A Legend in His Own Mind

By John McDermott

A LEGEND IN HIS OWN MIND IS A STORY OF A HIGH SCHOOL STAR BASKETBALL PLAYERS TRIALS AND TRIBUTES THROUGH A LIFE OF FIRST ALCOHOL ADICTION AND THEN LATTER IN HIS LIFE, OXYCODONE. AT THE END HE BEATS THEM BOTH AND GOES ON TO HELP ALLOT OF ADDICTS TO SEE THE LIGHT THREW HIS WRITING.

IT'S A MUST READ FOR ANYONE WHO IS SUFFERRING FROM ADDICTION. JOHN HAS JUST PUBLISHED HIS SECOND BOOK DREAM SEASON. ANOTHER WINNER.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 14, 2012
• ISBN: 9781469166513

Book preview

Copyright © 2012 by John McDermott.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2012902604

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4691-6650-6

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4691-6649-0

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4691-6651-3

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

110318

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Forward

Chapter 1  Hooked on Oxy

Chapter 2  The Summer of ’69

Chapter 3  Brookdale, 1974–1976

Chapter 4  The Dark Side

Chapter 5  Barefoot and Pregnant

Chapter 6  Surrender 1

Chapter 7  Love Hurts, 1987–1989

Chapter 8  Lyme Disease

Chapter 9  Vacations

Chapter 10  Heart Disease

Chapter 11  Vertigo

Chapter 12  Addiction

Chapter 13  Recovery

Chapter 14  The End, Amen

Acknowledgements

Without these special people helping me my book would not have happened. Ellie Sturbo, Mel Puma, Valerie McDermott, Lori and Rod Kirsbbaum, Tom McDermott, Dr. Andrew Gailub, Dr. Angello Scott I, Dr. Albano, William Kirgan, Catherine McDermott, Joe Perzell, Dave Stout, Dr. Vlahous and Dr. Belushio, The Here to Help Team and the hospitals that treated me, Bayshore, Riverview, Jersey Shore and Lenox Hill and of course all the nurses that aided in getting me back to help. To the crew at Exlibris Laura, Monique, Greg and Sam.

Forward

It is a priviledge to be asked to comment on John McDermott’s initial effort as an author. In A Legend in His Own Mind John introduces us to a litany of family members, friends, treatment providers and a host of others in a colorful, honest and no-holds-barred manner.

In a self-effacing way John takes us from his youth where he develops and early affinity for alcohol, to his Dream Lesson in his senior year of high school where he established a scoring record that has lasted 38 years; and, finally, to his life-long battle with drugs and alcohol.

Happily as he wrote this book John was in the winning end of this battle and is firmly ensconced in recovery from both drugs and alcohol. Ironically, John’s scoring record is in the process of being broken as the book is released. Fortunately, through John’s acceptance of God and the 12 steps of AA, he can gracefully accept his record tumbling. He has established for himself a far more important standard of a sober life.

This book is written for the non-addict so that they can appreciate the high, and excruciating lows of addiction. This book is also for the addict so that they too might be successful in their battle against addiction one day at a time.

Dr. Joseph F. Perzel, Jr.

Licensed Clinical Psychologist

2.16.12

Chapter 1

Hooked on Oxy

My work began when my doctor told me to write about my experiences with the synthetic wonder drug that is heroin. It makes you feel good and fall in love with it, then it will kill you, unless of course you’re me, John McDermott. After endless attempts to stop, I wind up in a hospital detox for only a couple of days. Then eleven days later, on the morning of May 5, 2010, I found my best friend, John McGowan, dead. Now I must deal with the symptoms of withdrawal along with this devastating tragedy.

The good Dr. A pointed out that relapse is so high because most users cannot handle the torturous symptoms and just want relief.

So let’s go back four years ago when I was fifty years old and needed a knee operation. Sounds familiar? It hurt, and the doctor wrote me a script for Oxycontin, and my nightmarish journey began. Right from the beginning, the drug made me feel great. But after the three months were up, he gave me my last dose to wean me off it. So I did what any good drug addict does and found myself another doctor, who gave me only thirty percocets with no refills, which lasted me only a week. Next, I was off to the EMO for another script. Pretty soon, I was six months in, and I took my pain to the streets. I found a dealer and started buying the blues, which is a thirty-milligram pill of Roxycet, which will become my lover for the next two years. Did I tell you by now I’ve begun to crush and snort? That’s right, it’s a new me—a blue, a crusher, a straw staying home alone. I didn’t believe I need to be around people, thus started my isolation, which is a big sign you’re addicted, which I didn’t believe I am yet. When you snort so much oxy, your nasal passages clog and you can only breathe out of your mouth, it would make you use steam or pour warm water down your nostril. Remember, I just needed one clear nostril for five minutes to get my next high. That’s why addicts shoot up, and I understand it’s also for a better high!

