Schedule for November 2009

    “You were put into the cradle as an addict,” his counselor told him recently – just a few months into sobriety and after several years of a drug-addled existence.

    “My counselor was absolutely right that day,” he said this week, during a private conversation with the Messenger. His partner of 18 years – the mother of their two teen-aged children – sat to his left. “We are a product of our own environment,” he said.

    Illicit substances abuse filled his childhood surroundings. Dad’s side preferred alcohol; Mom’s chose pills. From the time he could walk and talk, he watched his “family of enablers” drink, smoke, and pop whatever they had at their numb fingertips, and he quickly fit into the family.

    At age 15 – feeling peer pressure – he inhaled his first hit of marijuana while seated atop one of the war monuments in St. Albans City’s Taylor Park, where drug activity still persists today.

    “I felt free,” he recalled. “It helped me escape reality. It gave me justification.”

    For the next 18 months, he was on a strict “pot maintenance program.” Then he discovered booze. And Valium.

    That’s when he took off. And that’s when he crashed.

    It was then, during the mid-1980s, that he became a heavy hitter in an off-the-radar prescription drug culture that, today, makes headlines almost daily. He never spent much money on Valium – his painkiller of choice – because his relatives gave it to him.

    “I was just the next generation,” he said. “But I also know you’d sell just about anything, including your soul, to get what you need.”

    On blood pressure medication since age 18, he spent his early adult years psychologically – and foolishly – convincing himself that Valium kept him on an even keel. Then he honed a new talent: manipulating doctors.

    In the early 1990s, he was in a car crash and, through malingering, convinced a physician to prescribe him four tablets of Valium a day. When the drugs were in hand, he autonomously doubled the dosage to eight.

    “The car accident was a perfect opportunity for me, because, before that, I was doing what these kids do today – sneak the stuff out of the medicine cabinet,” he said. “That car accident fit like a glove.”

    He was working then, building his way to self-employment. He was notorious for liquid-and-leaf lunch breaks on job sites. Some of his workers ate elsewhere.

    “And whoever stayed knew what was going to happen,” he said.

    Also, he taught some of his nieces and nephews the finer points of addiction, by using in their presence. However – and this still shocks his partner – he has never used at home, never in front of his own children.

    Instead, he left his family behind at home, nightly, to hang with people he thought were his friends. He dabbled in cocaine and crystal meth, which he said is readily available in St. Albans today, but his steady, toxic diet consisted mainly of alcohol, pot, and Valium.

    “My reward from hanging with the druggies was being high,” he said.

Rear-view mirror

    They met in 1992. She knew he was a social drinker and pot-smoker. Then she learned he was a manageable addict, meaning he could carry on life’s duties and relationships with an alcohol-and-pill-addled brain.

    “I was pretty naïve,” she said. “I never had addiction. I actually disbelieved that people would take their own prescription drugs to get high and supposedly feel good.”

    He hit rock bottom in 1998, during a tragic situation he understandably holds close to his chest, and spent the next two years in prison. She told their children, then 5 and 6, that he “made a mistake,” and that a judge sent him to a special school, to make amends. They know the truth now.

    “I stayed for the children,” she said. “They never saw it, so to break up something they didn’t know was broken – I didn’t want that kind of guilt.”

    When he got out of prison in 2001, he rediscovered pills and a higher tolerance for them. Six years later, he quit. Overnight. His business and home had gone south.

    “Nothing had any reasoning anymore,” he said. “Everybody’s patience had worn out.”

    “It was amazing,” she added. “It’s like it is now. It’s even better now. He’s an amazing dad, when he has the quality time. When he’s using, he’s a dad of convenience. When he’s not, he’s a dad all the time.”

    But he wasn’t done.

    Not yet.

    In November 2008, he sustained a legitimate back injury that forced one doctor to suggest surgery, and another to dismiss it. The first physician prescribed 120 Percocet and 120 Valium. He never discussed his addiction with the physician.

    “Why would I?” he said. “I wouldn’t get what I needed.”

    He was using again. Hard. Heavy. Ten Percocet daily. And when the refills ran out, he returned to the streets and obtained 100 pills in a half hour or less, if he had the cash.

    “It’s very available,” he said. “All of it. In today’s world, going out and buying 100 Percocet is like going to a warehouse store and buying 10 cases of beer. No wait. Cash on delivery.”

    This past summer, his daughter wrote him a letter, declaring she missed him. She blamed herself for his problems. Additionally, his son had grown upset and miserable.

    “That letter from my daughter was the center stone for turning my life around,” he said.

    In July, he woke on a Wednesday, emotionally drained, and went to the Northwestern Medical Center (NMC) emergency department, where Dr. Ed Haak – one of the many local soldiers in the war against prescription drug abuse – hurriedly helped him enter residential treatment.

    No judgment. No punishment. Just assistance.

    “I saw a guy looking for help,” Haak said this week. “I think there are a lot of people looking for help, and we haven’t been able to help them.”

    In Haak’s treatment referral letter, he wrote, “Throughout my discussions with him, he never mentioned that he was in pain with his back. He never requested pain medication. During my examination, he did not appear in pain, but rather was tearful and upset that he was in this position of needing opiates for his addiction.

    “When I asked him if he could get additional Percocet if he wanted, he noted that he could get as many as he wanted from his contacts within a half hour, but that is not what he wanted. He wanted and needed help to break this cycle.”

    He will be three months sober on Monday. He feels changed: grateful, expressive, and lucid. He attends a weekly counseling session and has joined support groups.

    But is this time different? Really?

    “I have to own my part in everything I’ve done to get better every day,” he said. “But I can’t look back on the debris. It’s done. I do see a lot of trash in my rear-view mirror, but I have to look ahead and stay well.”

    Back surgery is an option now, but it scares his partner, because he’ll likely need something for the pain.

    “I don’t know if that’s something he can do,” she said.

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The subjects in this story, minus Dr. Haak, agreed to speak on conditions of anonymity. The Messenger appreciates their cooperation.

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