Bill Clegg - Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man

I won’t remember this guy’s name, but we become fast friends. We hunt for a cab together to get back to the hotel on 24th Street but can’t find one. A van pulls up next to me as it stops for a light, and I ask the guy driving if we can hitch a ride and, amazingly, he says yes. My new pal — who has ditched his flyers in a trash can — giggles in the back of the van and for a moment he’s Kenny in the woods with a bottle of Scotch, Max in the cooler setting up lines of coke, Ian wielding a fire extinguisher. I giggle, too, exhilarated to be on the other side of the lunch, on the other side of the line that separates me and my new friend from the rest of the world. The van rattles down Fifth. Drugs in pocket, partner in crime at my side, hotel key in hand, a whole night ahead.

The afternoon and night play out. We don’t have sex, though I want to. Rico comes at ten with more, and it is all gone by four in the morning. My pal gets restless and disappears. He asks for $50 for a cab up to Harlem and I give him $40. Alone, I smoke down the few crumbs I’d hidden. Alone, I scrape the broken stem for the last resin and burn the pipe black as charcoal trying to suck the last drop of venom out of it. Alone, I look at the window and wonder if I am high enough up to die if I crawl through and jump into the air shaft. Fourth floor. Not even close.

And then, because there is no other thought or action or crack crumb left to get in the way, I think one thought: Noah. I can’t bear it and I pick up the last burnt stem from the ashtray to make sure there is nothing left. I scan the floor to see if there is one last dropped chunk of drug kicked to the carpet’s edge, waiting for me to rescue it so that it can rescue me. But there is nothing. Not a thing left but me and the knowledge that I have not called Noah in three days. It’s seven in the morning and I’m alone in a hotel room on the other end of a three-day crack binge. I’m in unfamiliar territory, terrified. I feel as if I have been picked up by a tornado and spit out in pieces. Why did I drink so much at L’acajou three nights ago? WHY, oh, Jesus Christ, WHY? I’ve asked myself the question hundreds of times in the harsh light of hundreds of mornings and, as always, there’s no answer. I pick up the mess, gather my few belongings, and walk down Fifth Avenue in the dark, silent morning, toward what I hope is still home.

Noah is not at the apartment when I come in. I call and leave a message to say that I am at the apartment, in bed, and safe. That I am sorry and that this is the last time. That I love him. I crash asleep for what seems like a few minutes but is actually three or four hours. Noah wakes me sometime after morning. He has tears in his eyes and speaks in kinder tones than I could possibly have hoped for. He hugs me as I lie in the bed and pats my back like a child who needs consoling. He looks worried and I know something is not quite right. There are some people here to see you, he says, and I know right away that, after all this time, all these nights and mornings, the jig is finally up. Who? I ask, and he tells me that my sister Kim, David, and Kate are in the living room. The world stands still. Time stops. I can’t believe they know. That they’re here. Noah holds my hand and I am grateful for his tenderness. That he is not leaving me. But the horror of what is happening thunders down on me, and I am numb with shock. Let’s go, he prods. And with his help I put on my bathrobe and shuffle toward the door from the bedroom into the living room. Noah has his hand on my shoulder as I open the door and see them sitting around the coffee table in the sun-flooded living room, looking up, seeing me for the first time.

I don’t struggle, not yet. I am quiet and cooperative as each of them, in turn — Kim, Kate, Noah, David — tells me they will support my getting sober but won’t support me, won’t have anything to do with me, if I continue to use. There are many tears and I feel that I’m underwater and their words seem as if they have to swim a great distance to reach me. There is a car downstairs, tickets purchased to fly to a rehab in Oregon, bags packed, and a bed waiting. The ex-cop or ex — Army Green Beret or ex-gym teacher who stands alongside them with muscles and crossed arms and barks at me in stern tones is someone I instinctively know to erase. I do not look at or speak to or interact with him in any way and I agree to go to the airport as long as he does not come with us. And so we go. Noah, Kate, and I get in the car and go to La Guardia. It is early afternoon, and when we get to the terminal, I say I need food and order a plate of eggs and a bottle of white wine and drink it all and barely touch the food. I drink vodka on the flight to Oregon while Noah and Kate look on silently or sleep.

The place is an hour away from Portland and looks like a small elementary school nestled in the middle of rolling wine country. It does not rain once when I am there, and the sky is a dark, unsullied blue that turns pink toward the end of the day and scarlet at sunset. My roommate is a pill-addicted brain surgeon from Los Angeles whose gorgeous Swedish girlfriend comes up several times and takes us on car rides to Portland and to the coast. There are other guys, too — the retired ambulance driver from Washington State who drank himself into a stupor every night and who would go weeks without a word to another human being; the mouthy rich kid from New York who wore gold Adidas track suits and talked like a mobster; the spooked meth addict from the San Fernando Valley who lined his basement with aluminum foil to outsmart the Feds and cops who he just knew were tracking his every movement. I relate to them all. On the second or third day, after dozens of pleading phone calls to Noah and Kate and my sister, each one a failed attempt to get back to New York, I finally accept the fact that I am in rehab, that I am stuck. Once I stop trying to get home, I am amazed how at ease with these guys I feel, how much the same, and how exhilarating it is to be honest, about everything, for the first time. Each night I walk alone in a gentle field and watch the sky darken and streak with pinks and reds. I walk in that field and feel scared about returning to New York, worry what people will think, but after a few weeks begin to feel hopeful.

I volunteer to stay for an extra week — partly because I want to demonstrate to Noah and Kate that I have taken this seriously, but mostly because by the fourth week I am deeply enmeshed in the community of patients and counselors. I am not in a hurry to leave this process of letting go of the many secrets that I had spent a lifetime squirreling away, hanging on to, buckling under the weight of.

In a group discussion one morning I talk, for the first time since the sessions with Dr. Dave, about my struggle with peeing. After the group, another guy, a banker from San Francisco with four kids, tells me that he wrestled with the same problem as a boy. Two days before I go home, he will sneak off the rehab property, relapse on tequila in a strip club down the road, and be asked to leave.

When I return to New York, my mother calls and wants to see me. I put off getting together for nearly a month and eventually agree to have lunch. On that day she is an hour and a half late. She finally shows up and as we order food, she describes the generations of alcoholism and drug addiction in her family and my father’s, and tells me I’m one in a long line. Despite my initial agitation with her for being late, I am surprisingly relaxed with her and feel a little of our old ease return. I ask if I can bring up something from childhood, something that I hadn’t talked to anyone in the family about but that I’ve remembered only recently. She says yes and before I get the word peeing out of my mouth, she holds her hand up above the table and shakes her head. I say a few more words, but she is now crying, asking me if I’ve agreed to have lunch only to tell her what a terrible mother she is. Stunned by her sudden outburst, I say that I only need her to tell me if she remembers anything, to confirm that it happened, because all I have are a pile of chaotic memories shaken to life by a shrink. Through tears she says something that sounds like I’m not going to talk about that, your father was the one … The last thing I remember is her asking me if I knew how hard it was for her then, what a nightmare those years were for her. I say yes, that she’s been very good at letting us know how hard it was for her, and she leaves the restaurant. I follow her out to the street as she disappears into a cab without a word. I return to the restaurant, settle the bill, and by the time I make my way three blocks north to my office, I lose my wallet, my keys, and my sunglasses.