BURNED - Living Through the 80s and 90s as a Rock Guitarist

by Bobby DeVito

  CHAPTer nine

  you Go BACK, JACK, do iT AGAin...

  As I arrived in Ft Lauderdale, it was 5 am on a cold autumn morning. I managed to find my way back to Bob’s apartment, but felt it was too early to wake him. I walked down to the pool area, got myself a lounge chair, and tried to sleep for a couple of hours. Naturally the sun started to rise, and between the chilly temperature and the bright morning sun, I didn’t get much sleep. My body felt completely destroyed, and I had been running constantly for what seemed like the last three years. My marriage was completely over, my friends and family had largely given up on me, and I had just about given up on myself. Something about Bob G led me to believe that I could stand to have what he had.

  One of the big things you hear at program meetings is “I wanted what they had”, meaning peace, joy, serenity, sobriety, and happiness. On the whole, many of the people that I had met within the program had plenty of things I did not want. “Take what you need, and leave the rest” my sponsor Rich often reminded me. But Bob had a lot of things that I wanted – a certain calm and confident peace of mind, even in dire circumstances. He was always able to laugh and view things from a larger perspective. Coming from that true idealism of the late 60s Greenwich Village scene, Bob still had that vibe of optimism that you hear in the music of that era. And we also had matching interests into all things Buddhist, Taoist, and Hindu. Bob lived in a simply appointed one bedroom apartment in Hollywood, close to the beach. The first day that Bob and I had met, he had made it a point to bring me over to downtown Hollywood, and I immediately fell in love with the town. Hollywood has a very diverse population, with many people from Eastern Europe, Central America, Europe, and Canada. The downtown area is full of restaurants from around the world, coffee shops, and nightclubs. As opposed to the trendy glitterati-ridden South Beach scene 15 miles south, Hollywood is more like a small European town and I liked the way the place felt. And my decision was made a lot easier by the fact that no one else in the world really wanted much to do with me anymore by this point. Except Bob G.

  I arrived with no money, no job, no place to live, and very little hope.The initial plan, laid out by my sponsor Rich, is that I needed to go to the Lamb of God halfway house and enter their program. This place was truly an end-of-the-line solution for indigent drug addicts and street people. It was a highly strict fundamentalist Christian type place, and I knew that I would not last long there under those circumstances. Rich felt I had not truly hit my “bottom”, and he was right. But I was not looking forward to being an inmate at the Lamb of God, and Bob knew it. The first day at his place, I awoke to find a simple note on the kitchen table.There was a fresh juiced glass of vegetable juices in the refrigerator. Bob had left a $20 bill, with notice that I would “burn in hell forever” if I spent that money on drugs. There were several program books open, with pertinent pages marked. And he commanded me to relax, that everything would be OK. That was easy for him to say, I thought.

  Bob had a futon in his living room, and that became my bedroom during my time there. I had come there with absolutely no money, and Bob was also in really dire financial straights. I had sold his vintage Gibson guitar for him, but that money had already been spent. Bob knew I had sold a lot of things online, and produced his “treasure box” of old hippy memorabilia and items from the late 60s. He had rare autographed R. Crumb comics, New York City items, musical trinkets, all sorts of tchotkes that he had managed to save over the years. We set to work borrowing a digital camera, and began to sell the items online with eBay. Some of his rare R. Crumb comics were worth as much as $600! As we made the money, there was complete rejoicing – it meant that we could actually go food shopping. We both had a lot of fun during this time, as we literally just scraped by.

