This is difficult to write, because it’s about stuff related to AA, and “anonymity is the spiritual foundation of blah blah blah”, but fuck it.
A good friend of mine from college (call him E.) got in touch with me a few months ago. I knew from others that he had become a real hard case alcoholic in recent years, and I told people to tell him that if he ever wanted to, he should get in touch with me and I can tell him what I know, since I’ve been sober a few years. We started conversing on a regular basis since about October, and most days I talked to him he sounded relatively upbeat, but I knew he was often not being honest with me, and every time I talked to him some new facet of his life had gone wrong.
I tried real hard. We had long phone conversations about sobriety, about what works and what doesn’t work, about how you can’t do this alone, and at some point you have to open yourself up and let total strangers into your life to help you figure things out, and that you have to be painfully, rigorously honest when you do. But until you reach your bottom, until you hit a point where you simply hate your life enough that you are finally ready to listen to people, you’re finally ready to take any desperate measure offered in order to not drink again, you will keep drinking.
My bottom was relatively high. I know others who hit what sounded to me like rock bottom before they got clean…divorce, homelessness, jail, etc. And I knew that for some unfortunate few, there was no bottom other than death.
Well, E. finally found his bottom this week. He took his own life.
I hadn’t talked to him in a few weeks, not since my last visit to Austin, where I had tried and failed once again to get him to go to a meeting and meet up with my old sponsor. I was coming around to the idea that maybe he had some more drinking to do before he hit bottom, and was coming to terms with the fact that I had no more power over his drinking that I do over my own. But still, I tried my damnedest. I have that compulsive rescue hero streak in me, and I tried all the AA kung fu I knew.
I didn’t hear from him for a few weeks, finally called him a couple of days ago, Friday around lunchtime, and left him a voice mail.
Now I know that by then he was already gone.
One thing he told me that haunts me, is that he said when we were in college, even though we ran in the same crowd, he always thought that I didn’t like him. That I was somehow “too cool” for him, because I ran the college radio station and listened to all this weird music and he was just a regular old shmoe. When in fact the opposite was true. I loved the guy. He was so kind, so warm, so self-effacingly funny, I always loved running into him and hanging out with him. I used to have this wall up around me that was primarily shyness that I’ve been told over the years a lot of people mistook for arrogance. And I wonder, would E. have felt that way about me if I didn’t act arrogant because of my own insecurities? Would he have talked to me sooner? Would he have called me during the last two weeks when his life apparently spiraled out of control?
I tried everything I knew, and it wasn’t enough. And I will always wonder if if there was something else I could have tried, something I could have said, that could have made things click in his brain. I will always wonder if not calling him for his last two weeks was a mistake.
I know intellectually that none of this is my fault, that nothing I could do would have saved him. But in my gut, I am filled with self-doubt.
I remember one time staying up late with E. and a bunch of other people, and we were drunk and otherwise under the influence, and he was making us watch Evil Dead II, which he insisted was the greatest movie ever made. And the movie kept getting more ridiculous and he kept saying “wait, it gets better. it gets better”. And it didn’t get better, and he’d say, “it gets better!”…until the closing credits rolled and he said, “See? It’s over. It got better.”
E., man, I’m sorry that you had to get all the way to the end for it to get better. But I know that you’re better now, and I’m glad you’re not in pain any more. I just want you to know that when I said last month that I loved you and wanted you to get well, I meant it with all my heart.
We’ll meet again.
Take care.
It gets better
Posted in sobriety
I am very, very sorry. *hug*
Losing a friend that way is hard, you always wonder what you could have done or what you missed, and usually there isn’t anything. I’m so sorry.
*hug*
Wow. That’s really sad. I’m sorry you couldn’t reach him, but it sounds like you did all you could to help him.
Ray, you tried harder than most. Those of us who had known him for years had largely spent whatever emotional capital we had, and had gotten to that sad point of self-preservation where all we could do was wish him well and hope for the best. You continued to be proactive and stayed in closer contact, trying up to the end. It’s tragic that he couldn’t get it turned around.
So now we go through the grief, hug each other and try to focus on the memories of a sweet, smart, funny friend that enriched our lives. He will be missed.
Ray,
Thank you for all that you did. No one could have done enough to save him. But I wish I had done more too…
What should we do now?
If he had any doubts about you in life, he now knows that all your intentions were honorable and you truly loved him – my condolences on your loss
Ohh, no. Everybody here has said all that is true about this kind of a situation…but it doesn’t make this loss any easier.
I’m so, so sorry, Ray.
I’m so, so sorry. I’ve had to deal with sudden death and suicide more times than I’d like to remember, Ray.
E. will be in my prayers. So will you.
Ray: thanks for reaching out to E and sharing your thoughts here. I trust your words, and the comments posted here, will help others as they helped me in this night of anger and grief.
