The Real Bottom

It had been years now, to be exact almost four and a half years of knowing him. He had lived through so many near death traumas it was hard to keep us with all the terrible things that had happened to him.
His heart had stopped once and he had to have the paddles put on him to bring him back. Guns pointed at his head, a knives cut near his eye, slashed wrists, walking on balconeys three stories high and who knows what I don't know. I guess it was never his time.
I had never known anyone who courted death as he did. Whether he was aware of it or not, to me the man had a death wish, I know he wasn't crazy, he had been in enough therapy in all the 31 programs over the years to know that for sure. He just hated being an alcoholic. To him it was a humiliation and he knew it humiliated his family too.

One day I recieved a call from his dad at work. He was leaving for Maui, but before he went he had made arrangements for his attorney to have the power of attorney in Bob's case. His dad knew that Bob was in serious trouble now, so he covered him before he left town. His dad knew that if Bob would ask for any kind of help it would come from a call to me. I told him that if I did hear from Bob I would do everything I could to get him into a hospital. He had arranged for a long term hospitala in Kansas to admit him. the only thing was, they would not detox him, he had to enter completely sober. I had no idea if Bob would even call me for help I thought he still was with the "Girlfriend". But I gave his dad my word. I would do whatever I could should I hear from him. It was Friday and of course I had the weekend off.

Late on Monday afternoon, I got a call from Bob. I could not believe it. It must have been some sort of connection that we always had that he knew I would always be there to help him when he was ready to get sober. I asked him how he was.
The story he told me seemed impossible.

Bob was living in the desert near Reno, under a bush. He told me about how he trashed his house when he thought that he was being followed and that he had spent several days in his closet sure that he was being watched. He explained in detail how he kicked out the sliding glass doors and overturned all his furniture looking for whomever it was that was following him. He told me he sold his car took the money and hopped on a bus to Reno to get away from this person.

Of course it was all paranoid delusion from the substances that he had been using. None of it was real. I asked him what happened to all his stuff and he said the girlfriend was going to pack it up for him.

I told him I had spoke to his Dad and I wanted to know what his plans were. He told me he wanted help. Thats all I needed to hear. I asked him if he had any money and he said he did not. I asked him what he did have, anything that could get him to an airport. He told me he had a bus ticket to Salt Lake City. I told him to get on it and call me when he got there.
I hung up and called the attorney.

We were on the road to recovery. Thank God.

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.

Disappointment's in the Air

It was the roller-coaster ride I simply could not get off of. Just when things were going great all hell would break loose. The only good thing was that this time around we had separate places to live so that I was not in the eye of the Storm.

By this time Bob's roommate was hiding that he was back on some sort of drugs, he was not paying rent, stealing Bob's clothes. Bob wanted him gone. I'm not sure how long it took to get him out because I wasn't around much during this time again.

I was working two jobs to pay my rent and car payments, I didn't really have much time to dwell on the horrors that must have been taking place in his world.
When I wasn't working I was hanging out with our Sober friends and staying really close to the group. At least I wasn't alone in this next relapse. I was being coached the entire time to just not interfere and let it take it's course. It's a very hard thing to do I must tell you. Especially when I knew the nature of his disease. The outlook was always worse and worse.

The only thing Bob really had going for him was that he would get too physically sick to drink for any really long period of time, but that I mean "Years". This time I think it went on for several months.

During that time he did have a few brief spurts of not drinking which always resulted in me getting a phone call wanting to see me. I always said yes.

He invited me to see the new place he rented. It was a cute little house in Studio City. I was pretty surpassed he moved over there but it was a house with a pool, not an apartment. I know he needed to be out from under the scrutiny of any neighbors prying eyes. It was hard to be his neighbor when he was drinking. I'm sure he thought a house could provide him more privacy.

Once again, there was a special room for his daughter. I was not happy with this choice of a residence because in order for his daughter to reach her bedroom, she had to go outside and up a staircase to get there. I think she was only seven at the time. I worried about that.

He wanted us both to forgive him and start fresh. We took his daughter out and let her pick out a puppy, thinking it was a fresh start and maybe he was serious this time. That little bit of happiness didn't last very long. During the week he had to take care of the dog, and himself. He was inches away from another slip.

The dog was out of control running all over the neighborhood and their neighbors started complaining. I will never really know what happened to that little dog, but one day it was gone. He said it ran away. A little Pomeranian just went missing.
I think someone just took it and gave it a better home. He wasn't well enough to take care of it.

During the time in this house all the "Working Girls" started to come over again.
His disease was progressing so rapidly now it was hard to keep up with him. In and out of hospitals and then back to using.
He was so sick at one point he called and asked me to please come over. I did.

He was living on cold cans of soup which he could barely keep down. He was in bad shape but not bad enough to get sober.
There was evidence of drug use going on in the house all over the place. I had never known him to use needles for anything, but his "friends" did. It was a terrible scene.

During this time he met up with a woman whom he said was a "Madam" or something. Who knows. All I know is that his poor daughter had to spend time with him and this woman and her child. He informed me that this was his new fiance.
One night she called me to give me the happy news. I have no idea why she would do that, but I actually congratulated her.
Of course it wasn't sincere because I knew what she was in for. She said they were going to take a trip to Tahiti, a trip I refused to take with him. Actually I refused to go anywhere with him unless he was sober. I would not have wanted to be her for anything.

So off they went to Tahiti. Only a couple of addicts could turn Paradise into a nightmare vacation. It was a vacation from hell. When he got home he landed in the hospital just about to have his leg amputated from a cut he got on a coral reef that was not properly taken care of.

A new kind of nightmare was about to unfold.