  Bob had decided that I should stay with him instead of going to the halfway house, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief. I knew that I would not be able to deal with being an inmate at the Lamb of God, and he knew it as well. After discussing it with Rich, it was official. Bob’s only requirements were that I stayed clean and sober, and attended at least one meeting a day. Most programs recommend that a new comer do “90 and 90”; which is ninety meetings in ninety days. During my three months at Bob’s apartment, I managed to cram in over 200 meetings. This is not heroic, it is typical alcoholic behavior. Whatever I do, I tend to overdo it, even when it came to recovery. I joined a local AA group that was a men’s group, and it really seemed to connect with me for the first time. The guys in our group were fantastic, with many members having sobriety in excess of 15 years. We had a real cross-section of the population, with street people and inmates of halfway houses to doctors, lawyers, and politicians. This group was hard, real, and effective. I had sometimes been distracted by my hormones at AA meetings where the opposite sex were present, and had remembered well Bob Uzzo’s advice about the odds of finding a relationship in recovery. Besides, I had a friend from a few years back who used to cruise AA meetings just to meet drunk sluts. I really liked the fact that all the men would take openly and honestly at these meetings, instead of posturing and attempting to look good for the ladies.

  I began to really focus on my stepwork in AA, completing my steps as fully a possible as well as doing all of Rich’s additional written work. I managed to get a day job in a local music store selling synthesizers and pro audio/recording gear, and just focused on life day by day. My first paycheck was a real celebration, as it was the first money I had made in nearly 2 months. I worked hard, and was rapidly promoted to manager at work. Alcoholics seem to be overwhelmingly good salespeople – we have certainly sold ourselves a bill of damaged goods over the years. In my spare time, I went to meetings and hung out with Bob in downtown Hollywood. We spent countless hours at a local used book store in Hollywood called “Trader Johns”. This place was one of the funkiest booktores either of us had ever seen and frequently got in large collections of amazing books; they even had a rack of books that was left outside in the foyer 24 hours a day, with instructions to slide the money under the door if you wanted one. Hollywood at that time was still getting over the fact that Sep 11th terrorist Mohammed Atta lived in town with several of the other hijackers prior to that tragedy. We sat and ate at least several times a week at our friend Manny’s middle eastern restaurant that perched right on Young Circle downtown. God bless Manny, he always fed us even if we were a little short on money. We were always good on Thursday for a good plate of falafel today.

  Allegedly, some people understand recovery right away, and have some sort of life-changing experience that forever alters their perspective. During my life, I had already had plenty of life-changing and neardeath moments, and yet I was still making the same mistakes. There is the “sudden” variety of enlightenment, and the “gradual” method. I suppose it is very Zen-like in a way, where sudden enlightenment may occur…after 20 years of study and koans. My recovery path to bliss seemed to be of a very gradual character. I spent a lot of time reading other recovery-oriented books that Bob G. recommended, and did a lot of meetings. Things seemed to be going better and better, and within three months, I had finally saved enough money to get my own apartment. One of the other managers at the music store had a garage apartment that he would rent out, and it had become available to me. I packed what few things I had, and Bob helped me move my stuff over to the new place. I had finally once again gotten back on track.

  Things were decent for a while. I really got into my meetings, especially the men’s group I attended regularly. Work went well, although was getting more stressful due to poor upper management. I had reached some sort of stasis or balance, the still point of what had been a rapidly moving world for several years. I was able to look back clearly, consciously, and objectively at my actions and consequences during my research and development phase of drug and alcohol abuse. It wasn’t particularly attractive to look at, and is not something I’m proud of. But I have continued to get back up and keep trying, and that’s what we have to do – o
r its jails-institutions-death. Any one or a combination of the three is on the menu for me if I head back out into the drinking and drugging life. It very much comes down to learning new behaviors to deal with the desires to drink and use. For me, one very powerful tool I have used is the “play the tape all the way through” concept. When I think about going out to get high, of course the first half of this little “mind movie” is a total thriller…I am high, enjoying it, loving life. Then later in the movie come the consequences. My friend Mexico Bill from Sobrenity had it down to a formula – job, car, girl, drunk. And it worked the same way in reverse as you headed back down. By the way, Bill – see you in San Miguel de Allende someday. Vaya con Dios.

  So I have to play that little “mind movie” all the way through, which for me would be the next day after I had gone out drinking and drugging and had been up all night, crawling around on the floor the next morning to see if I had accidentally dropped any small pieces of cocaine, then frantically dialing any of my dealer friends while wondering if I could take out any more money at the ATM. By the way – it’s true that they should just have a special screen that appears on ATM transactions between midnight and 6 a.m.. Maybe it should include the phone numbers to the local AA and NA hotlines. Let’s be frank – if you’re withdrawing $200 at 3 a.m. on Saturday morning, you are probably up to no good.

