Joel Thomas Hynes is a Canadian writer, actor and musician.
It feels almost farcical to me when I’m asked to share my message of recovery, when I’m told that people need to hear from me, that my story is worthwhile. It’s sometimes hard to reconcile this new image with that other image I cultivated for so long. But you get on with it. So when I was recently asked to help with a kind of “intro to recovery” meeting at the local detox centre in St. John’s, I set aside my misgivings and agreed. After all, as they say, the only way to keep it is by giving it away.
There’s only one official drug and alcohol detox centre in town. And that’s all it is – a place to sweat it out. It’s hardly resource-based, barely a stepping stone. There’s no real intensive counselling that happens. The staff are not recovering addicts themselves. It’s just a detox. It’s situated in an area known as Pleasantville, near the old army barracks, not far from the north shore of Quidi Vidi Lake. As the crow flies, the detox is about half a kilometre opposite the crumbling silhouette of the local penitentiary, the oldest prison still in use in the country. Bordering the prison walls is a meticulously kept Anglican graveyard full of old money. If not for a scattering of splashy new condominiums along the south shore of the lake, the atmosphere might come across as a little bleak on a foggy Friday evening in old St. John’s.
I roll up to the detox at 7 p.m. with my friend Janet. Janet’s details hardly line up with my own, but we are fundamentally the same creatures, on the same journey. This is one of the most important lessons one can absorb on the road to recovery – that we are all the same. Addiction pays no heed to the boundaries of class, creed, gender or race. Jails, institutions and death are the most probable destinations that addiction has in store for the toughest of us. Another vital lesson I picked up along the way is that one should never go into these early recovery situations alone. It’s better to travel in pairs. Even in a controlled environment like a medical detox centre you never know what sort of situation you’ll find yourself in – the presence of drugs, a very volatile individual, sexual propositions, who knows. You have to consider your own recovery first and place it above all else. It’s best to have backup.
Inside the pale, grey hallways of the old detox facility, I’m struck with the memory of my own brief residency here more than 20 years ago. I’d just turned 21. I’d been drinking for a week. I was in trouble, crippled with anxiety and fear, and contemplating suicide. I mumbled my way through the admittance process and then slept for three days until I’d had my fill of detoxing. I left in the middle of the third night and met an old girlfriend at a downtown bar.
Janet talks patiently to the admissions staff. We have to sign a few forms and then a big bouncer type in green scrubs leads us through to a small cafeteria. A long, narrow, hardwood table with matching chairs. The tangy smell of bleach. An old Bunn industrial-sized coffee maker with a broken decanter. A container of lumpy tea-stained sugar. Pamphlets. A poster about domestic violence. The air is thick and dry with a burnt edge to it.
We wait.
It looks like the evening might be a bust until three haggard strangers saunter into the room. (For privacy reasons I cannot disclose their actual names.)
Randy is in his 60s with burst blood vessels webbed across his oft-broken nose. His hair is slicked back and still wet from the shower. A thin blue towel is draped across his shoulders.
Terrence might be my age, mid-40s. He looks like he’s just returned from a long stay at an overseas resort. His clothes look expensive and impeccably fitted. His face is clean-shaven, his teeth gleaming white. He’s wearing a heavy gold watch. His posture is enviable. But the sickness is there, in his eyes. He’s feeling it.
Lastly, to Janet’s right, sits a forlorn and downtrodden young man no older than my own son, no older than I was the first time I visited this dank place. His name is Brandon. He tries to smile as he introduces himself. He shifts and writhes in the chair. Sweat gathers in the groove of his top lip. His eyes are sunken black pits of misery. He groans and perspires and scratches and moans and stretches the small of his back.
Despite the heat, a cold sweat breaks out on my forehead too. My hands feel suddenly clammy. My heart races. I glance at Janet.
She tells her story, of how she barely survived that other life. She goes for the jugular, spares no gory details. Even I’m kind of shocked. We all laugh when she finishes with an upbeat declaration that even though life is far from perfect in sobriety, at least she hasn’t crapped her pants in five years.
It’s my turn. I talk about friends and acquaintances and family members who’ve died from this addiction thing. Good people who are gone. Tougher men than me who simply wasted away. I talk about my first drunk. The great Newfoundland beer strike of 1985. Cheap and weak American beer flooded the land. My mother and a neighbour, my godmother, were each sipping a can of Old Milwaukee in the kitchen, complaining about the dreadful flavour. My godmother gave her son, a boy my age, a taste. He spit it out without even attempting to swallow it. My mother gave me a taste. I slugged it back. I felt a delicious heat in the pit of my stomach. A distant red light bulb clicked on somewhere deep back in my nine-year-old brain. Things were going to be okay. I asked for more. My mother took it away. The little red light kept glowing. The next day I stole four cans of Old Milwaukee from another neighbour. I sat in the grass at the top of the meadow and drank two full cans. I have an image of myself prying open the third can but I can’t recall if I drank any of it. I woke up later in the evening having thrown up in the grass. My head was pounding. I was suddenly fearful. I heard my father calling my name. A sense of dread overtook me. I was in trouble.
