28 Seconds

by Michael Bryant

  “I need you to go downstairs. Take the elevator. And then when you leave the building, turn left onto Bloor Street. You’ll be heading east, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Go to Grand & Toy—you know it?”

  “I know it.”

  “Good. Now,” he took a sip of water, “buy a notebook. Okay?”

  “A notebook. Okay. How big?”

  He winced. “Doesn’t matter. You’re going to keep a journal.”

  “A journal?”

  “Yes, a journal. You’re going to write in your journal every night. You’re going to write about your two drinks a night. Every night.”

  “I’m going to keep a journal of my moderation efforts?” “Yes. But don’t lie to the journal. You can lie to your kids, lie to your mother, lie to your wife, even lie to me. But don’t lie to the journal. Write everything down that you think. It’s very important.”

  “Okay,” I said. “When do I start?”

  “Ah, yes. When do you want to start?”

  Susan and I were due to go to an all-inclusive resort in Jamaica in five days. It seemed contrary to the Geneva Conventions to be a moderate drinker at a Jamaican all-inclusive resort—for a moderate drinker, that meant all drinks included in a lump-sum price; for an alcoholic, it meant all you can drink.

  I told Dr. Himmel about Jamaica. He asked if I thought I could moderate my drinking at the resort. I began sweating. He was forcing me to feel the disease with these questions.

  “Michael,” he said, “I’m not a big drinker, but I will have an occasional drink. I’m a moderate drinker, you might say.”

  He allowed that to sink in. To this day, I think he was fudging it. He probably was not imbibing alcohol at all at the time, so nauseous did chemotherapy no doubt make him. But he was making a point.

  “I, moderate-drinking Max, could go to that resort, and drink moderately. Can you?”

  My immediate thought was: I’m different. Nay—I’m special. I need it, Max, way more than you. You don’t understand.

  “Oh, but I do understand,” he said.

  “How did you do that?”

  “What?”

  “Did you just read my mind?”

  “Did you just speak your mind?”

  I’m not sure what happened. But I said that, yes, I would start January 9 with Project Moderation.

  I reported this great news to Susan and she was quietly supportive. Not excited. Promising forecasts were nothing new to her. Many had turned into the dreariest of days.

  “What about between now and our trip? Can you abstain from drinking for five days? Just to prove to yourself that you can?”

  I knew that the correct answer to this skill-testing question was yes, so I said yes without thinking. I was going to dry out, I thought. And keep a journal.

  Headaches, hand tremors, inability to sleep, extreme agitation at the cocktail hour, obsession with other people drinking alcohol and with alcohol generally were some of the symptoms revealed in my newfound habit of keeping a journal. That journal saved my life, even if it is one of the sadder contributions ever made to English literature.

  As often happens with alcoholics, I was able to abstain for a few days, after which we convince ourselves that we can abstain whenever we want to, at which point we drink again. Until the next round of excursions “on the wagon.”

  Being sober for a few days, besides having some painful detoxification effects, alerted me to new feelings and thinking. I hadn’t gone sober for four days since 1999.

  As the plane began its descent into Kingston Airport, I was weeping. I thought about skipping the moderation effort altogether and abstaining. But that thought lasted only until the slightest incident—luggage delayed by half an hour—and I was toasting our arrival in Jamaica with a sip of Red Stripe.

  Here’s what I wrote in my journal that night: “After many delays and a little stress, we were left to wait in Sandals Resort Lounge until the shuttle arrived. Free beer. Susan had one; I poured a sip to “toast”/taste with her. More for thirst and relief than out of a strong desire, but there was no way I was going to pass on it. Had my sip (2 ounces of beer). Wanted more, but just because it was so available…. Arrived at resort 9:20—ugh. Champagne greeted us. I had it. Stressful check-in. SHA and I fought (her fault!). We sat down for dinner, hungry and fighting. We each ordered a drink. I had a double. Then food was crummy so we went to grill for fast food and each had a beer. Again, the occasion demanded one—I’d already decided that beer sip and mini-champagne did not count. So I stuck to my 2 but knew I hadn’t: thus 2.5….”