  So the process for me has included learning some new strategies, support from fellow addicts and alcoholics, and the indefinable grace that seems to occur with great frequency in my life. At various points, people have shown up that have guided me; sometimes for a minute and sometimes for months. All along the road have been signposts and fellow travelers all seeking their flavor of the same thing. Sometimes it takes quite a while for it all to sink in fully, especially with hard-headed problem cases like me. I was doing pretty well, going to regular meetings, working a normal job, and staying out of trouble. I was doing well at work, had passed my certification exams, and was being considered for a promotion to the regional level of the company. One day I was at work, and heard that we were delivering some gear to a local studio, and then to Ben Harper at a concert in Pompano Beach. I volunteered to help deliver the equipment, and during our travels the driver of the truck wrecked it. He ended up going to the emergency room, but I had seen it coming and had braced myself for the impact. I spent that weekend in agonizing pain, and reported for work that Monday intending to see the doctor for X-rays. My manager was waiting for me, and ambushed me before I had even come through the door. “You’re not going to screw us, man!”, and he refused to let me go to the company authorized medical clinic. I immediately called one of my good friends from the New College days, Mitchell Silverman Esq, the very man who had sang “Freebird”naked onstage with the Curtis Hayes Blues Experience back in the day. Mitch immediately got me set up with medical care, and before I knew it I had ended up injured, in a long-running worker’s comp case, and broke again.

  This summer was pretty extreme for me. I was enduring a LOT of stress, as it took months for the state of Florida to send me any worker’s comp money, and what I did end up getting was only 2/3 of what I was making at work. I visited doctors, physical therapists, and others to find out I had a herniated two discs in my neck during the accident, and they were causing a great deal of pain and headaches. I lived on cheap snack foods from the convenience store for weeks and weeks, and I literally just did not have any money. I played every Thursday night at a dive bar in Hollywood called “Sneakers” – it was the one place Bob G. had pointed out to me on my very first tour of Hollywood, saying “don’t EVER go in that place, it’s bad news”. Naturally, this would be the place I would end up having a house gig. Sneakers was open until 4 am 7 days a week, and was the kind of place that Tom Waits would have loved, yet still been a bit sketchy about. One week when I was playing a show, someone from the audience asked me why I had moved to Hollywood, and I told them “to get away from all the drugs in Tampa”. Nearly the entire audience busted out into laughter and guffaws, with several people breaking out baggies of coke and little “bullet” one hitters and waving them at me. “This place is SWIMMING in cocaine” said one customer, referring to Hollywood. The money I earned from this gig was the only food money I had to survive on. Luckily, my landlord at that time was very cool to me, and knew I would pay him the back rent as soon as the state had started sending me money.

  My body was beginning to wear out and run down, due to my extremely poor nutrition, constant stress, and the uncertainty of the workers comp case. I had slowed down on going to my meetings, and was finally reaching a year of sobriety. But I didn’t really feel like I had anything to celebrate. I was completely broke, could not work, and was nearly starving. Good friends like Bob G. would take me out to dinner to make sure I had a decent meal from time to time, but I largely isolated in my apartment and tried to wait out the court case without going crazy. One of my only bright spots during this period was my friendship with two other local singer/songwriter/ne’er do wells that were just like me: Paul and Rob. Between the three of us, we all did gigs in Hollywood, wrote our own songs, and hung out at each other’s gigs for support and heckling.The three of us had some real fun at those gigs, playing each other’s songs and having a blast. Little did I know that soon Paul would be headed to rehab as well, and I would be close to death.

