On the way to rehab everyone kept calling to make sure I was actually getting on the plane. I had every intention of getting on the plane, but I also had every intention of getting blasted one last time. I was in Delta’s Crown Room drinking as much as I could and taking every pill I could get my hands on.
It took me eight days to detox. The first four days I slept. The last four days were unbelievably bad. I don’t ever want to go back again. I spent thirty days locked away facing my demons and trying to stare down all of them. Every emotion comes spilling out, but the dominant one is fear. Once you break through the physical addiction and start to realize what you have done and what you have to do to remain sober, it’s incredibly scary. Some of the other people in there with me said they were afraid ever to go outside again. For the first time in years for some of us, we felt good.
ELEVEN
THE ESCAPE
It took a couple weeks in rehab before the pain began to subside and the fog slowly started to lift. I was still shaky and far from clearheaded, but around the two-week mark I started to think about what I would see when I walked back out into the world. It had been so long since I looked at anything without one vice or another coursing through my body that the thought of leaving was scary.
It’s hard for someone who hasn’t gone through it to understand, but without all those crutches stuffed into all those bottles, the world seems like a dangerous place. Before long, everyone in rehab is thinking the same thing: I don’t want to leave this place because I’m safe in here.
By the time day thirty rolled around, I was extremely nervous. My counselor suggested I stay another sixty days, but I felt like I could make it out here on my own with support groups and my sponsor. Thankfully, I wasn’t alone. I had my angel, Ta-rel, by my side every step of the way. But it was strange when I started to see the world through the eyes of a newborn. For the first time in a long time, I saw the world as it really was rather than how it appeared with drugs and alcohol running through my system. I had done so much of both over the previous ten years that my body wasn’t close to being back to normal, even after thirty days.
I was in one of the best facilities in the world, but there is very little joy in rehab. I was in with people who had problems at least as bad as mine, some of them a lot worse. Then there were a couple people who had been caught drinking and driving and had been ordered into rehab by a judge. They hated being there and did everything in their power to make the experience as miserable as possible for everyone else. There were a couple guys who wanted to fight. And everyone, at one point or another, hated his or her counselors. At the very least, I had to learn how to take suggestions.
Now instead of fighting my feelings, I accept having a bad day. Everyone has them. I don’t put as much pressure on myself anymore. I acknowledge the fact I’m having a bad day, and then I move on. I begin and end every day with a prayer. All I know is that the process has worked for me. I’ve been given the tools and I now understand how to use them. I also see that life gets better when you apply those tools. I know what relapse means and I have no interest in experiencing the options relapse presents—jail, another stint in an institution, death. At the same time, I don’t look into the future. For me it’s one day at a time. I think it will be that way for the rest of my life. All I can handle is what’s happening right now in front of me. I don’t worry about things beyond my control. If I’m going to work with Ezekiel Jackson tonight, I know that he’s going to slam me down in the ring and there’re going to be lightning bolts of pain shooting down my body. Can I do anything about that? No. I can ask him to knock me down a little softer, but that’s about all. That’s a lot different from worrying about it and being unable to say a word because of some insecurity. I’ve learned to communicate, which in turn has helped me improve my life. If I have a question, I go right to the source and ask. That’s a big change for me.
It isn’t simply a matter of learning new tools to deal with life. You have to be ready and willing to change. Every second of every minute of every day requires a certain level of focus. It’s intense, to say the least. But I was willing to look at the areas of my life that had suffered because of my addiction. It’s not pretty and it’s not easy, but it’s absolutely necessary if you hope to recover. It is, and always will be, a one-day-at-a-time process for me.
A lot of people either aren’t prepared for that process, or they haven’t reached bottom where they are willing to put themselves through that kind of examination. Then there are others who never learn no matter how many times they go through a program. I know the numbers. I know that the vast majority of people relapse. But I also know I’m not going to be one of them. I passed two years clean and sober on May 20, 2010, and I have no intention of ever going back to the life I was living before I got help.
I’m on the right path. I’m doing my program day by day. But those demons are always on my shoulder. At any given time I could turn around and start listening to them whispering in my ear. I could choose that bad path again, or I could find a support program to keep those demons at bay. Does it scare me? Hell, yes. There’s alcohol and drugs everywhere in our society. All you have to do is turn on the television.
When the final day arrived, I was still dizzy and my equilibrium was off, which is why I was afraid to drive a car. As she had done every weekend during the month I was in rehab, Ta-rel drove the five hours from Gainesville to the facility near Ft. Lauderdale, then turned around and drove five hours back. This time I was going with her, and I was afraid. I got into the car and we drove awhile before stopping at a Cracker Barrel off the highway.
It was frightening being back in the world with all these people and all the temptations. Everything is a trigger for an addict. It’s all around you when you come out into the light of day. My head was still clearing for a couple months after I got out. It was weird. I was seeing things in a way I hadn’t seen them in a long time. It was like, “Wow, look at that pretty pink cloud. Look at the butterfly. This is beautiful.”
