"Ken" (Not his real name) left. Against my advice. "Ken", for the most of you who do not know, was a guy who had been attending a local church for the past few weeks who then shared with them that he'd been sleeping in the woods. Since some at that church knew that I was the program supervisor for a sober living home at Adventist Assistance, and thus had dealt with that kind of thing, I got contacted.
I talked it over with them. While we had no openings in the sober living home of Adventist Assistance itself, my wife and I did let him move into the basement of our home.
I had suspected some kind of use of drugs yesterday, especially as he then had some behavioral changes late afternoon and on. Sudden loss of energy, withdrawn, didn't even eat the pizza my wife made for him, slept a lot last night, then withdrawn at the Eye-opener AA meeting at Discovery this morning.
When I went to pick him up at the library at 2:30 today, he was fast asleep - in the street. And had a whiff of alcohol about him. I told him he could share anything he liked, and I'd still help him. He had nothing to share. I asked if he'd had any temptations or lapses. He assure me that he'd had temptations, but no lapses.
Fair enough. I never force an admission, not when if they are doing it, the lapse will manifest itself in an obvious way soon enough. I took him home and arranged for him to be able to do some laundry at the Liahona Home, but he didn't show up with his clothes. I looked for him, and he was fast asleep in the twin bed we put down in our basement for him.
He woke up when I called his name and I asked if he was still wanting to do some laundry. He said, "This isn't working out. I'm going to move back to the woods."
I asked him why, but only got standard addict/alcoholic smoke screen answers, to cover up the real answer not wished to be gave out. Which was that now that it's warmer, it's easier to hustle up a few bucks by day for a 40 ouncer and a hit or two of crack in the evening, pass out in refrigerator box full of blankets and newspapers and repeat the next day. |
| When he says "the woods" he means this place. Several gather/camp there to drink and drug. Eventually the police will clean it out and they'll scatter and re-group at another similar place. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. |
I argued. Pretty long and well. And by argue, I mean sharing kindly about how it would get better, Jesus loves him, we all want him to do better, etc. Not the first time I've gave that talk. But he wasn't budging.
This was not wholly unexpected. Our sober living home usually takes in those who have completed a 90 day program at the Adult Rehabilitation Center or other equivalent program. He had only had sobriety since the 15th of this month. But he had been attending church, so given how cold it was when we learned he was sleeping in the woods, it seemed best to try. But I had concerns.
He struck me as a Professional Recoverer. That's where a person comes to enjoy the pettings and praisings and pamperings that you get when you first decide to go to AA meetings and especially if you go to a church. That type then enjoys that for awhile, then when the "new" wears off and/or the weather gets warmer, then it's back to the same old habits.
It doesn't have to be weather. Sometimes they just want to rest up between binges, or they ran out of money, or for whatever reason, they're just taking a temporary break from boozing and drugging before starting up again.
Trouble is that those of us who have recovered "for real" usually did not recover "for real" on the first attempt. So we went to AA meetings, or a church, or both, and enjoyed everyone telling us how wonderfully brave we were, and then we relapsed at various times and for various reasons. And then, a season or a year later, we'd try again.
It varies per alcoholic, but three or four attempts would hardly be unheard of. Nor would half a dozen.
Nor even a dozen.
Or more.
Guess how you tell the difference between an alcoholic/addict who has finally after many earlier attempts recovered "for real" versus the one who is a "professional recoverer"?
You can't.
Only time will tell. If they aren't relapsing, it's real, if they relapse, it wasn't.
It's like we're Quantum Addicts. Like in Schrodinger's famous thought experiment we're both Really Recovered and Pretend Recovered. I've been sober for some years. So my time is "real". But if I relapsed and became an active alcoholic again, then my time - every year of it - would retroactively be "pretend".
As to which I am, for this life, I'm in that Quantum Addict flux. If I make it till the trump is sounded, and am still sober, then Heavenly Father looking in the Box of my life sees that I recovered for real. Or I might relapse, then His observation of my life will show that I had not properly recovered at all.
People disagree. They find that too harsh. But such is the disease of alcoholism. You're sober or you're not, and ultimately your "intentions" and "words" are meaningless. True, my "intentions" and "words" are for sobriety, so in the unlikely event of a relapse on my part, my time in would still be "real". But only Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ would know that my intentions were real, mortal men would do well to just base their judgments on the observable data - which would be, if I were to relapse, "Dean's an idiot" and "It was pretend".
Back to the man who did relapse. I won't tell the details, but there were a remarkable number of stories and excuses gave earlier today when he left. Including some tales of woe that I knew in my heart to be utter lies. Like many, he wished to justify going back to the life he knows is wrong by a series of justifications and rationalizations. And blamings. Unsurprisingly, at the end, I and the church he had attended were at fault.
He would try one excuse, I'd answer, he'd try another, I'd answer, and etc. I'm blessed to have heard them all before. I'm blessed to have tried some of them. I think "blessed" is the right word. Probably not. But I was able to answer his chaff all the same.
When he realized that he wasn't going to be able to give me any of the standard lines about how we hadn't done enough, or couldn't understand his woes, he just left.
Will I see him again? I don't know. If it gets cold again, he may try and come back, though I'm afraid I cannot in good conscience accept him back. Not without him going to a 90 day program first. Or he might try another church. I gather that the church he had just tried was not the first that he's "found Jesus" in. So it may not be the last.
Or I might run across him the saddest way of all. The news. That's happened here before, a man walked out last Spring and was found dead of exposure and alcohol-related maladies a few weeks later. Today I just got a piece of mail addressed to him, it was his tax statement from the job that he worked while he stayed with us and was sober.
I mentioned that to "Ken", too, to try to persuade him to stay. I mentioned a lot more than I'm writing. I'm so sad. And it's so stupid for me to be sad, as I knew it would happen. I'd even warned the Missionaries of that other church not to get too excited. But I'm still sad. He could have had everything. The moment I took him in, it was like watching a slow motion crash. With me yelling, "Noooo!" like in the movies, arm outstretched, and the car smashing into the wall anyway.
But - free agency. You can tell a guy to put on the brakes, but you cannot make him.
I wish there was a cure for alcoholism. Besides meetings, prayer and hard work. Like a pill. Or while I'm wishing, a magic wand.
I try to have a neat ending to my writings, but I feel like I'm talking at an AA meeting, where I typically end with, "That's all I got."
That's all I got.
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