Out of Numbness: A Story of Addiction and Recovery

By C. A. Wyatt

Author C. A. Wyatt was introduced to drugs and alcohol in his youth, seeking the acceptance of others while growing up in the predominant culture of sex, drugs, and rock and roll in the seventies.

In Out of Numbness, Wyatt shares his life history and experiences from his days of active addiction through his search for a spiritual solution in recovery. As a young man, he began a promising career as an aerospace engineer in 1976, but his self-destructive addiction prompted endless nights of clubbing and drug use. When his father passed away in the early eighties, Wyatt was haunted by the death; when his mentally ill mother moved in with him, he was unable to cope. He found himself constantly brokenhearted by unstable romantic relationships begun with women he met in bars. Disillusioned with nightlife, Wyatt finally set out on the road to rehabilitation in 1985, when he was introduced to a new way of life. Although he experienced drama and setbacks in the chaos of life, the spiritual enlightenment of recovery has served as his guiding force ever since.

This memoir, seeking to offer understanding and hope for those struggling with addiction, shares one mans lifelong experiences on the path to recovery.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Nov 5, 2015
• ISBN: 9781480823822

C. A. Wyatt

C. A. Wyatt holds a BS in electrical engineering from the New Jersey Institute of Technology and a masters degree in engineering management from the University of Central Florida. He worked for more than thirty-two years as an aerospace engineer at NASAs Kennedy Space Center before retiring in late 2008. He is the author of several short stories as well as a work of nonfiction, Memories from the Land of the Intolerant Tyrant, on the Cuban Revolution and life in Cuba.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

DÉJÀ VU WITH A WILD PAST

IT was the cool midmorning of December 29, 2009, and I’d planned an uneventful day of reading, writing, watching TV, and toying with my computer. I had just retired as an engineer.

Then the phone rang. So much for an uneventful day.

It was Jay Doe, one of my old coworkers. We had known each other since 1976. He had gone on to have a family, while I’d continued partying until 1985, when I finally got help in a drug rehab facility where I was introduced to recovery. I’d struggled for years with my abuse of alcohol and other mind-altering substances, but I’d managed to string together more than twelve clean years by the time Jay called. After exchanging holiday greetings and inquiries about what was happening in our lives, he asked me if I could put up his cousin 420, the party animal of his family, for a couple of days.

His cousin had recently served several years in prison for conspiracy to import cocaine. Who knows—had I picked up another drink or drug, I might have wound up in the cell next to him. He had been a steady drinking buddy of mine back in the late seventies and early eighties, during my first few years on the Space Coast, when our lives seemed to be a cross between Saturday Night Fever and a Cheech and Chong movie. We socialized with the other free spirits at the nightclubs we frequented—looking for love in all the wrong places, as Johhny Lee sang in his song from 1980. In those days, 420 and I obsessively worshipped Bacchus and dated Lady Cannabis, and our nostrils offered amnesty to a powdery, mind-altering South American immigrant. The day after such fests, we would wake up with hangovers and repeat the insanity all over again.

Curious and anxious to see my old buddy, and being the unassertive and eager-to-please pushover that I was at that moment, I said yes. Here I was, a guy twelve years clean, violating one of those sacrosanct rules you hear in recovery rooms about staying away from old playmates, playgrounds, and playthings that risk bringing the drama and chaos of addiction back into your life. I wondered if after so many years I still had issues with codependency and seeking the acceptance of others. Those probably would have been good issues to discuss with a sponsor, except at the time I was between sponsors. I probably should have called another addict in recovery and consulted him on the matter. He probably would have said no to 420 coming over.

Jay introduced me to 420 in 1976, at a local drinking establishment. We were eager, work-hard/drink-hard types in our early twenties. Jay’s cousin was a contractor technician, and I was an engineer. During the day, I was a serious engineer-scientist, much like Spock in the original Star Trek series, but after hours I usually got together with 420 and became a party animal. Together we went on a near-daily quest for drunken fun, to the point that some folks thought we were part of the furniture at the bars we frequented.

The young 420 I met in late 1976 was not one of those crazy, dark characters out of a movie like Reefer Madness, Scarface, or Less Than Zero. He was a likeable, charming person, more like a cross between Travolta in Saturday Night Fever and pothead comedians Cheech and Chong. Most of the folks I met during my addiction were like 420.