My memories of E are also of a sweet, smart, funny friend. Since I was an unofficial adoptee at the college he was in, I often hung out with him and other friends there. I remember him as often being sort of like Silent Bob, sitting there quietly watching others blather on, occasionally making humorous facial expressions that you had to be watching carefully out of the corner of your eye to spot. And then he would catch you by surprise with a hilarious comment out of nowhere. Damn.
You did what you could do, he did what he could manage… but I’m not sure it’s possible to save someone from hitting their bottom. It’s a place you kinda have to go; his was simply out of your reach.
I’m sad for both of you.
Thanks Pat for reaching out to me, and thanks Ray for writing what you did. I remember Evil Dead II and Claymation!!, I remember when “E” and “E” started dating, how there was that one open pathway through the mess upstairs from the one bedroom through the bathroom and out through the other bedroom while downstairs was spotless, shit I remember when all of us were hanging out, going to Mardi Gras where we lost “B” for awhile. But now I look back on it, and realize how close many of us came to walking the same road, how many people we know still are confronting those inner demons while we wish we could give them the strength or the light to not have to walk that dark path.
I am so so sad that “E” has left this life, that he has struggled so. I hope his family and loved ones feel the strength pouring from all his old friends. He has found some peace in death that he couldn’t find in life (and I bet he would have loved Dusk til Dawn too!). We will be trying to find some meaning, peace and comfort in our shared words and memories of “E”, remembering all the good times and our friendships.
Sorry to hear this sad news, Ray. Maybe you couldn’t get him to save himself, but there’s grace in trying regardless. Thanks for setting the example more of us should try to follow.
I’m sorry for your loss.
I’m so sorry, Ray, for this terrible loss.
I’ve been touched closely by suicide twice. The first will be ten years past, next Christmas Eve. The second was in October of 2003. They both still hurt, but, after having this time to consider them, I’ve come to the contrary opinion that we (the collateral damage left after one for whom we care takes their own life) need to go through a period of blaming ourselves, of thinking about it too much and trying to figure out what we might have done differently. I think we have to do this in order to ultimately come to terms with the loss. After being angry with them and angry with myself for not doing more/better, I’ve had to conclude that my dear lost friends, both young men with their lives ahead of them (18 & 25), were in a place of pain that I simply cannot imagine.
You’re in my thoughts and prayers.
Ray, First of all my condolences on your loss. I know the feelings it conjures up having been my father’s “Baby Girl.” I don’t know what to do with that pain – even today. It’s been 26 years since his death, and quite frankly it still haunts me.
Thanks for your thoughts at “The Package,” but I came here becase it’s more relevant in my life right now. Tell me, what do you think of children of alcoholics? Never having been to AL Anon, or AL-A-teen, or whatever the hell the proper title is. I know though, I have some abandonment issues that seem to follow me wherever I go. Been to some “ineffectual” counselling more times than I care to acknowledge (single and marriage) and I’m convinced it all comes back to the aloholic who was the love of my life, in whose eyes I was special and wonderful and could do anything. Selfish as it may sound in your time of sorrow, I am asking someone who’s felt the pain of that kind of loss. Any gut-feelings?
Do I drink? Yes I do, like the sailor I used to be. But there’s something that keeps me from passing out, or waking up drenched in someone else’s pee (a la Craig Ferguson) or forgetting what I did last night (must be my damn Mama in my ear talking about how we don’t do or be what “they” expect us to be. But I know there’s something, something that’s comforting about putting my lips on the bottle and unlike you, opening my lips and letting it flow. The only difference is, I feel nothing, no matter how much I drink. So I don’t – for months on end. But when I do, I feel good right then. But later, I’m like “Okay that felt good. Now what?” I often feel like “Damn, if I was a drunk, would they listen, would they care?” It’s like no matter where I am, I’m not enough to matter. Do you know what I mean?
I’m smart enough to know it’s a real self-esteem issue, but too smart to know what to do. I feel the way I know my Dad felt for a very long time. But unlike him, I’m not ready to check the fuck out. Does that make sense? Back to my original question – what do you think about children of alcoholics? Are we doomed?
“Rigorous Honesty” got me to thinking about a lot of things. My Dad, my life, my sons, my world. Forgive me if this is not the time or the place, but it felt like it was, so here I am.
Wow, Ray. I ask my HP every day to help those I ran with before I got sober. I worry so much that they aren’t going to make it. I know I am powerless, and the only thing I can do is be as happy joyous and free as possible so they can see there is a different way. I am so happy I found your blog. My yahoo’s local part was all messed up, so I had to find new stuff, and you popped up, and I needed some program today. I am stuck in my FQ apartment with a bad knee, my car being held hostage by Endymion and a bunch of self pity. Thank you (and HP) for reminding me that I have so much more than I did last Mardi Gras. I don’t sit around pondering my own demise anymore, and if that was all I had, that is more than I could have ever hoped for.