I was doing fine until we started to get closer to home. The closer we got, the more anxious I became. I suppose it was kind of like returning to the scene of the crime. Ta-rel had cleaned every corner of my very little house so I wasn’t worried about a stray bottle of pills lying around. Still, as soon as I got home, I looked for an AA meeting to attend. I went to a meeting that first night and I didn’t stop going to meetings for the next 364 days. They talked to us about the concept of “ninety in ninety,” which refers to attending ninety meetings in the first ninety days after leaving rehab. I went an entire year without missing a single day and I needed every one of those meetings. Some people can return home and stay the course without going to meetings. Other people can’t last more than a day or two without attending a meeting. It depends on the person and his or her support system. I needed somebody to talk to outside of my support group, which was essentially Ta-rel. She doesn’t drink. She doesn’t do drugs or anything like that. She had been with me through the worst of times over a five-year period. She saw my descent and I know she was worried about me slipping up. But she has been critical to my recovery.
It’s probably reasonable to ask why she didn’t do something as I was going deeper and deeper into my addictions, but the truth is there wasn’t much she could have done. I had to hit bottom and make the decision on my own. I know this: She did what no one else would have done and that’s take care of me. Most people would have left, and I wouldn’t have blamed them. She stuck by me every step of the way, and a lot of those steps weren’t pleasant. Ta-rel knew that if she didn’t go to the liquor store and pick up a half gallon of vodka, then I would jump in my truck and do it myself. I’m sure she weighed the alternatives. I was going to get my stuff one way or another. At the end, I was going through a half gallon of vodka in less than two days. I had no business getting into a truck and starting the engine, much less driving anywhere.
The primary lesson of rehab is that recovery comes before everyt
hing and everyone. The counselors make sure you understand that nothing, especially work, is more important than an addict’s recovery. Things were tight for us, but Ta-rel never said a word about me not working those first five or six months. I went to my meetings every night. I did what I was supposed to do every day. It might have looked like I was a lazy bastard taking advantage of this wonderful woman, but my job was to work on my sobriety and that’s what I did. That’s what I had to do. It took a long time to mess myself up to the point that I needed to get clean, and it was going to take a long time to crawl out of the hole I had dug for myself.
Eventually, I got a job through a connection I made at an AA meeting. For the first time in my adult life I had to go to work just like everyone else. To that point, I never had a job that required me to show up every day at the same place at the same time doing the same thing. A couple weeks after I left high school I started wrestling. What did I know about a real job? I worked as a security guard at a jewelry store, but it just wasn’t me. I couldn’t take the routine. I know that’s how work is for most people. It’s day after day after day. As hard as professional wrestling is, and it is extremely difficult physically, I love its free-form nature. I like the idea of being in a different place every night coming up with a new twist or turn in a program. I like interacting with different groups of fans and working in different venues. There’s an electricity to it all. Needless to say, that charge was missing at the jewelry store.
Still, I didn’t think about returning to wrestling for the first five or six months. I knew the possibility was out there, but I was focused on taking care of myself. I was so focused on my sobriety that I didn’t let myself look too far into the future. When I did talk about it with my dad, he told me to forget about wrestling. He said I was too old, that wrestling was in my past. It was the same talk, and probably for many of the same reasons, I had heard from my father when I was young. He knew the business and he thought I’d be better off leaving it all behind and finding something else to do.
“Focus on your program, Dustin,” he said. “You’re too old to be wrestling anymore.”
My dad had been around long enough to see, firsthand, how addiction messed up lives. With that said, he was an awesome father to me throughout all of this. The result is that we have developed the kind of father-son relationship that I craved when I was a little kid. We do just about every-thing together. We go turkey hunting, play golf, or just ride horses. We can have a good time together. After all these years and all the shared experiences, good and bad, there is only love between us now. I can’t say enough about my dad. He’s exactly the father I always wanted him to be and our relationship is truly wonderful. And the same goes for my stepmother, Michele. I love her to death.
I’ve said this before, but even at sixty-seven years of age and after nearly fifty years in the business he’s as charismatic as ever. People have always loved Dusty Rhodes. It’s incredible to me. I remember tagging with him back in the 1990s at a time when I had become popular. It didn’t matter what I did. I might have had the fans behind me at the outset, but as soon as my dad slapped hands and entered the ring, that audience was all his. No matter what I did, the fans popped for my father. It was so cool.
He’s always been my hero, but now that feeling comes from a much deeper place. I just hope he gets treated like the legend he is for all that he’s accomplished. He should be remembered for being one of the original architects of professional wrestling. To this day, he remains one of the most charismatic guys ever to step inside a ring.
My counselor at the rehab facility wanted me to come back down to get my one-year medallion, but I just couldn’t face that place again. I celebrated my first year drug and alcohol free with my sponsor. I celebrated my second year clean at home with Ta-rel. It’s been two years and counting now, and I can’t imagine ever going back to my former life. Aside from the obvious reasons, I feel like I owe something to Vince, Ann, and the company for taking a chance—chances—on me.
