At the beach meeting I heard announcements of openings at sober houses in the area and decided to investigate. I needed to spend time with others who were living without drugs or alcohol and I couldn’t continue to take advantage of Julia’s kindness.

I found a house in Kahalu’u that would take me in. A large oceanfront house with about 20 men living in it, my new place would require me to get into outpatient treatment and go to twelve-step meetings every day. The house manager explained that I could apply for welfare and medical assistance would take care of the cost of treatment. I would be discouraged from looking for work until I had established some quality sober time.

This felt like a new beginning for me. This time I felt like I was finally doing all the right things. Three nights a week I went to an out-patient treatment program. I even stopped drinking cough syrup.

I spent my days with the other newly sober guys I was was living with. We hung out together. We had sober house parties that were actually attended by women in recovery. We held a big thanksgiving pot-luck and I held an awkward, sober, conversation with an attractive girl named Lilly.

I became friends with a couple of of the guys in the house. My roommate, Rod who’s about ten years older than me, seemed to be a burned out relic of the seventies. Longish dirty blond hair and a generous mustache, he’d been addicted to just about every drug known to man. When I met him, he had a little over a year sober and still seemed somewhat spaced-out. Rod had played guitar for locally successful bands in southern California, and at one time was good enough to turn down an opportunity to record with Eric Clapton in England. He had fast fingers that had earned him the nickname: Lightning Rod.

My other friend was Pahi. Mike was his given name but everyone called him Pahi. He was a Haole from the Big Island; about ten years younger than me, he was a musician too. Pahi had been in a band on the island of Hawaii, playing local music at weddings and bars. He played ukulele and sang Hawaiian falsetto songs, but he was a rocker at heart.

It was nearing Christmas time as I was starting to get to know these guys individually. They didn’t hang out together normally, but they were on friendly terms. One day I found the two of them on the lanai, Pahi with his ukulele, Rod with his acoustic guitar, playing around with blues riffs and just having fun. I stood and watched, enjoying their improvisations and rapport.

Guys in the house started catching colds and I caught the bug few days before Christmas. None of my previous experiences with cough syrup had been negative. I told myself that alcohol was my real problem. Cough syrup is completely legal, even in the sober house. I should just watch my dosage so I don’t arouse suspicion. The idea that it would be dangerous to my sobriety to misuse the drug, did flit across my mind.

But more powerful rationalizations won out. I had a cold, damn it! And I needed relief. Besides, the DXM effects were fun and I wouldn’t be hurting anyone. I conceded to myself that it could become a problem though, so I vowed to be careful with my doses and stop as soon as my cold was gone.

I spent Christmas Day in a stupor, unable to focus on anything in the world around me with my eyes open. With my eyes closed I was treated to the same acid trip visuals I had experienced previously on DXM. Since I was in a clean and sober house, I really had to watch my behavior. I didn’t want anyone to suspect I was on something. I spent most of my time in my room until the cold was gone.

I was feeling better a couple of days after Christmas but had decided not to stop the cough syrup. After a couple of days, I’d found that I could regulate my doses of DXM so that I could function without anyone knowing, yet still feel the pleasant effects of the drug throughout the day. I’d take a large dose an hour or so before bed for an extra kick and some vivid visuals before I drifted off to sleep.

At night my brain spontaneously produced its own music; sonorous and richly produced songs, complete with lyrics, played in my head. Cartoon hieroglyphs performed elaborately choreographed numbers as they morphed into aliens and back again. When I wasn’t simply enjoying the show, my mind was working and I was praying. That creative side of my brain, the side I knew I had but rarely exercised, was brimming and bubbling with ideas. I had found a new channel to the divine, and I expressed my gratitude to God for the new insights He was providing me.

I felt reborn. I’d made a mess of my life over the last several years. I’d been unhappy for a long time and I’d been using alcohol to numb my feelings, to help me escape. DXM was a new tool. Unlike with alcohol, I was able to manage my doses so that I could function productively and unlike alcohol it connected me to God rather than cutting me off. It helped me to feel good, it sharpened my senses and it sparked my creativity. 2005 was going to be different; I just knew it.

October 2004


7.

Perspiration is the bane of my existence. I am a sweaty guy. It's early, but I'm sweating like a pig. Yesterday I had sixty-one days sober (OK, I’d been drinking cough syrup for most of that time, but that doesn't get me into trouble like alcohol does). This morning I'm not feeling great, I’m still a bit drunk and I've lost my car.

Some homeless guy woke me up with his toe a few minutes ago. He told me I should get up before the police roust me. I don't remember passing out on the grass next to King Street, but the guy was right. It's a busy street; I'm lucky it wasn’t the cops that woke me up.

