by David Sheff
I cannot bear to have it stare down at me. I put it in a desk drawer.
Jasper has become adept with Garage Band, a music recording and mixing computer program. He has constructed a haunting and beautiful song.
"It's a sad song," I say as I enter the room where it's playing.
"Yes," he replies quietly.
"Are you sad?"
"Yes."
"About?"
"We ran the mile at school today. I couldn't think about anything but Nic."
I tell Jasper that there are places we can go where other kids with brothers or sisters or parents with alcohol or drug problems go.
"What do you do there?"
"You don't have to do anything. You can just listen to what other kids say. It can help. If you want, you can say something."
"Oh."
"Do you want to try it?"
"I think so."
He hugs me tighter and longer than he ever has before.
In the morning, the sun shines through a hole in the gray-black sky. It's like a klieg light is shining on the garden. There is a yellow circle surrounded everywhere by a diffused patchwork of gold, rust, and dying white hydrangea—the dying colors of autumn. The poplar trees are nearly bare; all but a few leaves are gone, and the trees' naked white branches reach skyward into the gray shimmering light. Only the magnolia has blooms—three white flames.
A load of firewood was delivered for the winter season. This morning my goal is to stack it with the kids. As we work, I am thinking about, what else, Nic. I am neither optimistic nor pessimistic. I don't know what will happen. I believe deeply in his good soul and brain and at the same time I have no illusions about the severity of this illness. No, to be honest, right now I do not feel optimistic at all.
It comes down to where Nic is. I'm optimistic—not overly optimistic but optimistic—when he's in recovery, disconsolate and pessimistic when he isn't.
Strangely, the thought of being cut off from Nic used to send me into a panic, but now—today, at least, today at this moment, at least —I am all right with the concept. But then I think, Nic could die. Stacking wood, I think, Nic could die. I stop for a moment.
I would miss having Nic in my life. I would miss his funny phone messages and his humor, the stories, our talks, our walks, watching movies with him, dinners together, and the transcendent feeling between us that is love.
I would miss all of it.
I miss it now.
And here it sinks in: I don't have it now. I have not had it whenever Nic has been on drugs.
Nic is absent, only his shell remains. I have been afraid—terrified—to lose Nic, but I have lost him.
In the past, I tried to imagine the unimaginable and I tried to imagine bearing the unbearable. I imagined losing Nic by overdose or accident, but now I comprehend that I have already lost him. Today, at least, he is lost.
I have been terrorized by the fear that he would die. If he did, it would leave a permanent crack in my soul. I would never fully recover. But I also know that if he were to die, or for that matter, if he stays high, I would live on—with that crack. I would grieve. I would grieve forever. But I have been grieving for him since the drugs took over—grieving for the part of him that is missing. It must be grief. At least it feels exactly like Joan Didion describes it in The Year of Magical Thinking: "Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life." (Ah, so that is what they are. It's a relief to know.)
I grieve, but I also continue to celebrate the part of him that is untouchable by meth or any other drug. I will never let a drug take that from me.
"Insanity is the insistence on meaning," wrote Frank Bidart in a poem. Yes, but this human brain of mine requires meaning—at least an approximation of meaning. The meaning I have come to is that Nic on drugs is not Nic but an apparition. Nic high is a ghost, a specter, and when he is high my lovely son is dormant, pushed aside, hidden away and buried in some inaccessible corner of his consciousness. My faith, such as it is, comes with a belief that Nic is in there and he—Nic, his essence, his self—is whole, safe, and protected. Nic strong and clear and filled with love—Nic may never again emerge. The drug may win the battle for his body. But I can live knowing that Nic is in there somewhere and that the drug cannot touch him where he is in there somewhere he is there.
Whatever happens, I will love Nic. Somewhere in that place he knows this. And I know.
I look over at the pile of unstacked wood. We have barely made a dent in it. The kids are whining and don't want to work. They look dejected and sullen. Jasper's head falls back, his eyes are closed, and he exhales loudly. He grumpily tosses a log onto the sagging pile. My head rings. I hear a truck grinding up the hill.
There is currently no ongoing Al-Anon group for kids as young as Jasper and Daisy. (Alateen is for older children.) So I call around for recommendations of other places to go for help. I want them to know that they aren't alone, it's not their fault, and that though the drugs have stolen Nic from them, they can still love their adored and adoring brother. I want Jasper to try to understand that Nic meant everything he wrote in his note to him. But Nic's illness is bigger than his best intentions—his desire to do right by himself and others. The Nic who wrote the note is gone, at least for now. We need to figure out a way to help the little children grieve for their brother.
The devoted librarians at their school send out a request to a network of their fellow librarians at schools around the country. The response is overwhelming. I am forwarded a list of books about kids dealing with a situation like ours—about the guilt and responsibility one feels and the questions that adults can hardly comprehend, never mind children. The counselor at their school tracks down a therapist who works with families and specializes in addiction. Karen and I will meet with him and then, if it feels as if it might be useful, bring Jasper and Daisy with us to meet him.
