Moyers on Addiction: Close to Home; 101; Portrait of Addiction

I had my appendix out when I was ten, and I remember they gave me an e through them, and I remember the feeling of floating off under the Easter, and I loved that feeling. It was just like being lifted out of my mind in a very nice way, because my mind wasn't a very good neighborhood for me to be in. I wasn't very safe there. You know, the scenario is that you start smoking by drinking beer, then you go to the hard rocks. I went straight to a spike in my arm. I am the kind of person who wants to just do it, and do it, and do it, and do it. You know, his eyes are bigger than his stomach sort of thing. You know, I couldn't possibly be addicted to drugs. I was a police officer

doing my job. I got to the point where I was using two, three times a week, and then every evening, and then all weekend long. In fact, of our group of about 40 of us, lively, robust, healthy, intelligent, beautiful youngsters, I think I'm probably the last one alive. Funding for this series is provided by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, making grants to improve the health and health care of all Americans. And by Mutual of America, building America's future through pension and retirement plans, encouraging dialogue

and discussion. The spirit of America and mutual of America. I'm Bill Moyers. Hardly a family in this country has been spared director and direct experience with addiction, including my own. My wife, Judith and I thought we knew about addiction until it came close to home. Then we discovered just how naive we had been. Ten years ago, our oldest son plunged into a long and painful struggle with drugs and alcohol. Our entire family was swept into the ordeal. It's come to a happy place for us, fortunately, and our son is doing well. Many others are not so lucky. What we have learned from our experience and are still learning prompted this series. It's not about the use or even the occasional abuse of a substance. We're talking about that obsessive desire where a chemical you take, drink, or smoke becomes the master of your mind and the tyrant of your life. That's what we'll be reporting. The experience of addiction, how it happens, and what can be done about it.

Okay, Denise. Now you're going to hear the beeps for about two minutes. Just slow, loud beeps. Scientists will show us how drugs hijack the brain. Literally, what this allows us to do is get an image of desire in the brain. Nice looking brain. I tell the girls all the time that if you forget your last time, then you're going to use it. Hi, I'm the shot I'm at it. We'll go to places where people are working to break free from addiction. And the new friends I met, best friends I ever had, they clean. We'll talk to kids in danger of becoming the next generation of addicts. I mean, they just kind of told me, Joe, you're an addict. Look at you. I said, why? How? Because what? Because I hang out with my friends and do drugs. This whole jail is mainly filled with people with drug problems. They steal for the drugs.

They have sex for the drugs. It's all for the dog. And we'll report on the fight to change our national drug policy. The bottom line is that we would whether have that bed space be taken up by rapists to rob her or murder her, then someone who has an abusive substance problem. Let's begin with some real veterans, people who speak from personal experience. They've agreed to tell us their stories so we could bring you this portrait of addiction. I remember it almost as if it was today, a friend of mine who had already been using, took me up to the roof and I thought it was for part, a marijuana. And we went up there and he had already used heroin. He was using it intramuscular and skin popped it and then offered me some. And there was this as soon as I injected it or he injected it for me

at those early days I had a needle for me. I remember this warmth, this serenity. My father dealt with the family by drinking. I remember very well, he'd get a big bottle of almond in and kick back in front of the TV and drink his wine. And around the time I was 19, I took a semester off from school and I was working and coming home with the family. And I discovered alcohol was a very, very efficient way of dealing with the family. And it worked for a while. You know, just get a buzz on and everything's fine. Everything's fine. It was on my first date. I went out to a place called the Audubon Ballroom. There was a big dance there. And I remember it was a bottle of secrets, seven or something. So I got very sick. And even that night, my first time drinking, I was able to hold a lot of alcohol. You know, I didn't drink in high school college. I had no aborious stories there.

