Detox - the final draft

Jerry Holland usually found the view overlooking Pittsburgh and the three rivers from Mt. Washington inspiring, but not today. The beauty of the sun dappled, icy rivers and buildings on a cold February afternoon could not touch the despair ripping at his soul. Nothing had gone right in the last twenty months since he got sober.

At thirty-eight, anxiety ruled his life. A few drinks would wash it away and let him feel the sweet joy of alcohol oblivion. Yet they would also take him down the same destructive path of drunkenness to detox and rehab where he would have to start all over again.

He prayed. But he had little faith some great power listened or cared about his request for a good job. A week later he found a part-time job, hardly what he envisioned in his prayer.
Jerry walked into the Salvation Army Southside Detox at 3:50 PM, ten minutes before his shift started. Spartan described the detox at best, bleak at worst.

He stood in a recreation area. It had a TV, two tables with chairs around them, three easy chairs and a couch. Behind waist high filing cabinets three rows of old army cots lined the dimly lit ward.

He introduced himself to a short, dour faced man behind a desk off to the right. “I’m, Jerry Holland. I’m supposed to start today at four.”

“I’m, Ronnie.” He didn’t get up or offer his hand.

“At four o’clock announce its dinner time and then escort then across the hall for dinner.”
Some men stood in line waiting. One of them said, “You new, man.”

“Yeah.”

“You an alcoholic.”

“Yeah, I got twenty months sober. I’m just like you.” He saw little point in adding that he wasn’t completely happy with his life sober. His ex-wife still didn’t let him see the children and couldn’t find a job except for one like this or driving cab. Alcohol took him to a low bottom and at times he still felt like he looked at the world from inside a dark pit.

“Not really. I got one day and you could hardly call me sober.” He jerked his head toward Ronnie’s desk. “Don’t mind him. He’s okay, just a little intense. He started out here just like the rest of us but he’s done well for himself. He’s got a few years sober. All you got to do is shout dinner time and the guys will come over and then you walk us across the hall.”

“Thanks. Dinner time,” Jerry shouted and watched the men crawl out of their cots and line up.

“Holland, what you doing here?”

Jerry looked up the line and saw a face he recognized.

“Jim Bosca. Remember me from the Harbor Light. We roomed together for about a week, then I left.”

Jerry smiled and hoped his face didn’t reveal his surprise. Jim Bosco looked nothing like the man he briefly knew eighteen months ago. Then his face was white and clean. Now it looked yellowish with red blotches on the jaws. He kept his brown hair trimmed and combed to perfection but now it hung over his ears dark and greasy. The lack of any semblance pride astonished Jerry.

“What are you doing here, Jim?”

“I hit some rough times, that’s all. I’ll be out of here in a couple days and everything will be normal again.

“Oh.” Jerry couldn’t think of anything else to say. After he brought the men back from dinner, he asked Ronnie what he should do.

“Have a seat. I started out here. Had some problems after Nam. I was a helicopter pilot. Things fell apart a few years after I came home. It’s taken a long time to come back from the streets.”

“I was in Nam.” Jerry said.

Ronnie nodded. “Then you understand.” He pointed to the sleeping area. “This is the last court of appeal for those men. Nobody wants them. That’s were alcoholism has taken them, to the streets.

“They come in here for three to five days depending on how bad they are, mostly to get out of the cold, get some hot food and a warm bed. That’s what I use to do, come in for three hots and cot. February is a cold month and the streets are a bad place to be. If you stay around here for awhile, you’ll see these same men come back time after time.

“No hospital will take them anymore. They’ve been to the hospitals too many times. But the Salvation Army will take them - no questions asked.

“Maybe one of them will get out of here and do something. I did. But it took many years and many trips to this place before I had enough. And that’s what we’re doing here, trying.” Ronnie’s rough face didn’t hold the hope of the usual Drug and Alcohol Counselor.
“What am I suppose to do?”

“This is an easy job. All you do is keep an eye on them. Talk to them. Share your story and hope you can get through to one someday. Don’t get your hopes up that you’ll do any good around here. If you do, it will be a very hard job.”

“What’s up with Jim over there?”

Ronnie frowned and shook his head. “He comes in about every three months or so. Story is always the same, he gets drunk and his brother throws him out. He lives on the street for awhile, decides to try again, his brother lets him come live with him for awhile, he drinks and out he goes and back he comes.” Ronnie shrugged. “Who knows - maybe this time?” Ronnie didn’t add that he doubted it but his face said as much. “That’s why we’re here; to give him another chance after everyone else has given up on him.”

