Chapter 13: What Can I Do

Chapter 13 – What Can I Do?

Frankly, I was lost facing two worlds. One was Linda continuing as a drug addict slowly killing herself. The other was my life with this beautiful woman, whom I loved and whom after years of work was able to work side by side with me, as we built a life together.

I knew which life I wanted and which I was likely to get.

So, I decided that I needed help. I called the mental health clinic Linda attended and got myself an appointment with a therapist (this therapist was recommended to me by the therapist Linda worked with).

I sat down with her and told her my story. She looked at me and told me what I am certain you would tell me; what I know I would have told a friend. Hell, what Linda would have told any girlfriend she had. The therapist said to me:

“Odell, I want you to listen very carefully to what I am going to tell you because it is very important!”

“GET OUT!!!!”

She told me that I should leave Linda that night. That there was NO hope whatsoever, that Linda was going to die and there was nothing that could be done about it, and my only hope was to save myself.

Rationally, I knew that everything she was saying was true, but there was one big problem. I loved Linda, and I had vowed to stay with her until she or I died. Nowhere had I said, “unless of course it might be inconvenient for me or might damage or even kill me.” The worst part of this was that the appointment was on August 4th, 2005, our four year wedding anniversary.

I went home to Linda.

“So, how did your appointment go?”

“Not so well.”

“What did she tell you?”

“She told me that you are going to die, that there is no hope for you and that I should leave you tonight! Linda, what are we going to do. I can’t live this way. I love you and it is killing me watching you die. If you are nothing more than a walking corpse why should I stay? Just so I can bury you? Can you imagine what it would be like if I had cancer but we thought it was gone, and then it came back over and over? That is what I live with every day. Like Robin Williams in ‘Good Will Hunting!’”

“How can you even say that, today of all days, our anniversary! It is not like cancer! I will learn to deal with it.”

“Linda I know when you are lying, your lips are moving. It is exactly like cancer. You are dying and you refuse to admit it to yourself. You don’t have a sponsor; you don’t go to meetings EVERY DAY, and you treat this like a game. You are going to die!”

“Then why don’t you leave me?”

“Because, I love you, and I do not want to lose you. I want you to get serious. I want to fight to save you. But I can’t save you and I am tired of being the only person on your side. Do you know what it is like to have the woman you love be your worst enemy? What else can you call the person who is actively trying to kill your wife?”

“What I want to know is why don’t you leave me!” I continued. “If all you want is cocaine, I wish you would leave me. I don’t want to feel like I left you, and I am not going to give up. Is it that without me, you can’t afford the drugs? Are you using me? Maybe all you ever wanted from our marriage was a ring and a party.”

“How can you say that? I don’t need you, I love you; I could live on my own if I wanted. I am here because I want to be. I was doing just fine before I met you!”

“Linda, that’s not true and you know it. When you moved here, you were about to have your phone and power cut off because you had not paid the bill in months. Now that you live with me, you don’t have to worry about that. Now you have money for cocaine, a nice house, a new car and a servant who is at your beck and call. That’s the way you treat me. I spend every day trying to show you how much I care for you and yet you do nothing to care for me. Linda, you don’t care for me! When was the last time you even picked up a piece of trash or did a load of laundry? You treat me like Doby (Doby a house elf from Harry Potter, a slave.)”

“I hate it when you say that. You know I care for you, you know I love you!”

“No Linda, I don’t. Care is a verb and you don’t show me that you care. What do you do to show that to me?”

The next day Linda got an appointment with her former drug counselor, Megan. Linda told Megan what had happened and Megan said to Linda:

“Linda you have to hear this, so listen. All your do-overs have been used up. If you do not stop using NOW, Odell is going to leave you and within a few weeks you will be selling yourself on the street to get drugs.”

“There is no way I would stoop that low!” said Linda.

“Yes,” said Megan, “you will. I have known 60 year old women who turned to giving blow jobs in alleys so they could support their habits. You have to beat this thing and you have to beat it now or you will die.”

“In the next 24 hours you must get an AA Sponsor and do whatever they tell you to do!” Megan continued. “You must start going to AA meetings every day no matter how you feel. This is the only hope left for you. Otherwise, Odell will be gone, your kitties will be gone and so will your life. I am sorry but that is the way it is and there is nothing else I can tell you.”

Linda had worked with Megan for some time and thought of her as a friend, as Megan stood up to leave Linda in tears went to hug her. But Megan stopped Linda and told her.