I started after I got married. And I moved to another community and I didn't know people. And when I went out socially, I was very shy. But I learned if I had a few drinks, it would loosen me up. I felt, I felt as good as everybody else there. I came home from two years in the Armed Forces and Vietnam. Yeah. And I avoided any serious drug use there. But when I came home, I was living in Harlem. Almost everyone I knew was involved with some kind of drugs. But principally heroin, which was something that had been a taboo for us since the time that I was small. We sort of grew up with that being a thing that was full of mystery, but certainly bad. I had been very terrified of the notion of any kind of drug. I kind of thought I might have to do them at some point because I remember drug education telling me that peer pressure is going to push you into doing drugs. And I knew that it seemed to me if peer pressure is going to push

you into doing drugs, then anybody who doesn't do drugs must be a total geek. And since I'm a total geek and I want to get out of being a total geek, I better do what peer pressure says. So that drug education was not particularly effective. But I do remember one sort of principle that came out of that drug education was I remember they taught me about tobacco and it caused cancer and it was really, really bad for you. And it didn't even seem to get you particularly high. And I remember thinking, now I don't think I'll do that one, but and I remember alcohol. That makes you physically out of control. I don't like that one. Marijuana, that sounds interesting. I started using as a result of working undercover narcotics on the street level. I would go into a town with an assumed identity, rent an apartment and buy drugs for a period of 60 days or 90 days, sometimes stretched into several months. Do you remember the first time you used? I was, I had a neighbor who was selling and I had discovered this over the course of becoming friendly with him. And went in with a state agent, he said, just do like I do, do exactly as I do.

And the cocaine was laid out on the mirror and he snorted it and handed me, I think it was a rolled up $100 bill and I snorted it. And I liked it the first time I did it. We were all in suburbia and very fine homes and having very good dinners and very good wine. And then it was kind of chic to bring out the coke after and they put it on a mirror or a piece of glass or something like that and break it up and break up the lines. And we'd be talking about one thing or another, never about drugs of course, always maybe about politics or something like that. And in the midst of our conversation we would be doing this and everybody felt very in and very with it and very, you know, together. I started cutting classes which was something that I never did because I enjoyed my classes and hanging out in the bathrooms and drinking wild Irish rolls, you know. And at first it was on a rare basis and then it became almost a daily thing that you started looking forward to. I had tried cocaine for the first time when I was about 17

and I really liked the feeling of power and glamour and sexiness it gave me. And my boyfriend suggested, well gee you're going to this Ivy League school, that'll be a great market. You know, there's lots of people who have lots of money there and when I got there I was so intimidated by all those people with all that money. I felt so left out and so scared of them and so poor. I just felt like, well gee here's this great source of lots of money, it'll give me friends, it'll give me drugs, it'll improve my social life, people will want me. Friends that I grew up with people that I was young were all using drugs and I either found it out right away or over time, it became clear. They were using heroin. In fact, in social situation, we were very social in the sixties and in social situations it seems like they had kind of connection and camaraderie that I couldn't break into. Actually, they were on another planet and I was speaking another language and I really couldn't break into that. I was somewhat alienated and I thrust around for a while

but eventually it was offered to me and I tried it and we were snorting and I went for the idea that well if you inhale it rather than inject it you're not going to get hooked on it. I wanted to believe that. I started using when I was nineteen. I mainlined cocaine, it was at speed actually and then it was cocaine, then it didn't even matter, you know, then it was heroin and I found the way of getting outside myself. I would wake up in the morning and roll over and open my top dresser drawer and get the cocaine mirror out and snort some cocaine to get started and throughout the course of the day take another hit whenever I felt I needed it whenever I was coming down too far. You don't know you're falling in love with it. You don't know that it's beginning to take a

priority except for one day you wake up and you know you got to have it. You got to have it. I love how I feel after three or four beers. I mean it's an ecstatic feeling and I think and that I sort of grew into that. I mean it was I think if there is a genetic difference between an alcoholic and a non-alcoholic I think a non-alcoholic who's had three beers will feel pleasant and relaxed. Whereas I felt ecstatic I just felt truly ecstatic. It's a euphoric, you know, it all problems disappear and you just you feel very physically good. You feel as though you're you're thinking ability is heightened somewhat though oftentimes it's not. It was just a general feeling of well-being. I soon was you know in a very glamorous world I was selling to celebrities. I was getting behind the velvet ropes at the exclusive nightclubs of the 80s. I was selling

