ACCEPTANCE WAS THE ANSWER

1 (16) ACCEPTANCE WAS THE ANSWERThe physician wasn t hooked, he thought he justprescribed drugs medically indicated for his many ail-ments. ACCEPTANCE was his key to there ever wasanyone who came to bymistake, it was I. I just didn t belong here. Neverin my wildest moments had it occurred to me that Imight like to be an alcoholic. Never once had mymother even hinted at the idea that, when I grew up,I might like to be president of Not only did I notthink that being an alcoholic was a good idea, I didn teven feel that I had all that much of a drinking prob-lem! Of course, I had problems,all sorts of problems. If you had my problems, you d drink too was major problems were marital. If you had mywife, you d drink too. Max and I had been marriedfor twenty-eight years when I ended up in Itstarted out as a good marriage, but it deterioratedover the years as she progressed through the variousstages of qualifying for Al-Anon.

2 At first, she wouldsay, You don t love me. Why don t you admit it? Later, she would say, You don t like me. Why don tyou admit it? And as her disease was reaching theterminal stages, she was screaming, You hate me! Youhate me! Why don t you admit you hate me? So Iadmitted 4/4/03 11:17 AM Page 407I remember very well saying, There s only oneperson in the world whose guts I hate worse thanyours, and those are my own. She cried a bit and wentto bed; that was the only ANSWER to problems that shehad left. I cried a bit and then mixed myself anotherdrink. (Today, we don t have to live like that anymore.)Max hadn t gotten that way because I didn t , it seemed that I cared too much. I had senther to four consecutive psychiatrists, and not one ofthem had gotten me sober.

3 I also sent my kids to psy-chiatrists. I remember, one time, even the dog had apsychiatric diagnosis. I yelled at Max, What do youmean, The dog just needs more love ? You tell thatdumb cat-and-dog doctor he s not a Beverly Hills psy-chiatrist. All I want to know is, why does that dog wetin my lap every time I hold him? (That dog hasn twet my pants once since I joined , and neitherhave I!)The harder I worked with Max, the sicker she , when it ended up at a psycho ward, I wasn t allthat surprised. But then, when that steel door slammedshut, and she was the one that went home, I trulywas had begun to drink in the early years of pharmacyschool, in order to get to sleep. After going to schoolall day, working in the family drugstore all evening,and then studying until one or two in the morning, Iwould not be able to sleep soundly, with everything Ihad been studying going round in my head.

4 I wouldbe half asleep and half awake, and in the morning Iwould be both tired and stupid. Then I found the solu-408 ALCOHOLICS 4/4/03 11:17 AM Page 408tion: At the end of study time, I would drink twobeers, jump in bed, sleep real fast, and wake up drank my way through schools and always gothonors. And as I went through pharmacy school,graduate school, medical school, internship, residency,and specialty training, and finally, went into practice,my drinking kept increasing. But I thought it was be-cause my responsibilities were increasing. If you hadmy responsibilities, if you needed the sleep like I do,you d drink too. My drinking took place after work hours. I remem-ber finding myself in the middle of the night in thedoctors parking lot at the hospital with one foot inthe car and one foot on the ground, not knowingwhich was the lead foot; finding myself hanging up thetelephone then realizing I had gotten out of bed, an-swered the phone, turned on the light, and carried ona conversation with a patient.

5 I didn t know whether Ihad told him to rush to the hospital and I d meet himthere, or to take two aspirin and call me in the morn-ing. With a problem like that, I couldn t go back tosleep. So I d sit up, watch old Wallace Beery movieson all-night TV, and longer the drinking continued, the shorter thetime the alcohol would keep me asleep; I would haveto drink myself back to sleep again and again through-out the night. But I never became a morning , I had a 5 shutoff time. If it was oneminute before five, I d drink myself back to sleep. If itwas one minute after, I d stay up and act like a martyrall day. It became progressively harder to get up inthe morning, until one day I asked myself what Iwould do for a patient who felt this rotten.

6 The answerACCEPTANCE WAS THE 4/4/03 11:17 AM Page 409came right back: I d give him something to pephim I immediately started taking and shooting peppills. Eventually, I was taking forty-five milligrams ofthe long-acting Benzedrine and forty-five of the short-acting just to get out of bed in the morning. I tookmore through the day to increase the high, and moreto maintain it; when I overshot the mark, I d taketranquilizers to level off. The pep pills affected myhearing at times: I couldn t listen fast enough to hearwhat I was saying. I d think, I wonder why I m sayingthat again I ve already said it three times. Still, Icouldn t turn my mouth the leveling-off process, I just loved intravenousDemerol, but I found it hard to practice good medicinewhile shooting morphine.

7 Following an injection, Iwould have to keep one hand busy scratching my con-stantly itching nose and would also have sudden un-controllable urges to vomit. I never got much effectout of codeine and Percodan and the , for a period of time I was injecting Pento-thal intravenously to put myself to sleep. That s thestuff used when the oral surgeon puts the needle inyour vein and says, Count to ten, and before you getto two, you re asleep. Instant blackout was what it was,and it seemed delightful. I didn t feel I could lie inbed and squirt the stuff in my veins while my kids andwife stood around watching me, so I kept the drug inmy bag and the bag in the car and the car in thegarage. Luckily, the garage was attached to the the garage I would put the needle in my vein andthen try to figure out exactly how much medication toinject to overcome the pep pills while adding to the410 ALCOHOLICS 4/4/03 11:17 AM Page 410sleeping pills while ignoring the tranquilizers, in orderto get just enough to be able to pull out the needle,jerk the tourniquet, throw it in the car, slam the cardoor shut, run down the hall, and fall in bed before Ifell was hard to judge the right amount.

8 One nightI had to put myself back to sleep three times, andthen I finally decided to give it up. But to do so, I hadto get all the stuff out of the house and out of my pos-session. In the end I had to do the same with alcoholand allpills. I wasn t able to quit chemicals as long asthey were in the house. If they were around, I alwaysfound a need for them especially the pills. I never inmy life took a tranquilizer, sedative, or pep pill be-cause I was a pillhead. I always took it because I hadthe symptom that only that pill would relieve. There-fore, every pill was medically indicated at the time itwas taken. For me, pills don t produce the desire toswallow a pill; they produce the symptoms that requirethat the pill be taken for relief.

9 As a physician andpharmacist who had grown up in a drugstore-home,I had a pill for every ill, and I was sick a , I find I can t work my program whiletaking pills, nor may I even have them around for direemergencies only. I can t say, Thy will be done, andtake a pill. I can t say, I m powerless over alcohol,but solid alcohol is okay. I can t say, God could re-store me to sanity, but until He does, I ll control myself with pills. Giving up alcohol alone was not enoughfor me; I ve had to give up all mood- and mind-affecting chemicals in order to stay sober and two occasions, over weekends, I had decided IACCEPTANCE WAS THE 4/4/03 11:17 AM Page 411would take absolutely nothing. On each occasion Ihad a convulsion on Sunday morning.

10 Both times myreaction was that I had had nothing to drink the nightbefore, so obviously alcohol had nothing to do with neurologist in charge of my case didn t think toask me whether I drank, and I didn t think to tell a result, he couldn t figure out why I had the con-vulsions, and he decided to send me to the MayoClinic. It seemed to me I needed a consultation happened to be the best diagnostician I knew at thetime, and certainly I knew my case better than anyoneelse. So I sat down with me and went over the factsbehind the convulsions: personality changes, dailyheadaches, sense of impending doom, sense of impend-ing insanity. Suddenly, it was obvious to me: I had abrain tumor and would die, and everyone would besorry for me.