The Big Rescue

My rock bottom occurred in Seattle.  I had moved out from the apartment my ex-husband and I had shared and into my own luxury apartment by the market.  I had also just gotten fired from my job because I had been so blackout drunk for 2 weeks I didn’t know what day it was.  I remember coming to, seeing it was dark outside and not knowing if it was 6am or 6pm.  I don’t remember anything from those 2 weeks except stumbling to the big Target to get a few more pints of vodka.  I was under 100 lbs and very, very sick.  I had no friends, no income, and I wasn’t exactly suicidal but I didn’t have anything to live for either. 

At one point, EMTs and cops busted through my apartment door, threw all my alcohol away and dragged me out of bed to the ER.  Someone must have called for a welfare check, but to this day I have no idea who it was.   I don’t know how long I was in the ER, but I do remember the doctors telling me I had a lethal blood alcohol level and that I could have died.   I had heard all this before, and I was too depressed to care.   All I knew is that my life was an absolute shit pile, and alcohol took away the panic from not knowing what to do.  When I was released from the hospital, it was about 3am, and I had no way to get home and no money, so I started walking. The walk took over an hour, through some really awful neighborhoods.  Seattle’s waterfront and the tourist areas are lovely, but when you get beyond that it is the saddest city I’ve ever seen.  In almost every doorway there were junkies passed out, some with the needles still in their arms.  There are drug deals going on with no attempt to hide them, and some really rough-looking people wandering around.  At one point a group of guys started following me.  So I walked as fast as I could while so, so sick toward to most lighted area I could find.  I guess they decided I was in worse shape than them, because they gave up.  My guardian angel at work again.  By the time I got back to my apartment, it was not quite 6am, so I waited in the fetal position on my floor.  I had a great empathy for and understanding of the junkies in the doorways.  We were the same.  I was so scared, so lonely, and so sick.  I wanted to die just to make the panic and desperation go away. 

I was in terrible shape, but somehow I got myself to the Target again at 6am and got several pints of vodka.  I ducked into the nearest alley and took the biggest swig I could manage.  I immediately vomited it up with such force it shot out of my nose.  This was normal when my body had gone into withdrawal, and I waited a few seconds then took another giant swig now that my stomach was “primed.”  This one stayed down, and I felt the pleasant burning in my empty stomach.  The panic went away, and I started to feel normal again.  An alcoholic’s “normal," and I was able to function again.  I cleaned my face off and went back to my apartment.  I was feeling artificially great, so I actually managed to eat something and keep it down.  Frozen bagel bites.  To this day I can’t stand to even see them in the grocery store, I have to avert my eyes when I’m in the frozen section.   I turned on the TV and started to relax with my vodka.  I told myself I deserved to relax after all I had been through, classic alcoholic justification.   And I kept drinking until I was in a blackout cycle again, and this continued for another couple of weeks. 

I came out of a drunken stupor just enough to realize that someone was pounding on my door.  Oh shit, I thought, another welfare check.  But the pounding continued without EMTs busting through my door again, so I stumbled to the door and opened it.  I thought I was hallucinating, because my dad was standing there.  My redneck father who left us when I was 5 and I only saw once a year because my mom made him.  My father who hadn’t been on a plane since the 1970s.  I hadn't seen him in years, and I have no idea how he knew I was in such trouble. I don’t remember exactly what was said, but I remember being in the ER with my dad telling me he was taking me home to Colorado when I was released.  Oh, hell no.  I was in a drunken rage because I was delusional and convinced I could get my life back together.  I was also pissed that I was a shameless drunk just like he had been.  I had become the person I resented most in the world.  So I did the only reasonable thing and bolted.   I ripped the needles out of my arm and ran through the hospital in my gown, fueled by another blood alcohol level that should have been fatal.  This came to a stop quickly when I was surrounded by four armed security guards.  I started to go toward them, ready to take on all four of them (all 90 pounds of me), when my dad stepped in and begged me to give up.   He looked so sad and defeated, so I thought for a second, then let them take me.  I was then drugged and strapped to a bed in the psych ward for 36 hours while I went through withdrawals yet again.   When I was released, we went back to my apartment and started packing up what we could fit in a small truck.  The rest went down the trash chute, including my designer wardrobe, thousand dollar perfume collection, art and everything else we couldn’t fit in the truck.   We tossed my king sized mattress off the balcony for the homeless people that lived in the alley below.  It was about 2am when we finished, and we were both so upset we just started driving in the middle of the night on the 3-day journey back to Colorado. 

The first day of the trip, my dad had to help me walk because my body was too weak without having food or alcohol for a few days.  It was a very sullen trip for both of us, offset by some of the stunning beauty we were driving through.  I had never driven through Montana before, and it’s absolutely beautiful.  Unfortunately, I had to have my dad pull over fairly often to throw up all over it.  (Sincere apologies to Montana, I tried to make it up to you several years later by adopting a stray dog from up there.)  We spent the nights in cheap roadside hotels.  One of them was next to a movie theatre so we walked next door to watch a Star Trek movie one night.  I think it was the one with Benedict what’s-his-face but neither my dad nor I remember a thing about the movie.  We were both in a state of mental shock, and my body was also barely hanging on.    We got stuck in a Wyoming blizzard, so we had to stay in Casper for a few days.   We were both dazed and exhausted, so we just sat on our respective beds and watched the Weather Channel for hours.  And hours.  When we finally pulled into the driveway of my dad and stepmom’s house, it was kind of surreal.   After so many years away, being a big fancy lawyer in New York, San Francisco, and Seattle, I was back where my life began in a cow town on the Eastern Plains of Colorado.   There wasn’t even a Starbucks there, the nearest one was an hour away in Kansas.  My first night there, my stepmom came into my room and gave me a diamond-shaped trinket box.  She told me I was a diamond inside, but I needed to start acting like it.  A few days later, my dad offered to send me to the same rehab he had gone to, and I very reluctantly accepted. But my journey wasn't over yet.