by Liana Maeby
“I . . . just wanted some more water,” I say, letting the words hang in the air for a minute.
The nurse helps me back to my bed and puts me in a dry dressing gown. But instead of getting me another cup of water, she hooks me up to an IV, which provides a constant stream of fluids that enter my body at a steady and controlled pace.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I spent my first three rehab days in the facility’s detox wing—which I’ve done the honor of naming “Purge-atory,” although the sign’s still being made. Last night, a nurse took my vitals and determined that my blood pressure has leveled off enough that I’m no longer at risk for spontaneously combusting and splattering ninety-seven pounds of blood, flesh, and stained bone against the sterile treatment-center walls. After spending a third sleepless night in the dormitory of the damned, I’m woken at 6 a.m. by an efficient knock on my door and handed a sheet of paper that marks out my day into hour-long blocks. You could call it an itinerary, an agenda, or even an appointment calendar, but I’m calling it a class schedule for my first day at Community College for Junkies.
6 a.m. – Make Your Bed
I have to read this twice to be sure I’m seeing it correctly. I am, I realize; I definitely am, and I laugh out loud. I feel privy to some sort of inside joke: a middle finger raised up in acknowledgment of the futility of it all. Because the reality of the situation is, my sheets are drenched in enough poisonous sweat that I half expect a team of biologists to march in, take some measurements, and declare the entire block a contaminated zone. I’ve been using my pillowcase to wipe my dripping nose, which runs so neon I’ve considered holding on to the slimy stuff and making a sign: “Live Girls?” My blanket, only tolerable when my sweating runs colder than it runs hot, is wrecked by the holes my filthy fingernails made in a desperate attempt to escape from the tomb of misery that has entrapped my body. Festering in this bed is evidence of every rotten decision I’ve ever made—flakes of dead skin begetting drool begetting tears—but still, I’m being asked to fluff it up and tuck in the corners like I’m Mary Middle America rising on five hundred threads to make waffles for the kids before heading to her job at the bank. I laugh as I hold my nose to keep from gagging on my own stench, chuckle as I flip my pillow over in an attempt to find the less crusty side, guffaw as I cross “Make Your Bed” off my list with a giant shaky X.
6:30 a.m. – Morning Meditation
It’s now time for morning meditation, a.k.a. Inspirational Quotes 101, Platitudes in the Modern Era, A History of Giving Up. We’re a roomful of people whose bodies are meant for sitting on floors, but still, there’s a hum of discomfort as the hundred or so residents of the treatment facility huddle up on the surface of cold morning linoleum. A thin man with a goatee sits at the front of the room, the leader of our predawn festivities. He reads a quote from the AA Big Book—something chock-full of the kind of hope we can meditate on—but my mind tunes out the moment the guy mentions letting God in. Instead, I focus on the throb inside my head and try to locate its source. I feel like it’s coming from nowhere, which means it’s probably coming from everywhere.
7:30 a.m. – Breakfast
The thought of food turns my stomach into a quarter-operated horsey ride and closes my throat up like an automated guardrail, but I smell coffee, and that makes the cafeteria seem almost bearable. I scoop a little oatmeal into a bowl for show and pour myself a full mug of dark-black brew. I sit down at an empty table and inhale a trail of steam before I take a sip. The coffee tastes rich and hearty, and it warms me from the inside out. It’s the first moment of joy I’ve felt in three days, and I’m grateful for it, as minuscule and fleeting as it may be. A woman my age, give a year or two, settles down across from me, her tray a heaping mound of fruit and eggs. “You mind?” she asks, and I shake my head, even though the sight of fetal-chicken slop causes the horsey ride to lurch forward again. My stomach bucks and brays.
“You look new. I’m Alice,” the woman says. I study her. Her bleached hair shows two inches of dirty roots, and there are scabs on her face, but I notice a little bit of light in her eyes and a dab of color in her cheeks that make it clear this is not her first post-Purge-atory breakfast. I raise my index finger in some semblance of a greeting and take another pull from my mug. Alice tucks into her meal, and I keep the coffee close to my face, praying it will suffocate the smell of steaming egg that wafts off her plate.
