The beast of alcoholism awoken, yet I tried not to panic. I spent my time reassuring myself that my relapse wasn't so bad, that I just needed get back to meetings, be honest about what happened and take my medicine. And though I'd lost my time, I'd learned a lot the past 5 years. And I'd changed even more, becoming the grounded principled person I always wanted to be. Hell, even my Dad saw I was an entirely different person. Sure, I made some mistakes and let my guard down. But just put it right back up. I mean, if a fuck up like me could get sober, how hard could it be?
But in recovery terms, I was now a relapser. No longer bullet proof, my force field had been breached and what that meant was drinking was once again an option. All the energy and work to quit alcohol and drugs, retraining my mind to not be ruled by addiction's obsessions. I'd managed to heal my mind and body from substances, yet I took that healing for granted. And a dormant voice from my past awoke.
And the conversations would go...
Lets go have one. No, You can't. Yeah you can, just have one. But you never had just one. That was then, you didn't know anything, now you do, you can control it. You're different now. Just be strong. Just one with the boys and head home...
Every night the debate raged on, just like the captions from those Sunday morning cartoons. The protagonist torn, the devilish devil on one shoulder imploring him to act, the angelic angel on the other, pleading with him to abstain.
Yet the devil with a bullhorn, louder, incessant, drowning out the resistance of the angel's whispered words...
Early in my sobriety, the obsession to drink lifted quickly, allowing me to live my life free from the constant cravings to drink. And what I replaced my drinking life with was a working program. That's what I was taught. To keep working a program, for shit happened in life and I needed my guard up at all times. It all seemed excessive at first, to continue meeting attendance in perpetuity. But in time I came to understand. Like the the old timers with the glow used to joke...
They went to 6-7 meetings a week, yet they only needed one, they just never knew which one it was going to be...
The old timers, they said keep coming back, and I did, but I felt shunned. AA was a program of commitment and discipline and sacrifice, not all that unlike my tennis. The code was we didn't drink no matter what and that nothing ever got better from relapsing.
But I'd broken the code. I was now looked upon warily, even by my confidants in program. They no longer trusted my commitment to the sober life and I felt their shunning. I was put on secret probation, duration unknown, until I proved I was serious again about recovery. And that could take months if not years, time I didn't feel I had as I scratched and clawed my way back to safety.
Now struggling, I continued to attend meetings but was unable to get more than a few days. With each slip I'd come back, identify as a newcomer, mark a new sobriety date. But that got old quickly. Unable to quit drinking, I stopped counting my time, for what was the point?
Drifting further from recovery, my partying began accelerating. I was stuck in the great in-between, unable to stay sober, yet unable to function high. And I started getting scared. I'd watched this play out in meetings countless times over the years and it rarely ended well. Statistically I knew most alcoholics never got any sobriety at all. But worse yet, those like myself who got some time then relapsed, the statistics were grim, with most never making it back again.
Did a person get only one chance at the sober life? Was I fated to be a statistic too?
As my using intensified, I began to get quite sick. During my sobriety, my disease had progressed. Just like I'd heard 1000 times in meetings, all the stories of people going out and never making it back. I saw them with my own eyes. I visited hospitals, I went to funerals, yet I didn't heed the warnings. Somehow I thought I was different, that bad things only happened to other people. The grandiosity of it all, to think I knew better. Of all the times not to listen.
Within a month I immediately have no defense against the first drink. There wasn't even a debate anymore, just the devil and his relentless imploring for me to get high. Yet I kept showing up for meetings in various states of disrepair. But the magic was gone, the connection to recovery and a power greater than myself severed. For I'd taken my will back and I was now running the show, self-will run riot.
To straighten out it was going to take another miracle. Did a person only get one in this life?
Not finding the answers in meetings, I continued to read voraciously. Seeking a roadmap for living in the pages of books to my human, all too human problems. I was still drawn to Nietzsche, his pull on my mind magnetic and complete. He spoke to my innermost self. But his teachings on the reliance of the self couldn't be more diametrically opposed to the AA way.
