Whispers from the Wilderness: One man's five-decade journey through life, addiction, and on to freedom

By Alan Cutler

A truthful, gritty, sometimes heart-wrenching look at the life of an overcomer. Join an everyman on his own odyssey from dysfunction, addiction, and near-death experiences to a life of peace and helping others find their way. A story that truly shows that no matter how dark the day, there is light and someone will hear your whispers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 19, 2021
• ISBN: 9781644687765

Book preview

Chapter 1

Born into Death

You may be asking yourself at this point, Why does he keep referring to the fact that he came into the world dying? Allow me to quickly expound on that. My mother’s recollection of that night, in 1966, was that after so many hours of labor, that I was born around 2:22 a.m. I was born with Rh factor disease and jaundice. As I write this in 2018, these are both very treatable diseases. In 1966, they were known but not to the extent of today.

To give some quick medical detail, Rh disease is when a child is born with two conflicting blood types and jaundice is when the liver is failing and your eyes and even skin color turn yellow. In my case, it was so severe that I had to undergo two complete blood transfusions within the first forty-eight hours of life. The facts get a little hazy here because all the major players, besides myself and my mother, have passed and my memory is far vaguer than hers. I do know this—the blood was donated through an anonymous donor from the Mason’s in New York which my grandfather and two great-uncles from Russia were a part of. I lived and the story continues. It must be noted that it is remembered, the connection between the new blood I received and how that would affect me spiritually later in my life. Yes, I said spiritually. In fact, let me take a minute and explain something right away. I make no apologies for my faith today as I have no shame over the journey that I have taken to get here. I would just ask you remain open and remember this is my testimony, not an instruction book or a how-to book; it is simply the story of my life.

The first six months of life were spent in relative normalcy. My parents dropped out of college, and my dad worked hard as a salesman to support his young family. Much to my mother’s dismay, my parents moved to Brooklyn to stay with my father’s parents. I say dismay because my mom’s whole family lived in various areas of Indiana and, in fact, those left still do. Also my mom was born on the family farm in Kansas and moved to the small Indiana town at the age of ten. I can only imagine as she has not been very forthcoming on how it made her feel the first time she was on the streets of New York. It must have been terrifying and invigorating all at the same time. Now it was time to take a bite out of the Big Apple which was hard for me as I had no teeth.

The next three years of life, I have vague memories, but I will say, they were all primarily good ones. We lived with my grandparents a short while who spoiled their new grandson and were a tremendous support to my parents. We eventually moved to our own place, and my memories are of the Bronx Zoo with my mom; in fact, I have two very concrete memories which many psychologists will tell you is very rare for a child of two and three. I do remember the beluga whales but what I remember the most is the petting tank with the starfish and my all-time favorite—horseshoe crabs. There is actually a very funny story that happened right before I got sober in 1997 that I will share when we get there; don’t forget to remind me please.

There was also the Yankees and Mets games with my dad. He was a die-hard lifelong Yankees fan but loved baseball and Mets tickets were cheaper. A really funny but vague memory was when my Aunt Claudia and Uncle Dan came out to visit us and we went to a Yankees game. My uncle Dan was out in the outfield, taking pictures, and one of the Yankees hit a home run that landed right by him but he had no idea. My father would often share, and so did my uncle Dan, that he heard someone screaming his name, and when he looked up, there was a crowd of rabid Yankee fans running at what he thought was him but they just wanted the ball. Dan would tell me that story through my life with his trademark cigar in his mouth and that oh-so unique Indiana accent. Just writing about it, I can smell his cigar which, to this day, is a smell of safety and comfort to me. Life seemed good to my young mind, not that I had any clue what bad was but I was about to find out sooner than I care to remember.

Shortly after that, man walked on the moon and the miracle Mets of ’69 won the World Series. In late 1969, or at the very beginning of 1970, my father was offered a job just outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He packed up his young family and we moved to a city called Monroeville. By now, I have more concrete memories and remember the house, the fact they made me give away my favorite dog, Fluffy, to my aunt and uncle as my dad wanted to keep our shepherd, Pepper. I can’t be for sure, however, I believe that this event may have imprinted on me a fear of letting go of things I love which, as will be seen, affected me almost to this day and often not in good ways. I even remember starting kindergarten and waiting at the bus stop with the high school kids, thinking just how ancient they were and how it would be forever before I was that old. There is not much else I remember about that school other than just before or on St. Patrick’s Day, I got to school early and caught the teacher placing green footprints on the floor and the walls. This was my first experience with adults creating a mythical white lie; well, there was nothing white about it. She deceived our little minds and I was asked to be a part of that deception. This also had some lasting effect on me later in life as well. The next year and a half are kind of a blur. I got my first stiches ever. We started raising and showing our champion Weimaraner guy.