  There are a few things of note in those jottings. The blame-game is rampant. I drank because of the “occasion” or its “availability” or “stress.” Not because of me. I fought with Susan but it wasn’t my fault. I lied to myself and others about how much I had in fact had to drink.

  This would be the pattern throughout the coming months. I lied to the journal in parts, and told the truth in others. I was explicit about my mental gymnastics of justification, like this entry on January 11:

  “How do I justify 2–4 [drinks], when I’d committed to only 2 drinks? Holiday, I say. Still very much in control, but for 2–4.” Oh sure: totally in control there.

  Or January 16: “1 Beer today. Not hungover, but tired and cranky so very bad. Pissed off at that huge cocktail last night (a triple bourbon before dinner, 6 drinks in total). Very little desire for a drink but had two beers with SHA at airport [returning home from Jamaica to Toronto]. Then stopped.”

  Good God, the denial. The denial that I harboured back then, oblivious to the rank absurdity of this thinking. Who has “very little desire” for something only to consume 16 ounces of it!? Breaks my heart every time I read it.

  But some entries make me laugh. Jan 12: “5 drinks (sort of—1 cocktail, 1 champagne, 1 beer, 1 more cocktail (double), ½ beer, ½ wine … 4½?” Or Feb 2: “Skipped Wed night because drunk.”

  Many days were blank. Some days were explicit about a binge. January 20: “Missed last night. Fell off wagon but not too hard. Hungover today. Fine tonight. Moderate? Almost. Not counting … That first drink has become too important.”

  Starting that night, I stopped counting. Or, as I put it that night: “moderate but not counting.” Two and a half months passed. The worst of my life. I didn’t moderate. I didn’t drink two drinks a night, unless you count two mason jars of bourbon as two drinks. I lied a lot to everyone but the journal and Max Himmel, to whom I lied only a little.

  The true genius of the alcoholic is for self-delusion and rationalization. One night, I would say I wanted more booze because it was so freely available. Another night, it’s for the taste of the wine. Another night, it’s to satisfy a ritual behaviour.

  Even when I admitted the truth of how much I drank, there were always the excuses of some event, circumstance, or other person. Bad sommeliers. Boring company. Not enough non-alcoholic beverages available.

  At a certain point, I began referring to Susan as “The Cop,” demonizing her in my journal.

  “Not moderate last night. The Cop’s absence clearly a factor. Buzz factor at work and the freedom to crawl inside the bottle. Discipline impossible when intoxicated. Booze like a friend to spend time with and I like getting on the phone. Partying alone” (Jan 31, 2006).

  There were occasional, and melodramatic, cries for help, mixed with self-pity. “WHY? Point is that boozing at night, even in moderation, is too much of my life. Planning, thinking, boozeobsessed” (Feb 2).

  “Friday night: the excuse du jour. I thought about [moderation] then (get this!) decided that I shouldn’t obsess—so just drink!! What an idiot…. I’m devolving. I’m NOT disciplined. I’m a royal piece of shit … PA-thetic” (Feb 3).

  As February turned to March, the writing itself, the penmanship, began to deteriorate. It painted a picture of decline that I can now see just from flipping the pages with my thumb; an animation of that last chapter of boozing.

  My han
ds were shaking, increasingly, starting when I woke up and easing up once I started drinking in the evening. During Question Period that winter, I reached for a glass of water while answering a question, and I could barely get the water in my mouth, while the cameras were rolling. I stopped drinking water at my legislative desk after that.

  Throughout the journal, I mention needing to spend more time reading to my children, playing games, showing them “how much I love them” (Feb 5). Regret and Shame became my other children, each receiving far too much attention.

  My entries grew more succinct. “Tues., Wed., Thurs. Tired. Drunk. Hungover.”

  Apparently, I wasn’t able to date an entry past February 13. The entries grew more random: “Sat/Sun ~ Drunk/Hungover/Drunk.

  Wednesday.

  “Better, but still in that drinking rut, which begets cranky days. One or two too many tonight….

  Thursday.

  “Same as yesterday.”

  Friday.

  “Worse than yesterday. Fuck.”

  Saturday.

  “Better?”

  Sunday.

  “Very moderate, but could have had one less. I need to stop at dinner (or cheese)…. I’m hoping to wake up tomorrow feeling ok.”

