Rehab Anniversary
Vol. 3, Issue 45
On Saturday, October 17, 2015, I took a selfie just a few minutes before my US Airways flight departed JFK for West Palm Beach International Airport (PBI), arriving at approx. 9:50 a.m. This was the third flight I'd booked to PBI in 36 hours. I skipped the first two. I wanted to "push the date," as I frequently did then.
This time it wasn't an important meeting I was bailing on or a doctor's appointment or a work deadline but drug and alcohol rehab, my second attempt to get sober through one in two months. I wanted to go eventually, but I didn't want to go just yet.
I'm wearing a black hoodie pulled up and a dour expression in the selfie. I'm also giving the finger. I forget who I sent the photo, too, but it was meant to serve as evidence that, yes, yes, I finally got on the damn plane. Here I am! It was time.
It was a half-empty flight, and there was an eerie lack of turbulence. Even on takeoff, it was like the plane just floated the whole way there. I sat in the middle row. I had that paper pillow behind my neck, but I didn't sleep. I had a tin of Kodiak with me, but I didn't need it. I couldn't fly for more than two hours without nicotine for most of my adult life, so I dipped instead. I used to buy a Snapple at the airport magazine supermarket thing and chug it all before takeoff, then spit in the bottle throughout the entire flight. I'd get up once or twice to dump the sloppy brown dip spit from the bottle into that noisy toilet. Sometimes the tobacco hunks stuck to the insides of the bowl. I would reach in there with one of those cheap paper towels and scoop it out because I didn't want the next person to think it was my shit.
Not on this flight, though! That felt like a huge first step away from the darkness and into whatever light awaits after I get back from rehab. I drank two Mrs. T's – without vodka – to celebrate. Mrs. T's is the best.
As the plane descended, the pilot announced that the temperature in West Palm Beach was about 77 degrees. "Welcome home to those who call this home, and I hope everyone else enjoys their vacation. It's gonna be a perfect weekend in South Florida." I could make this a vacation, I thought. I could push the date on this rehab stint again. I should enjoy this perfect weather and forget about everything else – just for a few days. A few days in the sun could be all that I need.
But the idea that I would disappoint people if I just took a cab to some hotel and then went out that night for crabs and beers like the majority of the normal people on this flight caused me to panic. Then I got real cold. I felt that kind of cold once before when I had some minor heart surgery to repair a troublesome tachycardia. I'd been operated on plenty of times, but for whatever reason – the paper gown, harsh lighting, some rando intern using a plastic disposable razor to shave my groin area – I began to shake this time around. I shook just like my dog used to when we took her to the vet. "He's got the shivers," one nurse told another nurse. "Can we give him something for the shivers?"
When I walked out of my gate, a caramel-sunburnt man of about 60 named Bud was waiting for me. He held a sign with my last name misspelled in Sharpie. He was there to drive me to the detox center a few miles away. On the way there, he talked about how he was retired and volunteered for this gig because his ex-wife was "one of you guys," and doing this made it easier to forgive her for all the hell she put him through. He let me smoke in the car the whole way there, so it was kind of a nice ride.
After detox, I went to the HARP rehab center, a small, holistic-based program in Singer Island, Florida. Based on the website photos sent to me via email by the rehab broker I hired, HARP looked like many of the 55-and-over rental condos my parents looked at before they moved to nearby Jupiter. Singer Island sounds fancy, but it's more like an abandoned resort town, the kind of place that a developer in a ten-gallon hat had high hopes for until he ran out of money or lifespan. Here's some more twisted geography: West Palm Beach is one of the easternmost cities in South Florida. I mean, come on, right?
The last time I went to detox I sprang for a private room and kept my electronic devices. But I wanted to try harder at HARP and also punish myself for my past failed attempts to get sober. So I handed over my iPhone to one of the intake technicians and even agreed to share a two-bedroom dorm with three other dudes, all in their 20's. It was pretty much what I expected. They always bummed cigarettes and pounded pre-workout drinks, and wore Addidas shower shoes everywhere. They also gave each other haircuts with expensive clippers in the kitchen so there was hair on the dishes. I was sure one of them would be dead in a year. They were all nice, though.
In early morning group therapy, the facility prided itself on insinuating new clients as quickly as possible, sometimes on their first days. One of their methods was straight out of an EST orientation: tell everyone three fun facts about yourself. Go.
"I have blue and brown eyes, I love plants, and I'm getting sued by Hulk Hogan for $100 million" was what I came up with.
That didn't land the way I thought it would. "Are you joking?" another 22-year-old asshole asked me. I wasn't, but, yeah, sure. Haha. But I was desperate to show I was smarter than them. I never got to be smarter than anyone back in New York. But at this janky place in Abandoned Hobo Resort, Fla., I assumed I was Mensa material.
A few days later, during one of the group spirituality sessions, the in-house therapist talked about David Foster Wallace's commencement speech "This Is Water" and showed an artlessly remixed YouTube version of it titled "THIS IS WATER!" on a projection screen. I pulled the counselor aside afterward – an incredibly kind and hopeful woman named Lauren – and told her that it seemed odd and crass to celebrate that particular piece in a place filled with so many downtrodden people. "Ya know he hung himself, right?" She nodded politely but exasperatedly – like I was another one of those – and she asked me why that information was so vital for me to tell her. I had no answer.
I didn't get really lonely until Halloween. There was a silly no-costume costume party in the common TV area, and everyone got to eat one piece of candy and drink one can of soda. I knew back home in Brooklyn there was a huge house party happening. I could catch a flight and be there by 1 a.m. if I hustled. What if nobody wanted me there, though?
Around November, things clicked for me – I actually got kind of good at rehab and on some days, I felt very wise. I perfected a backward half-court shot that would knock people out in H-O-R-S-E. I knew the exact amount of time it took to make perfect microwave popcorn. I learned how to play spades. I spent Thanksgiving there, too, and honest to God, it was one of the best ones ever.
I still have my rehab journal, too. It's a crinkly old green Mead One Subject Wide Ruled Notebook. 70 sheets of paper. It has only one entry written in pencil on October 19, 2015., six years ago to the day. In it, I wrote, "This is the part where you try to figure out how this all happened," and then there are about 100 more words of dreary, halfway contrite nonsense. I had already considered myself healed at this point. And underneath that entry, also written by me in pencil, is a note with an upward arrow that says, "This guy suuucks."
*****
Every now and then, I get emails from people who ask me if they should go to rehab to quit whatever is that’s bringing them down. Sometimes I give an answer, but I don't know if that's appropriate. I went to rehab because I could no longer drink or do drugs successfully. And I was unable to stop doing any of that stuff on my own. I don't know if I stayed too long or not long enough. My insurance covered a certain number of days, and then I was kind of shoved out the door. It's a flawed system that grinds down both patients and their caregivers. Everyone in there has been sunk by something. I also relapsed about four months later, but that's common – I’m still here.
And rehab did change me, just not the way I thought it would. Once I got out of there and re-entered the world, I realized I actually knew less about myself than on the day I took that selfie, but it was for the best. I had to leave that person behind.
