Alcoholism

“Battle not with monsters lest ye become a monster; and if you gaze into the abyss the abyss gazes into you.” Friedrich Nietzsche

I recently spent a few days in Washington, D.C. I have been to our Capital before, but this time I had a few hours to play tourist. Two of my law partners and I strolled the National Mall and surrounding area. Seeing the Capitol, White House, museums and other landmarks, one of my partners noted that it made her proud of her country. Indeed, one would have to be a jaded American not to feel the same way. I know I did.

I was in Washington on business. I had been asked to speak at a conference at the United States Department of Labor. Such things, of course, make one a big deal.

As we walked from our fabulous hotel two blocks from Capitol Hill, we approached several workers preparing for their day. They wore hard hats, boots, work gloves and those reflective vests which one hopes draw the attention of distracted drivers. These men were assembling scaffolding on the sidewalk and running industrial extension cords for whatever project awaited them.

As we neared the workers, I noticed that were negotiating their way around several piles of trash on the sidewalk. I thought it was a shame that among all those impressive sights, our nation’s capital couldn’t keep its sidewalks clean.

Then I saw the feet. They were sticking out from under a pile of carpet felt. Then I saw another pair beneath a pile of rags and plastic. Between the feet was a body. Wedged between two buildings was another man, swaddled in rags and staring blankly. These could have been corpses or garbage, but they weren’t. They were people–men huddled against the elements, awaiting nothing.

My concern that morning was that my feet hurt from the previous day’s sight-seeing. I also had my talk to give. This, of course, was very important, too. I was living a world away from those fellows.

The day before, I had walked by that same spot and noted that the building housed the Mitch Snyder Arts and Education Center for the Homeless. I’m embarrassed to admit that my reaction had been to dismiss this as foolishness. What kind of do-gooder thinks the homeless need art? I even cracked a joke about it to one of my partners. This Mitch Snyder must have been some rich guy who thought art would help. How about some beds?

When we walked back to our hotel several hours later, the scene was much the same. The workers were still working. The piles of humans were still there, too. Pedestrians disinterestedly passed both. We crossed to the other side of the street. On that side, those piles didn’t exist.

It struck me that’s how my life works. I live in suburbia. I have a job. And a family. Those men don’t exist in my world, although even in the college town of Lexington, Kentucky, I am no more than a 15 minute drive from them.

Who are these people? Most assuredly, they are wracked by some combination of mental illness, addiction and poverty. We know that many of them are military veterans–the same men we breathlessly laud for their service to our country, reduced to nothing so much as refuse. In fact, one would expect common garbage to be removed from the sidewalk. People, it seems, are a necessary evil.

At this point, one might muse “There but for the grace of God go I,” the well-known idiom attributed to 16th century martyr John Bradford as he saw prisoners being led to execution. How many of us really believe that? Not many, I suspect. You may be imbued with an arrogance that you are somehow protected. Family, friends and God will shield you from this fate.

I no longer believe that I am either graced or protected. At the risk of offending my readers, I have no use for a God who arbitrarily graces me while He curses my brothers. If I embrace that I am so special then I must also accept that others–through no fault of their own–have been ignored or even damned by that same God.

Those men on the street have families. They are sons, siblings-even parents. They have had friends and lovers. Each story is different but all share a common thread. Somewhere, somehow, they fell to the point where I saw them in Washington or in Las Vegas on New Years Day this year or here in Lexington.

I learned about some of these men from a friend of mine. He lived this same life years ago. Born to parents who neither wanted nor loved him, he suffered a childhood of abuse and neglect. In his teens, he was homeless and a budding alcoholic and addict. Into adulthood, mental illness gripped him as he drifted from town to town unable to hold a job or establish anything most of us would call a “life.”

The good news is that my friend overcame his addictions and for several years worked and made a life for himself. Fate, though, can be cruel. In the past few years, as he approached middle age, my friend suffered disabling illness which has threatened to take away this life. He gets along as best he can with the help of friends and doctors, and is grateful for all he now has, as meager as it may seem to me. Yet, he will occasionally look at me and ask: “What did I ever do to deserve this?” I have no answer. Now, when I consider all that I have in my life, I ask the same question. I have the same answer.

