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Recovery Ring

In the mode of people in programs of recovery, this story is not dressed up to paint pretty pictures, but contains the sometimes blunt and unvarnished facts about my imperfect life, both in my acive addiction, and in my still-unfolding recovery. It may be difficult for my close friends and family, co-workers, or even for casual readers and visitors to understand some of the things included herein.
There can be no victory without struggle - and sometimes the only slim victory is in the continued will to take on that struggle, never giving up. If you're still reading at the end of this long , convoluted story, you're either family, or masochistic. If you decide to bail - don't sweat it - I know I'm a champion blowhard. : )
 The short version is: an addict stopped using, lost the desire to use, and found a new way of life, one day at a time, through the program of NA.

 Before that, I had been fed booze from the time I was an infant, had been beaten by my mother, step fathers, caretakers and peers; countless, endless times. I had been dragged through every casino in northern Nevada, every 'Bucket-o Blood', and 'Glory Hole' Saloon from Central City Colorado to Virginia City Nevada. I had run free on the Nevada desert, and in the Pinon foothills of the Eastern Sierras. I had (accidentally) shot myself at age five, and been hauled into the Carson City Jail for nearly (accidentally) shooting a neighbor at seven. I could (evidently) shoot a gun, set a snare, catch fish and frogs with my bare hands, shimmy up any tree, and navigate by the stars, sun and moon.
 I had hung out in the stock car pits at Reno's racing tracks - even  ridden laps with Buddy Baker in his blue #4 Ford coup.
 I had even spoken before 400 people in the mess hall of the Nevada State Penitentiary, sharing my gratitude at ten years of age for my mother's one year of sobriety in AA.
 These were the things of my earlier childhood.

  I spent fifteen months confined to a mental hospital, because of my inability to be controlled by anyone. There I learned about old drunks and Paraldyhyde, ‘forensic patients' (criminals), and attempted jailhouse rape (better fight for your booty!), I learned to paint, bang out self styled songs on piano, play a mean game of chess. In my budding addiction, I'd steal from senile old ladies for money to buy drugs from the hospital staff. I learned how to slip wads of paper into door latches so that late at night they could be used for egress onto the streets of the city where I would run with dealers and car thieves. I learned how to endure solitary confinement, sensory deprivation, 'mileau therapy', and the dread of watching dazed and vacant zombies returning from shock treatments in the sinister ‘North Wing' - fearing that one day it might be me.
 I got an FCC broadcaster's licence, and had a radio show - a news-talk/interview show on a college FM station, spinning underground  records in the studios of the same college's AM station. And read the works of Jerzy Kosinski, DuMaurier, Malmud and Theoreau.
 I was with a very close friend (she had once been a girlfriend) through her pregnancy, after she was knocked up by another friend (a bass player from one of my early bands) and abandoned by him. I held her hand and sweated in the waiting room during her delivery, just as if I was the father of that baby - whom she relinquished for adoption and never saw or held.
 I had jumped out of moving cars to escape the advances of greasy old molesters - drooling on my young, blond, hitchhiking knees at 60 mph.
 These were the things of my life before my eighteenth birthday.

 I struck out for redemption and a new life, and found Bolinas Ca., where I slept in bushes & trees, and eventually built my little cabin. I worked for two dollars a day, beer and meals, willing to do anything to find dignity and a place in that world. I met my lifelong sidekick Dolomite (Doly), became a true musician on the old Nicholl & Gross upright in Scowley's pool room, rubbed elbows with accomplished people from all walks - Arthur Okimura,  Lawrence Ferlingetti, Richard Brautigan, Rosalie Sorrels, Alan Watts, Bobby Louise Hawkins, Robert Creely, Jesse Collin Young, The Rowens, Huey Lewis, Slick and Kantner, Jerry Garcia, John Cippolina, Steve Miller, and on, and on, and on.
 I laid up through the long, rainy winters reading the Russian masters - Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Solshenytsin as I coughed my way through the bronchitis of those damp months with fat, hand rolled cigarettes. I stayed up all night watching classic movies on the UHF stations that my little Zenith B&W tv pulled in with a coat hanger antenna.
 I played jigs on my harmonicas on the little boat dock in the channel to the Bolinas Lagoon, serenading the sunsets and the rising flocks of birds off the estuaries.
 I pondered through soft nights in the redwood rainforests of Muir, took in the sunrise from above the clouds in the Tamalpias Headlands.
 These were the things of my life before my twenty second year.