Other complications started to occur. The skin on my scalp was starting to harden, and I was always scratching away the scabs. Then there’s the urination hesitation, loss of appetite, and weight loss. So this is where I was. The last symptom that I really couldn’t deal with was waking up in the middle of the night to snort some more. Now it’s around the clock. Luckily, I’ve been educated in this field, which shows you how much respect the BLUES have for schooling. It’s brought doctors and lawyers to their graves. No shit! It kills. So I was stuck. I tried cold turkey, not successful; weaning, not successful. I was trapped and can’t go backward. I was desperate and broke, but not ready to die. I finally got a doctor’s appointment, and he put me on methadone.

For the first couple of days, I was fine; but as usual, after that, I started double-dosing and cancelling my doctor’s appointment. I knew my urine will fail because I was back on oxy. I was scared because oxy wakes me from a dead sleep to go to her for a 4:00 a.m. snort. For two weeks, I went around the clock doing oxy.

On Saturday, April 24, I made the call to Bayshore Hospital in Holmdel, and they told me to come the following night to check in to their three-day detox. My dear friend Mel stayed with me that night so I wouldn’t be alone. Then on Sunday night, April 25, my son and I, who had joined a men’s basketball league, were in the championship game at 6:00 p.m. The plan was to go to the game and then straight to the hospital after. You can’t make this stuff up, but I coached with every ounce of strength, knowing the hell of withdrawal was just about to start. Tommy put the team on his back and scored 41 points, leading us to the championship. Right after the game, Tommy and his girlfriend, Lindsey, drove me the two miles to the hospital, and that was the best decision I have ever made.

Hell’s Kitchen

In the summer of 1990, my brothers, sisters, and I, whom you will hear about in a little while, would go to the Hazlet swim club and hang out under the same tree every day. At this time, I took up reading and had just finished The Count of Monte Cristo, the best book ever. Then my aunt Tese, who grew up in Hell’s Kitchen with my dad, gave me a book about the westies and how they all lived very close by Ninth and Fifty-first streets. Well, the boss had moved to Hazlet, and I remember the name because I used to read their water meter. One day while at the swim club, I was reading the westies book and got to the part where they’re cutting up body parts. At that moment, I turned around and saw this family making a lot of noise, when I realized it’s him, the westie boss. Because my three kids were with me and everyone else went home, I hid the book, went home, and finished reading it. My mom and dad used to tell about how they never had to lock their door because of the Irish neighborhood; I now understood.

My dad was born on November 12, 1929, in Hell’s Kitchen, New York City, in an Irish American community on the west side of Manhattan, the home of mostly working-class Irish families. My father’s parents were both Irish immigrants, Cornelius McDermott and Catherine Feely. My mom, Kathryn Klyberg, was also born in the kitchen on May 11, 1935, to German and Irish parents, both born in New York City, Thomas Klyberg and Dorothy Ready. Mac, as my dad was known, grew up in the streets playing stickball and basketball, while Mom was a funny kid who loved the movies and worked as an usherette in Broadway. Mom’s best friend was Jessica Hahn’s mom. No details needed there. They were both in the parish of Sacred Heart, and if you recall the movie Sleepers, where Robert De Niro played the tough priest, they both said he was tough just like that.

After finishing school, Mac joined the army where he served in Germany during the Korean Conflict, a big reason why he read so many history books on wars in his later years. When Mac returned from the war, he started dating my mother, who was some looker with that red hair and shapely body. He used the alias of Ted Williams, the great Boston baseball player, who was his favorite. Mom was just seventeen at the time and couldn’t care less what his real name was. He told her soon after, and on February 28, 1954, the two were married in Sacred Heart Church. Dad was twenty-four, and Mom, quite a bit younger at eighteen, immediately started making babies and within four years gave birth to Karen; the twins, Michael and Maureen; and me all before 1959. My dad sometimes worked three jobs to keep food on the table and to pay the $23 a month for their railroad apartment. The railroad apartment was long and narrow, the sink doubled as a bathtub, and you had to share a toilet with your neighbor. I imagine that was why Mom believed a lot of us had stomach problems because they were always holding it in.

2627 Linden Blvd., Apt. 2b, Brooklyn, New York

In 1960, with their four children, my parents scored an apartment in the Pink House projects in east New York, where the hallways were spooky and you would throw your trash down an incinerator. When we were bad, which was often, Dad would threaten to throw us down the incinerator, which was basically a fire hole to burn garbage. For fun in the summer, we’d wait on the hot blacktop for the cold sprinkler water to cool us down. The main thing was that we had made a step up in the world because we now had our own bathroom with a tub and toilet!

Sister Beatrice

My first recollection of life was when I turned five. Mom invited all her sisters from Queens to come to my birthday party. She bought a big cake with Mickey Mouse on it. I remember feeling bad for my two-year-old brother because he got no presents. That year, I joined Karen, my older sister by two years, at St. Fortunata Grammar School. I was in kindergarten and afraid of my teacher, Sister Beatrice, because she was mean and would hit me. My first impression of nuns was that they had no hands because they would walk around with their hands folded into their sleeves. They were covered from head to toe, and even their forehead was covered by a white collar. Naturally, they all dressed that way. As a boy, I was traumatized by Sister Beatrice. I believed all nuns were evil. It would be my first experience of fear or as we call it today anxiety! A night I’ll never forget was when she came to my house to talk to my parents about my behavior, and she was led into my room. I pretended to be sleeping as she sat at the bottom of my bed, telling them she would keep a good eye on me. How creepy was that? This would also horrify my older sis who would be pulled out of her second grade class to watch me get hit. Later on in life, Karen checked to see what had happened to Sister Beatrice. She found out that Sr. Beatrice had a psychotic mental disorder, was labeled a sociopath, and was institutionalized to a place where she hung herself. We left the projects, which by now I loved because of all the friends I had. It was 1965; and Joe, the fifth child, was born. It was on a Saturday morning, at around 10:00 a.m., when Aunt Maureen, who was mean to us, screamed out the window that Mom just had another child. Oh great, I thought. That means we will be moving to the country, Hazlet, New Jersey. How boring life will be now.

