If I were the Prodigal, my long road wasn’t about miles and distance. It was about finding three words. I need help. It was about coming to the end of myself and facing where I was. Pride is the last tower to fall.
With the help of OxyContin, I kept my composure for the rest of that celebration. I may not have been the life of the party; it was probably more than obvious I was no longer the Robby they knew. I was thin; I was quiet; I was somebody else wearing Robby’s skin.
But I got through it, I followed my parents home, and there I humbled myself as deeply as I knew how. I got down on my knees before my mom and my dad. “Please help me,” I said.
“Of course we will.”
They welcomed me. They forgave me. And they told me they’d do everything in their power to rescue me from the mess I found myself in.
Chapter 10
Coming Clean
Where did it all go?”
My parents stood in the middle of my desolate apartment. They had once set me up in it, and they’d furnished it to make me comfortable. At one time this place had been filled with friends, refreshments, and festive banners congratulating me for my promising new career in the financial sector.
Now the unit was little more than a shell. I’d sold everything I could to keep the drugs coursing through my body.
“I’m sorry, Mom. Dad.”
“You can’t change the past. Just tell us where you took everything.”
I brought my parents to the pawn shops, and piece by piece they bought back the things of mine that were still there—music gear, baseball cards, personal items. But there wasn’t a need for furniture. The plan was to move me home, then figure out some way to get the drugs out of my system.
“You guys just need to understand,” I said. “This is going to be hell on earth, getting me well. There’s no easy way out.”
I’d experienced withdrawals before. I’d run out of money, or the supplier would go dry. The body aches would set in; there would be pain from head to toe; diarrhea, nausea, and stomach pains, not to mention the mental battle of wanting another hit. Long hours on the couch in a fetal position, incapacitated. Imagine the worst flu you’ve ever had. Multiply it by ten.
Symptoms would last five days, sometimes longer.
I had no idea what was going to be involved in a full detox. I’d never made it that far, but I’d never heard of any process that wasn’t torturous. And would it even work? It’s often said that traditional recovery approaches show no better than a 20-percent success rate.
So regardless of my parents’ determination, I didn’t feel much hope. I just knew I’d come to the end of the road. I was placing my life—what was left of it—in their hands.
Lori, with a sad smile, said, “Looks like you and me will be going through treatment together.”
“What are you talking about?”
“While they’re fixing you, they’ve decided to fix me, too—I’ve got to quit smoking.”
I had to smile. Misery loves company. “The Warden’s trying to lock both of us up,” I said. We both laughed.
Our parents videotaped something off the TV about kicking the cigarette habit, figuring it would give them something to help Lori. But it was even more helpful than that. The show documented an alternative approach to treating drug addiction, involving NAD therapy—supposedly it was vastly more effective than the usual approaches. The catch was, this treatment wasn’t available in the USA. Up to this time, it lacked approval by the Food and Drug Administration, so you had to go to Tijuana, Mexico, to get it. Apparently Tijuana was becoming quite the hub for alternative medical treatments of various kinds.
Mom and Dad liked what they heard on the TV special, but the irony of going to Tijuana wasn’t lost on me. You flew into San Diego and crossed over to Mexico, just like my old friend Rodney had done. I thought about how he should have been here with me now, flying over there to turn his life around instead of to load up on more ketamine. Instead of getting high, I was going to get help.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Believe me, Tijuana is the very worst place to turn loose an addict like me.”
“You won’t be turned loose,” my dad smiled. “Mom’s going with you. The people at this clinic say, ‘Bring somebody with you for support,’ so you and Mom will have a little vacation, eat some Mexican food, and relax.” He laid out the plan to fly over there four days from now, and I’d get ten days of IV transfusions.
“This has got to be costing some money,” I said. “Over-the-border treatments won’t be covered by your group policy. How are you paying for it? And how is Mom going to get off for two weeks?”
“Don’t worry about any of that, Robby. This is your life we’re talking about. You have one job, and it’s to get well.”
Best I could tell, the treatment would cost my parents about the same amount I’d stolen from them—doubling down on what I’d done to them financially. Years later I’d realize they were showing me a perfect model of the love and grace of God. I had inflicted the deepest kind of hurt on them, stealing from them and using the money to further wreck my life. Any other victim and I would have gone to prison.
I’d sinned against the very people on this planet who loved me the most, and now they were willing not only to take me in, but to uproot their lives and fork out that much more money to rescue me. How did they know I wouldn’t just break their hearts again?
They didn’t.
They just knew that love wouldn’t let them give up on me.
At this point, no one in my family, least of all me, understood the spiritual concept of grace, as shown in Christ—yet somehow they lived it out. God took my family in his merciful hand and carried us forward.
The problem was, I was still an addict, and my body was still crying out for what it needed. There was no option of going “cold turkey,” simply cutting off the flow of medication; I would have gotten very sick, very quickly. Mom and Dad called the clinic in Tijuana and came to understand there was nothing to do but buy some time with a few more pills until I could get to Mexico.