  A week later, I finally got a substantial check from the state, with my back pay to date. It wasn’t a lot of money, but to me at the time it seemed like a million dollars. I went grocery shopping, and paid my patient landlord some of the back rent. That night, I went to Sneakers to see a local band, and they wanted me to play electric guitar with them that night. I was having a great time and really playing some loud, crazy rock guitar. It was a great way to help let some of the stress of the past few months out. Eventually, shots of Jaegermeister and beers began to appear on the bandstand, and I crumbled. I wanted that ice cold beer in a frosty mug. I had been through so much that year, and I deserved to have one good night out. I was sure I could hold it down to only two beers. Of course I could! I had come a long way, and had done a lot of work on myself. I must have built up some more self-control by now with all my hard work in recovery!

  But as you can imagine, the two beers I initially had were only the start. I ended up playing until 2 am with the band, drinking beer and Jaegermeister shots until the music was over, then ended up in the bathroom with one of the locals. He offered me some cocaine, and of course I wanted some. “Hell, give me an 8-ball”, I said, and bought it from him. I didn’t ask for just one line, no sir. Go ahead and supersize me. I left the bar and went with some other people to another all-nite joint in the seedy adjoining town of Hallandale Beach, and kept drinking and doing cocaine far into the night. I didn’t drive home until around 8 am that morning. The sun was rising brightly, and burned my eyes considerably as I tried to adjust my sunshades to escape its evil wrath. As I drove home, I began to notice a funny feeling in my right arm. As I was driving and holding the steering wheel, my right arm was having a hard time staying up there and holding the wheel. I thought maybe my arm was going to sleep, but it simply wasn’t waking back up. As I continued to drive and grow more nervous by the second, already paranoid from the cocaine use, my arm continued to get worse, as did the entire right side of my body. When I finally arrived at my small apartment after what seemed like an eternity driving back from the bar, my arm had gone completely dead and lifeless. My right arm. I fumbled with my keys and managed to open up my apartment, and flung myself inside in my sweaty, paranoid, scared to death state. I tried to massage my arm, to do anything I could to get it to wake up. But it was dead, and I could feel an associated weakness with my entire right side. In my completely irrational state of shock, I called my handler from MAP, Chris Brekka. After my initial distrust of him when he left me stranded at the bus station, we had grown pretty close and he kept in touch with me to keep up with my progress. Brekka didn’t seem to be surprised to receive my call, a
nd I explained my predicament to him pretty simply.“Chris, I went out drinking, ended up doing an entire 8-ball, and when I got home my arm went dead. What should I do?”.

  There was silence on the line for a long indeterminable amount of time. Finally he screamed at me “Why don’t you go to the fucking Emergency Room you fucking idiot!”

  I quickly realized he was right. I could feel my life draining from me, and was becoming worse and worse. And I did what probably many other addicts would do in this situation – I still had a little cocaine left, and I snorted it before I left to drive to the ER. Is this completely insane behavior? Yes. Somehow I managed to drive myself to the ER, park my car, and smoke a cigarette on the way in. As I approached the triage desk, I am sure the nurse could see the look in my eyes. She asked me what was wrong with me, and I told her “I did a whole bunch of cocaine and alcohol last night, and now the right side of my body isn’t working”. All of a sudden, I was at the top of the list for treatment, and was immediately ushered into the ER. Luckily for me, Hollywood Regional Memorial hospital has dedicated stroke team of neurologists, neurosurgeons, and assorted specialists on call at all times for situations like mine, and I had some fantastic immediate care. A male RN was assigned to look after me, while I was tied to a gurney wishing I could climb through the ceiling. I had so much coke in my bloodstream I wanted to die. I kept begging the RN to give me Valium, Ativan, Xanax, ANYTHING that would bring me down, but he could not. He casually mentioned that while cocaine was an enjoyable drug, one needed to enjoy it in moderation. If I knew the meaning of that word, I wouldn’t have been lying there on the fucking gurney, and I told him so. I was rapidly rushed through a series of CT scans and other assorted tests. The doctor told me that my potassium levels were so low that I should technically already be dead. And now, I had literally exploded a portion of my brain by doing too much cocaine. And I was paralyzed. Jails, institutions, and death. Just like everyone always says at the beginning of those fucking AA meetings.