I started to fall apart. I was going to meetings every day to keep myself clean. It seemed as if my choices were becoming frayed. It is extremely difficult to follow and believe in something that isn’t tangible.
The irony is that currently we all do that. Advances in technology have changed the way we learn, communicate, and ultimately think. There is no human face behind the directions we follow every day. It seems to be easy for people to follow faceless directions, but it was hard for me. I shoved my strong connection with my higher power aside basically because of pride, disappointment, and frustration. I was shifting back to rudimentary thinking, and it would be a harsh lesson.
On Christmas Day, I was feeling especially low. I remember someone telling me one time about how it helps to go out and throw eggs off a cliff, just to watch them smash. So, I rounded up some hoodlums from early recovery and while everyone else was celebrating, we were out throwing eggs at buildings. Me, a forty-year-old doctor.
When I got home, I looked at my sad, bent Christmas tree sitting in the empty dining room. My friends had forced me to put it up. Where had things gone so desperately wrong? I had been doing so well and now I was acting like an out-of-control teenager. But I could not seem to reach that glimpse of hope that I had had before. I could almost feel myself being pulled in a direction that scared me, and as much as I tried to fight it I felt that anything short of institutionalization wasn’t going to stop it. But that was impossible now—at least, that is what I thought. So many people were counting on me and watching me.
Later that week, the same crew of us decided to go to Moncton for a road trip. We had fun and this became our thing: to hit the road and just get off PEI. There is something to being off the Island. It feels like you aren’t the same person and that can be dangerous.
On one of these trips, a couple of guys decided they were going to drink. They had maybe two-and-a-half years of sobriety between them. Me at just six months. But I drank, too. I drank twenty-five double tequilas that night in a contest at the bar. I ended up falling and hurting myself. It was messy. But I felt like I was part of a group again. I was trying to replace that empty feeling that Scarlett was leaving in my core.
And I’d told myself that drinking was okay. If I didn’t go back to narcotics it would be okay. But I was just binging like I had in Lunenburg.
As January went on, I became more and more depressed. My brother’s birthday was coming up on January 21. One of my buddies from recovery suggested that he and I go to Moncton. We were going to go without the rest of the group, and our plan was to get drunk.
We stopped at the liquor store on the way. I felt like a kid in a candy store. An addict in recovery (because that’s what I was—I’d just been focusing on the drugs during rehab instead of the booze) planning to drink again? Wow. I was so excited I didn’t know what to pick. I felt like someone who had been on a strict diet and suddenly I could eat all the things I love. I bought a pint of fireball and a huge bottle of the highest percentage wine I could find.
We drank the Fireball whiskey as we drove. I threw my AA book into the back of the van defiantly. I distinctly remember playing the song “Wake Me Up When September Ends” by Green Day. I still get visions of these moments every time I hear that song.
When we got to Moncton, we parked the car at a parkade. We called a cab from there to take us to a club. I wasn’t allowed to have the alcohol in the cab, obviously, so I chugged the litre-and-a-half of wine.
We ended up at a strip club and I didn’t want to hang around there. I never liked strip clubs. And there was talk of going back to the hotel rooms with some of the girls. I was in no shape emotionally to handle that situation. So, apparently, I took off.
And I woke up in a jail cell. Deep down inside I’d been wishing for that feeling of the plastic covering on my face, but it was a bare metal bed. No pillow and no blanket.
An RCMP officer asked me if I remembered what had happened the night before.
I couldn’t tell him anything. I’d blacked out.
Apparently, I had been walking around outside in minus-twenty-degree temperatures with no coat on. I do remember something about being booked into the cell, but the rest is just not there.
My buddy must have taken my keys from my coat, which I’d left behind at the bar, and somehow made it to the parkade. He took my car for a spin around a subdivision doing sixty miles per hour. I can just imagine that he had been looking for me in a drunken haze.
He hit a large granite boulder. The van ran over it, ripping the gas tank and everything went ablaze. When they told me, I was so shocked that I was in a daze.
The RCMP officer was kind enough to drive me to the hospital. He took ten dollars out of his own wallet and gave it to me because he knew I hadn’t eaten that day. I have thought of him since; he never did give me his name.
I was there when the doctors told my friend he would never walk again, and his pregnant girlfriend said that she didn’t know whether to hug me or hit me. I really knew I wasn’t responsible, but it still made me feel like shit. What the hell was going on with my life? I had a long time to think about it in the cafeteria of that hospital, waiting the five hours for my friends from PEI to come and get me. My emotions were driving my actions and I had to sort them out. I am such an idiot, I said to myself. I have been given a second chance and I am totally blowing it. Meanwhile, my disease is screaming that next time I drink it will be different. It will be fun and maybe I will meet someone amazing. But reality was sinking in. This was a struggle between devotion to my sickness and to other human beings.
