I Made a Good Friend in Rehab (Part Two)

And he died during the first week of quarantine

Fast forward to the end of August.

I got out of rehab about a week before Matt. It was a hassle just to get out of that place. Too many T’s to cross and I’s to dot. The doctors wanted a family member to come pick me up. All of my family was in the remote mountains in California or down in Charlotte. So that wasn’t going to happen.

I also didn’t want to go to a sober house like they were recommending because:

A. I was never going to stay at a sober house. There’s nothing wrong with them, and they’re very useful for the recovery of some people. I had just already decided that would not be my path. If I was going to stop drinking, it would be with no guard rails.

B. It was more than a little concerning that the rehab center seemed to have some sort of deal set up with these sober houses (which were not cheap by the way).

Looking back, there were a lot of questionable practices in terms of funneling patients one way or another and making money off them every step of the process. There have been plenty of stories about corruption and scandal in the recovery community. This is a good article right here; you can learn about recovery’s liquid gold.

Before they finally let me take an Uber back to my Upper East Side apartment, I set up intake the following day at an Intensive Outpatient Program, as well as meetings with my psychiatrist and mental health counselor. I had identified meetings that I’d hit and made plans for ways to fill the rest of my days.

Exit Stage Right

At this point, I’d been over Silven Hill for about the last week. I wanted out. As patients cycled into and out of the transitional house, the attitude had changed. It had gotten decidedly younger, less intent on pursuing sobriety and also more skewed toward opiates and benzodiazepines.

Fortunately, I’d never gone down either of those rabbit holes, but it made it harder to relate. Interestingly, I’ve been told that benzos are the most dangerous drug to get off, given the likelihood of seizures and death.

The classes were also repeating, and I was ready to move forward. I was tired of being trapped where I was. At last, the day came, and I hopped in my Uber on Saturday. It was strange to have my phone and my Juul back. Oddly, it took rehab to make me start smoking cigs again — apparently some dumb ass had jail broken Juul pods to smuggle weed in before my time.

I got about twenty minutes away when I got a call on my phone. It was the RC from the house. Apparently, I had forgotten to hand in my key fob, which was still around my wrist. She told me they’d have to charge me for it. I said, “Throw it on my bill. I’ll keep it as a reminder of where I don’t want to be.”

My girlfriend at the time had cleaned out my apartment while I was gone, removing the giant bottle of champagne that I’d won in a golf tournament as well as a kitchen full of empty liters of Tito’s vodka. I also told her where to find my THC pens and edibles.

It was really good to see her that day; she was much more attractive than I remembered. They say that you get “rehab goggles” when you’re on the inside for a month, and I can say with certainty that this is true.

I stayed with her for the first couple of nights, and then I started my routine. IOP four days a week, followed by a group meeting, and then I focused on reading. I had a pile of books that I had bought when I first quit alcohol over a year ago and had plenty of time on my hands to jump right back in.

IOP had quite the cast of characters. Everyone from nurses and surgical techs who had been caught on the job to New York State police, former DAs, a male escort, a famous chef, famous musicians, investment bankers, professional authors, leaders at big technology companies, c-suite corporate types and the list goes on. On the balance, it was a great way to reintegrate back into society slowly, continue to learn coping skills and be able to talk about my issues and experiences four days a week.

Exit Stage Left

Matt’s path was different. He decided to go a sober house. Apparently, it was a fancy McMansion up in Connecticut with a bunch of recovering addicts who had also been through Silven Hill. The owner was also an alumnus. I think it was like $20K a month. There’s no way I was going to pay that — even if I had that kind of coin to put toward my recovery (which I did not).

He was there for about a month. Everything seemed to be going well for him. He was hitting the gym and making meetings multiple times a week. I think having all the guys around him helped him, but he was a squeaky wheel about the price, which is understandable.