Back then, during our exuberant youth, 420 and I were the perfect personification of the bumper sticker on my first car that said, Protect the wildlife. Party every day! After being laid off and finding a sixty-pound bale of pot near his home on the beach, and having good drug connections, 420 eventually became a drug dealer. He pursued this career for decades, with big dreams of making money and partying. So much for his career as a technician.

He occasionally supplied me with small amounts of pot to supplement my drinking, and eventually, by late 1981, I moved on to what became my drug of choice—cocaine. Since I was a teenager, I had never thought of a drug dealer as being much different from somebody selling alcohol—both commodities were drugs, except one was legal and the other was not. Anything that gets an addict high is a drug. Sometimes I joke that I was a drug dealer at age fourteen, as my first steady job was in a liquor store, where I’d lied about my age. Today, in recovery, I do not use alcohol or any other mind-altering substances.

When 420 and I became roommates in 1980, he paid me his rent in drugs. I thought I was in heaven, having a drug dealer as my roommate. But looking back, I now realize that it was not a good idea for an addict to room with another active drug user, especially with a dealer who had stuff nearly round the clock.

After hanging up with Jay, I was having second thoughts about letting my old drinking buddy in my house for a couple of days while he visited his kin and friends in the area. I’d always thought of 420 as a close and loyal friend. In the old days, if somebody had messed with him, I would have kicked the son of a gun’s butt. In those carefree years, 420 and I had shared dreams of dating beautiful women, driving nice cars, and attending wild parties. We ran up lots of mileage partying together, and some of that mileage was in his Corvette, a vehicle he eventually sold to pay off his drug debts. In fact, 420 had had a decent job, a luxurious car, a cushy home, and a nice girlfriend, but he lost them all because of his addiction. It’s a story you hear all the time in recovery rooms.

In chapter 1 of the Basic Text of Narcotics Anonymous, we are told, An addict is a man or a woman whose life is controlled by drugs. We are people in the grip of a continuing and progressive illness whose ends are always the same: jails, institutions and death. However, in recovery, an addict can change that endgame and live a new way of life as a productive and legitimate member of society.

It is generally recommended that folks in recovery avoid people, places, and things related to their lives during addiction. But I told myself that because it was the holidays and I had twelve years of recovery, a couple of days hanging out with 420 would not be a problem. I also thought I could talk 420 into going to an NA meeting with me and save him from his addiction. This type of rationalization is typical of folks in early recovery; they think they can rescue old friends from their addictions. Today, I have to remind myself that while addicts are not responsible for their disease, they are responsible for opening their own minds to recovery.

Fifteen minutes after my phone call, 420’s pickup truck rolled into my driveway—a slight downgrade from that Corvette he’d had to sell to pay off his drug debts. He stepped out of the cab, tall and slim, and gave me a friendly smile. In his dark sunglasses, 420 looked like a Hollywood star, his Mediterranean features reminding me of the same young guy I had met in the late seventies, the one who resembled Steven Bauer in the PBS sitcom Que Pasa USA. He had aged only slightly, having gained just a few gray hairs and a slight beer belly over the last thirty-plus years. By comparison, thanks to a leisurely lifestyle, a big mouth, diabetes, and sleep apnea, I had gained more than one hundred pounds since 420 and I first met in late 1976. I was no longer the slim young guy who had once been offered a job as a male stripper. Now I was old, fat, and ugly, and I accepted it.

He walked over to me and gave me a warm hug, the kind you give a longtime friend who’s like a brother to you.

Hi, Wyatt! Long time no see! His voice was smooth and lively.

Hi, 420! It’s been a few years since the last time we saw each other—back when Bill Clinton was president and everybody seemed to be doing the Macarena.

Yeah, man. Those were the days, 420 said with a nostalgic sigh. I just served several years in prison for a little scheme I had to bring in small amounts of coke from abroad. Heck, I didn’t even get in an ounce! I got found out from an informer and was extradited back here.

You and your big dreams of making money from your addictions. You should have known that it was eventually going to get you in trouble. Have you ever thought of quitting and joining a twelve-step program?

No, but I heard from Jay that you have been in one for umpteen years! Maybe he thought that by staying with you for a couple days, I would join one. Are you in Alcoholics Anonymous?

I’m in a similar program. Narcotics Anonymous. It’s a fellowship for people for whom drugs have become a major problem. We are recovering addicts who meet regularly to help one another stay clean. Do you think you might want to go to a meeting with me?