Yet I would read his works every morning..
Nobody but yourself can construct the bridge by which to cross the stream of life.
ADD ONE MORE QUOTE
I found solace in his words. But they drove a deeper wedge between myself and AA. I was now in full revolt, engaging in all out intellectual warfare with the spirituality aspects of AA. AA was now just Christianity with some words moved around, an affront to my hyper-rational self, incapable of engaging with the incomprehensible and irrational aspects of the spirit.
My experiment in social drinking now firmly anti-social. Beers led to drugs. Drugs led to more drugs and stronger drugs, with my behavior beginning to change. I became more reckless, even more out of control. Missing work, disappearing again, going on 3-4 day drug benders all throughout Hollywood. Running with a dark crew, dealers and hustlers and hookers and pimps, all with access to the best drugs anytime of day. I was right back to Atlantic City behavior in a matter of months.
Trying to manage the unmanageable, but I kept trying. I'd make deals with myself. I would only party on road trips, alone, away from witnesses. Now I was back to having a secret life, out of town, seeing music. Hippy jamband shows, for years my salvation, my church, my place to spiritually regenerate. Now even they'd become cursed
All the years of experimenting, chasing the perfect high, and I'd finally caught it. Alcohol, edibles, ecstacy, mushrooms, the right amounts at just the right time and boom, I was dancing with euphoria for days on end.
What a terrible time to perfect the peak state of mind. At a crossroads, knowing I was playing dangerous games with my brain chemistry, exhausting all my serotonin, setting myself up for vicious crashes upon coming down, yet the addict in me, unable to imagine going through life never feeling that way again.
The weekend getaways became more frequent. Now having discovered nirvana, I became obsessed with getting high and seeing concerts. The Grateful Dead no longer, I started chasing Phish and all the newer upstart jambands. STS9, Moe, String Cheese Incident, Galactic, Widespread Panic. Steve Kimock, Sonic Youth, Phil and Friends.
The scene was afire. All the bands young, fresh, hungry, leaving it all out there every night. What a time to be alive. But so so slippery. Talk about Triggerville. I was living the most extreme double life. Air conditioned country club nightmare during the week. Counter culture boundary expanding drugged out hippy on the weekends. Unsustainable, yet I couldn't give it up. The venues, the lights, the crowds, the music, the drugs. The whole experience. I could lose myself in the sensory overload. Every weekend, the vibrant scene filling an enormous void
in my life, yet simultaneously destroying any hopes of living a stable one.
Trying to hold it together, but a cycle was emerging. The weekend getaways began taking their toll, with the come downs back to reality increasingly painful. I was working obsessively hard to go absolutely nowhere, exhausting all my resources for the blow out weekends, then back to the weekly teaching grind, just buying my time til the next weekend blowout, only to limp home again, take 24 hours to recover, and be right back at it, vowing to do better in the future.
Yet better never happened.
Intermittently, I would still attend AA meetings, but with a foot and a half out the door. Show up late, leave early, participate as little as possible. That was my program. It was obvious I was struggling, but I wouldn't let anybody in. And AA was a lonely place when you're keeping secrets and not being honest. My peers in program, they knew nothing of my weekend getaways. Yet they knew everything, for I lacked their glow, a glow I once shared with them for nearly 5 years. Now I didn't share, I couldn't share, so overcome with the shame of losing my way. I sat in the back row at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. They called the back row of a meeting death row for a reason, for it was the closest row to the door, the door to our past drugged out lives. Yet in spite of how poorly I was doing, I continued to attend, sitting apart from everyone, squirming and scared all by myself.
It was simply the best I could do...
My circle of friends began to worry. They suggested another inpatient treatment stay. Sensing where I was heading, I didn't object. I needed another 30 day time-out and badly. But I had one more idea up my sleeve before committing.
Desperate for a less radical solution, I concocted an idea. I would take a trip. A spiritual journey. It was Fall of 1999. Phish was coming to the west coast. I would follow them, hooking in with the phellowship, a caravan of sober phish fans who traveled from show to show. And if my plan failed, I promised my inner circle I would check back in to treatment.