I keep drinking, hoping to eliminate just a fraction of the ache in my body, maybe an iota of the fog that’s been eating through my head for the last four days. I’m looking to suck down another millisecond of joy. Soon, the mug is empty, and I get up for more. I’m surprised to see there’s no line.
I sit back down and poke my untouched oatmeal with a spoon. I take a sip from my refreshed cup of coffee and notice Alice smiling at me. What the fuck are you looking at? sits at the tip of my tongue, but I don’t have the energy to get it out, so instead I mumble, “As if I weren’t dehydrated enough.”
Alice sticks a forkful of egg in her mouth and chews. She doesn’t wait to swallow before she says, “You don’t have to worry about that.”
“Huh?” I mutter.
“Caffeine is what dehydrates you.”
“Yeah. Caffeine.”
Alice grins, her teeth flecked with egg bits. “And all the coffee here is decaf. Of course.”
Of course. I freeze with the mug pressed to my lips.
All the coffee here is decaf because I’m at a treatment center for drug addicts, and a sip of caffeine—o murderous caffeine, ye holiest of stimulants—might send any one of us on a downward spiral that ends with dead hookers, robbed liquor stores, and a 911 call to a condemned motel just off skid row. “It was those motherfucking arabica beans!” the unfortunate relapsing soul will yell, cursing the Starbucks siren herself.
I slam my mug down and push it off to the side. I’m livid, morally outraged, but I lack the fortitude to express this, so instead I stick the teeniest bit of oatmeal into my mouth while my brain composes an impassioned pamphlet on patient mistreatment and the audacity of decaf coffee that’s sure to make me a folk hero of the rehab circuit for years to come.
9:00 a.m. – Group Session
We congregate for group sessions in the main meeting hall, where we’re sorted and collated into groups of twelve. My gaggle is herded to a room with thirteen chairs placed in a circle, like this session is the prelude to some sacrificial rite, perhaps a bloody tribute to the death of free will. I’m the newest member, me and a twitchy man with rotten teeth. We’re here to replace the two lucky souls who graduated from the treatment center yesterday and are certainly skipping through a field of daisies with puppies at their feet today.
The twitchy man and I watch each other as if we can see things crawling on the surface of one another’s skin. Our group is led by a man named David, a diminutive creature with soft eyes, whose black sweater and square-framed glasses would suggest him to be out of his depth, although it’s immediately clear that the opposite is true. Against a backdrop of nervous junkies and downtrodden alcoholics, David’s relaxed pose and casual smile reign over the room, drawing all the energy in the circle toward him. So, I think, he’ll be the one to sacrifice the lamb.
“Okay, let’s start,” David says, and all the mouths in the room snap shut. “By giving a warm welcome to the two folks who have joined our group today. Which means: not saying ‘Fuck you.’”
I eke out a smile in spite of myself. “Welcome,” someone offers dryly.
David manages to set his eyes on both me and the twitchy guy with the black teeth at the same time. He pushes up the sleeve of his sweater, and I see that his arm is covered in tattoos, thick black letters and symbols that betray a history of rage. I can’t help but wonder where it all went. “Introduce yourselves, why don’t you,” David says to us newbies.
The twitchy man and I both deflect, demure, oh-so-politely allowing the other to go first. When the silence gets too heavy, I speak up. �
�I’m Lei,” I say, inventing a nickname, because I can’t bear to say my real name out loud.
10:00 a.m. – Smoke Break
At approximately four and a half minutes a cigarette, with time allotted for walking outside, walking inside, and steadying my hands enough that they can operate a lighter, I figure I can smoke five American Spirits in the half hour we’re allotted. Five cigarettes a break, four breaks a day, and that’s exactly one pack for each twenty-four-hour period. I’ve got two cartons to my name—twenty packs—and twenty-seven days left here. So I’m going to have to pace myself.