on Wall Street. I was selling on Fifth Avenue. I was selling at Columbia. You were selling to the down-and-out industry. You were selling to it was you know what you would call quotes nice middle-class people. Once you decide you'd like to have some or do some then you have to get it and when you know you have to get it then you make whatever contact you have to make to get it but oftentimes in in in these recreational drug things you don't get it right away. The person you can get it from says well I have to call so-and-so and I'll let you know etc etc. And you find that when that's happening you're waiting for it to happen and you become you more desiring of it and you just can hardly wait and it takes over your mind. You just think all you can think about is getting it. You're not even thinking about what's going to happen when you get it and how you're going to feel you're just thinking about getting it. I got to have it. I got to have it. During a drinking session all right if you were to bring in a tray of eclairs right now I'm quite fond of chocolate eclairs and said we got lots of them Dan help yourself have as many as you want. I'd certainly have at least two eclairs. I might even have three or four. I like

eclairs but I would get to a point where I don't want another chocolate eclair. I've had enough. Thank you. Whereas that doesn't happen when you're drinking. That doesn't happen. I could be bombed out of my skull and I have to continue and then of course you wake up with a hangover the next day and the only cure for a hangover that really works is alcohol and so that you know the cycle continues. Even though in the morning you say I'm not going to drink then you seem to hit it like a blind spot in your brain where you go on automatic and you're going to have that drink everything else sort of sort of fails. You're going to have that drink. You hit you hit a blank spot or something and you're not thinking anymore but the kids would have put the marriage what about you know I have to be up in the morning at 6.30 you just hit this blank spot and you go to the refrigerator you open it and you pull out that bottle of wine. I would do a lot of cocaine

and I would be too high to agitate it to excite it. I drink a lot and it would bring me back down a little bit to an acceptable level. I'd want to go back up there again and those are the cycles that you see minute by minute in people who use cocaine and alcohol and they are very commonly used together. If for some very strange reason you wanted me to have a beer right now it would take an enormous amount of persuasion. I doubt very much you could get me to have a beer right now but if I were to give in I would have the second beer very very quickly. The craving for the second beer is a lot different than the craving for the first and once you've had a second a third seems like the best idea in the world and so on and so on and the idea of stopping at that point seems absurd. Cocaine is a very tricky drug because cocaine is not satiating one hit of coke makes you want a hundred hit of coke hits of coke. One hit of heroin will do you quite fine for four or six hours but one hit of coke and all you can think about is more.

Injecting drugs is a very very strong sensation. It's so strong that months after I had stopped I found myself on occasion witnessing someone inject drugs and I actually got the physical taste of the drug in the back of my throat. Just the visual stimulus of seeing someone inject drugs was enough to trigger that kind of response. You know it's not like I was throwing Dan Martinez either. I mean I drank white wine and that's you know that's where I drank in a peritif wine first and then I switched to Chardonnay or whatever and the next day it would be a pall that how much was gone. It was like a half half those they had handles on them like a half gallon or whatever they are and I would be amazed the next morning how much I consumed. I wasn't so addicted that I wouldn't have been accepted by the Air Force obviously

and then I became a full blown addict in the Air Force heroin morphine morphine yeah it was available in the at the base in those days there in every facility in on any base there's an emergency pack in case war breaks out and these are bound up by metal bands so that you can't get in unless there's a war and you need all of that emergency medical supplies so I helped myself to every package and every facility for four years. In order for me to sit here and have this conversation with you I would need to have had a drink first just to calm me down because after a while physically you begin to depend on it so if my mind my mind may be telling me Wendy you don't need to drink but if my hands are shaking and if I'm sweating and I've learned that you take a drink and the symptoms go away you know what it means so that gradually you learn this stuff that

this is how you medicate the symptoms of this disease I use disease now back then I had no clue you know I just knew that if I took a drink I was able to move on but then it fools you because you only mean to take the one bill you know you don't but then you take that one and boom you want more heroin is an incredibly good feeling I mean it's not a coincidence that people use it misuse it and abuse it and become addicted it's an analgesic it's a pain killer and so it also kills emotional pain as well as physical pain I remember it was New Year's Day 1990 and it was a horrible New Year's horrible Christmas and I had some cheap champagne and some football game was on I don't even watch football but I'm about three glasses of champagne into it and you know my life was just awful at that point 89 and 90 which was toward the end of my drinking were both

