Finding Ultra (13 page)

I nodded. And Garrett assented. Not because he thought it was a good plan. It wasn't. But only because he understood one crucial fact:
You can't help someone who doesn't want help
.

So I returned for another spin around the A.A. merry-go-round. Primarily because I was scared to death of rehab. But I was a ticking time bomb. And sure enough, a couple weeks later I once again fell off the wagon.

I called up Garrett from my office to let him know my plan had predictably failed.

“I can have a bed ready for you at Springbrook tomorrow,” he replied. Springbrook Northwest was his treatment center of choice. Not the sun-soaked holiday spa of my rehab dreams, but a hard-line
recovery program deep in the farmlands of rural northern Oregon. The immediacy of it all was terrifying. But a deal's a deal. And I knew if I didn't take instant action, my willingness would vanish. So I marched to Skip Miller's office to take the news to him directly. “I need to take some personal time.”

I didn't have to say anything more. He knew exactly what I meant.

“Do what you need to do. Take as much time as you need. And we'll still be here for you when you're ready to come back.” It was unbelievable support from a man who didn't suffer fools lightly, and whose patience I'd tested to the limit.

Armed with Skip's hall pass, I walked outside 2121 Avenue of the Stars to meet the bright sun wash and headed straight to the liquor store. I had one night of solitary drinking left, and I wasn't about to squander it. Because despite all the misery, I still didn't want to let this life go.

Sloshing about my apartment in the wee hours of the night, I was half-committed to backing out on my deal with Garrett when that damn photograph caught my eye. The 1929 University of Michigan swim team photo of my grandfather given to me by my mother, recklessly lying upside down on the floor of my barren living room. It had sat there for months with nary a glance. But suddenly it was speaking to me, calling sharply through the glaze of my inebriation. Picking it up, I carefully rehung it on the naked wall above. And just stared. The sepia-toned maize and blue glory of my doppelgänger Richard Spindle peered back and spoke to me from the beyond:
Why are you doing this to yourself? This is not who you are, Rich
. The shame was unbearable.

Located about twenty-five miles southwest of Portland, Springbrook Northwest is an addiction treatment center (acquired by
Hazelden in 2002) tucked in the pastoral woody farmland of the Willamette Valley. Comprising several low-slung post-and-beam dormitories, meeting halls, offices, and a communal cafeteria, the campus is reminiscent of a small boarding school set against a backdrop of rolling green fields. A thick forest surrounds its perimeter like a protective moat.

But that dark night of my sodden arrival I saw nothing, my vision glazed and my balance compromised as I stumbled out of the van and apprehensively found my way up the steps to the main hall entrance, pushing through the double doors to the impossibly bright fluorescent-lit intake desk within.

“Rich Roll here. Checking in for duty,” I cracked wise to the unamused nurse.

She averted her glance and wasted no time zipping open my duffel bag and rifling through my belongings.

“Hey, that's my stuff!” I slurred smugly, a good twelve beers under my belt for the day's travels. But without offering a response, she continued to toss my clothes about the countertop, rummaging for drugs in every pocket and crevice, uncapping the lids of my various toiletries, scavenging even the inner lining of my bag. Addicts can't be trusted. And attempts to smuggle contraband are routine.

Luggage frisk complete, the nurse pointed me to a small bedroom just behind the desk: hospital drab meets boot camp chic. Shutting the door behind me, I hit the plastic pillow fully dressed and promptly blacked out.

The next morning, I awoke in a complete fog. Rubbing my eyes and breathing in deep, I raised my aching bones out of the cheap, damp bedsheets and stood at the window. The drizzly gloom of the Oregon skies stirred a foreboding that began to rhythmically pound the temples of my throbbing head. And then I remembered. The day was June 7, 1998.
Holy shit. I'm in rehab
.

Hence began the first day of a self-imposed incarceration shared
with inmates from all walks of life—people who would otherwise never in a million years comingle. Doctors, poets, professors, priests, students, pilots, drug dealers, bartenders, soccer moms, salesmen, and bankers. Many with wreckage more heartbreaking than you can imagine.

My problems seemed small in comparison.
I'm not like them
, I repeatedly told myself.

But the walls of separation I built would soon come down. One of my first assignments—
Step 1
, as it's called—was to prepare a detailed written account of my top ten most catastrophic drunken escapades. Then I was compelled to read the twenty-page overview aloud before the entire Springbrook regimen of patients and staff.

Shortly thereafter, I was summoned to the office of Springbrook's executive director; out of respect for anonymity, let's call him Paul. Paul was a recovering addict who years before had traded in a promising magazine publishing career in favor of Colombian white. But he'd come out the other side intact. And along the way, Paul had heard every story, fielded every excuse, and didn't suffer any bullshit.

“You remind me a lot of Jay Maloney.”

Once a Hollywood talent agent and the youngest of the infamous “Young Turks” of CAA, Tinseltown's most successful agency, the charismatic Maloney had represented superstars like Martin Scorsese, Leonardo Di Caprio, and Dustin Hoffman before succumbing to the free fall of drug addiction. And despite several rehab sorties, including a stint at Springbrook a year or two prior, Jay had been unable to achieve lasting sobriety. Fifteen months after this conversation, he would hang himself in the shower. Dead at thirty-five.

“We think you should consider a protracted stay. You're young. But your alcoholism has progressed to that of a sixty-five-year-old lifelong chronic drinker. And unless you make this your absolute top priority, you're going to end up just like Jay.”

At the time, my plan was to spin-dry the mind for a short spell. Three weeks tops. I was already suffering acute anxiety from the confiscation of my cell phone. And haunted by the idea that back home, the world was passing me by. But Paul's words helped me realize that my top priority, much like Jay's, was my career—not sobriety. And that unless I made this final stand, there would be no career. No, if I didn't do this now, and do it right, I had no future.

