Postcards From the Edge Page 2

  Most of the people in here share the desire to seem cool. They can be aching from heroin withdrawal, but ask how they are and they’ll say, “Pretty good, man. Hangin’ in there.” The answer comes too quickly, and hovering over a grin, a look of desperate loneliness gazes across the abyss. The only thing worse than being hurt is everyone knowing that you’re hurt.

  DAY NINE

  So, essentially I could have died. Not only this time but probably several times, forgetting how much I took and when I took it, not to mention why I took it. Was I celebrating, or drowning my sorrows? Or celebrating my sorrows?

  The junkies were up in arms this morning. Half of them wouldn’t speak to Carol and me because we snitched on Irene. The other half thought it was pretty stupid for anyone to have smoked dope at a drug rehab. They had to call a special little group session to defuse things. These aren’t people with a good handle on their emotions, and without their chemical coping skills it’s every man for himself. It doesn’t run hot and cold here, it runs hot and hotter. Bart, the homosexual triple Scorpio, called me an asshole in the Ping-Pong room.

  It turns out Irene got the dope from one of the cleaning men who she was fucking in the stairwell during lunch. My kind of people.

  DAY TEN

  Three new people checked in today. Marvin, a retired bus driver in his fifties, is probably here for alcoholism. Wanda is a heroin addict who says she’s a model and brought the makeup to prove it. And Mark is a crazy kid from Vacaville—I don’t know what his drug of choice is, but I don’t think it matters anymore. This is a cross section of village idiots from all over the state. Everyone you ever would have thought was too loaded at a party is in one place.

  After group, Bart apologized for calling me an asshole and told me a story about the time that he spilled amyl nitrate on his testicles and his balls melted into the sheets, and he had to take the sheets and his balls to the hospital and have them separated. I told him it was a great idea for a TV movie.

  We had lunch and watched The Outer Limits. Drug addicts pretty much all have the same taste in shows: science fiction and MTV. It’s so bizarre. Everyone is acting like where we are is sort of normal, and we’re in a drug clinic.

  DAY ELEVEN

  The new people came out of detox today and joined our group. Marvin said he wasn’t an alcoholic, but he likes it here. He thinks all of us are interesting. It’s like he’s on a field trip for Psychology Today, or a segment of Bloopers, Blumpers and Bleepers where they send a healthy person to blend in with a wardful of addicts just to see if anybody notices.

  Wanda was in the hospital recovering from a suicide attempt (carbon monoxide in her car). She called her dealer to bring her heroin because she couldn’t sleep. She overdosed in the hospital, so they just transferred her down here.

  Mark was brought in by his parole officer directly from Vacaville. He’s nineteen, and he looks like he’s been on medication of some kind for most of his life. His blond hair is greasy and parted down the middle, and he has very wild eyes. When he walks down the hallways, he hugs the walls, which Carl says is a prison thing. Mark has already been in jail for three years for resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer, and now he’s in a drug clinic. His father came in today to bring him some clothes. He seemed disappointed at the way Mark’s turned out.

  My mom is probably sort of disappointed at how I turned out, but she doesn’t show it. She came by today and brought me a satin and velvet quilt. I’m surprised that I was able to detox without it. I was nervous about seeing her, but it went okay. She thinks I blame her for my being here. I mainly blame my dealer, my doctor, and myself, and not necessarily in that order. She didn’t like my hair very much, but pretended to. She said it was “interesting.” She thinks my life would work better if I got a new business manager. She washed my underwear and left.

  In the last few years I’ve become an accepted eccentric at best, and a fuckup at worst. I feel like I’ll let people down if I take away the behavior they’ve grown accustomed to disapproving of. They try to discipline me, I refuse to be disciplined. They object, I’m objectionable. We all know exactly what to do.

  Julie talked to us today about the family and friends of the addict, the Alanons. She said they become very caught up in the whole downward spiral of watching the alcoholic slowly die. It can become their whole lives. Addicted to addicts. “It’s like an Alanon jumps out the window and someone else’s life flashes in front of their eyes,” said Sid. I wished I’d said that, but then, I probably will.