 I was Tutored by a French chef, went to live in an upscale little resort village near Sant Cruz, got a job as a lead chef - drove around in a fancy little sports car, played music with acquaintances at the local college, wrote songs and songs and songs. Had my first true love and heartbreak, lost a best friend to suicide, failed at my own drunken suicide attempt (wanted to gas myself & blow up the building I lived in),eventually left California and reconciled with my family in Denver.
 I stopped drinking alcohol for the most part (aside from periodic benders), but went deeply into 'Marijuana Maintanance'.
 I went to work helping 'retarded' (Developmentally Disabled) people, and fell in love with the field. I worked with enthusiasm, got noticed and promoted quickly. I became an Administrator, took on responsibility and authority, managed large projects, budgets and staff.
I changed my life in nearly every way. I established a home, got married to a hard working Iowa girl, and became engrossed with coral reef aquaria. I played music with friends whenever I could, formed a band, and built a little rehearsal studio in my basement. I became a Team Leader for State of Colorado survey teams, going into care facilities and evaluating compliance with standards, and the quality of services there.
 I took in a terminally ill retarded man, and made a commitment to give him love and friendship until his last living day.
 I wrote songs, and wrote songs, and wrote songs.
 I bought a 34 foot bus - gutted it, built it into a double-deecker motor home, and launched out with My family (Heather then being only 6 weeks old) on a 5000 mile tour of the south - spending weeks snorkeling, adventuring, and diving off of Sugarloaf Key.
 I took time away from my work in Human Services to go to work with an importer of tropical fish and exotic animals - managing the coral reef animals and systems for that enterprise.
 I took other Adult Foster Care people into my home.
 I lost my 'tenure', and returned to my work in human services at an entry level (administrative positions were few and far between). I drove truck for a sheltered workshop program, working with trainees of the program as something of a hybrid between a grunt worker and a vocational trainer. I languished at this job for four long years, feeding my family, playing music, and waiting for a break.
 I got that break (I thought) when I was asked to become the director of a pilot residential program for persons with Developmental Disabilities coupled with very severe behavior disorders. It was a nightmare - I was brought in to right a sinking ship - but it had already suffered too many fatal breaches, and after a year I left to work as a nursing supervisor in an agency providing community & home based care to a patient population consisting mostly of indigent AIDS patients. This I did for one tormented, exhausting year, until my addiction brought my career in human services administration to a halt.
 I had been using continually through all my years, trying to keep up a life that required more of me than I felt I was.  I achieved and achieved and achieved, all to prove that I wasn't the worthless piece of garbage that I felt I was deep inside.
 I began to crack under the weight of all the responsibility that I had taken on.
 My free-spirited life had been stifled under the immense weight of my outsized commitments.
 I had played music all my life, and had managed to keep gigs going & songwriting projects in my little studio all along, but now was losing my creative spark. I hid out, and used every chance that I could - spending endless hours isolated and short of sleep as I tried to get a harder, deeper high.
 I quit my job, and went on unemployment, and stayed home with my foster care clients (who, by bthen were taking better care of me than I was of them), free then to do nothing but isolate and use. And ultimately, in my pain , confusion, and shame, I bottomed out and made the decision to surrender to the program of NA.

 I charged back at life with renewed enthusiasm - financing and building a small recording studio with a musician friend, immersing myself in music, writing songs, reincarnating my band, and setting up shows. As I got clean, and my ego began to get tempered, I began to look less toward being a front man and the star of the show, and more toward being a pragmatic musician (there's an oxymoron!) - setting up a production company thatt brought me into contact with a broad range of artists and industry people as I provided sound, recording, and video support for my clients.
 I was becoming free to live in my world of music, still a foster care provider, still helping people, freed from the yoke of drugs, my mind was clearing and I was becoming more strong and straight and focused. I was a sponsor to many people, whom I had learned to allow to teach me, rather than appointing myself as their teacher. I was finding a deep love of a God I was awakening to, the people in my life, and my own faulty, eccentric self.
 I had lived all of this in the span of forty two years.