  Then, on the last night, March 7, I attended an awards ceremony for Ontario Crown attorneys, at which I had a couple glasses of wine. Photos taken, speech delivered, many laughs, maybe all fake. Then to the Air Canada Centre to watch the Leafs play the Canadiens. I was turning 40 on April 13, but this night, March 7th, was a pre-birthday celebration hosted by a former colleague from McCarthy Tetrault, Michael Barrack, and attended by half a dozen of my most generous donors and closest advisers. They pitched in for a Leafs jersey with my name on the back, #40, and AG stitched onto the front where the “C” for Captain would be. It was a cool and generous gift, from a group of good friends. I barely acknowledged their existence. My only friend was being served to me in liquid form.

  I proceeded to get New Year’s Eve shit-faced again, right in front of Susan. At some point in the final period, I left without saying goodbye or anything to anyone. I got lost somewhere downtown, the alcoholic Attorney General on his last night out. I don’t know how I got home.

  I woke up, remembered nothing, sat up in bed, and remembered enough.

  “What are you going to do?” Susan asked. Her face was red and tear-streaked.

  “I don’t know. But I know that I’m not going to drink anything tonight.” The words tumbled out of my mouth, and I heard them as if not my own. It was the first sensible thing I’d said in a very long time.

  Thus began the revolution, the rebirth, the surrender. I just gave up, gave up trying to figure it out, gave up on my old life, ready for a new one. My head shook very slowly, as the words echoed back to me: “I’m not going to drink anything tonight.”

  And I didn’t. Not that night. Or the next. Or the next. Or, by the grace of God and one day at a time, in any of the days that have followed. Not since March 7, 2006, until the time of this writing, in 2012, and of course I pray to continue this streak, one day at a time, until I croak.

  I was a reader, and thought that I could read my way through this. So I bought up every memoir by a drunk or addict that was in print, and even found some that were out of print.

  It was an important first step: reaching out for the experience, strength, and hope of others who had recovered from their addiction.

  Here’s how it worked, for me. I would read something that Cheevers or Burroughs or Sykes or Knapp or Hamill said about their affliction, and I’d connect with these authors. That’s just like me, I’d think. And you’re telling me that you’re an alcoholic? I must be one too.

  A few nights into sobriety, I wrote about a dream I had: “On a plane, dozing off, suddenly a glass of red wine in my hand. I looked at it, thought about it. And poured it out. I was CONSCIOUS of its power. Poured out it was powerless. I am now conscious of the power of alcohol over me.”

  Then a couple weeks later: “Finishing bio on Bill Wilson, founder of AA. I feel a little re-born; must enjoy this but not overdo it.”

  Then I experienced a huge drop in energy, heightened anxiety, and the need to sleep a lot. Many ups and downs, but throughout a sense that nothing was as bad as when I was drinking. I kept opening up the journal to remind myself of how pathetic life had been as a drinker.

  At some point, within the first month of drying out, I admitted to myself that I was an alcoholic: “Loving Knapp memoir [Caroline Knapp’s Drinking: A Love Story]: she confirms for me that I’m an alcoholic (rough word). Felt a tug at a bottle of wine in the fridge but then called it EVIL out loud. Had another cigar.”

  A couple of months later, my journal recorded a tough night following a roughing-up by the Opposition in the Legislature: “Very down. Normally booze would have flowed; tough not to but not really tempted. Just hard to deal with that feeling without escaping from it…. But then it’s over; it ends; I move on. Building the muscle.”

  There are a number of firsts in this re-birth. The first time in a cocktail lounge or bar or restaurant or party, at a wedding or the cottage or a staff party or a birthday, all sober. They were dreaded, but never lived up to the fears I’d generated in my head. After some initial self-consciousness, it was fine.

  For many days after I’d admitted alcoholism to myself, I still couldn’t admit it to others. I constantly dreamed at night about drinking booze and awoke relieved that it was just a nightmare. Indeed.

  Eight months into sobriety, I started to go to the meetings Dr. Himmel mentioned. I heard stories. I related. I felt understood. I felt hope. But still I kept to myself, did not share what was going on inside me.