  I keep thinking that if I could marry somebody, this would be less embarrassing. I’m so jealous of Carol because she has a husband. It makes it seem less final that she’s here. It gives her something to go back to, someone to be with, and someone to be. I have no situation that requires me to be more than I am. It just seems like when you get two people together, and one’s in a suit and one’s in a dress, how could they be unhappy? Unless their kid murdered another kid or something.

  I envy people who have the capacity to sit with another human being and find them endlessly interesting. I would rather watch TV. Of course, this eventually becomes known to the other person. I once told Jonathan that I would pay more attention to him if he got better programming. It always seems that in the beginning with someone, nothing they do could ever be wrong, except that they don’t see you enough. And eventually it gets to the point where you just want to say, “Get off my leg, okay?”

  What’s the difference? No one would marry me with this haircut, anyway.

  DAY TWELVE

  This boy Brian was checked in this morning by his mother and his aunt. He wore a red knit hat and stunk of beer. He was about eighteen years old, and he did not want to be in a drug clinic. He had a concert to go to Wednesday night.

  Brian’s brother was killed last year in a car accident. He was lying in the street and someone released the brake on a car, and it rolled over him because he was too loaded to get out of the way.

  They sent Carol and Bart and me to convince Brian to stay. He said he was impressed that someone like me actually stayed in the clinic, and that he wanted to be an actor, but he couldn’t be persuaded to stay. He said he was too young to stop drinking and drugging. All his friends did it.

  He knew he was probably an alcoholic—he drank all day and smoked a lot of dope, and did cocaine when he could get it—and he knew that his brother had, in effect, died of it. Still, he couldn’t handle what it meant to be in a drug unit. He wouldn’t examine it. It was too heavy and it was definitely too hard. It couldn’t be true, therefore it wasn’t. And so he split.

  The whole thing made me think. I used up so much energy explaining why I was late, why I didn’t show up, how I wasn’t really loaded, I was just tired, I had jet lag. Avoiding looking people in the eyes because I couldn’t stand how I felt when I saw the disappointment in their faces. That ate up a lot of energy. If I could accept that I’m a drug addict, I could have all that energy back.

  So, I’m a drug addict. I guess we’re allowed just so many drugs in one lifetime, and I’ve used up my coupon. From here on out, there’s just reality. I think that’s what maturity is: a stoic response to endless reality. But then, what do I know?

  DAY THIRTEEN

  This is not necessarily where I envisioned myself when I was young. I didn’t stand up in school and say, “My goal when I’m older is to be in a drug hospital, eating cafeteria food and watching The Outer Limits and fighting in group therapy and playing volleyball in the park and not dealing with my feelings.”

  I talked to Thomas on the phone today. He said he’s been trying to reach me, but the line is always busy—it’s a pay phone. Thomas sounded so calm, so okay, so not me. Somehow I absorbed the world’s genetic horror, while my brother inherited the sweetness and patience of someone who befriends birds. He’s one of the few people who, when you ask how he is and he says fine, you don’t question it. It reminds me of the scene in The Exorcist when the priest looks into the devil insi
de the possessed girl and cries, “Take me!” and the devil leaves the girl and enters the priest. It’s like I’m an exorcist, taking all the darkness and letting it gather inside me, while Thomas absorbs—well, maybe not light, but certainly lighter colors. There’s some sad buoyance in him. He ambles and strolls, moving through life in smooth easy motions. I told him that the great thing about having me as a sister is that I make him look even better by supplying him with contrast. He said, “The really great thing about having you as a sister is that you’re the only adult I know that keeps a bowl of Tootsie Rolls for her guests.” I don’t know why, but this made me feel better.

  Sid said that drugs weren’t the problem, life was the problem. Drugs were the solution. I think Sid has a crush on me. He gets me up in the morning by coming into my room and holding my feet until I’m totally awake. I like having my feet held, even if it is by Sid.

  Marvin still doesn’t think he’s an alcoholic.

  Mark showed me his letter from Manson today. It didn’t seem to make much sense—something about redwood trees. Mark says Manson is deeply misunderstood and a “cool guy.”