And the worst part of my plan was I was dead serious. I really thought going on Phish tour struggling as I was would be the place for me to find myself and sobriety. The pure insanity of it all.
Landing in Seattle, I headed up to Vancouver to begin my pilgrimage. I wasn't on lot for more than an hour and I was already off and running. The whole trip, 11 concerts in 13 days from Vancouver to San Diego became a transcendent mess. I came home a shell of myself, defeated once again, my best laid plans an unmitigated disaster.
At home, I made one last attempt to do better. Then the crack came back. I started making midnight runs in to the inner city, buying rock at corners from the most crazed and random street people. Super dangerous. Super messy. Pure recklessness and nothing fun about any of it.
The lost weekends soon became lost weeks with longer and longer disappearances. I was hooked and I couldn't stop. Heading for trouble again, yet I couldn't ask for help, partly from my false pride, partly from being so gacked out I couldn't put the words together. I started blowing everything and everybody off, trying my friend's and client's patience. Every binge another termite eating away at my life's remaining foundation. The dark progression of my progressive illness
With my luck running out, it was time for treatment again. But not before one incredibly difficult conversation with my parents.
Since my relapsing, I hadn't been coming around the house much. It'd been two long years since the night my father looked at me declaring me an entirely different person. Now I walked in to their house an entirely different person again, but in all the wrong ways.
It was a difficult conversation. They were upset. They were concerned. I told them as much as I could, leaving out the more harrowing details. I told them of my struggles with AA. That I grew disillusioned, thought I had it under control, but let my guard down and fucked up. I told them how the first relapse happened quite innocently, it wasn't some master planned blowout, but even then, I didn't think it would spiral so out of control so intensely.
My father was surprisingly understanding at the bad news, agreeing to lend me the money to go to treatment again and on the weekend before Thanksgiving of November 1999, I checked in to the Betty Ford Treatment Center in Rancho Mirage California for another 30 day tune-up.
The Betty Ford Center. It came highly recommended and with great mystique. Rehab for the jet set crew. Housed in the Eisenhower Medical Center, it was more a hospital setting than the pastoral desert dude ranch motif of Sierra Tucson. But all business they were at BFC. If only I were too.
Another 30 days of substance abuse treatment. But there would be no drivers to BFC with inspirational speeches nor saintly counselors praying for my health and well-being and certainly no promises of the miraculous this inpatient stay. I was all out of recovery magic. I came in strung out and beat down. Alcohol wore you down emotionally. Crack fried you physically, like being struck by lightning. Violent. Sudden. Like a car crash. The decline so rapid and destructive.
My whole stint at BFC was a struggle. There would be no pink cloud this time through nor proud clutching of chips. In treatment terms, I was a repeat offender, a retread. I was a know it all who didn't know the most important thing, how to stay sober. But my challenges this time were different than before. It wasn't simply drugs and alcohol I was battling. It was the AA program too, the only known solution to my incurable progressive illness. And right from the first moment I set foot on the BFC campus, there it was, AA and more AA, getting jammed down my throat.
My stay went terribly. I had little willingness left to give. And I was angry. Constantly stewing. I was angry at myself. I was angry at addiction. And I was furious at AA and recovery. But beneath all my rage was a far deeper fear. For mostly I was flat out scared. AA was the only proven remedy for alcoholism yet its transformative magic eluded me. Day after day, it was AA all the time. I tried to hang in there. But I'd heard it all before thousands of times and was numb to it all, feeling none of its alchemy. So much so, against all medical advice, I checked myself out of treatment early, hitchhiking the hundred miles home, back to my broken hopeless life.
December 31st, 1999
Y2k and a new millennium was upon us. But again, I was stuck in the past, with no idea what to do with myself. I was staying sober but barely, the flat boring part of the run, knowing full well there was a gnarly hill just round the bend. Then the relapses began. Mild at first, but before long, I was right back to full on blow outs.