All was going well until he went down to Philly. He’d been interviewing for jobs to be a high up executive that had managed large operations for cities and commercial real estate companies. His plan was to go down, do the interview and then come right back up. He never made it back up.

He ended up calling me in a blackout the second night he was drunk. Apparently, he’d checked himself into a hotel and proceeded to continuously drink vodka. I tried to talk some sense into him, but the words weren’t getting through. He was too far gone at that point.

So, I just listened and let him ramble about his girlfriend being mad at him, the random things he bought down in Philly, where his car was, how he wasn’t going to be able to drive back up, how his hotel room had water leaking… And then, he threw up while I was on the phone with him, and all I heard was him moaning. Eventually I just hung up.

He called me the next day in a less inebriated state. We talked again for a while. It was clear he was still drinking and had no plans to go back to his sober house. I talked to one of our mutual friends repeatedly over the course of this weekend, a trend that would continue in future months. We were a little worried that we would need to go down there to get him. I wasn’t really comfortable with that given all the warnings I’ve heard about trying to help someone who has relapsed.

“They’ll get you drunk before you’ll get them sober.”

Either way, a couple days later I received a frantic call from Matt from the road. Apparently, two guys from his sober house had driven down to Philly to bring him back to Connecticut. They were going to take him to a detox first and were trying to figure that out. He didn’t want to have any part of it and put me on the spot requesting to stay on my couch.

What Do I Do?

I was only maybe a month and a half out of rehab. The thought of him coming in hot to my one-bedroom apartment sent my nervous system spiraling. I had once told him that he could crash on my couch for a few nights, but him showing up loaded was a different story. That and unsupervised detoxes, while he had done them many times before, were not something I was planning to host.

Eventually they convinced him to check in at a detox facility about twenty blocks from me. He was very wary of checking in, as he didn’t want his rights taken away from him or suddenly end up being shipped to a long-term program. The facility gave him some assurances, but then he almost lost it and tried to escape when they took his phone away.

He stayed for two nights or so — using Librium while the alcohol cleared his system — and he made it through the worst of the withdrawal. Then he wanted to come to my place. I was a little hesitant because I had been repeatedly told by people in the program that having him over at my apartment was, unquestionably, a bad idea.

Similar to many of us, I like to do things my own way. So, I let him come over. I figured that we’d just watch some movies, eat dinner and chill out. When he came over, I got another idea. Why not take him for a massage to keep his mind off the booze? It had become part of my weekly regimen, and I thoroughly enjoy it as a replacement.

He’d never had a massage before and said it chilled him way the f*ck out. After putting away some Italian food and watching some movies, he went to town on the ice cream in my fridge. The next day I took him to a meeting, and we hung out for a little bit. He told me about how much of a mistake it was for him to go down to Philly alone, and how he didn’t know how he could slide back into a relapse so easily.

That day Matt sounded committed to getting back on track, and I felt relieved when a guy from the sober house came to pick him up. He was doing okay for a few weeks, and then we got word that our buddy Rex had relapsed. To his credit, Matt drove over to his house, helped him stop drinking and made it back home all in one piece.

Maybe this gave him confidence in having self-control over alcohol. I’ll never know.

He was planning to move into a new apartment near his girlfriend in Hudson Valley, and we all thought that would be a great idea. He’d be able to spend time with her in a cheaper location and hopefully start to do some work on himself.

I had repeatedly encouraged him to set up a mental healthcare network like myself that included IOP, psychiatrist and counselor as well as meetings. He just didn’t want to. He would get angry at all the meetings he would attend and call the people stupid or weak or too rigid or the big book too old. Ultimately, if we want to find a reason not to follow the program, we’ll find it.

Hudson Valley Geographic

When he moved into his apartment, he relapsed right away. Apparently before he went to rehab, he had hidden vodka in the boxes he used to pack up his old apartment. So, day one in the new apartment back off the wagon he hopped. It didn’t turn into a multi-day binge this time though, as his girlfriend went over to his house and dumped his booze.