Not today, Wyatt. I just want to crash here while I visit some of my family and friends. I guess Jay thought that a guy like me, who likes to party, would have friction with his wife. Heck, Jay’s happily married and has a kid now!

Well, most men do that before they are fifty. How about you, 420?

I’ve got a live-in girlfriend. She’s out of state for a few days, visiting her parents, and I figured that I would come to my old stomping grounds and visit some relatives and friends. How about you?

Still single—no girlfriend. Dated a few women over the last thirty years, but things didn’t work out. They were all addicts too.

How about your mother?

She passed away in 2002. She was eighty-four. I was her only child, and my one big regret is that she died without me siring any grandchildren for her. How about your parents and brother?

My parents are doing fine. My brother has diabetes now; he’s gained quite a bit of weight.

I’ve got diabetes and weight problems too. I take insulin and blood-pressure medication on a daily basis.

As we talked, it dawned on me that 420 and I were not spring chickens anymore. Nevertheless, for a couple of days we enjoyed ourselves, dining in local restaurants and visiting family and old friends, including John, one of our mutual friends, whom I had not seen for about thirty years. He looked like 420’s blond twin—a quiet, slim, smiling fellow about six feet tall. John no longer looked like a young, rocking Gregg Allman, as he had back in the late seventies. Now he had short hair and a fulltime job, and he took care of his elderly father. He was divorced with grown children and a steady girlfriend. John had cut down his partying to an occasional beer. 420 also checked in on a couple of other friends who no longer practiced the partying rituals of our youth. Time had slowed down most of the old crowd over the last twenty-plus years.

After a couple of somewhat tense days, during which 420 rejected my offers to take him to an NA meeting, I heaved a sigh of relief as I watched him drive off on the midafternoon of New Year’s Eve 2009, headed to a party at a family member’s home in South Florida. Although he was in his midfifties, 420 still acted like the adventurous twenty-year-old that I had met more than three decades earlier. It had been a couple of somewhat stressful days for me while he stayed in my house, smoking his prebreakfast joint in my backyard or mixing himself an occasional drink from the impromptu bar in the bed of his truck. He never had any shakes or puked during those two days at my house. Was 420 an addict? To me, he seemed to display the obsessive and compulsive behavior typical of an addict. But that’s a question every addict has to answer on his own. You cannot rescue an addict from his addiction. He has to rescue himself by taking that first step of honestly accepting the disease of addiction and developing the willingness and open-mindedness required to live a recovery program.

After 420 left, my life returned to a quiet routine of attending recovery meetings, socializing on the Internet, puffing cigars, playing chess, going to Sunday Mass, and working on write-ups for a local writer’s club. When 420 called me a month later, I asked him again if he wanted to go to an NA meeting the next time he visited. After all, his addiction had led to bad relationships, career instability, and a few years in jail. But 420 replied that he would rather die than stop partying, and he hung up shortly thereafter. I never heard from him again.

I could see that 420 was still a rebellious addict living an unmanageable life, repeating the same insane mistakes over and over again. Many years earlier, I’d known another rebellious young man who said that he would rather die than stop partying; now that not-so-young man considered his recovery to be as important as his next breath of air. That other rebellious young man was I. Here’s my story.

CHAPTER 2

FIRST DRUNK

Remember that we deal with alcohol—cunning, baffling, powerful!

—Alcoholics Anonymous

SINCE my early teens—in fact, since almost as far back as I can remember—I’ve wanted to drink and party. Even then I cherished the taste, smell, and effect of alcohol. It was as if those early memories of drinking and partying were imprinted on my subconscious. I’m seventeen years clean at the time of this writing, and still, once or twice a year for a few seconds, I nostalgically recall the holiday parties of my childhood. Food, music, dancing, laughter, and—most important of all—the elixir of alcohol were there. Perhaps my recollections of these family gatherings, from the time I was about age three, made my young mind associate that magic poison called alcohol with all that fun.

During those family gatherings in the early sixties, my father exposed me to baby sips of beer and wine. I used to cherish those moments as if I was taking Holy Communion. One day, dad was drinking; he smiled at me and told me that alcohol cheers a man’s spirits and helps hair grow on your chest. Umpteen years after he told me this, I was introduced to a twelve-step program and taught about addiction, recovery and false beliefs by addicts. Back then, I contented myself with the small amounts of alcohol given to me by dad, but I remember thinking that when I grow up I want to drink lots of alcohol. And my best and steadiest drinking buddy was my beloved father George until the time of his death in 1983. And my dear mother Martha was our greatest enabler.

