New Lows

The doctors could not understand why they could not stop the staff infection from spreading. They were giving him massive amounts of anti biotics but still nothing was stopping it. Then a nurse found a bottle of vodka that his new "girlfriend" was sneaking into his room. They immediately banned her from going to see him.

Talking to him on the phone knowing how close to loosing his leg made me more aware of just how advanced his disease had taken him. He was being given so much morphine along with the antibiotics that he actually said he didn't care if he lost his leg. He liked the feeling of being on the morphine. Even many years later he was still telling my roommate this same story.
This is just one little example of how his life was reeling out of control before my very eyes and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

When they finally released him from the hospital, he was now craving morphine. His "girlfriend" had some pretty questionable acquaintances and one night she introduced him to what he called an "Israeli Mob Guy" He was looking for drugs and this man thought he was an undercover policeman. They got into an argument and this guy pulled out a gun and pointed it at Bob's head.
Bob told him to go ahead and shoot him, he would be doing him a favor. The man put his gun down and Bob said he told him he was a crazy Mother Fucker and couldn't be a cop. Bob simply had a Death Wish. It would even show up in his sobriety. He wasn't afraid of dying and put himself in many terrible situations. I thought the man had nine lives.
Bob wore that story on his sleeve for years like a badge of honor. That's how sick he was. That isn't something to brag about in my world. For some reason all these horrible things that happened to him made his"Story" seem all the more interesting to him.
There were times when he was sober in AA that he would comment on what "light weight" some of the speaker's stories were.
He had a tale to tell that was better than theirs. He loved the drama in fact it was as much a part of his addiction and the substance abuse was. He was a total adrenaline junkie. Even starting a fight, he would get his endorphine rush that he was seeking for some type of relief.

This was the beginning of his paranoid phase. Whatever he was taking had pushed him into full blown paranoid delusion.
He started driving around with a baseball bat in his car. One night one of his former friends from the program who was now also drinking again, went out and got into some sort of fight with a guy in a truck. They smashed his windshiel with the bat and then just took off. I got the call from Don that night telling me how out of control Bob's behavior was becomming.
He no longer wanted to hang out with him either.
I wondered what I was supposed to do about it. I was no longer his girlfriend I told Don. It seemed Don didn't approve of her either. Don got sober again right after that incident and stopped hanging out with Bob.
Bob was now pretty much alone most of the time except when someone delivered whatever it was he was taking.

Left on his own his delusions got stronger and stronger. He was convinced someone was after him. Even his cousin who was always trying to be there for him, bailed out. He was simply to far gone to socialize with.
I don't remember if Bob called me or someone else called but one night the call came. Bob had kicked out all the glass doors in his house broke all the furniture, and had to be rushed into the hospital for surgery. The plate glass doors had severed his leg pretty bad and he needed surgery and plastic surgery to save it.

Bob had gone over the deep end. The Bob everyone knew and loved was gone. I had no idea who was in his skin, but it wasn't Bob.

I did not hear from him again for at least a month when he did call it was not good. He was living in the dessert under a bush.