She put him on a train into the NYC the next day to meet up with myself and Rex. We decided to hit the Mustard Seed and then go for a walk. He had to sit in the front of the room and tell his story of relapse in front of an audience of twenty or thirty. Again, he sounded genuine and determined to turn it around.

We grabbed some lunch and then hit another meeting before calling it for the day. We resolved to do it again soon, which we did.

The next time he came in he brought a former roommate at the sober house. I forget his name. Alcohol wasn’t his primary issue. Apparently, he would get a bunch of meth, go to a casino for the weekend and have sex with hookers and gamble for a few days straight. We hit one of the meetings from before, which was on Madison by Central Park, in an old church.

Rex joined and shared about the arguments he was having with his wife, and how difficult it was that she had basically stopped being supportive of his efforts while he was going through the program with me.

It turned out that an emergency room nurse had been in the meeting and stopped to talk to him after. I had thought his story had touched her, but she was actually running down an ACS checklist to see if she needed to alert the authorities. That really pissed me off, and I haven’t been back to that meeting.

We chilled out in the Park for a little bit, and then we all went our separate ways. My brother and his wife had just been staying at my apartment for three days, and I needed some alone time. At various points in my recovery, other newly sober people wanted to hang out all the time. I wanted to help them, but I didn’t have any instruction manual. I needed some serious alone time to find my own way.

Matt text me a few hours later, asking if he could come over. In therapy, one of the things that I’d been very hard on was drawing healthy boundaries and respecting how I feel. I’d been a people pleaser for years. In an attempt to get everyone to like me, I’d never say no to anything. Not at work. Not in my personal life. Not to my family. It had resulted in me being caught up in some very high-stress situations that did a lot of damage to me mentally.

So, I said I needed the night to myself. I later learned that Matt then went straight to a bar in the Village and proceeded to get blackout drunk. Rex tried to get him out of the bar, which was quite a challenge. Matt instead tried to get him to start drinking, but he finally won and got him into a hotel.

The next day I met them at the Mustard Seed again. We did another meeting, and he shared again that he was on day number one. Rex took him to Grand Central to hop on a train home because his girlfriend was expecting him for dinner.

He never got on the train. Instead he called another guy from rehab, who had picked up a gram of cocaine just hours after he got out of rehab. They proceeded to get blackout drunk and disappear off the grid for the remainder of the day.

Everyone was looking for him, and no one could get an answer. His girlfriend called me extremely upset the next day; she thought he might be dead. Friends had started calling hospitals and morgues to no avail. Eventually he began responding to texts that Sunday, and we learned about what he had done.

Matt had this habit of weaponizing guilt. I think it was a coping mechanism that he learned over time. When he knew that you’d be mad at him for his behavior, it was like he attacked himself in front of you with his own guilt. I don’t know if he was trying to preempt any blame being directed his way and head you off at the pass or if he genuinely did feel that way. I suppose that both could be true.

I Need to Look Out for Myself

At this point, it became clear to me that he was pulling me into his relapse cycle. Even if I wasn’t physically by his side while he was drinking, my emotions and anxiety level were attached to his behavior and the lies he told to his girlfriend and others.

I didn’t want any part of it anymore. It was holding me back from my own recovery, which was going well. I was committed to the program I had set up and was doing some really hard work in therapy to put myself back together.

I’d begun to recognize the authentic self within — that shy, anxious and sensitive kid who just wanted all the kids to be nice to each other on the playground. I’d made peace with the fact that that kid was enough. That his imperfection was perfect just as it was, and no one needed to change that.

I stopped texting Matt for a while. He called me while I was in Central Park once, and I listened to him rant for a half hour. The next time he called me it was early the day before Thanksgiving, and it was clear he was drunk. I was going through a really tough time with my own family, and I didn’t have the emotional capacity to handle his issues as well.

