I don’t know what I would do to change the system. What I do know is that people fall through the cracks all the time, and unless the addict is ready and asks for help, forced intervention won’t work. Even if she had somehow intervened that day, then what? I wasn’t ready. I wanted to be taken care of, not necessarily quit using meth. I was in denial, thinking my only real problem was depression. I wasn’t ready for sobriety yet. The professionals in the system know how addiction works. I felt betrayed that day, leaving the evaluation. I felt like the system let me down and was allowing me to slip through the cracks, but the reality was, it would have been a waste of time and money for them to step in at that point. I had to come to sobriety on my own. Ask any addict/alcoholic or their family. It doesn’t work any other way.
I cried all the way home, and I cried while I loaded my pipe. When I took that first hit and held it deep in my lungs, I stopped crying. I started to get pissed off. The more I smoked the angrier I became. At what, I don’t know. Everything seemed so pointless.
A couple of days later, I received the results of the evaluation in the mail: “From the information made available during this evaluation, it is clearly evident that Kim has a significant drug abuse problem. Her assessment test scores were all very high and she reported drug use had affected at least three of the six major life areas. Kim reported she was using methamphetamine daily and had been for four years...It is imperative that she becomes involved in an inpatient program as soon as possible so she can get off the drugs. It has been affecting her health, employment, and now she is in the legal system. I recommend that Kim attend a very intensive inpatient substance abuse treatment program as soon as possible. The program should include a yearlong aftercare and relapse component.”
The prosecution received the same results from the P.S.I.
Nothing changed after the arrest, except that I began deteriorating, mentally. I’d been taking my medication sporadically for a few months, but hadn’t bothered going back to my doctor when the prescriptions ran out. A common problem with people who have bi-polar disorder is that once we start feeling good, we decide we no longer need our medicine. We’ll stop taking it and by the time we realize we’ve made a mistake, we’re so far down in the spiral we can barely function, and even making a doctor’s appointment seems overwhelming.
That’s what happened. My meth use increased with my depression and I began shutting down. It’s a strange feeling when copious amounts of speed leave you nearly catatonic, but that’s what was happening.
I cried until the tears wouldn’t come anymore. I’d come home in the middle of the night and curl myself around Andy, feeling his warmth radiate, feeling his aliveness, and I’d envy him.
Allan and I barely spoke anymore. He would come home from work, fall asleep on the couch watching TV, then wake up and go to bed.
I lost interest in gift baskets and shopping, so I closed the office and moved everything to the house where it stayed, stacked in boxes. I even lost interest in gambling.
I didn’t want to see people; I didn’t want to talk to anyone. All I wanted to do was smoke meth and sleep. At night, I would go to my bar and play pool in the back corner by myself until closing time. I started renting hotel rooms more often so I didn’t have to be in the house alone with Allan there. Being alone is unbearable when people are present.
I felt more alienated from Andy, too. He was growing up and wanting to spend more time by himself with his games and movies. He loved going places with Allan on the weekends, but never wanted to go anywhere with me. I know now, and I probably did then, too, that he was being a normal adolescent boy, but at the time, it felt like everyone I cared about was rejecting me. Feeling helpless and lost, I did the one thing I’ve always been able to do, regardless of how dark I feel. I wrote.
Journal entry - October 2006
This isn’t my home. This is a place where I’m waiting to die. I’ve lived here almost four years and I’ve never even completely unpacked. My sentencing is in December and I don’t care what happens. I don’t know if I’ll get sentenced to prison or if I’ll receive probation, and I just don’t care. I don’t know that I’ll be around long enough to find out. I want to die.
I’ve lived with depression all my life and nothing I’ve felt before has ever come close to this. I’m in a dark, dark place inside myself where everything’s still. Usually my mind races with thoughts, ideas and the constant chatter of my inner dialogue, but all that has stopped. My head is filled with thick, clotted, black ink as dark as the inside of a coffin. Nothing moves inside me. I can’t even cry. All I do is sit and stare stupidly at movies most of the day. Sometimes I stare at the wall.
I sleep so much. It’s the only thing that gives me relief. The meth isn’t working anymore, although I keep smoking it whenever I’m not sleeping. It seems to be the only thing I do when I’m awake - smoke meth and stare stupidly. I don’t know what to do, so I do nothing.
My sleep is dreamless - like the sleep of the dead. All I can think about lately with any kind of concentration is killing myself. I’m so lonely and wish someone would come save me, but no one does. I miss my mom and dad, but there’s no way I can talk to them. If I could, I would say to them, “Please take me in. Please take Andy and me away from everything. I’m dying inside, Momma, and I don’t think I’m going to make it. Daddy, please come get us and don’t hate me. Just let me sit on your lap and rock me until everything’s okay. Please don’t leave me alone, because I’m dying and I don’t know what to do.”
