THE GOLDEN BOY
A Doctor’s Journey with Addiction
by Grant Matheson
The Acorn Press
Charlottetown
2017
Copyright © 2017
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior written permission of the publisher or, in case of photocopyingor other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency.
P.O. Box 22024
Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island
C1A 9J2
acornpresscanada.com
Edited by Ann Thurlow
Copy Edited by Laurie Brinklow
Cover design by Matt Reid
eBook design by Joseph Muise
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Matheson, Grant, author
The golden boy / Grant Matheson.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-927502-95-2 (softcover).--ISBN 978-1-927502-96-9 (HTML)
1. Matheson, Grant. 2. Matheson, Grant--Health and hygiene. 3. Physicians--Canada--Biography. 4. Drug addicts--Canada--Biography. 5. Physicians--Malpractice--Canada. 6. Recovering addicts--Canada--Biography.
I. Title.
R464.M354A3 2017 610.92 C2017-905361-2
C2017-905362-0
The publisher acknowledges the support of the Government of Canada
through the Canada Book Fund of the Department of Canadian Heritage
and the Canada Council for the Arts Block Grant Program.
The needle tears a hole,
The old familiar sting.
Try to kill it all away,
But I remember everything.
—from “Hurt” by Nine Inch Nails
(lyrics by Trent Reznor)
PREFACE
Montreal.
Victoria Day Weekend, 2005.
He sits in an airport waiting area full of happy travellers. Looks down at his dirty, rumpled jeans and wipes the sweat off his forehead. He restlessly taps his foot, making the black duffle bag on his lap bounce. Rolls his ticket between his fingers.
He unfolds the paper and checks the time. Looks at his gold watch and back at the ticket.
Running his hand through his hair, he looks again at his watch. Taps the rolled-up ticket on the duffle bag.
“This is a pre-boarding announcement for passengers of flight AC235 from Montreal to Toronto. We will commence general boarding shortly, but we invite parents of young children and those requiring extra boarding time to come now to the gate. General boarding will commence in five minutes.”
Those around him gather their things, putting their paperbacks and newspapers in their carry-on bags. Zippers open and close as the travellers make their way to the gate. The soles of their shoes squeak on the floor.
But he stays seated.
Rubs his leg for reassurance that things are still in place, before slinging the duffle bag over his shoulder. He runs to the restroom.
Bursts through the bathroom door.
Walks past three men standing at the urinals and stands behind the man waiting for the only stall. “Can I please go ahead of you? I’m going to be sick.”
When the stall door opens, he pushes past the man exiting it. His hands tremble, but he manages to pull the latch closed. Hangs the duffle bag on the hook on the back of the door.
Pulling down the zipper of his jeans, he feels his thigh for the tape holding the syringe in place. Holds his breath, rips the tape, grips the needle. Balancing the syringe between his teeth, he roots through his duffle bag past the snacks and books for the pill, the pill crusher, and the test tube.
Water.
He has no water.
Panic washes over him. Under the stall, he sees dozens of feet waiting to get into the toilet. Men are growing impatient.
The toilet is attached directly to the wall. No tank.
An announcement comes over the speaker…
“Attention passengers of Air Canada Flight AC235 from Montreal to Toronto, we are now ready for general boarding. Please come to the gate…”
His hands shake uncontrollably. A cold sweat breaks out on his body.
He dips the test tube into the toilet bowl, crushes the pill into a powder, puts the crusher back in his bag, and pulls out a lighter. Pours the powder into the tube of toilet water and holds the lighter beneath it. It bubbles loudly.
The people in line start to whisper.
He tugs at the upper sleeve of his shirt and pulls it tightly around his arm—a tourniquet. Pours the cooked Dilaudid into the syringe and looks for a vein. They are all collapsed but for one in his forearm.
He injects himself. His eyes close, and his mouth opens. His face instantly transforms from hard to soft as he enters a deep state of euphoria. Of ecstasy.
He pulls down his sleeve and gathers his things. He rushes past the men staring at him.
He gets to the gate just in time to catch his flight to rehab.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
It started with a cough.
As a family physician, I heard that line many times a day. A cough can be symptomatic of a chest infection or lung cancer, pneumonia or asthma. But rarely, as it happened with me, does an opiate addiction start with a cough.
I grew up in a religious household. One of three children (two boys and a girl), our father was a Presbyterian minister, and our mother stayed home to raise us. I tried my best to avoid disappointing my parents. I kept my nose clean and my grades up.
When I was eighteen, I made the decision to become a doctor. That’s when I truly became the golden son.
I was serious about this calling to practice medicine, and I wanted to do whatever I could to help me along that path. I decided to take an advanced first-aid course, and I got my chauffeur’s license so I could get a job working on an ambulance. I thought that would help prepare me for my chosen career. Every second weekend, while I was attending university, I worked from 5:30 p.m. on Friday until 8:30 a.m. on Monday.