The last time that I spoke with Matt it was late December. He was telling me that he was sober, but he was saying some very strange things. After telling me that his girlfriend had dumped him, he said that he wanted to sue her for making him go to Silven Hill and spending all that money when it didn’t make him better.

In my mind, it felt like anger was covering up his own fear that he couldn’t control the situation. And he was doing what he had always done, which was to shift blame. I only chatted briefly because I needed to head into IOP.

That conversation stayed with me all week. It was upsetting to me how contorted his mind must have been to think that he could sue her when going to rehab was clearly his decision. Or that he could not take responsibility for his refusal to do IOP or see a therapist.

It made me angry. It made me sad. It made me disappointed. And it made me scared. So I sent him a text on Saturday morning right before I walked into my regular meeting.

I’m Sorry But I Need to Cut You Off

I told him it was clear to me that he could not stay on track on his own. I said that I couldn’t help him because he wasn’t willing to help himself. In his mind, he could always just quit and go back to drinking a little. He was never willing to just submit and admit he was powerless. The truth is that he didn’t want to let go of his will. He didn’t want to be sober.

I recommended that he go back into rehab for a 60-day stint. I thought it was the only way he could get better. And I also said that I needed to stop talking to him because it was not good for my state of mind or dedication to sobriety.

He lashed out at me later that morning, and I bit my tongue. Then all throughout the next week he sent me various levels of belligerent texts. They were disturbing, but also funny (he called me “beard face” repeatedly and warned me he was a bad motha). I did not respond. Eventually the texts stopped.

He tried to call me a month later to apologize. I could hear the weaponized guilt in his voice again. I know that he felt bad, but I didn’t want to get into another replay of the same old conversation about what he was going to do or how it wasn’t his fault this time.

He called me one last time. I actually thought about answering it, but I didn’t. Maybe the next one I thought.

His ex-girlfriend called me that Saturday morning at 8:30, which I thought was odd. She didn’t leave a voicemail, but I knew it wasn’t going to be good. I procrastinated in calling her back. I didn’t get her, but Rex did.

“Matt’s dead, Russ.”

I talked to his girlfriend later that night. Apparently, he had gone silent on his family for a few days. His mom had sent him the gluten free pizza that he liked and wanted to make sure he got it. His girlfriend did a drive by and noticed an Amazon package downstairs that had been there all week.

She called the police, when they opened the door his dog frantically ran out, going up and down the stairs as if to lead them inside. He was found on the floor of his bedroom. I never heard what the autopsy report said, but the cause of death was ruled asphyxiation on the scene.

His girlfriend was crushed. I was shocked. I’m still shocked.

I’d spent the last nine months of my life talking about the inevitability of death if I continued on this path. Intellectually, I knew the risks. I knew the risks all along. But they weren’t real. They weren’t real until right now.

Now, they are real.

How many times have I walked up to the very edge of death and was too inebriated to even know? When I woke up on the floor a few times, did I have a seizure? How many times had I nearly choked on my own vomit? I know I almost overdosed once a few years back. I know I may have had the DTs in the hospital a year and a half ago.

I can’t change what has happened in the past. I can’t control the decisions that others make around me. But I can control what positions I put myself in. I can listen to my feelings and use them to guide my decisions. I can withdraw when I’m uncomfortable, and I can choose to save myself.

I do feel guilt and very sad that Matt passed away. I don’t want anyone to die, but especially not someone who I’ve connected with. What happened is not my fault, and I could not have saved him. Ultimately, I made the decisions that I made to protect myself.

It’s immensely depressing that he couldn’t save himself. He was in a lot of pain. I know that he was trying, and I Know that he wanted to stop.

I know what it’s like to not be able to control alcohol while intellectually convincing yourself that you can. It’s a 24/7 struggle. I’m just glad that he’s no longer hurting each and every day.

I didn’t know there wouldn’t be another call, Matt.

I will never forget your struggle. I will use it to keep myself strong.

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