10:30 a.m. – One-on-One Counseling
Since it’s my first real day at Narcotics Anonymous Junior College, I’ve been assigned a one-on-one session with a counselor to discuss my course of treatment. As I look for the office noted on my schedule, I find myself wishing I had a locker so I could shove myself inside its metal walls and avoid having to face the rest of the day. But here at rehab, the only places to hide are beneath the long shadows of junkies, inside the riverbed scars of speed freaks, or tucked under the concave chests of lifelong alcoholics.
I take a deep breath outside the office of my new counselor and loosen my ponytail, hoping to find some relief from the high-score game of pinball being played inside my skull. I’m about to knock on the door when a tall, lightly freckled woman opens it from the other side. Her name is Megan—and oh, is she ever so very much a Megan. She’s Megan from head to toe, Megan from the gloss of her hair to the high-heeled boots wrapped around her feet. She’s way too Megan to be working at a place like this, and I become so disoriented, so awash in a surprise tidal wave of Meganness, that I momentarily forget where I am. “You can have a seat,” Megan says with a Megany timbre in her voice.
As Megan’s eyes flit over my file, I glance at her desk. I spot a framed photograph of a cute teenage boy who wears his flannel button-down open over a black T-shirt reading “Mother Love Bone.” The kid holds up a pale hand like he’s trying to block the camera, but he can’t keep the shadow of a crooked smile from peeking out from behind his shoulder-length hair. His cheekbones are just a little too pronounced.
Dead brother, I realize all of a sudden as I look up at Megan and see that same lopsided half-smile hovering absently on her lips. I’m going to say 1996, maybe three years after the photo was taken, which would have made him close to twenty.
Megan circles something in my file and jots down a note. They had always been close. They stayed close until he died, or as close as was possible in a situation like that. She stood by him even after he stole the TV from her apartment for the third time, she bailed him out of jail and made sure he showed up for his arraignment, but she was also the person he talked to in those fleeting moments when he’d felt like everything would turn out okay if he could just get his shit together for real this time.
Megan closes my file. I look into the crevices of her softly upturned lips and examine her face. I try to figure out how old she would have been when her brother died. The lines around her eyes say “older sister,” but the flakes of purple polish on her fingernails say “younger sister.” She wears a forest-green turtleneck, but her jeans are skinny and tailored to her casual runner’s thighs. Her shiny ginger-colored hair looks to be natural in hue, although it’s also been doused in expensive conditioning treatments and cut by the hands of a skilled professional.
Dead twin brother, I decide, as Megan folds her hands softly and says, “Let’s begin.”
11:30 a.m. – Lunch
I enter the cafeteria at an angle that won’t allow me to see the coffee machine even if I want to; that motherfucker is dead to me. As the fumes of generic allfood reach my nostrils, I’m surprised to feel a pang of hunger jab me in the gut. Although my body is still detoxing, there isn’t a damn thing inside of it, and I imagine some of the weakness that hangs on me like a cloak will subside if I treat myself to some nutrition. A certain notion creeps up on me, however, the impulse that I should resist eating and let the pangs that nudge at my stomach turn into an angry, ravenous gnaw.
I remember the thrill of starving myself in high school—I never did it out of vanity or insecurity, but for the rush of light-headedness that would come over me if I skipped a couple of meals. Not to mention that the pills worked better if there wasn’t anything in my system to buffer them. For me, embracing hunger was just another way to get high.
But I’m not supposed to be doing that anymore, I realize with such obviousness that I feel entirely confused. That’s the whole point of being in rehab. A cloud of dark-gray cartoon hopelessness gathers above my head as I mull this over. I can’t just get rid of the drugs; I need to exterminate the desire to feel high. Right? Maybe I should write off caffeinated coffee, which means I should definitely give up nicotine. After that, I guess I’ll x out chocolate; I haven’t eaten any for a while, but I recall a certain fondness for Milk Duds. What about carne asada burritos, sushi, my mother’s pasta primavera? Even if the thing I want to put into my body is good for me, does looking forward to the way it will make me feel mean that it’s a drug?