I never saw anything as a doctor that scarred me like what I saw working on that ambulance.
While I was in university, I married my girlfriend. I was twenty-two years old. I remember walking down the aisle thinking, what a terrible idea, you are too young to be doing this, what are you doing? But I wanted to please my parents, and they thought I should be married.
Remember, I was the golden boy.
By the time I finished school and started practicing medicine in Montague, Prince Edward Island, my wife and I had two daughters, a beautiful home, and a picture-perfect life.
It came as a complete shock to everyone, including me, that soon after our divorce I became a drug addict.
Addiction stole a good portion of my thirties and also stole my career.
Many people have told me over the years that I should write a book. So that’s what I’m doing.
Some details have been changed to protect those that I love, while still telling my story as accurately as I can.
I hope that everyone who reads this will understand both the overwhelming power of narcotics and that addiction can happen to anyone. Your kid isn’t a bad kid because he or she is addicted to drugs. (And you aren’t a bad person if you are addicted to drugs.) These people are into something serious and they can’t get out of it. Narcotics are vicious, and they kill.
The man you read about in the preface, in case you haven’t guessed yet, was me. You’ll read more s
tories about him throughout this book. You’ll notice that sometimes I write about him in the third person, and that’s because he is now just a character to me. He is a completely different version of myself. He led to my destruction, until I helped him to get strong. And I never want to forget him.
This is my story…our story.
And it started with a cough.
Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island.
February 2000.
I sat on a leather sofa in an expensively decorated living room. I had a persistent cough, making it difficult to complete a full sentence. My friend pulled out two Cokes from the refrigerator and handed me one. I thanked him, took a drink, coughed again.
We were both in our mid-thirties. We ignored the hockey game on the big-screen TV, made small talk about the event we were going to: a dinner put on by a drug company. A chance for doctors to socialize and enjoy a free meal at the local Italian place. An opportunity for the pharmaceutical company to make connections.
I kept coughing.
“You’re driving me crazy, Grant. Go take some cough syrup.”
“I’m sure it will go away.”
“You’ll interrupt the presentation. Go take some.”
I sighed. “Where is it?”
“Bathroom cabinet.”
I dutifully went to the bathroom, opened the cabinet, found the bottle, twisted the cap, took a swig, and put it back.
We both finished our Cokes, put on our coats and went outside. We scraped snow and ice off the car windshield.
As soon as I sat in the passenger seat, I felt a warmth rise from my shoulders to my head. And the voice inside—the one that had been berating me day in and day out about my failed marriage—it faded away.
I was at peace.
After my marriage broke up, I had an extreme amount of guilt. As soon as I moved back to PEI after graduating from Dalhousie Medical School, I started building a practice in a small, rural community. It didn’t take long until I had a full patient load. As soon as I woke up in the morning—every morning—this voice in my head would tell me I had failed. (Sometimes the voice actually came from my mother. Sometimes it still does.)
I’d failed my parents. I’d failed my wife. My church. My children.
I’d fallen in love with another woman while I was legally married, even though said marriage had been over long before I met the woman who would become my second wife. We’ll call her Beth.
Even though Beth, whom I married in April of 2000, thirteen years after marrying my first wife, was truly the love of my life, I was living with a tremendous amount of guilt. I had traded the life I’d been living for a life I’d chosen. I was a terrible husband. Was I a decent father? I became somewhat of a disappointment as a son. My parents didn’t even attend my second wedding.
This chatter went on inside my head constantly. I couldn’t shut it off.
I was overwhelmed and depressed, but I didn’t really think about how stressed I was until that night at my friend’s house, when I took that cough syrup. My first step into that world of substance abuse was so innocent and it happened at the age of thirty-five. It was seductive, though; it made all of the guilt go away. The voices finally went silent. I felt such peace and calm. It was amazing, really. But, even then, I never sought out any kind of substance again. Not until about seven months later, September of that year, when I injured my ankle.
I’d been a marathon runner. And I had an injury that prevented me from running. The pain was bad, and I had a lot of stress in my life. I was missing that runner’s high.
My daughters were four and six years old at the time, and Beth had just found out she was pregnant. I was working day in and day out, with a successful practice in Charlottetown. I was not only working my regular office hours, but I was also doing evening clinics and taking regular shifts at the hospital. The money was great. Much of it was going to my first wife for child support and alimony, but I was doing well as the primary breadwinner for my new marriage, and I was helping to support my parents as well.
But here I was with this injury. I couldn’t mow the lawn. I couldn’t run around the yard with my daughter on my shoulders like she wanted me to. I was in pain.
One day, a patient returned a bottle of Percocet to me, to be disposed of. I thought I’d take half of one to see if it would make my ankle feel any better than it did with the Tylenol I had been taking.