 Then the Bottom seemed to drop out of my life.  I endured the  death of my lifelong best friend and brother, Doly, the long agony of my mom's illness & death (both died in my arms within eighteen days of each other, as well as a beloved uncle who died in California during this same span), & the creeping in of my own chronic illness - COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease).
 Though I was told many years ago that I had this illness, I denied it  for the most part - wanting only to believe that if I quit smoking (as Idid finally on March 5th of 1990 after four years of trying) I would be ok.
 I pushed myself to the limit - taking on big contracts without more than a single helper - starting out in the early morning de-bugging gear, loading it into the trailer, then into the venue - doing all the setup for mains, monitors, and any lights, video or recording that might also be involved. I ran the system through the shows - hustling from booth to monitor station to amp stacks, keeping it all going with a big red 'S' on my shirt.
 I'd strike the stage, pack up & load out, not dragging my weary ass to bed until 4 or 5 a.m. most nights - only to get up & do it again, three - four nights a week during my busy seasons.
 Between this frenzied schedule, I put on shows for the fellowship - donating my gear and time to do DJ dances, talent shows, and benefit concerts..I started an NA clubhouse, I remodeled my house, bought a big beautiful Crewcab Dually 454 Chevy truck and a 30 foot fifth wheeler to tow with it, and took my dysfunctional family on vacations that made Chevy Chase's seem like backyard bar-b-ques. Went to Yellowstone, the Olympic Rain Forests(loaded the whole rig onto a ferry & crossed Peugeot Sound as orcas danced alongside!). Took the family to Mexico, and toured the Southwest deserts.
 I rode my motorcycles whenever I could - especially loving rides in the San Luis Valley, and out on the back roads of the eastern plains of Colorado. I loved to fish for brook trout, scrambling up mountain stream-sides with a short rod poked through the thick brush - trying to get into that little swirl or deep hole where those crafty little brookies like to hide.

  I fell sick in the fall of my 42nd year, and  all the things of that life seemed to suddenly be put behind me. I was wrong to deny that I was ill when the doctors told me so back in 1988, after I couldn't shake yet another of my 'bad colds' and bronchitis.
 "COPD? Doesn't sound too bad - and when I'm well, I'm really well - there ain't no stopping me! Hell, I've beaten everything else that's ever been thrown in my path." This was the voice of my denial. But in my grief and exhaustion following the deaths of my loved ones, I got very sick, couldn't catch my breath, and over a two month span realized that something more menacing than bad allergies and a cold was upon me.
 A couple of years after my intial diagnosis, I followed the advise of my step mom, who has a chronic lung disease,  and went to National Jewish for treatment and evaluation. There, I was told that My COPD was mild, that I was having reactive episodes that were manageable, but were warning signs that I needed to take care of myself & take medications.
 I got to feeling better, and the longer I felt better, the less relevant that advise seemed. The medications were expensive, and I didn't feel any real discomfort other than 'bad allergies' and an occasional episode of shortness of breath. Did seem to get tired a little easier, but hey - it's a big life!
 I went to smokey meetings, hung out in smokey clubs, and lived in a dusty old Denver brick home with a menagerie of pets.
 I took a job helping my friend rebuild his house in Southern Colorado, that put me to work through an entire summer in a very small, fiberglass-filled attic crawl space, far too hot to keep on a mask in for any period of time.
 On November 1st of 1996, I got a 'cold'. It became bronchitis quickly.
I went to the doctor, who became quite alarmed. I was in full blown COPD - had reactive airways that were badly obstructed. He ordered me onto the meds I should have been on all along. I was coughing out of control, and discovered that I had torn the wall of my abdomen, creating an umbilical hernia that was nearly strangulated. I had no medical insurance, and found myself with a major medical condition that threatened to wipe me out from the expenses of care, medication and surgery.
 It was the holidays. I had just lost my best friend, and my mom, and now was sick and broke. I eventually managed to get on my wife's Kaiser plan, which lifted the financial stress but as the months wore on I got sicker and testing & evaluation revealed that I now had a chronic, progressive lung disease, that was unresponsive to most treatment, and was rapidly destroying my pulmonary functions.
 I  lost more than 50% of my lung capacity in a year, despite  aggressive treatment from a very good pulmonology team.
 I was on an average of 9 - 14 medications daily, and tolerated the side effects of them poorly. I slept poorly, was deeply fatigued and intolerant of the whirlwind of my household most of the time. I was married to a woman who seemed unable to give me the comfort and emotional support that I needed in these very dark times, wonderful person though she is. We had drifted apart so many times over the years, but I felt that now, when the chips were down was a litmus test of the strength of our marriage.
 She would bring me food and medicine, but seldom touched me - never held me, and I felt like a leper - a drag on her already overtaxed emotional resources. She too felt the strain of our life - the pain of death's visits upon our loved ones - the load of caring for the entire faamily, a sick husband, working her very demanding job. She was not mean or cold - but there I lay in pain and illness, and feeling the gaping void left by our conflicting needs.
 Finally, craving quiet and feeling maimed by my life's recent course, I moved into my studio(in a detached building on my property), where I was very self contained, but also very isolated.
 I could sit in a chair, on an average day, for about 45 minutes at a time before I got tired & had to lay down. Although for a while I was on something of an exercise routine, I developed new tears in the muscle walls of my abdomen, & had to be very conservative about strenuous activities. My voice was pretty much gone, as a musical instrument anyway - became very hoarse & raspy.
I drew close to a woman friend, Jennifer, whom I met on the internet, and through voice telephony, came to rely on her as a light in my sinking life. I was in deep dispair - though I tried my best to keep going, and look for meaning. She and I developed a bond of mutual support and understanding, and she ultimately saved my life - I do believe.
 

