The Harder They Fall

by Gary Stromberg

  I’d been in Fargo, North Dakota, at an agricultural seminar. Got done with it. Was back running a little bit, not hard, but out running. It had snowed all day long, and I’d always liked running in a snowstorm. I went out for a run. I was running down this one-way street with the traffic, knowing that’s not the way to go. But with the sidewalk clogged with snow, I thought I’d run on the main street until the next block and turn off on a side road. Well, I never made it. I ended up getting hit in the back by a truck. They found me lying in a snowbank and loaded me up into an ambulance, at which point I came to. As they took me to the hospital, I asked what had happened. “Oh … uh … you got hit by a car or truck when out running.” “Am I going to die?” “Oh, no, but you’re banged up pretty good.”

  Honest to goodness, I almost started high-fiving the ambulance driver. I knew I was about to get more Demerol! I had that warm fuzzy feeling again without even getting the drug—anticipating. At the hospital, almost the same scenario repeated. They checked me out and shot me with Demerol, put me in my room. Then shots for a few days, then the IV, then over to Percocet. Got home, was laid up and recovering and such.

  When feeling well enough, I drove down to the Twin Cities to do a speaking engagement. And on the way home, about forty miles from home—I should not have been driving that day because of blizzard warnings, but I was eager to get home—I was driving a Ford Bronco truck, and it came out from behind a windbreak and the wind caught my truck and it slid across this icy road and hit a big, tall snowbank and rolled about a dozen times. The emergency crew tried to cut me out ’cause I was hooked upside down. It was twenty below, and they couldn’t get the Jaws of Life to work, so they basically yanked me out of there the best they could, as they smelled gas.

  That same week, I was scheduled for a checkup with the doctor. Instead I was hospitalized—same floor, same room, same nurse as only a few weeks before. And on the stuff again!

  A few years ago, after three years of sobriety, I gave a talk at a little elementary school in a small town nearby where we live. Afterwards—you know, kids are great because they’re not afraid to ask you anything—this little girl, about second grade, came up and said, “Mr. Beardsley, did you ever like purposely get into an accident so you could get the drugs?” I was dumbfounded! I never even thought about that. She set me back on my heels like I hadn’t been for a long time. I sat there thinking and thinking about it and gave her an answer, and then thought about it more that night. I never purposely jumped out in front of a vehicle or drove my truck into a ditch, but without question, I put myself in situations subconsciously. Sure I didn’t want to die. I loved life. But I loved the drugs and put myself into situations where there was a pretty good chance that something could go amiss—where I’d get into an accident or car wreck or whatever and get some of the drugs again. I mean, it took me three or four years of sobriety to admit that.

  So I’m in the hospital for another ten days, I’m discharged, get sent home with some Percocet. I’m lying at home, been on my back a lot, taking a lot of the pills, and one afternoon Mary came home from work and we sat around downstairs. I said, “I’m going upstairs and take a nap.” I wasn’t feeling good. We live in an old farmhouse with narrow steps. I get to the top of the steps and either blacked out or got dizzy and slipped. Anyhow, I fell backwards down the stairs and ended up busting some ribs. It was a Friday, so Mary was home and took me to the hospital. The doctor they wanted to have me see was off for the weekend. They just had the on-call doctor, and they were giving me big doses—shots—of Demerol every three hours. My roommate told me that the doctor coming in Monday was a really good doctor but with a poor bedside manner. So Monday morning, I’m in the far bed, and the doctor walks in and pulls that old curtain as if that’s going to keep out any sound of what he’s ready to tell me from the roommate. He’s got this clipboard, and he doesn’t come up and address me, “Hey, I’m Dr. So-and-So.” He just comes up to the side of the bed and opens up his chart. He says, “Beardsley, I think you’re addicted to these painkillers.”