really really bad years and I had was on my third glass of champagne or so and I turned to my friend Kevin and I said this is why I drink my life is just awful right now but I feel great and I did and I knew it was delusional but I was just high it took me to a place where everything felt just fine I can still feel a warm feeling going down and even into your fingers and just feeling relaxed you know that terrible intense tenseness would would dissipate yeah I had one of those experiences I liked the effects I liked it I liked it what it did for me because it took me from reality and put me wherever I wanted to be I became very cynical and had a very depressive way of thinking like I sort of you know the vulgar term would be life sucks and then you die I just

had this way of viewing the world that really made me very uncomfortable and I kind of felt that if life was horrible and short and then you were going to die anyway why not have anesthesia I can clearly remember my using because of pain and my using because I know where to go with the pain and what to do with it and my looking for a way to escape the pain and it wasn't that I started out seeking pleasure and I can't really recall that being pleasurable see I think that a lot of people do drugs because it adds drama to their lives it's like a self dramatizing situation where your your life becomes more interesting in your own mind because I've got this problem I don't know I don't know what I'm going to do about it but I've got to do something about it because if I don't do something about it I'm going to be in trouble and there's a drama I never drank in the morning I never drank a lunch my kids never came home and found me drunk

I didn't drink all day long I didn't drink till six or seven o'clock at night and I would say where I'd read all those tests and magazines you know if you'd pass or flunk six of these and you're out of Hawk I would take them all the time and so that most of them said do you drink in the morning or do you drink at lunch and I didn't so I used that for a long time but the next day as my drinking progress the next day I would feel horrendous so you wind up it controlled my life anyway because I was looking at the clock for half the afternoon I felt I had lost control over that that I couldn't make it through the day without some cocaine you know that was what my day was about was acquiring and using cocaine when I came back from the Air Force remember that the Air Force the military the military structure that's that's an operant there contains me from acting out from being out of control it provided external controls for me that I didn't have internally

leaving that and coming back out and coming back to society was culture shock and and I didn't negotiate that culture that shock very well I began selling drugs on a wide scale in order to maintain my habit and and that didn't go that I wasn't successful for long because the drug culture unlike the larger societies culture is a culture where you start off at the top and you quickly go to the bottom where in society you start off at the bottom and you work your way up so I worked my way down quickly in less than a year everybody around me drank and nobody else was working it was the lifestyle for me but I guess when I started having blackouts when I started having those experiences where I couldn't remember how I got home or where I was or things like that something started going off in me as something is wrong

I got pretty drunk and ran out in the rain in my underwear underwear happened to be red that figures into the story a little later and was just shouting hootin and holler nothing big not that big a deal but my downstairs neighbor didn't particularly appreciate it and she called the cops and the cops showed up and I had to show up in court the following week and the judges you know reading the little documents you were outside in the rain and you were red underwear he was apparently just a pall that my underwear was red but you know that's a sign if the cops are showing up that's that's probably a sign I think the time it really hit home was when I had begun injecting it and I found myself crawling on the floor searching the carpet for one more little rock of cocaine I mean this led me through some bouts with prison I mean it became a thief in order to support a habit that was really expensive there's no

job you can have that can support a speedboat habit I mean you either have to have old wealth or you have to take money where it lies and and so this led me to I mean there were periods that I spent alone where I was just living on the French society if if I was living it all I lived in a nice house had a bunch of cars my kids were in private schools I you know I looked all right uh it was what was the problem problems I was dying you know I was I was dying 18 years later and a marriage and an abandonment and a strangenment from my son and a zillion other things also three careers I'd had periods of intermittent abstinence three careers whereas I just was about to move over the hump so to speak into unknown territory of success I would always fall into addiction again then there was a point and I can't remember exactly when it happened I just remember

that it happened there was a point when I would do it every day um I would have it and I would compulsively do it every day even though I didn't really enjoy it which just sounds very strange but nevertheless that's the way it was I used cocaine for about 10 years never missed a weekend in 10 years never missed three missed Friday Saturday and Sunday benches of cocaine use for 10 years what were you like in those benches violent I mean you begin this begins over time you begin grogarious interesting uh very social and you end up you end up paranoid angry uh assaultive out of control it's funny because the moment I got arrested for a very brief moment I felt a sense of relief because I was like oh the worst that can happen has happened it's over