One day I am driving Daisy and Jasper home from school. As we reach the crest of the hill above Olema, gold and dry in autumn, marking the entrance to West Marin, Daisy looks up from the scarf she's making and says, "It's like Nic is like my brother who I know and this other guy who I don't."
She puts her knitting aside. Then she says that yesterday they discussed drugs in Girls on the Run, a group of fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade girls who run and talk about personal and social issues—everything from body image to nutrition. The girls split into groups to discuss why kids start drinking alcohol, smoking, or using drugs.
"What were the reasons?" I ask.
"They are mad at themselves," she says. "Monica says peer pressure. Janet said, somebody gets stressed, and I thought, because you want to get out of yourself.
"We talked about ways to deal with stress or sadness or things like that and said it would be smarter to think of ways to feel good about yourself and to do things that make you feel happy, like running, rather than to do drugs."
Jasper has been quiet, thoughtful. He says, "I was talking about drugs on my field trip." His grade just returned from spending the night on icy-cold and fogbound Angel Island. He says that he and a friend, shivering through the dark night, talked. "He asked me how Nic is doing," Jasper says. "I said that he is using drugs again."
His friend, who had read the Times article, said, "But your brother seems so smart and like such a nice kid."
Jasper says, "I told him, 'I know. He is.' " He repeated the story about the cartoon angel and devil on Nic's shoulder and also said that he is going to talk to someone about it—a person who helps people who have addicts in their families learn how to deal with it.
In the past, Jasper and Nic have sent each other messages from my cell phone to Nic's—one-line greetings. Now Jasper, thinking about his brother, asks if he can send one.
He writes: "Nic, B smart. Love, Jasper."
He sends it even though Nic's cell phone has been shut down. "Maybe he'll turn it back on," Jasper says.
So much about this disease is grieving. Grief is interrupted by hope, hope by grief. Then our grieving is interrupted by a new crisis. From the Shakespeare by the bed, I read:
Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;
Then have I reason to be fond of grief.
I rage against his struggle and pain and how his addiction has caused so much pain in our lives—ours, his—and I am also filled with boundless love for him, the miracle of Nic and all he has and all he has brought to our lives. I rage against this God I don't believe in and yet pray to and thank him for Nic and for the hope that I have—yes, even now. Maybe it's that my brain is bigger now: it can hold more than it could hold before. It can more easily tolerate contradictions, such as the idea that relapses can be part of recovery. As Dr. Rawson said, it sometimes takes many of them before an addict stays sober. If they don't die or do too much damage, there's a chance, always a chance.
I look back at the dismal statistics I was given years ago by a nurse about the success rates for rehab of meth addicts—single-digit success. I understand that it's unrealistic to think that many addicts will stay sober forever after one or two or three or however many tries at sobriety, but maybe the more meaningful statistic is this, related by one of the lecturers at a rehab: "More than half of the people who enter rehab are sober ten years out, which doesn't mean that they haven't been in and out of sobriety."
It's a sad, sad time, but I am grateful for the miracle that Nic is alive and has a chance. Maybe it will take a bigger miracle to save him. When we named him, we consulted my father. His full name is Nicolas Eliot Sheff. His initials spell the Hebrew word for "miracle." I pray for a bigger miracle, but in the meantime I am grateful for the one we have. Nic is alive. Writing about his son, Thomas Lynch described the unexpected conclusions parents reach when we confront something as overwhelming as a child's addiction: "I could be thankful even for this awful illness—cunning, baffling, and powerful—that has taught me to weep and laugh out loud and better and for real. And thankful that, of all the fatal diseases my son might have gotten, he got one for which there is this little sliver of hope that if he surrenders, he'll survive."
In the morning, Jasper, wearing a berry-colored sweater, sits at my desk, where he plays a new computer game. Along with the sound of computer-generated music, crashing cymbals, a French horn, and booming bass, Jasper talks to the screen. "What? Eh eh eh. Gotcha."
Daisy closes her book and moves to the round table where Karen is working on a collage. Soon she is cutting, painting, and pasting paper, too.
Nic called and left another message last night. He said that he and his girlfriend "brought things way too far" and now plan to get sober. He explained that he talked to a doctor about it and was given some medication to help.
Of course I don't believe it. His meaningless words these days are another sad fact of his addiction, belying their genuineness when he is sober.
I wait. For Nic to hit some sort of bottom. It sinks in after everything we have been through and everything I have read and heard. Addicts ultimately recover when they hit bottom. They become desperate and hopeless and terrified; they must be so desperate and so hopeless and so terrified that they will be willing to do anything to save their lives. But how could Nic's overdose in New York, when he was rushed to the emergency room—unconscious, near death—not have been hitting bottom? How could his subsequent nightmarish relapse not have been hitting bottom? I don't know. All I do know is that Nic is back in a state of drugged fantasy, holding on to the illusions that allow him to deny the seriousness of his situation. It's what addicts do. I am fearful knowing that Nic will remain in this deluded state until the next dramatic event. What event? We must wait for it, meanwhile knowing that it might never arrive. Before many addicts hit bottom, they die. Or some wind up half-dead, paralyzed or brain-damaged, after a stroke or something similar. This is true of most drugs and certainly with meth, which can turn a brain into misfiring mush.