And nothing changed for another 25 years.
Hospitals, courthouses, police stations, psych wards, rehabs – you name it, I’ve signed the guest list. I’m predisposed to drink every last drop in the room, and then carry on to the next room to find more. One drink and I am a different person on a singular mission: to become and to stay as inebriated as possible for as long as possible. Obsession overtakes me. I can’t take that first drink with any reasonable indication as to where I’ll end up or what I’ll say or do. Thankfully it’s only that first drink that I need to concern myself with. If I don’t take that first drink I can’t get drunk. That’s a certainty that I cling to.
When it’s Brandon’s turn to speak he is all over the map. His eyes well up the moment he mentions his old man. The girlfriend has disappeared. Someone has stolen his prescription. He’s busted flat. Some boys are looking for him. He recently wrecked a friend’s truck and walked away without a scratch. He says he’s tough like that. The cops have always had it in for him. He’s got a court date coming up. No place to live when he leaves this place.
Like you said, Brandon says, this is life and death. I don’t know if I’m gonna see next week.
His desperation cuts through me. I can’t meet his eyes for more than a second. I think of my son. I see my younger self wandering the streets of that other life with nowhere to go, the trail of heartache and deception in my wake. I know it’s a long shot, but I really want Brandon to get it, to stay, to give this recovery thing even half a chance at catching hold.
When it’s all said and done and we’ve managed to scrounge up a few more laughs, the night draws to a close. Terrence and Randy slink off to the TV room with a couple of mutters and grunts. They are underwhelmed.
Brandon hangs back. He asks me about one of the tattoos near my right eye. He wants to know where I got my silver teeth. He talks some more about his father, his drinking buddy who’s now in jail. He says his father is one tough old SOB. He repeats that he has nowhere to go after detox. He repeats the fact that he’s broke, that he had a chance at a job but lost it …
Whether he’s aware of it or not, I know I’m being baited. And a huge part of my own recovery is about learning not to take the bait. But I’m hardly unfeeling. I feel for him, I do. He’s in survival mode. I know it well. If he asks me for my number, I’ll give it to him. But I was told a long time ago never to offer someone my number because, in a sense, it robs that person of the opportunity to learn to ask for help. It sounds cold but I know it to be true; I’ve never called anyone who tried to punt their number on me, no matter how earnestly. I tell Brandon, instead, what’s available to him beyond the walls of this drab old detox centre, and which 12-step rooms he can regularly find me in if he chooses to take his recovery to the next level. That seems fair.
Outside in the parking lot, Janet and I do a recap. We determine that the evening was a success, if not for the boys we just shared our stories with, then for ourselves. It’s never a bad thing to remind yourself where you came from. We contend that above all, we are grateful to be clean and sober, to know where we were and what we said last night and to whom. Grateful not to be looking over our shoulders. Come what may, we are reasonably free.
St. John’s is a small town. I run into Randy on my way into the grocery store a few weeks later. He’s outside the liquor store, petitioning for change. He doesn’t recognize me. I don’t have any cash on me, but I offer to buy him some food. He asks me for a sandwich and a bag of chips. I buy him the sandwich and the chips but he’s gone when I get back outside.
I eat the sandwich and the bag of chips on his behalf.
Terrence, I see one day at the gym near my house. He’s going hard on the elliptical machine, wearing a brightly patterned spandex suit. He nods in my direction, then buries his face in his phone.
I keep an eye out for Brandon, hoping he’ll show up in one of the recovery rooms that I frequent. He just might. If he survives the next few years and gets enough of a beatdown, it’s possible. Maybe he’ll have to get a taste of jail first. But that’s hardly a guaranteed wake-up call, not for everyone. Maybe he’ll simply not wake up some morning. That happens to the toughest of us.
On my way out to meet some recovery friends one Saturday night, I assess myself in the bathroom mirror. My eyes are clear and bright. I kind of like the guy looking back at me. It’s a revelation.
My old leather jacket has seen better days. I survey the time-worn party scars on my temple and forehead. A few weeks’ worth of scruff. Diamond earrings and silver teeth. Tattoos across my neck and on each side of my face.
I am infinitely relieved to note that I’m not as tough as I once thought I was.