At the three-day mark, I quit detoxing. I had to go back to work. I had to take a little something and then I would be okay.
I knew I was caught. I was being sent to Homewood for an assessment. I knew I was done, but I still couldn’t stop. I injected myself. Immediately, relief came. From my toes right up to my head, through every nerve in my body. I felt so happy—so good. The misery was over. But then I realized I would have to go through the worst part of the withdrawal process all over again. Next time. But for then I had to get through the day.
I had to work. I still had the bills. I had to juggle work and the kids. And I was doing a horrible job. Still I continued to use, though in much smaller amounts, convincing myself everything I was doing was justified.
Halifax, Nova Scotia.
May 2005.
Since I failed in my attempts to quit, I had a new plan. I would wean myself down to almost nothing, and I would go to this assessment and fleece the doctors. This whole thing would be dropped. It was only 48 hours. I could do it. But for now, I had a birthday to mark. My brother was 41 when he died. I would hope I would make my 41st but I knew this all might be coming to an end. Hopefully not with flowers and a casket.
To celebrate my 40th birthday, Scarlett and I went to Halifax for the weekend. We had, I thought, an amazing time. We stayed at the Prince George Hotel. We got a suite, so the room was opulent. The shower was an open concept and could be viewed from the master bedroom. I watched as Scarlett showered and lathered her long lean body in soap and shampoo. For a minute, I felt guilty about dragging this woman along on my nefarious journey, but this was interrupted by her leaving the shower and dropping her towel.
“Why the long face on the birthday boy? I have a couple of things here that will cheer you up.” The couple of things included sex and drugs, and then we were off to the casino. The Prince George is connected to the mall and casino by a series of pedways. Scarlett was wearing a tight short black dress with no underwear and high-heeled boots. The sound of her heels in the halls echoed through my body and made me feel invigorated. I love to walk when I am drunk or high, but even more so with an attractive woman on my arm.
We entered the mall area and I sensed the smell of new fabric, cooked food, and perspiration. We glided through the atrium oblivious to the other patron’s scramble for last-minute purchases. We boarded an escalator to the pedway that would eventually take us to the casino. I went ahead, to help Scarlett exit the escalator, but not to be outdone she flipped her heels onto the mobile handrails. It was like a long sleek linebacker coming at me, except instead of a grimace I was distracted by a better view. She hit me hard and we both fell with a thud. I knew at the time we would feel it the next day, but a stop at the portable photo booth in the mall, and an injection for both, quelled any chances of us feeling it that night.
Guelph, Ontario.
May 2005.
The Tuesday after Mother’s Day, I was on a plane to Guelph for my two-day assessment. Scarlett knew what I was going for, but I hid it from everyone else.
I didn’t think I would be going any further than the assessment because I was confident I would fool these doctors. I thought I was pretty clever. The night before, I went out into my back yard and scraped up my arms on the rose bushes, to cover the track marks in my arms. I’ve since wondered what the neighbours would have thought if they’d seen me wrestling with the thorny branches. I really believed I would be able to make this team of specialized doctors think I didn’t have a problem.
Once the plane landed in Toronto, I got a rental car and drove myself to the B&B.
I dropped off my bags in my room, and headed to “The Homewood,” as the locals call it. I was ready to breeze through the assessment and go back home, putting an end to this nightmare.
The assessment started with a physical exam and then there were all kinds of questions that I answered in the way I figured would flag me as not having a problem.
Do you drink or use drugs in the morning? Me: no. (But I did, all the time.)
Do you hide your drinking or drug use? Me: no. (But I did, all the time.)
Is your drinking or drug use affecting your work or family life? Me: no. (But it was, all the time.)
That was pretty much it for the first day. I got in my car and went to the liquor store. I knew I would have to be drunk to get through the next day of assessments. I went back to my room, got drunk, cooked some drugs, and injected them into my forearm.
The next morning, I had some more wine and some drugs for breakfast. After I injected, I walked to Homewood for my second and final day of the assessment.
The first half of the day wasn’t much different than the day before. But after lunch, things changed.
I was meeting with a physiotherapist, going over exercises I could do to judge my balance, and there was a knock on the door. I was getting antsy. I wanted to go back to my room and inject again. I was surprised when the person at the door said Dr. Cunningham wanted to see me.
I didn’t know who this doctor was, but my blood ran cold.
I was escorted to Dr. Cunningham’s office. He wasn’t alone in there. There were about ten people sitting in the room with him. Nurses, addictions doctors…everyone who had seen me over the past couple of days was there.
“We got a call from the Bed and Breakfast you’re staying at, Grant,” the doctor said, in his Scottish brogue.
I felt like a cornered animal. Someone had been in my room? My cheeks turned red.
“They found drugs and alcohol,” the doctor said.
I looked him straight in the face and said, “It wasn’t mine! It was there when I arrived.”
“I can’t believe you’re trying to deny this,” he said. “It’s like you’re standing over a dead body with the murder weapon. I don’t believe a word of the shit coming out of your mouth.”
