Dave. Thirty-five years old.
I leave work and see three missed calls, one voicemail. Twenty seconds long. Thirty-five years reduced to twenty seconds. I listen to the voicemail, and I know. I don’t listen to the words. The man’s tone is a crooked bell.
Dave’s obituary reads: “Died peacefully but unexpectedly.”
It reads: “Dave was a sensitive, creative dreamer.”
It reads: “[He] embraced a life of discovery and adventure.”
I read and reread the obituary until I feel ill. Peacefully but unexpectedly. Dave’s dad was asleep in the room next door. Before going to sleep, his dad searched Dave thoroughly—his pockets, pant legs, shirt, bag. His dad did not search his socks.
I’ve never experienced uncontrollable crying in my adult life until Dave’s death. I’m driving on the beltway Friday afternoon, twenty minutes after I find out, and the feeling, one I cannot crush even if I wanted to, breaks out of my chest like shrapnel from a landmine. At first, I speed up. Seventy in a 55. 80. 90. For a moment, I do not care what happens to me. But I can no longer see through the tears, no matter how hard I wipe them away.
I pull into the shoulder lane, bury my face in my palms, bury my knuckles into the steering wheel’s grainy leather, stop trying to control the noises I’m emitting, and I cry for his mom, who’s just lost her closest child, and I cry for his dad, who can’t stop drinking. I cry for his sister, who is fresh out of an abusive relationship and staying at his house. I cry for his uncles and the trip to Europe they’ll never take, and I cry for the kayaking trip we had scheduled in August, the wet home of rippling water our paddles will never reach.
Six days. Three hospitalizations. Nine overdoses.
Though I don’t know if his final overdose, the overdose, was counted in the nine. I suspect not. Eventually, loved ones stop counting. It’s too tiring.
“Embraced a life of adventure.”
Adventure, as in an exciting or remarkable experience.
In the beginning, drug addiction and alcoholism feel like an adventure. It feels like freedom, like a corridor of possibilities opening for you. Earth’s philosophical lines appear endless, denying society’s moral objectivity.
It begins and remains an adventure, but at some point, the adventure changes. The corridor narrows, and choices become binds.
The day I get the call, I drive to talk to a man about his alcoholism. He asks me for help, wants to know how I’ve stayed sober these past three years. I talk about Dave. I cry. The other man is hit with waves of emotion, maybe empathy. Empathy and fear about his own alcoholism, what this all means for him. A few months later, he stops calling me.
Adventure, as in an undertaking usually involving danger and unknown risks.
Each line of heroin is an adventure, with danger and unknown risks.
Sometimes, people point guns at you. Sometimes, your nose gets broken by brass knuckles, doesn’t heal right, leaves you with permanent sinus issues. After I got sober, a doctor told me I should consider sinus surgery. I never called the doctor back.
These are adventures. But these adventures do not feel like freedom.
When I met Dave on the curb outside a Methodist church three or so years ago, he wore an ankle monitor. He had just gotten his second DUI. He told me the judge was making him go to meetings but that he had it all under control.
I call my mom and tell her I love her. I do not mention Dave. I sit in my apartment, alone, all Saturday morning, thinking about Dave and crying.
My friend Jack picks up the phone on Saturday afternoon. This is why there’s no such thing as helping “too many people,” Jack says.
Baltimore County tracks overdose deaths on a giant billboard in Towson, on Burke Ave. The same year Dave died, Baltimore County reported 348 overdose deaths related to heroin and fentanyl.
Two thousand sixty-one overdose deaths in Maryland.
One hundred seven thousand eighty-one overdose deaths in the United States.
None of these people are numbers to their families. Most are numbers to me. Dave is a number to someone.
I was hospitalized for the fifth time. I had overdosed. I got sober after that.
I don’t know why this was the time that struck me sober. Consequences were not the cause. Before I overdosed, I would have told you I wanted to die. I would have been okay with being a number.
The second time I talked to him, we were at a sober Halloween party. Everyone stayed away from him, talked shit behind his back because he looked high. I spoke to him.
He had gotten out of the hospital that morning and was still dope sick.
He later thanked me for speaking to him when no one else would.
That gesture changed my life, he said.
Saturday night, I sit with Dave’s dad and sister, tell them how much I loved him. His dad cries, unrestrained, and yells about losing his only son. His sister cries quietly, looking straight ahead. Her eyes look like wet moons.