um and you know then you know being in jail was terrifying but I have to say the moment I got out I went back to my apartment and I found some drugs that I knew the cops hadn't found um and I knew where they were and I went and I got them and I injected them and I mean now how irrational can you get you've just been arrested for this stuff and then what do you do but as soon as you go home you do this I didn't go dance on top of a bar somewhere you know I didn't I didn't grab other people's husbands I didn't do any of that which supposedly I thought with the hallmarks you know this is what we did I didn't do any of that it was so boring just day after day of feeling like peace of junk it's a hell it's really you know your your life becomes about where am I going to get the next dose uh you're disconnected from friends and family your your emotions are dulled

to the point of uh almost being non-existent um there's there's no there's no life there's no life there's no soul there's no spirit left in you I couldn't imagine a life that I would be happy in I couldn't imagine life working out in any kind of way to accommodate me um you know what I would like to do would have liked to do if I could is get a place to live and get an unlimited supply of alcohol and just continue to drink and drink and drink and that would have been fine if that had been offered to me if somebody says you know some eccentric millionaire said all right if you'd like I'll provide you with an apartment and enough food to keep yourself alive and all the alcohol you want to thank you you know that's fine that's fine I'll just I'll just do that I was in a relationship then uh with a lovely woman who I uh put through much suffering because of my escalating addiction over the years and binging and uh she

was becoming both psychologically and physically sick and uh she left me she was smart enough and wise enough to leave me and uh a woman who I cared for and loved very much and yet she played uh she played an important role she she she would keep me in some ways only only addicted those Thursdays Friday Saturdays and Sundays I wouldn't go beyond that because she would complain and harass me and so that was the the external control that kept me from using even more she finally ended up leaving uh and uh and even when I loved her uh very passionately uh and would miss her uh I remember my first thought it was oh glad she's gone you know now I can really stretch out

here and enjoy myself it was very frightening to discover that I actually had an addiction and started immediately trying to uh to withdraw from it and get away from it what did you do uh I tried uh well a couple of times I tried just cold withdrawal um with somebody helping me and I've found before too long it was entirely too weak for that I just didn't have the stamina and the moral conviction for that every single day I would wake up and I said today you know today's the day I stop and by three or four o'clock every single day I knew that I would uh I knew that I'd have to drink that night and then I'd say well I'm gonna stop it too or stop it three and I want to miss every morning and I would pray that I could stop at three drinks which in fact I did but they got worn vats I mean my situation was was unusual in that I was I was a police officer I wasn't um

someone who was just struggling against an addiction I was in this this world where um I would lose my job immediately and might uh go to prison if I admitted what I was doing but at a certain point I realized um in the last investigation I was doing that that I was strong and and I feared that my partner was killing himself uh and I using yes yes you knew he was addicted to oh absolutely and you were addicted yes and uh and I went to the sergeant and said we've got drug problems and they put him in the hospital for a few days and um and he got back out and they said go buy more drugs they they wanted cases they wanted numbers they didn't care that their narcotics operatives were strung out on drugs it didn't it didn't matter I was in a battle for my life with this thing called alcoholism and my alcohol told me cut your face I went to a mirror I was living in Brooklyn and I took a razor blade and I cut one side of my face I cut this side and I stood there and

I remember this vividly I wasn't in a blackout um and then you told me cut the other side so I did that as well I had a gun in my pocket and I just today was looking for someone who had drugs and there's no one out at that kind of the kind of time in the in the middle of the morning in the south Bronx again and uh and I'm 25 and just realizing I'm gonna be like this for the rest of my life this is who I'm gonna be like for the rest of my life I'm talking about 1968 probably 67-68 where the axiom cliche uh once an addict always an addict was very much an accepted one and and and that's frightening to think I'm only gonna get worse and I'm gonna lose all my teeth I'm gonna lose an eye I'm gonna suffer and I'm gonna be miserable walking around the streets like this in the middle of February zero degrees walking around looking for someone to rob I think