 During those long months, I struggled pretty hard - I was on  bursts of prednisone, and it played havoc with my nervous system. I was a tangle of moods and emotions and perseveration - hanging on through anxiety and muscle spasms and twitches and itches - all the side effects of steroids which I needed to keep breathing, but which made me so miserable that I often didn't want to . I was prescribed sedatives to try to keep me on just this side of psychosis - though I took them very conservatively, and only after asking for direction from my medical staff on each and every occasion.  I would go for a day, into two, and then three without sleep, then finally surender to the need to take something.
 It was especially hard on my closest loved ones, who got sprayed by the emotional surf as waves broke within me. God how I hated being weak, frail, and labile.
 I had been a squirrely mess at times during this period - losing focus, getting into self pity and fear, taking off on tangents. Life was going to take a little figuring out. I couldn't self-will my way out of this, and needed to face the future in a new way. I'd always lived under the illusion that the future was going to be something of my own shaping, somehow. I mouthed the words the program teaches us about powerlessness and being in the hands of a Higher Power, but like many of us, I secretly held onto my reservations that I was in control, that I could make things happen.
 I had to learn to truly give my life over to the care of God.
 I was alone a great deal of the time during that period, somewhat by choice as I got worn out quickly by the activities and energies of others.  I was profoundly lonely at times, and leaned on a select few people too much, to shield me from facing that loneliness. I  formed unrealistic expectations that my online friend would be like a button I could push for companionship, fixing me when I was scared or alone. Self centered, self seeking me.
 I know that in those long months, I was at times erratic, proud, vain, arrogant, angry, demanding, usury, and evasive with my friends, family and associates. This disorder (COPD) can serve, like so many other things, as a source for my betterment or my downfall.
 I had to learn that I couldn't use it as an excuse for lapsing into the defects of character that have always been sources of misery and unmanageabitily in my life.
 I have a responsibility for my recovery, no matter what.

I concluded in October of '97 with:

 "I look back on my life with amazement. I suppose that having squeezed so much into so few years, I sometimes feel past my quota of life experiences, & may have to be very miserly about how I ration out many more.
 I am adjusting to my new life, trying to become a better player, and taking advantage of the wonderful toys & tools that I have in mystudio.
 I try to grow in my recovery, and seek contentment, though in honesty, I have had some troubles with grief and anger at my losses. Allowing myself to be human, I expect that will be so, but I need to keep striving.
 I know that there is much to be gained from finding a more quiet, accepting relationship with myself. Learning not to measure myself by frenzied accomplishment and 'doing', trying to get ok with just BEING - breathing, and sensing. Life is sweet, though often painful. I have no clue if I will be here tomorrow, or in another fifteen years (none of us really do!), but if and when I am gone, I hope to have lived this intense flash of experience well, and found some contentment before it was done.
 I love Narcotics Anonymous for giving me tools and a chance for that - for showing me that way to a more spiritual life, and giving me steps to live by.
 I doubt if many folks are still with me at this stage of this looooong tract, but have written it for the sake of writing it, so no matter. If anyone is still with me here, I will close by saying :
I Love You! - and thanks for being here.
   Steve
   10/97"

Update, 7/98:
...In January '98, I decided I'd had enough of life in my studio, and of the isolation I was feeling there. I  ended my marriage of 19 years, though without great animosity or bitterness. We both knew that it was done, and that we needed to be free. Niether of us could continue as we had been. I was laying there, feeling life slowly slipping away from me - craving the comfort of love. If there was a life out there to be lived, I felt it passing me by.
 I left Denver, and went to Long Beach Ca., where the climate and the weather were much more agreeable for me. I knew that I needed some purpose for being, and had come to love my friend Jennifer very much. I wanted to try to start life over with her, or at least die trying.