After one of his next attempts at sobriety, he went to the doctor and discovered he had opened a fissure in his nose, an additional hole, from snorting so much heroin. He would need surgery to get it fixed. But he’d have to be sober for a year before the surgery. He never got the surgery. He spoke with a nasal tone after that point.
Consequences alone cannot keep a true alcoholic or addict sober.
Dave told me he was in line to buy heroin at a dope hole in West Baltimore when someone rolled up and shot the guy in front of him in the head. He got in his car and sped home to wash the brain matter out of his hair, to put his blood-soaked clothes in the wash.
Dave was back in West Baltimore, buying heroin from the same dope hole several hours later.
Trapped on an adventure you don’t want to be on.
I cry on my way to work on Monday morning. At work, I can’t stop crying. I’m working with little kids on the autism spectrum, playing with toy hot dogs and block games, supervising their little adventures, and I can’t stop crying. The kids laugh, giggle, play with my hair, and I’m crying.
I’m crying, and I’m retreating to the bathroom every forty-five minutes to sob intensely enough that I can keep the classroom breakdowns mostly at bay—a controlled burn, like a fentanyl hotspot.
I got drunk three hours after leaving my first psych ward. I had no intention of drinking when I left. When I left, I was stable. Content, even.
On Tuesday, I stop crying.
On our first phone call, after Dave asked me for help, he wanted to know:
Do you recycle? Do you ever litter? Are you the kind of asshole who throws trash out your car window on a highway?
He told me he produces only a quarter bag of trash each week.
Wednesday, I call another friend. I say I should know better than to ask the question, but I ask, Why is God doing this to me?
His answer: I don’t know why bad things happen to good people. But I do know you have recovered, and God needs a warrior. Dave’s family needs a warrior.
After Dave’s second-to-last relapse, we sit in his living room and talk about addiction. He admits he is powerless. I lay my hand on his shoulder, tell him powerless and hopeless aren’t synonyms. He says he is done for good this time. He says he will go through the work to get better this time how necessary he knows it is. I think about how many people I’ve known who said this and died.
His urn sits alone in a corner at his viewing the Thursday after he dies—a sleek, black lantern with silver lettering.
I bow my head to the urn and say a few words, tell him I love him, say thanks for having been lucky enough to have known him. I don’t know if I am talking to him or God. I don’t believe in heaven.
Alcoholism is the only illness that tries to convince you that you’re not sick, people have said.
When I see his mom at his viewing, she wraps me in a huge hug, pressing her body into my chest, pressing inward and forward toward some unknown destination, leaving no space between us.
She speaks into my ear: Thank you for being a reflection of Dave’s sober life.
There is no doubt in my mind that alcoholism is a predator, Jack has said.
I know of someone who says that riding his bike is the only way he knows how to escape the feelings that make him want to use again. He rides his bike all day long, up and down Belair Road. He’s asked how long he spends each day riding his bike.
Six or seven hours.
He believes he can outbike his addiction.
Dave loved riding his bike. By this logic, if Dave rode fast enough, he could have outbiked his own death.
On the day of his funeral, a Friday, his sister stands at the corner of the parking lot, chain-smoking. She lights one cigarette with the embers from the previous, stuck on a fiery loop. She stares ahead at the trees. She wears a sleek, black dress. I want to talk to her but decide not to. I don’t want to ruin her experience. Maybe she needs to have it, I think. I have just been shown that I can’t save everyone.
I never learned how to ride a bicycle properly.
Dave loved his garden, his pride. He still tended to it when he was high on heroin.
Dave had a law degree and stared at contracts all day; he said he loved it. He found it calming. He found flaws in everything he read, every conversation.
Our friend, Nate, relapsed with no place to go. Dave let him sleep in his house, gave him a bed, so he could avoid sleeping at the homeless shelter again.
Jack, who’s never met Dave, attends his funeral with me. He watches me run my fingers along the edges of my tie in the dry August heat. He tells me, There’s no wrong way to feel in this moment. Whatever you’re feeling is how you’re supposed to feel.
Alcoholism is a rabid dog. We have to stare it in the face for the rest of our lives. I wonder if this understanding is why I’m alive, and Dave is not.
Almost everyone at his funeral is older than him.