My head hurts, my body aches, and I can’t tell if I’m being petulant, so I get myself a bowl of soup and suck it down. It lasts five minutes in my stomach before I throw it all up.
12:00 p.m. – Free Time
I decide that I’ll allow myself two cigarettes at the beginning of free time, and two at the end of the hour—and if I can’t stick to this plan, here inside these last-chance walls, then goddamn it, I’m busting out of this building and walking straight into traffic on the 101 Freeway. I open the door to the designated smoking area and hunch over with my back against the wall, so bone-tired that it feels almost spiritual.
There’s a guy standing at the other end of the wall watching a Parliament burn. He looks very much like the male version of me: young but beaten, encased in a cracked, dried-out shell that once protected something shiny. We’re both courteous enough to avoid acknowledging the other’s presence.
There’s nothing to do during free time. All the reading material in the building is program literature, and the selection of movies has been whittled down to a bunch of inoffensive crap that couldn’t possibly remind us that drugs and alcohol still exist in the outside world. I try sitting in a chair, but even in my exhaustion, I can’t handle the way it feels to stay still. So I pace back and forth like a stockbroker at the closing bell until it’s time to smoke my last two cigarettes.
1:00 p.m. – Group Video
The hundred or so chairs in the meeting hall would have been squeaky under ordinary circumstances, but beneath the bodies of addicts in various stages of withdrawal, they’re downright symphonic. The video that plays for us is a lecture by Father Martin, an old alcoholic priest whose decades of work educating other addicts have made him a legend in the recovery world. This is explained with a whispered spiel offered by the woman next to me, an overweight forty-year-old with the thinnest hair I’ve ever seen. Her concern that I might not understand the lessons of the video if I don’t know the man’s backstory is kind of touching, and I’m especially moved when she flips the guy behind us the bird after he tells her to “Shut the motherfuck up, Elaine.”
Father Martin is a white-haired wisecracker with a flat, ruddy face that reflects whatever emotion is projected onto it right back at the audience. He reminds me of my grandfather, a kindly blue-collar Irish Catholic who was good with his hands and always had a piece of chocolate and a wink hidden away for me. I try to remember the last time I saw my grandpa, and it dawns on me that I don’t even know if he’s still alive.
3:00 p.m. – Group Step Discussion
“Step six,” the counselor says. “We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.”
At the pace of a step per day, I’ve joined the treatment center’s ongoing NA discussion midway through its cycle—and needless to say, I am not entirely ready to have God remove all my defects of character. The truth is, I’m not even sure how close
I am to wanting to be ready.
For the first time since I was admitted to the treatment facility, I allow myself to address the elephant lamp in the opium den: How the fuck did I get here? How did I go from being a hyperproductive fire spark at the top of my game to a track-marked burnout barely capable of bathing myself, much less convincing another human to pay me good money to churn out teen-friendly adaptations of fairy tales?
I want to blame everything on the shift in my drug habit, the detour from speed to heroin, but I know that would be oversimplifying the problem. Heroin didn’t take me by surprise; I invited it in. I was ready for it, was practically begging for it (you know, before I’d reached the point that I was actually, literally begging for it). The honest truth of the situation is much more involved: I was, and am, completely exhausted by the sum total of the life I’ve led. And I found myself looking desperately for some kind of permanent vacation from being me. Fairy-tale that, motherfucker.
Hey, this is a start, I think, considering what isn’t so much an epiphany as an admittance of something I’ve secretly known for a long time. And then it happens, the biggest surprise yet: all of a sudden, I find myself just the tiniest bit interested in what the people speaking in this room have to say.
4:00 p.m. – Work
We all have jobs to do at the treatment center: cleaning, cooking (if you’ve been tested for all the hepatitises and are approved for food-touching, of course), manual labor. As odd as it may seem, working actually sounds appealing to me. Comforting, even. The thought that I can spend a little time doing something other than examining every aspect of my battered being, without engaging in total destruction either, blankets me in relief.