  DAY FOURTEEN

  Today Mark threatened Sid’s life. Nobody quite knows what happened, but Mark was given Haldol, an antipsychotic. Now he has all this mung in the side of his mouth, and he looks wilder than ever. Carol and Wanda say they’re going to put trash cans in front of their doors tonight, because there are no locks in drug clinics.

  Carl’s mad at me because I gave him ten dollars to shut up. He says I’m a spoiled movie actress and I don’t know the first thing about real life. Maybe he’s right. Sometimes I feel like I’ve got my nose pressed up against the window of a bakery, only I’m the bread.

  DAY FIFTEEN

  A lady came in today to beef up our spirituality, AA-style. She told us a couple of great stories. First, she explained why people who bring us into AA are called Eskimos. There was this guy named Harvey, sitting in a bar up in Alaska. Another guy, Tony, came into the bar and started talking to the bartender about God. Harvey said to Tony, “Do you believe all that stuff?” Tony said, “Yeah, I do,” and Harvey said, “Aaah, I tried that God stuff. It’s a bunch of crock.” Tony said, “What do you mean? What happened?” So Harvey said, “Well, I was in this really, really bad snowstorm. I mean, I’d been lost for days and I was dying. I was desperate. Finally, I dropped to my knees and prayed. I said, ‘God, if you’re up there, please get me out of here. Save me!’ ” “Then Harvey stopped talking, so Tony said, “Well, what happened?” And Harvey said, scornfully, “Oh, nothing. An Eskimo came and got me out.”

  Then she told us this story of how her first AA sponsor had gotten this horrible kind of cancer, and her sponsor believed in God. So this lady couldn’t understand how she could believe in a God who would make her suffer like that. And her sponsor said, “God never gives us any more than we can handle, so if he gives you a lot to handle, take it as a compliment. It’s because he believes that you can handle a lot.” It was such a powerful thought, I wanted to brand it into my brain.

  When I got back to my room, there were flowers from the guy who pumped my stomach. The note said that he could tell I was a very sensitive person. I’d have to be sensitive to need all that Percodan.

  I’m tempted to marry him, just to be able to tell people how we met.

  ALEX

  . . . That’s it, I’ve quit. This time I’ve really quit. I’m not doing cocaine anymore. If someone came up and offered me cocaine I wouldn’t do it. I doubt that anyone will offer it to me, though. No one offers cocaine anymore. It used to be a way that people got friendly, sharing a few toots, but now everyone hoards their cocaine.

  My first party without drugs. Interesting. I mean, when I was a little kid I always went to birthday parties straight, but that was a while ago.

  I wonder if anyone here even has any cocaine. That guy Steve looks like he might, he usually has some. I loathe that guy, but he always has great cocaine . . .

  No, I promised myself I would not do any cocaine, because that last time was such a nightmare and . . . But it was fun in the beginning. Sometimes it’s fun. I don’t know, Freud took it, so how bad could it be?

  But this is the new me. I’m totally on a health kick. I have not taken any cocaine in four days. I don’t even like it anymore. I never really did like it, I just did it ’cause it was around. And I don’t think I was really heavy into it, not like Steve over there. Steve is really, really into cocaine. I would say he’s got a problem. He can’t stop. Well, sometimes he stops for a while, but he can’t stay stopped. I really think I can. I think I have willpower, I just haven’t used it in a while. I’ve been kind of on a willpower break, but now I feel it’s coming back. I really think I can stay with this commitment of not doing cocaine.

  Besides, this healthy life is great. I really love this being straight. You know, you see people jogging and you think, “ Yuuucccchh,” but I’m getting on. I’m in my late twenties, and I think taking drugs was all part of being young. I don’t think I had a problem, I think I was just young. And that by definition isn’t a problem, it’s just a point in your life when it seems okay to take a lot of cocaine. And then that point passes.