It was a nice corner house with two stories. I have some glimpses of memories from that house. Our shepherd, Pepper, had a litter which, I was told, died while I was at school the day they were born. I never got conformation, as I never asked, but I don’t think they died; I think they were disposed of while I was at school. Then there was the day I ran to the kitchen door and somehow missed the handle and put my right hand through the storm pane of glass which promptly shattered and cut my eye. I so remember the pain and fear when they took me to the emergency room. I’m not sure he should have said it in front of me but the doctor told my mother that just a tad further north and I would be wearing an eye patch today. What a wonderful and comfortable thought for a five-year-old child.

Sometime that year, we moved to a house not far from there. In fact, it was just before what would start to be my annual summer trips to Camp Cutler in Mountaindale, New York. I loved spending time with my Nana and Papo. Those first few trips were just a fun time to spend with my grandparents. I also loved it because when he wasn’t feeling ill, my grandfather would take me fishing and he also taught me how to shoot a pistol and a rifle. I enjoyed that and what would be many more summers away at my grandparents when I came back to Pennsylvania—only to find my parents moved without telling me. This is my first of many memories where the truth was withheld from me. This would play a significant role in my future behavior. I was never able to get a straight answer from my father or my mother about this, only the stereotypical answer, We thought it better not to tell you the truth. Who was it, I wonder, so many decades or centuries ago, that first thought of this? But I tell you, it breeds resentment and creates—or at least in me—it created, or should I say better, caused me not to trust at a young age.

I did love that house and it opened the door for the next chapter of my life. I started first grade that year and to say I had attachment issues with my mother is one of the larger understatements you will read in the story. I cried every morning, having to leave my mom. In fact, my mom, at this point, started working to support the house with my dad so I had a babysitter in the afternoon. Sally Felver, who became more of a big sister to me, was my first babysitter. She lived with her parents. Her mom, I remember as Mom Felver, and her dad was Richard. I mention her dad by name because of the impact that he had on my life and that of so many others. Mr. Felver was a professor emeritus at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. An accomplished artist, inventor, published scholar; but to me, he was Mr. Felver. Mr. Felver who would roll out large pieces of blank drafting paper in his basement workshop so that I may color. In fact, when he passed in 1975, the university held a large exhibit honoring his work. That was amazing. Mom and Mr. Felver, two people that I was not related to, made such a drastic impact for good on my life as it was about to unravel.

As I had just mentioned, my mother had gone to work, now that I was in school, to help my father support the household. She worked at a company that manufactured and repaired mining equipment. In fact, she would be there for about a decade to come. While she was there, one of her bosses, Harry, and his wife, Judy, became good friends of hers and my father’s. They had known each other previously because we purchased our first champion show dog from a breeder that knew them. That was Goliath Grey Ghost who is presented in the photo section. I have brought Harry and Judy into the story, not for their influence, however, that of their children. They had a boy that was a few years older than me and twins—a boy and girl—who were my age. I became good friends with the twins and often was either at their house playing or they were at ours.

This is where the story begins to get cloudy a bit for me. As it will be revealed, I, later in life, will have rather large issues with sexual addiction and pornography. Yes, I know what you are thinking, Well, what man doesn’t? I do believe many do, but when I was around the age of five, I have memories of bathing with the daughter and her, her brother, and myself playing rough. She was rather tomboyish and honestly dominated her brother and me. Once again, nothing shocking but wait—I have vivid memories of just allowing her to overpower me because she liked to hold me down on my back and straddle me. This is not unusual but the feelings that this generated in the genital area of my body was. I wasn’t sure what was going on or, really, what I was feeling, I just knew that I really enjoyed it. Being in the field that I am counseling in, I know texts say that this is common for most children, it is what was to follow in the coming years that I know was not. Other than what I have shared, there are really no memories that stand out other than good ones during this period. We lived in a nice two-story house with an apple tree in the backyard. I had friends in the neighborhood, a great babysitter, and some very awesome people pouring into my life. If I only had known what was around the corner, I may have gone to live with my grandparents who had just left New York City for their new house in Mountaindale, New York, or even my Aunt Claudia and Uncle Dan’s house with my cousins, who I still love today, back in my home state of Indiana. I, however, am not a prophet and had no idea, though what could a five-year-old do, right?

