Chasing the Dragon
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CK Class of '73 50th Reunion
Those of you who are on campus today, thanks for coming.
Those of you who couldn’t make it, maybe next time.
Chasing The Dragon
As some of you know, I’m a dried-up junkie. Back in ‘79, I was taking too many pain pills for too long—I was up to sixteen or twenty-four Tylenol III a day, and some other stuff just to keep going. On the freezing morning after Thanksgiving in ‘79, woke up, spilled my bottle of pills and I decided I was sick and tired of being sick and tired, and was missing too many days of work…a job I wasn’t good at and liked little. So I flushed my pills. All of them.
I hit the city, and I lost my band; I saw the needle take another man…
Gone, gone, the damage done…
Neil Young, The Needle and the Damage Done
Then the easy part started: the detox, or cold turkey. I had a girlfriend, sort of, who was home from college for the holidays and wanted to go out with her friends and have dinner with her family—and me—completely tone-deaf to what I was experiencing. I was angry; I felt desperate; I could not get off the toilet for half the day. I had chills and hot flashes, and I thought my chest would explode. After all that and after the new year, she went back to college, and I didn’t see her anymore. Maybe she was too young to have a junkie boyfriend, or just didn’t have the mental tools to handle one. I didn’t know that I did. But I needed…someone who wanted nothing from me I couldn’t give then…or something…
You’ve never been empty until you’ve been dope-empty… and alone.
For a very long time I woke up in the middle of the night thinking I was nowhere…like Twilight Zone nowhere. The utter silence of my high-rent slum of an apartment complex at two in the morning was shattering, nerve-wracking. I was still smoking then, and went up to two packs a day for a while, turning my white walls blue. The prospect of another day…another hour…of this unending nothing was…grinding is the best way to say it. I needed…something that wasn’t Tylenol III or anything stronger, or someone to…you get it.
There was AA…
I’d taken my brother to the drunk tank twice, but booze, for whatever reason, didn’t do it for me, and for a couple of physical reasons, I couldn’t take much. I’d known guys in the military who’d done too much of this or that, and I’d “escorted” some to AA meetings. But I knew very few people in Southeastern Wisconsin and didn’t have a doctor…except the VA, and they fed my dragon.
So, yeah, I went to meetings…
Anyone can go to open meetings, but only members can go to closed meetings. To be a member, you have to have a problem with booze. I didn’t, so I couldn’t technically join AA. NA—Narcotics Anonymous—didn’t have a chapter in the area in ‘79. Didn’t mean I couldn’t go to AA meetings.
Five weeks after I flushed all my pills, AA meetings were…loud.
Or at least they seemed loud. My addiction was quite real, but was not nearly as serious as that of others. My second meeting, I believe it was, I met a guy who was getting off booze and heroin and cocaine. He was in his third month of sobriety for the second time, hadn’t seen his wife and kids in two years. He was also looking for work, since he’d lost his job to the monkeys on his back and the snakes in his brain. His case was not unique. He’d been to rehab, but rehab then wasn’t what it is now. Then, it was…
Dry out.
Leave.
Like today, sometimes it took in the long term, but usually it didn’t. He talked about the next time he dried out, fully expecting to go back to whatever he could scrounge or steal.
He only had a dollar to live on till next Monday;
But he spent it on some comfort for his mind…
Hoyt Axton, Snowblind Friend.
Believe it or not, that guy’s absent acceptance of his bleak and self-destructive future made me determined not to go that route. I didn’t go to many AA meetings, but I didn’t go back to the VA for a very long time. Yes, I am service-connected-disabled, but that doesn’t mean I have to go there for all my health care…which will keep you alive, but not much more. I went when I had to. I got some dental work done there because when I was on vocational rehabilitation for a few years; it was free, and I needed it. Ironically, the most time I spent in the VA after 1978 was to visit my buddy Bill for the last few months of his life in 2018. And now I have to restrict my opiates severely…Ev is my narcotics manager, when I need them…
Because the tort law industry got rid of everything between aspirin and opiates.
Everything that worked for me in between, gone now, because of “side effects.” Like opiates don’t have side effects.
Sometimes life is going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith.
Steve Jobs
As you can see in And Finally…today is the anniversary of AA. For all the drunks and junkies out there who haven’t yet seen the bottom, find it before it finds you. For those who have stopped chasing their dragons, one day, one hour, one minute at a time….and another…
And then another…and another…
Coming Up…
The Hornet's Nest: Did It Matter?
The Bismarck Chase Reconsidered
And Finally…
On 10 June:
1775: John Adams proposes a Continental Army to supplement the chaos of militias that were engaging the British. While what there was of a motley army already bottled up the British in Boston, the other militias often would not leave their home colonies. Adam’s Continental concept made these militias at the service of all the colonies and they would become the backbone of the American rebellion.
1935: Bill W. and Bob S. found Alcoholics Anonymous in Akron, Ohio. Both men were self-described hopeless drunks who could not stay off the sauce, and they knew it was killing them. They created a forum for fellow alcoholics to share their pain; an early support group, and hopefully dry out. Today, AA holds meetings in every city around the world. In major metro areas, you can find a meeting nearly every hour of every day in multiple languages. There are faith-based (from atheist to Zoroastrian), and even meetings in sign language. If you need one, find one.
And today is NATIONAL ICED TEA DAY. I never liked the stuff; tried it when I went cold turkey. I switched to Vernor’s, which was prized because it was hard to get in Wisconsin in the early ‘80s. I still like it, but there’s no National Day for it.