go to the thing the thoughts work I should kill myself you know why would I want to live like this 20 30 more years I kept buying drugs eventually um my partner and I wound up getting shot and I left the department getting shot was was was was a form of death for a long time and I and I relied on prescription drugs very heavily for a long time after that um instead of dealing with the terror I wanted to die I remember thinking at points I'm just gonna raise these children and then I'll die and that and I think really initially I got sober just because I smoked my head off at that point I would smoke in bed and I was afraid the house was gonna burn down and I was you know the kids would be burnt to death so I knew that um that I want I want to I love these children and and that's what what did it one day I was sitting in my

apartment and I recognized that uh A I was living in a filthy mess that uh was almost indescribable in the stench it had blood on the ceiling there were dirty wine bottles there were dirty needles there was dirty laundry it was just horrible and I was sitting in this place and I was begging a man I despised and thought was really stupid and ugly and would never imagine myself sleeping with but I was begging him for heroin and I just I just knew that I was about to violate all of my principles in order to get drugs and I knew that that was the hallmark of an addict for me it's the insanity that happens when you're in the throes of this disease sometimes when people ask you why do you drink windy you get angry because I didn't know I you know I didn't know myself why um I just didn't know God I didn't want those things to happen I didn't want to cut myself up I didn't want to jump out windows I didn't want to end up in places where I didn't know how I got

there with people who I don't know who they are you know I didn't want that I wanted a life like you know when I came out of my mom's womb I didn't say when I grow up I want to be a drunk I want to be a tramp I didn't say that and I didn't want that but that's what happened I would sometimes look at all the tight spots I'd been into and how many times and every time I walked into a hallway or into a bar or wherever to to buy drugs I could have died right there every time I mixed up some potion somewhere and injected it into myself I could have died right there certainly I've been in present when people have just unexplainably you know you're you're injecting an unknown substance that's produced without controls and and of course the things that I did to get money some of them were just incredible unbelievable I couldn't believe that was me sometimes it would make me sweat and cringe just to think of some of the things that I had done I definitely lost power over my own faculties at some point you know in terms of things that I wanted to accomplish

someone said that dreams is is foreign addicts drugs ends all dreams you know dead actually you know and I felt a lot of my dreams had died you know when I tested in 1986 for HIV and primarily possibly due to my addiction due to my use needles I was an interview drug user primarily and then I began to use different drugs experimenting with different drugs mixing different drugs and I had gotten sick and I went to the Department of Health for testing and I tested positive at the time I was on heroin and so I didn't really feel the result I probably got myself arrested I got myself arrested I'm saying on some level I think that it was a choice and and some wise judge gave me gave me options go to jail go to treatment and you chose and I chose treatment

my roommates had a bottle of champagne in the fridge and I ran out of my alcohol supply and I'm like I got to buy that champagne off you guys got to sell that champagne off you and my and my roommate said you're gonna have to stop some time and he was absolutely right you don't think in those terms but eventually this binge would have to come to an end and I decided to end it for good then that was ended up being the last drink I had oh your own you just stopped oh I checked into a mental health facility the next day my name is Geneva as I used to drink with her and run up and down the street with her and I noticed for two years I never saw her anymore too much you know she just kind of I mean I used to wash this woman hallucinate up and down the street

but all of a sudden she was gone and coming to find out she had went into alcoholics and on this had been in alcoholics and on past two years hey hey yeah I remember her coming to I was working in a grocery store then and I remember her coming in the grocery store and by now I had heard that you know she's an alcoholic well I was 26 years old at the time so of course I didn't see myself as an alcoholic I was much too young for that I mean to be an alcoholic you had drink a long long time that was what I thought so I remember when she came up to the counter I was being facetious in my nasty way and I said Geneva do you think I'm an alcoholic you know it's not really serious about it and she looked at me and she was very serious and she said Wendy I can't call you an alcoholic only you can do that and said well you know I'm 26

so I you know and I didn't give it another thought until one day God I didn't have any money okay and I figured you know if I go down to Geneva's house and tell Geneva I need two dollars to get me a bottle because I'm gonna tell her I'm an alcoholic so I get down there and of course Geneva's on she was very active in the program so she was on her way to institutions meeting and I never forget it I had a bandana around my head because see in my addiction me and soap and water weren't friends at all I had no time for that I really had no time for it so I had on a bandana on my head and I had on a pair of orange shorts that was I don't know if I can use this word but they were very funky okay because funky very funky so she asked me if I wanted to go with her to this institution meeting and I'm still