But there’s no way I can do that. No way I can tell them what’s happened to me and why I stay away from them. How can I possibly tell them what I’ve been doing to myself all these years? How can I let them see how broken I am? I can’t. I can’t do that to them and more important, I can’t risk them hating me. And they would hate me if they knew how I am...what I am. I know they would because I hate myself and I know they’d never forgive me because I can’t forgive myself. If I want things to be all better, I’ll have to do it alone. But I’ve been alone so long, living with only me, and I’m sick of me. I’m sick of thinking about me and I don’t know how to make everything better.
I thought about Intermountain Hospital, the psych hospital in Boise. I spent hours researching electroshock therapy on-line. It’s not what it used to be in the 50s and 60s. It’s much more humane now. I thought it would be nice to check myself in and undergo a series of shock treatments. I read about the effects of ECT on depression - how it can often jar the brain into resetting itself after a few sessions. With no insurance, I tried to figure out how to finance a couple month’s stay in a mental hospital complete with E.C.T. This is what I fantasized about: committing myself to a mental hospital.
I was so sick. I thought of meth as medicine that I had to have. Without it, I reasoned, I wouldn’t be able to function at all. It was all I had until I could figure out how to fix the depression. Once I had the depression under control, I would stop doing meth. I didn’t think it would be a problem. All I wanted was to feel better.
Committing myself was never really an option, though. Money aside, what about Andy? What about Allan and the house? If I went away for a couple of months, we’d lose the house and where would that leave Andy and me?
I began to think about killing myself. I spent days rolling the idea around in my head and the more I thought about it, the better I felt. The fog surrounding me began to lighten as I considered methods. I didn’t want to use a gun for two reasons. The first was because someone would have the unseemly job of cleaning up one hell of a mess. Second, if I got jumpy at the end and didn’t make a clean shot, I could end up paralyzed for the rest of my life. If that happened, I’d never had a second chance.
That’s the same reason that a car crash or jumping off a building was no good: too much risk of permanent injury rather than death. If it were possible to overdose and die from meth, it would have happened long ago and as for pills and booze, the risk of regurgitation was too high. Eith
er that, or a trip to the ER for a quick stomach pump.
I was still searching for a foolproof way of killing myself, when I was watching the movie Magnolia again. I was at the part where Julianne Moore’s character is sitting in her car in the garage with the motor still running when it hit me like an adrenaline shot to the heart: the perfect way to kill myself was asphyxiation. I didn’t know of anyone, off the top of my head, whose garage I could use uninterrupted, but I definitely had my method. The logistics would come.
One day, as I was drifting in and out of sleep with a loaded pipe in my hand, I realized that I knew exactly how to do it. Jill, the woman who owned the bail bond company I worked for, has a condo in McCall, a little resort town in the mountains, that is private and has a tiny, one-car garage. She let Andy and me stay there one weekend, and I was sure if I asked, she’d let me use it again. I pictured the garage: small with solid walls all around and no windows. Everything had clicked into its proper place, and I became serene, like an early morning lake.
I felt guilty involving Jill, but I didn’t think there would be much of a mess. I felt at peace for the first time in months.
Then I thought about Andy.
I knew my parents would take him, but what would they tell him? Would he ask for me the rest of his life, not understanding where Mom was and always thinking I could be back any day? I couldn’t do that to him. I couldn’t leave him, possibly missing me for the rest of his life and never comprehending what happened.
But I couldn’t live anymore, either. I’d already decided that. I felt torn apart. I was Olivia de Havilland in The Snake Pit when the lightning splits her in two just before she drowns.
A thought began to creep into my mind like a sneak thief pulling aside a curtain in my mind. Just a finger at first, then a toe, then a foot, until the rat-bastard was just there. When I began to entertain the thought seriously, it seemed like the only logical thing to do. The only humane thing to do. I couldn’t leave my son behind. I had to take him with me.
I did not come to the decision lightly. Thinking of what I was going to do hurt me physically - like something was wrong with my skeletal structure - but at that time, in my sick mind, I couldn’t see any other way.
I began to play the scenario through in my mind. He’ll be okay, getting in the car with me. I’ll tell him we’re going to get pizza. By the time he starts to get tired of waiting, he should start to get drowsy and then I’ll sing to him. I’ll sing the “I Love You” song I used to sing to him as a baby when he was spending so much time in the hospital. I’ll talk to him the way I did when he was in N.I.C.U. and I couldn’t hold him-when he was unconscious and I just wanted him to hear the sound of my voice. I’ll tell him how much I love him and how perfect he is. I’ll tell him that the best thing I ever did in my whole fucked-up life was give birth to him. My bug in a boy suit. My perfect person. The best human I’ve ever known. I’ll hold him on my lap and kiss his face as I tell him again and again how much I love him and we’ll slip into sleep together.
There could be no mistakes. I had to make sure we both went. That was the most important thing. If I went and he didn’t, who would find him and take care of him? I didn’t want him trapped in the garage, scared and needing me, not being able to wake me. What about the alternative? What if I survived but he didn’t? I couldn’t bear to think about that
For the next two weeks, the thought of following through with my plan consumed me. I obsessed about it in my mind until sometimes I felt it was already done.