I didn’t say anything for a minute, and then I completely broke down. “You’re right,” I said. “I’ve been taking drugs every three hours for months. I’m drunk all the time. I’ve tried to stop but I can’t…”
I spilled my guts to the people in that room. I told the entire truth.
After I was done, the doctor said, “You must feel like someone who has been juggling plates for years and you finally let them fall.”
I started to cry then. “I don’t know what to do.”
“You’re a sick man, Grant. Not a bad man. You need help. I would admit you today if I could but we don’t have a bed. We’re going to have someone go back to your room and remove all that stuff, and we’re going to send you home. But you have to go to AA meetings and NA meetings until you come back. Do whatever you can to not use before then. I hope we see you again.”
He said this, because the time before an addict goes to rehab is the most likely time they will die. The doctor was afraid I would overdose, trying to get one last high before rehab.
Two addictions workers went back to the B&B with me. I was embarrassed, but I felt like it was going to be okay. They moved everything around and tested it all to see what was in it. They were checking to see if the urine tests matched up.
I called Scarlett and told her to have something ready for me to inject when I got home because I was going to be sick.
When I got home, I really wanted to follow the doctor’s advice to stop using, but I couldn’t. Addiction had taken over my body and my mind and I just wasn’t strong enough to overpower her. I was, though, smart enough to call my best friend to tell him what was going on: the Halifax cop, Donnie Buell. He had been my friend since grade seven, and over the years has become my best friend. He had this ability to allow me to show my fragile side. Perhaps it was his vast experience working with irrational behavior. Society itself seems to embrace the absurd. But when it comes to our own pod of existence, it is not so entertaining. I just wish more people were like Donnie.
Of course, he alread
y knew. He’d noticed I’d been drinking, but he never in a million years would have dreamed I was also using drugs. I remember him saying to me, “I knew something was up when you were wearing long-sleeved shirts when we were golfing.” I’d also been wearing a blue band around my arm for “tennis elbow” to cover my track marks.
He came from Nova Scotia to Prince Edward Island to stay with me the weekend before I went back to rehab, to make sure I didn’t overdose. We both knew that the last days before going to rehab are the most dangerous for an addict. I didn’t want to die from that last big “hurrah.”
I made some calls before I left. Told my exes and my parents that I was going to be gone for a few weeks. It wasn’t easy to find the words.
Beth wasn’t surprised, of course. My first wife was shocked. And my parents? I don’t think they could actually believe what was happening.
That their golden boy was a drug addict. He was going to rehab.
When I kissed Scarlett good-bye, we both knew that things would never be the same between us.
Montreal.
Victoria Day Weekend, 2005.
This is where it happened. This is where I was so desperate that I pushed past the men lined up for the bathroom stall, where I used water from the toilet to mix up my hit. I was on my way to rehab but I couldn’t think about that. I couldn’t even face the short flight from Montreal to Toronto without sticking something in my veins.
I started drinking on the plane. Even when I didn’t drink, I drank on airplanes.
When I got to Toronto I got a cheap rental car at the airport. It was a little Toyota Corolla. There was a time when I would have gotten the most expensive option, but at this point, I was flat broke. Like most drug addicts end up.
I had $600 in my bank account after I got the rental car. I probably shouldn’t have been driving because I’d had so much to drink on the flight, but I probably shouldn’t have done a lot of things in those lost years.
It wasn’t until I was almost in Hamilton that I realized I was driving in the wrong direction. Before I turned around to head to Guelph, I stopped the car and asked myself if I really wanted to go to Homewood, or if I should just say screw it and go to Toronto and party.
Reality kicked in and I asked myself how long $600 was going to last me. If I had $10,000 in my account? I probably would have gone to Toronto instead. But that wasn’t an option now. I turned around and drove to Guelph. I dropped the car off at a rental place and hopped in a taxi.
“Where to?” the driver asked.
“Homewood,” I said.
He looked at me in a way that I’ll never forget. I wasn’t the first person he’d driven to rehab. It was the first moment I experienced where someone looked at me as if I was a junkie. He wasn’t unkind, but he was guarded. He didn’t know me as the golden boy. As the doctor, husband, father, or the son of a minister. He just knew if I was going to Homewood. He knew I was an addict.
“I know people who’ve gone there,” he told me as he drove. “They’ve done well. You’ll do well.”
I wondered what he would have done if I asked him to take me to a bar. But I don’t think he would have. He encouraged me through his small talk on the ten-minute taxi ride. He really helped to calm me and made me feel like things would be all right.
When we got to Homewood, he wished me luck, I paid the fare, and hauled my ugly old suitcase out of the car and made my way to the front door of this imposing structure.
Homewood is an old redbrick sanatorium, surrounded by gardens and beautifully manicured lawns. At the time I wasn’t seeing it that way, though. To me, in that moment, it seemed very much like a prison.
I struggled to make my way up the brick steps. I didn’t know if I wanted to go through with this. But at the time, I didn’t seem to have many options. I had no money, and everyone at home now knew what I was doing here.
I took a deep breath and went through the first set of doors.