A month or two before he died, Dave called to tell me he’s decided to stop doing the work to stay sober, that he feels great, that he “has this thing figured out.”
I told him one of four things will happen:
- You’ll stay sober, but the emotional pain of sobriety with no relief will make you do the work.
- You’ll be completely fine and stay sober with ease.
- You’ll relapse and come back, do the work.
- You’ll relapse and die.
I said this for me rather than for him. I didn’t want to wonder if I could have done more.
During his funeral service, I try to make myself cry. I fail. I don’t know why.
Rabid dogs cannot be cured.
The nondenominational pastor at his funeral has known him for years. They’re Facebook friends.
He was constantly posting on Facebook, the Pastor muses.
His life looked so full.
Things we discussed on our last call at 6:45 a.m. on my way to work:
- The season finale of Better Call Saul.
- Grunge music—Nirvana, specifically.
- His Eurotrip to Spain with his uncles.
- When and where we’d go kayaking that summer. We settled on August. He knew just the place. We’d wake up early, before the August heat. We’d watch the sunrise together.
Dave died just before sunrise on a Friday morning in August.
Now, I kayak with my mom. I always paddle ahead of her because I’m impatient, use my oar to twirl my kayak around, look at her from across the water. She’s almost always staring back at me, staring at my face and smiling. An exciting or remarkable experience. We feel grateful. I feel free.
He seemed happy on our last call; his life so full.
The next day, he got high again.
Six days later, he was dead.
His mom begs me to go to her house after the funeral for his wake. I decline. I need to go back to work. This is the only guilt I have left.
I lost the pamphlet from Dave’s funeral. This is the only guilt I have left.
His mom says:
If you can’t come to his wake, call me and keep calling me.
Tell me stories about Dave that I don’t know.
His mom, dad, sister still post about him on Facebook constantly. Mostly, I scroll past their posts. Now, I have the luxury of choosing moments of pain. This is the only guilt I have left.
I’m running out of memories I can comfortably disclose about Dave. Some memories are reserved for just him and me. Some are too precious to share. Some are too painful. These memories are encased in the amber of my memory, preserved like ashes in a sealed urn.
Words can’t capture a personality like numbers can’t capture a person.
Dave loved Nirvana. Dave loved Newport cigarettes. Dave composted. Dave loved Spain. Dave cherished multi-cultural art, hung it all around his home.
Who hung the numbers on the billboard in Baltimore County? Who increased the number by one? What were they thinking about when they hung Dave’s number?
I call Dave’s mom, a week after his funeral. I tell her about his “humble brag” (Dave’s words), how he only produces a quarter bag of trash each month.
I tell her about how beautiful his garden was.
We’re keeping his house so we can keep his memory alive. We’re upkeeping his garden, tending to it. My lord, he loved that garden.
Writing broken into fragments. Because Dave’s life was broken into fragments. Because our lives exist in fragments. Because heroin reduces lives to fragments.
I considered numbering each fragment the way Maggie Nelson does in Bluettes—each thought, anecdote, fragment reveals more about her story, more about herself.
I decide against it. The numbers are too tiring to add up.
Now, I call his mom twice a year—on his birthday and on the day he died.
His birthday was wonderful, his mom says, the day he would have turned thirty-seven. We sat in his garden and ate crabs.
We did everything Dave loved. He loved so much.
When the final season of Ozark came out on Netflix, we had a watch party at Dave’s house, the house he died in. We ate pizza and stayed up till two in the morning. Eventually, we gave up trying to finish it. I’m too tired, Dave said. I can barely stand.
***
Rumpus original artwork by Liam Golden
Voices on Addiction is a column devoted to true personal narratives of addiction, curated by Kelly Thompson, and authored by the spectrum of individuals affected by this illness. Through these essays, interviews, and book reviews we hope—in the words of Rebecca Solnit—to break the story by breaking the status quo of addiction: the shame, stigma, and hopelessness, and the lies and myths that surround it. Sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, adult children, extended family members, spouses, friends, employers or employees, boyfriends, girlfriends, neighbors, victims of crimes, and those who’ve committed crimes as addicts, and the personnel who often serve them, nurses, doctors, social workers, therapists, prison guards, police officers, policy makers and, of course, addicts themselves: Voices on Addiction will feature your stories. Because the story of addiction impacts us all. It’s time we break it. Submit here.