And it did.
When the Percocet wore off, I took another one.
I was soon taking half a pill every few hours to keep the pain at bay. And I felt great. There was no shortage of Percocet in a medical clinic. Patients were leaving me with their unused medications all the time, and if I didn’t have any, I just got more from the pharmacy. Beth was aware that I’d been taking this stuff, but neither of us was concerned. I was a doctor. I knew what I was doing. Besides, I was as straitlaced as they come. I would be the last person to ever develop a drug dependency.
I also enjoyed the extra rush of energy the pills were giving me. I had a hectic life. I was working through the week, picking up my daughters from their mother every Wednesday afternoon and every other weekend. While I had them, we packed in as many activities as we could. I was determined to play an active role in their lives.
The painkillers were not interfering with my life or my work, but they were certainly a constant. I had to have them in order to manage the pain, and to keep up with everything. As a doctor, I knew that the chronic pain in my ankle was worse because I was taking so many painkillers. Looking back, I should have managed that pain in a different way, but I’d already gotten myself hooked.
As Beth’s pregnancy progressed, we started making some plans to celebrate. We booked tickets to go to Disney World together in the winter of 2001, to celebrate and to have fun as a family. I had a medical conference to attend in Orlando, so our accommodations would be covered. The timing seemed right. The girls were so excited! Both about the baby, and about seeing the “happiest place on earth.”
But before Disney, Beth and I decided to book ourselves on a little getaway to Miami, to celebrate her birthday. I was making a lot of money during that time, and, boy oh boy, did I ever love spending it. I was on top of the world. Or so I thought.
Miami, Florida.
February 2001.
One evening in Miami, Beth and I joined some friends for dinner in a great restaurant. I was on top of the world. I looked across the table into the face of my beautiful wife—the love of my life—and felt like I was the luckiest man in the world. She seemed especially beautiful there, in the candlelight, on the beach. Short sundress, long legs. Silky, dark hair.
Then, I could feel my buzz dying.
The bill came; I opened it. Dinner for two: $450 US. Unblinking, I set my credit card down on the table—nothing to it.
All the while the seductress was calling to me, like a siren would beckon a sailor into the sea. I needed to sneak away without raising alarm in my wife or our dining companions.
I was powerless. I loved everything about my drugs: the intoxicating scent, the thrill of possibly being caught with them, the way they made me forget about my problems and made me feel everything while feeling nothing.
I knew I shouldn’t be thinking about getting high while I was out celebrating my wife’s birthday. But I needed to.
Immediately.
I excused myself from the oceanside table and hurried to the restroom. I walked through the gauzy white curtains floating on the ocean breeze. Reached into the pocket of my pants until I felt the pill. Put it in my mouth. Swallowed.
Release.
That happy buzz was back. I reached the restroom, basking in the sensation of stillness sweeping over every nerve in my body.
Then I had a moment, right in that bathroom stall. I was in this incredible restaurant right on the beach in Miami, with my beautiful wife, and I�
�d taken so much Percocet that my bladder couldn’t relax enough for me to pee.
That should have been enough right then and there to make me seriously examine my behaviour, but I still wasn’t ready to admit yet that I had a problem.
I was my own doctor, and I had things in check.
After we returned home from Miami, we were getting ready to take the kids to Orlando when Beth suffered a miscarriage. We lost the baby.
I was suddenly faced with this terrible dilemma. We were totally devastated by this loss. Yet, the girls were so excited to go to Disney World.
I had an impossible choice to make: leave my wife home alone after just having lost our baby or tell the five- and seven-year-old girls we couldn’t go to Disney World after all.
We agonized over the decision and decided I would go with the girls.
I remember having that discussion with them. That the good news was: we were going to Florida. The bad news was: there would be no baby.
My life started to get much more stressful, though, during that solo trip to Florida. I had this conference I was there for, and so I had the girls in childcare at the hotel. I would blow off my meetings in the afternoon, so we could have our time together, exploring the Magic Kingdom and swimming in the hotel pool. I was taking half a tablet of Percocet every few hours, and I was feeling okay. I know now that drugs had distorted my sense of reality while I was down there. I was feeling like Super Dad for having my girls there with me on my own, but I failed to recognize the only reason I was able to cope was because of a chemical. With the Percocet, the pain was manageable—the physical pain and the mental anguish over leaving my wife at home. The Percocet helped to quiet the voices in my head, allowing me to get through the days. When I popped a Percocet, my ankle wasn’t as sore, and my mind wasn’t so busy berating me all the time.
I kept on taking them when I returned home. Every day. Multiple times a day. Again, I was able to justify my behaviour, because I was my own physician. Nothing to worry about. I was an excellent doctor.
Then, the following year, I attended a conference in Halifax. And it’s there where I learned that I might have gotten myself into some trouble.
The Golden Boy Page 1