got in the back of my mind I want to get these two dollars so yeah I'm gonna follow her wherever so you know I thought you know she was going in a car or something but she took she went on a public bus a public bus and I said well you know she's probably gonna sit way at the other end and let me be way up here because I was horrible but she didn't bill you know what she did she sat down next to me you know she really sat down and I was looking like that and she talked to me you know everybody on the bus knew that she was talking to me what was she saying about the program about a uh-huh I mean all these years later you still remember that it must have been something Bill it was the first time you know you I guess you would have to have seen me and smelled me to understand to have somebody acknowledge that they know you on a public bus the people around look it nobody had done that in a long time

when people start treatment they look like hell they look like a bunch of Dick Tracy villains or something I mean everybody looks ghastly and just a few weeks later they start looking pretty good and that's that's something you see right on the surface people you see a very dramatic that's that's one thing that I do like about A.A. you see some poor bastard come in shaking and my first meeting and they look awful and you may see him two months later and looks pretty good I was in the detox for seven days um it was not fun you feel like so vulnerable and so uncomfortable and you have this dreadful fear that your source of comfort is going to be forever taken away so it's not so much the vomiting and the shaking and the puking and the diarrhea that gets you but just the mental anguish and the insomnia and the sense that you're never going to be comfortable

in the world it took some time before it sunk in that you know I have this result this diagnosis and and what am I going to do with that um that was an awakening I think there was a number of awakenings that jolted me to like some type of personal action some type of hope perhaps some type of make this next detox coated this next program um that just didn't have me just lay down I think that happened for me in um in in in 1989 when I came out of my last detox and I went to a soup line because I came out of the detox I was living in the abandoned building in Harlem and I wondered well I'm not going back to the abandoned building where am I going well I'm hungry let's go to a soup line so I went to a soup line and he saw him to he saw him shelter and found more than just soup I went in and got a change of underwear and a clean shirt and a place to be still and safe for a while uh to develop some regular regimen of getting up and doing work and eating regular meals

and spending time paying attention to other people I walked into the therapeutic community and and people opened their arms to me when I sit down with a group of men and women who begin to talk about I've been afraid all my life I've been angry with my mother for a lot of years I was raped by my stepfather you know these these hurtful painful things that people hide when you begin to talk about it and everybody in the group said happen to me you know all of a sudden you're not in this alone and that's very powerful to feel that you're not in this alone I can't expect you to know how I felt but had you been an addict or you would instantly know what I talked what I meant when I said I was trash you know I wasn't I maybe I behaved like it but I wasn't but someone else that had been been there could say instantly I know what you're saying

it's like AA or NA or or gamblers anonymous or anything where people are coming together I think it also happens like with when is the earthquake or national disaster and people just forget about their their status and life straight out it's right in life and they just begin digging people out for forever I've been feeling that I have no character I have no willpower that I'm a bad person all of those things that society and one places them themselves when you don't understand addiction and then to realize that it has nothing to do with any of those things it has to do with a genetic predisposition that if I don't pick up that drink I'm okay it helped me enormously to think that I had a disease that it wasn't just tomorrow failure I'm my part my mind needed training it really did it was a weak muscle or whatever and addicted muscle yes it was an addicted muscle

exactly and it takes a lot of work to to make it a strong one what made it so hard to stay off oh well one reason is that by the time you want to quit you've really messed up your life that's just the way it is it's you know it always works out that way very few people go into an a meeting saying things are great but I figure you know they might get bad you know you've really messed up your life it took me it took me a while to develop the willpower develop the willpower or or recognize that this if I if I snored in this cocaine it was not going to make me happy it was not going to make me feel good it was going to make me miserable and it was most likely going to start me on on a run of just doing more cocaine it was I remember once I was talking to a therapist about a problem I was having and it had nothing to do with drugs or anything like that it was a