I think that all it came down to was love. I know that I loved Beth; I think that I loved Scarlett’s dark side; and sure as hell I somehow loved Dancer. But I think my biggest love was not being myself. Since the Golden Boy was gone I didn’t know who I was anymore, and that intense fear made me drink. I would have to use extreme action to take myself back to the centre of reality: the reality being that life is what it is and I was going to have to live every second of it fully aware. I would have to learn to love myself to accomplish this daunting task. I needed someone’s advice on how to achieve this peace. I was going down a rabbit hole.
I remembered this older man I saw at AA and sought out his help. I remembered travelling to his trailer and him telling me that Scarlett was like a slippery football: the more I held on to her the more like she would slip away. This was simple, I could understand this.
He also told me to go back through the twelve steps and to focus on Step Four. Follow the simple instructions in the book of AA.
Step Four is: Write down your resentments and things you’re resentful about.
I resented my ex-wife for taking all my money. But I’d cheated on her.
I resented Beth for leaving me. But I was the one who’d changed.
I resented Scarlett for cheating on me. But I’d willingly gotten involved with a drug addict.
I resented the College of Physicians for getting rid of me. But I’d been doing drugs.
I resented my brother for dying.
Every one of those resentments…they were all my fault. Except for Guy. I was carrying so much guilt. He never would have wanted this for me. He was four years older than me, so throughout my life he had always protected me. Although very different from me, he was brilliant in various ways. His IQ was a bit higher than mine, but it was more geared to the technical realms. He was the only member of my family who really supported me through my first divorce, and I would talk to him by phone almost every day through that crisis. He was acting like my big brother again, but there had been years of turmoil before that point.
I guess all this changed when, in in his early twenties, he developed bipolar disorder and the roles reversed. They not only altered for me but my entire family. It was difficult adjustment because he was so intelligent and driven. I remember him as a kid pretending to be a radio announcer
and he would stay up late in our bedroom, talking on the CB radio. He learned Morse code and spoke to people throughout the world. He ended up becoming a radio announcer in his late teens. He was very successful in his profession, especially because of his uncanny grasp of technical equipment.
It was when I was in medical school that his unsettling behaviour began. He would spend money in extravagant amounts and would develop grandiose, unrealistic plans. He was so good at his job and was so smart that it was hard to decipher brilliance from mental illness, but in reality it was a combination of both.
He was, however, one of my hugest supporters in those dark days of family and social isolation. Besides my friend Donald, he was the one person I could tell most things to. One thing we didn’t share with each other, unfortunately, was our struggles with opioids. I was too proud to tell him, and I suspect the same applied to him. I had become the arrogant little brother just because I helped him out financially several times. I remember sitting on my parents’ front steps on one occasion and him showing me the new cowboy boots he’d bought. I was resentful that he could buy these when he owed me money, so instead of being supportive and complimentary, I told him a joke that Dr. Barry Ling had told me that day. “What do hemorrhoids and cowboy boots have in common? Sooner or later every asshole has them.” I will never forget the look on his face and if I could take five sentences back over my lifetime this would be one. I knew I really hurt his feelings, and, furthermore, he had come to respect my opinion so what I had said was very wounding. There was a divide that was developing between us. I was struggling that summer with stopping narcotics, without any outside help. He was also struggling, but I think he was too proud or too ashamed to ask his brother for help, especially when the brother was acting like a total dick.
When I look back on it, his behaviour over the last few months of his life was more of someone physically dependent on narcotics rather than an addict. He seemed to be taking too many sometimes, but all in all he was quite functional. He was an avid goose hunter and the day he died was the day before the season opened. I am sure he was just trying to get out of withdrawal so he could get all his gear ready for an early morning start the next day. I knew it wasn’t my fault because I didn’t know any better, but I could have been more helpful at the time. I could have explained the situation to a colleague and asked them to see him. In AA there is an expression: “If they knew better they would do better” and certainly that applied to me. I had to go through my own hell to feel the sense of desperation he must have been feeling that day. Coupled with his bipolar illness and his feelings of withdrawal, it created a perfect storm for catastrophe.
I wrote him a letter and I took it to his grave. I read it to him and then I burned it. I looked at the dog sculpture that is part of his gravestone. He loved dogs, especially Labrador retrievers. He had such a secret side to his life. I may never understand him, but that is okay. I loved him and I have forgiven both of us for our mistakes.
I freed myself from the guilt I’d been carrying. And I was done with drinking and trying to hide or blur how I felt. I was going to be truthful and real. I couldn’t promise that it would last forever, but I knew it was going to last at least that day. I kept stringing those days together.