Chapter 2

The Beginning of My End

Sometime in the year of 1972, as I was walking home from a friend’s house, I saw a broken bottle on the side of the road. I am sure you have heard of kick the can; well, I created a not-so-bright game called kick the bottle. I had sneakers on, what harm could come of it? One of my earliest memories of bad choices but, by far, not the last one. I got home and, like a good kid, took my sneakers off, exposing my right foot first with its dingy white tube sock and then my left. Well, you can imagine the look on my face when I realized that I had one white sock and one bloodred sock on. It seems that at some time during my game of kick the broken bottle, it sliced my ankle open. A surgical cut it must have been because I never felt any pain until I saw my sock. Hysterical crying (my mom, not me—no, it was both of us) and we were on the way to my pediatrician. That was my first introduction to stiches, and to this day, I swear he never numbed my foot. Flash-forward a few hours and I was lying on our couch in the living room, watching Sesame Street , Mr. Rogers, or some show of that nature, when my parents approached me. What happened next, I had a false memory or, I should say, a blocked one until I was thirty years old. I have a vivid memory as they approached, thinking how great it was that I had parents that loved me so much. Well, instead of the words of comfort that I was expecting to hear, I heard this, Alan, your dad and I don’t love each other anymore and we are getting a divorce.

I would honestly like to say that I remember the emotions that I felt at that moment. I don’t, but when I look back, I believe that it put me in a state of shock and the fact that I did not remember them asking me who I wanted to live with tells me that, most likely, I blocked the memory. My mind, to protect the fragile little mind of mine, threw a circuit breaker that wouldn’t rest for almost twenty-five years.

Please understand, the word divorce was not a household word in 1972 and most six-year-olds had never heard it. Well, I was one of those, add the fact of trying to explain to a six-year-old how you could no longer be in love. If they were no longer in love with each other, what about me? What happens next, will they tell me that one or both don’t love me anymore? It was over two decades later that I remembered the question that came from my mother after the universe-ending words. I have prayed long and hard as to whether or not I should tell everyone now, and I feel that it is best left for a later chapter when I was shown the truth.

I shortly, thereafter, left the house with my mom, who I would be living with, and moved thirty-five minutes west of everything I knew. We moved into a single wide trailer with three friends of my mom’s. Now if I were to tell you, as I have many people in the last forty-five years or so of my life, where it was that I moved, you might just scratch your head like they did. Well, we moved out to a town called Delmont. According to the 2010 census, there were just about 2,700 people living there now. When we moved, I would put that number at half, if not less. We had a pharmacy, a Stop and Go, a bank, a great general store, Kemer’s. The last will come into greater play in my life later on. A small town that also had two bars. The four little bees in town and outside of town closer to us was Astorri’s Tavern. I have to mention those because Astorri’s was a landmark to even find the road we lived off of. The other landmark was a blue two front-ended VW Beatle that was mounted about twenty-five feet in the air on a pole. How or why it ever got there, to this day, I do not know. Well, just past Astorri’s, you turned right at the Beatle on Thorn Run Road and drove about two miles back into the woods. On the right hand side, you saw a dirt road, turn right, go back in the woods a quarter-mile, and there it was—my home for the next ten years, our single wide trailer with the extra-large addition added on to the back by the MBR. In reality, I did not live in Delmont but there was no town name for how far out we were so our address was Delmont. Looking back, I am glad because the next closest town was Slickville. Yes, it really exists; it even made maps back in the early 1990s, finally. The census there in 2000 was just over 300.

Back to the trailer and home life. My mother moved me in with three of her friends: Sally, my then-twenty-one-year-old former babysitter, Mary, and Linda. I know she worked with Linda but have no clue where Mary came from; all I know is she was supposed to be my babysitter. I still laugh every time I think about that. There I was, sometime in 1972, in the woods with three woman and my mom. Gone was the stability of my two-parent home and my friends. Heck, gone was civilization for the most part.