What of Mitch Snyder? My judgment was wrong. I have since learned that he may well have been the greatest advocate the American homeless ever had. He is credited with forcing the District of Columbia–largely by public shaming–into providing shelters for the homeless. A common tactic was to publicize the funerals of those who froze to death on DC’s streets. His public fasting directly led to the donation of an empty Federal building as a 1400 bed homeless shelter–the largest in America. In the end, Snyder couldn’t conquer his own demons. In 1990, at age 46, he hanged himself in that shelter. His Community for Creative Non-Violence continues his work.

For all his efforts, I suppose Snyder never conquered homelessness, either. Don’t ask me for the answers. I still wonder why I have so much while others have so little. I do know that money alone isn’t enough. If you think this can be remedied by handing out checks or jobs, I disagree. Visit one of your local homeless shelters and talk to the residents. Few can handle money, much less a job. We can do better offering them food and shelter, but that can be limited help. My friend told me that always avoided shelters because they were “too dangerous.”

Snyder was right when he thought that those men on the street should enrage the public, but they don’t. They make us sad, even a tad guilty perhaps, but few of us rage against it. Even worse, a fair number of us condemn such people as drains on society, symbols of those who can’t–or won’t–take advantage of all our great country has to offer. This is, after all, the Land of Opportunity. Each man and woman can do anything he or she sets out to do. If that comforts you or eases your guilt, go on believing it. I’ve come to believe that opportunity isn’t doled out equally nor is success measured the same for everyone. For too many, survival equals success.

A person born to my circumstances has little excuse for failure, while my friend mentioned above can easily be forgiven. I’m not naïve enough to think that we can eradicate homelessness anymore than I would believe that we can assure success for everyone. Nor do I think my observations are great revelations. It’s not like I just discovered this problem, but I don’t think I’ll see it the same again. Something about the juxtaposition of my privileged stroll down the street with men living on that sidewalk gave me new perspective.

If nothing else, the next time I’m patting myself on the back for something, perhaps I’ll consider those men. No one’s life is easy. We all have our trials. I suppose we all run the same race, but many of us had a head start.

Since Philip Seymour Hoffman’s body was discovered on February 2, 2014, I’ve pondered whether to write about it. What can I add to the flood of coverage? Maybe nothing, but here goes.

Let’s stop being ignorant about drug and alcohol addiction. We once embarked on a well-meaning, but painfully naive, campaign to JUST SAY NO to drugs. Perhaps one day a high-profile drug death will force us to JUST SAY NO to our collective ignorance of addiction. Addiction is disease, plain and simple.

Many of us think of the famous and talented has having something we don’t, an edge that we’d love to have. This is largely true. Addiction, it seems, is the great equalizer.

That Philip Seymour Hoffman was a great actor is undeniable, so, too, it seems is the fact that he was a drug addict. Being a great actor is a mark of distinction. Being an addict is not. The addict is like a character from a Tom Clancy novel, operating in the shadows, doing his best to conceal his true identity.

Hoffman gave many fine performances as an actor. His skills are now a footnote to his life. He will be largely remembered for how he died, not how he lived. For all its trappings, this is one element of the price of success. Anonymity is gone. Fame–or infamy–take its place.

Hoffman is not afforded the vague obituary of the common addict. You know some of these people. Their obituaries say they died “suddenly” or “unexpectedly” or after a “brief illness.” Perhaps they died of “heart failure,” another common euphemism for overdosing or drinking oneself to death. There are no requests to support cancer research or hospice care in lieu of flowers. They are relegated to the same types of amorphous remembrances as suicide victims.

Hoffman died like most addicts–alone. By all accounts, he had been clean for over two decades, only to relapse in the past couple of years. It took him two decades to build his enviable career. It took his addiction less than two years to kill him. If you are familiar with addiction, you’ve seen this same story play out before. Regardless of how glamorous one’s life may have been, this death is not.

The addict’s death is an ugly death. Google Chris Farley’s name, and one of the images you’ll see is his body after his overdose death. Ugly might be a mild word.

The chances are that every person reading this knows an addict. Perhaps you are one yourself. If so, you know the power of the addiction. Maybe you are one of those for whom addiction is a sign of weakness or poor morals. If so, consider:

Have you ever taken an illegal drug?
Have you ever taken a prescription drug that belonged to someone else?
Have you ever taken a legal drug but not followed the directions?
Have you ever had a drink of alcohol?
Have you ever been drunk?