When I romance those fleeting moments of nostalgia, I always bring myself back to the present by remembering the pain and misery caused by my many years of abusing alcohol and other mind-altering substances; reminding myself how well I am doing today, living a clean life with a spiritual program; and realizing that it’s time to call someone else in recovery or perhaps go to a twelve-step meeting. I only have to recall that my road to obsessive and compulsive addictive behavior started after my first drink, which unleashed my disease of addiction for umpteen years afterward. Alcohol would be the first and last drug I ever used.

It was in my native Cuba, back in the midsixties, when I first got drunk. I call alcohol my original drug of choice. What is a drug? Some would define a drug as any chemical you take that affects the way your body works. Under that definition, mind-altering substances like alcohol, cannabis, and cocaine would be drugs, as would mild stimulants like caffeine and nicotine, and even over-the-counter pain relievers like aspirin. However, on the second page of chapter 1 (Who Is an Addict?) in the Basic Text of Narcotics Anonymous, we are told the fact was that we could not use any mind-altering or mood-changing substance, including marihuana and alcohol, successfully. Drugs ceased to make us feel good. Thus, when we speak of drugs in NA, we are talking about mind-altering substances like alcohol, cannabis, and cocaine—and we are not referring to caffeine, nicotine, or aspirin. Believe me, I’ve used all six substances listed in the previous sentence, and during active addiction, I used alcohol, cannabis, and cocaine to get a bell-ringing, mind-altering buzz—not caffeine, nicotine, or aspirin! Many newcomers to NA have the mistaken belief that only hard drugs like cocaine and heroin are dangerous. Because of this misconception, some addicts relapse on alcohol and cannabis, which are often referred to as gateway drugs.

Back to my first drunk. It was on a cool, sunny day in late December 1965, in my hometown in Cuba. I was thirteen years old then, and during the holidays, my family exposed me to baby sips of either beer or wine. From the get-go I liked the smell, taste, and euphoric effect alcohol had on me, and I obsessively looked forward to my next drink, almost the way a little kid with a sweet tooth wants more candy. Little did I know then that my obsessive thinking about and compulsive yearning for another drink was the start of my career as an addict—a career that would lead, nearly twenty years later, to my introduction to recovery through a twenty-eight-day rehabilitation program.

For the past few months I had been hanging out with an older bunch of teenagers, guys aged thirteen to seventeen. Most of us had met through either school or church, and we were often playmates in a friendly game of stickball or even an occasional game of chess. But on that cool, sunny day in late 1965, we did not play stickball or chess. The oldest boy in our group—let’s call him Gulliver—had been drafted into Castro’s army. A benefit of fighting for your local dictator was that you could buy all the food and alcohol you wanted without the limits imposed by the ration cards issued to the rest of us commoners. This privilege was extended to members of the Communist Party and visiting foreigners.

Did I say that my friend Gulliver and his family could buy all the food and hard liquor they wanted without the limitation of a ration card? Gulliver’s parents threw their son the greatest send-off party in the town’s history, with all the booze you could drink. And the guest list included about a dozen of Gulliver’s teenage friends, several of whom were very curious about alcohol at the time. That obsessive curiosity turned out to be a hard lesson for me.

As soon as I had that first drink, I was overcome by the compulsion to have one more. The aroma, taste, and effect of hard liquor attracted me like an irresistibly beautiful woman. And speaking of beautiful women, early on during the party I had a dance with the most beautiful girl there, but I hardly paid her any attention after I started drinking. Lady Alcohol absorbed all my attention after my first glass. This behavioral pattern was to repeat itself during my many years of active drinking, when I would lose any interest in a committed relationship after I started bingeing—unless the woman was as bad a drunk as I was. To this day I call that cunning seductress, Lady Alcohol, my first girlfriend, with whom I stayed in a continuous relationship until I first sobered up nearly two decades later. Alcohol would be my drug of choice for sixteen years, until I turned twenty-nine.

One of the guys in the group rallied three of us to join him in a drinking contest: the last man standing would win bragging rights. The humblest guy in the bunch was smart enough to withdraw from the game after about three shots, but three of us kept it up for what seemed like a long time. The