I knew that this was more than just the usual nodding off—I
was used to that. I’d nod off about two, three times a day. I
was the uncoolest Keith Richards, finding myself in the middle
of some important task, like chopping onions with a clever or
talking to a relative on the phone, when I’d discover myself
pretzeled over on the couch or ready to julienne my
fingertips, eyes fluttering like the wings of a shot pheasant.
And don’t even get me started about the nausea. Throwing
up became as common as getting ready in the morning:
flossed teeth, check; clean shaven, check; brushed hair,
check; oh, wait: puke in the toilet, check.
At first, Lisa tolerated me as she ran through a whole litany
of excuses: He needs the meds to manage pain; he couldn’t
function otherwise; it’s just not his fault. But in the end she
became so polarized that she had all but given up on me. She
grew to know the tell-tale signs of being high: for one, my
voice would become husky when I was on oxycodone. I don’t
really know why, but my voice would drop a couple of octaves
and give the impression I was coming down with tonsillitis.
Also, she could just plain see it in my face. One night, I took
about nine after I left work and by the time I got home she
could see that my eyes, my face, my overall complexion had
just simply…changed. So she’d recoil, retract from me and
the small world I created. I was losing her right in front of me
but didn’t care. I mean, why should I when I had almost one
hundred pills and the weekend spread before me like a
sumptuous meal?
And it never occurred to me to think about my father, his
own addiction to Darvocet and his slow, painful extraction
from a family that he would eventually lose before I was ten
years old. He moved into a men’s only housing complex and
eventually joined the Catholic Church. He cleaned up,
remarried, and had five children hoping for a mulligan from
God.
I focused my righteousness on Lisa and became so incensed
by her accusations that I would explode in any given moment.
“Jesus, give me a fucking break,” I’d say, seething. “It just so
happens I’m really happy now, okay? Can’t I be happy
without it being because I’m fucking high or something?” The
whole time I would say these things, trying to stare her
down, pills would be swimming through my veins, wrapping
me in their beautiful glow. Lying was now a part of me in ways
I never had imagined.
During the month leading up to my surgery, most nights
were spent in two different countries: Lisa would be putting
our daughter to bed, or washing the dishes, or sobbing
uncontrollably in the bathroom, and I would be blissed out
somewhere, usually on the couch reading poetry. Sometimes,
I could hear Lisa upstairs reading stories to Grace, her voice
sounding impossible and so far away.
* * *
The week before surgery, I became nervous; I couldn’t feel
pain in my shoulder anymore. And I don’t mean when I was
taking drugs—I mean all the time. In the morning, I’d spin my
shoulder around in the shower hoping to jar something
loose, make the pain come back. Nothing. Reality crept in: am
I actually going to go through with surgery just to show the
doctors I believe I have pain? It had been almost five months
of nonstop medication, physical therapy, arthograms and
MRIs. Was this all a hoax? I started to panic. I was going to
be exposed for the fraud I was.
But about four days before surgery, the old nagging
suddenly came back in my shoulder. I’d never been more
relieved in my life. Back on track, I counted down the
remaining few days and then followed the instructions the
night before: no food after 9 PM and nothing to drink after
midnight. I took an extra large dose that evening as a kind of
sendoff.
I wasn’t nervous the next morning; it was to be an out
patient procedure. I wasn’t even going to be fully
anesthetized, more in what they call ‘twilight sleep’, when you’
re there but not really there due to some type of super-
Valium.
Everyone was really nice to me as I was prepped. Everything
was explained slowly and I was asked if I understood; I
nodded like a man who had much to consider. As the time
neared, I felt myself become anxious surrounded by so much
sterility, so many gleaming white tiles. “This is oxygen,” a
doctor said, “Take a breath.” And when I did I immediately
heard someone saying my name and that I should wake up
now, Chris, it’s time to wake up.
I had what is called a SLAP tear. A SLAP (Superior Labrum
Anterior to Posterior) tear occurs when there is damage to
the labrum where the biceps tendon attaches. The labrum is a
cartilage ring which surrounds the shoulder socket. The
biceps tendon, which comes from the muscle on your arm,
goes through the shoulder joint and attaches to the top of
the labrum. My surgeon said it was the worst one he’d ever
seen, “The tendon was just floating in there,” I remember him
saying as I tried to shake the grog from my head. “No
wonder you’ve needed all those pain pills.”
My surgeon explained that he reattached the tendon with
anchors made out of compressed sugar. In three years, he
said, the anchors would dissolve completely. On the drive
home, my arm in a chest-tight sling and everything still
thankfully numb, I looked over at Lisa with a half smile and
said, “Compressed sugar? Well, at least I’ll become sweeter
than I already am.” Lisa offered only a strained smiled; she
had become someone committed to a duty not because she
wanted to but because she had no other choice.