  I was, if not sober in the best sense of the word, certainly abstaining and alcohol-free. I kept that journal until December 14, 2006. My last entry was: “I feel better sober. Much, much better. Happy to be sober.”

  Come the night that everything changed, I hadn’t had a drink for more than three years. And a good thing it was.

  * Infinite Jest, at p. 1079. For more on Wallace, see David Lipsky, Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace (Broadway, 2010).

  SEVEN

  Twenty-Eight Seconds

  As Susan and I licked honey from our fingers in a Greek bakery on the Danforth, at about 9:30 on the evening of August 31,

  2009, we could never have anticipated the storm of primal fury that was blowing our way.

  Not terribly far away, the man we would presently come to know as Darcy Allan Sheppard, part of Toronto’s hardy, scruffy, aggressive sub-culture of bicycle couriers, was having the latest in a lifetime of turbulent days.

  For most of his troubled 33 years, Darcy Sheppard had fought addiction to alcohol and crack cocaine. On this day, his string of eight sober days had come—once again—to a dispiriting end. He appeared on the city’s radar a little after 7 p.m., as Susan and I were parking the car at the restaurant where we would have our shawarma dinner. It was then he showed up at the apartment of his girlfriend on George Street, in a notorious zone of men’s hostels and crack dealers in one of Toronto’s grittier quarters.

  For a time, Sheppard and his girlfriend had lived together. But, after a dispute, she had asked him to move out. Now, he was back at her door, drunk on arrival. She wanted him to sleep it off. For a time, he reportedly did. Then he awoke and apparently decided to leave. There must have been a disagreement in the apartment about the wisdom of this.

  Around this time, Susan and I would have been exchanging anniversary presents, and walking on the sand, along the lake shore at the Beaches. The moon was three-quarters full. On the other side of town, someone was howling at that moon.

  At 9:12 p.m., the Toronto Police Service received a call from another resident of the building, complaining of noise coming from the apartment of Sheppard’s girlfriend: screams, crying, the sound of things being thrown. The caller told police that Sheppard was observed outside the b
uilding a few minutes later, assaulting a homeless man.

  Police arrived at 9:21 p.m., as Susan and I were finishing our baklava on the Danforth. They noted that Sheppard was belligerent and had been drinking. Sheppard’s girlfriend would later tell reporters that she, along with other friends who showed up, asked police to allow Sheppard to return to the apartment, but the officers refused to permit it.

  Instead, police warned him not to return to the address. They cleared the call within 10 to 15 minutes, about the time Susan and I were paying our bill at Akropolis and heading toward our car to drive home.

  Sheppard “was asked to leave,” a police spokesman would later tell the news media. “The officers left. And that was it.”

  Except, it wasn’t.

  Darcy Allan Sheppard—extremely intoxicated, fresh from an argument with his recently estranged girlfriend, from beating up a homeless man, and from his latest encounter with police—was allowed to ride off on his bike.

  As Susan and I approached Yonge Street, it was Darcy Sheppard who had snarled traffic by throwing pylons and garbage across the intersection. Then, in something of an athletic marvel—despite an alcohol level more than twice the legal limit—he did figure eights curb to curb, along Bloor Street, as drivers like myself hung back, refusing to take his dare to pass him. Until he finally forced a vehicle over to the side of the road, and I drove on by.

  It was Darcy Sheppard who, moments later, drove within inches of my driver’s side door, as our Saab was stopped a little farther west on Bloor Street at an intersection near Avenue Road.

  It was Darcy Sheppard who then pulled directly in front of our car and spun his bike around to confront us, sneering at me. “Now what’re ya gonna do?”

  By 9:48 p.m., on the night of my 12th wedding anniversary, the 28 seconds that changed my life forever, and that abruptly ended Darcy Sheppard’s, were about to begin.

  IT’S ABOUT THREE KILOMETRES—and many tax brackets—from that apartment on George Street to 102 Bloor Street West in Yorkville, which houses a store called L’Occitane En Provence. That shop, specializing in vanity products, is what Yorkville is all about. L’Occitane started in the south of France and is now listed on the stock market in Hong Kong. The company aspires to be, in its own words, “the worldwide reference for Mediterranean wellbeing, with unique body, face, and home products.” The shop smells wonderful, the scent of money not least among its allures.