Jerry spent his first shift watching TV, playing spades with a few men, listening to their stories and admitting two new men who came in cold, hungry and drunk. Jim Bosco didn’t approach him. At midnight, replacements came in and he recognized one from the Harbor light.
Pat Rienhold smiled when he saw Jerry. “You got a job here too?”

Pat was one of the few success stories from the Harbor Light. They had become friends when they started to trek from the Harbor Light across the West End Bridge to the AA club.
After exchanging pleasantries, Jerry left.

The next day Jerry went to a noon AA meeting at the club in the West End of Pittsburgh. Someone brought up the topic of bottoms. Jerry listened to men and women talk of what alcohol had taken from them, families, homes and jobs. The meeting almost became a competition to see who lost the most.

It came to a man Jerry became friends with several months ago, a doctor and fellow Nam vet. “I lost nothing,” the doctor said. His partners had forced him into a six month rehab for doctors. “I still have my wife, my children, my automobiles, my job and a very nice house in the North Hills. But when I hit bottom, no one can tell me I didn’t feel like the lowest thing on this planet, like any man who has ever lived under a bridge.”

Those words smacked Jerry between the eyes. Bottom wasn’t something physical. It was emotional. You had to feel it to know it. And this man, who kept everything, had felt it. Jerry never thought of it that way before.

He went to work that afternoon. A couple new faces had arrived and a few had left. One of the new faces was a young black man who introduced himself as Teak. His white smile and personable boyish, twenty-something face made him a likable young man. He appeared out of place among the men worn down by the streets.

Jerry played spades with Teak and a couple other guys and listened to their stories.
"I live with my grandmother," Teak said. "When I go out on a toot for a few days, I come down here to sober up before going home."

"Have you thought about getting sober?"

Teak laughed. "I go out on a toot every few months. My grandmother has more problems with it than me."

Jerry talked to Teak about alcoholism and getting sober. Teak grinned, nodded and ignored everything Jerry said.

Ronnie frowned when Jerry asked him about Teak. “Hey, you didn’t waste your time. Maybe you planted a seed. Who knows? I’ve been here, Jerry. If you say something one of them remembers ten years from now, then you didn’t waste your time. It’s what we’re about.”
One night a weathered faced man came in high and drunk. He gave Jerry an angry look over and said, “You don’t know nothing about the streets.”

Jerry didn’t try to pretend he did.

He held up his left hand which had two fingers missing. “Frostbite, they had to cut them off. I live in the stairwell of the Sixth St. Cemetery. You know which one I mean?”

Jerry did. It was a beautiful church that dated back to before the Revolution. The cemetery had an Indian chief buried in it.

“And no one comes into my cemetery unless I say so.”

No doubt his matted, curly, black hair, mouth twisted with rage and fierce eyes frightened homeless drunks away from his small domain. Rather than provoke him further, Jerry remained silent.

The man walked over to the desk and said, “Ronnie, how you doing?”

“I’m okay. How are you, Jacky?”

After Ronnie processed him in, Jacky stumbled to a cot and flop on it.
Ronnie smiled for the first time Jerry could remember. “That’s Jacky’s. He’s okay. He’s a Nam vet too. We use to panhandle and drink together. Leave him be and he won’t bother you.”

Jerry celebrated his second anniversary sober with a new girlfriend, Liz. They met in AA. Alcohol had ruined her marriage and left her a single mother with two kids. The threat of losing her children forced her into AA. Together they sought solace from the loneliness of early recovery. She was attractive and they had a good time together. The celebration went well. After dinner they went back to her house and made love. After Liz fell asleep he stared into the darkness. He smiled. Things had started to turn around for him.

When Jerry went back to work, he recognized one of the new men. He remembered the graying hair and pale face with eyes that stared off like he had a million things on his mind. Jerry had picked him up in his cab several months ago outside the detox. He went straight to a bar. Jerry looked at him several times through the shift. The man remained in the back of the ward on his cot. He didn’t interact with anyone around him.

Jim Bosco came back three months after his last visit. Jerry tried to talk to him. “Things have gotten better for me since the Harbor Light, Jim.”

“Yeah, you’ve done good, Holland.”

“You know there is a better way. I left the Harbor Light and went to AA. It helps me stay sober.”

“Yeah, well I don’t need those people, Holland. They ain’t got anything I want. You watch. I’m going to beat this thing. I’m going to quit drinking, get back to work, live with my brother and drink on holidays.”