I needed four to five Oxy 40s a day just to maintain my habit, and my parents had to finance that at a hundred bucks per day. Drug dependency was awful, but I was used to that. Financial dependency on Mom and Dad for my habit, however—that was utterly humiliating. I didn’t want them anywhere near the dealers and the transactions.
I told myself that if I could ever get clean, I was going to stay that way, if only for their sake.
I lined up a dealer and made the arrangements to get enough pills to hold me until the plane took off for Mexico—a maintenance dose. But I was so much in the grip of this addiction that I took more than I’d promised, of course. I’d take the next dose a little too soon. Or a lot too soon.
So the day we were supposed to take off, I saw I would run out of Oxys. That meant my inner clock was ticking. I had thirty-six hours, more or less, until I would be way too sick to fly or move for that matter.
Addicts live with constant fear of something happening to the dealer, or running out of money, or anything that could separate them from their dosage. It’s utterly nerve-racking. So, approaching the time to fly out, I was a mess. I got on the phone and found a dealer, begged my mom for more money, after explaining I’d gone through the other stash too soon. Admitting that was one more humiliation, but by now they had a pretty good idea of my condition. No more “functioning addict.”
It was thirty minutes until time to head to the airport, and I was screeching away in my car to buy drugs.
I met the supplier and got my Oxys. As I drove toward home, breathing a deep sigh of relief, I felt my car hesitate. The car lurched, and I realized my Mustang was out of gas. I had to pull over by the side of the road, with no time to fool with flagging someone down to get gas. I could fill the car up or make my flight. Not both.
I called my
parents frantically, and there was nothing for them to do but hurry to where I was. Mom was going to drive with me to the airport, and Dad would stay back to get my car running again. They had to change all their plans on the spur of the moment.
I had no words. How much stress could I cause them? Did they have a limit?
We did board the plane, took off, and as we rose above the clouds, I told Mom, “Well, we’ve gotten through the easy part. Now all I have to do is defeat drug addiction.” Mom didn’t laugh, but then again, it wasn’t very funny.
We landed in San Diego, crossed the border, and met some of the other people making the same recovery pilgrimage. I remember seeing this tall, blonde woman with her son, who was skinny, dead-eyed, clearly addicted. She was tense and anxious; he was damaged and beaten down. I realized that for everyone out there with my problem, several innocent bystanders surrounded them, people like this woman who was suffering helplessly, desperate to rescue someone she loved. And I wondered if my mom and I offered the same appearance.
The clinic was in a very ordinary, unimpressive building. It could have been the corner chiropractor’s office. We stayed at a motel nearby, and we walked past all the local farmacias every day to get my treatment.
During the first morning, I met a guy named Carl, an addict who’d come by himself. I knew that broke the rule of “bring somebody with you.” Carl and I started our regimens of IV treatments that lasted several hours. All it really took was patience—little sickness, no agony. Not a bad deal.
Dr. Hitt explained how drug abuse damages the neuroreceptors in the brain. I already had issues in that department as someone with ADHD. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that regulates motivation, rewards, and pleasure. Do something satisfying and you get a happy little dopamine surge. People with certain kinds of neuroreceptor issues become sensation seekers. They’re born, to some extent, with an addiction to positive stimulation. They chase the surge.
This is enough of a difficulty to live with on its own, but drug abuse takes all that and renders it a train wreck—it damages the neuroreceptors, and it creates a cycle of seeking the drug and needing it even more. Anyone can be an addict, but certain people are absolute walking targets for addiction. That was me.
After a consultation with the doctor, I knew I was in the right place. The success rate of his treatment was superior to any other treatment on the market. At the clinic, the nurses injected an amino-acid solution into my blood. The job of the aminos was to repair damaged proteins and help the damaged neuroreceptors rebuild in the right manner. To put it more simply, I was receiving intravenous treatments that fed my body’s craving, but in a healthy way—which bought enough time for my body to get over its need for the wrong stimulation.
Within a couple of days, I could feel the difference. I was thinking clearly, the way I used to. I was feeling better, had a good appetite, and was alert.
Within three or four days, my mom told me she didn’t recognize me. “Robby, you haven’t looked this good in years,” she said. “It’s remarkable. But what’s going to happen once we check out and go home? Are you going to go right out on the street and buy some more pills?”
“I don’t think I will,” I said. “I have no desire to. The cravings are gone.” I felt stronger, but I wanted to be as honest as possible. “For now, Mom, it seems like I don’t need that stuff anymore. But we’ll just have to see how all of this holds up.”
Mom nodded her head. She wanted to believe.
On the fifth day, the doctor asked me, “Robby, have you seen Carl?”
“Come to think of it, I haven’t, Doc. Hasn’t he shown up?”
“Nobody has seen him.”
That evening we heard the news. Carl, who hadn’t brought anyone to support him, had seen someone selling black tar heroin, something he’d always wanted to try. As I said, Tijuana has its dangers. In a moment of weakness, Carl had tried some—maybe he figured just a touch wouldn’t do any harm. He couldn’t have understood it undermined the entire, expensive, time-consuming treatment he’d come here for.