Back to Oxy (b.t.o.)

And so my journey began on April 26, 2010. It was the first day of my sobriety in detox at Bayshore. I was a shaking, sweating, and an anxiety-ridden mess. I was in bed but not relaxed, had a terrible cough, had no appetite, and was constipated for four days. I can’t sleep and had back pain and heartache—all symptoms of detox, as to relax you just a little bit if you are seeing yourself in this scenario. Not weak. I was sick, but what could I expect after using oxy for three straight years, spending fifty grand, because I got it at half street value price? They go for twenty bucks a blue. I did get an ambient for sleep.

Day 2 was just as bad; the only good thing was being able to urinate because I was given Flomax for my hesitation when urinating. My big savior that day, although I was embarrassed at first, was my nurse, a high school classmate who was the prettiest girl in the class, Joyce Gaynor. She really helped with my fears, and months later at her son’s high school baseball game where he had hit the single to drive in the winning run in extra innings, I had my chance to thank her. It’s ironic how I always get an old classmate as my nurse or candy striper, because twice the equally pretty Stacey Whalen, ten years earlier, was assigned to me, and when I asked for a sponge bath, she told me no f——ing way.

On day 3, Dr. A sent me home with a script for methadone, a drug I would not recommend. Later, I will explain the way to get off oxy for good. But first back to the country of Hazlet as a fourth grader and finding my playground for the next fifteen years.

Leocadia

It was a cold spring Saturday in 1967, I was in the fifth grade, and the word is out that there’s a new basketball court on Leocadia Court, a mile-long dead end with woods on the right. Halfway down the block, the clearing is made on the right with a new basketball court with tin backboards and chain-link nets. To the right are three fenced-in tennis courts, and then a little further down would be the baseball field. Across the street from the court was the first aid station, and at the end of the block was the public works building, or as we liked to call it the dumps, because cars would ride by all night to get rid of junk. I still don’t know if it was legal or not; because years later, to keep us kids from bothering the neighborhoods, the mayor and cops gave us the green light to drink and have sex in the woods as long as we threw the beer cans and condoms away. I take the fifth on the mayor at the time. All I’ll say is that he had the best football player, basketball player, and mechanic as sons. Leo, as we later would call it, was two blocks from my house on Lillian Drive. I grabbed my ball out of the garage and headed down Laurel Ave., and as I turned left onto Leocadia Ct., I can hear a ball bouncing. It was one of my peer group friends, Dave Dries, and he was snickering as we passed and nodded to each other, for he knew he was the first to shoot at the new baskets. I asked how the rims were, and he said, Tight, no give, but the backboards are dead. Good, I will bank all my shots when the game is on the line. Thanks, Dave. John, by the way, can I borrow your English book to study for the test Sister Celestine is giving us on Monday? Sure, Dave, I’ll drop it off later. Do you want to study together? No, thanks, but if you lift your arm after you complete the test, I would really appreciate it. I continued down the street and stared into the wooded area right before I reach the court, not knowing that this will become the biggest party area in Hazlet in about six years. But this court will be the place I will dedicate all my free time to becoming as good a player as possible. This would become my first addiction and would last for a decade until at college, at the age of nineteen, when alcohol would kick my ass and cause tremendous heartbreak. It was so bad that after my suspension from college, I would come down to Leo at two in the morning alone, with a ball in one hand and a bottle in the other, and cry, drink, and shoot until I passed out on the bench hidden from the street. To all you guys who hung down at Leo, or girls who used to ride by, as well as you Raritan High Alumni, get this book and enjoy those memories of our youth when the most important thing was to have a dollar fifty-six for that six-pack of Bud.

I Got Winners

A week or so went by, and I was on my way down to Leo, when I heard a bunch of guys, big guys, from Holmdel shooting around. Guys like Rat and Al, who are identical twins who live on a farm and have broken southern accents. There was another set of identical twins, well-built without an ounce of fat on them, who would later join West Point Military Academy. Jack Purcell, six feet tall, chubby, funny, lefty, and his best friend, Rudy Mixon, who believed if he ever missed a shot it’s because he was fouled. Frank Strenk, who at six feet three, was like a gentle giant with a great lefty jump shot that reminds you of Willis Reed’s shot. Then there was Russ Westendorf, a tall seventh grader who went to St. Ann’s in Keansburg, who was a year older and five inches taller than me. I started shooting around with these big guys. They were all about seventeen,