I am not really sure when it started but my mother started drinking every night. By saying drinking, I don’t mean a glass of wine—I mean drinking. I know that Linda drank as well and I am pretty sure the other two smoked a lot of weed. Well, for me it was school by day and pandemonium by night. Two incidents that have stayed with me were the ladies screaming that there was someone outside the front door peering in. They were scared, I was terrified. Come the morning, when we saw all the deer tracks on the porch, we knew it was neighbors wanting to know what humans had moved in. The next was the night a couple of sheriffs showed up wanting to speak to my mom. Evidently a teenage girl in town had run away and someone gave them a tip that she was with the divorcée (yes, there was a terrible stigma to young divorced women in the early ’70s) and her harem of drug-using hippie chicks. It took her a while and they searched the house, but as my mom told them, we never knew nor ever met this girl. I also remember my mom and her friends talking bad about my father and even comments about how he deserved to die. I have vivid memories of one of the roommates—I do remember who but won’t call them out—saying that if given the chance, she would like to stab my father with a rusty butter knife. What every young man wants to hear, right? I find it ironic that just a few weeks ago, as I was fact-checking with my mom, as my father passed away eight years ago and was told that he fought her for nine months for custody of me before the divorce was final.

The next couple of years are a blur in my memory. I will share the best I can to paint the picture of neglect and dysfunction I was subjected to. Before I go any further, please let me state, I have long forgiven my mother. She was young, dealing with her own demons that would haunt her for years to come, and I don’t feel she ever set out to cause me harm. I remember our landlord Ozzie who had a mechanic shop at the end of our driveway and the cool guys that worked there, especially Donny and Randy who would actually remain friends with me until his untimely death of a brain aneurism in the late ’90s. I remember Mr. Hooper, Oscar, and Mr. Snuffleupagus when only Big Bird could see him. I remember Mr. Rogers who shot the show in Pittsburgh and an upstart kids show called the Electric Company with a young black actor named Morgan Freeman. On the same hand, I remember the Beatles, Moody Blues, Chicago, Frank Zappa (who I would meet and finally see live when I was seventeen), Simon and Garfunkel, and, of course, Led Zeppelin, among many more. No wheels on the bus for this kid, Mr. Kite was leading the show that night with Nanook and Sgt. Pepper.

Last thing for this memory, I remember that album covers were also great for separating the stems and seeds from weed. Oh yes, and I remember one day, Mary had me out and she hitchhiked with me. Yes, once again, I hear people saying, Well, it was the ’70s. No, what it was, was trauma. One last thing I remember that had a lasting effect on my life was my dislike for things that are broken or missing a piece. In 1972, like most young boys, I was a G. I. Joe fanatic; in fact, I had been for a few years. I had the G. I. Joe space capsule that I saved for myself, and in 1972, they released the Joe Mobile Command vehicle. The front separated from the command unit and it was the most super fantastic, futuristic, incredible toy ever created. That is, at least, in my eyes, it was. Well, I am not sure if it was Christmas or one of the nights of Hanukkah as in our trailer, we celebrated both. Dad was, as I, Jewish and, in fact, my mom as well, having converted before I was born; but she held on to the Christmas spirit and received presents from her family at Christmas. So the day came and I unwrapped my big present, praying to God that it was the command unit. Oh! It is! It is! Oh, thank you, Mom, you are the best mom ever.

Well, I meant it in my heart but it was not the case. When I opened it and pulled it out, the connection piece between the front and back was broken. My mom apologized and explained that she and some of her friends had opened it and someone was trying to ride it when it broke. Really? I said in startled unspeakable horror. One of your drunk hippie friends was playing with my toy? What the heck is wrong with you, woman? Well, that is an adult translation of what my then six-year-old mind was thinking, what came out was, Thank you so much, Mom, you’re the best. Although something inside me died that day and a small part of my innocence was taken, there was much left to go.

I mentioned, just earlier, that my father, unbeknownst to me, fought my mom for custody. All I knew was that he had me almost every weekend. I don’t want to paint a picture of my father as this do-no-wrong father. My dad had many faults: he was stubborn, had control issues, and there was a time when he had gambling issues, was addicted to pornography, and I say some twisted stuff as well; but overall, he was a great parent. Later in the story, that became even more apparent after I became an adult.

Chapter 3

Life on the Other Side

Iknow, all this mother bashing, right, and not much mention of my dad. Well, here we go. As I had mentioned before, my parents met at Indiana University in Terra Haute. My father was the opposite of my mother, and as much as I loved him, I have no clue why