When I made it home and was shuffled off to bed, I sat up on
a legion of pillows. The sun was just starting to go down and
its glow slanted orange through the windows. I could hear my
parents downstairs helping out with Grace, and Lisa kept
coming in with things for me, glasses of water or little snacks.
She set up the TV and DVD player and put in a movie. And
then, just like that, I started to cry. I cried for her, and for
my daughter, and even my parents. I didn’t know who I was
anymore. I gently touched my bandaged shoulder, felt the
chafed sling against my bare chest. “Lisa,” I called. “Lisa,
come here please.”
* * *
During the first two days of recovery, my shoulder felt like
someone was hammering a soldering iron through all the soft
tissue and blue membrane. I had to sleep sitting up. I hated
myself and my stupid predicament. I spoke to my brother
Josh on the phone. “Remind me again why I thought I could
wrestle,” I asked him. Josh just laughed and said, “I told you
I was your daddy.”
About a week after surgery, I had a checkup with my surgeon
and had the stitches removed. He told me I would need to
start seeing someone over at the pain clinic to ‘get off’ the
oxycodone. I agreed, swallowing hard at the prospect.
The doctors at the clinic didn’t take any shit. They must have
dealt with junkies like me ten times a day, heard all the
excuses and lies, the tricks to try and get extra meds or
higher doses. So when I told them I didn’t want to take the
Methadone they prescribed because it would make the detox
part of my program last longer, they gave me quite a bit of
heat. The truth is, I researched Methadone and discovered it
makes the whole process drag on longer; the drug more or
less sets up shop in your system and refuses to leave,
prolonging withdrawal time by several days. But that’s not
why I wanted to switch to something else--I wanted to switch
because Methadone didn’t get me high.
They told me to bring them the unused portion and they’d
give me a new script for MS Contin, which is a time release
form of morphine. I told them I’d give it a try. “No,” a nurse
said to me coolly over the phone. “We’re going to stick to
this plan.”
I was put on a five week schedule. The first week, I was to
take 120 milligrams of morphine a day, (equivalent to about
eight oxycodone pills), the second week 90 milligrams a day,
the third week 60, and so on. I was to be down to 15
milligrams by my last week.
But in charge of my own dosage, I couldn’t stick to the plan. I’
d hoard the pills or chew them up to get an entire day’s
worth of medicine all at once. And then I’d pull into the clinic
Monday afternoon all smiles and talk about how good things
were going, how glad I was to be getting close to finishing.
My last week was a joke; I used up my entire supply on a
single day. Even though I was told that I would be given no
more prescriptions, that this was it, I squandered it all with a
glass of orange juice at ten in the morning. That afternoon,
still a little dumb in the afterglow of the morphine, I thought
about the next day and that I was going cold turkey. “I can
do it,” I said to no one in particular. After all, I thought, how
bad can it really be. I mean, really?
* * *
Now first thing, you need to forget all those glorified
Trainspotting images you might have; withdrawal is not like
the movies. There was no violent lunging about, me frothing
delusional and twisted on the bed as I screamed up and out.
And, unlike in Trainspotting, there were definitely no visions
of dead babies crawling on the ceiling. At least not exactly.
But to be sure, there was physical pain. I felt years of pain
wrapped up in a few days. But in the first sixteen hours, it
wasn’t too bad. I felt a little shaky, experienced a restless
ambiguity like the feeling I needed to be somewhere but wasn’
t quite sure where that was. And it felt like I had the flu. My
nose was running like a broken main, my throat burned, I
chronically yawned, and, get this, I started sneezing like a
madman. Every five minutes or so came a fantastic sneeze.
All right, I said to myself, I can get through this; I’ve got this
licked.
Then came the butterflies.
You’ve felt it: that light, fluttery feeling in the stomach on a
carnival ride or during a scary part in a movie. But these
newfound butterflies I felt were malicious. And instead of in
the stomach, I felt them in my arms and legs. I shook and
shook my limbs, trying to drive the feeling down and out
through my fingers, my toes, but the butterflies clung tight
to the inside of my skin with their little suction cup feet,
soundlessly flapping their exquisite message of flight. It was
maddening and electric—I wanted to peel my flesh off like a
wet suit. Every muscle twitched and lurched steadily towards
some ending I could only dream of, could not imagine. But I
could still walk. I could still sit on the deck and listlessly eat
dinner with my wife and daughter. I could drink beer after
beer trying and override the horrible sensation. I could do all
this, but it was done under a great and unbearable pall.