Some folks-very, very few–can answer “No” to all of those questions. If so, you have avoided the risk of setting off your addiction. If you answered “Yes” to any of those, you are simply one of the vast majority of us.

The great puzzlement of addiction is that most people–indeed, the overwhelming majority–can do all of the above without becoming an addict. Life for an addict is different.

The simplest (and best) explanation I’ve ever heard for why we drink or take drugs is this: We like the effect. That’s hard to admit for a lot of us. We want to think we are wine connoisseurs or that we “experiment.” The truth is more blunt: We like the effect.

The addict likes the effect, too. His world, though, is different. He obsesses about the effect. When he consumes a drink or his drug of choice, he likes the effect, but then craves more. In his last days, he can’t quite get the desired effect. More is better but never quite enough.

I am certain that most people reading this cannot relate. You may have a drink or two at dinner and think “I better slow down. I’m starting to feel this.” Maybe you smoke a joint to relax. For the addict, that drink or joint lights the fuse. His response is “I’m starting to feel this. I need more.” As F. Scott Fitzgerald said “First you take a drink. Then the drink takes a drink. Then the drink takes you.”

Hoffman, Lenny Bruce, Judy Garland, Whitney Houston, Chris Farley, John Belushi, Michael Jackson, Heath Ledger, River Phoenix, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin–all well-known drug deaths. A similar list could be compiled of the famous who drank themselves to death. Actors, athletes, politicians–the lists are practically endless.

These are the addicts we know about. Consider all the ones we don’t. They include your friends, neighbors and even family. Maybe you, too.

Like other diseases, addiction doesn’t discriminate. The rich and poor; black and white; male and female; young and old–addiction throws a broad net. The addicts I’ve known include doctors, lawyers, accountants, realtors, salesmen, ministers, carpenters, brick masons, electricians, janitors, politicians, housewives and many others. Money, success, failure, poverty–none of this matters.

You may be of the stripe who say “Lock ’em, up!” While I disagree, I understand the sentiment. It is more comforting to think we can hide it. Looking at it is tough. There is shame in it. And fear. We’ve stuffed our prisons full, yet our friends and neighbors still die.

There is good news, though, among all this sorrow–and it is sorrow, by the way, destroying the lives of the addicts and all those who care about them. Addiction is treatable. Make no mistake here–it is not curable. The clean addict or sober drunk is one drug or drink away from disaster. Ongoing, effective treatment can and will prevent that. Our attitude toward addiction remains a great stumbling block.

The stigma attached to addiction is daunting, worse perhaps than mental illness. While we’ve grown accustomed to taking a pill for this or that , we still shrink at the thought of a drug addict or alcoholic among us.

Shaming the addict into the shadows with the threat of prison or ostracizing him won’t work. I’ve never known an addict who enjoyed his or her addiction in its chronic form. No one sets out to be a drug addict or alcoholic. Sanctimonious preaching won’t cause a great revelation in the mind of the addict.

Why don’t they just straighten up? You might as well ask a cancer patient why he “doesn’t just get well.” I once heard that no one was ever shamed or browbeaten into Christianity. Treatment for addiction works the same way.

If we consign addiction to the dust bin of moral failure, we simply accept it as a human frailty. It is much more than that. Likewise, it is not a bad habit. Leaving one’s dirty clothes in the floor is bad habit. Drinking or drugging oneself to death is not.

Addiction is a disease of the mind and body. The addict’s mind drives him to his drink or drug while his body craves more. Addicts aren’t “partying.” They are dying.

Addiction has one distinction that other diseases do not. Often, the addict has no desire to stop. The disease convinces him that he has no disease. I can think of no other chronic, fatal illness that has that so affects its sufferer. As a result, getting help for an addict is difficult, even impossible in many cases. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.

I suspect that if a terminal illness swept through our population like addiction has, we would bring every possible resource to bear on its eradication. Of course, it is foolish to think we can eliminate this disease. As long as there are human beings, some will want to change how they feel.

Perhaps if we take addiction out of the shadows and remove the stigma, we can make some progress. If every drug or alcohol death were publicized, we would be horrified by the numbers. For all his fame, talent and wealth, Hoffman died the addict’s death. He leaves children to mourn him and puzzled friends. The next time you hear of an overdose death, think about your friends and family. There’s probably an addict lurking among them.

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