I had known Ann for a long time before I called and asked for help. She has always been so good to me in every way. She calls me her little miracle because there are other guys who haven’t been able to conquer their demons even after coming out of rehab. I called Ann every week for a year after I got out. Sometimes I’d call her a couple times a week. She never failed to take the call, and she never failed to make every effort to have a meaningful conversation with me. It wasn’t about her job. She just cared. That’s not something you can fake. She’s my third angel along with Dakota and Ta-rel. Ann’s number is one I keep close to me at all times. I love her. I really do.
By the end of 2008, though, it was time to start living again.
TWELVE
THE RETURN
I always need to be doing something. That’s a characteristic of attention deficit disorder. You have to remember that in those first few months out of rehab I had nothing but time on my hands. I didn’t have much money and I didn’t have a schedule full of commitments. I didn’t have a job. All I had was time.
One day I decided to find a gym and start working out. Needless to say, I hadn’t been very focused on my physical health and well-being for a long time. But I needed something to do, and going to the gym started to fill a little bit of that void. I didn’t have the cash to hire a trainer, so I started slowly on my own. I was building up to what I called the three hundred, a combination of exercises that add up to three hundred repetitions. It’s actually a form of circuit training that provides a total body workout. It’s worked really well for me. I very quickly became hooked on working out, and for the first time in my life I was going to the gym and working hard every day. At my heaviest, I weighed about three hundred pounds, which is a lot for me. Hell, it was all I could do to get through a match at the end. I’m lucky I didn’t have a heart attack.
The workout routine was part of the program I selected for myself in recovery. It’s become an important part of my life and since I’ve returned to wrestling. Not only can I keep up with all the young guys, but I’ve lost fifty-six pounds while adding a lot of muscle.
I don’t know whether someone at the company heard about me working out, or it was just perfect timing, but one day the phone rang. It was John Laurinaitis. He wanted me to do a bit with Roddy Piper and the Honky Tonk Man at a Pay-Per-View in Phoenix at the end of 2008. I was going on seven months clean. I was getting stronger and working out harder. I just didn’t know if I was strong enough. I was excited, but I was nervous, too.
By the time Laurinaitis called, I was feeling pretty good. But the idea of seeing everyone again made me very anxious. It was like leaving rehab. There is a part of you that fears leaving the facility because all the temptations and triggers are on the other side of those doors. That paranoia I had when I was all pilled up was still there, and it started to creep out as I got closer to the event. I knew I was doing good things. I knew my life was better than it had been in a very long time, but I still didn’t know for sure whether I had what it took. Could I stay clean in that environment? It was a test. At the same time, I didn’t have any questions or doubts about my ability to do the job. I have always known how to work. What I didn’t know was whether I could keep up with the younger guys and go back to the rigorous daily routine. Specifically, I didn’t know if I could do all that and stay the course on my recovery.
But everything went well in Phoenix. I did the Pay-Per-View, then television the next night and headed back home. I felt good about my performances, but I had no idea where they would lead. A couple months later, Laurinaitis called again. This time, he offered me a contract. The deal was designed so they could slowly work me back. It worked out exactly as they planned.
The next major test came months later when the company decided to send me to Europe. Once again, I was extremely nervous. That trip turned out to be the most intense test of my recovery. I was stuck in the bus with guys for four hours at a time, sometimes longer. I’d play cards, but there was alcohol on th
e bus. It wasn’t like anybody was trying to get me to have a beer or anything like that. Everyone knew my situation and they were respectful, but it wasn’t easy returning to that environment. I had to stay completely focused all the time. That meant thinking about what I was doing just about every minute of every day. That kind of attention can be exhausting, but I never wavered.
About one year into my return, Vince came over one night. I can’t count how many chances Vince had given me at that point, but it meant a lot that he wanted to talk to me. He didn’t send somebody else with a message. He delivered it himself.
“Dustin, I want to start getting Goldust over again, but we have to take it easy.”
I knew exactly what he was talking about. He was reminding me of the fact we had a PG audience on television, and I couldn’t do the kind of the sick stuff I did back in the day. He wanted to make sure I understood the rules of the game—all the rules, including those that related to my continued employment. I couldn’t go out there and go into business for myself doing nasty, dirty things on television. He was giving me another chance, another opportunity. And it felt good hearing that from Vince.
I also understood the part of that conversation that didn’t involve Goldust. It didn’t even require words. No one had to tell me that one of my responsibilities was to help some of the young guys. It might not sound like a big deal, but a lot of guys never understand the big picture. They never figure out that wrestling is going to be around a long time after they are no longer able to climb into the ring. As a result, a lot of guys wind up on the outside looking in at exactly the time they could use the work. They get caught in things that don’t matter. What they are really missing is an appreciation for the little things that make this business so great. They start losing matches that in the past they would have won. It’s not losing that’s an issue—it’s how you lose that matters. There is a way to lose and still bring down the house. It’s an art form, and some guys never learn to honor the subtleties of it.
Cross Rhodes: Goldust, Out of the Darkness (WWE) Page 9