There is a show called “The Cleaner” about a man, an ex-addict, William Banks, who made a pact with God that if He got him out of his last run, William would be His soldier in this war.  William Banks gets calls to help people get out of the immediate addiction and into rehab or find some type of help–he is hired by family or loved ones.  It is supposedly based on the true story of this ex-addict and his mission to help others who suffer his same disease.  I still hold back on an opinion on this show since I am not sure to what extent I feel it is accurate or just for thrills.  What I do know is that it has made me think about what addiction means and how it affects us as people who live in this society.  I realize that there is so much to be grateful for and that if I forget, just one day, to be grateful for the blessings I have, that I will quickly fall into the darkness from which I felt there was no escape.  The last episode I watched, named “Five Little Words” made me think more on this.  Here is a short excerpt and some thoughts:

“There are five words that are a part of every addict’s vernacular.  Five words that come from the darkest place imaginable.  But these five words don’t admit surrender or defeat–to call it defeat would oversimplify the absolute loss of humanity.  This is it.  The disintegration of the soul. The point at which the body has no fight left.  When helpless becomes hopeless, and hopeless becomes despair.  This is the moment in the game when there are no more plays, no more out; no more options.  This is the place every addict eventually gets to.  The thought of living our lives without our addiction is unthinkable, even worse than the thought of living our lives with it, so when we say these five words, it doesn’t come from a place of fear, it doesn’t come from a place of sadness.  It comes from the core of our soul–the burning hot center that has begun to become cold.  The place where nothing lives except the truth.  These five words are so simple, five little words. ‘I wish I would die.'”

‘Helpless becomes hopeless and hopeless becomes despair’ perfectly describes my descent.  I grew up as a child full of hope and wonder, with friends and family urging me and motivating me to become everything I could.  I had dreams of becoming a “nuclear physicist.” I had no idea what that entailed, but the dream was there.  My neighbors bought me higher level books on physics and some other family friends gave me to read Richard Feynman’s autobiography.  I devoured these with zeal and zest.  Now I am an alcoholic.  For most people this would explain everything and my post would be over, but this is far more complicated to me.  I didn’t know–there was no bright neon sign telling me–that if I took that first drink, and then the second and then went out with friends as most people do and enjoyed a nice glass of wine with dinner or to wind down at the end of the day–that I would be gripped for the next 19 years in a fight, not for my life, but for my sense of being, a fight for myself.

Once I found myself in the grip of my addiction, I didn’t recognize it.  There is no “addiction ed” class in high school that tells me the signs of addiction and how to protect myself (I’m not saying this would necessarily make any difference, but who knows).  By the time, others had seen the extent of my fall, I was willfully blind to it.  I was helpless to stop myself due to the nature of addiction, a disease of the Ego which necessitates me to let go of my Ego, yet holds on to it in a last ditch effort not to accept I am helpless.  Once I realized that I needed help (10 years later) and I sought it, the hopelessness began.  It wasn’t immediate, the first time I went to rehab, there were classes of self-awareness, there was therapy, they warned us that only 1 in 10 recovers, but I was going to be that one!  I stayed clean for 7 months and felt great! In fact, I felt so good that I knew I didn’t really have a problem.  My Ego told me that I was like other people and could handle a night out with friends.  I mean, if I could do 7 months, this wasn’t truly a disease that I suffered from, it was just a minor setback and I was fine. So, comes the inevitable fall and my second rehab.  Yes, I am skipping the pain and the suffering and the misery that I put myself and my loved ones through.  I am skipping the detoxing, the throwing up, the shakes, the illusions of grandeur as I fell on my face.  I am skipping the utter and complete negation and denial of who I was and what I deserved.  So, my second rehab and again the therapy, the self-awareness, the warnings and caveats, and again I will be the one!

Skip ahead to rehab number who knows, because do we count separate intakes, or just separate institutions? Do I need to be out at least 2 weeks for it to count as a new intake?  Does 3 weeks of detox count as rehab? If I ‘checked myself out’ after 2 days, does that count? etc.  But maybe we shouldn’t be counting number of rehabs, but amount of time locked up, willingly or unwillingly.  I can say that for most of the second half of my third decade, almost an eighth of my life, almost 12.5% of my life, a medium pizza’s slice-worth of my life I was in and out of rehab and spent most of that time, going to the hospital, to detox, to rehabs and running to different parts of the globe to look for help.  All of these rehabs and relapses representing personal failures for me (although they were not).  Helplessness had now become hopelessness.

Through this hopelessness there were glimpses of light.  I was able to get a couple of weeks here and there when I was clean and saw the possibility of things moving up.  And every time, the siren’s call of vodka would call me back and bring me to my knees.  There were times when I just didn’t want to get better.  I wanted to keep drinking and keep that constant fuzz over my brain.  Being mentally numb and absent was better than facing the reality (perceived reality) that I was hopeless.  The truth is that it felt better, but was still nothing good.  This was my darkness.  It was a darkness I wanted to embrace so that I never had to live again, but I didn’t want to take my own life because, well I don’t know why.  I just didn’t take an active role in suicide.  However, many times I would wish that I would just die.  Not out of fear because life was too scary, or out of surrender to a hopeless life.  I only knew the fact that I couldn’t be without my vodka and yet physically, there was no way to be with it 24/7.  I was stuck in a limbo that was not living, but was not death.  I wanted somebody to pick one for me.  Damn it God, do for me what I am too lazy to do!  Either fix me or take me out, but pick one!  Despair.

So now, I have almost 8 months.  I struggle with the thought of drinking, but don’t feel the craving to do it.  I have an amazing career and I look forward to going to work.  I have a great family that loves me and friends that truly know what friendship is (even when I fail them).  However, the most important thing I have is a discovery of me.  I have hopes again and dreams.  I have reasons to live my days.  For all this I need to give thanks.  Thanks to God and thanks to all the people who came in my life and showed me a different way.  I have always heard, “who believed in me even when I didn’t believe in myself,” and  never understood what it meant.  To me it means that they believed in the idea of me.  A me that can live apart from my Ego, yet be proud of who I am.  At the end of the show, William’s character says, “five little words–I wish I would live.”  I am blessed and grateful to have changed my five initial words to ones full of hope.  Unfortunately, there are many who don’t get this opportunity.