The depression I felt when coming off of the morphine was
something I find hard even now to discuss. It lasted for days
after I was done with the physical part of the withdrawal, and
in some ways was much worse. It was like this: imagine you’
ve disappointed everyone you’ve ever loved or has loved you,
and that nothing will ever be right again, and you know this
plainly and clearly. Happiness is a lie because it has never
existed. And you know it never existed. And each terrible
second you continue to take space on this earth is one
second too long because how can you actually feel this
bottomless and without hope and still be alive? Then your
heart slaps blood from one chamber to the next, rinsing each
room with miserable life and you open your mouth to breathe
and repeat the whole damn thing all over again.
But after about a week, I began to see the world again. I had
missed some work, and the kids all hugged me when I made
my way into the school building that first day back.
Driving home after classes, I heard a song by Radiohead.
“Just because you feel it/doesn’t mean it’s there,” the singer
dryly cooed over and over. I sang along. It felt good to sing
and tap my fingers on the steering wheel; it seemed like it
was the first time I had ever done such a thing.
As I pulled into my driveway, I could see Lisa through the
glass doors holding our daughter high up in the kitchen air.
They were both smiling. I waved through the windshield but
they didn’t notice. I sat in the car and watched them, watched
the playful give and take they exhibited and felt the distance I
created stagger between us like years. I didn’t shut the car
off and continued to grip the wheel like the world depended
on it. And it did.
* * *
It’s now February, and my family and I have taken refuge on
the Gulf Coast of Florida for a two-week vacation. Lisa and I
have an unsteady truce, attending therapy and desperately
trying to communicate. Sometimes I’ll sit with my head in my
hands and just cry, unable to articulate what must be said,
needs to be said.
As I sit writing this now, five a.m., I take small pleasure in a
nearby open window. Some thin clouds are whisping the
horizon, the sky adamantly blue. I work hard to focus on
moments like these.
There’s an orange tree in the front yard, heavy with its
burden of fruit. I think this tree is saving my life. For the past
three days, my daughter and I have collected the ripe globes
and brought them in for juicing. Her hands are steady as she
holds the golden halves against the electric juicer. “Is that
enough,” she asks, lifting the empty fruit each time and
throwing it in the sink. “Almost,” I say, placing another in her
hand, “We still have work to do.”
was used to that. I’d nod off about two, three times a day. I
was the uncoolest Keith Richards, finding myself in the middle
of some important task, like chopping onions with a clever or
talking to a relative on the phone, when I’d discover myself
pretzeled over on the couch or ready to julienne my
fingertips, eyes fluttering like the wings of a shot pheasant.
And don’t even get me started about the nausea. Throwing
up became as common as getting ready in the morning:
flossed teeth, check; clean shaven, check; brushed hair,
check; oh, wait: puke in the toilet, check.
At first, Lisa tolerated me as she ran through a whole litany
of excuses: He needs the meds to manage pain; he couldn’t
function otherwise; it’s just not his fault. But in the end she
became so polarized that she had all but given up on me. She
grew to know the tell-tale signs of being high: for one, my
voice would become husky when I was on oxycodone. I don’t
really know why, but my voice would drop a couple of octaves
and give the impression I was coming down with tonsillitis.
Also, she could just plain see it in my face. One night, I took
about nine after I left work and by the time I got home she
could see that my eyes, my face, my overall complexion had
just simply…changed. So she’d recoil, retract from me and
the small world I created. I was losing her right in front of me
but didn’t care. I mean, why should I when I had almost one
hundred pills and the weekend spread before me like a
sumptuous meal?
And it never occurred to me to think about my father, his
own addiction to Darvocet and his slow, painful extraction
from a family that he would eventually lose before I was ten
years old. He moved into a men’s only housing complex and
eventually joined the Catholic Church. He cleaned up,
remarried, and had five children hoping for a mulligan from
God.
I focused my righteousness on Lisa and became so incensed
by her accusations that I would explode in any given moment.
“Jesus, give me a fucking break,” I’d say, seething. “It just so
happens I’m really happy now, okay? Can’t I be happy
without it being because I’m fucking high or something?” The
whole time I would say these things, trying to stare her
down, pills would be swimming through my veins, wrapping
me in their beautiful glow. Lying was now a part of me in ways
I never had imagined.
During the month leading up to my surgery, most nights
were spent in two different countries: Lisa would be putting
our daughter to bed, or washing the dishes, or sobbing
uncontrollably in the bathroom, and I would be blissed out
somewhere, usually on the couch reading poetry. Sometimes,
I could hear Lisa upstairs reading stories to Grace, her voice
sounding impossible and so far away.