 After a six month period at that altitude & milder, more stable climate, I broke through the revolving cycle of broncospasms and medication side effects. With less medication I began to sleep and rest better, and gradually found a level of energy closer to what had been normal for me in the past - not cured, but much better. But as I got better, the relationship with Jennifer seemed to become more difficult, and we both had difficulty adjusting to so much radical change. I was so very homesick for Denver, and missed my daughter terribly. Jenni and I struggled as we discovered that our differences were greater than we had ever realized from 1000 miles away. I decided that I wanted to come home - back to my daughter, to Denver which I realized once more is such a jewel, back to the fellowship which was there for me when I first got clean.
Becoming well enough to return home was a gift of profound grace - moving back away from Jen was a thing of profound sadness.
 I returned to Denver in early June (more adventures in that trip!) and have settled into a garden apartment in a house in Southeast Denver. My new landlord  (who is a retired literature professor) and I seem to have a great rapport, and I am in the process of building a full scale recording facility on the premises. Eargasm Sound Co. rides again!
 Though I need to take extra care and closely monitor my level of fatigue and my respiratory function, I have nearly regained my normal voice, am active in my fellowship, riding motorcycles again, and have great hopes for the future.
- SN, 7/98

Update 9/99:
 I am as settled in to my life as a person could ever hope to be - the apartment that I moved into in '98 was a fixer-upper, and much of my rent was exchanged for my work here. I have built a new kitchen and bath, have completed the making of my living areas into a colorful and comfortable home.
 I am again a Host Home Provider, working with a guy named Michael here. Mike is a challenge, and suffers from the aftermath of a horrific upbringing. I am blessed to have the resources to bring to him, helping him learn new ways to approach life.
 I also have bought myself some luxuries - a nice Blazer Tahoe, home theater gear, and have completed most of the components of my studio - adding a networked computer to my control room and converting a storage area into a nice little recording room, which doubles as a small (and still a little primative) guest room.
 I am good friends with Shari, and Heather and I are closer than we've ever been.
 I work during the afternoons with Lue, my sidekick of 22 years who shows that Down's Syndrome may be considered a disability, but a person's character lives in the indominability of their spirit. It's a privilege to work with Lue, who keeps me sharp just trying to keep up with him.
 In the mornings I do community participation with an autistic man named Carl. Carl is a gentle giant, and amazingly for a person with his kinds of challenges - he's a hug machine. He is the converse of Will Rodgers who never met a man he didn't  like - I've never met anyone who doesn't like Carl.
 I have done some recording projects, have been doing some DJ gigs here and there, and actually PERFORMED publicly  for the first time in a very long time this summer. I actually SANG (!) without driving people from the building and wowed 'em with a rendition of Heather's Song.
 I ride my motorcycle as often as I can get away with - usually a little faster than I should, but not too fast to miss the warming sun, or the limitless world all around me. Have gone to two consecutive annual biker runs - the International Serenity Run held at the end of July at the foot of the Grand Mesa in Western Colorado. It's a blast to ride with several hundred 'clean and sober' scooter folk - still leather clad and politically incorrect, but so welcome in the nearby town of Cedar Edge that the local VFW throws them a traditional Saturday breakfast, and gives over the streets for a parade - hundreds of big, loud bikes, with bikers throwing candy to the local kids.
  My life is no less than a miracle from the God who loves me, and who does that which is beyond the reach of any human being.
 I still need some medication, and still have times when I need to slow down and rest - but every day I feel stronger. Each day is full and challenging, and it's sometimes hard for me to believe how far I've come from those months of wrestling with an illness that often seemed bent on bringing my life to a close. No, I'm not cured, and can't get too cocky - but I am LIVING with it, and life's so very good.
 I stay in my program, and know that at the heart of it all, I owe everything to NA. Without being clean, and having a set of benevolent, guiding principles I would have no life, and I would have no hope.
 Much love to all, and I'll update again.....
  SN   9/99