Time began to fly by. One step forward, two steps back. I was treading water, waiting for a wave to ride. Looking for answers, I tried everything. Therapy, medication, meditation, but nothing was sticking. With AA once again a bridge too far, I struggled to find my way back to prolonged sobriety.
Still in the tennis industry. Somehow still employable. Somehow still playing alright. I continued to get new clients, up and coming juniors with parents who knew the game. They remembered my name from my UCLA days. They would invariably ask me questions, always wanting to know what happened to me. I would respond in a general way, my stock answer being I had health problems that kept me from seeing my talents all the way through.
Then they would twist the dagger, asking what was my highest world ranking? To which I'd have to tell them I never achieved an ATP point and a world ranking. I flamed out way too young.
And the rush of shame that came with that answer, addiction having stolen my sole dream from me.
Time continued to pass. I was getting nowhere. I was going nowhere. I needed something to light a fire under me, to motivate me to take better care of myself. After one particularly good tournament, I got asked that dagger question again. What was my highest ranking? I answered once again I never got one, too many health problems to see my talents through.
Then as the inquirer and I parted ways, he shouted back in jest.. 'You still got it. You should go out and play the tour.'
And I would politely laugh off the compliments, but then a thought hit me. What if I did try to play again? Not the tour of course, that ship had long sailed. But play with a goal, of becoming the oldest player to earn his first ever ATP singles ranking point. But go even further than that. Write a book about the whole process, about what it took to be a successful tennis professional, a literary antithesis of my tennis upbringing, and in the process surround myself with all the best people I could find. Essentially do a tennis do-over, all the while making one more earnest attempt at sobriety.
An ambitious undertaking, certainly not lacking in grandiosity. But it wasn't all that far fetched either. Excited, I got right to work assembling a dream team. I reached out to Jim Grabb, now retired from the ATP tour and living locally and he loved the idea, offering to help coach me. I sought out a trainer to get back in shape. I went back to therapy to better understand my head and emotions. And I started hitting meetings again, no longer sitting in the back row but participating this time. And most importantly, I started writing, taking copious notes about all things tennis past and present. And in a matter of months, I was back playing again, using tennis once more as an ordering principle in my life, this time with the larger purpose of my survival in mind.
I soon assembled an awesome team. I reached out to all my tennis connections from years passed, taking direction from the likes of Jim Pugh, Jeff Tarango, Eliot Teltscher, Kim Po. Everyone and anyone who knew the game and what it took to be successful. I became willing to learn, a sponge to it all. And in no time my life started coming together.
Tennis now anchored my sobriety. It became my therapy, trading in the counselor's couch for the courtside bench. Tennis was always the ultimate physical, mental, emotional and spiritual challenge. If any one of those fields were askew, it would show in my play. But for a brief moment in time, all was going well, the downhill wind at my back part of the run. I had great momentum, finally finding a balance in my life between the philosophy of Nietzsche and the AA program.
what truly drew my soul aloft quote
For the first time in what seemed forever, I had a purpose, I had found my why.
Tennis still had something to teach me. And I was using tennis to save myself.
2002. I'm thirty-seven, playing tournaments, I'd been at my project for a year now but still no point yet, with the physicality of training beginning to take a toll. Now all my past doubts and demons returned. Playing locally, I lost back to back matches to a couple kids with world rankings half my age. I played about as well as my 37 year old self could play, having good chances in both matches to win, but I got tight and choked them away.
At this point I was pretty invested in my project, but felt like I was running out of time. With still no grasp of how to manage disappointment, I took the losses hard, going on a couple bad benders. Such the wrong thing to do. But the matches, the stress, the anxiety, the consequences of losing, of failing at my life saving project. My future well-being had become dependent on the success of my project. (or so I thought) And as my lofty goals started to slip away, panic began to set in. What if I fail at this? Then what was I going to do?
Next event. Playing the Adoption Guild, a local prestigious event held throughout Newport Beach, Ca. Playing with an old UCLA teammate John Davis, we drew the top seeds, the South African duo of Pieter Aldrich and Dannie Visser. Aldrich and Visser (BIO) Come match time, I came in pretty shaky, having just come off a bad bender. Not even thinking about winning the match, all my thoughts centered around not getting embarrassed by the former world number ones.