it was a personal problem probably a relationship or something like that and I was being very compulsive and obsessive about it and I felt like I couldn't stop and she said to me well you you you can and you must and I said how and she said the same way you take your hand off a hot stove and actually that's it if you just stop I was saying earlier how early recovery is real real tough that's that's it's something I realized is why why you people always relapse because it happens all the time and I think the reason is as difficult as drinking is early recovery in some ways is even worse but eventually you turn a corner and in my case it was about seven months about seven months into my recovery I started feeling better I wound up in listing in the Air Force which I suppose was a form of treatment you know getting getting up at five in the morning and running and doing push-ups and that kind of thing during basic training I that was very helpful and and I think that gave me a bit of a grip it got me back into my old physical

self where you know I could I could start to feel good again feel physically good because the drugs run you down you know they run run your body down terribly I used to smoke three packs of cigarettes a day and I just smoked all the time I smoked until I had respiratory problems when I was smoking and I'd cough and I have a hard time breathing and so I stopped and I only stopped because it was from my point of view it was either stop or die and so I preferred the alternative of living and so I stopped I don't I don't know what made me wake up one day and say this is it I can't take another minute of this but once I got going in recovery I knew that I had to pray I knew that I had to find a god that I could believe in I knew that I that I couldn't do it on my own and I I believe that there is some spirit within me that is my strength the power can be

whatever you want it to be so long as it ain't you for me it was Geneva she was my power greater than me she was my guiding light then it became my a a meeting and my peers and my support in there and eventually when I got a some of the shame and the guilt out of my life I was able to say my higher power is God I mean however a person gets this gets in touch with you know there's a choice in an option an alternative to me that speaks to freedom and that to me is what recovery is about recovery is about change and change is about freedom you know having freedom you can plan your day when you're drinking you can't you day the limited bang at six o'clock

I used to think don't get on the phone and don't do whatever you're free I mean it's enormous freedom and this this you are so used to hiding hiding him what you drink that being honest first of all with myself I was trying to kid myself all the time and that I don't have secrets I don't I don't ever have to be a phony again I don't have to wear masks you know this is who I am I remember sitting in the bathtub in the rehab and when I stepped out of the bathtub I my body felt comfortable and I just felt warm and nice and safe and I thought I can do this I thought there is pleasure here I also remember swimming in the swimming pool in the rehab and again feeling like there is some other joy other than drugs I plan to live a ridiculously long time I plan to live another hundred years saying let's see if I succeed but I plan to be one of these

people who lives just forever and I don't think of myself as not drinking during that time I mean I it's ridiculous for me to imagine quitting you know 10 years from now I don't know what I'm going to do a week from now but today not drank a piece of cake as you and I are sitting here doing this interview I'm sober see I want to be sober right at this moment but I have a disease that can trick me when I get up from this chair and tell me that I don't want to be sober but I can make a commitment to you bill or to anyone that I can't make a commitment that I can stay sober the rest of my life that's just too long for me even after working on 14 years of recovery the rest of my life is too long I can make a commitment that I want to stay sober this day I have to say to myself I am the only person I can depend on not that I can't depend on others because I can but I am really the only person I can depend on and I am really responsible for

myself and I am the only one who will have to pay the price and so I have to constantly take myself in in in rain because I don't I am I am led into temptation all the time and and that's just the way it is what's been the hardest thing about staying clean it's not it's not so hard anymore it's maybe I've just grown up you know maybe it's having children in a family that's part of that part of understanding that that's no that that's no way to live it's there's too much there are too many wonderful things in life to to allow your focus to diminish to the point of crawling on the floor and looking for one more hit you

you you want to know more check out your source close to home www.pbs.org for in-depth info, resources, and a multi-media comic book for teens. Join us on the web. Next on, close to home. Nice looking brain. The hijacked brain. I realize no matter how much I wanted to quit, I couldn't. Sciences unraveling the mystery of the addicted mind. They don't know why they don't just stop. New technologies show us where drugs and alcohol take hold. We're getting a map of her feelings. We're getting a map of desire in the brain. And offer hope of new treatment and a transformation in attitude. You've got to deal with it as an illness.

The hijacked brain on the next close to home. Funding for this series is provided by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, making grants to improve the health and health care of all Americans.

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