to call an end to all of this created the change we both wanted. That night, I left for rehab.

The Social Capitalist

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