And so I agreed.
I became willing
, ultimately staying one hundred days.

“You only have to change one thing, Rich. Everything.”

Daunting words from Stan,
^*
the Springbrook counselor assigned to lord over my rigid and admittedly pathetic butt. Once a successful trial lawyer, Stan's love of the needle had left him disbarred and homeless before he found sobriety and reinvented himself as a drug and alcohol counselor.
Let's get to work
.

Every morning, the alarm went off promptly at 6:30, reveille for the first of several group and private counseling sessions of the day. Some days it was painful. Other days, hilarious. And often confrontational, like the time I got busted sneaking out to give Jen—a young college professor with a nasty heroin habit who decided to head back to New York City “AMA,” or against medical advice—a lift to the airport. That move almost got me tossed out.

Then there was the dreaded family weekend. Two days of group-therapy torture with my parents and sister in which I was pounded with a litany of my failures. They all ganged up to provide an exhaustive recounting of how their cherished son/brother had humiliated them, abused their trust, and otherwise disappointed them.

It was tough, to say the least. But with Paul's words ringing in my mind, I decided that if I was going to be here, I would let go of my misapprehensions and simply do as I was told.
Willingness
. And in time, I began to open up, eventually coming to understand that I was absolutely powerless not just when it came to alcohol, but with respect to most things in life. And my persistent belief that I could find a way to control my drinking had left my world not just completely unmanageable, but in ruins.

But most important, I learned that it wasn't my fault. I had a disease. And like a diabetic who needs insulin, I, too, needed a treatment protocol. It's just that the treatment for alcoholism doesn't come in the form of medication.
The solution is spiritual
.

I'd never been a religious person, let alone spiritual. In fact, I can't say I even knew what that word meant. As a youth, I briefly attended Presbyterian Sunday school, but it never stuck. Yet I wasn't an atheist either. The fact that I was still alive was potent testimony that something beyond my awareness just might be looking out for me. But I never found answers, let alone solace, in church. No, religion was not for me, I'd long ago decided. And from that point forward, the only time you'd find me seated at the pew was for a wedding or the occasional Christmas Eve service with my parents.

But lasting recovery, I was coming to understand, is purely spiritual, premised on the conviction that only a power greater than yourself can restore you to sanity.

“Let's face it, Rich. Your best thinking has you institutionalized. The time has come to set aside your self-will. Because that barometer is broken. If you look at it objectively, it's an attribute that has essentially destroyed your life. And you simply cannot solve this problem with your mind. So let it go, already.”

I couldn't fathom it at first. Without self-will, who was I?
Doesn't that mean giving up?
But Stan seemed to know what he was
talking about. He'd helped hundreds before me get sober. Who was I to challenge his methods? So I agreed.

My immediate reaction? Relief. A huge burden lifted. A realization that by making a simple choice, I no longer had to be solely responsible for solving all my problems. That's not to say that I abdicated all control over my life. Just that I became willing to do what had always been so difficult for me:
not just ask for help, but be willing to receive it
. And as payback, I began helping others—because it turned out that a cornerstone of recovery was
service
.

It's said that alcoholism is a disease of perception.
Change your perception, change your reality
. As the Springbrook weeks blurred into months, I began to replace my distorted perspective with a finely ground lens of objective clarity. The first step was compiling a written account of all my resentments, fears, and harms to others in an attempt to uncover my “character defects.” The project took weeks to complete, ultimately totaling more than one hundred pages. For example, I resented my father for his success and for placing expectations on me that I felt I could never quite meet. And I resented myself for never being quite enough in his eyes. But the inventory helped me to understand that my emotions were primarily fabricated; misdirected and ill-placed. Behind them lay a deep insecurity—a desperate need for approval rooted in poor self-esteem.

And that all these confusing feelings boiled down to one singular emotion.
Fear
. Fear of people. Fear of situations and institutions. Fear of economic insecurity, the unknown, and events that hadn't yet and possibly never would transpire. All told, fear of everything.

And there's only one cure for fear. Faith.

Bridging that gap started with another irksome assignment in which I was compelled to share—
out loud!
—the entirety of my encyclopedia-sized moral, or should I say
immoral
, inventory. It's one thing to concede the nature of your wrongdoing to yourself. On some level we
all
do that. But expose every dark corner of your soul to a stranger?

“What on earth does this preposterous activity have to do with quitting drinking?” I asked Stan.

“If you don't haul the garbage out to the curb, your house is gonna stink like holy hell. And that rotten stench always leads back to using.”

And so for the next five hours I recounted to a friendly neighborhood priest (hardly my person of choice) the resentments I held against essentially every person I'd ever met, everyone from my mother to the mailman. But even as I recalled some of the most embarrassing and horrific episodes of my life, he never once flinched. And when it was over—my depleted body and exposed soul having been turned inside out—he left me with just one question.

“Are you ready to let all of this go?”

“Yes.”

“Good. For the remainder of the day, I want you to refrain from speaking to anyone. Find a quiet place. Reflect on the work we've done today. And when you're ready, ask that these character defects be removed.”

I knew just the place to spend a quiet day. Hopping in my car, I headed west to Cannon Beach, a small weekend getaway of a village nestled along Oregon's rugged and barren Pacific Coast. No radio, no music. Just me and my thoughts. When I arrived in this salt-stained postage-stamp hamlet, I parked along the blustery shore and made my way down to the beach. With the sun and tide low, the beach was expansive, the orange glow of dusk casting long shadows across the glassy sheen of the flat wet sands.