  I don’t know, I think it was the bad relationship I was in that really determined my drug intake. And now Joan’s left me, and I really feel good about myself. I mean I want to. And I went to that juice bar today and bought chlorophyll juice, that green drink. It gave me diarrhea, but I really feel good tonight. And I feel like it’s a beginning. You go to a place like that and you buy the chlorophyll juice and the carrot juice, and you’re making a statement. And I bought some new sneakers, I’m gonna start running . . . I actually got up at nine thirty this morning and moved my exercise bike right next to my bed, so tomorrow morning I know I’m just gonna hop on that cycle. Ten minutes is enough for aerobics, I guess. And then maybe I’ll go to that Canyon Ranch health spa. Maybe then I could meet a really great girl. I think if I meet someone who doesn’t do drugs, then we won’t do them together, obviously, and that’ll really help me. I think all of these choices reflect where you’re at with you.

  The only thing that bothers me is the idea of giving it up completely. I should be able to celebrate every now and again. Like if I stay straight for a while, I should be able to celebrate by getting loaded. I don’t see what’s wrong with that. Steve does that, but Steve has a problem. I think that once I get this under control, I’ll be able to do it. And I really feel like I’ve made a strong beginning. God, my stomach is upset from that juice, though. I wonder if everything good for you tastes awful. I hope not, because I’m really gonna get into it.

  Steve looks kind of loaded now. That looks so awful. You see people and they’re loaded and . . . Look how dumb it looks. That looks so stupid. I can’t believe I ever did it. I feel so good about being on the other side of it now. It really erodes your self-esteem to make a decision like not taking drugs and then taking them. The thing is, I also think you can take a little bit, and not do it to excess. Not everybody can—obviously there are some personality types who can’t do anything a little bit—but I’m not one of those. There are certain areas of my life where I do a very little bit, and I think if I practice, one of those areas could be cocaine.

  Well, maybe not cocaine, but maybe I could take a speed pill every so often. I love what speed and coke do to my weight. It’s unnatural, I know. I could just exercise . . .

  God, there’s that great feeling right at the beginning. If you get some good coke. From now on, I’m just gonna do good coke. When I do it, I’m gonna make sure. I’ll never go to the dealer in Brentwood again. Never. I think that was the problem. His coke hurts your face, it becomes a chore to do it. I’ll just do pharmaceutical, that’s not hard on the membrane, and I really want to take care of my body. I think I’m unusual, because even during all those years when I was doing drugs, I still sometimes went to the gym. Joan accused me of trying to maintain my body so I could destroy it wi
th chemicals, but I think that’s a little harsh. And even if I did, I’m certainly better off than someone like Steve, who’s just frying himself and eating burgers and sugar. I eat no carcinogenic food, I’m drinking some juices now . . . I went overboard today, but . . .

  I’m tired. Who’s that girl? She’s attractive . . . Aauugggh, I don’t want to get into another relationship thing again. God, I’m so tired. I shouldn’t be drinking. I shouldn’t have started drinking, ’cause I associate the two, alcohol and cocaine. I’m just gonna not drink now. Oh, he sees me, he’s coming over. I should ignore him so he gets that I’m not interested in doing any—

  “Hi, Steve, how ya doin’? Yeah, yeah. I’m fine. No, I feel okay. I don’t look that bad. I have a stomach thing today. How are you? You seem very up. No, I’m . . . I’m not doing any right now. I’ve quit. Yeah. No, I feel great. No, I’m serious. What do you mean, that’s not a great line reading? I feel great. I’m absolutely committed to this. No, I don’t mean it like a judgment on you. I think it’s fine that some people still do coke, you know? I don’t think it’s weak . . .

  “No, I don’t think I had a problem. It’s just that my nose started . . . I don’t know. I’ll probably end up still doing a little bit every so often, you know. Not right now. Maybe . . . well, like, maybe . . . I don’t know, let me just . . . Is there food at this party? All right, maybe like a hit, but that’s—who is that girl over there?—that’s it, though. I’m gonna do . . . No, this is . . . I’m not . . . All right, give me one hit. But don’t give me any more even if I ask you to. This is good coke, right? It’s not from Brentwood? All right, one hit.

  “(sniff) Mmmmmhh! (sniff) Ooohhhh, fantastic. Oh, great. Shit, that’s great! Mmmmhhhhh! It just burns a little bit. There’s not much cut in it, right? Yeah? It’s good. No, I really don’t need any more. I mean, I can handle it, I just think that was it. You know, people come to a party and they do one hit to break the tension, and I think I can really master that now. I can do a little bit.