The Great Pretender

My story doesn’t start off sad. Quite the opposite, actually. As a matter of fact, if you were to list all of the things a kid could want or need to have a great childhood – mine would check all the boxes. 

* Big family? Check. The house I grew up in was the house my Dad was raised in. Two-family double decker house in an urban area. Me and my parents lived in the downstairs apartment. My grandparents lived upstairs. My brother lived in a furnished room in the attic – he got the boot, I got the bedroom. Being the baby has its privileges. That house was across the street from the double decker my mother grew up in. Two Uncles and two aunts lived in that and a gang of cousins with them. Old school tight knit. I was raised by a village – and I was the baby cousin of both sides of the family. 

* Played outside not ruled by technology? Check. I was born in 1981. There were 8 kids on my street all of us about the same age. We played. All day. Every day. We rode our bikes. Stick ball tournaments. Public pool in the summer. Big park up the street. The YMCA summer camps. We did it all – together. Only two things kept us inside the houses during the summer; dinner and the street lights. Cell Phones existed in movies but not our hands. You went home when the street lights went on. Not before. You might miss something. 

* Good school? Check. Catholic School. Kindergarten through senior year. I played team sports (not well), acted in drama club, had a gang of friends, traveled, chased girls. Story book. Then college – 4-year degree from one of the best media schools on earth. Broadcasting. My calling. Natural fit for “the entertainer.” Internships in LA with job offers to follow. The day I graduated, my Dad (my best friend I ever had) told me point blank with a proud smirk: 

“You’ve got the world by the balls.” 

…and then – failure to launch. 

I played it safe I thought – gonna keep the office job working for the state for a little while, then I’m off to LA to claim fame and fortune…someday. But then weeks turned into months, turned into years. The voices crept in. “You have SO much potential!” That statement was an echo of praises past. I had heard it…A LOT. But now I’m in my mid-20s and I feel stuck. Stagnant. Uneasy. Uncomfortable, more than anything. Being me sucked. 

Until I found it. 

Technically, it found me. I was at work at my office job, hating life because it wasn’t grand enough to my liking and I complained about my shoulder hurting. An older woman I worked with offered me something for the pain. Percocet, 10mgs. “Take it with a Tylenol, it’ll make it work better.” She was right. It worked. It. Solved. EVERYthing. It made everything so effortless. It made my mundane job easy and even enjoyable. It made it easy to be nice to everyone. It made it easy to be a good co-worker, son, friend. It made life seem ok, great even. It made it easy to be me. Effortless. 

But it wore off. 

When it wears off, and you’ve experienced that kind of relief – anyone would want that feeling back again. I did. I couldn’t go back to being miserable, angry, full of fear and regret and longing…not when I knew relief was a pill away. So, I sought my relief and I got it, and it worked…until it didn’t. 

Flash forward ten years, I’m in my mid 30s now and I’m sitting on a hospital bed in an emergency room a thousand miles away from that double decker house I grew up in. No, I didn’t overdose. That would have been much less humiliating. No, I’m in a bed in the ER with a CNA sitting next to me, babysitting. They’re not allowed to leave suicidal people alone. I was being admitted to a psychiatric ward but you have to get there by way of ER if you don’t have insurance. I couldn’t detox on my own, so I had to do what a mental health professional suggested I do – let him call 911 and say I’m going to kill myself. I played it off like it was a means to an end – but truth be told…I wanted to die. It’s the only thing I ever did pray for. 

I feel like a lot of addicts get to this place. It’s not that we truly WANT to die…we just don’t want to hurt any more. That should be my story of how I got into recovery…but it’s not. After 5 days in the psych ward, I got out. I left the opiates alone, but I switched solutions. 

I’ve heard it said that an addict is someone that obsessively seeks externally to fix something internally. 

That’s my story. That’s me. The great pretender. 

It’s fine, I’m fine, everything’s fine. Pretending I’ve got this under control. That was the biggest one. This narrative is already 20 times longer than I intended it to be. One would assume that since I’m writing it, there’s a point to be made – and there is. 

We do recover. 

Here’s how I did it… 

That family I spoke so highly of? I pushed them away. Before I got well I started to say “I lost my family.” You get a lot of sympathy from the choir that way. My mother, never one to mince words, shot it to me straight: “you didn’t lose your family, you gave us away.” Ouch. My family never did give up on me, they just refused to continue to do anything to help me kill myself. Which, to the unhealed person, feels like betrayal. The great pretender acted like the victim. He stomped and threw tantrums. He convinced himself that his loyalty went unanswered. He was wrong. When I finally couldn’t hide what I was to my family and I couldn’t manipulate them to get me out of a bind and that I couldn’t do this “my way” they never left. They just refused to enable me to treat them in a way that only served me. They taught me a hard lesson in that steadfast approach – you are free to make your choices, you are NOT free from the consequences of those choices. 

Two weeks before Christmas, 2017, I surrendered. 

It wasn’t without a fight, harsh words, toddler-like tantrums…but I quit fighting in the end. I accepted help. I could not do this my way. My best thinking kept landing me in psych wards and rehab. Maybe there’s a better way. For this addict, that better way was found at another rehab – only this particular rehab was what the people in “the rooms” (which I loathed btw) called a “big book boot camp.” I was not afraid of boot camp. Shit, the military was one of my bright ideas ten years before to try to beat this addiction. I’ve been to boot camp! I loved it! (Structure = good) I agreed to go to the big book boot camp. 

I’ve been sober since December 13, 2017. This addict got sober through the program of AA. I still work at that rehab today. Like the world around us, that rehab is changing. I have the tools to adapt to that change now. Recovery gave me those. Every day I get to use the principles learned out of a $10 book (The “Big Book” of Alcoholics Anonymous) in a way that keeps me from having to seek externally to fix something internally. 

My family is still in my corner. 

I’m a father now – the universe’s funny way of making you realize with overwhelming perspective just how traumatic my actions must have been on my parents. 

Sobriety gifted me safe passage through my greatest fears – I lost my Dad a year and a half after getting sober. He passed seeing me having gotten well. I got through it sober. About six weeks after my Dad passed, I got run over by a car. I fractured my skull, collarbone, three ribs, tibia and fibula. My AA fellowship, family, and significant other stayed by my side in the hospital not knowing if I would make it. I made it. They helped me resolve to heal without the assistance of prescription opiates. I stuck to Advil and Excedrin. I got through it sober. 

I know my Dad smiles down on his youngest granddaughter, my daughter. I see his smile in hers, because I’m present. I even try to impart a little handed down knowledge… 

“You’ve got the world by the balls…don’t waste it.”

• Some Rando