  And I yelled back. (Usually I’m an easygoing person.) I said, “I am not addicted to this stuff. You could cut me off of them right now.” I-don’t-ever-need-this-stuff, I’ll-show-you kind of thing. He said, “Now, I’m not just going to cut you off. We’ll wean you gradually off of them and get you back on the right track.” Of course I didn’t want to hear that, although he was right. Dead-on 100 percent right! So they gradually weaned me off the Percocet and put me on some methadone, which made me real sick. In fact, if I took the methadone and didn’t lay down for the first forty-five minutes afterward, I would end up throwing up. So I got home and they got me off that too, and I was fine until …

  That would have been late February, and I was doing pretty good. I wasn’t using anything after that for two or three months. I was back running a little bit, and went out for a run one day, and go about 150 meters down the road, and thought, honest to God, someone had come up and stabbed me in my lower back. The pain was excruciating. I couldn’t right myself. I hobbled home and got into my car and drove to the family doctor. By the time I arrived, I had these big knots in my back. “Yikes, we got to get you into some physical therapy,” the doctor said. And also he wrote a prescription for some Percocet. When he asked, “Have you ever used painkillers before to help with any problems? Of course I had but didn’t want to tell him that. I just said, “Yeah.” He said, “Have you ever used a drug called Percocet?” I played dumb, “Maybe one time a doctor …” You know, I could have spelled it backwards for him! So he wrote me a prescription for 30 or 40 Percocet and then put me into physical therapy.

  Three weeks later, when I wasn’t a whole lot better, I went to him and he said, “Dick, you know I have to get you to a specialist for that. I can’t keep giving you these painkillers ’cause they’re very addictive, and we need to get this condition taken care of.” So he sent me to an orthopedic back specialist, who did a bunch of stuff and planned to test some more. In the meantime, he was very liberal with his prescription pad. Now not for one moment have I blamed any doctor for the problems I had, because doctors are between a rock and a hard spot. They have compassion for people, plus I could make myself hurt a lot more than I was just to get the drugs. So the specialist wrote me a prescription for 60 Percocet, and I walked out of there. I never had 60 before, and of course, I was using them two or even three at a time now. I continued to go back and get more and more and more. Well, finally I ended up … that was late summer of ’93 … by January of ’94, they figured out that I had these busted-up vertebrae, and had to go in and do about eleven hours of surgery. For the twelve days in the hospital, they had me on the IV pump and then on the pills. Then I got out, and once I started getting recovered from the surgery itself, my back actually felt much better. I remember thinking, “You know, I really need to get myself to not be using these painkillers. Dick, enough is enough.”

  And I did get myself off of them. I’ll never forget. My checkup was the first part of May. The doctor says, “Hey, Dick, how’re you feeling?” I go, “Like a million bucks, Doc. I’m walking an hour and a half every day, doing the exercises you recommended. And the best part of it, I haven’t used any narcotic painkillers, just a little aspirin and Advil for a month now.” He goes, “Dick, that’s great. I’m glad to hear you’re doing so well. But the surgery we did on you, it takes twelve to eighteen months for that area to heal. I know you’re a person that likes to push the envelope with your recovery. If you ever start feeling like you’re overdoing it and think you need a few painkillers, let me know.”

  Holy cow! When he said that, it opened that door, and I shoved it open full bore. I’d just told him how great I felt, and when he opened the door that little bit, I kicked it wide open. I said, “You know, Doc, come to think of it, every once in a while my back does get quite sore. Since I’m an hour from here and you’re a busy person, maybe I ought to get a prescription from you just in case.” “No problem.” I told
him I’d get it filled if I needed it, and he said, “That’s not a problem.” So he wrote me out a prescription for 60 Percocet. I shook his hand, walked out of the office. The medical clinic was attached to the hospital at the other end. I walked down the long hallway. At the other end was a pharmacy. I went in there, filled the prescription, bought a Diet Coke, got into my truck. I snapped the bottle top off the can and took not one but three Percocet. I mean my mouth was drooling as I walked out to my truck, knowing I had these Percocets! And twenty minutes later as I drove home—’cause that’s how long it would take to get into my system—damn, I got that fuzzy feeling again and was right back just like that. And continued to use and abuse, and continued to return for more and more. I could make myself hurt! I’d say, “Doc, my back really hurts. I must’ve overdid it. Can I come over and get another prescription?” “Yeah, come over.” And so, on the way, I could do these contortions with my back where you kind of tighten it up, so by the time I drove there, I had big knots in my back that would stick right out. I’d be hobbling in there, and the doctor would look at me, and who isn’t going to give the kid some painkillers? I mean, I was purposely doing that just to make sure. … I was so sick!