Carl was found beaten up, left by the road, and in no condition to continue. He had to be sent home.
I always wondered what happened to Carl. Was that his one shot at getting better, or was he able to raise the money all over again to come back to the clinic, or even recover some other way?
I realized how important it was to fend off that dangerous impulse, that “moment of weakness.” No cure is foolproof, because we all play the fool; it just takes that one bad moment. I told myself I’d never be like Carl—I was too smart. Thinking that, of course, was the ultimate sign I wasn’t smart enough. And it wouldn’t be long before I, too, would play the fool.
After ten days of IVs, I couldn’t believe how good I felt. Before heading home, we met with Dr. Hitt one final time. “I had forgotten what it was like to be well,” I said. “It’s only been two weeks, but that time already seems like a nightmare, something that didn’t happen, and I just woke up.”
“Recovery is like that for everyone,” he said. “But don’t relax too much. What we’ve dealt with is the physical element, and that’s a big thing. Your body no longer craves that rush, which is great. You get a fresh start. But you know there’s another issue, right?”
He tapped on the side of my head with a finger. “The mental part.”
“Exactly. This is why we say, ‘Once an addict, always an addict.’ Whether it’s alcohol, drugs, food, or anything else. The mind has to be retrained, not just the body. The body is more immediate, because there’s pain, withdrawal, and all those symptoms. But your mind is what really counts in the long run. You’re still going to have memories that float to the surface; moments when you think about the old highs and how they felt. Especially an ADHD guy like you. Carl had one of those moments in the middle of his treatment. You’ll think, ‘I could dull the pain right about now.’ You’ll remember it, you’ll dwell on it, and saying no will just make it more seductive. Like saying you’re never going to eat chocolate ice cream again. Ever. Now that I’ve said that, what does that do to the thought of ice cream?”
“Makes me want some right now.”
“Exactly.”
“So what am I supposed to do about this?”
“Talk to an addiction counselor. I’m sending you to Paula Norris, who isn’t far from where you live. She’ll walk you through weeks and months of reestablishing a healthy life. You need a better understanding of who you are and what makes you tick. Now listen—some people think they’ve crossed the goal line, the points are on the board, and they blow off their counselor. They say, ‘I’m good from here. I can handle it.’ But they can’t, and they fall right back into the trap. Classic relapse. So my friend Paula will help you avoid that.”
Paula had a practice in Slidell, Louisiana. Her clinic was familiar with the kind of treatment I had received, and she had a thorough understanding of addiction, as well as the challenges of being me. Over the next few months, she became not only a guide, but the kind of positive, supportive friend I desperately needed. Above all, she helped me understand myself for the first time.
Slidell is a forty-five-minute drive from New Orleans. I would sit and talk to Paula, and she wanted to know my whole life story. Like most people, she found it hard to believe.
“This stuff really happened to you? Just the way you’re telling it?”
“I have no reason to make it up.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what I’m hearing. This is someone trying, from the first days of school onward, to be someone he isn’t. The class clown. Then the one who does impersonations of all the teachers. Then the jock, the basketball star.”
“I wanted to be good at something.”
“You wanted to stand out. You were feeding on the acclaim, the attention. Not because you were egotistical, but because applause is the first powerful narcotic even kids can get their
hands on. It releases that dopamine, your body’s own in-house drug. The applause of the crowd is intoxicating, and you have to find new ways to get it, just like finding new drugs. But chasing crowd approval keeps you from being who you really are. One day you’re the—what was it?—Brazilian jiujitsu guy. Then you’re the club DJ. And the host of the Closer’s Corner. Even the stockbroker. Who knows how many more hats you’d have tried on if drug abuse hadn’t gotten in the way?”
I sighed. “I can see it. But who am I?”
“That’s what you’ve got to find out. But in a healthy way. Robby, when you focus on something, you’re powerful, productive—like a laser beam. The problem is that you’ve been pointing in the wrong direction for years. People with ADHD tend to be creative, effective, and successful once they figure out where to point that high-intensity beam. Before then, they point it in every direction, and a lot of people get burned. So let me give you this exercise as homework.”
“I hate homework,” I smiled.
“Well, you’ll like this task, because you get to look at yourself in the mirror! I want you to wait until you’re by yourself, then go to the mirror, put your nose right up against it, stare yourself down, and ask, ‘Who is Robby Gallaty? What does Robby Gallaty want out of life?’”
“Okay, but I don’t get it. How’s this supposed to help? If the mirror talks back, I’ll know I have mental problems.”
“Just do it. See what happens. Answer your own question, when you have no one to impress and nothing to prove. Find out who you are when no one’s looking.”
I went home and tried it. First I felt a little silly. Then I began to think about that question and realized I had no answers at all. I was twenty-five years old, a guy with a crazy life, who had no idea who he was or what he wanted out of life.
That moment remains as one of the most difficult I’ve ever encountered—asking myself a question I couldn’t answer. And maybe, just maybe it was a small beginning toward hearing the answer from Someone else.
Recovered Page 9