I stayed clean for the rest of that winter, attending meetings. Staying clean took all my energy. I didn’t focus on much else. But life was certainly interesting. I remember on one occasion after attending an AA meeting I was standing with a group of guys waiting to order a coffee at the Tim Horton’s on Kent Street. Some guy in the group struck up a conversation and then told a story about the whole incident that had unfolded in Moncton. That I had been the drunk driver and that someone else had ended up paralyzed. The truth was that had it not been for a father and daughter team pulling him from the burning vehicle he could not have gotten out himself and he would not be alive. I just listened to his banter and then very calmly, after hearing my name mentioned a third time, said, “I am Grant Matheson and we should make sure we have our facts straight before we gossip.” I exited through the two sets of glass doors, not really waiting to see his reaction. My friend who I will call Stick followed me. He was handsome and thin, and had about four years of sobriety at the time, and was one of the two who had come to pick me up in Moncton that fateful day. He said something I will never forget: “Grant, people love talking about your situation because it makes them feel better about themselves. Don’t take it the wrong way, buddy, everyone is hoping you make it in the end. But your spills make them feel better about their own situations.”
Spills was an interesting choice of words. I always hated spills because there was obviously less in the glass. The irony again was that less in the glass would be better for me. I could only grow to appreciate how full my glass of life was, but also accept and appreciate the spills. I just had to go on with my own life one day at a time and try to put Scarlett and that life behind me. I met a woman in March and we started a low-stress relationship. She was a social drinker but that didn’t bother me, and things were good. She was funny, energetic, loyal, and most of all she didn’t judge me. I was content.
That summer I took a labour job with a handyman to help pass the time. I was working for a man in AA who couldn’t drive his truck because his license had been revoked. He needed me to drive, and to help him. I needed some money, although the guy was so honest he hardly made any money himself. But that didn’t matter: I felt productive and was staying sober. I had an amazing summer. We laughed about the silliest things. It reminded me of having a summer job as a teen. Not much money but so much fun. I so appreciated his company and I almost felt like I was back in rehab again.
In 2007, I started back to work as a locum doctor. I started out working about twenty hours a week. It felt good going back to work, and things started to feel normal. It was strange using my signature again. It was something I used to do hundreds of times a day before rehab, and I had barely needed it since then.
That fall I started working my own clinic again. The Murphy’s Pharmacy group was excellent to me. They gave me a space to set up my office and helped me hire staff that would protect me. After all, I knew I was a people pleaser so I needed support staff that would have my back—and they did.
The winter ticked along without incident. News of my drug addiction had circulated throughout the community and my patients were very understanding. Everyone was supportive and just seemed happy that they hadn’t lost another doctor.
The other doctors, however, weren’t all one hundred per cent happy with me. I had been guilty of using my relationship with some of them to sign prescriptions that were questionable in hindsight. They had put their careers on the line for me, and I still feel guilty about that to this day. Others just had problems with trusting me.
In April 2008, I received word that I was being charged with committing fraud under $5,000, for writing prescriptions that were being partially diverted to me. These incidents all happened prior to my admission to Homewood.
The man who had been supplying me with drugs heard that I’d returned to work. I now understand his motivation for reporting me, but at the time I felt betrayed.
I was taken to the police station and read the charges. Everything that I was being charged with was true. My head subconsciously nodded yes, as the detective read the charges to me. As I left the building with my lawyer I felt totally defeated.
Not only was this man the attorney for the Canadian Medical Protective Association or CMPA (and therefore every physician in PEI), but he was one of my best friends and had been the best man at my wedding to Beth. He witnessed the union of this ideal love and then its unravelling. Then he watched me rise again from the burning ashes of a controversial disease, only to be shot down by my own prior transgressions. He is one of the most brilliant minds I know—not only for his legal skills but for his intuitive capacity. So, I trusted him completely. He helped me through many a College interrogation, many I can barely recall. The most amazing
thing about him is that he could walk that line between friendship and client. He never made me feel judged or that I couldn’t tell him anything. Quite the opposite: the only person in the world that I professionally trusted was Jim Gormley, QC.
He encouraged me to take responsibility for my actions. This also happened to be the best legal advice. But he would always make sure that I was treated fairly in both the justice and my professional system. His first advice to me after the charges were laid against me was crucial in my journey, not only from a legal perspective, but from a recovery standpoint. He recommended and set up an appointment to go back and see the doctor who first confronted me at Homewood, Dr. Graeme Cunningham. He was the very doctor who stopped my addiction circus act of juggling multiple plates—or, rather, lies.
I was afraid. But my gut feeling, as was his, that this was the right thing for me to do under the circumstances. He arranged for me to see him on Tuesday, the same day as the Caduceus meeting. That way I would get the opinion of health professionals who may have faced similar circumstances. I remember that it was around April 20, 2008. It was hot but I rented a little air-conditioned Volvo. It was liberating to be off PEI, enjoying the nicer weather, not scared for me and my family, or that the media were going to show up outside my house. I know I am not that popular, but PEI is a small place.
Sure enough, I got to see Dr. Cunningham himself. I was seeing him on different terms now: I had been sober for more than two years, working without a narcotic license, and doing biweekly urine tests. I explained the situation, as did Jim Gormley. I knew the obstacles. So did Jim. He intentionally chose the same physician whom the College of Physicians and Surgeons had chosen in 2005: the physician who first broke through my denial and offered the opinion that I was sick and addicted. These opinions were used to suspend me.
The Golden Boy Page 11