  Of course, a tolerance level continues to rise, so by now, I used more and more. It was late summer of ’94 when I got up one morning to go out for a walk, and honest to goodness, I got out of bed and could hardly move. The doctor said, “Get in here. I got to take some pictures.” So they take me to X-ray, and then I’m back in the doctor’s office. The doctor comes in. I could tell by the look on his face something was wrong. He says, “Dick, this is unbelievable, but it happens in less than 2 percent of the patients. That big bone that we took out of your hip to fuse your lower spine, your body has reabsorbed it into your system. Your lower spine is down there hanging like it was before you even had surgery.” He said, “The only thing that can be done: We need to operate again and fuse it onto the back side. We’ll be opening you up on the front side and use some rods and pins and screws.” He said, “The back side I have no problem doing. The front side, though, is a very delicate operation. You’re talking a lot of nerves down there. You might become impotent.” He said, “I don’t feel comfortable doing it, so I’m going to see if I can get you into the spinal clinic down in the Twin Cities where they do that quite often.” So he made a phone call, came back. “Listen,” he said, “I made you an appointment to see the doctor. They’ll schedule you for surgery. And as of today, I’ll give you another prescription for your painkillers. But after today, those doctors will have to take care of your pain management.”

  He wrote me out a prescription and shook my hand and said, “Good luck. Keep in touch. Let me know how you’re doing.” As I’m walking out of his office, down towards the pharmacy to get this filled, I happened to open it up and looked at the prescription. He’d written it for 300 Percocet! As bad as I was hurtin’, I almost felt like doin’ cartwheels! Honest to God, I walked in that pharmacy and had a big smile on my face. I felt like Jed Clampett on the Beverly Hillbillies when he shoots that rabbit and strikes that oil and becomes a rich man. I walked out of there with two big canisters of pills, 150 each. Why, I felt there were a couple of mortar shells underneath my armpits. And I’m thinking to myself, “These are going to last me for the rest of my life.” And less than a month later, they were gone: 300 Percocet! In the meantime, the surgery was scheduled for October, and it was still six weeks away, so I called down there and he says, “Dick, I’m sorry, but I cannot call in a Class 2.” So I said, “A pharmacist will probably take it over the phone.” He said, “Naw.” He just wouldn’t do it. He said, “I’d have to send it up there, and it would take a couple of days. I can call in some Tylenol 3 with codeine in it.”

  I’m terribly allergic to codeine. I break out in hives and get itchy and stuff. But I thought, “What the heck, it’s a narcotic. Maybe my body has changed since I last used it.” So he called in a bunch, 30 or so. I knew they weren’t nearly as powerful as Percocet, so when I got home from the pharmacy with them, I took like 10 or 12. A half hour later, I was itching so bad and was broken out in hives. I called back down there. I said, “Doc, man I broke out in hives and I’m itching.” He says, “Dick, listen. What you need to do is go to your family doctor. Let your family doctor take care of your pain management until you get down here.”

  So I hopped into the car. I hadn’t seen the family doctor for over a year. Well, I get up there and he’d moved to some other place. But there was a new doctor that had just came in, and they gave me him. And I walked in there and showed him the knots in my back. ’Cause I had ’em but I made ’em even worse, you know. And I get in there and he says, “My gosh!” And he looked at his nurse. “Nurse, bring in a 120 milligram shot of Demerol.” ’Cause I was in pain, but in worse pain than I actually was. And I said, “You can give me a Demerol shot here in your clinic? I don’t have to go to the hospital?” “Oh, yeah,” he said. “Listen, Dick, if you get like this again, you come in here. We’ll give you a shot anytime.” So I’m thinking, “Ooooh,” ’cause that to me was the ultimate, to get the Demerol shot. Pills were good but … So he gave me a prescription for Percocet and said, “Gosh, if your back gets this bad again, we’ll give you a shot anytime.”