“Linda, I am sorry, but I can’t let you do that. I can’t let you be that close anymore. I don’t want to be hurt.” And she left.

After the meeting Linda and I talked and she asked me to give her six months before I left her, to prove that she could recover. I agreed.

Linda did go out and got a sponsor that day and started going to meetings every day.

I think I need to say a few words here about Alcoholics Anonymous. While we were going through this everyone I talked to, doctors, therapists, nurses, counselors and recovering addicts all told us the same thing. As far as treatment programs, AA is the only one that works. There are other programs out there, but they do not work and are a waste of money.

When Linda went to in-patient drug treatment, they used the Alcoholics Anonymous 12-step program.

Almost from the first time Linda went out, back in 2002, we started going to AA meetings. During Linda’s struggle, she also went to CA (Cocaine Anonymous), DA (Dual Diagnoses Anonymous), and NA (Narcotics Anonymous) meetings. She even went to Friends of Bill meetings on board ship when we took our cruise. These are AA meetings but are listed as Friends of Bill in the schedule so people do not feel embarrassed about going to them. Linda went to AA meetings because there are more of them, and while she had a problem with drugs, she also had a problem with alcohol. Normally, when she introduced herself she would say, “Hi, my name is Linda, and I am an alcoholic and a drug addict.”

Frankly, I am very impressed with the AA program and agree with everyone that it is the only program for the addict that seems to offer any hope. I have no idea how many AA meetings I have been to holding Linda’s hand and helping her face her demons.

Unfortunately, at every meeting I went to, they opened by telling me that the chances of my wife recovering were less than average.  One of the things read at the beginning of every AA meeting is something called “How It Works” This is just a part of that:

            “Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path.  Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves.  There are such unfortunates. They are not at fault; they seem to have been born that way.  They are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty.  Their chances are less than average.  There are those, too, who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest.”  -  From the “Big Book” page 58 Copyright© 2001 by Alcoholics Anonymous.

 The problem should be apparent to anyone who has read this. Linda was almost incapable of being honest with herself and with me. I would not like to try and count the number of times Linda told me that she never wanted to do drugs again, or that she would never do them again. Whenever she said that, I would get scared, because I knew she was letting her guard down. When she would say things like that, I would have to point out that that was not what the first step was all about.

In AA, the first step to recovery is “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – That our lives had become unmanageable.”

When you think you are in control of alcohol (or drugs) you are no longer following the steps.

It is awful to have to tell your wife that you can tell when she is lying because her lips are moving. But to Linda lying came as naturally as breathing, and I just hoped that somehow she would find the help she needed.

The next week Linda’s sister from San Francisco came to visit and Linda spent her time showing the sights, visiting Mt. St. Helens and Multnomah Falls.

Linda’s sister is a foster parent who takes care of babies, most of them are from mothers who used drugs. While she visited, she had one of them with her. This tore Linda and myself up inside, as it was now very clear that we would never have children of our own. In fact, after Linda returned from her time in the psych ward I let her know that we would no longer be having unprotected sex, that it would not be fair to a child to be born a crack baby.

We had been searching for a job for Linda for weeks, and she finally got it, working for a local clinic’s cardiology department. I think this job was a little overwhelming for Linda as the workload was so great. This clinic had a bad habit of being understaffed. But Linda worked hard, for the first three weeks.

Then, unfortunately, Linda developed MRSA (Methacyin resistant Staphylococcus aureus), a terrible infection. Linda was off of work for a month, in the hospital for four or five days at that time. When she did get back to work within two days, they laid her off.

I went to her office to pick her up after they laid her off. She was still in tears, it was a terrible blow to her. She had worked so hard and frankly, they never gave her a chance.

Linda was true to her word. She started going to an AA meeting every morning at 6:30am. She worked with her sponsor. In fact, she changed sponsors several times trying to find one that was the best for her. She gave it the old college try.

Linda worked very hard in AA. But I noticed that as time went on, AA became another one of her lies. Linda would get ready for each meeting taking her time to do her makeup and selecting what she was going to wear. She volunteered to drive people to the meeting from a nearby halfway house, and once a week she led a meeting. All of this would be wonderful. But I could tell that Linda was doing it because she wanted the attention. She liked showing off. Most of the people at the meetings were poor, many homeless, and Linda loved to drive them around in her Prius. And she loved that everyone thought she was succeeding.

Next: Chapter 14 – Stress Can Kill You

Previous: Chapter 12 – Here We Go Again

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