Chapter 21
The more I rehearsed the suicide in my head, the sicker I felt. How could I possibly do this to Andy after everything we’ve gone through? All the surgeries, all the doctors, the diagnoses (both correct and incorrect,) the oxygen, the feeding tube, the assessments, ambulance rides, bowel movements nearly ripping him in two, the flashbacks, the poop in the underwear and cleaning liquid shit off a fifteen year old’s hairy ass...and that laugh. My, God that raspy, trachea slamming unique-only-to-Andy laugh that makes my heart pitter-patter...and the way he talks...the Andowneese that only I can translate...skinny arms around my neck and kisses on my mouth that he won’t release until I do the muha thing...the way he feels in the morning when I have to wake him up: warm and soft and yummy...how deep my love for him is and has been since conception...how proud I am of who he is and how I tell him every day, without exception, that he’s the smartest, funniest, most handsome boy in the world: he’s a perfect person.
I didn’t feel like I deserved to live, but he didn’t deserve to die and since I couldn’t leave him I was back where I started, staring into the abyss.
I had to do something, though. I couldn’t go on the way I was. All I wanted was to feel better, but I felt so far gone that even if I were to go back on my prescription medication, I didn’t feel it wouldn’t be enough.
All of this made sense at the time. I remember feeling very rational about the decisions I was making, or trying to make. It blows my mind to look back and remember the window of time I’m describing here, because now, in my right mind, I see that there’s nothing rational about any of it.
I believe everything happens for a reason. Most people believe that, though depending on their faith or philosophy, they may use another term. However you want to look at it, the events that took place after I gave up the idea of suicide took place almost immediately and happened as rapidly as I’ll relay them to you here.
I started searching on-line for someplace to get help for my depression. I was looking for dual-diagnosis treatment centers: programs that provide help for two or more disorders, like depression and drug addiction. The more I read, the more I began to think about my drug use, although I still considered depression to be my main problem.
The treatment facilities that popped up first were for places like Malibu that cost upwards of ten thousand dollars a week. The pictures are mouth-watering: lavishly appointed rooms (private, of course,) swimming pools, oceanfront and or view, spa treatments...everything you would want for a lovely vacation getaway.
Most of the places I found were in California, so I did a specific search for programs in Idaho. The only inpatient treatment center I could find was the Walker Center in Gooding, Idaho. I spent over an hour on the modest web site pouring over every paragraph and picture. It bore no resemblance to the splendor and elegance of its upper-class cousins, but the bone structure seemed similar. It looked plain, but nice. I read about their dual-diagnosis program. There was a medical doctor on staff who made assessments and provided help with depression and other mental illness while the patient received individual and group therapy for drug addiction.
The typical stay was thirty days and the cost was around ten thousand dollars. The most appealing thing to me was the thought of going to a place where someone would finally take care of me. That thought appealed to me very much. They didn’t offer payment plans, though, and there was no way I’d be able to afford it.
Then I got a rare e-mail from my mother:
“Kimbo, I haven’t heard from you in a while and you never answer your phone. I’m worried about you. Please let us know you’re okay. Remember, I’m always here if you want to talk. Love you, Mom.”
I re-read it three times before deciding I had nothing to lose, so I hit reply:
“Mom, I’m sorry I’ve been out of touch, and I’m not okay. Take a look at this web site, and please, please don’t hate me. Love, Kimbo.”
I included the link to the Walker Center site, hit send and shut off my computer. I was scared to death of what my parents would say. I knew they’d probably hate me, and I started to panic. What the hell did I do that for? Fuck! There’s no turning back now. I’ve essentially just told them I have a drug problem and there are no do-overs on this one. I’m terrified of what will happen. They’ll be disgusted. They won’t even respond. They’ll never want to see me again. I feel like an idiot. What the hell am I expecting?
I felt like a caged animal that’s too frightened to e
scape when the door’s ajar. I wanted to run, but I had nowhere to go, so I sat on my bed, smoking meth and nodding off and on until morning.
I didn’t turn on my computer until later that day. I was afraid of what I will find. When I finally did, I was stunned by Mom’s reply:
“Kimbo, I think this is a good idea. Call the Walker Center today and ask them about the program. Find out how much it costs and when you can go. I could never hate you, Kimbo. Love Mom.”
Just like that.
I sat there, staring at the monitor for a long time. I spent most of the day getting high and avoiding my phone. Around four o’clock I made the call. The woman who answered asked me a series of questions about my drug use, and although I’d been through it all before, I found myself crying, barely able to choke out the words. There would be a bed available on Tuesday, she said. I was calling on a Friday. I told her I would talk to my parents about it and call her back. I e-mailed Mom again, but she wanted to talk to me. I bawled through the entire phone conversation, which, as I remember it, was brief:
Was I using meth?
Yes.
Did I think I needed help?
Yes.
Did I think this place could help me?
Yes, and they’ll help me with my depression, too.
Then call and reserve the bed.
I was shocked. My parents didn’t hate me, at least my mother didn’t, and maybe they even understood a little, although she never mentioned the word addiction. The conversation was as I’m relaying it to you here. Yes, they looked at the web site. Make the call. When can you get in? Make the reservation.
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