* * *
The week before surgery, I became nervous; I couldn’t feel
pain in my shoulder anymore. And I don’t mean when I was
taking drugs—I mean all the time. In the morning, I’d spin my
shoulder around in the shower hoping to jar something
loose, make the pain come back. Nothing. Reality crept in: am
I actually going to go through with surgery just to show the
doctors I believe I have pain? It had been almost five months
of nonstop medication, physical therapy, arthograms and
MRIs. Was this all a hoax? I started to panic. I was going to
be exposed for the fraud I was.
But about four days before surgery, the old nagging
suddenly came back in my shoulder. I’d never been more
relieved in my life. Back on track, I counted down the
remaining few days and then followed the instructions the
night before: no food after 9 PM and nothing to drink after
midnight. I took an extra large dose that evening as a kind of
sendoff.
I wasn’t nervous the next morning; it was to be an out
patient procedure. I wasn’t even going to be fully
anesthetized, more in what they call ‘twilight sleep’, when you’
re there but not really there due to some type of super-
Valium.
Everyone was really nice to me as I was prepped. Everything
was explained slowly and I was asked if I understood; I
nodded like a man who had much to consider. As the time
neared, I felt myself become anxious surrounded by so much
sterility, so many gleaming white tiles. “This is oxygen,” a
doctor said, “Take a breath.” And when I did I immediately
heard someone saying my name and that I should wake up
now, Chris, it’s time to wake up.
I had what is called a SLAP tear. A SLAP (Superior Labrum
Anterior to Posterior) tear occurs when there is damage to
the labrum where the biceps tendon attaches. The labrum is a
cartilage ring which surrounds the shoulder socket. The
biceps tendon, which comes from the muscle on your arm,
goes through the shoulder joint and attaches to the top of
the labrum. My surgeon said it was the worst one he’d ever
seen, “The tendon was just floating in there,” I remember him
saying as I tried to shake the grog from my head. “No
wonder you’ve needed all those pain pills.”
My surgeon explained that he reattached the tendon with
anchors made out of compressed sugar. In three years, he
said, the anchors would dissolve completely. On the drive
home, my arm in a chest-tight sling and everything still
thankfully numb, I looked over at Lisa with a half smile and
said, “Compressed sugar? Well, at least I’ll become sweeter
than I already am.” Lisa offered only a strained smiled; she
had become someone committed to a duty not because she
wanted to but because she had no other choice.
When I made it home and was shuffled off to bed, I sat up on
a legion of pillows. The sun was just starting to go down and
its glow slanted orange through the windows. I could hear my
parents downstairs helping out with Grace, and Lisa kept
coming in with things for me, glasses of water or little snacks.
She set up the TV and DVD player and put in a movie. And
then, just like that, I started to cry. I cried for her, and for
my daughter, and even my parents. I didn’t know who I was
anymore. I gently touched my bandaged shoulder, felt the
chafed sling against my bare chest. “Lisa,” I called. “Lisa,
come here please.”
* * *
During the first two days of recovery, my shoulder felt like
someone was hammering a soldering iron through all the soft
tissue and blue membrane. I had to sleep sitting up. I hated
myself and my stupid predicament. I spoke to my brother
Josh on the phone. “Remind me again why I thought I could
wrestle,” I asked him. Josh just laughed and said, “I told you
I was your daddy.”
About a week after surgery, I had a checkup with my surgeon
and had the stitches removed. He told me I would need to
start seeing someone over at the pain clinic to ‘get off’ the
oxycodone. I agreed, swallowing hard at the prospect.
The doctors at the clinic didn’t take any shit. They must have
dealt with junkies like me ten times a day, heard all the
excuses and lies, the tricks to try and get extra meds or
higher doses. So when I told them I didn’t want to take the
Methadone they prescribed because it would make the detox
part of my program last longer, they gave me quite a bit of
heat. The truth is, I researched Methadone and discovered it
makes the whole process drag on longer; the drug more or
less sets up shop in your system and refuses to leave,
prolonging withdrawal time by several days. But that’s not
why I wanted to switch to something else--I wanted to switch
because Methadone didn’t get me high.
They told me to bring them the unused portion and they’d
give me a new script for MS Contin, which is a time release
form of morphine. I told them I’d give it a try. “No,” a nurse
said to me coolly over the phone. “We’re going to stick to
this plan.”
I was put on a five week schedule. The first week, I was to
take 120 milligrams of morphine a day, (equivalent to about
eight oxycodone pills), the second week 90 milligrams a day,
the third week 60, and so on. I was to be down to 15
milligrams by my last week.