Parents want only good things for their children. Yet here, in mortal combat with addiction, a parent wishes for a catastrophe to befall his son. I wish for a catastrophe, but one that is contained. It must be harsh enough to bring him to his knees, to humble him, but mild enough so that he can, with heroic effort and the good that I know is inside him, recover, because anything short of that will not be enough for him to save himself.
A friend whose mother was an alcoholic told me that he spent a decade hoping for a "near miss"—something dramatic enough to bring his mother into treatment for her illness, but not too dramatic—nothing permanently debilitating. The near miss never came. His mother died two months ago. When my friend and his sisters cleaned his parents' house, they uncovered empty vodka bottles hidden in the backs of cupboards behind china, and empty bottles buried under neatly folded sweaters in closets. When she died, his mother had thirty times the legal driving limit of alcohol in her body.
I wish for a near miss for Nic.
I pray for a near miss.
24
There's nothing to be done, we have to do everything we can do. We have done everything we can do, we have more to do. Vicki and I agonize over it.
After Nic calls again, high, asking for money, Vicki says, "We have to try."
I wonder about an intervention, but think that after everything we have done, it's ridiculous and hopeless.
"You can't control it."
But I cannot let Nic go. Not yet. Soon? Not yet.
I cannot let Nic go.
I will not let Nic go unless I am forced to. I may be.
You didn't cause it, you can't control it, you can't cure it.
I know.
There's a lot I don't know, but I have learned some lessons about addiction. Though there are some wrong courses of action to take, there is no predetermined right course. No one knows. Since relapse is often part of recovery, Nic still may get it. Nic can still be OK.
I go over the endless stories of people I have met in the rehab groups or at AA and Al-Anon meetings and the stories of friends of friends for whom it took multiple tries. Some of them hit bottom—unthinkably horrible bottoms—and literally dragged themselves from crack houses, from gutters, from dealers' dens, from pools of their own blood into rehab or detox or to an AA meet ing or to their parents' doorstep. Others got to rehab because their wives gave them an ultimatum, the court ordered them, their parents forced them, or their friends and family orchestrated interventions. A woman who hears about our plight calls and says, "I just want to say don't give up. My son would be dead if I had given up. I decided to do it one last time. This is after seven rehabs and hospitals and arrests and two suicide attempts. Now my son, who is twenty-five, has been sober for three years and he is better than he has ever been in his entire life. People told me to give up on him, but I didn't. How does a mother give up on her son? If I had, he wouldn't be here now. That's a guarantee. He would have died. I called just to tell you this story. Do not give up hope and do not give up on him."
If it were legal, I would hire someone to kidnap Nic and forcibly take him to a hospital for detox with the hope that, sober again—at least with a window out of the deranged and deluded drugged state of mind—he would try. I have heard stories about parents who hired people to kidnap their adult children. I would consider breaking the law and suffering the consequences if I thought it would work, but I don't think it would. Nic would flee. If he was unready to be treated, he would flee. Yet it feels too risky to wait for him to bottom out.
Karen and I decide that we will help pay the cost of rehab if we can get him to go. Again. His mother says that she will, too. We have decided to pay one more time. Yes, we know that it could be wasted money. We agree that this is the last time, because rehab can become a lifestyle for some add
icts. After this, if Nic relapses and wants help, he will have to do it on his own, relying on the sorely limited public resources available to addicts. Maybe it would be more useful if he crawled on his hands and knees into a publicly funded program begging for help. Would he do so? There are programs in many cities, but they are overcrowded. There are waiting lists. It's likely that it would take Nic two to four months to get into one.
We may not have that long.
Sometimes I am all right. Is this what they call letting go? I have let go, if letting go means that I am all right sometimes. I leave the crisis behind for periods of each day. I enjoy the time I spend with Karen and Daisy and Jasper and our friends. Yesterday Daisy and I had our book group. Last evening Jasper and I went on a thrilling bike ride past egrets and curlews on the trails through Corte Madera Marsh. Sometimes I am fine, sometimes I am not.
I consult more experts. After our experience, I am not naive enough to believe that any expert has the answer to our family's problem. Nor am I arrogant enough to think that I know the answer. I will not blindly follow anyone's advice, but I gather information and will weigh it and decide what, if anything, to do. I know more than I did at the start of this thing. I know that no one knows the answer to what is right for Nic or any other addict. No one knows what will work. No one knows how many times. This neither compels a loved one to act nor impels him not to.
Over the past few years, I have come to know and respect and trust a few of the experts more than others. Dr. Richard Rawson at UCLA knows as much about methamphetamine as anyone. As a researcher, he has no agenda other than fact and truth. He is devoted to his work for one reason, to help addicts.
I email him and ask if he thinks that, after everything we have been through, trying an intervention is crazy, an exercise in futility. I fully expect to hear back the conventional wisdom—Nic has to hit bottom. I expect him to tell me that I should do my best to let go.