Match time. JD and I took the feature court at the NBTC on postcard perfect SoCal day and low and behold, we came out playing fantastic. We won the first set, then I started getting the idea this could be the ending for my book. Win this match against the former Wimbledon champions and declare mission accomplished. Now I was excited. It was all coming together, as we continued to play about as well as we could.
Late in the second set, I stepped up to serve for the match. This was it, my chance to put it all to rest. But I got tight, real tight. Played a terrible game, pissing away my serve. And my choking had just begun as I continued to spazz, losing the second set and getting behind early in the third. Starting to fade, I began to cramp. It was the third set of a doubles match and I was finished, for I hadn't been taking care of myself again and as I continued to tire, a wave of rage rushed over me, the power of which I'd never felt before. It was all slipping away again, in public, on a tennis court, at the worst of times.
They're called red outs. Blinding rages that blot out consciousness. Snapping rackets and cursing like a sailor, now all eyes were upon me. My partner tried to calm me down, but there was no helping me this day. Losing the third set badly, I rushed from the tournament site, heading straight for the first liquor store I could find. And before I even got out of the store's parking lot, I'd drank a pint of bourbon on my way toward another world class bender.
I simply wasn't able to manage my mind during tense situations. Monday arrived and I was despondent. On a whim, I reached out to another former UCLA team mate, a gentleman named David Livingston, who was now a therapist in Beverly Hills. Agreeing to meet, we sat and talked for hours, myself explaining my situation and my project and all I hoped to accomplish. I shared about my father, my alcoholism and addiction, and my uncontrollable anxiety in times of duress all while I was attempting to reparent myself through tennis, providing for myself all the nurturing that was missing from my upbringing in the hopes of healing myself.
David listened intently as I described the past 20 years to him. I could tell he wanted to say something, to jump in with an insight, but he was hesitant to speak. I finally asked him what he thought. He responded that I was his friend and there were ethical issues with him working with me, but he had someone he held in the highest regard that he felt would be ideal for my situation, a peer of his in the Los Angeles area named Dr. Alex Kataharkis, a brilliant woman whom he thought I should consult.
I wasted no time, making an appointment with her the very next day.
Sitting across from Dr. Katehakis, I explained to her all I had told David the day before, when in the middle of my speaking she asked me to pause a second.
I did, asking her after a moment what she thought.
And without flinching, she looked me right in the eye and said I think you have Bipolar Disorder.
Bipolar Disorder??? How can that be?
Yes, she continued, as a matter of fact, from everything you've described, your Bipolar has been quite active in your life for some time now.
I nearly collapsed. I began to do inventory of all the help I'd sought over the years. The two months inpatient rehab, the hundreds of hours of therapy, the thousands of meetings I'd attended, the reading of every imaginable book on every imaginable topic I could find and at 37 years old, this was the first I was ever hearing of this? That I had Bipolar Disorder this whole time and nobody caught it?
I almost passed out at her diagnosis. Then my mind raced back to 18 years before, to the time I walked the halls of the UCLA Psychology Department looking for an open door, for anyone to talk to, for I wasn't feeling well. And I found that open door and a woman inside who tried to help me. Like David, she couldn't/wouldn't tell me what she thought was wrong with me. But she gave me a phone number, saying to call and that person should be able to help me.
Was this what I would have found out all those years ago at UCLA if I had simply called that number? Was this what she couldn't tell me herself and that only a Doctor could?
Our session ended. Emotional, I thanked her. I came in confused, I walked out with the mood disorder of Bipolar Disorder. Not sure if that was a victory, but we agreed to meet again the next week
Driving home, I began rummaging through my memory for signs.
And in the middle of my search, I began to weep. So there was a reason driving all my inexplicable dangerous behavior all these years.
I was sick and I'd been self-medicating all these years.
Part relieved. Part exhausted. I now had an answer. I've had Bipolar Disorder my whole life and I didn't know.
But now what the hell was I supposed to do..
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