But in charge of my own dosage, I couldn’t stick to the plan. I’
d hoard the pills or chew them up to get an entire day’s
worth of medicine all at once. And then I’d pull into the clinic
Monday afternoon all smiles and talk about how good things
were going, how glad I was to be getting close to finishing.
My last week was a joke; I used up my entire supply on a
single day. Even though I was told that I would be given no
more prescriptions, that this was it, I squandered it all with a
glass of orange juice at ten in the morning. That afternoon,
still a little dumb in the afterglow of the morphine, I thought
about the next day and that I was going cold turkey. “I can
do it,” I said to no one in particular. After all, I thought, how
bad can it really be. I mean, really?
* * *
Now first thing, you need to forget all those glorified
Trainspotting images you might have; withdrawal is not like
the movies. There was no violent lunging about, me frothing
delusional and twisted on the bed as I screamed up and out.
And, unlike in Trainspotting, there were definitely no visions
of dead babies crawling on the ceiling. At least not exactly.
But to be sure, there was physical pain. I felt years of pain
wrapped up in a few days. But in the first sixteen hours, it
wasn’t too bad. I felt a little shaky, experienced a restless
ambiguity like the feeling I needed to be somewhere but wasn’
t quite sure where that was. And it felt like I had the flu. My
nose was running like a broken main, my throat burned, I
chronically yawned, and, get this, I started sneezing like a
madman. Every five minutes or so came a fantastic sneeze.
All right, I said to myself, I can get through this; I’ve got this
licked.
Then came the butterflies.
You’ve felt it: that light, fluttery feeling in the stomach on a
carnival ride or during a scary part in a movie. But these
newfound butterflies I felt were malicious. And instead of in
the stomach, I felt them in my arms and legs. I shook and
shook my limbs, trying to drive the feeling down and out
through my fingers, my toes, but the butterflies clung tight
to the inside of my skin with their little suction cup feet,
soundlessly flapping their exquisite message of flight. It was
maddening and electric—I wanted to peel my flesh off like a
wet suit. Every muscle twitched and lurched steadily towards
some ending I could only dream of, could not imagine. But I
could still walk. I could still sit on the deck and listlessly eat
dinner with my wife and daughter. I could drink beer after
beer trying and override the horrible sensation. I could do all
this, but it was done under a great and unbearable pall.
The depression I felt when coming off of the morphine was
something I find hard even now to discuss. It lasted for days
after I was done with the physical part of the withdrawal, and
in some ways was much worse. It was like this: imagine you’
ve disappointed everyone you’ve ever loved or has loved you,
and that nothing will ever be right again, and you know this
plainly and clearly. Happiness is a lie because it has never
existed. And you know it never existed. And each terrible
second you continue to take space on this earth is one
second too long because how can you actually feel this
bottomless and without hope and still be alive? Then your
heart slaps blood from one chamber to the next, rinsing each
room with miserable life and you open your mouth to breathe
and repeat the whole damn thing all over again.
But after about a week, I began to see the world again. I had
missed some work, and the kids all hugged me when I made
my way into the school building that first day back.
Driving home after classes, I heard a song by Radiohead.
“Just because you feel it/doesn’t mean it’s there,” the singer
dryly cooed over and over. I sang along. It felt good to sing
and tap my fingers on the steering wheel; it seemed like it
was the first time I had ever done such a thing.
As I pulled into my driveway, I could see Lisa through the
glass doors holding our daughter high up in the kitchen air.
They were both smiling. I waved through the windshield but
they didn’t notice. I sat in the car and watched them, watched
the playful give and take they exhibited and felt the distance I
created stagger between us like years. I didn’t shut the car
off and continued to grip the wheel like the world depended
on it. And it did.
* * *
It’s now February, and my family and I have taken refuge on
the Gulf Coast of Florida for a two-week vacation. Lisa and I
have an unsteady truce, attending therapy and desperately
trying to communicate. Sometimes I’ll sit with my head in my
hands and just cry, unable to articulate what must be said,
needs to be said.
As I sit writing this now, five a.m., I take small pleasure in a
nearby open window. Some thin clouds are whisping the
horizon, the sky adamantly blue. I work hard to focus on
moments like these.
There’s an orange tree in the front yard, heavy with its
burden of fruit. I think this tree is saving my life. For the past
three days, my daughter and I have collected the ripe globes
and brought them in for juicing. Her hands are steady as she
holds the golden halves against the electric juicer. “Is that
enough,” she asks, lifting the empty fruit each time and
throwing it in the sink. “Almost,” I say, placing another in her
hand, “We still have work to do.”