“Jim, the problem is once you start drinking you can’t stop. That’s what I had to come to grips with. I can’t have just one or two drinks.”

“That’s you, Holland. I’m different. Right now I’m going through a rough period. That’s all. I’ll get through this.”

Jerry had told himself the same thing many times. But it was all lies. At first, he found the things he heard at meetings hard to swallow, that he had a disease and he couldn’t drink like normal people. He desperately wanted to believe what Jim believed. He came to realize the disease of alcoholism talked to him, told him his wasn’t sick, that he could bring his drinking under control and live as he wanted to live. Those lies nearly destroyed him.

“Jim, it doesn’t work that way. You can’t control alcohol, it controls you.”

Jim shook his head and gave Jerry a knowing smile. “They’ve brainwashed you, Holland. I’m telling you I’ll beat this thing without their help. I don’t have to go to those meetings and deal with those people.”

Jerry frowned. He understood how Jim felt. He had felt the same way a few years ago. He believed his problems caused his drinking. If he could get his problems under control, he could control his drinking. But the problems kept getting worse until he landed in the Harbor light after twenty-eight days in the VA Drug and Alcohol Unit.

Jerry wanted to offer these men what he had learned, but they were like he was several years ago. They didn’t want to listen. And he didn’t have the words to break through the denial.
No one had the words for him either. He had to feel the complete despair of hitting bottom. Yet these men should have felt the despair a long time ago. It amazed him that they didn’t.
Jim left the table and walked back to his cot.

One night, Pat came in and took Jerry aside. “I got a job with one of the hospitals as a drug and alcohol counselor.”

“That’s great, Pat.”

“I’ve put in my notice here. You know, Jerry, I’ve been watching these guys come and go for a year. It’s always the same. And I’ve come to a conclusion. This is what they want. It’s the only explanation. They have a free existence, no bosses, no wives, no parents, no rules, just living on the streets doing what they want. They’re happy in their misery.”

“That can’t be true, Pat.”

Pat shrugged. “It doesn’t sound right but I got no other explanation for it. How could anyone live this kind of life unless they want to?”

Jerry frowned. He had no answer. They seemed to revel in their misery. “I don’t know that this is the life they’ve chosen, but they certainly have settled for it. And the only explanation I have is alcoholism. That could be us.”

Pat frowned. “I hope not.”

A couple months later, Jerry got a job offer. In his last week at the detox he learned Jim Bosco died. They found him dead along Route 51 of alcohol poisoning. Jerry never really liked the man. But to die alone on a dark, cold street seemed an unworthy death for any human being.

Five years later, Jerry stood on Mt. Washington looking over the city of Pittsburgh on a clear, sunny March day with a young man in his early twenties.

“Nothing’s happening and nothing’s going right, Jerry.”

“Paul, recovery requires the one thing an alcoholic doesn’t possess - patience. It takes time for things to turn around.”

“There’s this second step thing too. Jerry, if I ask a Power greater than myself to restore me to sanity, I’m admitting I’m insane. I don’t think I am.”

Jerry raised his eyebrows and laughed. “Think not?

“Paul, I’m going to tell you what I’ve discovered to be true. Taking on alcoholism, packing two pissed off parents and some willpower is like single handedly taking on a company of North Vietnamese Regulars. You’re going to get your ass kicked.”

Jim Bosco came to mind. He couldn’t do anything for the man. And maybe the same was true for Paul. He didn’t know. But like Ronnie said so long ago, ‘just plant a seed.’

“You need a support group and a Power greater than yourself. Do I believe there’s a God? I don’t know. I don’t think all the priests, preachers and rabbis in the world know for sure. That’s why they call it faith.

“I can tell you what happened to me. I stood right here a few years ago and prayed for help. At the time, I was thinking along the lines of a good job and everything coming together sooner than later. I guess you could say that prayer didn’t get answered because I didn’t get a good paying job and things didn’t come together immediately. They did eventually, but it took more time than I had hoped or prayed for.

“Instead of a good job I ended up on the Southside Detox making very little money and watching a parade of drunks pass through who had little hope of ever getting sober or having anything.

“A guy said to me back then that he thought those drunks chose the miserable lives they lived. I’ve thought about that a lot over the last few years. I don’t think that’s true. Today, I think drugs and alcohol damaged their brains to the point where they couldn’t make a rational decision about getting sober. Self-destruction is insanity, Paul.”

He smiled. “At the time, I needed perspective and some appreciation for what little I had. And that’s exactly what that job gave me. Eventually everything worked out. But it took time, Paul.”