A Sweaty Guy - Homeless in Hawaii

5.

I landed in Minneapolis where my brother Matt met me at the airport. We decided to stop at the Dairy Queen on 50th and Portland not far from one of the houses we had lived in growing up. It was a cool sunny day in April. It was a 1950’s Dairy Queen and had seemed retro (before retro was a word in my vocabulary) back in the late seventies when we lived there. Having been closed during the summer months, we were among the first customers of the year. We sat outside, Matt eating a banana split while I had a chili-dog.

It was 25 years since we'd lived in the house on Park just a block away. I looked across the street at Know-Name Records. I wondered if they still sold vinyl in the digital age and if they still sold bongs and other paraphernalia. Matt and I talked about those old days when we lived in this south Minneapolis neighborhood. I had been in junior high school; Matt, five years younger than me, would have been in about second grade. Our youngest brother Andy is two years younger than Matt.

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With the years between us my brothers and I had led somewhat separate lives. I was the older brother who didn't want his younger brothers tagging along anywhere. By the time I was in seventh grade, I’d already been drinking, smoking cigarettes and weed for a couple of years. We'd lived in this neighborhood for only about a year and I remembered being unhappy for the entire time. I was small for my age (something that never changed as I'm only 5'5" as an adult) and had a hard time making friends. I remembered spending hours and hours at Know Name, browsing the records and admiring the various pipes and bongs. I had older cousins who would visit, or I'd visit them. They would smoke pot with me or we'd steal liquor from an aunt. These cousins turned me on to music that wasn't playing on top forty radio and I started building my own record collection, mostly what we now call "classic rock", The Who, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, etc.

That was before my mom met her second husband, Ken, and we all moved down to Georgia where the new step-dad was moving his business. I didn't get along with Ken or his mother who had been living with him to help take care of his son Anthony, since his second wife (and Anthony's mom) died of cancer.

I ended up living with my dad and his new family after several drug and alcohol related incidents at Ken's home. The first of these incidents occurred shortly after my mom and Ken were married. I drank enough vodka one day after school to put me in a coma for six hours. The final straw came when one day, with the house to myself I got high on marijuana and accidentally started the living room carpet on fire. Ken told me he thought it would be better if I returned to Minneapolis to live with my dad.



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These days I was out in Hawaii and Andy was living in Salt Lake City, while Matt was back in Minneapolis starting a family of his own. He and his wife Denise, both sober alcoholics, had a new son and a couple of dogs. Our mom, also newly sober, had moved in with them to help with the baby. My dad is has since divorced Jane and he too is now married to another sober alcoholic, Mary.

Matt's wife, Denise, loaned me her car and I made the familiar sixty mile drive down to Red Wing, the picturesque Mississippi town where my father now lives in the very house that his father grew up in. Growing up in the Twin Cities, we would drive down to visit my grandparents at least a half dozen times a year. It seemed like a much longer trip then. Listening to my sister-in-law's CDs, noticing the little changes in the scenery, and looking forward to spending time with my father and my daughter, I found myself in Hastings before I knew it.

It was in Hastings, the half-way point where we would often stop for a break from the road on my childhood trips to Red Wing, where I first started to feel the tickle in the back of my throat. I remembered a woman sitting across from me on the plane, coughing and blowing her nose. I cursed her now; I knew that in the morning my symptoms would only be worse.

I arrived in Red Wing with the usual fanfare of a Kernan homecoming. Hugs and kisses, a meal and an opportunity to relax after my trip. It had been nearly 24 hours since I got on the plane in Honolulu. It was Friday evening and Shea was due to arrive late Saturday afternoon. I didn't want to be sick for the short time I would have to spend with her, but there was nothing to do but drink fluids, get vitamin C and rest. Mary fixed some orange from a can of concentrate. My throat was really starting to hurt now and I asked her if they had any cough syrup. She said that they had a bottle prescription cough syrup with codeine. I told her no thanks. My first reaction was that I had a couple months sober and I didn't want to risk a relapse.

But the idea had been planted. I'd had the cough syrup with codeine before and I liked it a lot. I began to obsess about the warm, every thing is just fine, feeling it provided. Besides, my throat really hurt.

Before I went to bed, I checked out the medicine cabinet in the upstairs bathroom. There it was, and the bottle was full. I didn't have any thing to measure it out in, so I just took a quick little swig straight from the bottle. A peaceful, easy feeling seeped through my body. My throat only hurt a little, and I didn't care. I slept only a couple of hours before I woke up with a sore throat and a craving. By noon the next day the bottle was nearly empty and I was beginning to panic. After having turned down Mary's offer, I didn't want her or my dad to notice that I had almost finished off the cough syrup, and of course, I didn't want to stop feeling good.

I decided to buy some over the counter cough syrup. I wanted enough to refill the prescription bottle, and some to take for my cough. Maybe if I took enough over the counter stuff, it would make me feel like the codeine did. I went to a convenience store a few blocks from my dad's house and bought a couple different types of cough syrup, avoiding those with alcohol. I wanted a buzz but I didn't want to relapse. Back at the house, I downed the rest of the codeine stuff and replaced it with Robitussin, which had the same approximate color as the prescription syrup, then I took a healthy swig from the other bottle I'd just bought. I hid all the empty packaging with the newly opened bottle in my luggage and went downstairs to wait with Dad and Mary for Shea's arrival.

The week went well; Shea and I spent time in Red Wing, hiking up on the bluffs to check out the views of the town on the Mississippi and shopping at the old pottery that had been turned into a mall. We also went up to the Cities to visit Matt, DK and my mom, (Shea's Grandma Inga). We spent time at the Mall of America, riding indoor roller coasters and walking through miles and miles of retail bliss (or hell). We walked Matt's Huskies and Inga's Terrier around Lake Harriett.

All this time, I had a pleasant buzz going. I was making any excuse I could to go to by myself to a store where I would replenish my supply of cough syrup. I'd found a new drug that seemed ideal. I wasn't hung over in the morning, and though I craved it, I didn't feel the sort of physical withdrawal symptoms I associated with alcohol. So far, I was able to function around my family while it elevated my mood.

I took time to read the labels and had figured out that what was making me feel good was the Dextramethamorphin (DXM). So I began trying different brands, avoiding ones with other active ingredients and looking for ones with the highest levels of DXM and the least unpleasant taste.

If my behavior was off during that week in Minnesota, nobody mentioned it to me. If I was a bit sluggish, my family probably attributed it to my cold. There was one awkward moment though, when I told an inappropriate joke in front of my daughter. My dad acted as if he didn’t get the joke and gave me a funny look.