One Day at a Time

Mike looked up from his glass of and remarked, "remember that game we played against the chapter in South Jersey, where Hank pitched a hissy fit over that strike three call"? His words came out slurred, which is fair since it was his seventh or eighth beer. "Sure", I responded, only slightly less tipsy. "Hank was such as asshole, he looked for reasons to fight every game we played".

By the way, I asked, "Where is Hank? I haven't seen him in what, two, three years?" Mike's brother Paul chimed in, "that crusty fucker walked out of here three years ago, on Flag Day." Flag Day, I thought. I looked at him and said, "how could you remember it was Flag Day?" He paused, looked up, and said, "Don't you remember that day? He was pissed about something, as usual, and took the flag hanging on the pole in the Knights hall and started waving it around. Well Jimmy McGrath didn't like it and grabbed it from him." We all looked at Paul, and I said, "Holy Shit, that's right". Jimmy had a real dislike for Hank, and screwing with the flag was the last straw. Then Jimmy moved towards him and swung, popping Hank and he went down like he got hit by Tyson. When he got picked up, he pushed us off and said, "Fuck all you guys, you all suck!" After Hank tumbled out, Paul then said, hey, "Hank got flagged, and it's Flag Day to boot!"

I hadn't thought about Hank McCall in a long time and couldn't care less about him, because I didn't much like him either. He was older than us by twenty or thirty years, we were in our early twenties, he was an old guy who liked to get black-out drunk. He was our softball coach, and he drank with us, but there was no real relationship beyond that. I never expected to ever see him again. I was wrong.

My life took a dark turn after those somewhat happy years at the Knights. We drank, snorted some coke, smoked weed and spent summer weekends at the Jersey Shore. We were weekend warriors. Somewhere along the way, when most others just drank more or smoked weed regularly, I took a different turn. I dug deeper into coke, and when introduced to free-basing, my plunge to the bottom accelerated. It was the high I was searching for my whole life. Why that was is another story for another time. I lost a couple of Wall Street jobs; lost a girlfriend who I probably would have married if things had been different; surrendered the trust of my family. It was dark and desolate.

My luck turned when the truth finally came out. Between my sister and that girl who's heart I broke, they found a way to help me. I entered a rehab in Hoboken, NJ. Not exactly the garden spot of recovery, like Palm Springs or the Mayo, but once you're inside, the outside doesn't much count any more.

Recovery was new to me, and one of the first thing an addict needs to do is to admit they have a problem. It should seem obvious to anyone addicted to drugs, to me, that I had a drug problem, but it's not always so simple.

So here I sat in a rehab with about 40 other people, some with the same issue I had, others with addictions to alcohol, and still others hooked on both. This rehab must have had a contract with the Ford plant in Linden, NJ. At least ten of the forty were from the plant. Mostly men in their forties and fifties, which is typical for any alcoholic. Women, too, suffer the same plight. It takes some time for alcohol to take its toll. Twenty or thirty years of hard drinking will lead to poor health, loss of jobs and perhaps the worst is what damage it will do to family and friends. And of course getting behind the wheel of a car can be most devastating...potentially destroying the lives of strangers.The decline due to my addition to coke was much faster. It takes everything from you, money, friends, family, jobs and, of course, any sense of self-worth. And it happened quick.

I never spent any time in prison, I was lucky that didn't happen to me. Rehab has some similarities, although some would argue it's quite different, and I suppose it is. However, being told where to go, when to eat, when to sleep, hoping for privileges...it seemed like prison to me. But here's the thing, you could leave if you wanted to. There has to be some sense of recognition about what's happening in your life. As is often said in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, it's a program for people who want it, not for people who need it. Even though I was addicted to cocaine, I learned soon enough that where recovery was most successful was in the rooms of AA. What reinforced this belief was something an addiction counselor explained to me. James Littlejohn, who was a recovering heroin addict himself, laid out the scenario of how my relapse would occur. "Tom, here's how it will happen to you. First, everything will seem good. Your going to meetings, staying clean. Then as time goes on, you begin to attend less and less meetings each week. You decide you're cured. You start going back to bars, promising yourself that you will only have a few beers. You're feeling good, just a little buzzed. You head to the bathroom and in the stall next to you is a guy you used to run with back in the day. So, you promise yourself you'll just snort coke, no free-basing. Of course, it's a cruel lie, and your back where you started, and maybe worse. Relapse is a reality, and once it happens, it gets even tougher to come back to recovery.

What James told me stuck in my mind and scared my like nothing else I ever heard.

Over the thirty-five days I spent in Rehab, I realized that I wanted to change. I wanted my life back, I wanted my dreams back, too. There were some privileges some of us competed for, like being one of the ten to get in the van to be taken to an AA meeting. The freedom of leaving the Rehab, even for just a couple of hours, felt good. We would be taken to meetings around Hudson County. One evening, we were brought to church basement for an AA meeting in Bayonne. It felt strange at first, like you didn't fit in. What was most unexpected was the smile on the faces of people. The laughter, the hugs, the openness, it all seemed so strange. I grabbed a cup of coffee and a couple of cookies, and settled in. At first, it was hard staying focused on who was speaking. I was looking around, still stunned at the positive vibe around me. I didn't yet have anything to be grateful for. As I looked around, my eyes focused on someone across the large circle of people. Someone from the past that I recognized. I couldn't believe it. Hank sat there.

We spoke after the meeting ended. Hank had been sober almost three years, starting shortly after leaving the Knights that evening three years ago. One of the suggestions of AA is to find a sponsor, someone who can show you the ropes. Someone who will take you around to various meetings, listen to your struggles, encourage uou and slam you, when necessary. Hank became my first sponsor and did that for me. We were quite different in many ways, but we had one important thing in common, a desire to stay sober.

Hank's been dead a long time now, and so is James Littlejohn, who's wake I attended. But I'm still here having gotten sober on April 28th, 1987. I'm what we like to call, a first time winner, having stayed sober after leaving the rehab. I sometimes think of how many meeting I've attended, it's around three thousand or so, and I needed every one of them.