After getting myself oriented I begin walking. I’m nearly a mile from the last bar I remember being in last night. WHERE DID I LEAVE MY CAR? Miraculously, I still have over half a fifth of vodka in a plastic shopping bag, but I have no cash. I go to an ATM to check my balance and make a withdrawal. I'm sickened by the puny amount. The balance shows a few hundred, I should have well over a thousand. The ATM won't let me have any.

I vaguely remember leaving Club Rock Za last night after the ATM there stopped feeding me cash to feed the strippers. My shopping bag tells me I bought the vodka from Daiei, a Japanese store near the strip clubs. I take a swig from the bottle and start on foot to find my car.

I’d thought I was doing so well, putting my life back together. I had stayed for a couple of months with Matt after hitting what I thought was my absolute bottom. I'd been going to meetings, spending my days playing with my new nephew, Frankie, and helping Matt repaint his house. I just got back to Oahu a couple of days ago and now I'm in a worse bind than I’d been in when I'd left in August.

*

My life had seemed so full of promise last spring. I'd given John my notice and I was looking forward to making some real money in private practice working for Mark. I was making arrangements for Shea's summer visit. Though I'd backed off, Jessica and I continued to see each other. I knew that Shea would get along great with Jessica and her daughters.

In May and June I had more time on my hands. I was winding things down at work. Jessica less interested in spending time with me, and I was less interested in going to 12 step meetings. I began to focus my energies in other directions; I went to strip clubs. This was not a new activity for me, but one that I usually did when I was drunk (or wanting to get drunk) and lonely.

One Wednesday after work I went to Club Femme Nu; I just ordered Diet Cokes and spent about an hour (and $40) looking at the girls. Then Thursday afternoon I did the same thing, but after one Diet Coke, switched to beer. I'd been nearly 4 months without a drink, and I wanted to prove to myself that I could drink like a gentleman, so I left after just two beers. But I stopped on the way home and picked up a six-pack.

I was still using DXM constantly and was drinking one or two eight-ounce bottles of cough syrup per day. It was fortunate that I stopped drinking at the bar after just two beers because the interaction of the two substances really had a multiplying effect. Eight beers in one night would normally have been a very slow night before when I was drinking.

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.

*

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.



*



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.

2.

I first sobered up back in 1987. After several alcohol related incidents involving Military Police, urinating in inappropriate places, and AWOL, the Army decided that I had a drinking problem and sent me to alcohol rehab at Tripler Army Medical Center.

Only 22 years old at the time, I could already see the self-destructive influence alcohol had had in my life, so I was enthusiastic about sobriety. My father and grandfather had both been alcoholics and had both gotten sober. After each of my early adolescent adventures with alcohol, like when I would meet my father at his front door accompanied by a uniformed escort, my dad

I met a woman Marine in the rooms of a 12 step program. My attraction to her kept me coming back to the meetings and eventually we got married. But, after we were married for a couple of years, I stopped going to meetings. The people in the meetings told me I needed a Higher Power, and I'd found her. What did I need meetings for. Of course, my marriage didn't last and neither did my sobriety.

My marriage ended in ‘96, the year I returned to school and the year I rediscovered pakalolo (literally “crazy tobacco”) and started getting high a few times a year. One one hand, I was trying to hold it together...law school was hard and I knew I couldn’t do it if I were drinking. On the other hand, there was nothing I wanted more than to be able to drink like a gentleman, to lose my inhibitions a bit but not loose complete control. Most of my fellow students at U.H were about ten years younger than me, good students, but they still knew how to party and have a good time. Smoking a little weed was my compromise.

I finally let the genie out of the bottle during my last year of law school. Disaster didn’t strike right away, it waited a couple months. I was arrested for my first DUI a few weeks before taking the bar exam.

For a few years I bounced in and out of the 12 step fellowship, always on the verge of completely fucking my life to shit, but never quite succeeding. I started treatment a couple of times but never finished it.

Still working for the DOE, my attendance record at work was terrible. As a state employee, I was allowed 22 sick days per year and I used nearly all of them. Sometimes, afraid to call in sick yet again, I would stop on the way to work and pick up a small bottle of vodka and some chewing gum just to get through the day.

It must have been just a week or two into 2004 when my bosses confronted me on my absences and told me that some of my colleagues were concerned. Pauline said some had told her that they had smelt alcohol on me in IEP meetings. John really liked me and, he said, I did a good job when I showed up sober, but I’d have to get my act together if I didn’t want to face disciplinary action.

I confessed to John and Pauline, the two administrators I reported to, that yes, I’d been struggling with alcohol, but I was seeking help again and going to meetings. I was sincerely contrite, as I always was when I had to face the consequences of my drinking. And I knew at some level that being sorry was not enough to keep me sober.

John and Pauline were kind to me, but I wasn’t sure that their threat of “disciplinary action” would keep me sober either. I was a union member after all. It would take a major fuck-up on my part for me to get fired...probably a series of fuck-ups. The already familiar sense of overwhelming dread intensified. My self-destruction seemed inevitable.