The smell of hand sanitizer hit me. It was a familiar smell. Like the hospital. The SARS outbreak had just happened and there was sanitizer everywhere.
I put some on my hands and went through the glass door and whispered under my breath, “I surrender.”
Guelph, Ontario.
May 2005.
He sits in reception, waiting for someone to take him to admitting. His hands are trembling. Sweat beads on his forehead.
How many hours has it been since he used? In the airport. Hours ago.
He looks over and sees a rough-looking man holding a black garbage bag. “First day?” he asks.
He nods.
“Me, too,” the man says. “But I’ve been here before.” He kicks the garbage bag. “This is all I have left.”
He studies the man with the garbage bag. Pities him. Fears him. What kind of people am I going to be in here with? I’m going to be in here with…drug addicts like him.
Finally, someone came to bring him to admitting. He is examined. Is given an identification bracelet and his first dose of methadone.
Being in the position of patient was surreal. Between that and the withdrawal, I was feeling pretty antsy sitting at admitting. I had my vitals taken, and the nurse put a purple hospital bracelet on my wrist.
A volunteer walked me to my unit. As we went up a set of stairs, I saw a simple plaque above a door that read: “Trust the process.” I made a mental note to follow that advice.
The man walking me to my room tried to make small talk, but I wasn’t really in the mood for chatting. Finally, we reached my room. My roommate was there. Lorenzo was his name. He left when we got there.
I laid on my bed while the volunteer searched my suitcase.
A nurse and doctor team came along shortly thereafter. The doctor asked me questions while the nurse took notes.
“What have you been taking?” the doctor asked me.
As a physician, you learn to protect the confidentiality of your patients. I had been acting as my own doctor for so long, I didn’t want to tell him the truth. But I knew I had to be honest with him so I would get the appropriate dose of methadone. And I trusted him because he’d been through the same thing as me.
“80mg of Dilaudid per day.”
It was the first time I ever said that out loud. But I didn’t feel shame. I felt safe. Like I was protected. After years of trying to manage my illness myself, while caring for my patients, my children, I was ready now to let someone take care of me for a change.
The nurse administered the methadone and they left me alone to rest for a little while.
A couple hours later, I was nudged awake by my roommate. “Sorry, man, I know you want to sleep, but we have to go bowling.”
I was disoriented. “Bowling? What?”
The methadone must be kicking in, I realized. I felt a bit better, but my bed was soaked with sweat.
“Yes, bowling.” Lorenzo said.
I later learned that the rec team assigns each new patient to an activity when they are first admitted. I was in bad shape so I couldn’t do anything too vigorous like basketball or volleyball.
It was late afternoon. After I was through at admitting, I really just wanted to sleep. The methadone helped ease the pain a bit, but I was drug-sick and I wanted to go to bed.
Lorenzo led me down to the bowling lanes in the basement of the building. I was standing there thinking, “This morning I was shooting up in the airport and now I’m bowling with a bunch of sober people.”
I thought it was ridiculous. I wanted to use or to sleep. Anything but bowling.
That’s not how things work at rehab, though. The program at Homewood is as effective as it is because it is so structured. It was go bowling, or go home.
There were about ten of us bowling. I started a conversation with a guy who seemed to be in worse shape than me.
After bowling, I went back to my roo
m and lay down on my single bed. I didn’t want to eat—I didn’t want to do anything except be miserable. I wanted to call my kids, but I couldn’t. Not yet.
The main doors auto-locked at 11 p.m. with a big bang, a sound like you would hear in a prison movie. The doors were locked until 6 a.m.
I learned that night that my roommate slept in the nude. I also learned that he frequently woke himself up farting.
I had a hard time falling asleep. Sometime around 2 in the morning, I wandered out into the hallway to the nurses’ station. I asked if I could have something to sleep. I was offered a cup of warm milk. I should have known better than to think I would be given a sleeping pill. Eventually I did fall asleep.
And that was the last day I would ever put drugs in my body.
Guelph, Ontario.
May 2005.
The next morning I opened my eyes at 5:30. I tried to sleep some more but I couldn’t. I heard the doors unlock with a big bang at 6, I realized I was drenched in sweat. I made my way to the shower.
In the shower, I looked down at my wrists as if I was seeing them for the first time. There were scars everywhere. “How did I cut myself?” I wondered.” Did I make all these?”
When I finished washing the night off, I stood at the sink, looking at my gaunt reflection. My skin was yellow. I didn’t recognize myself.
I left the shower and drank the first coffee that I could remember as a sober man.
I still felt like shit, but the methadone was taking the edge off so that I could function. That’s why methadone clinics are so important. Methadone is a drug, but when prescribed by a physician, it eases the symptoms of withdrawal. I was on a tapered methadone program for my first week at Homewood, and it made all the difference in the world.
It was bizarre to start seeing myself through sober eyes. I was a complete and utter mess. I didn’t look any different than that guy with the garbage bag filled with his belongings. He was probably looking at me the day before thinking the same thing I was thinking about him.
The Golden Boy Page 5