  About once a week, I went in and made it hurt real bad, worse than it was, to get a shot of Demerol and a new prescription of Percocet. I did that every week and got the load of drugs right up until the time to go down for surgery. Had the surgery, was in the hospital a week, and was sent home with Percocet, that was all. The doctor down there wasn’t real big on the painkillers. He aimed for you to get by on as little as possible. So I got home and, after a few days, was just about out of pills. It was a Friday. And I was in a lot of pain—the front scar. Again, it was painful, but part of the pain was from knowing I was just about out of pills. And that psychological-rebounding kind of a deal occurred. So I remember telling Mary, “Mary, I can’t handle the pain anymore.” And they took me into our little hospital into the emergency room, and the doctor on-call there—our family doctor was gone for the weekend—gave me a 150 milligram shot of Demerol right away. Then he put me into my own room, and instead of giving me shots, they hooked me up to an automatic drip. And they must have had that bugger cranked up but good! Basically, for two-and-a-half days, it comatosed me. Seriously, every once in a while I’d wake up, but mostly I was in the ozone layer. When the bells and whistles of the machine went off because it was empty, I’d sense the nurse come in and put another bag up there, reset it, and close the door.

  Monday morning, Mary is in visiting with me, and she has the chair by the bed and is talking to me. Pretty soon there’s a knock on the door. The door was actually kind of half open, and the doctor knocks on it and pokes his head in. A lot of doctors are so busy they’ll knock on the door, push their head in, “Dick, how’re you doin’?” “Okay.” You know, “We’ll see you tomorrow,” and they charge you a hundred bucks or whatever. Well, he knocks on the door. Mary says, “Oh, come in.” He walks in and closes the door. Right away I’m thinkin’, “Uh-oh, that’s not a good sign.” Then he goes over to the corner and grabs a chair and brings it over to the bed. I’m thinkin’, “This is really not a good sign” because I knew what was coming. He had the charts. And the last thing I wanted to hear was what he was about to say. But even worse than that, the last person in the world I wanted to hear what he was about to say was Mary. I didn’t want an official, a doctor, to say with her listening that “I think Dick has a problem.” ’Cause if I would have been there alone, I never would have come home and said, “Hey, Mary, the doc thinks maybe I have a problem with the painkillers.” She knew I was banged up. She didn’t know how many pills I was taking ’cause she worked during the day. For more pills, I called the doctor and would go and get ’em. For all Mary knew, I’d been home all day long. I didn’t talk to her about my mental state at all. I kept it well hidden to keep her from asking questions, as I feared she might. Mar
y’s the kind of person who might pick up the phone and call the doctor then and there: “Hey, I think this guy’s gettin’ hooked on this stuff.” So I really played it cool around her.

  So the doctor says, “Dick, my God, the amount of Demerol that you took over the weekend—it could have killed a herd of elephants. I really think that you’re becoming addicted to it.” Well, I started bawlin’ ‘cause I didn’t want to hear that, and as I said, especially didn’t want Mary to hear it. “Listen,” he says, “we’re not going to cut you right off. We’ll work you through this.” He says, “We’ll reduce it little by little. You’ll be fine.” And that’s what they did. They cut the shots down gradually over a few days. They weaned me off. And the day I was going to get discharged from the hospital, the nurse comes in and says, “Dick, here’s a prescription, and the doctor says to just take the medication as prescribed and you’ll be fine. The doctor would like to have you go across the road to the mental health clinic to get evaluated. Make sure everything’s okay.” But there was not talk of treatment for any abuse. And I looked at this prescription, and it was for 75 pills of 100 milligram tablets of Demerol. I go, “They make Demerol in a pill form?” She goes, “Oh, yeah.” I’m thinking, “This is unbelievable!”